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October 2000

Here’s Another One We Like

2000-10-21 / Painting isn’t dead — far from it. While currently we may see this venerable art take the form of glittering pixels as often as daubed pigment — Photoshop gradually supplanting the bristle — the same forceful extraction of an image from the mind’s eye and its deliberate application to a flat surface is in play. That plane may be canvas, or it may be the curving glass of a cathode-ray tube. What happens physically is well understood. But what happens between the minds that a picture inherently links is less so. It has its effect. It speaks to us more loudly often than words can be delivered. These are the truisms of the medium.

In this regard, we heard about some pictures on the web from the [rhizome-raw] list, and we are talking about them, shedding like dander the numerous words a picture is supposed to be worth. You can’t precisely call them Plagiarism®, although they clearly owe a lot to something else — as does every work, after all. The images in question are simulations of a rendering-engine’s eye view of important tragedies in recent history, and Hollywood movies. Simply put by the artist, they are: “A series of drawings from an isometric perspective, in the style of a computer game.” Please go and have a look at them, if it’s the last thing you do.

The gallery is open, mesdames et messieurs.

Napster Nuggets: Folk Art or Freaky Folly?

2000-10-18 / When we find something we like, we tell you about it so you can like it, too. Now, we realize that things did not go down too well for most of you with the rocky road ice cream with real rocks in it. Some of you still have not forgiven us for that recommendation. But we swear, at the time, we actually liked it! Just goes to show that momentary lapses of taste can be swift, fleeting and catastrophic.

All that aside, we’d like to recommend this cultural attraction, brought to you by the Evolution Control Committee. The whole thing hinges on a small set of facts: 1) most people use Microsoft Windows; 2) most people that use Microsoft Windows don’t really know how to use Microsoft Windows; 3) computers, such as those using Windows, give users an awesome power; 4) failure to take intelligent control of that power can lead to results that are amusing to the rest of us; and 5) this may or may not be amusing to you. In answer to the age-old question, "What do people say to their computers when they think no one’s listening?", the ECC offers you the mp3 files known as Napster Nuggets.

Find out more about the great and glorious Napster Nuggets.

2000-10-11 / Today’s reading: The New Economy of Ideas by John Perry Barlow.

2000-10-06 / Track-of-the-Week. This week, we continue our public act of charity by completing the collection of Matter QuickTime movies with not one, but two new video tracks: Song of the great wall — and as a bonus the Closing titles. The latter might not seem like much, but bear in mind that the music that plays while the text fades in and out appears on no Public Works release. It was only first published on the Matter video, of which these movies are constituent parts. The track that precedes it represents, perhaps, a clash of several cultures, an enigma perhaps, to which we do not offer you the key. Knowing all the answers leads to a dull existence, don’t you think?