Loosely Assembled

By Martijn Hendriks

Fill this jacket with any kind of on hand insulation

Another piece from Yuri Suzuki

Designer/musician Yuri Suzuki’s “Sound Chaser” is a fantastically fun mixture of retro nostalgia wrapped in a sleek minimalist package. I’d be really curious to see the track pieces up close, to see how they connect. The other interesting thing that isn’t apparent form the video is that any “left” turns will be playing audio in reverse, enabling a possible “scratching” effect if the track bits were short enough.

Proposal: Yuri Suzuki + Christain Marclay + Tyco

He’s also got lots of other great work here

– related post — trains that don’t stop

Thinking through a way to fund a free web domain service for art projects. Maybe grant funded and limited to social practices kinds of work, or perhaps a partnership with a registrar/hosting service that acts like a gateway drug?

Or actually, imagine a speculation based service: you get free domains for a year, but the service actually owns the domain, at the end of the year, if the project is going well, you will pay a higher fee to buy the domain from the service.

The service watches stats/traffic on that domain and determines price based on that value.

It’s not even really the issue of paying for a new domain with each idea, it’s the hassle of the process. Maybe a prepaid bundle of domains would be a better way to think about this? Some service offers you domains by the dozen, for cheap, you prepay, and can create/get those dozen in any quantity at any time over the established time period. Like all pre pay models, part of the sustainability of this would be the assumption that not all prepaid domains would be claimed/used.

I simply think more artists need to be on the web, doing work that works well with the web.

The driver of the art work Shared Propulsion Car was arrested by Toronto Police on October 25 on Queen Street West in Toronto. The revolutionary vehicle is an art work create by the just-announced winner of the 2007 Sobey Art Award Michel de Broin. It was made of a Buick Regal 1986 body stripped of its engine, suspension, transmission and electrical system and propels by the will to power of its passenger. The vehicle retains the illusion of the mass-produced luxury automobile, but is now reduced to a shell with a top speed of 15km per hour. This unique car needs no petrol, produce no toxic emission and is not responsible for the innocents people killed for petrol in the Middle East. Furthermore, in this individualist society, this convivial car was proposed as a good solution to bring people together and take over the street. Dean Baldwin an experience driver, took the steering wheel and with his fellows Elaine, Dave and Dan drove the car carefully on the street. The reaction of the public was enthusiasm, solidarity and sympathy. They drove 9 blocks (from Lisgar to Strachan) before being pulled over by the police.

The driver and passengers were left to wait for 30 minutes in the car while we suspect the cops tried to determine which exact law was broken. They settled on “operating an unsafe vehicle” and a tow-truck was called.

We believe there is noting in the law against this car, the problem is only in the perceptions: police can’t accept a car to be modified and to be moving without petrol. They gave the driver an order to appear before a judge on the 21 of November. The problem for the court will be to argue that the Shared Propulsion Car can be dangerous while we all know that the danger remains in the use of petrol car. It is rather the other car that are obviously dangerous. We believe the court is taking a big risk of bringing our car to spotlight. It is always striking when art become politic and win its right publicly. Our Plan is to tow the car to the courthouse, win our cause and then be able to drive the car freely on the street of Toronto.

watch the video

Some amazingly hilarious little paintings over at royalartlodge.com

coming off the back of a bike

While reading the following, think about bees, pollinating the natural world.

The Pirate's Dilemma And Opportunism: ”

I just finished watching a video of Matt Mason - author of ‘The Pirate’s Dilemma’ - giving a talk that more or less covered the topic of his book.

First of all, Matt really gets it. He really does. He is looking a piracy as reflective not of a failure in the legal structure, but failure in companies’ approach in their own market. I hate to put too much of a commercial/free-market spin on this, for what I’m going to connect it with is at times orthogonal to that perspective, but he’s right when he says that pirates:

• identify gaps within and outside the existing marketplace
• may do damage, but carry valuable information in their actions
• can often harness the collective consciousness of their audience and turn that into social change

He primarily draws on pirate radio in Europe, but connects it with the record industry, fashion, etc. The solution he proposes to combat piracy is to either (1) fight it when appropriate, or (2) compete with it and treating it as a real (if illegitimate) force. To compete, companies should learn from where pirates are adding value to their product, where they are increasing a products recognition or brand value, and identifying advantages in selling convenience and experience.

As with many things, I couldn’t help but start comparing some of his talk to things I’ve read by Paolo Virno - specifically about opportunism an virtuosity. Firstly - and I’ve covered this in the blog before - competing with piracy in many sectors is a matter of recognizing that main players must begin to locate value in non-physical products, the product of immaterial labor. As Virno points out, McDonalds has this down with their ’service with a smile.’ You aren’t going there for the burgers, but for the service (quick, friendly, etc).

More interestingly, it seems that what Matt is pointing out is the opportunism of the pirates. Virno would probably say that this is a natural result of the shift to a post-fordist world. Opportunism is a virtue, if not necessity, rather than something to be frowned upon. In an interview with Archipelago in 2002 he said:

‘…if it is certain that postfordist labor has at its center communication - culture in the most full sense of the term - then, it is necessary to commence analysis starting from certain emotions, but not emotions in the psychological sense, but rather emotions understood as forms of being, forms of being in the world, and we began to discuss the negative feelings: before all others, opportunism, later cynicism and finally fear. We believed that opportunism understood as mass emotion, signified that each individual worked in contact with many distinct opportunities, opportunites understood in a technical sense.’

It seems very clear that contemporary labor’s very core is communication. No need to look further than sales of the Blackberry to prove that. So it is a natural result that participants in this new era should take advantage of opportunities they see - this is what Matt calls ‘gaps’.

So to blend these two sources, ultimately Matt Mason is suggesting that companies take a hint from the pirates and wake up to their post-fordist existence. It will not be an easy task to theorize the role of a company acting as a post-fordist subject, but perhaps that is where we are headed.

“

(Via Swarming Media.)

There aren’t really any links to artwork here. Sorry, just realized that.