art

Art and nothing but art! It is the great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the great stimulant of life….
Art as the redemption of the man of knowledge–-of those who see the terrifying and questionable character of existence, who want to see it, the men of tragic knowledge.
Art as the redemption of the man of action–-of those who not only see the terrifying and questionable character of existence but live it, want to live it, the tragic war-like men, the hero.
Art as the redemption of the sufferer–as the way to states in which suffering is willed, transfigured, diefied, where suffering is a form of great delight.

Friedrich Nietzsche in Will to Power, fragment 853

Dante’s Inferno: Cori reads; Gustave Doré illustrates; and lucid videoifies.

Dan Hill has a wonderful posting of Monocle design notes. There’s much good and thought-provoking stuff in there, particularly if you are interested in text as a medium, and the thinking behind the next generation of media, which sees web and print as different, and complementary, and builds both accordingly. This struck me particularly for some reason:

In terms of user generated content, or user discussion of Monocle pieces, my view was that we didn’t need comments on the site as people increasingly have their own spaces to talk, discuss, comment - whether that’s blogs and discussion fora, or the social software of Facebook et al. So a more progressive approach would be to ensure that everything is linkable and kept online - with clean, permanent URL structures - thus encouraging people to point to articles from the comfort of their own sites. At some point, we could begin to aggregate responses to Monocle editorial, Technorati-style, perhaps (it’s a development of a strategy I’d outlined at the BBC, which there was also predicated on ‘tear-off strips’ of content as well, enabling people to grab BBC media and build a blog entry around it).

Adam Greenfield wasn’t so taken by Monocle, which echoes my reaction years ago to Tyler Brulé’s previous magazine venture, Wallpaper: basically, a fancy mag for rich people who like to covet well-designed, and really expensive, things, and travel to exotic places to have experiences other people aren’t smart/rich/good-looking/adventurous/enlightened enough to contemplate. (Which is fine, but usually doesn’t interest me for all that long).

I’ve never read Monocle, and though I admire the web site, it’s never pulled me in for whatever reason. It might just be because the bespoke tailoring is for a kind of suit I don’t like to wear.

Since we were kids, most of us got emotionally attached to things that aren’t real: cartoons, teddy bears, and talking cars, for instance. Usually these attachments are built on the stories that surround, for instance, our teddy bears - stories we create. In the case of cartoons, it’s other people’s stories.

But there’s something different, exciting, and scary happening here. Watch this, and tell me what you feel when a) the guy kicks the machine, and b) the machine slips on the ice.

I found it heartbreaking watching the machine try to keep its balance on the ice. “Go little guy, go!” I thought. And I thought the guy was a real jerk for kicking it… yet I’ve kicked many a machine that hasn’t done what I wanted it to do.

UPDATE: zeke points out that this is a military robot…I know! That’s what’s crazy, but when those feeble feet were skidding on the ice I reacted - involuntarily - with pity.

Here’s another one that really got me emotionally:

The movements of these giant contraptions are so organic that it’s hard *not* to think of them as sentient somehow, and to react accordingly.

Finally, here’s an amazing CGI woman, not quite lifelike, but damn close.

So what’s striking about all this is how important movement is in our emotional reactions to things. Part of that suggests that we’re getting closer to loveable robots. But another thing is to consider the information that gets lost in text-based communication.

from the onion:

LOS ANGELES—The Novelists Guild of America strike, now entering its fourth month, has had no impact on the nation at all, sources reported Tuesday.

The strike, which scholars say could be the longest since 1951, when American novelists may or may not have voluntarily committed to a six-month work stoppage, has brought an immediate halt to all new novels, novellas, and novelettes from coast to coast, affecting no one.

ha. great.

[via Matt]

MontrealTechWatch has a few pics from YulGeek entrepreneurs’ desks, including mine.

Theo Jansen is a kinetic sculptor. Animaris Rhinoceros Transport is a sculpture powered entirely by wind:

See another vid. And from TED.

A good friend of mine is a documentary film maker; more than that. His latest film, about violinist Malcolm Goldstein is a challenging and brilliant work of art in itself, much more than a typical portrait documentary.

The market for a film like that is small - a few festivals, hundreds, maybe a few thousand people will see it in a theatre. TV will never pick up something like this, not even arty cable. Certainly no commercial movie houses.

