general

guthrie has been narrating Vvork on Twitter. He's having a hard time keeping up with the site that has more art than there are people on Earth so I added some captions today. Some of these are his and some are mine. I realize this defeats the "presentness" of Twitter, oh well:

Apollo 11 on a scale of 1:1 made of wood
sculpture reconstruction of the "oldest piece on earth" rock
photogrid of blue collar Asian males
two email programs out of office autoreply each other
web page where page can be turned like physical page
pretty ethno-geographic photos of unidentifed nature and ruins
3d architectural model art
black and white flavinlike installations that look like graphics
solid grey smashed car
various materials stuffed into freestanding cabinet like Tetris
ordinary objects piled to create art in ordinary settings (photographed and blanked out)
bright light spins around room
2000 white books installed in public libraries
photos taken in russia by westerner
art with two motorcycle helmets connected back to back
astronaut on knees (sculpture)
photos of people holding signs with text photoshopped out
metallic mushroom cloud (sculpture) about 6 hours ago from web
sculpture of man standing, metal, headless, with bumps on back and lower left leg
black sculptures of woman standing, different levels of polygon simplification, shiny
bus with funhouse mirror sides, party inside
reflective sculpture, abstract
artist raises floor in hallway
wall projection of ants (green)
photographic reproductions of works by internationally known artists, downloaded from the internet, printed at original size and sold
artist arranged library books with "modern" in the title
artist hung library books with faded covers on wall
things hung from ceiling, lights
art with dudes walking on beach (black and white)
log cabin installed in gallery (with figure)
giant LED clock shows only "beautiful times"
backwards running clock hangs above mirroring water surface, appears to run forward
trip sequence from "2001" ten times, offset by a frame

This list will be supplemented if there is any spare time today.

Some great video psychedelia from triptych.tv.

Figured out--duh--how to look at triptych. Forget loading the entire blog page, there are too many embedded Quicktime files.
But you can use the "previous" links on the sidebar to page back through the posts.
Even that isn't perfect, as sometimes the Quicktimes are so large they cover the "previous" links. Then you have to use the "back" button to get to a clear sidebar.

jimpunk and Abe Linkoln would be good choices for a museum show on, say, internet montage.

Thanks much to jimpunk for this one.

A nice tv mandala.

If you wonder why the press loves John McCain, a man so out of it he thinks Sunni jihadis are trained in Shiite Iran*, consider this news item from 2004 (via the Daily Howler):

Richard Leiby, Washington Post (8/31/04): Sen. John McCain tended to his political base Sunday night: the entire national media. The maverick Arizona Republican, once (and future?) presidential aspirant and press secretary's dream hosted a hyper-exclusive 68th birthday party for himself at La Goulue on Madison Avenue, leaving no media icon behind. Guests included NBC's Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert, ABC's Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, Ted Koppel and George Stephanopoulos, CBS's Mike Wallace, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer, CBS News President Andrew Heyward, ABC News chief David Westin, Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons, CNN's Judy Woodruff and Jeff Greenfield, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, CNBC's Gloria Borger, PBS's Charlie Rose—pause here to exhale—and U.S. News & World Report publisher Mort Zuckerman, Washington Post Chairman Don Graham, New York Times columnists William Safire and David Brooks, author Michael Lewis and USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro. They and others dined on lobster salad, loin of lamb, assorted wines, creme brulee, lemon souffle and French tarts.

[...]

One guest, who asked not to be identified, described invitees as "the Journalistic Committee for a Government of National Unity." After singing "Happy Birthday" to McCain, many of the guests—Russert, Borger and Shapiro, among others—cabbed to Elaine's, where Zuckerman hosted a mob scene that included Fox's Bill O'Reilly, PBS's John McLaughlin and New York Gov. George Pataki, The Post's Mark Leibovich reports. By 11 p.m. the Second Avenue landmark—with red carpet outside—was elbow-to-elbow with martini-sipping guests. Thus commenced Campaign 2008 (we think).

