I love this! It’s a video created by artist Marco Brambilla for installation in the elevators of the Standard Hotel in New York City. The artist worked with a production company called Crush. The video takes you on a journey from hell to heaven. Where’s Dante when you really need him? On the elevators at the hotel, the film goes up toward heaven if the elevator is rising, down to hell if you’re going down. Clever. I think I’ll spend a weekend at the Standard Hotel inside the elevator.
Author Archives: Editor
Booking the Future: An Article About Where Publishing is Headed
Here’s a reprint of a fascinating and well thought out CC-licensed article by Ransom Stephens on the openDemocracy Network about the future of books and publishers. The main thrust of the article is that books will survive mainly in hardback versions, electronic on-demand publishers will take over the bulk of book publishing, this takeover will begin the day Stephen King releases a major novel through an online self-publishing outlet, major publishers will whither and eventually be outmoded, and bookstores will thrive in a healthy relationship with electronic publishing.
Booking the Future
Ransom Stephens (openDemocracy Network)
Though the role of publishing has not changed – connect readers to writers – the revolution will not be led by an established publisher. To date, no established player has prospered through, much less led, the transition to the digitally-based economy. What’s left of the recording industry is still pursuing the fascinating how-to-best-prosecute-our-customers business model. No one was better positioned to profit from the web-based economy than Sears, with its legendary catalog, but Amazon all but killed it. Even IBM barely survived the computer revolution.
For some reason, even when entrenched companies can see the iceberg they can’t turn the ship. In 2000, at the height of the “Napster Crisis,” Time-Warner/AOL’s CEO, Richard Parsons said, “It’s an assault on everything that constitutes cultural expression of our society… And the corporations won’t be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create. Worst-case scenario: the country will end up in a sort of Cultural Dark Age.”
Have YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, Blogspot, et al reduced cultural expression? Here’s a better example. In 1977, Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) which, at the time, built the best computing hardware, said, “There is no need for any individual to have a computer in their home.” Time-Warner/AOL, Sears and IBM survived, but are swimming in the wake of Dell, Google, Amazon, etc.
Jean-Luc Godard Film
Film director Jean-Luc Godard is making a film that appears to be called Le Socialisme. I’m not entirely certain, but it sure looks to me from this trailer for the film like Mr. Godard is shooting with a small video camera. I can even hear the wind hitting the microphone during shots on board the ship. He’s always had a keen interest in shooting with small cameras, going so far at one point as to have a tiny 35 mm camera designed for one of his films in the seventies. I like this kind of filmmaking. This is how a filmmaker approaches a method that resembles the method of the painter or the writer. Filmmaking, for all its technical achievements and its massive budgets and enormous popularity, lags far behind painting, photography, writing and music. A filmmaker, in order to really be an artist, must be capable of functioning with the autonomy of the writer or the painter or the composer. Until then, the filmmaker is simply interested in socializing, not making art.
Mr. Godard’s films are often difficult, infuriating, perplexing, gorgeous, ugly, profound, ridiculous, and experimental – but they are always, without a single exception, the expressions of an artist who owes nothing to anyone.
Iran Election Fraudulent Because of No Free Press and No Free Women
The protests raging over the recent presidential election in Iran are an expression of distrust of the official election results that seem to declare the current and totally insane president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the overwhelming victor. Riots are becoming extremely violent, with police beatings in the streets and clouds of black smoke rising above Tehran. However, the arguments over whether or not the election was fraudulent are a complete waste of energy. No election in any country that does not have a free press can ever be legitimate. Without a free press to report on an election and possible election fraud there is no one to hold a sitting government accountable to the people. You cannot have a democracy or an election in a country that does not allow reporters freedom to write whatever they want. It’s impossible. Iran’s election is fraudulent because Iran’s government is controlled entirely by Islamic clerics who have absolutely no respect for freedom of expression, freedom of information, freedom of religion, freedom of education, or freedom of women.
I define as barbaric any country anywhere on the planet that forces women to wear specific attire. Iran is a barbaric nation with a population of extremely fearful males lacking in an essential self-confidence. This is what drives male-dominated Islamic governments to require certain codes of conduct and dress for women. In countries where elections are legitimate women wear shorts and makeup. Think I’m just being glib? Go check it out.
Iran has cut off internet services, cell phone service, and texting services in order to prevent discussion and organization of opponents to the religious government. It has arrested journalists, shut down newspapers, and confiscated television cameras in a crackdown on activities of the international media in Iran. These are the actions of a total dictatorship.
In fact, there is almost no hope at all for the protesters in Iran. Even if they succeed in overturning the election, they would not be able or willing to eliminate religious control of their government. Countries ruled by Islam are permanently and hopelessly barbaric. It’s like a law of physics that’s completely unbreakable.
The root of the problem with Iran is the root of the problem for almost every single government in the Middle East: religious control. There is no possibility of the slightest freedom of expression or freedom for women in any country controlled by a religious entity. None whatsoever.
Photo from AFP/Getty
Film: Story About 4-Inch Alien in Pakistan is Sheer Genius
Whether this video news report is real or fake, whether the story is made up or not, it is sheer genius. It is a remarkable modern day fairy tale that expresses almost everything you need to know about our questionable human condition. While repairing an old house somewhere in Pakistan recently, some children found a tiny alien woman walking around. These well-adjusted children immediately understood this tiny creature to be a terrible threat, so they stoned it until it fell down and remained motionless. Then they put her in a bottle for a while and eventually threw her onto some very hot bricks. Following this brutalization of a 4-inch female, flocks of onlookers arrived, at which point the locals decided to bury the dead alien in a hole in order to protect the community from hysteria.
Well, I don’t think the tiny aliens will be interested in returning to Pakistan, that’s for sure. But they can certainly come to Los Angeles where they will be warmly welcomed and given tiny outfits from Giorgio Armani.
I heard about this via Xeni at BoingBoing.net.
Charles Bukowski Meets Another Poet
The Rumpus has a piece that Charles Bukowski wrote as a forward to a book of poems by William Wantling in 1974. He writes about meeting the other poet for the first time and liking him. It must have been a big thing to be liked by Bukowski because he seems to have a problem with most people. His piece is touching and shows how sensitive Bukowski really was to the unspoken things.
He writes a bit about style and says:
Style means no shield at all.
Style means no front at all.
Style means ultimate naturalness.
Style means one man alone with billions of men about.
Is that really it? Boy, Bukowski would have hated me to the ends of his toes because I’m always arguing my point. The problem I have with what he’s saying there is that he made a living by writing with the biggest shield of all in front of him. A bottle. It’s the best shield there is. Bullet-proof. So he must be wrong about style.