==pla|\|ing lakes==

Saturday, February 01, 2003

Web developers using blogs to get feedback on new software

Game developers have been doing this for a while. Now others within the Great Pyramid are following suit.

6:07 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"I've kept company with music for a second only and now I no longer know what to think of suicide..."

Surrealism founder André Breton's art and effects to be auctioned off after family spends decades trying to get a museum sanctioned by the government

Though the "Pope of Surrealism" was a dick in many ways, his influence is undeniable and profound.

The French are up in arms about this, and they should be -- as should anyone with the slightest knowledge of 20th century art and culture. Surrealism had an effect far beyond the fine art world. Try to imagine the 20th century without Dalí!

Breton bio, lecture "What is Surrealism?" and surrealist (move mouse over diagram) overview.

The activity of our surrealist comrades in Belgium is closely allied with our own activity, and I am happy to be in their company this evening. Magritte, Mesens, Nougé, Scutenaire and Souris are among those whose revolutionary will -- outside of all consideration of their agreement or disagreement with us on particular points -- has been for us in Paris a constant reason for thinking that the surrealist project, beyond the limitations of space and time, can contribute to the efficacious reunification of all those who do not despair of the transformation of the world and who wish this transformation to be as radical as possible.

[...]

I am not afraid to say that this defeatism seems to be more relevant than ever. "New tremors are running through the intellectual atmosphere; it is only a matter of having the courage to face them." They are, in fact, always running through the intellectual atmosphere: the problem of their propagation and interpretation remains the same and, as far as we are concerned, remains to be solved. But, paraphrasing Lautréamont, I cannot refrain from adding that at the hour in which I speak, old and mortal shivers are trying to substitute themselves for those which are the very shivers of knowledge and of life. They come to announce a frightful disease, a disease followed by the deprivation of all rights; it is only a matter of having the courage to face them also. This disease is called fascism.

As relevant as ever.

3:03 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, January 31, 2003

Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans documentary [robot wisdom]

Jarecki (who as a sometime musician and former CEO of Moviefone.com may have the most unlikely background of any director at Sundance this year) proves a smart, assured, unsentimental documentarian who never sides with any one interpretation of events, never stops reminding us of Arnold Friedman's past transgressions.

He has us pity the implosion (and, at times, self-immolation) of the Friedmans without ever once asking us to forgive the heinous nature of Arnold's and Jesse's possibly real, possibly imagined crimes. By remaining so resolutely objective, Jarecki forces us to put ourselves in the Friedmans' position and ponder how there, but for the grace of God, might we go.

2:15 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Victim of Polanski rape case would like um closure

2:12 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Copyright lunacy file

Finnish kindergarteners charged fee for singing songs [Undernews Jan 29]

12:03 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, January 30, 2003

Had a pretty bad 24 hours, psychologically. Music helps now.

Live on tomorrow

Put me in the shower, pull me out of bed.
Am I only dreaming, or did I wake up dead?
Throw me in the garbage, shackled up in chains.
But I still got my boots on
So I can walk away.

A heartbeat says you haven't died.
You gotta try to stay alive.
Leave me to the vultures.
Throw me to the wolves.
I'll live on tomorrow
And purity of soul.

Dump me in the ocean,
Tied to a piano.
But you forgot to rip my heart out
Before you let me go.

A heartbeat says you haven't died.
You gotta try to stay alive.

Lock me in the basement,
Without anything to eat.
You can hurt my body,
But you can't hurt me

Juliana Hatfield

Music is too important to be doled out by gangsters.

Thanks to sing365 for the lyrics.

2:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, January 29, 2003

This review of The Little Friend (and The Secret History as well really) is pretty much on the money

I gave up on TLF after about 150 pages, for reasons I'll go into when I have more energy. For now, read Ruth Franklin (above link).

3:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tom Carson's new tour de force, Gilligan's Wake

I used to read Carson's reviews and so forth in the Village Voice and the short-lived but fondly remembered Soho Weekly News in the 80s. I always liked him, and I'd like to like his book. But the Joycean wordplay (and from my look at it today, it's got little of Joyce's hyper vibrancy or whatever it was he had, as David Kelly noted) is way too mental or even precious for me these days.

But it's chock full of pop culture references, and many people will probably love the shit out of it.

I also checked John Laurence's The Cat from Hué: A Vietnam War Story, after seeing him on Booknotes on the weekend, and that's more up my street. If I can get through at least one of my Intel tomes. . .

For pop satire in book form, I'll stick to Victor Pelevin for now. Maybe that's partly because I've just had enough American culture for now. Maybe my sense of humor is closer to the darker, more disorienting Slavic acid-etching of Pelevin.

I just wish I read Russian, because I know I'm missing a lot in translation.

Fiction has to be right on my wavelength these days or I just can't stay with it.

2:38 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario (the 10th largest museum in North America) hires Frank Gehry for a re-design, as it expands with a new bequest and aspires to world-class status

Gehry is from Toronto originally.

1:48 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A new book argues that the fragmentation of modern life began with the ear, not the eye

From a review:

The aural experiences of yore were often communal - a congregation listening to a sermon or a choir, or an audience listening to a play. They happened in a specific time and place, and when they were over, they were over. Anyone who was wool-gathering during the second act simply missed it. Period.

Nowadays, however, we have a soundscape that is as much a "built environment" as is a city skyline. But the myriad forms of sound recording and amplification make it a fragmented soundscape. Instead of an audience that, as one, laughs or cries or sits enraptured, we have collections of individual auditors, each with his or her own headset. This fragmentation is like similar phenomena in other modern media and art forms - such as flashbacks that cinemagoers once had to learn to "read," or photo montage and stream-of-consciousness literature.

The reviewer notes that we once had to learn to speak over the telephone.

Hard to imagine a world so unified-in-hearing now. This is why artists like Laurie Anderson prefer live audiences.

Being an opinionated, firecely independent sort myself, I shudder at the thought of having to listen to the music the majority likes, for instance. But some communal experience might go a long way toward healing the alienation and anxiety we all feel.

Even in the 60s and 70s, the music I listened to was a shared experience (even if you weren't at a live concert), in a way it isn't now.

But how does that organically occur? It couldn't work any way but through a natural flow.

It would have to grow out of an intention. A shared intention.

Which seems to be a trend: collaborative art, that's made by a group or interacts with the audience.

Lawrence Rinder, the Whitney [Biennial's] curator, says of this team mentality, "There's definitely something in the air, particularly with the younger generation." Edward Kerns, an art professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., agrees that "it's a generational thing. Students who grow up with networking systems are used to working together."

[...]

Canadian artist Jillian Mcdonald, working out of a storefront in downtown Manhattan, invites passers-by to tell her their fears, then sews a protective mantra in gold thread into a garment for them.

"Without participation, there's no art - it depends on interaction," Ms. Mcdonald says. "There's nothing like communicating with other people," she adds. "It's more rewarding than working alone."

Ray Kass, founder and director of the Mountain Lake Workshop at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Va., has invited visiting artists to work with the local community since 1983. John Cage, folk artist Howard Finster, and French artist Jackie Matisse are a few who've worked alongside students and Appalachian residents.

Two hundred locals attended kitemaking day with Ms. Matisse. More than 700 viewed her artwork, "Kites Soaring In and Out of Space," in a virtual-reality cave. Focusing on a discipline-centered activity to get rural residents involved, Mr. Kass says, "has had the phenomenal effect of creating a kind of local culture."

This gives me a good feeling.

1:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, January 27, 2003

Music retailers figure this here music file stuff might be worth lookin' into

10:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, January 26, 2003

German crop circles

3:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()