Archive for 2010
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Channel 101: More Media For The Attention Deficient
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 4, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010One hundred channels of television and still nothing to watch? Try Channel 101.
In our continued search for amusing media for the attention deficient, we bring you: Channel 101. And in a convenient example of life imitating art, we’re going to do what Channel 101 does to its audience, and rather than tell you what to like, force you to go look at it and tell us what’s good. So just what is Channel 101? Well, if you live in LA, it’s a film festival with monthly screenings. But beyond that, it’s a “web channel” created by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab that lets filmmakers create short “pilots” that are then judged by the audience for a shot at getting into top rotation on the site. Kind of like real TV, except no-one’s getting paid, and the fat rich executive that calls the shots is YOU. The concept was born back in 1999 when Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab were banished from legitimate television after the FOX network opted not to make a show from their pilot Heat Vision and Jack. As their lives unraveled in 2000, Rob Schrab went on to make a series of home movies about eating poop and having sex with babies. Dan Harmon, not to be outdone, makes a movie about Chris Tallman coming back from the dead and raping him in the ass. That’s pretty much verbatim from their About Us page, for the record. The fact is these guys appear to have pals like Sarah Silverman, Jack Black, and Ben Stiller, and the concept draws some pretty decent talent, ranging from the “meta” arty 60′s mod stylised vignettes of EVERYTHING to the camp of Fagney & Gaycey. I didn’t take time to dig deeper. Why don’t YOU. And then come back and share. We get tired of doing all the heavy lifting around here. Read the rest of this entry »
Movie Reclamation Mashups – Scavenging Film To Make Music
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 3, 2010 by admin in Music
Monday, May 3rd, 2010Editing artists like Pogo and Tasman Richardson are creating a cool new genre in which film sounds are scavenged to make music. Now we just need a name for it.
There’s definite shortage of terminology when it comes to describing one of my favorite forms of pop media, i.e.: the mashup. We’ve touched on the genre of music that for lack of a better term is called a “mashup” before, and pointed you to cool artists like Kutiman, who kind of takes it to a new level by creating very musical video collages with elaborate resampling of music tutorials and demos from YouTube. But there’s not only a definite shortage of terminology for discussing this form of expression, some would question whether or not it’s even music. Especially in the case of work by either Pogo or Tasman Richardson. Pogo has recently been getting some attention for his musical video collages, most recently Skynet Symphonic (video below) which is assembled primarily from using selected non-musical sounds from the movie Terminator 2 to make music. A purist of this genre might say Pogo “cheats” a bit by adding synth lines and pitch-controlling the samples to make things more “musical”. For something a little more “hardcore”, both in terms of using pure editing to get results, as well as the resulting musical style, you might check out Tasman Richardson’s work, like Vader Lives (clip below) which is – as Richardson puts it – a “Breakcore homage to the Dark Lord Himself”. Richardson has a body of work stretching back to 1996 which can be found in quicktime on his site or on his YouTube channel. He has also created a term for the type of media he’s creating and defined it in his Jawa Manifesto (1.2MB PDF). The only other artist I’m aware of that does this with any finesse is Robin Koerts, who has done remixes using Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction (also below). If you know of any others creating this kind of work feel free to share. Read the rest of this entry »
Is Technology Making You Crazy?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on May 2, 2010 by admin in Technology
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010Well, I think we know the answer to that. But is it killing you too?
Because of your technology-damaged attention span, I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t read this entire piece. If you aren’t sure how your attention span rates, take the quiz; I didn’t have the patience, probably because of my technology abuse issues. As something of a techno-addict, I’ve been thinking about rehab for a while; just quitting it cold turkey and then re-introducing it slowly to see how much I can handle. Why? Because for a number of years, I’ve unscientifically asserted that many of the mental and emotional maladies that people suffer these days – fatigue, patchy memory, poor attention, anxiety – were due to the media overload most of us experience. Well, now some of the science is in. Yes, you can be addicted to technology. And yes, it is affecting not only our relationships, work, and home life, but the health of our children as well. One of the most dramatic negative impacts I personally see on an ongoing basis has to do with attention span and disruption of time and activities. So aside from the more obvious irritation caused by poor texting and cell phone etiquette, why should this be a big deal? The Wired piece Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains includes an interview with Maggie Jackson (author of the rather dramatically-titled Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age
It’s My Party And I’ll Lie If I Want To
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 1, 2010 by admin in Politics
Saturday, May 1st, 2010Party switching politicians shouldn’t bother you. I mean, why do you think they call it a “party”.
