more framed explanations

and now from the ever growing library of long explanatory paragraphs as art, come these two entries. first is jonathon keats’ conceptual auction of 6 billion neurons (more thorough, auxiliary explanatory paragraphs via wired, here). second is shelley jackson with her paragraphs on skin:// the mortal work of art”. (auxiliary paragraphs for this one, here). so as you can see the explanatory paragraphs really pile up, and as everyone knows the longer it takes to explain, the more paragraphs that need to be written, the better the art. enjoy, or not.

posted by jmorrison on 10/29 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
god and logical dodge ball

have ideas about god? suppositions? a line of logic that informs your beliefs beyond simple faith? play the battleground god game and see if there are irreconcilable contradictions in your logic so you can adjust accordingly. actually pretty interesting, all implied jibes aside.

posted by jmorrison on 10/29 | lost & found - belief | | permalink
i gotta wear shades

the brights. an old story which does not seem to have made any real waves. a movement for those with naturalistic world views to join under one banner and in the process assert themselves socially and politically. a movement for atheists, humanists, agnostics, and skeptics among others to get their voice heard among the din of religious mumbo-jumbo and rhetoric overpowering the airwaves and podiums. though you may not have heard of the brights movement it’s not for lack of effort.

posted by jmorrison on 10/29 | lost & found - ideas | | permalink
aspen? ah yeah again and again

the truly great ubuweb has put up all of the content of a nice mid 60’s mag-in-a-box called aspen. it was a high minded affair with lots audio visual goodness.  every bit of it’s varied content is here. good list of contributors. you can listen to duchamp, burroughs, beckett, robbe-grillet, glass, and bill evans, read some barthes or watch some rauschenberg and hans richter, just for starters. it is a bit dated in parts as you can well imagine but overall it still manages to out shine a good deal of the empty calorie crap magazines put forth now-a-days. check it out.

posted by jmorrison on 10/26 | sights & sounds | | permalink
the contextual do-gooder

it happens, has happened, to you and to everyone. a person walking ahead of you drops something unknowingly. the question is what do you do? simple question really. what do you do? do you pick it up? do you call out, however uncharacteristically perhaps, and draw their attention to it? do you pretend not to notice? do you laugh out loud and find your day instantly brightened? there is no wrong answer. you are not being graded… not sure? thinking “it depends”? wondering “well, what did the person drop”? alright, fair enough…

sine fiction

very interesting idea. people composing imaginary soundtracks to science fiction novels, created by whomever (we may need to do one ourselves huh?), and their conception of what constitutes a sci-fi book is nicely broad. they have covered samuel delaney’s dhalgren, italo calvino’s t-zero, and burroughs’ soft machine among others. my favorite thus far is the 1984 soundtrack. (ignorance is strength!) it’s a service of n((o))type which is a pretty cool place in and of itself. enjoy.

posted by jmorrison on 10/25 | sights & sounds - music | | permalink
the low, lost life

great article by luc sante, (author of the much loved low life) in which he speaks about the “old” new york. a new york most of us only sniffed the lingering fumes of in the early nineties, when there were still a few sections of downtown that could be called communities. when there were still places that students, musicians, artists, and drug addicts could afford to live. when it was on the whole still dirty, crumbling, stinking and dare i say it, alive. now the only reason to go down there it seems is to buy a five hundred dollar t-shirt or pick over the bones of bars, clubs, and cafes that once had heart, soul, and balls.

posted by jmorrison on 10/23 | sights & sounds | | permalink
feeling down?

hey. feeling down? having a bad day? forgot your umbrella? your team lost the big game? your favorite show got cancelled? got a big pimple on your nose? humidity wreaking havoc on your hair? got the flu? lonely? can’t get a date? got some bad feedback on friendster? left your cell phone in the back of a cab? lost your keys? have an awful hangover? didn’t get that promotion? well boo hoo. read this and shut up.

