time passed. three months ago we finished a new revision of the arc. it's a one hundred percent redesign, but the new aspects are not overt. so instead of trying to hype and spotlight the new, we made art.
four slowly phasing arpeggios, playing an old beloved synthesizer into analog tape feedback. the projection started as ring juggling captured by jay gilligan, which i then projected onto the winter snowscape at night and recaptured, which was then projected onto the wall while the arc stepped through time.
hania rani - anette (2023)
holden and zimpel - incredible bliss (2025)
mr beatnik and richard greenan - superb crafty garden (2023)
[mp3] - 14:03
"wabi tek sabi is way of seeing and living with human craft and technology. like the japanese idea of wabi sabi it has much to do with aesthetics and pleasure, but it is mainly a way to look at, work with, and live with, technology."
“Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward -- reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
arvo pärt - da pacem domine (2004)
sonic youth - beautiful plateau (2004)
grouper - hollow press (2009)
[mp3] - 9:47
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’”, Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
corin - empress (2015)
kaitlyn aurelia smith - what's between us (2025)
koreless - sun (2013)
[mp3] - 15:19
jan garbarek - a tale begun (2004)
perimeter o - my senseless kind of hunt (2024)
yoko kanno - folly fall (2000)
[mp3] - 10:11
so at some point you think you know how to do things, that things will go a certain way because you did it before and it was a disaster so you did it again and it was a different disaster but this time you've thought of all of the past and potential disasters, but then also the rules just totally change and all sorts of things can happen that seemed inconceivable, both disasters but also miracles, both equally perplexing, and eventually it becomes just a pastime to classify events as disaster or miracle, until maybe a day is just, having coffee and seeing birds, and whatever happens next is, next
pet shop boys - it couldn't happen here (1987)
romain bertheau - trichomonas gallinae (take 4) (2023)
julee cruise - the world spins (1989)
[mp3] - 17:08
oliver coates - please be normal (2024)
cocteau twins - feet-like fins (1986)
tim hecker - black phase (2016)
[mp3] - 13:04
after describing izzzzi to a friend as "barely an idea" i recognized my longstanding disposition towards what might be called the hyperbolic undersell.
from the very beginning almost two decades ago the unrehearsed hot sentence from an early monome interview was something like "it doesn't do anything by itself. isn't that wonderful?"
this is likely just schizmogenesis in its natural habitat, defining oneself in opposition to that which one opposes. in this case the overselling of promises. particularly in technology, where nothing is new, and we are sold worse versions of old things which actively undermine our happiness and humanity.
maybe it's just the idea of selling in general.
maybe you just need barely an idea which leads to radical transformation, where you then see everything differently.
in november i made a lot of drawings. i feel them leaading to something else, but for now you can see some of them here. they'll likely vanish at some point, however.
i finally wrote something about a weird project we've been enjoying with friends for the last six months. it's now open invitation.
"it's become a sort of collaborative daily newspaper written by friends. on the surface the parameters feel antithetical: it's ephemeral, it only changes daily, hardly anyone sees it. this is precisely what makes it interesting."
we've been running now for half a year, some observations:
technically, izzzzi challenged some of my grumpy opinions about computers. given the simplicity of the project, i figured it should just be files glued together with shell scripts, maybe something people just log into a server with a terminal to use. but of course any normal person just wants (reasonably!) to use a web browser. and after a somewhat silly journey into "low level" cgi with python, we (it's a collaboration) ended up just using flask (a "lightweight" framework). i like to say this project is "500 lines of code with 10k lines of dependencies." it's really a black box, yet i found myself constantly discovering "idiosyncracies" which required taking apart the black box to figure out why the dumb legos didn't fit together right. but, this was my first web-based project despite having programmed computers for three decades. i've been guilty of redesigning systems at ever lower levels in pursuit of a specific goal. the original goal almost gets lost as the system itself takes so much focus, spending all energy on perfect tools. the takeaway is perhaps that while there is no elegance to be seen, the possibilities of creating alternative social infrastructure is remarkably within reach.
maybe there are different ways.
karen gwyer - pikku-kokki (2013)
tangerine dream - love on a real train (1983)
underworld - pearl's girl (1996)
[mp3] - 17:49
"All of this public funding and community involvement has had an enormously beneficial albeit unacknowledged and uncosted effect on the development of Silicon Valley and other hi tech industries. Capitalist entrepreneurs often have an inflated sense of their own resourcefulness in developing new ideas and give little recognition to the contributions made by either the state, their own labour force or the wider community. All technological progress is cumulative it depends on the results of a collective historical process and must be counted, at least in part, as a collective achievement."
1ST GENT. Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves.
2ND GENT. Ay, truly: but I think it is the world
That brings the iron.
birch overheard us talking about ginkos
now birch is showing off
look look look
desert iii, ocean iv (2024)
part of Fortune Teller, a group show on view September 20 through October 20, 2024 at Luck Dragon, Delhi, NY.
daniel o'sullivan - the oscillating love (instrumental) (2024)
teebs - prayer i (2019)
jessika kenney and eyvind kang - no sound (2024)
[mp3] - 17:40
the season where a disproportionate number of photos taken feature things-in-bowls
(seen here, nigella in k ceramics)
panoram - limbo (2024)
purelink - maintain the bliss (2021)
carlota - cool in the pool (2020)
[mp3] - 13:50
a word for a feeling of anticipation equal parts enthusiasm and anxiety ahead of the near certainty of an avalanche harvest, the moment we dreamt when planting an orchard so long ago and the energy required in attempt to respect that original vision and figure out what to do with it all
"The ubiquity of algorithmic recommendation and prediction systems may also make it easier to recognize one’s own variability: When confronted with what past behavior suggests we should want, we may just as often balk and disavow it as let it frictionlessly proceed. In that situation, one is surprised only by one’s own refusal to comply — negation rather than discovery becomes the principle of self-realization."
tehn@nnnnnnnn.co