A movie like this — based so much on sound, and on the scale of the image — ought to be seen in theatre, where the full work of art can be appreciated and experienced as it should be. Big screen, big sound, silence, darkness.

That’s true enough.

Still, as a filmmaker, you are stuck in the constraints of festivals and distributors for your distribution; yet the film is made, and there are people - like me - who would like to see it, but cannot.

This is a ramble, and it’s obvious where I am going with it. But I just watched this beautiful documentary yesterday, on Vimeo - a free service - and what can I say? OK, it’s not the big screen, but it is beautiful, moving, fascinating. If you’re a film maker, put your stuff online, like this [best to watch it full screen]:

POSSESSED from Martin Hampton on Vimeo.

Sometimes I wish I was still a kid:

[via: infosthetics.com]

Chris Hughes wins with his entry of Life is Life, by Opus. Truly the worst song in the world.

Beer and cookies will be offered, for free, next time Chris is in Montreal.

From Infovore:

I’ve written before about how wonderful Twitter can be as a messaging bus for physical objects. The idea of overhearing machines talking about what they’re doing is, to my mind, quite delightful.

So when I found an untapped data source for such an object, I thought it was worth having a poke. Half an hour of scripting later and Tower Bridge was on Twitter. It tells you when it’s opening and closing, what vessel is passing through, and which way that vessel is going. The times are determined by taking the scheduled time for the “lift” and subtracting five minutes for the opening, and adding five minutes for closing - the official site suggests that, at rush hour, lifts should take five minutes to open and close tops.

Follow the Tower Bridge on Twitter.

I don’t know what to think of this, exactly, but it’s kind of neat. I wonder what inanimate object I’d like to hear from in Montreal?

A Rails conference, in Toronto, says:

RubyFringe is an avant-garde conference for developers that are excited about emerging technologies outside of the Ruby on Rails monoculture. We’re sick of the sold-out and over-sold labradoodle shows that are now staged with alarming frequency. In response, we’re mounting a unique and eccentric gathering of the people and projects that are driving things forward in our community.

Nice poster.

Footloose is surely one of the great cinematic achievements of the 1980s, but these years later it’s not Kevin Bacon “dancing away oppression” that we remember most, but rather the searing sounds of Kenny Loggins’ unforgettable theme song, Footloose, which surely was the soundtrack of a generation of youth who were “yearning burning for some/ Somebody to tell [them] / That life ain’t passing [them] by …” I was one of those youths who yearned. Burned.

I always assumed that the great Loggins wrote that song after a long cocaine bender had eaten up all cash reserves and back taxes were due, but it turns out the story behind the classic songsmithing is much, much, much more inspiring.

Here is a documentary film called: Jimmy Buffet & Footloose.

[via: wfmu]

From an article by Andy Rutledge, about design & martial arts, but applicable to anything related to life, I think:

In short, it is simply not enough to be highly competent under the best of circumstances, when you’re filled with inspiration and all the gears are turning. What matters most—and most often—is how competent you are when things are not going well.

[more…]

This week’s Wednesday Picks from earideas include: the democratization of innovation; the scientific genius of Leonardo da Vinci; and master short story writer Mavis Gallant.

Check it out.

From Matt:

I’m not a gadget/gear junkie, but the mechanical engineer in me (I didn’t like much of my engineering courses, but I enjoyed fluid dynamics) thought this photo was pretty darned neat:

A closeup [below], notice the visual distortion caused by the shockwaves… cool huh? The jet is not yet supersonic, but is in the transonic region. The air around the plane is accelerated to supersonic speed when it encounters an obstruction (like a bump on the fuselage). Shocks within the supersonic flow (often causing it to decelerate to subsonic conditions) produce large gradients in air density and index of refraction, bending the light differentially on either side of the shock. Those pressure waves can be seen radiating from specific points on the aircraft (including the canopy). The above was compiled from various people who emailed me!

[photo by BZ]

Never seen a shot of the city from this perspective:

[pic by caribb; via spacingmontreal]

Something like this maybe?

see more here.

great parallel video(s) about the creation of the universe:

[via infosthetics]

Ever wonder what those wifi and rfid and gsm waves in the air actually *look* like?

Sorta like this:

See more fictional radio spaces here.

[via infoesthetics]

David Byrne talks about music and business in a great article in Wired.

