Koogle

An image of Jeff Koons' sculpture appears as Google's background today (hat tip Paddy Johnson).
Two comments: (i) What is Google thinking? and (ii) Koons is starting to look more and more like Dale Chihuly.

Update: The Koons is gone--guess it was just momentary, to plug Google's customizable home page crapola.

Bad Idea from Brody Condon

...as noted by Rhizome (but not described as such):

In coordination with Saks Fifth Avenue and the PS1 Greater New York Exhibition, Brody Condon was invited to contribute a project to be displayed in the Saks window on 50th St. Brody’s proposal was to film a performance inside Saks itself. To his surprise Saks was familiar with his work and agreed.

The piece, a modification of the Trisha Brown work Accumulation (1971), is a floor-based dance performance based on various seizure-like movements choreographed by Stephen Lichty, who is himself familiar with movement disorders.
-- DESCRIPTION FROM DIS MAGAZINE

In the accompanying photos the "seizure-like movements" are all by attractive female models, of course.

My comment:

Why is Saks' green light for this a "surprise"? Guess everyone's forgotten heroin chic and Diesel's "dead teenagers" campaign. And name-checking Trisha Brown, how wonderfully correct.

My bird could play that

YouTube of birds perching on an electric guitar neck, unconsciously dispensing power chords. (posted by bustram) [update, 1/1/2012: video removed by user--why?]

Prefer this to the famous Schoenberg cats, which subtly reinforce bubba dislike of modern music. These birds are creating their own score (although the digital delay helps quite a bit) and the artist who set it up isn't showing off I-hate-it-but-I-really-like-it musical acumen: creating a highly structured work product around a highly structured score to imply (without really meaning it, natch) that the score is just random splooge. What is the point of that?

Hat tip Disquiet - the link to the birds came up in the course of a discussion of the new Oval disc (first in many years from Markus Popp). Haven't heard the recording but it sounds like Popp's old fans are mostly dancing around that it (i) isn't anything like the '90s records that they loved and (ii) possibly is mediocre.

anti-sit

antisit

Examples of anti-sit devices from google images (hat tip Curbed)

One website calls these "architectures of control in design." No sitting, no leaning, no resting, no skating, no enjoyment, pain, pain, hurt, sadomasochism, move along, you animal. That is the world we now live in, courtesy our fine owners of property.

Neg-Fi for the 'teens

A fave band, Neg-Fi, has a web page where you can stream and/or buy their tunes. Check it out.

What I wrote in '05 still adheres for the '10s:

In the '50s, a time of postwar optimism and faith in science, there was Hi-Fi. In the '90s, an era of slackers and diminished expectations, there was Lo-Fi. In the '00s, a time of neanderthal government and outright contempt for the arts, there is Neg-Fi.