The First Faked Photograph (1840)

in History, Photography | October 22nd, 2019

The pho­to­graph was invent­ed in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, but who invent­ed it? His­to­ries of pho­tog­ra­phy point to sev­er­al dif­fer­ent inde­pen­dent inven­tors, most of them French: Nicéphore Niépce, for exam­ple, who in 1826 made the first work rec­og­niz­able as a pho­to­graph, or more famous­ly Louis Daguerre, hon­ored for his inven­tion of the daguerreo­type pho­to­graph­ic process by the French Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and the Académie des Beaux Arts in 1839. But what about Daguer­re’s con­tem­po­rary Hip­poly­te Bayard, who had also been devel­op­ing and refin­ing his own form of pho­tog­ra­phy? After going unac­knowl­edged by the Acad­e­my, he had only one option left: sui­cide.

The Vox Dark­room video above tells the sto­ry of Bayard’s 1840 Self Por­trait as a Drowned Man, which depicts exact­ly what its title sug­gests: Bayard’s corpse, retrieved from the water and propped up unclaimed at the morgue. “The Gov­ern­ment which has been only too gen­er­ous to Mon­sieur Daguerre, has said it can do noth­ing for Mon­sieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned him­self,” reads the note on the back of the pho­to­graph. “Oh the vagaries of human life.…!”

A sor­ry tale, to be sure, and of a kind not unknown in the his­to­ry of inven­tion. But wait: how could a dead man shoot a “self-por­trait”? And if indeed “no-one has rec­og­nized or claimed him,” as the note adds, who would have both­ered to write the note itself?

Bayard, still very much alive, made Self Por­trait as a Drowned Man as a kind of artis­tic stunt, the lat­est in a series of self-por­traits test­ing his pho­to­graph­ic process. The “morgue” shot con­tains some of the arti­facts in its pre­de­ces­sors, includ­ing a gar­den stat­ue, a flo­ral vase, and Bayard’s sig­na­ture broad straw hat. (Even the expres­sion of death was of a piece with his pre­vi­ous self-por­traits: the long expo­sure time meant he’d had to hold absolute­ly still with his eyes closed in all of them as well.) Until his death in 1887 — long after Daguerre had passed — Bayard con­tin­ued exper­i­ment­ing with pho­tog­ra­phy, cre­at­ing real­i­ty-depart­ing images includ­ing “dou­ble self por­traits.” If he could­n’t go down as the inven­tor of the pho­to­graph, at least he could go down as the inven­tor of the fake pho­to­graph — a still-rel­e­vant inven­tion, to say the least, giv­en our increas­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with the truth in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

See the First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre (1838)

See The First “Self­ie” In His­to­ry Tak­en by Robert Cor­nelius, a Philadel­phia Chemist, in 1839

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ates Real­is­tic Pho­tos of Peo­ple, None of Whom Actu­al­ly Exist

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

The His­to­ry of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes: From Cam­era Obscu­ra to Cam­era Phone

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Story of Ziggy Stardust Gets Chronicled in a New Graphic Novel, Featuring a Foreword by Neil Gaiman

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Music | October 22nd, 2019

Film has always been a medi­um that seeks to enter­tain as well as edi­fy, fram­ing thrills and chills for prof­it, and fram­ing com­po­si­tions deserv­ing of the label of “art.” Very often it has done both at the same time. Every casu­al stu­dent of the medi­um will, at least, admit this much. But nev­er have the dif­fer­ences between movie art and enter­tain­ment seemed as mag­ni­fied and polar­ized as they are now, in the midst of debates about com­ic book fran­chis­es and the fine art we call cin­e­ma.

What­ev­er the rea­sons, film has not reached the détente between art and enter­tain­ment achieved by pop­u­lar music—another medi­um depen­dent on late-19th/20th cen­tu­ry record­ing tech­nolo­gies and born of a thor­ough­ly mod­ern com­mer­cial matrix. Of course, not all pop aspires to art. But the idea that music can be huge­ly entertaining—drawing on the “low” gen­res of fan­ta­sy, sci­ence fic­tion, and com­ic books—and also wor­thy of cul­tur­al immor­tal­i­ty has become uncon­tro­ver­sial in large part because of the career of one musi­cian.