What is music?
First, a definition of terms. What is it we’re talking about here? What exactly is being bought and sold? In the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. Epic songs and ballads, troubadours, courtly entertainments, church music, shamanic chants, pub sing-alongs, ceremonial music, military music, dance music — it was pretty much all tied to specific social functions. It was communal and often utilitarian. You couldn’t take it home, copy it, sell it as a commodity (except as sheet music, but that’s not music), or even hear it again. Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone — a memory.

Technology changed all that in the 20th century. Music — or its recorded artifact, at least — became a product, a thing that could be bought, sold, traded, and replayed endlessly in any context. This upended the economics of music, but our human instincts remained intact. I spend plenty of time with buds in my ears listening to recorded music, but I still get out to stand in a crowd with an audience. I sing to myself, and, yes, I play an instrument (not always well).

We’ll always want to use music as part of our social fabric: to congregate at concerts and in bars, even if the sound sucks; to pass music from hand to hand (or via the Internet) as a form of social currency; to build temples where only “our kind of people” can hear music (opera houses and symphony halls); to want to know more about our favorite bards — their love lives, their clothes, their political beliefs. This betrays an eternal urge to have a larger context beyond a piece of plastic. One might say this urge is part of our genetic makeup.

All this is what we talk about when we talk about music.

[more…]

As far as I know, this is the first youtube vid using LibriVox audio. This is DE. Wittkower reading Schopenhauer’s Studies in Pessimism. Music is Richard Wagner’s Rheingold. I’m not sure the providence of the images.

I haven’t been posting much to my project poetic spam, since I found out there are many spam poem sites out there. But I just published one today, which I thought was pretty moving:

I used to believe the stock market
would make me rich.
All I needed
to do was pick the right stock
and I’d be a millionaire.

In March
of 2000,
I decided
that stock
was PALM,

which I bought the morning
it went public.

Within days
my $1,000 investment was worth $600,
and my fantasies of instant
wealth
were swept out the door.

My mistake
was a desire.

I think the first “serious” novel I read was Mailer’s Naked and the Dead.

In the past year, Mailer gone. Vonnegut gone. Bellow gone. I wonder which high school favourites are left? I’ll have to think about that one.

RIP, mr. mailer.

Dear Mr. McGuire,

Thank you for your submission to House of Anansi Press. Anansi has been experiencing a severe backlog in submissions that has resulted in very long delays. We apologize for the wait.

After careful consideration and considerable review, our editorial board has decided that, although you demonstrate writing potential, Blind Spot does not suit our current list. Please feel free to submit again if you have another manuscript for us to consider. We wish you all the best in finding a suitable publisher for your work.

I sent Anansi a query (standard cover letter and 30 page sample of the novel) in September 2005 (two years ago). They responded to the query asking for the full manuscript in October 2006 (one year ago). And this arrived a year later. To recap: submitted the novel 2 years ago, finally got rejection today.

Question: is this a standard form letter or is it encouraging. I *think* it’s just a form letter, though I might call them to ask.

This is the last response I was expecting, so now I can go ahead with my plans to publish Blind Spot online, (free audio, free bloggy-text, free pdf, and bound copies from lulu.com for anyone who actually wants to buy it). Stay tuned for news.

And I have started editing Novel Number Two … it’s coming along well. Hope to have it in shape by the end of December.

Matt sketched barcampmtl#3:

That’s me yammering about data.

In the past couple of weeks, I went to see some public lectures at McGill and elsewhere: the first was Amy Goodman, of DemocracyNow, giving the keynote at the ReDefining Media conference. Then I went to see cognitive psychologist, Stephen Pinker talking about language and the human mind. Finally, I saw management guru David Maister (choice quote: “just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s easy”) at PodcampBoston.

All three were good, interesting, intellectually stimulating.

But, the question is, given that I can (and do) see Amy Goodman on the net, whenever I like; and given that I can see Stephen Pinker present in video in, say, TEDTalks; and given that I could just read Maister’s book & blog posts; why do I want to go to physically see them? What is the value that I get by actually being there?

I had dinner during PodCampBoston2 with a good group: Sylvain Grand’Maison, Neil Gorman, Julien Smith and Anita from LibriVox. And we were batting around ideas about why that physical presence brings more to you than just reading text, listening to audio, or watching a video.

