There may be some among you that have ever sent an actual letter (which is sort of like a printed e-mail). What I remember from letters is that you’d never write at the bottom that you couldn’t be held responsible for the contents of the letter et cetera. As a matter of fact; I never end a telephone conversation with anything like that either. The disclaimer is typical for e-mails. It’s understandable that such a statement is needed, but it is quite bizarre at the same time.

Today, I received an e-mail from someone working at one of our government offices and a sentence from our official governmental disclaimer caught my eye:

“The State accepts no liability for damage of any kind resulting from the risks inherent in the electronic transmission of messages.“

And I find this highly intriguing. Until now, I was never really that aware of the fact that that are inherent risks involved in electronically transmitting messages. Fortunately the State has brought this to my attention. I think I will take precautions of some kind. That’s important, since it’s also made very clear to me that, when damage occurs, of any kind I might add, as a result of one of these inherent risks, I may try to hold the State accountable, but it will accept no liability. None. Not even the tiniest piece of liability will be accepted when I encounter any sort of damage, no matter what the nature of that damage may be, when it result from the inherent risks in electronically transmitting messages.

If you are extremely offended by this posting and suffer emotionally, I must point out that this is considered a message, that is being electronically transmitted to you and, given that there are inherent risks to reading electronically transmitted messages, my State will no accept any liability whatsoever for it. Well, they’re not a part of this small electronic communiqé, so I’m guessing you don’t really mind. You’ll just hold me accountable.

Are the contents of these ‘electronically transmitted messaged’, also inherent risks from which damages may result? I mean, there are always inherent risks to any form of communication of ‘message transmitting’ , electronic transmission included. In other words, is the focus of the disclaimer on ‘transmission’, ‘messages‘ or ‘electronic’ or is it spread out over the three equally?

Even though I guess I understand what the disclaimer means to say, but it could mean so many things that I am actually thoroughly confused. I will spare you the more bizarre questions flying through my head right now, but I think I need to lie down for a minute. It wonder if the State will accept liability for emotional damages caused by the electronic transmission of disclaimers..

It’s easy to be all ‘2.0′ and ‘open source’ when you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s an entirely different thing if you’re one of the biggest rock bands of our time (and indisputably the most influential band of the fin de siècle of the 20th century). I’m talking about Radiohead here. After they let their fans download their newest album directly form their website for free (paying was optional) and their innovative idea of selling the several separate tracks to their single ‘nude’, they’ve now put the source code of their new video ‘house of cards‘ online for all the vid-techie-fans out there to manipulate. (I’m a BIG sucker for ‘making of’ films, so that site’s an absolute treat for me…)

When I bought the DVD of the brilliant David Payne film ‘About Schmidt’ it included as an extra, some edits of the opening sequence, made by different editors. Very entertaining and inspiring to watch. The various remixes of ‘nude’ mainly proved the brilliance of Radiohead themselves; none of the remixes came close to the original. I still can’t wait to see some of the ‘fan-made’ video version of House of Cards. You may call Radiohead whatever you want, but you cannot deny the fact that their innovative ideas for making their fans experience their music keep revolutionizing the music industry.

As he was flicking through the channels a documentary on Chaos Theory caught George’s attention.
Unfortunately he didn’t quite get all of it.

All characters and situations mentioned in this blog are completely fictional. Anyresemblance to actual people or places is purely coincidental. The publisher cannot be held responsible. For anything. Ever.

When I think about it… Moblogic actually sounds like quite a good name for a webchannel about economics and polictics (’n stuff) targeting the socially aware segment of the internet generation. (Hurrah, finally I managed to sound like a marketing guy!). I was made aware of these hip e-savvy cats through my my Flickr account, proving the use of online communities for me personally. I had a look at their site, watched a few videos, had a couple of laughs (Note #1: if Americans can apparently be funny, why on earth did they make that awful and exceptionally unfunny American version of ‘The Office’?). Anyway, this experience made me feel all 2.0 inside, so I decided to write a short post about it. A blog-to-blog campaign can be exteremely succesful in gaining in popularity and I am willing to put my two cents in for a channel I seem to be able to ‘dig’. (Note #2:If you doubt my claim on blog-to-blog campaigning, please e-mail this guy I have heard about who can tell you all about it at: b.obama@thewhitehouse.org).

