What is it about a particular media that makes it successful? Drawing a mini history from printing-press smudges to digital compression artefacts this lecture considers the value of error, chance and adaptation in contemporary media. Biological evolution unfolds through error, noise and mistake. Perhaps if we want to maximise the potential of media, of digital text and compressed file formats, we first need to determine their inherent redundancy. Or, more profoundly, to… ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:39:59 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/errors-in-things-and-the-friendly-medium http://www.ubu.com/sound/lucier.html "I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any sem- blance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physi- cal fact, but more as a way to smooth… ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:48:11 -0700 http://www.ubu.com/sound/lucier.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2032304_2032746_2032903,00.html A decade ago, four young men changed the way the world works. They did this not with laws or guns or money but with software: they had radical, disruptive ideas, which they turned into code, which they released on the Internet for free. These four men, not one of whom finished college, laid the foundations for much of the digital-media environment we currently inhabit. Then, for all intents and purposes, they vanished.

In 1999 a Northeastern University freshman named Shawn Fanning wrote Napster, thereby pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing and a new paradigm for consuming media without the… ]]> Wed, 01 Dec 2010 05:22:00 -0700 http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2032304_2032746_2032903,00.html http://canopycanopycanopy.com/static/0000/2985/The_Endpoint_of_All_Gravity_Is_the_Grave.mp3 On July 29, as part of its Sender, Carrier, Receiver program, Triple Canopy presented a briefing on the activities of the International Necronautical Society's Berlin Inspectorate at Program. As heard in this unofficial recording, Provan, Triple Canopy's editor, and Yamamoto-Masson disputed the INS's claim that Berlin is the World Capital of Death, and discussed attempts by its members—chief among them writer Tom McCarthy, artist Anthony Auerbach, and philosopher Simon Critchley—to surreptitiously recruit agents and take over major cultural landmarks. Click here to read the draft copy of their internal report, and here to listen to a file of covert INS… ]]> Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:35:00 -0700 http://canopycanopycanopy.com/static/0000/2985/The_Endpoint_of_All_Gravity_Is_the_Grave.mp3 http://pornfortheblind.org/ Porn for the Blind is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to producing audio descriptions of sample movie clips from adult web sites. This service is provided free of charge. ]]> Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:27:00 -0700 http://pornfortheblind.org/ http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/audio-essay-on-pharaohs-cults-and-parasitism

audio essay : On Pharaohs, Cults and Parasitism (The Condition of Division)

Originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM as part of Antepress’ Digestives series, Monday 24th May 2010

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

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]]> Mon, 24 May 2010 10:29:22 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/audio-essay-on-pharaohs-cults-and-parasitism http://www.metafilter.com/90270/Two-podcasts-about-sound-art "Starting with the precedents set by Charles Ives and John Cage, VARIATIONS presents the principal milestones of Sampling Music, looking at examples from 20th century composition, popular art and the mass media, and the way all of these currents converge today." Curated by Jon Leidecker, who records and performs as Wobbly. "Poet Kenneth Goldsmith presents selections from UbuWeb, the learned and varietous online repository concerning concrete & sound poetry, experimental film, outsider art and all things avant-garde" in Avant-Garde All the Time. Goldsmith's the founding editor of UbuWeb and sometime DJ on WFMU as Kenny G. (Previously: CodPaste - a… ]]> Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:48:00 -0700 http://www.metafilter.com/90270/Two-podcasts-about-sound-art http://www.metafilter.com/82828/Music-is-Math-is-Beauty Glenn Marshall is an Irish computer video artist and musician whose recent work has focused on audio visualization programed in the Processing language. Generally the program is left to its own devices, though his work-for-hire has more intentional design, as in his video for the Peter Gabriel song "The Nest that Sailed the Sky." Marshall has also been hired to create video for Guinness for Sky TV and the Rugby Six Nations Tournament, and a looping animation for Hermes of Paris. Marshall discusses his works with some detail on his blog. (More videos inside) ]]> Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:05:00 -0700 http://www.metafilter.com/82828/Music-is-Math-is-Beauty