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individual images found on what I'm guessing was an online "draw anime" class - artists unknown
tom moody
MSNBC on Internet Sleepover
Above: my laptop featured in MSNBC article on the Great Internet Sleepover; blowup view shows what was onscreen at the time.
MSNBC's cybercorrespondent Helen A. S. Popkin covers the Great Internet Sleepover here. She emphasizes the social aspect and reminisces about her early days trading gross-out pictures found on the Net, confessing her lack of qualification to discuss the actual purpose behind the event:
“Art” figured in somehow, but as I do not possess a masters degree in that subject, I’m at a loss to explain how. My gentleman friend does, la-dee-da, so I’m only going by what he says. Admittedly, I’m a hater who generally rolls her eyes whenever “Art” is added to something everybody does while goofing off at work. But in my defense, many of the hardcore surfers who took part in the party’s panel discussion weren’t so clear on how “Art” figured in on the phenomenon of communal surfing either.
It's a fun article and chronicles many of the zanier aspects of the evening but since MSNBC provides no links to the "surfing clubs" Popkin mentions,* readers couldn't handily learn a key fact about them: that the term "surf club" is ironic. Rather than just trading links the sites in question also alter content and present original artwork in a melange that is not always easy to distinguish. Those parameters were one of things discussed in the panel, which she apparently slept through. "Gee we're just a bunch of 20-somethings surfing" is a pose or persona that sailed over the head of this mainstream media critic.
"Cursum Perficio (Carl Craig-like Mix)"
"Cursum Perficio (Carl Craig-like Mix)" [mp3 removed]
A midi version of an Enya tune (originally found on Guthrie Lonergan's blog no. 4) done in the manner of "second generation" Detroit techno guy Carl Craig, sort of. The midi track mostly featured piano and string instruments. (Update: one should always Google--I thought the tune was Lonergan's but he was being ironic. Sorry, Guthrie.)
Speaking of Carl Craig, Simon Reynolds wrote about him in Generation E. This is almost mean but really nails the music:
With its open-hearted yearning and twinkling textures, "Elements" conjured up the image of a lonely boy moping in his bedroom studio, mixing his lo-tech palette of tone colors with his teardrops to paint exquisite audio watercolors. There were shades of electro-calligraphic brushwork of Thomas Leer, Japan, and Sylvian/Sakamoto. This wasn't party-hard music but the pensive frettings of one of life's wallflowers. Six Nine's "Desire" features a keening synth melody that soars up and slides down the octave in fitful lurches. Released under Carl's own name, "At Les" is even more moistly melancholy, its trickle-down synth pattern sounding like glistening teardrops rolling down a cheek.
I can barely hit "publish" for my sobs, reading that.
Related: Kit Watkins "Labyrinth" remixed
Digital Political Time Lapse
Aron Namenwirth is currently installing a show he is curating at Brooklyn's Long Island University, called Digital Political Time Lapse. My piece Guitar Solo is on the tiny monitor in the above photo. The music will be listenable on those adjacent headphones (or cans, as the audiophiles love to call them). This is a provisional placement but it looks good to me, in keeping with the aesthetic Guthrie Lonergan has called "exuberant humility." Or as Steve Martin use to say, "let's get small."