general

One candidate stands up to Giuliani in the Republican debates and says the US's destructive policies abroad led to 9/11--it's not because "the terrorists hate us for our freedoms," the official loony story line. Millions appreciated his candor and have given him money as the sole conservative candidate not on defense industry payroll. Yes, we're talking about Ron Paul. Now considerable effort on both the right and the centrist left is going to marginalize Paul as a "nut." Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com examines the anti-Ron Paul movement, particularly posts by center-left blogger David Neiwert, who seems not to understand that the US has bigger problems than Ron Paul's candidacy. I would also add the ultra-verbose Open Left blogger Paul Rosenberg, who I believe tacitly supports a permanent U.S security state and endless military adventurism abroad with his Herculean efforts to prove that the "paleo" conservatives are a greater danger to us than Rudy and probably ultimately Hillary. Rosenberg says the paleos are isolationists who want to return us to a time that never existed, but so what? Being the world's cop clearly isn't working out--that part of the critique rings true. Rosenberg's effort to discredit the already discredited paleos seems like cloud cuckoo cerebration in the face of the rise of Thug No. 1--the neocon 9/11 profiteer who has promised to continue Bush's policies of preemptive, undeclared wars and the resulting curtailment of civil liberties here at home.

Neiwert at one point singled out this 1999 Raimondo column as an example of the paranoia of the paleos. Raimondo was talking about the Y2K madness and how it was prepping us for an Afghanistan attack--incredibly prescient, it seems to me.

This is a show I'm in that opens Saturday, November 24. Many of these artists are not in what I'm calling the Steffany Martz Biennial (in joke--meaning the Whitney 2008). I'm pleased to be in "Bitmap," though--a kind of counter Biennial for the abject geek set. I started using the word "bitmap" in gallery labels about '98 to the consternation of print mag reviewers so it's nice to be in this crowd.

image: Petra Cortright

VertexList space and Blip Festival have the pleasure to present “B I T M A P: as good as new” a group exhibition celebrating the history of the digital image, the aesthetics of early computing and early video-game consoles. Expect pixels, old monitors and 8 bit sounds!

"B I T M A P: as good as new" is proud to feature: Cory Arcangel, Chris Ashley, Mike Beradino, Mauro Ceolin, Petra Cortright, Paul Davis, DELAWARE, Notendo (Jeff Donaldson), Eteam, Dragan Espenschied, Christine Gedeon, Kimberley Hart, Daniel Iglesia, JODI, Olia Lialina, LoVid, Kristin Lucas, David Mauro, Jillian Mcdonald, Tom Moody, Aron Namenwirth, Mark Napier, Nullsleep, Marisa Olson, Will Papenheimer, Prize Budget for Boys, jimpunk, Akiko Sakaizumi, Paul Slocum, Eddo Stern and CJ Yeh.

A reception will take place at vertexList on Saturday, November 24th 2007 from 7pm - 10pm.
The exhibition will be on display until Sunday, February 3rd, 2008.
Live 8 BIT music performance @ the opening reception, 8.30pm.
VertexList gallery hours are Friday, Saturday, Sunday 1pm -6 pm, or by appointment.We are located between Graham and Manhattan Avenues on Bayard St, Brooklyn, NY. For more info please visit our website www.vertexlist.net or call 646 258 3792

And speaking of the lifeworld, check out these prospective utopias in Manhattan.

(the images came from Curbed, here and here)

Re: the Momenta Art exhibition "Air Kissing: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art about the Art World," in Brooklyn, NY:

Me, prereviewing the show on Paddy Johnson's blog: "The last thing I want to see is an extended whine about how horrible/capitalistic/phony the art world is--as content. There are just more pressing issues from the life world that artists could be addressing."

Artist m.river's reply, also on Johnson's blog: "Yeah Tom, like circles, gif animations and electro. Way to hold us up to your higher standards for art.

On another note, the show is great."

My reply, currently in moderation on Johnson's blog: "More circles, gif animations, and electro, less whiny art about other people's art and what a dreadful place the art world is, I say. Thanks for drawing the poles so clearly, m.river."

Update: I'm joking here about prereviewing the show but it's hopefully clear to all but artist TWhid that my remarks on Johnson's blog were addressed to the general topic of "art about the art world" and the work of this ilk I *have* seen.

For the record, here's what I wrote on Johnson's blog that didn't really get responded to:

I disagree with this reasoning: Because some artists have made art about the art world, one must think they blow if one thinks art about the art world blows. (e.g. Alex Bag–she has other personae besides art-specific personae.)

...[I]t’s often a sign that an artist has jumped the shark when s/he starts making art about art. (E.g, Lichtenstein’s awful Leger quotations, Jim Dine’s Greek statues… Sherrie Levine was an exception because a philosophical point about authorship was being made–at least until she started doing gold urinals. Similarly Andrea Fraser’s museum tours were kind of interesting but fucking the collector was just belaboring the point.)

That was my complaint about the Cory Arcangel screen burning piece–the subject was the mechanics of art display and the types of screens "A" list artists get to destroy as opposed to overlooked wharf rats. The last thing I want to see is an extended whine about how horrible/capitalistic/phony the art world is--as content. There are just more pressing issues from the life world that artists could be addressing.

Most of my free time lately that would otherwise go to blogging has been committed to converting a mass of my music to CD.
As mentioned previously, I eliminated about 100 songs (because they were collaborations, fragments, "early experiments," or just weren't wearing well), which left me with about 125.
I have been learning to use the "Audio Montage" feature of Steinberg's Wavelab to make discs where the volume levels are more or less uniform and the tracks have some sort of flow. These are not mixes or montages, though; one track just follows another. After doing a "greatest hits" volume I threw in the towel on trying to pick "the best" and started grouping them alphabetically.
Here's what I have so far:
CD1. 19 tracks, random alphabetical.
CD2. 21 tracks, A-C
CD3. 20 tracks, C-H
CD4. 20 tracks, H-R (in progress)
CD5. 19 tracks, S-Y
CD6. 13 tracks, Electribe (the ones I did mostly on a "groovebox" last year fit together better as a group)
CD7. 12-15 tracks, Sidstation (in progress)
CD8. ____tracks, "classical" and miscellaneous experiments (projected)

I've been listening to a CD of Dutch electronic music from the Philips laboratories from 1958-1963, and reading about all the restorative efforts with regard to the analog tapes in the company vaults. Every scrap of tape is lovingly fussed over, and one CD of the four CD set consists of alternate takes and audio "raw material."

Back then electronic music wasn't even polyphonic--you had to run several tape recorders simultaneously and record that to get a master tape. Everything that took an eternity and was precious then can be done easily and quickly on a laptop now. So what happens to the resulting mega-hours of music of the tens of thousands of home computer musicians? Instead of a few scraps lovingly fetishized, you wind up with a mass of organized sound that's actually a burden for your friends to listen to once. Nevertheless, my vague plan is to send CDs around to a few folks who were foolish enough to say they liked my tunes, to be listened to if and when they have the time. These sets are mainly for me. I wish I could say they were helping me to be self-critical but with 125 tunes obviously I like everything I do. A lot.