general

An unnecessary stimulant drink invaded my neighborhood yesterday for an unnecessary "air race." Sorry to go all treehugging killjoy, but the hyperactive gnat-like engine sounds could be heard for miles. Impossible not to think of all that oil gushing into the gulf and what stubborn oafs we are about our pleasures.

One person loved it, though (from the NY Daily News):

"U-S-A! U-S-A!" chanted Jeff Samelson, 30, a PR executive from the upper East Side, as the first U.S. pilot flew through the first obstacle.

"How could you not love this? Seeing these machines fly so fast through the air, turn on their sides in less than a second, and have a hot dog in your hand?" he said. "I'm on cloud nine right now."

Could easily not love it.

Update: The race is still going on today. Bike paths are blocked for temporary bleachers and concessions. All for the sake of promoting some dubious "energy drink" from the private sector.

Update 2: If anyone wants to question this blog's carbon footprint (it's been done), no one on our staff owns a car or air conditioner so we get to burn up some electrons posting funny pictures.

More from the discussion on Paddy Johnson's blog of the Guggenheim Museum's call-for-entries for artists to make YouTubes that will be judged and exhibited as art. The museum's teaser video is just awful.

Commenter Paul Slocum says: "I’ve decided that instead of submitting something myself, I’m going to contact producers on Youtube who are true to the spirit of Youtube and deserve recognition, and urge them to submit specific videos to the contest. Rally, y’all."

My reply to that:

Here are my YouTube faves. Paul Slocum has a good idea of encouraging producers we like to submit but after watching that Guggenheim call-for-submissions video again I wouldn’t wish that process on my worst enemies. Normal video pausing into pseudo-glitchy jitter, gratuitous sped-up city scenes, quasi-8 bit music, a groovy fake Yellow Submarine sequence, stop-motion graffiti oozing off the wall and strutting around: the full panoply of effects a 30-something high paid art director would create to conjure happenin’ youth. By contrast, the work in the above faves list is no-budget, sincere, incomprehensible, vague, “weak,” anti-YouTube, no-style, slight, non-corporate, etc (but also brilliant). Recall what happened when Guthrie Lonergan curated a group of touchingly inept MySpace intros on YouTube. The work got duller when it was linked to directly by Rhizome.org and even duller when shown on professional gear at the New Museum. The work I love most would shrivel in the institutional spotlight and I shudder to think of a techie explaining to Silicious how to make a more polished use of Poser software.

Update: YouTube is constantly changing the size of the player window, such that pieces that need to be full bleed suddenly acquire annoying letterboxing. Just noticed that a few more pixels have been added to the width so that even the widescreen pieces a few months ago now have thin vertical black stripes on the right and left. The only kind of art anybody should be making for this "medium" is shitty half-assed art that will somehow survive the hosts' regular tinkering.

Update, 2013: I closed the "Teleclysm" YouTube account over the "unitary identity" issue and general Google weirdness.

Comment below posted to Paddy Johnson's blog, in response to two threads about an upcoming Guggenheim "YouTube show."
Briefly the museum isn't scouring the 'Tube but asking for artists to send "new YouTubes," and the show is in effect a collaboration among the museum, Hewlett Packard, which will be providing gear and "technical advice," and Google. Johnson questioned the credentials of the standard "video art" curators to judge YouTubes (because the platform is a web meme factory, a slightly different animal from "video art") and offered substitute judges, including me (I would be great because I basically hate YouTube).

The question under consideration is whether YouTube is just a delivery system for "video art" of the established, Nam Jun Paik variety, or whether it’s a culture unto itself that curators should be learning about. By culture I don't mean "digital culture" in the starry-eyed Nicholas Negroponte sense of an evolving hive mind but a culture in the Margaret Mead sense of a group with its own mores, which may or may not mature into a canon with critics, philosophers, checks, balances, etc.* According to the New York Times, Hewlett Packard will be collaborating on the project "to teach skills like editing, animation and lighting to the video-naïve," and as noted by NYC the Blog, the YouTube platform has company rules and acts as a censor independent of the museum. All this suggests that YouTube will be thought of in its original, intended, non-vernacular sense as a place to find "new talent" for art and TV, even though, over the years, the YouTube "street has found its own uses for things," in William Gibson's phrase. James Kalm mentions several of those; I noted in the earlier thread that YouTube is becoming a substitute iTunes, with people posting their favorite obscure song with a single still image for the consideration of the site’s talkative commenters. (I've been calling the site "America's Jukebox.") Will that and other "pirate" uses of YT–-such as OAVs or "original anime videos" featuring anime clips recut with new music–-be reflected in the Guggenheim's filtered call for entries? Doubtful--the YouTube competition will ultimately be WhateverWeSayTube.

*forum culture, in Beau Siever's phrase

Have never used the term "digital culture" with a straight face.
Paddy Johnson refers to "web culture" in discussing an upcoming Guggenheim show that will largely bypass it in favor of a call for entries for newly made YouTubes (like we needed more).
A regular sarcastic AFC commenter asks:

Can you guys give me some examples of this great YouTube material I’m missing? I mean, I like the really cute lemur as much as the next guy, and those people lip-synching the Lady Gaga song are certainly doing important cultural work, but clearly there’s a whole avant-garde that has passed me by.

Nothing like an open mind!
It's possible to speak of a "culture" of something without claiming it has matured or evolved to the point of having a canon or even two people who agree on what's good.
Through Johnson's blog am continuing to rub shoulders with folks who equate "trying to get two people to agree on a good thing made with digital tools and transmitted/shared on the web" with starry-eyed Nicholas Negroponte-isms about our webby future.
It's easy to sit back and snipe, especially when you lack the aptitude or fortitude to make these critical judgments yourself. Just please don't ask to have it explained for you when you are asking in bad faith.

From my dump.fm page:

Kirk thinks of Spock

Painted Kirk thinks of Photographic Kirk

Roddenberry Kirk thinks of JJ Abrams Kirk

thought balloon via noisia

Non-Trekker bonus: What is a blog?