So there you have it. A posting without a proper conclusion (I am quite happy with the opening though). Except that I will probabaly be a regular viewer of Moblogic and perhaps even steal a couple of their items to be able to write about current events without having to do much of the actual work myself. (Note #3: obviously I will give proper credits wherever due.)

‘Everybody’s a photographer‘ is just about as big a mistake as ‘everybody’s an artist‘. I am sympathetic towards the thought, but it’s just all wrong, dude. Photography is hard. It’s difficult to get a good shot with an intruiging subject, exciting composition… or just something that worth looking at. But since everyone is capable of the act of pushing the shutter button everybody’s able to make a registration of an image through a lens. And if the end result sucks… Let’s call it art.

Well… let’s not call it art. Let’s call it ‘crap’. Which is what it is, most of the time. With the rise of the digital camera, photography courses have been flooded and one amateur photography exhibition after the other has been organised. Flickr was worth millions when it was bought by Yahoo and why? Because everyone is a photographer.

I’ve just been leafing through the photography special of Juxtapoz, which is always a beacon of good taste in a world that’s becoming increasingly amateur-image-crazy, but in a lot of cases… I just don’t see it. Could it be that the photographer that managed to get his image up in a gallery and published in this magazine is way better at his/her PR than his/her photography work? I’d imagine so. Fortunately there are also a lot of gems to be discovered. Beautiful heart stopping images that made me gasp for air when I looked at them. My faith in photography as a mature art-form has been restored. With this posting, a couple of wonderful examples. Please click on images for links to the photographer’s websites.

Credit: all pictures published in the Juxtapoz photo-issue 2008 and taken from the Juxtapoz website. Photocredits top to bottom: Aaron Hobson, Patrick Smith, Alex Prager and Graham French (click on photos for their websites).

For some reason, let’s go into what it was, I was searching online for the name of that robot on the ‘old’ Buck Rogers’ series. (During my search I also found out that apparently the coolest member of the Battlestar Gallactica series (the robotdog Muffit) did not make it into the new one, which could almost be considered a criminal act, but that’s an entirely different posting,) When I read it’s name, Twiki, I suddenly remember one of my favourite lyrics of all time: ‘Andrew’s a starfighter pilot‘ by Snow Patrol. At some point Gary Lightbody sings: “He’s better than James Kirk or Twiki…”. even though that’s some bold statement (to boldly state where no statement has gone before), that’s not what this post is about. It’s about popularity, or to be more precise: Do I like alternative popbands less when they become popular, or do they become popular when I start liking them less, i.e. they start making a different kind of music.

My first example is of course: Snow Patrol. About a decade ago they were signed on the no-less-than-brilliant music label ‘Jeepster‘, also the label of Belle & Sebastian and Looper. They released two fantastic albums ‘Music for polar bears’ (1998 ) and ‘when it’s all over we still have to clean up’ (2001) before they switched labels to Polydor and started hitting the charts. I am very happy for them that they’ve become so popular but I also a bit sad that to do so, they had to let go of the wonderful quirky musical bits, and brilliantly bizarre lyrics. On the band’s website I read that mr. Garrett ‘Jacknife’ Lee (a charming name) can be credited for finding their new sound. In my humble opinion, he should be accused with it, not credited. I still consider Snow Patrol to be ‘okay’, but only in the way I’d call Coldplay ‘okay’. I hesitate to write this but I feel like one of my favourite bands has …erm… ’sold out’. ‘Chasing Cars’ is a typical crowdpleaser, but nothing as groundbreaking as ‘Get balsemic vinegar, quickly you fool’. Am I perhaps just jealous?

Another band that used to be great; Korn. Their first self entitled album created a whole new music genre: ‘nu metal‘. It’s one of the best things I ever heard. Then they became popular and it appeared they weren’t picked up by the mainstream, but swallowed by it. The edge was gone, they started producing more of the same, but watered down. Did many original fans of Extreme, Mr. Big and Ugly Kid Joe still remain fans after ‘More than words’, ‘be with you’ and ‘cats in the cradle’? Didn’t anyone learn anything from Kiss?