Some theories:

1. 2-way experience
Being there means that you are somehow engaged (or think you are engaged) in a two way communication with someone. I wonder though, in a big lecture hall (both Goodman & Pinker were speaking to hundreds, and I certainly had no sense that they were communicating with me, much less that I was communicating with them) whether this applies. Maybe our subconscious minds trick us into thinking we’d be able to really communicate, even if our conscious minds know that’s unlikely.

2.sharing the experience
Maybe somehow you “get” “more” (more what? how?) from seeing a person live with a group of other people. Is it that you will later be able to discuss it? How does this work?: if you go alone, and don’t know anyone there who you will discuss with later, this one doesn’t make much sense. Maybe it’s something though about being a part of a greater community that shares knowlege? collective unconscious? Hmm, I don’t know about this - though certainly if people you know are going, you’d like to be there too.

3. more information
In person, “more” information is transmitted. This one gets my bet as the most likely, though I don’t quite know what it means. but beyond the explicit information (ie, “here are 7 ways be be effective: make a list, make deadlines…” etc), seeing someone live transmits a richer breadth of information. voice, body, brainwaves… i don’t know. somehow information is transmitted more easily (for me) and with a sort of 3 dimensional context that you can never get from text alone, but more information as well, not contained in the explicit info; for me personally audio is a better way to understand concepts (probably that’s not true for everyone; and for detailed knowledge, text is always better); and video is “better” I think, though I prefer the flexibility of audio - you can listen while you do other things. But live, has something more than all that.

Probably it’s a mix of all three, but i think #3 is the most interesting. But the question is what exactly do you get that is *more* … ? any ideas?

Other ideas:
* seeing someone famous or smart in person gives you some perceived smartness and famousness in the eyes of others … when you tell others about the smart/famous person you saw.
* smartness and famousness actually rub off on you - and you get smarter and famouser by seeing someone smart/famous
* seeing someone live *forces* you to pay attention … you don;t have the same distractions as you would when reading, or listening at home (computers, other people etc).

Any more ideas?

Warning:

Transcriber’s Note: These memoires were not written for children, they may outrage readers also offended by Chaucer, La Fontaine, Rabelais and The Old Testament.

Found that on the Gutenberg page for The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova … I owe the audio of chapter 10 from vol 1, over at LibriVox.

From the Telegraph:

All the novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize could be made available online in a radical move being considered by publishers, it was reported today…

Negotiations are said to be in progress with the British Council to digitise the six shortlisted novels so they can be downloaded in full, all over the world.

It is hoped the initiative will capture new audiences - particularly in Asia and Africa - who may be unable to access the actual books….

Those behind the venture hope it will boost, rather than detract from sales of the hard copy as readers who download the novel online, may be inspired to buy a paper version for themselves.

More than 10,000 publishers have already signed up to Google’s book-scanning project, which makes part of selected books available online. Initial results from the programme have suggested that publishing the tasters has increased sales of the books.

Note: emphasis added.
Questions/comments:
-does that mean online for free?
-hey, googlebooks (maybe) proves the point that giving it away might sell more (will be nice to have more than doctorow’s anecdotal evidence)
-I was just saying the other night that the open movement is not/will not be successful for any moral reasons, but because it will be better at doing certain things.

(vie michael geist)

The Facebook Review:

The first … Literary Review that uses Facebook as its means of publishing, of marketing, and of editing. We are essentially an online magazine with the (titular) difference of location. Our manifesto is humble and somewhat weak-kneed. Apologies. All we want is to publish the best work by Facebook members and to do so free-of-charge, free-of-cost, and completely within the confines of the Facebook network and software environment.

Mostly, nice, I think. Suggestion: make a parallel site on the real Internet. Interesting, though.

Small World 2007, Nikon’s microscopic photography competition:

First: you can get updated about new releases via twitter, by following http://twitter.com/librivox (seems not to have updated today?)

Next: The last few LibriVox releases are all pretty cool.

