"America isn't like Egypt, the govt. couldn't just shut down the whole internet."
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha."
Lauren Weinstein explains how it could be done in a few hours (note: thought experiment) and is working on a re-release of his vintage dial-up software, which could restart networks after the switch is flipped.
http://antlerswifi.com/ has returned.
Here's a post about the site from a couple of years ago, not all of which is germane (e.g., no sound as of yet and the page is now more bloggy):
recommended: blog of semi-abstract sound and video by Rick Silva.
Video, still and sound objects arranged four or so to a page.
Self referential designs (e.g. mountainous ripples made with characteristic marching ants and faceted chains of photoshop outlining), moving 3D graphics (mountainscapes, again, are prevalent), complex polygonal shapes (some moving or vibrating, some not), and eerie, Alpine UFO sample-tones marred by pops and clicks (think Eno through a fried sound card) appear on full-frame pages, no text. What does it all mean? No wall labels, you're on your own. These are net art gems--enjoy while you can since this artist is constantly erasing his trail across the net.
This GIF suggests JG Ballard's Crystal World by way of the geometric energy field in David Lynch's Dune. Shields on, plants.
Am trying Netflix's $7.99 "streaming only" plan and had a discouraging experience. Despite disclaimers for "hard language" the print of Hopscotch (1980) is a bowdlerized TV version. Knew something was up when Ned Beattie used "freaking" as a swear word--no one did that in '80--but then his voice said "son of a gun" while his lips were saying something else. Stopped watching and jotted an "online review" to alert viewers to the family-friendly remix, in the course of which I learned that the software doesn't allow you to use the word "Netflix"! Substituted "N-----x" but have no confidence my caveat will see the light of day (it takes a couple of days for approval and haven't checked back).
Earlier I noticed they are using a pan and scan version of Lynch's Dune but not the Alan Smithee TV cut, at least. By way of balance, the "foreign" selections are pretty good--haven't noticed any strange edits.
John Lingan (whose writing I found on the House Next Door, where he does a terrific series comparing movies and their own remakes*) interviews Van Dyke Parks about Parks' 1968 record Song Cycle:
[JL]: What were your immediate influences on Song Cycle, both lyrically and musically? There's a similarity to Copland in the use of American idioms in orchestral settings, just as there's a little Whitman in your variety of characters and place names. But your work is more elliptical than either; what were the formative influences on that record?
VDP: Lyrically, the free-relating lyrics were consciously influenced by the Beat poets, James Joyce, Ferlinghetti, e.e. cummings, with perhaps a nod to Bob Dylan—the latter of whom set a new elastic standard in what a song lyric could achieve.
The music? Basically an attempt to integrate the power of Cliché into a Pop arena. By "Pop," I mean a style of expression stamped in the Visual Arts during the sixties (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, etc.) in which images are reduced to the irreducible redux. In Song Cycle, such images are in orchestral detail (the Presidential dirge in the march to "The All Golden," the street sensibility in "Laurel Canyon" with the honk of the Helms Bakery truck, the flatulent horn retorts underscoring the Gershwinesque "I came west unto Hollywood."
It makes complete sense to think of Song Cycle as audio Rauschenberg, but I hadn't before. It's rare for a musician to trace roots to visual work.
*terrific despite the recent dismantling of his premise by comparing Piranha to Jaws rather than Piranha 3D--the Joe Dante tribute could probably have been done in another vehicle. Earlier comparisons are refreshing for being somewhat disrespectful to the original films (e.g, The Vanishing).
In the previous post two links to essays about Facebook were put up. For the record John Lingan's take is preferable to Zadie Smith's New York Review of Books rake-over. Her literate-us-versus-unwashed-them frame is something I keep having projected onto me and that's not how I see it (one can hate the idea of Facebook without being down on all 2.0 media).
Lingan puts it in better perspective:
To a lesser degree, she makes [Malcolm] Gladwell’s mistake of assuming that newfangled social media is designed to be radical or revolutionary. But these things are just platforms. Twitter, MySpace, Tumblr, et al would rust and moss-over if and when the patrons ever go away. People–typically older people–who stare at these odd new tools with bemused skepticism grant them too much power. You might as well look for meaning in a newly designed baseball glove.
But Lingan quotes Smith favorably on this point:
It feels important to remind ourselves, at this point, that Facebook, our new beloved interface with reality, was designed by a Harvard sophomore with a Harvard sophomore’s preoccupations. What is your relationship status? (Choose one. There can be only one answer. People need to know.) Do you have a “life”? (Prove it. Post pictures.) Do you like the right sort of things? (Make a list. Things to like will include: movies, music, books and television, but not architecture, ideas, or plants.)
[...]
Finally, it’s the idea of Facebook that disappoints. If it were a genuinely interesting interface, built for these genuinely different 2.0 kids to live in, well, that would be something. It’s not that. It’s the wild west of the Internet tamed to fit the suburban fantasies of a suburban soul.
