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.)
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.
This just in: Rumour has it that the former Dutch alternative popband ‘Long Evans’ are regrouping for a new album and international tour. Sources around the band reveal that both album and tour might be called: “Music 2.0″.
Their new album will consist of an empty CD-R on which you can record your own music and an empty inlay in which you can write your own texts. The band are currently rehearsing their new material for the live performances. They plan to stare mindlessly into a void while the audience generates it’s own content in the ‘Long Evans environment’ on stage. Design for the tour however, will be impecable.
Both the music-journalists and the financial analysts I we have contacted about this press release have responded enthusiastically. It is expected that Long Evans will sell their new works to Google, AOL, Yahoo or any other of these User Generated Content/ 2.0 believers for several million dollars within a year.
For more information on the new Long Evans release, please contact their management at: longevans@cultblender.org.
I know for a fact that a lot of artlovers out there are mostly interested in art featuring women (as the Guerilla Girls pointed out: 83% of all nudes in the Met feature women, whereas only 3% of all artists featured in the Met actually are women). Looking at the tags and search queries people use to get to my blog clearly points that out. The popularity of the picture with my post about the work of Eric Bailey, which is still one of the most popular posts I’ve written is also a clear indication in that direction.
BLK/MRKT gallery in Los Angeles always seems to showcase artists that I, and this is truly a matter of personal opinion, think are more or less brilliant and quite inspiring (at the same time, I must admit I have never actually physically been there yet… they say their coffee is great). A recent virtual wander about on their website revealed to me the magnificent works of Canadian artist Ben Tour.
We are very familiar with the use of the female figure in art. Porn did not only help the VHS system be victorious, but the (ab)use of the nude female body has made a good living for many painters, sculptors and other artists. They figured out a long time ago that sex sells. But the female nude is no longer synonymous with ’sex’. Works by South African artist Marlene Dumas are often so confrontational and graphic that her works are uncomfortable to even look at. Her works make clear, even more than a photograph could, how women can be exploited and degraded in this oversexed world. The audience feels even more embarrassed by watching her works than they would be when they had rented a piece of ‘adult entertainment’. Another artists that has been on top of the artistic food chain for quite a while is Lucian Freud. Freud also paints nudes. And, of course, also female nudes. Just as with Dumas’ works, his nudes aren’t meant to sexually arouse and they don’t.
Ben Tour’s work is very different from both artists mentioned. His works breathe that ’streetart’ atmosphere, and the way he incorporates letters and numbers give his works the feeling of even deeper lying mythical meaning. The serie that touched me most was his blue wash series. Tour has painted several women with crayon and ink that are both beautiful and tragic. It’s uneasy to look at them. And you just know that pretty girls aren’t supposed to look like that. that;s not the image Hollywood has taught us. Pretty girls have fun. But Ben Tour will have none of that. you just hope that the artists comforted them after he took their misery and poured it out on paper.
Ben Tour’s repertoire goes a lot further than these ‘tragic sirenes’. All his works seem to have a sort of lightness in colors, you feel you can see right through them. For me this also meant that I actually looked into his works. The way he chooses his subjects and compositions make that his works look both very contemporary (like I said: streetart feel) as well as timeless. You can’t date his works. But then , that only helps to see his works as instant classics.
A quite nice read, the Ben Tour interview on fecalface.com.
And a movieclip by WalrusTV featuring some of Ben Tour’s works, can be found here.
I am not going to lie about it. Whenever I read a Coupland novel I think I can write myself as well. I start feeling the urge to document certain contemporary trivia about my life the way he does. And now I have this blog thing… so I can bother you with it as well. How?
Well, this morning when I walked out of the train station (since I work in the center of Amsterdam, going by car is not an option and would be insanely bad for the environment) I discovered two things. First; I am glad I quit smoking a long time ago. When you walk out train stations you see a lot people, a certain group of those people smoke. Those people do not seem to be the type of people that are going anywhere fast. In a lot of cases those people don’t even seem to be the types of people that are taking regular showers. Obviously, this is a crude generalization. Some people that smoke are young, successful, cool, cosmopolitan and healthy. However, their numbers are decreasing and they are none of those things because of their addiction but in spite of it. I took a deep breath of fresh morning air. At least, as fresh as you get it in Amsterdam.