South! The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition 1914-1917
by Ernest Shackleton

Shackleton’s most famous expedition was planned to be an attempt to cross Antarctica from the Weddell Sea south of the Atlantic, to the Ross Sea south of the Pacific, by way of the Pole. It set out from London on 1 August 1914, and reached the Weddell Sea on January 10, 1915, where the pack ice closed in on the Endurance. The ship was broken by the ice on 27 October 1915. The 28 crew members managed to flee to Elephant Island, bringing three small boats with them. Shackleton and five other men managed to reach the southern coast of South Georgia in one of the small boats (in a real epic journey). Shackleton managed to rescue all of the stranded crew from Elephant Island without loss in the Chilean’s navy seagoing steam tug Yelcho, on August 30, 1916, in the middle of the Antarctic winter. (Summary from Wikipedia)

As the last section of this project we include a short original recording by Ernest Shackleton about the expedition.

Democracy in America Vol. I
by Alexis de Tocqueville, translated by Henry Reeve

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in the 1830s he found a thriving democracy of a kind he had not seen anywhere else. Many of his insightful observations American society and political system, found in the two volume book he published after his visit, still remain surprisingly relevant today.

Star Born
by Andre Norton

Andre Norton’s “Star Born” pictures a human colony in another galaxy, driven away from Earth generations ago by a repressive government. Considered outlaws, the colonists are in permanent hiding.

They have developed friendship and cooperation with a local race of “mermen” who are equally at home on land or sea. But that race only took to the sea to escape a malevolent power that hunted them and killed them violently for sport - Those Others.

With a global decline in the population and reach of Those Others, contacts are few and the humans have no direct knowlege of them. So it is a major surprise when Dalgard, a human scout on his coming-of-age expedition, along with his “knife-brother” Sssuri of the mermen, run into a party of Those Others who are bent on reclaiming hideous weaponries left behind in one of their abandoned cities… and find that they are being aided by new arrivals from Earth!

OK so I said a while back that if I have not heard from the publisher about Blind Spot (my old, fatally-flawed first novel; i have a newer one to shop around now) by the end of September, I would do something with it. Options:

1. make an audio version (maybe with some LibriVox friends) and podcast it (say a chap a week)
2. publish it in sections online - in serial format (say a chap a week)
3. do a print-on-demand lulu.com version, for friends who want to buy a hard copy
*4. publish online in a wiki - so that either: people can easily copyedit for me (ha!), or, more radically, the text could be modified substantially (????)
5. a combo of the above

Votes?

*Note: I have some hesitation about 2 & 3, because I will soon be shopping around a second novel to publishers - and I think maybe that publishing the other one online/with lulu might be considered poorly by publishing houses. Self-publishing still carries a stigma. So I don’t want to be tarred with a Vanity brush. Maybe that’s silly.

And maybe I should put my money where my distributed media mouth is, suck it up, and put it out there.

The fabulous Nora Young has just launched a new podcast (that also happens to be a CBC Radio* show), called Spark. Covering technology, art, society, it also aims to get more interactive feedback from the net. Comments, participation, stories and the like. As with all of Nora’s radio work, it’s good good stuff.

The next episode has a segment about the Warbike:

Did you know that almost anywhere that you go in a city you’ll be sharing space with someone’s private wireless computer network? All of their personal communication—e-mail, love messages, bank passwords, credit card numbers, and bizarre surfing habits—will be passing through your body without your awareness. Who are they, and how do you feel about sharing space with their personal life?

The Warbike turns this wireless network activity into sound. As you cycle the streets, you’ll hear the activity of this invisible communications layer that permeates our public spaces. Who knew that so much was going on?

So, have a listen, and go comment on their blog (to help show CBC management that people on the web care about content).

UPDATE: also forgot to mention, they’re using podsafe/creative commons music on the show. sweet.

*NOTE: Radio shows are just like podcasts, except that you have to listen to them at specific times (often based on a “schedule” that a small group of people determine arbitrarily), and instead of being able to hear them on your computer, or put them on your portable mp3 player, you have to buy a special “radio receiver.” Radio receivers are devices that pick up radio signals (much like wifi), but are usually single-purpose machines - ie for audio only, no email, internet etc.

Normally Saturday Night Live music performances are pretty terrible (don’t know if the show’s even still on? do they still have bands?) … But I’ve seen a few good/impressive ones.

Sugarcubes: Birthday
This was the first time I’d heard Bjork, and I thought what the hell is this? I’d never heard anything like it.

Neil Young: Keep on Rockin In the Free World
Normally SNL performances were insipid affairs, but check out how Neil just rips it up on this one, just gets more and more intense, till that solo at the end. Man. That’s Rock n Roll. And he was an old man even then (sometime in the 90s I think).