David Bowie, rock and roll’s orig­i­nal space alien super­hero, used his bank­able per­son­ae through the decades to give cre­dence to the idea of “art rock,” to real­ize its glam pos­si­bil­i­ties, to turn the rock auteur into an actor. He learned from a host of exper­i­menters, both his direct influ­ences and his spir­i­tu­al pre­de­ces­sors. And he inspired a legion of suc­ces­sors who weren’t afraid to play char­ac­ters in their work, to mix inter­ests in phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture, and the occult with the flam­boy­ant, campy styles of the comics. (A mix comics them­selves played with in both pop­u­lar and under­ground man­i­fes­ta­tions.)

Bowie embod­ied the future when he appeared on the scene as Zig­gy in 1972, after years of labor­ing in obscu­ri­ty and a few fleet­ing brush­es with fame. “The incar­na­tions of David Bowie were, in them­selves, sci­ence fic­tion­al, “writes Neil Gaiman in the for­ward to a new graph­ic nov­el, BOWIE: Star­dust, Ray­guns, & Moon­age Day­dreams, which tells the sto­ry of Bowie’s rise as Zig­gy. “All I was miss­ing was a Bowie com­ic,” says Gaiman of his own fan­dom. “And, miss­ing it, I would draw bad Bowie comics myself.” Zig­gy Star­dust espe­cial­ly called for such treat­ment.

Bowie wore the glam rock Mar­t­ian mask with such com­mit­ment no one doubt­ed that he meant it—only what, exact­ly, he meant by it. “He defied clas­si­fi­ca­tion,” notes Simon & Schus­ter, “with his psy­che­del­ic aes­thet­ics, his larg­er-than-life image, and his way of hov­er­ing on the bor­der of the sur­re­al.” Fit­ting­ly, the com­ic is drawn by an artist who real­ized a psy­che­del­ic, sur­re­al­ist cre­ative vision of Neil Gaiman’s: Michael Allred, who worked on the Sand­man series.

The sto­ry, “part biog­ra­phy and part imag­i­na­tion,” reports Rolling Stone, is writ­ten by Steve Hor­ton and col­ored by Lau­ra Allred. You can order a copy here.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

96 Draw­ings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beat­on & More

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

Fred­die Mer­cury Reimag­ined as Com­ic Book Heroes

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Meet Viola Smith, the World’s Oldest Drummer: Her Career Started in the 1930s, and She Played Until She Was 107

in History, Music | October 21st, 2019

Update: Vio­la Smith sad­ly passed away this past week. You can read her obit­u­ary at The Guardian.

She may be the most famous jazz drum­mer you’ve nev­er heard of.

Vio­la Smith played with the NBC Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, per­formed for Har­ry Truman’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 1949, and played in the Kit-Kat Band (see them below on I’ve Got a Secret), in the first Broad­way run of Cabaret from 1966–70. These mark only a hand­ful of her career high­lights. She’s still thriving—and still playing—at the age of 106. While a fall has forced her to rely on a walk­er, she “looks like a sev­en­ty-five-year-old in ter­rif­ic shape!” writes Dan Bar­rett at The Syn­co­pat­ed Times.

Born Vio­la Schmitz in Mount Cal­vary, Wis­con­sin in 1912, Smith start­ed play­ing in the 1920s with her fam­i­ly band, the Schmitz Sis­ters Fam­i­ly Orches­tra (lat­er the Smith Sis­ters Orches­tra). Con­sist­ing of Vio­la, sev­en of her sis­ters, and one of her two broth­ers, they played the vaude­ville and movie the­ater cir­cuit on week­ends. Their father man­aged, direct­ed, and booked the band. An appear­ance on America’s Got Tal­ent, “the 1930s radio ver­sion,” notes Bar­rett, gave Vio­la and her sis­ters the con­fi­dence to form the Coquettes, who gar­nered a con­sid­er­able amount of fame after their debut in 1938.

In 1942, Vio­la wrote an arti­cle for Down Beat mag­a­zine titled “Give Girl Musi­cians a Break!,” sug­gest­ing that bands who lost musi­cians to WWII should hire women. Lat­er that year, when Mil­dred, Viola’s last remain­ing sis­ter in the Coquettes, got mar­ried, Vio­la moved to New York, “where I always want­ed to be,” she tells Bar­rett. She earned a sum­mer schol­ar­ship to Jul­liard, Ben­ny Good­man asked her to join his band (she turned him down), and she played with Ella Fitzger­ald and many oth­er greats. She record­ed film music and played with the Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. She appeared on The Ed Sul­li­van Show five times.

