Consider this a dual author post. Vera posted this comic called “How A Web Design Goes Straight to Hell” on my facebook page. Hilarious and a must-read. Coincidentally, Smashing Magazine’s article posted yesterday was “How To Explain To Clients That They Are Wrong,” which, as Vera put it, “is all about rhetoric.” And, yes, it is. So, per request, I post these things for your enjoyment. (I certainly do enjoy them.)
While I developed this application (with the help of a certain Smashing Magazine article) a few weeks ago, I completely forgot to tell you all about it. This application is for Facebook users to follow and comment on Harlot’s blog from within Facebook itself. You don’t need to be a fan of Harlot’s Facebook page (but, of course, we’d love that too: become a fan), so hop on board and keep up to date with what we’ve got going on in this here neck of the woods. Click the link, approve the permission, and this juicy little app is all yours:
To continue on my music-is-a-form-of-communication rant, I recommend you read and/or listen to this short piece by Andre Codrescu.
In this piece, he describes listening to his wife’s ipod after his dies and the world that opens up to him after doing so. I like the potential of this. I like the thought that our choices of what to put on our ipod communicates our lives to other people and that those choices impact their lives as well. Call me idealistic, but I find it a beautiful concept.
There was a great piece in the NY Times this weekend, “Uploading the Avant Garde,” in which Virginia Heffernan considers the presence, among YouTube’s many microgenres, of what she calls “the vernacular avant-garde.” I’ve never heard this phrase before, and I dig it. What does it mean to put those words in tandem? According to the OED (of course):
Vernacular (adj)
1. That writes, uses, or speaks the native or indigenous language of a country or district.
2. a. Of a language or dialect: That is naturally spoken by the people of a particular country or district; native, indigenous.
6. Of arts, or features of these: Native or peculiar to a particular country or locality. spec. in vernacular architecture, architecture concerned with ordinary domestic and functional buildings rather than the essentially monumental.
Avant garde
1. The foremost part of an army; the vanguard or van.
2. The pioneers or innovators in any art in a particular period. Also attrib. or as adj. Hence avant-
gardism, the characteristic quality of such pioneering; avant-
st), such a person; also attrib.
And so this seems clear enough: we have the home-grown innovator, the local pioneer. But in our current use of vernacular, we usually mean folksy, populist, “normal” ways of communicating, whereas avant garde is all about pushing those norms to provoke and even alienate mainstream popular audiences… So, yeah, I’m still not sure I get how those work together. How can we define such a concept? ( I heart semantics.) Like porn, do we just know it when we see it? Anyone?
So of course I googled the phrase and found few results beyond a couple of uses in reference to avant garde jazz and vernacular architecture… Except, that is, for a couple of blogs and a SNS who’d posted the same link and video:
Since the latter part of the twentieth century, and especially in new media artistic practice, we have witnessed a shift from the representational idiom — where art is viewed mainly as a means to represent the world — to the performative idiom — where the practice of art is considered an active negotiation with the world it seeks to address.*
Networked Performance is real-time, embodied practice within digital environments and networks; it is, embodied transmission.
Performance involves the moment of action, its continuity, inherent temporality and relationship to the present.
DocumentaryTech is a collaborative effort to talk about what makes for the best in the art of the documentary. As a joint project by The Rhode Island Film Festival and several sponsoring universities, we’ll talk about technique, technology, distribution and funding.
Using the most advanced social software platforms and internet rich multimedia applications, dance-tech.net provides movement and new media artists, theorist, thinkers and technologists the possibility of sharing work, ideas and research, generating opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborative projects.
I don’t have much profound to say about all this. I think the phrase is fascinating and worthy of play. And I think it’s cool that there are such fascinated/ing people out there instigating such play.
Yay interwebs.
Wow, I’m surprised I haven’t passed on this site before. If you’re in the market for some inspiration for minimalist website design, then check out minimalsites.com. For sure, a fantastic resource for that particular style. Mmm, clean, simple, and effective. Tasty.
Ben Stiller tries to explain Twitter to Mickey Rooney. I find Twitter to be a rather interesting creature. I’m kind of a Facebook gal myself, and even at that I only update my status about once a week, so Twitter has never been something that I got overly interested in.
I mean, I’m sure there are some people who post really interesting musings to themselves and all that, so I can see the purpose for it there. An extremely quick exchange of interesting ideas and all that. However, it’s the absolutely useless things that nobody cares about that are rather, well, annoying. For instance, is it really necessary to give a morning/evening/night greeting?
Anyway, I digress. So, Mickey Rooney is listening to Ben Stiller about this whole thing. And we all expect the traditional, “oh my, what is this new fangled invention response,” right? But, Mickey doesn’t fall for it. Oh no, he’s pretty calm and collected. This makes me happy, because I get a little tired of that stereotype. I’ve met as many young people as old who approach technology like it’ll give them a brand new rash and met some older folks who geek out on new gadgets.
Okay, yeah, so my grandmother still doesn’t know how to answer her cell phone, but she’s got one! And I bet Mickey does too!
via NPR.
I talked before about about Musopen for a good place to access classical music that’s in the public domain. Now, I can’t do quite that well again, but I can give you an option to update your music selection. Funky Remixes is a site dedicated to, well, funky remixes; however, they do generally try to list music that uses creative commons licensing. So, even if you need something a little more lively to accompany your project, check out the site and see if anything will fit. You might find something totally sweet you could use. They even have mixes from some notables such as Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Le Tigre, The Rapture (a personal fav), and Danger Mouse & jemini. Oh yes, and they’re all free to download.
If you need a recommendation, then I’d start with “I’M FUNKYN’LOVE YOU” by DEEJAWU. It’s just groovy–er, funky.
Tomorrow, June 4th, marks the 20th anniversary of the bloody affair in Tiananmen Square, when the Chinese army opened machine gun fire on unarmed protesters. In an attempt to obviate any risk of renewing the spirit of dissent, China is taking measures to prevent communication:
Not that we exactly needed more evidence that communication technologies are instrumental in 21st-century activism, but this certainly helps confirm it. And since China is credited with having the largest online community, the impact goes deep.
This maneuver to counter dissent has interesting connections to the massacre, since one of the key demands of students gathering in Tiananmen was for free media. Such issues should concern any rhetorician who is interested in who has the power to speak, who is denied such power, and the influence of digital technologies on expression.
One may wonder how protesters will react to this sadly predictable move on the part of the Chinese government. How will citizens communicate when the channels for doing so are blocked? Who will lead when leaders have been placed on house arrest or “strongly encouraged” to vacation away from the capital for the 20th anniversary? Furthermore, since none of these tactics are surprising, how might activists elsewhere learn from them? The digital networks that support much of the transnational activism that is highly touted these days could easily disappear. What then? How can those that identify with certain social movements account for “cutting the head off,” where leaders are minimized, or worse, executed? And what might this mean in our networked age, where movements could be seen as acephalous?
A conversation . . .
Debord:
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation. The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation. The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to himself. The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living.
Plato:
Someday, in the distant future, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge.
Derrick Jensen:
When you don’t know how to connect, when connection frightens you so much, I suppose this simulation is better than nothing. Isn’t it better to watch nature programs than to never see nature at all? We’re substituting imaginary experiences with the images of things for experiences with the things themselves, having already substituted the experience of things for the possibility of relationship with other beings.
Martin Buber:
Through the Thou a person becomes I. The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.
Jean Baudrillard
Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
SpaceCollective seems to have found a nice cushy spot where their members intersect between science and art. My, my, how I love it so.
Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion
2008