posted by jmorrison on 10/22 | lost & found - wtf | | permalink
the picture of everything

remember being a kid and drawing your favorite cartoon or comic characters in your notebooks? i mean a young kid, before you got cool and started drawing them with joints hanging out of their mouths or eyes x-ed out holding a bottle of mad dog, thinking foolishly “this would be a dope t-shirt man.” i mean when you still loved them for what they were and not the “hilarity” that could be achieved by using their visages in unexpected contexts. this drawing, titled the picture of everything, manages to overcome the insistent gravitational pull of irony through sheer scale of it’s own, to become perhaps the greatest slathering pop doodle of all time. use the “picture key” to zoom in and get prompts on who everyone is. my favorite part is the placement of freud and jung with the three stooges. perfect. for extra credit try to find chaka from land of the lost or ian curtis or vincent from the black hole. enjoy.

posted by jmorrison on 10/22 | sights & sounds | | permalink
archeography project

the nonist project: archeography went live this weekend. you can access it through the link in the left side bar. you will need the latest flash player as well as a decent internet connection. if your using dial up be prepared to wait and curse and possibly give up. i will try to get a non-flash version up in the future. enjoy.

if you’d like to comment on the project you click contact on the main page, or return here and comment in this post. whatever floats your boat.

posted by jmorrison on 10/20 | announcements | | permalink
bringing up baby

for those of you out there with kids, expecting kids, or belonging to religions which prohibit the use of prophylactics, here is a collection of educational sites. they were all created especially for your lads and little ladies by everyone’s most concerned big bro, the u.s. government…

posted by jmorrison on 10/19 | lost & found | | permalink
confluence and conceit

came across this story last week. evidently there is an new “because it’s there” type project going on world wide. it’s called the degree confluence project. it’s interesting but ultimately pointless, much like this sort of related project. actually, looking at these two projects side by side reinforces my opinion that when doing a pointless though perhaps interesting thing the assertion that it is “art” really makes it much less enjoyable.

posted by jmorrison on 10/19 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
evolutionary tale

it was a long long time ago. pre history. a man, scarred and striated was covered in sweat. he hauled a rock two hundred miles from a sacred site where men of his kind had first seen the elephants morn their dead, past the thick and brutal beasts of the field, through the unknowable angers of the air. he hefted it on his back, crouched low and stumbling.

posted by jmorrison on 10/15 | piss & vinegar - fiction | | permalink
friendly reminder to religious fanatics

to any of you out there strapping a bomb to your transmission, pouring lighter fluid on a cross, shaking a spray paint can in a temple, etc, let me just offer this: the beliefs you are so fanatical about proliferating and defending are most likely not your own. that is to say, statistically, you almost certainly inherited those treasured beliefs. your religious affiliation is based on the exact same criteria which dictates the baseball or soccer team you follow. that is a fact.

posted by jmorrison on 10/15 | lost & found - belief | | permalink
monkey mind control

according to a washington post article“Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts, marking the first time that mental intentions have been harnessed to move a mechanical object.” yes, you read correctly: a monkey moves a robot with his thoughts. lets just hope they don’t start hooking these monkeys up to say, these guys, or any of these. they might consider hooking these furry folks up to some electric typewriters though, since this simulation seems to be coming up empty.

cause i’m alive!

after all these years of wishing and hoping and longing you can finally see the motley crue live wire video in bright green ascii, played entirely in crappy midi tones… o.k. i admit the whole concept of metal videos rendered in ascii is disgustingly ironic but at least you don’t have to look at mick marrs’ old lady face. “cause it’s bight green and running free, a little bit better than it used to be”. on a side note sabbath’s paranoid in midi sounds exactly like a trans-am song… strange.

posted by jmorrison on 10/15 | sights & sounds | | permalink
aesthetics in a vacuum

well in the coming year humanities visual aesthetics will be yet again put on display in that great gallery in the sky, space. two pieces of human artistic bric-a-brac are en route to mars as you read this. one, dubbed the first artwork on another planet, is damien hirst’s target painting aboard britian’s beagle2. the other, which is not nearly as presumptuous in it’s claims, but certainly related is bill nye’s sundial aboard two of nasa’s mars exploration rovers. as diminutive as they are i like these things, i like the idea of them, but in aesthetic terms i’m not sure weather we have really improved upon the venerable voyager’s gold record, or the pioneer 10’s plaque. maybe it’s like all the space art critics say, space painting is dead.

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