 Yeah, yeah. I know. This is the Roman god of war. But I think it could get new mileage as the Roman god of politicians. |
The hubbub recently surrounding Charlie Crist jumping ship from the GOP reminded me of how I found it amusing back in 2004 that one of the key strategies that the Bush camp used to beat John Kerry was to peg him as a “flip flopper”. To me, that’s the very definition of a politician. And even politicians I admire seem to adhere to flip flopping as a modus operandi. I personally feel that given the fact that in the states we have what is – in reality – a two-party system that’s manipulated by a corporatocracy, that switching parties or running as an indpendent immediately before an election is a powerful reflection of that politician’s lack of character. Kind of a “Dick Move”. Which is one of the reasons I have so much contempt for one of the most famous Dicks in America, who for some reason prefers to be called “Joe”. Some of the other reasons are that he looks like he probably eats flies for breakfast, drools in his sleep, and lives under a toadstool. But I digress. Charlie Crist’s decision is generating a lot of dialogue, ranging from those who believe it’s more a reflection of Crist’s style, to those who believe it’s a powerful statement about the US political system being broken. But the fact is that party switching is nothing new. If you don’t realize just how common it is, check out the roundup on Wikipedia. You’ll probably be surprised. Just over forty US politicians have done it each of the last two decades.
Your Charitable Donations: Crisis Relief? Or Guilt Relief?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 30, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Friday, April 30th, 2010Sure, it feels good to give. But it feels even better to see results.
Are you the sort of person who occasionally makes charitable donations? If so, do you ask yourself where the money is really going, or just make the donation and operate with good faith about the idea that you’ve done something good? I personally like to do good when I can (which is less then I’d like!), but have a mildly cynical and pragmatic streak that makes me really question what good is occurring as a result of my donation. For that reason, I’ve always questioned the logic behind organizations like Sierra Club or Greenpeace sending me hefty, glossy-stock packages with pleas for support. Part of me instantly recoils and says “Why should I give you money? So you can send out more pricey direct mail pieces like this?” Although I’m no “expert” on non-profit organizations, I’ve learned a lot from working with one in particular called Amara Conservation. It’s a Kenya-based NGO that I got involved with in its inception stage. It was started by a good friend about a year after I had started a for profit venture doing new media work back in 2000. The reason I’ve stayed committed to doing what I can for Amara since then is because the organization had as one of its fundamental principles a commitment to maintaining low overhead, applying funds as directly as possible, and assessing the durability of any project they engaged in rather than just throwing money at problems or applying band-aid solutions. In the work I’ve done with other non-profits, I’ve often encountered two polar extremes that at first surprised me. On the one hand, a sort of mamby-pamby feel-good-about-yourself attitude that in my opinion produced little in the way of results. On the other extreme, massively-funded operations with heavy corporate sponsorship that seem to become all about brand and fund-raising rather than helping. I’ve often caught a lot of flak about my “cynical philanthropy”, which is why I was glad to run across the blog Blood and Milk, maintained by by Alanna Shaikh. She shares a lot of seemingly cynical but actually dead-on observations like how the work of NGO’s is impeded by a culture of “being nice”, why you shouldn’t even bother starting an NGO and if you choose to anyway, how to succeed. In my view, there’s nothing more ridiculous than a bunch of Americans living their relatively cushy lives and feeling good about themselves because they helped pay for a program that benefits no-one. If you ever have wondered where your donations are going, there are a few useful sites that track and rate non-profits. One of the best-organized I’ve found is Charity Navigator, which offers up extensive reporting on organizational efficiency and capacity, revenue and expenditures, even the salaries of the organizations principles. For general tips and guidelines, try the FTC’s Charity Checklist. And those references earlier to big NGO’s and how they raise funds? You might also look at whether or not the organization is a 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) non-profit. Organizations like Sierra Club and Greenpeace are categorized as 501(c)(4), which gives them much more freedom to lobby and engage in politics, among other things.