Though often com­pared to Gene Kru­pa, whom she con­sid­ers a “love­ly per­son” and an influ­ence, Smith had a very dis­tinc­tive style all her own, char­ac­ter­ized by a twelve-drum kit with two 16-inch toms mount­ed on either side of her head, as you can see in the clip at the top of the post, in a 1939 per­for­mance with the Coquettes. This was no mere gim­mick. Smith had stud­ied tym­pa­ni at Jul­liard and import­ed clas­si­cal train­ing into her big band sound. (She claims drum­mer Louis Bellson’s use of two bass drums was due to her influ­ence.)

Why isn’t Vio­la Smith bet­ter known? It may have some­thing to do with patron­iz­ing cov­er­age in the press, where she was described as “the girl Gene Kru­pa,” the “fastest girl drum­mer,” “the famous girl drum­mer” etc. Oth­er female instru­men­tal­ists were sim­i­lar­ly belit­tled as “girl” nov­el­ty acts, or ignored, even when they played with band­lead­ers like Ben­ny Good­man, whose orches­tra fea­tured trum­pet play­ers Bil­lie Rogers and Lau­rie Frink. (Smith her­self frowns on women play­ing brass instru­ments, for some odd  rea­son.) In her Down Beat arti­cle, Vio­la named a num­ber of oth­er top female play­ers of the day who deserved more work and recog­ni­tion.

She may for­get things here and here, but Smith still has a steel-trap mem­o­ry for a 106-year old who has lived such a rich life. Her inter­view with Bar­rett is full of detailed rem­i­nisces (she briefly dat­ed Frank Sina­tra, for exam­ple). She gives us a pic­ture of a musi­cian at the top of her game and in full com­mand of her career dur­ing the gold­en age of big band swing. We can cred­it Smith’s life­time as a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian with much of this con­fi­dence. Like all of her sib­lings she learned to play piano and read music from a young age, and she honed her skills as part of a hard-work­ing fam­i­ly “pit band,” as she says. But she was also dri­ven to suc­ceed above all else, leav­ing behind the con­ven­tion­al life each of her sib­ling band­mates even­tu­al­ly chose.

Smith did it her way—reportedly turn­ing down offers to play in Sinatra’s band and refus­ing band­leader Woody Her­man in order keep play­ing with the Coquettes. She played for the radio show Hour of Charm until she was 63, and has played con­certs recent­ly in Cos­ta Mesa, Cal­i­for­nia, where she now lives, tend­ed to by the staff of a quilt­ing sup­ply shop called Piece­mak­ers. Smith talks eas­i­ly about the sources of her musi­cal longevity—her fam­i­ly band, edu­ca­tion, and the tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty of musi­cians who embraced her.

As for her phys­i­cal vig­or and sta­mi­na, this she chalks up to the rig­or of play­ing the drums, and to relax­ing with a drink or two on occasion—a life­time of activ­i­ty and mod­er­a­tion that has helped keep her sharp and healthy after all of her con­tem­po­raries have passed away. See Smith in inter­views at 100, fur­ther up, and 102, just above, and read her recent inter­view at 106 at The Syn­co­pat­ed Times here.

via McGill Media

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

The Women of the Blues: Hear a Playlist of Great Blues Singers, from Bessie Smith & Etta James, to Bil­lie Hol­i­day & Janis Joplin

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Best of the Edward Gorey Envelope Art Contest

in Comics/Cartoons, Creativity, K-12 | October 21st, 2019

What a delight it must have been to have been one of Edward Gorey’s cor­re­spon­dents, or even a postal work­er charged with han­dling his out­go­ing mail.

The late author and illus­tra­tor had a pen­chant for embell­ish­ing envelopes with the hairy beasts, pok­er-faced chil­dren, and cats who are the main­stays of his dark­ly humor­ous aes­thet­ic.

(A num­ber of these envelopes and some 60 post­cards and sketch­es are includ­ed in Float­ing Worlds: The Let­ters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumey­er, which doc­u­ments the cor­re­spon­dence-based friend­ship between Gorey and the author with whom he col­lab­o­rat­ed on three children’s books, includ­ing the delight­ful­ly macabre Don­ald Has a Dif­fi­cul­ty.)

