Metropolitan de-Hulued

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"Whit Stillman's film Metropolitan now available on Hulu!" was a hottish internet story a few months ago; a recent Stillman IFC interview touted that he was re-releasing it there. Well, now it's gone!

Obviously this is not your typical case of a video host "overreaching" and then getting smacked down by a suddenly self-important copyright owner a la a million of your favorite disappeared YouTubes. So what happened? Will Hulu be used as a teaser to relaunch old, dead films only to have them yanked when the "buzz" gets restarted? Were the rights to Metropolitan not entirely Stillman's to give? Did Hulu not meet contracted-upon ad revenue targets? Who knows? The only reason I care is I've been recommending the Stillman movie on Hulu to people--sorry for any waste of click energy.

Some Notes on "Gradient Circle (Crushed)"

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Didn't want to "explain" that GIF in the same post, so this is a "related text."
Photoshop always goes haywire when resizing the "crosshatching" of 1-bit (monochrome) MSPaint drawings. I think the program's trying to make a nice smooth photographic image and the grids confuse some algorithmic averaging process (just a guess). There are "tipping points" where the image partially disappears or goes black, or turns into various-sized checkerboards.
I changed the size of Gradient Circle (or rather, a single still frame from that earlier black and white GIF) in Photoshop's "view" mode 14 times (more or less equal steps from small to large) and took a screenshot each time.
The screenshots, unaltered, are the GIF frames for the "Gradient Circle (Crushed)" GIF.
Thus are the bugs turned into features of interesting (to me) chaotic patterns, and art is made about how previous art has been unintentionally messed up in reproduction.

"Chillout Librarian"

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"Chillout Librarian" [mp3 removed]

Psychedelic easy listening for the masses. Some Electribe groovebox preset melodies "treated" with a couple of filters and made into a slow, rather tuneful song. This is basically two "live" takes cut up and selectively muted to get the better passages of each. Am especially happy with the bass on this one.

Aron Namenwirth at vertexList

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Aron Namenwirth Opening

Panoramic view of Aron Namenwirth's art opening at vertexList, Brooklyn, NY. Midway between bin Laden and Bush, gallery proprietor Charles Beronio introduces Glomag, preparing to play a Gameboy music set to the left of bin Laden's beard.

The show's meticulously painted acrylic on canvas imagery in a Warhol meets Chuck Close by way of Yahoo! vein also includes the future President and (gulp) Secretary of State. The title of the exhibit is "Made in U.S.A." That's what we do these days--gin out imagery of political celebrities to frighten or amuse the world. The icons exist in endless feedback loops--one such eddy is internet thumbnail --> painting --> art exhibit --> photo --> internet thumbnail. Eventually we may get things back on track and stop leading the world in the production of simulacra but this show bears witness to our current predicament.

File under: Artists with Computers