© UMG / Xavier Rudd / Axel Massin (via YouTube)
Music is a memory machine —one reason why I enjoy collecting records so much. Xavier Rudd for example was one of my favourite artists over a decade ago when I was still a student but already transitioning into a completely new phase of life. His old album ‘Solace‘ –I still own on CD– awakens a lot of happy memories of said carefree days whenever I put it on.
Currently my life is changing to a greater extent than ever before and even though I’m not trying to live barefoot, planning to move to Berlin and thinking about getting dreadlocks anymore –ironically I do have long hair for the very first time nowadays–, Rudd has been on heavy rotation again with his new song latterly. Now Stoney Creek for me will inevitable be linked to the life events of the challenging yet incredible fortunate last weeks.
Coz baby, the wind is blowing /
And there ain’t no other place I’d rather be /
And the wind owes me nothing /
But it’s blown me here with you /[…]
This is home
Your fragility is also your strength.
I am on Twitter, still, despite my better judgment, and it seems to me to be The extremely unforgiving medium in my life.
It is risky compositionally. You can delete a tweet, but you can’t edit a tweet. You can add to a tweet, but it’s hard to improve upon it.
It is risky socially. Every tweet is an invitation for scrutiny if not consultation if not correction if not misunderstanding if not rancor. Forgiveness, even if we agreed it still existed in the wider culture, I think we could probably agree it doesn’t really exist on Twitter. (“Never Tweet” is not terrible advice.)
While Twitter still refuses to provide its users the repeatedly brought up and widely requested edit button, Austin Kleon has a point for Blogging as a forgiving medium —published on his personal blog of course. Reaffirms my suggestion to move back from the centralised social media structures to self-contained, more private digital spaces, instead.
Real time is slower than social-media time, where everything feels urgent. Real time often includes periods of silence, reflection, growth, space, self-forgiveness, processing with loved ones, rest, and responsibility.
© Aeon (via Vimeo)
A drolly cheerful celebration of the very ordinary, Born to be Mild explores the uncommon hobbies practiced by the members of the Dull Men’s Club – an online community that connects ‘dull men, and women who appreciate dull men’.
aeon.co/videos/the-dull-men-s-club-where-being-extraordinarily-ordinary-is-celebrated
To be truly countercultural today, in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform, which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self.
Earlier this year Caroline Busta wrote a comprehensive –and very interesting– online article about counterculture in the time of social media hegemony, touching on politics, technology and culture. The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram.
I came to the same conclusion as Massimo and many other designers—I don’t need a huge range of fonts of questionable quality to choose from, I only need a few high quality ones. So I created my own list of 5 fonts that I use most often.
Not sure, if I’d be able to strictly limit myself to five fonts like Massimo Vignelli, but I certainly have a bunch of fonts I keep coming back to more frequently. Guess I’m going to make a list of my favourite ‘five fonts’ covering the cited criteria and then try to use them whenever I start working on something new, as Matej Latin suggests in All you need is 5 fonts.
betterwebtype.com/articles/2021/06/07/all-you-need-is-5-fonts/
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.
© Above&Below and Einar Fehrholz (via Vimeo)
Aquateque is a short film and multimedia installation exploring the river Ruhr through a variety of new media technologies. The diverse ecosystem of the surrounding is captured through audio, visual and 3d modelling tools and transformed into a generative augmented space. The project explores themes such as digital material ecology and neural networks as artistic tools to dream about alternative and fantastical worlds in which nature, machines and humans collide.
Bo Burnham – Inside
»Should I be joking at a time like this?«
Five years after he turned his back on performing, Bo Burnham is finally back on stage —or rather would’ve been if the pandemic hadn’t prevented his return last minute. Instead Burnham used the forced isolation during the last year to write, perform and edit the new Netflix comedy special –an improper label, by the way– all by himself at home. Basically he’s coming full circle more than a decade after starting out as a teen performing quirky comedy songs alone in his small room for a fast-growing YouTube audience.
The new program, aptly titled Inside, is a wild amalgamation of sketch comedy pieces, documentary elements and –of course– catchy musical performances. One of its great achievements is how well the seemingly disjointed bits are pieced together to archive a somewhat coherent narrative to follow along, not unlike a four act story structure. Burnham always had immense talent for witty writting and pinpoint timing and he has clearly perfected his craft, adding some political awareness and meta humor to his already poignant zeitgeist commentary.
In earlier shows he brought up his personal struggles every now and then, be it him coping with newfound fame or suffering from anxiety, but this new experiment blurres the line between his stage persona and the artist’s mental inside entirely, delivering multiple gut-wrenching insights and a painful character dissection throughout its 87 minutes runtime. That’s why I think labeling it a comedy special doesn’t do it justice, probably even bringing people in with completely wrong expectations. To me those highly emotional, dark and intimate moments intensify the comedic value and vice versa, but I totally understand how they might catch viewers off guard if the expectation is easygoing, mindless fun.
I’ve heard people calling Inside an arthouse film and I think that’s probably the best way to characterise the project. Not only because of its content, but because of its arrangement as well. It’s absolutely incredible what the comedian, musician, actor, director and screenwriter is able to archive basically with a tripod, a small consumer camera and various LEDs all by himself. The meticulous planned motion picture is brilliantly framed, illuminated and edited, resulting in a visually gorgeous, highly cinematic piece, in spite of its claustrophobic single room setting. It’s an inspiring example of how far creativity can get you even –or maybe especially– within strict limitations.
I think Burnham has crafted a true masterpiece and an exciting contemporary document —of the pandemic and its isolating impact in particular as well as our self-centered generation and modern (internet) culture at large. Inside is probably the best thing I’ve seen for a very long time and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone willing to go through this emotional rollercoaster ride. I’m pretty sure the two three four fifth viewings of mine won’t remain the last.
Ich bin der Meinung, dass die ganze Digitalisierung, die jetzt ja auch immer mehr Bestandteil unseres Daseins ist, Erfahrungsvermögen verdunkelt. Es gibt Bilder die verlöschen eins nach dem anderen ohne Spuren hier oben [anm.: im Kopf] zu hinterlassen. Es geht wahnsinnig schnell. Und vielleicht deshalb können oder wollen wir so viel konsumieren. Die sinnlich wahrnehmbare Welt verströhmt eine Aura, meine ich, die nicht digitalisiert werden kann. Wir müssen achtgeben jetzt, dass wir die digitale Welt beherrschen und nicht von ihr beherrscht werden.