The Edward Gorey House, a beloved Cape Cod res­i­dence turned muse­um, has been keep­ing the tra­di­tion alive with its annu­al Hal­loween Enve­lope Art Con­test.

Com­peti­tors of all ages vie for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have their win­ning (and run­ners up and “very-close-to-being-run­ners-up”) Gorey-inspired entries dis­played in the Gorey House and its dig­i­tal exten­sions.

2019’s theme is the high­ly evoca­tive “Uncom­fort­able Crea­tures” … and depend­ing on the speed with which you can exe­cute a bril­liant idea and deliv­er it to the post office, you may still have a shot—entries must be post­marked by Mon­day, Octo­ber 21, with win­ners to be announced on Hal­loween.

In addi­tion to Stef Kiihn Aschenbrenner’s win­ning enve­lope from the 2018 contest’s over-18 cat­e­go­ry (top), some of our favorites from past years are repro­duced here. Our inky-black hearts are espe­cial­ly warmed to see the spir­it of the mas­ter kin­dling the imag­i­na­tions of the youngest entrants—special shout out to Daniel Miley, aged 4.

View five years’ worth of notable Hal­loween Enve­lope Con­test entries on the Edward Gorey House web­site (2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014) or down­load the offi­cial entry form and race to the post office with your bid for 2019 glo­ry.

Entries must be post­marked by Mon­day, Octo­ber 21 and addressed to Edward Gorey House, 8 Straw­ber­ry Lane, Yarmouth Port, MA 02675 USA.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lemo­ny Snick­et Reveals His Edward Gorey Obses­sion in an Upcom­ing Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

Edward Gorey Talks About His Love Cats & More in the Ani­mat­ed Series, “Goreytelling”

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Martin Luther King Jr. Explains the Importance of Jazz: Hear the Speech He Gave at the First Berlin Jazz Festival (1964)

in History, Music | October 21st, 2019

Mar­tin Luther King Jr.’s dream of full inclu­sion for Black Amer­i­cans still seems painful­ly unre­al fifty years after his death. By most sig­nif­i­cant mea­sures, the U.S. has regressed. De fac­to hous­ing and school seg­re­ga­tion are entrenched (and wors­en­ing since the 60s and 70s in many cities); vot­ing rights erode one court rul­ing at a time; the racial wealth gap has widened sig­nif­i­cant­ly; and open dis­plays of racist hate and vio­lence grow more wor­ri­some by the day.

Yet the move­ment was not only about win­ning polit­i­cal vic­to­ries, though these were sure­ly the con­crete basis for its vision of lib­er­a­tion. It was also very much a cul­tur­al strug­gle. Black artists felt forced by cir­cum­stances to choose whether they would keep enter­tain­ing all-white audi­ences and pre­tend­ing all was well. “There were no more side­lines,” writes Ashawn­ta Jack­son at JSTOR Dai­ly. This was cer­tain­ly the case for that most Amer­i­can of art forms, jazz. “Jazz musi­cians, like any oth­er Amer­i­can, had the duty to speak to the world around them, and to oppose the bru­tal con­di­tions for Black Amer­i­cans.”

Many of those musi­cians could not stay silent after the mur­der of Emmett Till, the 16th Street Bap­tist Church bomb­ing in Birm­ing­ham, and a string of oth­er high­ly pub­li­cized and hor­rif­ic attacks. Jazz was chang­ing. As Amiri Bara­ka wrote in a 1962 essay, “the musi­cians who played it were loud­ly out­spo­ken about who they thought they were. ‘If you don’t like it, don’t lis­ten’ was the atti­tude.” That atti­tude came to define post-Civ­il Rights Black Amer­i­can cul­ture, a defi­ant turn away from appeas­ing white audi­ences and ignor­ing racism.

As jazz musi­cians embraced the move­ment, so the move­ment embraced jazz. While King him­self is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the gospel singers he loved, he had a deep respect for jazz as a form that spoke of “some new hope or sense of tri­umph.” Jazz, wrote King in his open­ing address for the 1964 Berlin Jazz Fes­ti­val, “is tri­umphant music…. When life itself offers no order and mean­ing, the musi­cian cre­ates an order and mean­ing from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instru­ment. It is no won­der that so much of the search for iden­ti­ty among Amer­i­can Negroes was cham­pi­oned by Jazz musi­cians.”