This was during the Republican Convention, when Mayor Bloomberg's finest were arresting anyone who looked like a protester and hauling them to an asphault paddock near the Hudson waterfront to sleep in the open air.

*The man who Hillary Clinton believes passes the "commander in chief test" doesn't understand the most basic facts about the country he wants to keep occupying. From a news report yesterday:

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate." A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

"al Qaeda in Iraq" is a Sunni insurgency group; it has nothing to do with Iran or bin Laden's al-Qaeda based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Update: Don't know if Wolf Blitzer was at that party, but he is showing a clip of one of McCain's (frequent) "al Qaeda in Iran" assertions that has been edited to make it look like a simple one-time slip. See Media Matters.

Update 2: According to Neal Gabler, writing in the New York Times, the reason the press loves McCain isn't because of the birthday party at La Goulue (he doesn't mention it) but because McCain is "postmodern."

One of the hobbies of this blog will henceforth be collecting self-confident-to-outright-hostile artists' statements. (See, e. g., Adolph Gottlieb's; coming soon: George Antheil). Today's entry comes from CDBaby; this is the bio of Galaxy Robot Orchestra. Cower, you worms.

Galaxy Robot Orchestra is the brainstorm of Cy Borgski, who is proud to be a drop-out from the Yale School of Music. Shunned by his peers and persecuted by his instructors, Borgski knew his days at YSM were numbered when a professor asked, “What is Arnold Schoenberg’s fatal flaw,” and he replied, “Too many notes!” The look of revulsion on the prof’s face told Borgski everything. Even here, in this supposed epicenter of musical creativity, his maverick brand of nihilistic minimalism was doomed.

Soon, Borgski left this self-righteous “tune factory” to start his own recording and composing projects. With a stack of reel-to-reel tapes under his arm, containing recordings of performances by he and his YSM classmates, he decided to take the classical sketches and “correct” them digitally until only the sheer essence of their musical power remained, and none of the ostentatious narrative piffle. He expanded upon this with his own keyboard compositions, always recording in analog format to retain the essential retro flavor of his own vision of computer music. Above all, Borgski strives to maintain a rich, otherworldly orchestral sound in even the most minimal of works.

A devoted disciple of Morton Subotnick, Borsgki considers his “Silver Apples of the Moon” the only truly successful electronic symphony ever composed. Even Subotnick’s “The Wild Bull” suffered that soft, corrupting homogenization which so soon spoiled the entire electronic music movement, turning it into latter-day elevator music from the likes of Eno and Tangerine Dream.

Borgski reveres electronic film music of the 1960s. He considers the score to the 1962 SF film CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS one of the great electronic film-score masterpieces, and finds it odd that its creator, the mysterious “I.F.M.” is not even mentioned when critics discuss this landmark cinema apocalypse. “I really don’t think anyone has ever heard this music. It’s astonishing how one can watch a film, and discuss it, and never once mention the music. It baffles me. The music hovers over the film like its guardian angel, caressing and protecting it. How can you not hear it? Sadly, no music credit appears for this film on the Internet Movie Database. How embarrassing for them!”

Another composer hero for Borgski is Frederick Charles Judd (aka F.C. Judd), who scored the avant-garde UK SF TV series SPACE PATROL (1963). Judd is famous, amongst other things, for the seminal 1961 handbook to the then-new electronic music scene, “Electronic Music and Music Concrete” (1961). Borgski admits to cribbing the term “electrosonic” from Judd. “Judd’s music was so ahead of its time, people still don’t know what to do with it. It’s dark, ironic and threatening, and it was premiered on a freakin’ kiddie TV show in 1963, for gosh sake! Now that’s avant-garde! Sadly, no music credit appears for this series on the Internet Movie Database. How embarrassing for them!”

The music is pretty good so the artist is entitled to say what sucks and what doesn't.

"Cat Bus #8," by Anthony Leslie: [YouTube]
(via guthrie lonergan)

Leslie examines the problems of aging.