I heard that the British punkband Chumbawamba lost almost all of its fanbase after they scored a big hit with their single Tubthumping. Was that beacuse they radically changed their music? Or was it just not ‘punk’ to score a hit? But alternative popmusic doesn’t necisarilly have a problem with hits. The biggest popband out there, Radiohead, had a larger than life hit at the start of their career with ‘Creep‘.

I guess it will always be difficult to really figure it out since music is such an emotional thing. When bands we love change their music and become popular and mainstream, we feel let down and respond like they’ve broken our hearts. But perhaps the band has just moved on to different music which just ‘happens’ te become really big. And perhaps they have not ’sold out’ at all. I guess I’ll just go and play my old Snow Patrol albums for old times’ sake.

Sometimes you’d think that ‘we the people’ are in control since everything is rapidly becoming a popularity contest. Voters get to choose their political leader, consumers get to choose what products are on the shelves, fans get to choose their next idols. There are polls on everything and this also means that serious discussions can get cluttered and important decisions get made on the basis of uninformed opinions, fed back to us in incomplete and misleading questionnaire reports (”53% of population opposed to roundabout” usually means, 53% of online voters are not completely satisfied with the current plan of a roundabout for various reason and 47% of online voters don’t care one bit, which is a completely different result than the headline in your local weekly.)

Dutch artist and webdesigner Jacco van de Post has made a cool online application that let’s everybody vote
on the news. It would simply be the next democratic step to take; news we like can make it to the final and news we don’t like, gets voted out. If news is injected in us with this big hypodermic needle, than at least let it inject us with a big dose of ‘happy’ (or perhaps, ‘denial’).

Besides it being a clever comment on our voting addiction his work also comments on the media-age we live in. bringing news is one thing, but what if you only bring news that (potential) viewers don’t like? That would cost you loads of money from advertisers wouldn’t it? So clicking and voting would bring CNN (which is where the app gets its headlines from) valuable information which, I am sure, Jacco would be willing to sell to them for loads of money.

Start the application by clicking here.

I have a special interest in online storytelling. CultBlender artist JMDKM and myself have written the storyline of ‘Trip Fontaine‘ an online non-linear road novel. Upon completion, it is also a genuine art 2.0 project, where readers (or: visitors) add their own art to the project and thus expand it. Making it a true multimedia experience.

I stumbled across a very poetic online interactive story recently (Even though the makers themselves call it ‘a game’), called ‘the graveyard’. The only character in this story is an anonymous elderly lady who you walk across an ominous graveyard towards a bench. On this bench you sit the old lady down and a Flemish song starts. If this song isn’t your cup of tea, you simply get up and walk out of the graveyard again. End of game. Well, end of the demo game that is. You can also buy the full version which doesn’t add much…or: adds everything. The full version also provides you with the possibility of death. (let’s hope that they do not mean the possible death of your hardware or yourself.)

The images of the short walk are really nice, they give you the actual feel of being on a rainy stormy graveyard at the early evening. visitors that are born ‘n raised in the computergame era will undoubtedly start looking for ways to shoot enemies that jump up from behind tombstones, but I didn’t see any enemies, nor weapons. The walk towards the bench is slow and your character obviously has difficulty walking. Annoying, but you also start to feel sorry for the old lady. Then, when she sits down the song starts playing and a lot of different possible storylines go through your head. That experience is what made The Graveyard worthwhile for me.

Adding to the ‘interactive’experience, from the website you can also click on to the Graveyard forum where I found a very useful link to a graveyard photo-community Death by Light.

Conclusion: I recommend this Graveyard experience to anyone that would liek to have a bit of a poetic online experience.

Radiohead has been one of the most innovative bands for years. In the evolution of music since the release of OK Computer and since their latest album ‘In Rainbows‘ when it comes to ‘making a living for yourself as a rockband‘.