Jazz not only gave order to chaot­ic, “com­pli­cat­ed urban exis­tence,” it also pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal emo­tion­al sup­port for the Move­ment.

Much of the pow­er of our Free­dom Move­ment in the Unit­ed States has come from this music. It has strength­ened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich har­monies when spir­its were down.

King’s take on jazz par­al­leled his artic­u­la­tions of the move­men­t’s goals—he always under­stood that the par­tic­u­lar strug­gles of Black Amer­i­cans had spe­cif­ic his­tor­i­cal roots, and required spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal reme­dies. But ulti­mate­ly, he believed that every­one should be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and respect, and have access to the same oppor­tu­ni­ties and the same pro­tec­tions under the law.

Jazz is export­ed to the world. For in the par­tic­u­lar strug­gle of the Negro in Amer­i­ca there is some­thing akin to the uni­ver­sal strug­gle of mod­ern man. Every­body has the Blues. Every­body longs for mean­ing. Every­body needs to love and be loved. Every­body needs to clap hands and be hap­py. Every­body longs for faith.

Jazz music, said King, “is a step­ping stone towards all of these.” Wrought “out of oppres­sion,” it is music, he said, that “speaks for life,” even in the midst of what could seem like death and defeat. Read King’s full address at WCLK 91.9. And at the top of the post, hear the speech read by San Fran­cis­co Bay Area artists for a 2012 cel­e­bra­tion on King’s birth­day.

The 1964 Berlin Jazz Fes­ti­val (poster above) was the first in the illus­tri­ous annu­al event. See many oth­er stun­ning posters from the series here.

via JSTOR Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.’s Hand­writ­ten Syl­labus & Final Exam for the Phi­los­o­phy Course He Taught at More­house Col­lege (1962)

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

In the 1920s Amer­i­ca, Jazz Music Was Con­sid­ered Harm­ful to Human Health, the Cause of “Neuras­the­nia,” “Per­pet­u­al­ly Jerk­ing Jaws” & More

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The Internet Archive Makes 2,500 More Classic MS-DOS Video Games Free to Play Online: Alone in the Dark, Doom, Microsoft Adventure, and Others

in Games, Internet Archive | October 21st, 2019

Back in 2015 we let you know that the Inter­net Archive made 2,400 com­put­er games from the era of MS-DOS free to play online: titles like Com­man­der Keen, Scorched Earth, and Prince of Per­sia may have brought back fond 1990s gam­ing mem­o­ries, as well as promised hours of more such enjoy­ment here in the 21st cen­tu­ry. That set of games includ­ed Id Soft­ware’s Wolfen­stein 3D, which cre­at­ed the genre of the first-per­son shoot­er as we know it, but the Inter­net Archive’s lat­est DOS-game upload — an addi­tion of more than 2,500 titles — includes its fol­low-up Doom, which took com­put­er gam­ing itself to, as it were, a new lev­el.

The Inter­net Archive’s Jason Scott calls this “our biggest update yet, rang­ing from tiny recent inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tions to long-for­got­ten big-name releas­es from decades ago.” After detail­ing some of the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges he and his team faced in get­ting many of the games to work prop­er­ly in web browsers on mod­ern com­put­ers — “a lot has changed under the hood and pro­grams were some­times only writ­ten to work on very spe­cif­ic hard­ware and a very spe­cif­ic set­up” — he makes a few rec­om­men­da­tions from this newest crop of games.

Scot­t’s picks include Microsoft Adven­ture, the DOS ver­sion of the very first com­put­er adven­ture game; the 1960s-themed rac­er Street Rod; and Super Munch­ers, one in a line of edu­ca­tion­al titles all of us of a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion will remem­ber from our class­room com­put­ers. Odd­i­ties high­light­ed by clas­sic game enthu­si­asts around the inter­net include Mr. Blob­by, based on the epony­mous char­ac­ter from the BBC com­e­dy show Noel’s House Par­ty; the undoubt­ed­ly thrilling sim­u­la­tor Pres­i­dent Elect — 1988 Edi­tion; and Zool, the only nin­ja-space-alien plat­former spon­sored by lol­lipop brand Chu­pa Chups.

