What Follows.

originalmaterial: Please no advertisement!

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:02:37 +0800

Please no advertisement!

Ok Go - Hong Kong live performance! It’s more goodness...

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:34:00 +0800

Ok Go - Hong Kong live performance!

It’s more goodness from The Peoples’ Party! The LA-based fun indie pop rockers Ok Go hit town on the back of their brand spanking newbie Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, here to prove they’re more than mad viral music videos on treadmills.

Of Moths & Stars - Live set!

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:32:10 +0800

Of Moths & Stars - Live set!

The Importance of Marketing

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:10:53 +0800

The Importance of Marketing

The neocameralist Mecius Moldbug takes on Robin Hanson and his...

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:08:00 +0800

The neocameralist Mecius Moldbug takes on Robin Hanson and his idea of Futarchy. Excellent discussion on the possible heir to democracy.

Via | Bryan Baxter

The tunnel, purveyor of pedestrian passage and host to the...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:29:03 +0800

The tunnel, purveyor of pedestrian passage and host to the underground, here shown in its transitory state between pathway and home.

Are people in ‘poverty’ aware of the choice they are making, and therefore morally should be left to it, or should a patronising government step in and consider the lack of exposure to the full spectrum of possibilities as the *very reason* why the choice of street life is made, instead of say, following a government funded education programme?

Why touchscreens won’t happen for the desktop - just yet.

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:57:00 +0800

Why touchscreens won’t happen for the desktop - just yet.

Photo

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:10:20 +0800

Because carrying Herpes Simplex Virus is just as Fun and...

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:53:00 +0800

Because carrying Herpes Simplex Virus is just as Fun and ‘Trend-Observing’ as carrying an Ipod!

How did I get here? No saucy story behind this one m’afraid, just checking out the competition for the newly registered HYPE.hk

The Knife - Colouring of Pigeons...

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:17:56 +0800

The Knife - Colouring of Pigeons [2010]

thekathunt:

homeofthevain:

The Knife, Colouring of Pigeons
(Tomorrow, in a Year, 2010)

“Six weeks old Henrietta smiled for the first time, the delight of once again being home.”

Download the track. More Karin Dreijer.

fuckyeahsociallyawkwardpenguin: submitted by stutzbearcat

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:17:00 +0800

fuckyeahsociallyawkwardpenguin:

submitted by stutzbearcat

My Robot Friend - Robot Class Room [2009] My Robot...

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:19:00 +0800

My Robot Friend - Robot Class Room [2009]

My Robot Friend’s newest album is called “Soft-Core”. It was released last year and has been over one year in the making. Featuring a dense, forward-looking electronic palette of sounds and a glowing sense of humor, “Soft-Core” is as ground-breaking as it is catchy. The new music has been garnering advance praise and features from Pitchforkmedia, Stereogum, GBH, and the New York Observer! The lead single is the robot anthem of the new decade. Enjoy!

originalmaterial: 990000: seanmarclee: overshadowed: gpm5000:...

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:36:13 +0800

originalmaterial:

990000:

seanmarclee:

overshadowed:

gpm5000:

nerviosismo

Happy birthday to you Copyright

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:05:23 +0800

The melody of “Happy Birthday to You” comes from the song “Good Morning to All”, which was written and composed by American sisters Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill in 1893. They were both kindergarten school teachers in Louisville, Kentucky. The sisters created “Good Morning to All” as a song that would be easy to sing by young children. The combination of melody and lyrics in “Happy Birthday to You” first appeared in print in 1912, and probably existed even earlier. None of these early appearances included credits or copyright notices. The Summy Company registered for copyright in 1935, crediting authors Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R.R. Forman. In 1990, Warner Chappell purchased the company owning the copyright for U.S. $15 million, with the value of “Happy Birthday” estimated at U.S. $5 million. Based on the 1935 copyright registration, Warner claims that U.S. copyright will not expire until 2030, and that unauthorized public performances of the song are technically illegal unless royalties are paid to it.

Via | Wikipedia

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every 6 months."

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:51:30 +0800

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every 6 months.”

- Oscar Wilde

Twenty-Ten hosanna hey hosanna ho!

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:49:44 +0800

Twenty-Ten hosanna hey hosanna ho!

Tokyo - Absent without leaving

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 12:57:05 +0800

The greater Tokyo area has just under 36 million people living in it; it’s still the world’s most populous metropolitan area. If this monster of cities runs remarkably smoothly most of the time, and even feels like a rather relaxing place, it’s because of the particular, even peculiar, habitus of presence which prevails here. Tokyo people are very good at being absent without leaving.

Tokyo’s inhabitants, especially in their transitions on public transport, maintain a minimum degree of presence. Crushed against each other or spread out on seats, with lowered eyes and the virtual escape-environments of books, newspapers and electronic gadgets, they’re there but not there. They’re (it’s Howard Devoto’s phrase) absent without leaving.

A certain amount of discretion and self-minimisation exists amongst commuters all over the world, of course. But the Japanese are more discreet, and minimise themselves more politely and considerately than anyone else I know. Even their houses seem to avert their gaze; you can pass down a heavily-built Tokyo street with the sense of being completely unobserved, thanks to the frosted glass in the windows, just as you can sit in a crowded train carriage and not find a single eye meeting yours. It can feel uncanny at times, like being an invisible man. Most of the time it’s very reassuring, though. You soon miss it in other cities.

Adjectives I’d use to describe this minimised public presence: discreet, considerate, polite, apologetic, cold, withdrawn, inward, socialised, repressed. And there we begin to hit on an interesting paradox: you withdraw into yourself in the interests of the collectivity. Your absence is highly social, even when it resembles a semi-autistic withdrawal. You turn inward to facilitate outward smoothness. You make yourself ghostlike out of courtesy to other people, who do the same.