My second discovery is that I really satisfied with the playlist I have uploaded to my first generation iPod Shuffle. My playlist currently features;
Radiohead - In rainbows (legally downloaded and paid for at radiohead.com, Radiohead rocks)
New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom (Tip: perfect music for looking at my artwork)
Fink - Distance and time (No less than brilliant show in Paradiso a couple of weeks ago)
Pete Murray - See the Sun (Bringing back memories of my stay in ‘Oz’)
Bonobo- Days to come (Last.fm played Bonobo in ‘Fink’ radio, Ninja Tune is a great label)
Hot Chip - The warning (haven’t heard the new album yet)
Kings of Convenience - Riot on an empty street (it’s snowing right now, what better than Scandinavian music?)
And even though I am very pleased with this selection, it’s got some good tracks for reading while on the train as well as for walking though the center of Amsterdam I know it is far from perfect. A perfect mix depends on various variables like where, when and for how long you intend to listen to it. At this point I am not even sure whether or not I will add several individual tracks to the playlist or, as I have done now, select a couple of albums which will make it possible to not listen to a shuffle but in fact an entire album.
Which brings me to a different point. I believe that the iPod shuffle is superior to its bigger siblings, not in spite of but because of it shortcomings. There is not too much memory on a shuffle so you have to really select what tracks you add instead of adding just everything and thereby merely postponing the moment at which you cannot choose what music you’d like to listen to. It’s the same reason why I will never download a ringtone but just use the one my mobile came with. If you start downloading ringtones, you will never be happy and just keep on wanting more and better ones. Leave it to the marketing people. It’s just like the casino: the only way to win is not to play. Furthermore, the iPod shuffle does not have a screen or various sorts of buzzers. It limits your options to the basics, which is such a relieve nowadays.
Jpod is Microserfs v2.1! That’s what you get for picking a book for it’s cover and just start reading a novel without any historic perspective whatsoever. A couple of months ago I wrote about Douglas Coupland’s genius novel ‘Jpod’ which I read, how appropriate, on one of those 24hr mega airplane flights. Yesterday, I started reading his earlier sign-of-the-times novel ‘Microserfs‘ about a group of Microsoft coders in the early nineties. In a way Microserfs explains why Jpod is so good. It’s same reason why Bree Hodge makes such an incredible lemon pie… he already had a winning recipe he could follow. And the same as with the pie, he barely changed the ingredients.
Both Microserfs and Jpod are written in the form of a log by the main character. Both characters are in their mid-twenties, mainly live to work in the digital industry, which also means they are doubting their purpose in life, their friends are their -also slightly dysfunctional- colleagues, they fall in love with a female colleague and their parents have problems… And one thing both novels have in common is the fact that Coupland likes playing around in both books with lists and seemingly ‘at random’ words in different fonts and sizes that give you, the reader, some not spoken out loud information about the personality and lives of the characters.
So, if both novels are so much alike, why bother reading both then? Why not just pick one? Isn’t the reason that no one buys a Coldplay album anymore that they’re making the same album over and over again? Why do I want, no have to continue reading after I keep getting this continued deja vu? Or, to phrase this slightly bizarre, what’s the difference between Coldplay and Coupland? Let me explain using a video-gaming analogy.
Coldplay is the like big videogames hit franchise Fifa or NHL by EA Sports; a new version comes out every year that’s basically the same. You get some extra options, better graphics, new names of players, but: when you’ve bought Fifa ‘06 of NHL ‘06 there is really no need to buy any other version… unless you are really, really hooked and are a genuine Fifa collector’. Coupland is more like a shoot em up. ‘Halo‘ was a really, really big videogame. And, apparently, so is Halo 3. The basic idea of the games is the same; you’re a sci-fi marine and you try and kill the other side. The difference with the sportsgames is, that if you’ve played Halo 3 and liked it, but haven’t played the original version (or the other way around) there is every reason to give the other version a go as well. Different tactics, different possibilities… new game…
I guess you might say I have cleared every level of Jpod, the Halo 3 version of Microserfs and am now starting on the original Halo game. I’m actually at that point where I know I’ll love the game, even though I don’t know what’s going to happen yet. The fact that Halo is a Microsoft game simply cannot be a coincidence.
