Catch-up - interesting blogs and links
Other blogs
Mark Vallen's Art for a Change blog
Art Blogging LA
Blogging LA - many Bloggers
LA Voice - Also many bloggers
Art Kunkin's blog | Los Angeles Free Press
LAist
we make money not art
Untitled 54 Blog by Artist Painter Kelly Thompson - Los Angeles ...
www.boingboing.net - winner of most popular blog of the Webbies. I read it everyday.
www.indymedia.org - global independent media
Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines - Robert Scheer's Website
Wonkette - Politics for people with dirty minds.
Famous Artist's Course
Remember those matchbooks that said "Draw Me!" on the front? They advertised a correspondence course called "Famous Artists". Everyone made fun of "draw Binky the Skunk any size but the same size"; but the truth of the matter was that the Famous Artists Course was no laughing matter- it was one of the best art instructional courses ever created.
Second Life
Second Life - This is a quite well performing virtual world - social networking site.
It lets users create their own houses, sculptures, gardens, costumes.
It's vast and you can fly around and check things out. They have
quite an economy going. The virtual world has a virtual banking system,
and though you are given some money during you free trial setup,
you can buy more money with real money, and use it to buy items in the
virtual world, with a overall sales volume already exceeding $1,000,000.
I found many beautiful homes completely deserted all over the landscape,
some of which include video screens which play streaming media.
I found beautiful virtual scultpures. I found a Goth sex room with a fountain
of blood and a throne and a circular bed. There are little spheres all over
the place that you can click on and select activities, like dance, play a bass,
doggy style. Remember how in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 there
was a virtual reality room which many found more important than the real world.
This is just the beginning, and not the end of the world. There are some locations
where charities hold virtual events, and can do real-world fundraising and education.
You need to download client software.
Propissterol
The Huffington Post's spoof on the Drug Industry Ads
Dark Miracle
Why Mommy is a Democrat
A different kind of Children's Book
Calling All Wingnuts
Calling All Wingnuts
Kickin’ ass on the lyin’ side: A never-ending battle against stupid, ugly, deceitful and corrupt right-wing water carriers…
For Nearly One Third of Venice Residents, English is not their first language.
Modern Language Association Statistics
Best and Worst Advertising from around the world.
Advertising Design Goodness is also a good
place to find other sites which deconstruct advertising.
Dashi Namdakov
http://www.sirin.co.uk/docs/namdascu.htm
check out the music and art and video clip
via - Arnold Springer
Political Videogames
From www.boingboing.net: Molle Industria makes subversive mini-games aimed at undermining post-industrial capitalism:
http://www.molleindustria.org/home-eng.php
NYC Garbage Scout
Li Wei Art
http://www.liweiart.com/index.html
Slavery Still Exists
http://anti-slavery.org/index.html
Asshole
http://filmstripinternational.com/
music by Jim's Big Ego
The 50's
America Triumphant after WWII, Big industrial consumer product manufacturers raise mass advertising to new levels with big fantasies for you which includes their products. These advertising and magazine illustrations are intriguing, hilarious, and frightening. Styles are different now but the intentions are the same.
Plan59
Joe Sacco's illustrated story about victims of torture
Joe Sacco has a great illustrated story available on the Guardian's website as a PDF file. Sacco puts a face on the victims of the torture.
Sand Fantasy
http://www.sandfantasy.com/videoclips/videoclips.htm
Robert Cray Video appeals to end Iraq war.
http://afsc.org/iraq/cray-video.htm
Flying Dogs
"What happens when pets suddenly start diggin' Fischerspooner"
http://www.joshuablankenship.com/video/x/birds.mov
Sex in Video Games Conference
This is an inevitable development. Computers already
create enormous fantasies for Movies and Television,
Game console makers have discouraged most porn
to avoid a backlash against their products, but now
that consoles are ubiquitous, the wraps can come off.
Sex in Video Games Conference
A Good Read
Morgan Stanley's research on Internet trends.
http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/GSB112005.pdf
Thoreau
A true poem is not that which the public read.
There is always a poem not printed on paper,
coincident with the production of this, stereotyped in the poet's life.
It is what he has become through his work. Not how the idea is
expressed in stone or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how
far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist.
His true work will not stand in any prince's gallery.
Make Your Own Magazine Cover
Create a customized magazine from your digital photographs
http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/magazine.php
The Dead
Oh the rhapsodies of love I have composed only
to be anihilated in a online form response timeout.
Love lost, words that might have carried the magic
ah well my pose of wretched oppression tires me.
This whole election is bogus, driven by Republican Strategists
who just want to torture Democrats by making them defend themselves
in special elections. That Feral Pet thing is just more fear based law,
"oh no, there may be terrible wild animals out there" not far to go to get to
"Oh no! There may be dangerous wild humans out there.(the homeless)"
What is this click activism? Send an email, become a statistical executive summary
to the decision makers...maybe. That's an unfair dump on online activism,
but I am a proponent of direct community action.
It is too easy to be cynical about local politics, and too easy to believe
the carefully crafted fundraising pitches of national organizations.
