BREAKING NEWS ON THE 3D FRONT
You should have gone to graduate school for so that you could make video games,
you dummy. You are such a dummy.
Psychedelic Hoo-haha
Like my obsession with Brian Eno, some things never change.
Here’s where we’re looking
Using the geotags on digital photographs uploaded to Flickr, Eric Fisher has created maps of cities. To the left is San Franscisco.
Is the real city where we look for it, or is the real city the place we don’t see? Or is it both? Or neither?
Or does it depend on the city? Is your city mapped here? If so, is it the “real” city?
Blake Butler—
Some technical difficulties caused posts and comments to be jacked up during the weekend. They are fixed. Thanks for your patience.
A Pixel Art Documentary by Simon Cottee
Last May, Blake posted a short meditation on video game art, particularly Jason Rohrer’s Passage, and how the constraints Rohrer and others write under can create new experiences in video games. If you liked that post, consider watching Simon Cottee‘s pixel art documentary, which explores how and why the pixel style has moved beyond indie video games and into visual art, music, and so on. Makes me miss my NES.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mqAZ06dwKU
We are here
It’s odd that technology’s default backdrop is often nature, as if an apology, a nod to how things were. Windows XP’s “bliss” wallpaper shows a rolling meadow seen through faceless, almost disembodied eyes. Apple, always listless and self-conscious in their designs, offers us, with the iPad, a clear lake at dusk; I wonder if it’s just me, or if “dock” — the term Apple uses for the row of applications at the bottom — in the foreground is a playful pun operating also as a dock on a lake. Or maybe it’s not dusk but dawn, wake up time for the early risers, those people with severe jobs and complicated calendars.
I once pointed to my iPhone in Google maps and said to my wife during a hike “we are right here,” to which a passerby scoffed “no, you are here,” demonstrating with his arms the vicinity of reality (I guess everyone is a Zen master). He probably went home to regale to his wife a story about some dork on his iPhone who could only find his ass were it an app. It’s useless to look at porn on your iPhone: the lovers are too small. If you’ll grant me an aphorism, let it be that.
I’d like to think I could jump into Apple’s lake anytime, dusk or dawn, like a seal meets Thoreau. Let me just block out the image of Jason Voorhess comin’ to get me, which is why I never camp, no matter what Sontag has to say about it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, sigh, youtube and wiki it, respectively, you useless bastard.
I’m always surprised and impressed by the diversity of ideas at work in independent publishing. Here’s another one: Submishmash.
Not to get all Wired Magazine on you, but here I’ve done an interview that includes the words, “It’s a services-based MVC architecture. We mostly use open-source technologies (Subsonic, ASP.NET MVC, JQuery).”
See, for the last few years I’ve been managing Publishing Genius submissions through an email address that directed subs into my personal inbox, where I would use various labels to keep them straight. It was easy, so I figured it was a good solution.
But a couple months ago I stumbled across a service for managing subs called “Submishmash.” I liked the curious name, and it was free, so with an ounce of hesitation, I decided to check it out. Since it was in beta, I had to send an email off to the creators. A couple hours later, someone named Michael FitzGerald responded and set me up with an account. He even helped me out by inputting my guidelines from the PG site.
It took me a couple weeks to decide if I wanted to use the service. I had to do my “due diligence” and ask around, find out if they’re reputable. Also, I was worried that writers wouldn’t send their work if they had to deal with signing up for an account with Submishmash.
When I finally adopted the system, I was immediately surprised by how well Submishmash works. Not only did writing continue to flow in, it seems like I started getting more. I don’t know if this is accurate because my old, email-based system doesn’t give me any reports. Submishmash, however, has great analytics. It made receiving subs fun again.
Submission management systems aren’t new. Famously, One Story developed one and sold it to the CLMP. Theirs is a paid system, though, and I can’t afford that, so I have no idea how it works. But I also didn’t know how overwhelmed I was with my email solution, and how disorganized. What I do know, however, is that Submishmash has made my job exponentially easier. It’s intuitive and powerful. It’s packed with features for reading on the screen, automated responding, filtering and reporting. And best of all, at least for me – the developers are great people who know their business, and who know publishing.
I’ve asked Michael FitzGerald, who aside from being a programmer also wrote the novel Radiant Days, if I could interview him about the project. READ MORE >
Manuel Delanda on Deleuze & Genetic Algorithms in Art
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50-d_J0hKz0
This video held me rapt for the 1 1/2 hour stretch. Delanda is a great speaker, and what he says about environmental & intensive partnerships in art is really fascinating to me.