Off of one of the main Interstates headed towards Nashville, on private property, resides a gigantic statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, an all around abysmal Civil War general known for slaughtering surrendered soldiers, engaging in slave trade and being an early member of the KKK. In short, an awful guy has an awful looking statue right on a primary road in Nashville and no one can do anything about it because it's on private property. Folks have tried to vandalize it but it still remains. In short, it sucks.
Artist Rocky Horton has taken it upon himself to setup Nashville Bedford Forrest, an Internet art exhibit in which the statue can be deconstructed and rebuilt into something altogether new. It's an exercise in catharsis, allowing people of the community to finally tear down that god awful thing, albeit digitally.
You can save your work and have it added to the gallery, where you can also see everyone else's reworkings.
The above animation for Manhattan Cable TV (MNN) ran in the mid-1980's and has been described as containing "horrifying music" that "has the opposite of rhythm." I can't disagree with either of these notions but I would add that I am entirely compelled by it.
Public Access TV has always been a breeding ground for the weird, the DIY and the hard-to-explain. This is particularly true of a network based in NY, which can also be described in the same manner.
If you've been around the Internet for awhile, some of this may be commonplace. We've all seen TV Carnage and Everything is Terrible compilations that contain material of this kind but I'm not suggesting taking the deep dive as a tourist looking to mock or laugh at these things. I'm suggesting taking the deep dive to experience a legitimately fascinating treasure trove of archived videos. Let yourself watch a full 30-minute program, not just a 15 second blast of the worst parts.
Ezra Cohen has a portfolio filled with interesting video textures and presentations for products and artists. I'm not quite sure what the official name for such a thing would be but his own byline is "Creating memorable visual textures for films, commercials, and live concert environments" - which feels pretty apt.
He also offers a number of video filters to help you make these sorts of things on your own. There's an 8mm film grain texture pack or a repeater template but what caught my eye is the Modular Retro Visual Elements pack. It's 30 different elements, glitches and textures that all loop and interplay with one another. Mix and match to your own desires!
Personally, I have little practical use for this but I appreciate that it exists and lowers the barrier to entry for video creators to put together a compelling display to augment the right artists performance.
Really fascinating read from Gumroad founder Sahil Lavingia entitled "Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company." Obviously, most people fail to build a billion-dollar company and it's a fairly insane goal to start with that as your baseline but it's a very honest article with plenty of shared missteps and open humblings. It also isn't the story of failure; it's the story of a realization that wealth should not be the end goal (not always easy to see at 19 when immersed in SF startup culture).
Definitely worth your time, regardless of being in the tech world of not. Via Adam.
Dreams do come true! Check out this most outstanding recut of the Excellent Adventure intro with the original version of I Can’t Break Away by Chuck Jackson! ::air guitar:: Thanks to @weownthistown and @yewknee ! https://t.co/2DwS4RlEEF
One thing I learned while producing the Bill & Ted podcast San Dimas Today is that the opening scene of Excellent Adventure that features the song "Break Away" by Big Pig is actually a cover of the 1973 track of the same name by Chuck Jackson. Someone offhandedly mentioned that it'd be great if the opening scene of the movie was recut to feature Jackson's version of the song... so I did exactly that.
You can watch the original version or my recut version to compare and contrast. It's definitely a much different vibe to use the Jackson version but I'm into it.
Make your way through this "404 Page Not Found" piece by Kate Wagner. It's a lengthy piece reflecting on Web 1.0, the early days of Internet before frameworks and mass homogenization took place. It's also filled with fascinating quotes that work quite well, even completely out of context. Here's a few:
The internet is perhaps the most potent and active delivery system in history for the thesis "capitalism will obliterate everything you know and love" - online it happens in real time.
These disembodied ghosts - ancient in computer years - blink back at me because tech companies know that, based on my age, I like them. And I do like them. I miss where they came from - it’s a place I’ve found is no longer there.
Because websites had to either become apps or self-optimize for mobile, web design declined from its creative, more variegated heights to become flat, highly minimalistic, and multi-platform, and the results are, frankly, fucking boring.
Nostalgia, I’m reminded, is profitable - it remains one of the easiest to execute and cheapest grifts of neoliberal culture.
The piece is not so much about yearning to go back to the days of Geocities and MySpace as much as it is reflecting on how the major platforms have changed the landscape, generally in a direction that is more stale.
I can't say that I can't add much to this or even comment eloquently enough on it beyond simply stating that it's a worthwhile read and even more worth a reflection on for a bit.
No pun intended but I'm really drawn to the work of David Joel Kitcher. If you'll allow me to indulge my artier tendencies, there's a "beautiful grotesque" quality to it that I can't look away from. It's not disturbing or disgusting, there's just something about the chaotic nature of it that is pretty spellbinding. Even the sketches are able to embrace that quality, despite their small size.
There's plenty of worldly influences at play here - Mayan, South American and Native American art comes to mind off the top of the dome - but fused with graffiti style or even early cartoons. It's a lot going on but manages to be uniquely Kitcher throughout. Worth a deep dive, for sure.