When you get to your destination, of course, the sublimation and repression can stop. You can suddenly elevate your presence, like the glum silent queuer finally reaching the nightclub, checking his coat, greeting his friends, ordering a drink. What’s the maximum degree of presence? Perhaps being a celebrity would represent that: a celeb is a super-individual, someone whose mere presence makes our day, our month and our year. Quick, take a photo! The celeb is being asked his view on this and that, and listened to respectfully. The celeb has engineered his life so that there’s no dead time, no self-repression. Like a Romantic poet, we imagine his life filled with moments of maximal intensity. We wish our lives were like that.

The other person like that, weirdly enough, is the madman or homeless person, who lives completely in the moment because he uses the spaces of transition as his places of residence. The street or the train is the homeless person’s destination; no need to sublimate, save up intensity for later. This is it; grumble, chatter, joust, laugh, be yourself, right here on the street, right here on the train! It doesn’t matter! You’re going nowhere! You’re mad and you’re homeless! The obligation to be self-effacing and considerate doesn’t apply to you! Be intense! Live in the moment! Make every second count!

For the rest of us, though, self-repression is a daily fact of life. Especially in conditions of urban density; we could say that density and intensity are at odds. The more dense the urban conditions, the less intense we want people to be as they transition through public space, the more ghostlike we require each other to be. Don’t talk on your cellphone! I know it makes you feel like a celebrity, feel more alive and intense, but please don’t do it! What if we were all celebrities in this carriage? What if all 36 million of us in this city were super-intense individuals at every moment! What a nightmare! Let’s all stay ghosts, please, at least until we reach our destination!

Japan being Japan, of course, has developed aesthetics of non-presence, turning something negative into something positive with its own etiquette and its own subtle beauty, and giving non-presence a sort of presence. Iki describes something muted, sombre, restrained, apparently-unselfconscious, half turned-away, “an aesthetics of the back, of the nape of the neck. It can’t be face-to-face. It’s an aesthetic of obliqueness and peripheries which avoids focus and despises intellectual analysis”. A woman whose seductiveness has an iki quality would, paradoxically, turn her turning-away towards you as she dropped her gaze and revealed her back, her shoulder, the nape of her neck. An absence becomes a presence; it’s something I see enacted by women on Tokyo trains every day.

A related aesthetic might be Naoto Fukusawa’s idea of the super normal; self-effacing, slightly bland goods that blend comfortably with others are better than loud, flashy, unique, individualistic goods. “Super normal design means design which, instead of trying to stand out by making a statement or being “stimulating”, blends into the background, becoming unobtrusive but indispensable.”

You might seek maximum intensity in an affair with a lover, perhaps, but smooth, unobtrusive consideration in a longterm relationship with a spouse; the perfect spousal togetherness might approach a discreet, doubled aloneness, whereas the perfect affair intensity would be the unbearable tangle of two celebrities, two Romantic poets, or two mad homeless people.

At the tragic end of intensity is the individual who becomes intolerable when his quirks get amplified by too much attention: “everyone loves you until they know you,” as John Lydon sang. At the tragic end of self-effacing consideration is the self which disappears and can’t come back, even when the destination-requiring-presence is reached. So we get the otaku, unable to emerge from the pages of his manga, or the hikikomori, who can’t even leave home in the first place, and who’s taken consideration to its ultimate degree of absence: that barricaded room where the self both disappears from the world and becomes the world.

Via | Click Opera

isabellau: (via tryphena)

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 10:01:50 +0800

isabellau:

(via tryphena)

Usually, Christmas is thinking about others. But for once, think...

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 02:30:01 +0800

Usually, Christmas is thinking about others. But for once, think about yourself. Think about how much harder it would suck if today this happened to you.

Via | OriginalMaterial

My listening habits, broken down by country of origin Sweden is...

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:41:00 +0800

My listening habits, broken down by country of origin

Sweden is one of the largest exporters of pop and rock music in the world, and is often referred as the third largest one in the world after the US and the UK. I love Sweden to bits for their music, I really do! This makes it even more revealing though that they are still absolutely dwarfed by the plethora of American and British bands I have taken a liking to.

What Follows.

originalmaterial: Please no advertisement!

Ok Go - Hong Kong live performance! It’s more goodness...

Ok Go - Hong Kong live performance!

Of Moths & Stars - Live set!

Of Moths & Stars - Live set!

The Importance of Marketing

The neocameralist Mecius Moldbug takes on Robin Hanson and his...

The tunnel, purveyor of pedestrian passage and host to the...

Why touchscreens won’t happen for the desktop - just yet.

Photo

Because carrying Herpes Simplex Virus is just as Fun and...

The Knife - Colouring of Pigeons...

The Knife - Colouring of Pigeons [2010]

The Knife, Colouring of Pigeons (Tomorrow, in a Year, 2010)

fuckyeahsociallyawkwardpenguin: submitted by stutzbearcat

My Robot Friend - Robot Class Room [2009] My Robot...

My Robot Friend - Robot Class Room [2009]

originalmaterial: 990000: seanmarclee: overshadowed: gpm5000:...

Happy birthday to you Copyright

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every 6 months."

Twenty-Ten hosanna hey hosanna ho!

Tokyo - Absent without leaving

isabellau: (via tryphena)

Usually, Christmas is thinking about others. But for once, think...

My listening habits, broken down by country of origin Sweden is...

The Knife, Colouring of Pigeons
(Tomorrow, in a Year, 2010)