This addi­tion of 2,500 com­put­er games to the Inter­net Archive also brings in no few undis­put­ed clas­sics whose influ­ence on the art and design of games is still felt today: Alone in the Dark, for exam­ple, prog­en­i­tor of the entire sur­vival-hor­ror genre; Microsoft Flight Sim­u­la­tor, inspi­ra­tion for a gen­er­a­tion of pilots; and Sim­C­i­ty 2000, inspi­ra­tion for a gen­er­a­tion of urban plan­ners. Among the adven­ture games, one of the strongest gen­res of the MS-DOS era, we have Dis­c­world, based on Ter­ry Pratch­et­t’s comedic fan­ta­sy nov­els, and from the mind of Har­lan Elli­son the some­what less comedic I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. One glance at the Inter­net Archive’s updat­ed com­put­er game col­lec­tion reveals that, no mat­ter how many games you played in the 90s, you’ll nev­er be able to play them all.

Get more infor­ma­tion on the new batch of games at the Inter­net Archive.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Arcade Lets You Play 900 Vin­tage Video Games in Your Web Brows­er (Free)

Free: Play 2,400 Vin­tage Com­put­er Games in Your Web Brows­er

Play a Col­lec­tion of Clas­sic Hand­held Video Games at the Inter­net Archive: Pac-Man, Don­key Kong, Tron and MC Ham­mer

1,100 Clas­sic Arcade Machines Added to the Inter­net Arcade: Play Them Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Banksy Launches a New Online Store: Make Purchases Through October 28

in Art | October 18th, 2019

Has Banksy sold out? Fans and crit­ics alike of the street-art provo­ca­teur-turned-glob­al­ly rec­og­niz­able brand can argue that ques­tion end­less­ly. But we do know, at least, that Banksy sells: ear­li­er this month he broke his own record when his 2009 paint­ing Devolved Par­lia­ment went for £9.88 mil­lion (about $12.20 mil­lion USD) at Sothe­by’s. Not all the fol­low­ers attract­ed by Banksy’s anti-cap­i­tal­is­tic, anti-cor­po­rate, anti-wealth image can afford to pay quite so much for a Banksy of their own, but if they can come up with any­thing from £10 to £850.00, they stand as much of a chance as any­one else of mak­ing a pur­chase from the artist’s new­ly opened online store, Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct, the sec­ond phase of a project that began, as many of Banksy’s ven­tures have, on a Lon­don street.

In this case it was­n’t a mur­al but a shop, or rather, an instal­la­tion designed to look like a shop, “opened” right in time for Frieze Week, when the art world pass­es through the city. “Tak­ing up large win­dows fac­ing the street, the shop, ‘where art irri­tates life,’ is a clas­sic dis­play of the artist’s inge­nu­ity and razor-sharp sense of rea­son and humor,” writes Jux­tapoz’s Sasha Bogo­jev.

Its stock includ­ed a “baby crib sur­veil­lance mobile toy, along with ‘ear­ly learn­ing count­ing set’ con­sist­ing of wood­en fig­ures of refugees, wel­come mats made from life vests sal­vaged from the shores of the Mediter­ranean, dis­co ball made from old police hel­mets, plates/clocks with run­ning rats, works on can­vas, cush­ions, and even bad­ly done ‘Banksky’ T‑shirts, mugs and plates.” Much to the dis­may of many a Frieze-goer, noth­ing in Banksy’s brick-and-mor­tar store was avail­able for sale.

But every­thing in Banksy’s online store is: “GrossDomesticProduct.com offers a wide range of house­hold prod­ucts, art­works and basi­cal­ly a whole range of Banksy™ knick-knacks,” writes Bogo­jev. “From mugs for which ‘the artist got the kids to do it, then signed the result,’ sculp­tur­al edi­tion made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Escif, learn­ing sets, t‑shirts” — one mod­eled after Girl with Bal­loon, shred­ded bot­tom half and all — “soft toys, clocks, all the way to two new print edi­tions.” Such is Banksy’s pop­u­lar­i­ty that you might well assume every­thing has already run out, but no: each hope­ful buy­er can reg­is­ter to pur­chase one item — but just one — until Octo­ber 28th, at which point a lot­tery process will deter­mine which of them will actu­al­ly have the priv­i­lege of mak­ing their desired pur­chas­es. In the high­ly like­ly event of “demand out­strip­ping sup­ply,” Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct will use as a deter­min­ing fac­tor appli­cants’ respons­es, con­sist­ing of fifty words or few­er, to the ques­tion, “Why does art mat­ter?”

