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"Wire contributor, semi-mythical pop svengali, erstwhile thespian, sampler troubadour and untidy kitchen user" - Owen Hatherley of Sit Down Man, You're a Bloody Tragedy

"Your songs are pretty little paths - take us somewhere nice." - Elodie Amandine Roy, Applejack Zine
By Strategy: On Early Neoliberalism

by-strategy:

The New Statesman published a piece on the early history of neoliberalism by Daniel Stedman Jones, trailing his book Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. It brings many of the lesser known aspects of the tale of the creation of neoliberalism to…

(via )

6 years ago
24 notes

Tom’s Codec



Above: a reworking of Suzanne Vega’s track ‘Tom’s Diner’ using only sounds from a poorly-ripped MP3 in various stages of distress.

Below: an extract from this review of Jonathan Sterne’s new book, MP3: The Meaning of a Format.

Part of the mythology of MP3 history is the role played by Suzanne Vega’s track ‘Tom’s Diner’. The story goes that the fidelity of the format is the result of engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg repeatedly playing the song through his codec, endlessly refining until it had perfectly captured the warmth of Vega’s voice.

 So it happened that in 2007, the singer was invited to the Fraunhofer Institute - billed by the latter’s PR team as a visit from the ‘mother of MP3’, much to Vega’s horror at the implication that she was about to meet the format’s various fathers. Before a gathering of press, a panel of engineers played first the distorted version Brandenburg had been so struck by, and finally the ‘perfect’ MP3 copy. Sterne quotes from Vega’s own account.

 ‘See,’ one man said. ‘Now the MP3 recreates it perfectly. Exactly the same!’

‘Actually, to my ears it sounds like there is a little more high end in the MP3 version? The MP3 doesn’t sound as warm as the original, maybe a tiny bit of bottom end is lost?’ I suggested.

The man looked shocked. ‘No, Miss Vega. It is exactly the same.’

‘Everybody knows that an MP3 compresses the sound and therefore loses some of the warmth,’ I persisted. “That’s why some people collect vinyl … ” I suddenly caught myself, realizing who I was speaking to in front of a roomful of German media.

‘No, Miss Vega. Consider the Black Box theory!’

 I stared at him.

‘The Black Box theory states that what goes into the Black Box remains unchanged! Whatever goes in comes out the same way! Nothing is left behind and nothing is added!’

I decided at this point it was wiser to back down.

‘I see. OK. I didn’t realise.’

6 years ago
0 notes
wandrlust:
“ Romanian Poster for Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958)
”

wandrlust:

Romanian Poster for Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958)

(Source: phdonohue)

6 years ago
56 notes
wildcat2030:
“ Officially, aliens have never existed but flying saucers very nearly did. The National Archives has recently published never-before-seen schematics and details of a 1950s military venture, called Project 1794, which aimed to build a...

wildcat2030:

Officially, aliens have never existed but flying saucers very nearly did. The National Archives has recently published never-before-seen schematics and details of a 1950s military venture, called Project 1794, which aimed to build a supersonic flying saucer. The newly declassified materials show the U.S. Air Force had a contract with a now-defunct Canadian company to build an aircraft unlike anything seen before. Project 1794 got as far as the initial rounds of product development and into prototype design. In a memo dating from 1956 the results from pre-prototype testing are summarized and reveal exactly what the developers had hoped to create. The saucer was supposed to reach a top speed of “between Mach 3 and Mach 4, a ceiling of over 100,000 ft. and a maximum range with allowances of about 1,000 nautical miles,” according to the document. (via Declassified at Last: Air Force’s Supersonic Flying Saucer Schematics | Danger Room | Wired.com)

(via wildcat2030)

6 years ago
42 notes
new-aesthetic:
“ “ The new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has brought Disney characters and fun fairs to the images disseminated by the secretive regime’s state media. The question now is whether his rule has also added a touch of South Korean pop...

new-aesthetic:

The new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has brought Disney characters and fun fairs to the images disseminated by the secretive regime’s state media. The question now is whether his rule has also added a touch of South Korean pop culture.

A video published on www.uriminzokkiri.com, a North Korean government website, draws on imagery from the highly successful pop video “Gangnam Style” by the rapper PSY to poke fun at a South Korean presidential candidate.

The North Korean video starts with a picture showing a person apparently in the midst of performing the world famous horse dance from “Gangnam Style.” The face stuck on the dancing figure is that of Park Geun-hye, the candidate for the governing Saenuri Party in the upcoming South Korean presidential election.

North Korean video evokes ‘Gangnam Style’ to taunt South Korean candidate - CNN.com

North Korean Video

6 years ago
9 notes

quiteaspectacle:

superb sample from a collection of water tower photography at present and correct, which also suggests lots of interesting further reading.

(via tapebox-deactivated20141209)

6 years ago
253 notes
wandrlust:
“ TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, Eero Saarinen, New York, NY, 1962 — Ezra Stoller
”

wandrlust:

TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, Eero Saarinen, New York, NY, 1962 — Ezra Stoller

(Source: phdonohue)

6 years ago
110 notes
A single mysterious computer program that placed orders — and then subsequently canceled them — made up 4 percent of all quote traffic in the U.S. stock market last week, according to the top tracker of high-frequency trading activity. The motive of the algorithm is still unclear.

Mysterious Algorithm Was 4% of Trading Activity Last Week - CNBC.com - US Business News - CNBC

Also, expect to read sentences like “the motive of the algorithm is still unclear” a lot in the coming years.

(via mwfrost)

(Source: cnbc.com, via kchayka)

6 years ago
169 notes
sboung-deactivated20150828:
“ Jack Nance and David Lynch on set of Eraserhead (1977)
”

sboung-deactivated20150828:

Jack Nance and David Lynch on set of Eraserhead (1977)

(via phdonohue)

6 years ago
2,193 notes

prostheticknowledge:

SOFTWARE - An Exhibition (1970) 

Fascinating art catalogue of an exhibition which explores the creative potential of communication technologies, with ideas and approaches which are relevant today.

Some hightlights:

The first three images above refer to a project called ‘Seek’ by M.I.T. featuring an enclosed space filled with toy blocks that are placed by a robotic hand. Also inside are some gerbals who navigate themselves around the changing environment they find themselves in.

“Notes on art and information processing” essay by Jack Burnham is worth a read, with some great highlighted quotes.

“The Crafting of Media” brief essay by Theodor H. Nelson also has some interesting points, inventing the term ‘cybercrud’ to refer to information shared to one another via computer, and the first time (I have heard) the term ‘hypergram’ used a visual relation to hypertext, which could be best understood in the way a photo in Facebook or Flick is tagged with additional information which is referenceable within it.

Tactile Film by Linda Berris.

There are many others (various sound art projects, one which employs solar panels), even conceptual billboard work.

You can get a link to a pdf download via Monoskop Log here (discovered via brown-and-son)

(via kchayka)

6 years ago
100 notes