Watch how I cleverly start a new post, while at the same time promoting an item on an alternative webpage. While I was reading through some of the answers I had received from Kendrick Mar for the e-terview (Yes, I just a made that one up, yes it’s bloody awful) with him I was writing for the cultblender site, it suddenly dawned on me: Painting as an art-form is here to stay… where a lot of digital art forms may not be.
Kendrick said something along the lines of: “Painters who prefer not to have pictures of their art taken and posted on the internet -since you can never translate a painting to a digital image- are like musicians who don’t want their music recorded to cd, since it’s always better if you hear it live.” (not a quote, free interpretation) To me, it seems there is a lot of truth in that. In Wired magazine I read an article by David Byrne (former ‘Talking Heads’ band member and recording artist) who stated that the main mistake made by the record industry when trying to find an answer to downloading of music is that they thought that they were in the music business. Which is not true. Record labels are in the business of selling containers in which you contain the music you like to listen to. Big difference. The containers are things you can hack, make copies of. The music itself however….
Music, like painting, is an analogue and organic art form. A lot of its beauty comes from the personality the artist can put in it, or even the small mistakes he or she makes. That’s why we love to see those things in real life. And it’s the whole package, all the senses are important, smelling the paint, tasting the air, feeling the connection with all the other fans in the stadium. If art is performed or seen live, you can feel it, submerge in it. And since people will want the real live experience, it will always be possible to make money of it and make a living a an artist. If you are in the business of making digital art, it may be that you find that -even though you’re brilliant- it’s almost impossible to make a living of it. Because it will always be possible to make exact copies of your work that will be spread for free as soon as it seems that you can make some money of it. That’s the internet anarchy for you.
We also see an exact opposite development. Polaroid has announced it will stop producing their films because of the success of digital photography. It seems no one develops a film anymore. Except, obviously, for those photographers that enjoy developing their own films, which will - as long as you have a vague notion about what you’re doing- always lead to better results than the pictures that come from the lab. But by developing your photos yourself, you are , again, creating an analogue version that cannot be digitally copied, because you will lose a lot of the original attraction.
Like painting, analogue photography or live music performances will never die as an art-form. Simply because the total experiences cannot be copied to a digital form, from the relative comfort of your won home.
With new found arrogance I once again proclaim myself to be an artist. But an artist who sometimes unleashes the geek inside. That may mean, reading popular science books on quantum mechanics, or hooking up my PSP to the WWW, but it sometimes means I run out and buy myself a copy of Wired Magazine. Goody! Sometimes it can be thoroughly fulfilling to read about which earplugs for my mp3 player I should buy (I just use the ones that camewith the iPod, or how an oilrig drills the ocean (even though I am totally against that, save the environment people!). The january 2008 copy of Wired was even more fulfiling than others. Not only did it include an article about French cinema genius Michel Gondry (Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind among others) it also featured a small article about an artist I had never heard of before; Scott Listfield.
My first thought was: why, o, why can’t I remember seeing his stuff in Flash Art, Frieze Art, Modern Painters or whereever? Beacuse his works are brilliant. Totally in line with what I wrote in my two ‘Love the paint’ postings. Lushly painted, energetic sceneries that suck you in and then surprise you with all those things you didn’t see at first. Which is very, very clever. Because his compositions are actually very well balanced. Never too much information that would just give you a headache. They would actually be very comforting in the background of a waiting room for a doctor or dentist. Only at that second glance -and he will get that second glance- can his paintings give you that nagging feeling of discomfort I admire so much in paintings. Others don’t make you feel uneasy at all, but have a wonderous air. A bit like watching a Michel Gondry film or video.
Scott Listfield’s paintings have a message, but my personal bet is that is not a message of doom and anger, but amazement over he world that surrounds us. Hence the astronaut that pops up in all paintings. In Wired the compared this with the -kidnapped- garden gnome some backpackers take along to take pictures of durin their travels. Scott Listfield admist feeling like that astronaut every once in a while. An out of place spectator in a world dominated by bizarre little things like Starbucks, Blackberries and primary elections. I april he’s got a show opening up at ArtCenter/ South Florida in Miami Beach. I don’t think I will be around for that one, but I am truly jealous if you’re able to go see it. For those of us that can’t… there’s always the possibility to buy a giclee print of one of his works online.
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).