We're planning a day of the dead celebration at SPARC, first week of November,
get involved in planning now.
honor the dear, ask them to forgive you, why, because they are jealous of you, you live.
Death laughs at our follies. Why do we mourn the inevitable?
The dead want us to live for them, and kindly,
so as not to oppress creation .
I must sleep to dream
or ask, what could conjure
extrordinary transformative love?
AI
Why robots are scary--and cool - Is AI an attempt to overcome Sin?
Mini robot mimics cockroaches - robot leads cockroaches.
Venice Studio Rental
it's 2200 square feet $2600 just West of Lincoln
It's not mine.
It's next door to me so I would love to refer
the right person. email
on the eve of the eves
how am i faring so close to the heart of so many Venice Artists...?
those lovable high strung bipolar medicated rehab-ed addicted dealing just sworn off moralizing and a thing or two to add, medicated to deal with the pain, the terror, disempowerment kitsch,
Casting out demons and visions,
trying to dream outside the box
while being incessantly nagged.
I take a deep breath of love and break a wind of my own,
slapstick humble.
By now we've managed to scape together a few grand
to pay for these three shows so please keep those donations coming
Eric Ahlberg - 070905
The junk that ate the world
They called them crickets, the chirping of the millions of
RFID post consumer trash
some of them were cameras still filled with family photos
Crank knew they were starting to chew up bandwidth
and had been able to get them to shut up by giving them busy work or
locking them up with viruses, they couldn't use EMP's, like some dumps
did to kill the noise, not this close to civilization.
Crank tripped on it though and started loading them up with little things to do,
like running a synth or rendering a milimeter of space
and collecting it into the colliseum of trumpets, or jimis
a rocking synthetic sound system for the shack in the middle of the dump
pulling a torrent of starlets from the pods and blowing them across him
Crank was on a buzz, and he tweaked his dream feedback
and gave up anything else and it was so beautifully changing for him
and when it showed up on the shared dreaming network it was all over.
when the cyber carnies learned to resonate libido
Cultural Worries
Spies Spies Spies
Posted by admin on 05/11/05
Yes the matter of spies has come up a number of times. What are you paranoid or something? Being paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't out to get me.
I did have some experiences with police spies in the 70's.
About 1971(?) I was working in the Midnight Special Bookstore Collective at 1335 1/2 West Washington Bl. (now Abbot Kinney Bl.). I was recruited to work there just after some other collective members had been entraped by the FBI and the LAPD Public Disorder and Intelligence Division (?) so they could start a grand jury investigation into the Venice Opposition to the Vietnam War, and all their friends.
A little later on this new guy joined the Midnight Special Collective. He said he was Turkish, his name was Yuri, and he came to a few meetings, we left him alone running the store. He calls me at home to try to convince me to sell drugs, but I never have wanted to risk that. He tries really hard to convince me to buy them, but I just get the wrong vibe from it. He comes over to the house and then won't leave until I agree to at least take the drugs up front though he tries really hard to get cash. Well he's gone about 30 seconds and rap rap rap there's the police badge in the window. I ask if they have a warrant and refuse them entry. They say they have a complaint and that they just want to ask a few questions. I had been thru legal training and knew not to do anything provocative. After about 5 minutes of discussion I agreed to go outside. Though my adrenaline was running I just maintained my poise, and politely refused to answer their questions, besides my name. They really wanted to go look around in my house and get the names of those who lived there. "I'm sorry, I don't want to tell you that." Blah de blah no warrant, they goes in the front door anyway. 2nd major adrenaline rush but years of TM paid off. I went in too, and stated extremely loudly "You have entered my house illegally and I want you to leave!" But I maintained my poise. I started repeating it at intervals and a cop told me to sit down, and after a defiant pause I sat down. They don't find the stash. I had put it behind a big painting that covered some recessed shelves. They finally sit down with me and do the same song and dance, but I wasn't talking. They finally left without a bust and I was simply bursting with nervous energy. I couldn't believe it.
A friend was taking self defense classes up at the Church in Ocean Park.
Jane Fonda was in the class, as well as John Dial, movement security guy, sometimes Jane's Bodyguard, until he was spotted in police uniform in Beverly Hill Court.
War is Fascist Kitsch
Posted by admin on 05/11/05
The constant clamor of the clash of kitsch,
bubbling thru the streams of sitcoms
my daughter watches on cable.
The U.S.A. made shows are goofy, punchline to punchline.
Nickelodeon has an excellent Canadian show, DeGrasse, where hot button issues of identity, relationships, and violence are given a much more real treatment, and minus the sitcom yuks.
the bulging egos of fascist kitsch?
guns and bombing into submission
denial of choices
holding on and strangling everything
if you let go of the world
it will smile on you
a smile with teeth
for the universe is a dragon
undefeatable
Paranoid Futurism
Posted by admin on 11/11/04
Ubiquitous wireless video camera phones are fast upon us. What are the privacy and surveillance implications. What are the artistic potentials? What is the potential for witnessing the world? Can virtual world renderings be edited into captured footage to bear false witness? Who owns captured footage? These things worry me..what, me worry?
If the civic leaders can erect naked statues, why can't we go naked on the beach?