general

Some recent censorship stories intrigue mostly for what they say about the type of environment someone or some group hopes to create (see added boldface below). Particularly if that environment is going to be touted as some inevitable, be-all-and-end-all arena where future art will be forced to operate. Publishing in a realm of random, inexplicable censorship will create strange wrinkles or ripples in discourse.

1. Low-wage Facebook contractor leaks secret censorship list:

The list’s disclosure by gossip blog Gawker marks the first time that the public has been given a glimpse at the inner-workings of the planet’s largest social network...
The list also shines a light on Facebook’s darker underbelly: how it uses third-world laborers to police first-world content.

2. From the original Gawker story:

Facebook has fashioned itself the clean, well-lit alternative to the scary open Internet for both users and advertisers, thanks to the work of a small army of human content moderators...

3. So we're not always picking on Facebook, Reddit has censored blog posts from the reputable, outspoken Big Picture blog (whose author now writes for the Washington Post):

There are certainly also more open-minded moderators [than davidreiss666 and Maxion] at Reddit. But a couple of censors can squash discussion on entire topics.

Smaller operators (say, Word Press blogs on Dreamhost) don't have to worry too much about low-wage moderators on a post-by-post basis but everything you put out there is going to be filtered and monitored by somebody. So it becomes tempting to self-censor and speak in code to the few people you know are reading and will get it. This code, whether internally or externally imposed, becomes "part of the art."

A listicle!

Erik Satie - score for "Entr'acte Cinematographique," Rene Clair's film that ran between the two acts of the Relâche ballet. The film music is better than the ballet music; it's very contemporary-sounding in its use of loop-like compositional fragments that could be cut, stretched or repeated to accommodate the action onscreen. Alternately bombastic, comical, hypnotic/seductive, mock-elegiac, these fragments could be arranged like furniture (which is how Satie often described his music).

Zomby, Dedication. Just listening to this for the first time tonight, and was surprised by the Satie-like piano composition "Basquiat" plunked in among the repurposed club bits. Lots of one and two minute songs - yeah.

Ennio Morricone's score for the Mario Bava film Danger: Diabolik. A completely nutty, echt-1960s romp with surf guitar, Yé-yé vocals, hammond organ tone wheel freakouts, and eerie strings. This music leaps out of the speakers, grabs you by the neck and chokes you. You can't unhear it and you can't get it out of your mind. Brilliant.

4Hero, In Rough Territory and Tek 9, The Early Plates. This is the same artist team recording under two names, a couple of years apart. In Rough Territory captures the moment when Manchester Bleep'n'Bass was starting to become Jungle/DnB, tipped off by a song called "The Last Ever Bleep Track (Used to Death)." My favorite song is "Mad Dogs (Feeding Propaganda)," with its magnetic, layered sample of a voice over tinkling piano keys that reveals more of itself as the song progresses. Tek 9's "You Got to Slow Down (Original Mix)" has those great pads, Rhodes stabs, and meaty breakbeats of classic drum and bass (i.e., no heavy drilling yet).

Recently a teaching assistant at NYU published an essay saying that his generation mediates all its art through Facebook. Do you agree?

No. That guy hates his own generation and is selling them short with that theory. Also considering the timing of the publication [coinciding with Facebook's IPO] it reads like a long ad for Facebook. You can almost hear the PR flack: "850,000,000 users and even artists like it!"

So you think an artist, or a "young artist," as the expression goes, can exist outside of Facebook?

Please. There are thousands of places where your "online expressions" will look better than they look on Facebook, with its cramped page design and cumbersome navigation. Facebook actually puts up obstacles for animators, or anyone who likes to work large. Just hypothetically, one could be active on tumblr, twitter, dump.fm, a group site such as phone arts or Loshadka, and/or have a Word Press or Google blog and get all the exposure and interaction you could want -- assuming you had something to say.

What about the idea that "the economy of liking" is a new kind of conceptual/performance art?

That's just cynicism and self-loathing raised to the level of a theory. This generation deserves more enthusiastic spokespeople, willing to go outside one social media enclave for a few minutes.

Why do you hate Facebook?

It's fine for people have a place to hang out and talk shop and keep up with their friends and frienemies. Claims that this is somehow art, or a replacement for art, are just too depressing to be considered.

Encouraging news on the Gulag USA front:

Early this year, the United Methodist Church Board of Pension and Health Benefits voted to withdraw nearly $1 million in stocks from two private prison companies, the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

The decision by the largest faith-based pension fund in the United States came in response to concerns expressed last May by the church’s immigration task force and a group of national activists.

“Our board simply felt that it did not want to profit from the business of incarcerating others,” said Colette Nies, managing director of communications for the board.

Update: The bad news is CCA is offering to buy whole prison complexes from cash-strapped states in exchange for promises that the prisons will remain 90% full.