Soundgarden: Burden in My Hand
I was hoping to find the Butthole Surfers, and then Pearl Jam’s crazy performance where Eddy Vedder climbs all over the amps and makes a pro-choice speech, but couldn’t: here’s Soundgarden instead!

(thanks Kara)

The New Yorker has a fascinating story, about the “discovery” of a 75 year old virtuoso, genius pianist, Joyce Hatto, that turns out to be a hoax. What’s so interesting - to me anyway - is how the internet - and brilliant grassroots marketing, fraudulent tho it was - created the myth bought by many mainstream music journalists.

The whole thing, rather than being tawdry, is somehow touching, romantic, sad, and beautiful in a perverse sort of way.

Here a podcast interview with the writer of the story.

Hey, sweet. Montreal video maven Casey McKinnon, of Galacticast and A Comic Book Orange, has an article in the (UK) Guardian, How Do You Beat Youtube, about what needs to happen in the online vid platform space.

Congrats.

UPDATE: Mat has an interesting response, from a consumer’s point of view. And he’s right on.

Every time I get a nicely layered Laika coffee, and watch the beauty of that first stir, I think to myself: If I ever make a movie, this will be the opening shot. Today I realized that with my little macbook pro isight camera, I could film it, and get that first shot I’ve always wanted. Now to make the rest of the film…Hmm there’s a nice gimmick boing boing would like: a full-length feature film, made entirely with a built-in MBP isight camera. Who’s in?

Stirring coffee @ Laika from Hugh and Vimeo.

See some static pics of laika coffee at the new photo sharing site, flickr.

Tom Waits: Take Me Home

Randy Newman: I Think It’s Going To Rain Today

Elton John: Tiny Dancer

Michael Geist on HMV’s decision to drop the price on back-catalog CDs:

This week, HMV announced that it was reducing the price on hundreds of back-catalog CDs generating a surprising amount of news coverage (Post, CBC). The move is good for everyone - the recording industry gets an important retail outlet to reduce prices on increasingly hard-to-find CDs (their largest retail outlets such as Wal-Mart do not carry many older titles), HMV gives a boost to music sales at a time when digital downloads, DVDs and video games command a growing share of the market, and consumers may find that the $20 sticker shock on some older CDs disappears. Yet leave it to CRIA to use the opportunity to spin this as a copyright reform story. HMV said absolutely nothing about the issue, because high-priced, older CDs have little to do with P2P file sharing or copyright law. CRIA’s Graham Henderson claims, however, that “it’s an effort to stem the tide of illegal downloading that threatens retailers and everyone else in the recording industry” and argues that other countries have reduced P2P through copyright reform while “a succession of Canadian governments have sat on their hands and done nothing.”

[more…]

So from a Canadian perspective in all this music biz debate about P2P/copyright/downloading, the real question ought to be not: how much money are record companies making/losing? but rather: how many active “professional” music artists are there in Canada now? Is that number increasing or decreasing? If it’s increasing (which I think it must be) then we should ask why? As in: does rampant P2P have a positive or negative impact on the number of professional musicians in Canada? And if it’s positive, then you’d have to conclude that there is an overall benefit to P2P, regardless of what the CRIA and others on the business end have to say, since really copyrights are theoretically about creating incentives to make art. Negative, and you’d have the opposite conclusion. (Assuming you could get the “right” conclusions out of your data).

I have no idea what the stats are on professional musicians (do any of you?). And how would you define that? The number of musicians who make money from their work (many)? Or the number who live off their work (fewer)? Or the number of millionaires (very few)? It would be interesting to see these stats.

Does anyone know of such stats?

Shoot, when I did my “research” before putting up poeticspam.com I didn’t find any sites dedicated to the poetry of spam. Or at least, I didn’t think I did.

I just came across spam-poetry.com … which appears to have been at it since 2003 (!). And now I find spampoetry.org AND poemsmadefromspam.blogspot.com/ AND spam poems

What the hell was wrong with google that day? or, what the hell was wrong with me?

Ah well, surely there is room in the world for more than a few online spam poetry journals? A technicality: spam-poetry is poetry composed of the subject lines from spam. Whereas poetic spam maintains spam in its purest form.