One hopes that when this lat­est Banksy stunt has fin­ished, the win­ning respons­es to that ques­tion will be made pub­lic; the art-world com­men­tari­at would cer­tain­ly make much of an answer from Banksy him­self. But Banksy-watch­ers know that the artist, what­ev­er his real iden­ti­ty, is always on the move: no soon­er have we learned of his lat­est piece of work, what­ev­er form it takes, than he’s primed the next one to drop. Banksy has described Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct as legal­ly moti­vat­ed, prompt­ed by a greet­ing card com­pa­ny’s attempts “to seize legal cus­tody of the name Banksy from the artist, who has been advised the best way to pre­vent this is to sell his own range of brand­ed mer­chan­dise.” If any­one makes Banksy greet­ing cards, it’s going to be Banksy. And if he were to announce his own Hall­mark Store, lines would sure­ly start form­ing right away.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Break­down of the Artist’s Self-Shred­ding Paint­ing

Banksy Strikes Again in Venice

Watch Dis­ma­land — The Offi­cial Unof­fi­cial Film, A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Banksy’s Apoc­a­lyp­tic Theme Park

Banksy Cre­ates a Tiny Repli­ca of The Great Sphinx Of Giza In Queens

Pat­ti Smith Presents Top Web­by Award to Banksy; He Accepts with Self-Mock­ing Video

The Always Bank­able Banksy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Teenage Kurt Cobain and Friends’ Horror Movie from 1984

in Film | October 18th, 2019

Because Kurt Cobain died so young (and some would say so mys­te­ri­ous­ly) his pre-Nir­vana works can be over-exam­ined as har­bin­gers of his fate. Maybe death was always rid­ing hard on his tail, these works can tell us, though any num­ber of pro­to-grunge teens in the Pacif­ic North­west would have been writ­ing about death and the dev­il. That’s the cool stuff, man.

A Super 8 film made by a 17-year-old Cobain, Dale Crover (future drum­mer of the Melvins) and Nir­vana bass play­er Krist Novosel­ic popped up among boot­leg col­lec­tors in 1998, and dates from 1984. Fans dubbed it “Kurt’s Bloody Sui­cide” to juice its val­ue, back in the days when you actu­al­ly had to buy bootlegs and then lat­er be very dis­ap­point­ed. Now it’s up on YouTube as “Kurt Cobain Hor­ror Movies.”

Crover has described it as “fuck­ing around with a cam­era,” which indeed it is, but with some intent. It fea­tures Kurt in a Mr. T mask, light­ing can­dles in a pen­ta­gram and snort­ing up a pile of cocaine (no doubt using a hid­den vac­u­um clean­er). Then some odd shots of a Mr. T pup­pet, somebody’s mom at the win­dow, a black labrador, very brief attempts at stop motion, somebody’s grand­dad, shots of down­town Aberdeen, Wash­ing­ton, and more goof­ing off (with a gui­tar!).

Then we get to the “mon­ey shot,” so to speak, with Cobain fake slit­ting his throat and stab­bing him­self. There’s some more knife vio­lence, then a shot of a cat, a shot of a dog, some fake gun vio­lence, plen­ty of shots of a pet tur­tle, and final­ly back to a hor­ror movie: a bloody Vir­gin Mary, and some stab­bings and some decent fake wounds. (How­ev­er, the trav­el­ing shot of the run­ning dog gets my vote for most skill­ful.)

Should we read any­thing into the gore and Satanism? (“This kid was a tick­ing time bomb,” says one YouTu­ber.)

I’d say no…and yes. There’s some­thing fun about watch­ing these bored teens mak­ing a film for their own enter­tain­ment. It’s sil­ly, unfo­cused, but def­i­nite­ly an indi­ca­tion that these guys want­ed out of their bor­ing town and they’d have to cre­ate some­thing to do that. Nir­vana was right around the cor­ner…

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Kurt Cobain Con­front­ed Vio­lence Against Women in His “Dark­est Song”: Nevermind‘s “Pol­ly”

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

Ani­mat­ed Video: Kurt Cobain on Teenage Angst, Sex­u­al­i­ty & Find­ing Sal­va­tion in Punk Music

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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