It’s a good thing I’ve taken up the habit of actually going through the thousands of spam e-mails I receive every wee, otherwise I might have completely missed the e-mail that had the subject line: ‘Remix nude for Radiohead’. (Tip: The word ‘nude’ doesn’t do well in most spamfilters.) What’s the e-mail about? Well, Mr. Yorke and friends give their fans the opportunity to buy the several stems of the track (A stem being the separate track of one particular instrument, like the drums keyboard, guitar, bass or vocals).

Buyers are invited to use these tracks to make their own remix of the song ‘Nude’ by Radiohead which is their next single in the UK. These remixes can be uploaded, Remixers can install ‘widgets’ on their personal sites (myspace, facebook etc) to atract extra traffic, their remixes will be judged, visitors can vote for their favorite remixes et cetera. Basically: it all sounds like a very clever and good idea. Radiohead makes a little extra money on their track and by providing a product that their fans will actually love (talk about marketing!) and they will also get a lot of extra PR because of this, which is also very useful when releasing a new single. And all this without losing any ’streetcredibility’. If there is one thing Radiohead is not, then it’s a bunch of corporate sellouts.

After their innovative ‘download our album and pay as you see fit’ and their In Rainbows video competition, they’ve added another new chapter to ‘music for you and me, not the f#@ing industry.’

You may click here for more information about the Nude remixes.
And should you for some inexplicable reason have a hard time locating it, the top 10 of most popular remixes can be found (naturally) here.

Not so long ago I wrote about the poor copywriting quality of spam. I had some ideas about saving and organising all this spam and then using it as raw material for some, digital, artworks. there are, obviously, two very different ways to approach this. You could either use the texts ‘in context’; present the words as spam and see what the audience has to say about spam and the other way around. Or take the words out of context and use the words like Lego. Building blocks that may take on a completely different meaning when place in a different context. The well from which all you building blocks would have sprung would be spam and thus limit your artistic vocabulary. But isn’t it so that in limitations you may recognize the master? Does spam in a different context get a different meaning? yes. Does that make good art? Not necessarily.

Whether presenting words out of context and calling that art has much artistic value is open for debate. Anyway, as was to be expected, spamart is ‘hot’. Dutch artist Loek Grootjans has been collecting and organising the spam he receives (he specifically asked his provider to remove his spamfilter specifically for this purpose) for years. He expects that in about ten years, hew ill have built a unique archive of spam. This, I doubt, since many other people artists around the world will have had the same idea (search engine ‘collecting spam’, there you go) . Whether or not his spam-archive will make art-history will probably depend on how he uses it for building other artworks.

Four examples of how spam is currently being used to create art. Going from ’spam merely provides the building blocks for completely different artworks’ to ‘the nature of spam is at the core of the artwork’.

1. The works of Romanian programmer and artist Alex Dragulescu. Alex wrote an algorythm which he feeds with spamtext. His program than uses these texts as input to create three dimensional images of plantlike structures. He has also built 3 dimensional sculptures based on spam texts.

2. A site where they experiment with ‘recycling spam’ is appropriately called spamrecycling.com. You can make use of spamtexts you have received and turn that into movable objects. However, it’s a shame that there is no added value because of using spam as building blocks there. Dragulescu’s works seem to improve in meaning when you know how the sculptures were created with spam.

3. A better (at least I think so) example of how you can use spamtexts to create art I found on the Flickr page of English illustrator Linzie Hunter. Her works create lovely tension between the sugar coated and pastel coloured typography and the wasteful dollar-driven spam where the texts come from. Never before did we want spam to intrude our personal lives.

4. Let’s return to Grootjans. Merely saving and archiving spam is not all he does. One of the artworks he created using spam is part of the Utopia exhibition I wrote about in my previous post. Grootjans’ minigolf course is a traditional one, but with an addition. All over the course there are little signs that have spamtexts on them. It can be quite difficult to concentrate when someone is shouting stuff about your ‘Johnson’ at you. This work illustrates how spam effects our everyday lives, sucking up energy and time. How annoying it is. So spam is used as spam.

I think good, interesting, provocative and inspiring art is possible on all the above levels (hey, there are even artists that make great paintings about ‘paint’…) it just depends on what you do with it. Perhaps, after this post you might not hit the delete button so quickly anymore. Try and appreciate that someone sent you a little piece of art.