But to all of you: please consider submitting a few spam poems.

When I was a kid I spent summers at my uncle’s farm in Ontario. All my cousins are older than me - and the youngest was Moira, so she spent the most time with me I guess. In 1980 I was 6 years old, and Moira was probably in her late teens, and I remember memorizing (some of) the words to the Billie Joel tune, Still Rock n Roll to Me, which played on the radio all that summer. Later, in 1983-84, another cousin from Ontario, Rose, lived with us for a year in Montreal. When she left, she gave me two tapes, the first I ever owned: David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, and Queen’s The Works.

And so, here are some more musical memories from childhood:

Billie Joel: It’s Still Rock n Roll to Me.

David Bowie: China Girl
[Note: I think this is the stranges video I’ve ever seen. UPDATE: and that’s stevie ray vaughn on guitar, by the way]

Queen: Radio Ga Ga
[Note: as I write this, the radio tells me that guitarist Brian May was awarded his doctorate today in atstrophysics, from Imperial College London, with a dissertaition titled: “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud”]

So I just started a new little project, a literary journal called Poetic Spam…deets:

Poetic Spam is a literary journal that celebrates the poetry of spam.

Submission guidelines:

1. poetic spam submissions must be legitimate spam (email or comment), whose poetic quality glows through its spamminess
2. you may submit spam snippets, rather than the enitre spam message
3. you may reformat the linebreaks etc.
4. you may NOT add or remove or rearrange words
5. all poetic forms (sonnets, haiku, free verse, etc) are accepted
6. if you wish to be credited, please include your name and URL

Please submit your poetic spam to:

submissions [AT] poeticspam [DOT] com

submissions are open, so send em along if you got em.

Sometime-Montrealer, occasional yulblogger, and fiction-writer Jon Evans has an article in the Walrus, called: Apocalypse Soon: The Future of Reading, about books, ebooks, the Internet, and publishing.

Starting para:

A few years ago, my first novel was published. It did pretty well, won an award, was translated and sold around the world; the movie rights were even optioned. Now I want to put it online — no charge, no hook, no catch. My motivation is simple: greed.

My publishers are resolutely opposed to this idea. They fear it will “devalue the brand” and set a dangerous precedent. They fear, intuitively but wrongly, that fewer people will buy a book that is also given away for free. But most of all, they fear the future — and with good reason. Book publishing is a dinosaur industry, and there’s a big scary meteor on the way.

Bit late for the Friday Youtube Mixed Tape, but here it is anyway. Tacky tearjerkers from mid-eighties, that are still fun to listen to (for a while anyway):

Foreigner: I Wanna Know What Love Is

Corey Hart: Never Surrender

And, of course:
Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the Heart

Reuben did a roadtrip through the States, and among other things, took pics of Church billboards. Fruits of his (and God’s) labour include: “Our Church is Cool with AC and JC.” And:

See the slideshow here.

A short work of genius:

The Dove (short), 1968 (mp4).

(via Martine)

Says da boing:

The New York Public Library has just installed an Espresso book-on-demand machine and they’ll print any of over 200,000 public domain titles from the Open Content Alliance free of charge for any patron.

[more…]

Me too.

Link

This weeks theme: genderbending.

Rough Trade: High School Confidential

Lou Reed: Walk on the Wild Side (Live, Brussels, 1974)

The Kinks: Lola
(Check out how excited the drummer is to be playing. It’s all he can do not to yawn!)

Beautiful!:

more at controlman, a blog about urban exploration.

[via mtl city weblogs]

LL Cool J: Mamma Said Knock You Out
(east coast)

Ice T: I’m Your Pusher
(west coast)

Maestro Fresh Wes: Let Your Backbone Slide
(north coast)

The Mirror’s got an article on the Atwater Digital Literacy Project, nicely done. Here’s the lede:

Give a kid a video camera and they’ll fiddle around with the buttons, but teach a kid how to make movies and they’ll be feverishly posting to YouTube in no time—or at least that’s the idea behind the Atwater Library’s Digital Literacy Project.

[more…]

Thanks Tracey!

Man, it is a brave new world. What do you get when you mix: Youtube, Second Life, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr? This:

Here is the text that goes with the interview:

In August 2006, the national, weekly public radio program, The Infinite Mind, made broadcast history as it aired a four-part special taped inside the 3-D virtual on-line community Second Life. Among those interviewed in front of a live, virtual audience was author Kurt Vonnegut. The 40-minute conversation with Vonnegut was the author’s last sit-down interview. The host was The Infinite Mind’s John Hockenberry, who was with Vonnegut in the studio where the program was created. This is a machinima video of Vonnegut’s interview, taped at the 16-acre virtual broadcast center in Second Life built by Lichtenstein Creative Media, which produces The Infinite Mind.

Stay away from Youtube. There is too much good stuff on there.

This week’s theme: 70s Proto-Grrrl Rock.

Pretenders: Brass in Pocket

Patti Smith: Gloria (live)

The Runaways: Cherry Bomb

Heri whipped up a great little map of montreal’s web scene, surely missing all sorts of stuff, but it’s still a great visualization of many of the people I rub shoulders with, drink coffee with, and occasionally quaff the odd pint or two with. Missing, I note, is Collectik (tho we are in quiet retooling mode, so that’s OK):

Would be nice if the stations and lines were live links.

Canadian 80s new wave:

Canadian 80s garage rock:

Canadian 80s arena rock:

Here’s what Trent Reznor thinks of how his record label prices his record:

The ABSURD retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia. Shame on you, UMG. Year Zero is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne’s record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US).
By the way, when I asked a label rep about this his response was: “It’s because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out - you know, true fans. It’s the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy.”
So… I guess as a reward for being a “true fan” you get ripped off.

[more…]

Some updates on the story of Zeke & Mr. Tremblay (see my previous post for background). The court session was held June 21, arguments were made, and now … we wait again till September 7.

• For a good review see: Fagstein: Zeke maintains status quo in court.
• Also interesting, Pierre-Antoine Tremblay has reached out to the blogosphere, here: Michel Leblanc: Affaire Zeke’s Gallery, le point de vue de Tremblay

I’ve had a few discussions with people about this and, there are a few points worth considering:

1. be careful how you phrase things: the case here seems to turn on Zeke suggesting that Pierre-Antoine Tremblay was associated with the mafia, for which I gather there is no evidence. that’s a serious (and dangerous) sort of thing to suggest. my understanding also is that the original post was unclearly written, which is where the problem may be. bad syntax … but just pay attention to your words, you are responsible for them. morally and legally.

2. It’s interesting to note the power of blogs now. As Julien said in his Podcasters Across Borders presentation, you are who Google says you are. And for someone who isn’t online, and doesn’t have some google linkjuice protection, one post from a relatively well-ranked blog might just end up defining who google thinks you are.

3. Mr. Tremblay’s plea to the blogosphere, (linked above) goes like this:
-he’s not rich, just a guy who works in a gallery, is a writer, poet artist [relevant for PR, but not the case]
-he’s sad to see people write nasty things about him (quoting some blogger, not chris) [relevant as proof that some people are jerks, but not the case]
-he’s upset that zeke brings up the lotto quebec forgery case [this is the one that gets my goat: this lotto quebec forgery case is IN THE PUBLIC RECORD … if the charges were all untrue, if the case was settle out of court, it sucks that mr. tremblay got tarred by the story, but Zeke is fully within his rights to say: Mr. Tremblay got taken to court for (allegedly, counsels my lawyer to write) selling forgeries to Lotto Quebec. That it’s a chapter Mr. Tremblay wishes to forget is unfortunate, but it’s still a fact, and you can still read about it at Devoir, Radio-Canada and a Lotto-Quebec press release!
-he’s upset that zeke suggests he was linked to the mafia [for this he would have a legitimate beef, if indeed zeke did so]
-he states that zeke should have contacted him before writing [this is just odd…]
-he states that this has nothing to do with free speech [a bit more on this below …]

so, to me, all the stuff about who zeke is and who tremblay is… is beside the point. The question is, why should Zeke be forced to take down posts that state and link to facts that are in the public record?

The answer of course, is that the court injunction serves as a means to stop any potential “crimes” until such a time as the court can decide (now delayed to September 6). again, i’ll bet that zeke made some wrong moves in the early days … and i’ll bet the whole thing more or less goes away without much impact on you or me.

but it’s not irrelevant, and it is important, and it’s worth paying attention to.

so good luck chris.

mitch joel - videoblogger from Hugh on Vimeo