{electronica} – Page 146

Weekend links 30

Did someone say “woody”? Plenty more toy antics at TheOneCam.

• And yet more Haeckelisms: Praying in Haeckel’s Garden, recent works by artist Mary O’Malley.

• Seasons of the Peacock, the perennial showoff as depicted by a handful of Art Nouveau artists. A couple of examples there I hadn’t seen before.

• Dorian Cope presents On This Deity, “Commemorating culture heroes and excavating world events.”

• At long last, Fantagraphics will be publishing Ah Pook is Here, the comic strip collaboration between William Burroughs and artist Malcolm McNeill. Something to look forward to for next year. Related: Malcolm McNeill’s website.

• David Lynch Dark Splendor: “Der große Filmemacher David Lynch als Fotograf, Maler, Zeichner und Grafiker.”

• More on the forthcoming album from Brian Eno, Leo Abrahams and Jon Hopkins. With this degree of hype the end result is going to be a disappointment.

• Book design by Richard Hollis, including John Berger’s essential Ways of Seeing.

• A fistful of Vignellis: the work of Lella and Massimo Vignelli celebrated.

• Berni Wrightson’s Frankenstein at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

• Jimi Hendrix, Philip José Farmer reader.

• Imagerie du Chemin de Fer.

• El UFO Cayó (2005) by Ry Cooder.

Weekend links 28

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The Expansion of the First Great Ornamental Age: 3 Distances (2009) by Seher Shah.

• Great Female Artists? Think Karachi. “One reason for the unusually high ratio of female artists in Pakistan has to do with the fact that the art industry has not traditionally been viewed as a lucrative business by men, says South Asian art historian Savita Apte, who administers the internationally renowned Abraaj Capital Art Prize. Until very recently, creatively inclined males tended to focus on fields such as advertising or illustration, leaving the art field wide open for some very talented women.” Related: artist Seher Shah (and also here).

• Hardformat looks at the luxury/collectors/whatever edition of the forthcoming Brian Eno album. “What’s the music like?” Colin asks. Indeed.

• Strange Flowers is “a celebration of the most extraordinary, eccentric and unfairly forgotten figures of the past 200 years”.

• Warsaw Warble: Illustration and design in Poland, 1917 to 1938. More marvels from A Journey Round My Skull.

• Strange Attractor hosts talks at London’s Little Shoppe of Horrors throughout the autumn.

• Barney Bubbles in Mojo and more details of the new edition of Paul Gorman’s BB book.

• A blog devoted to all things having to do with Howard Pyle (1853–1911).

• Erik Davis on Dreaming, Writing, Philip K Dick and Lovecraft.

• 10 Reading Revolutions Before E-Books.

• Secular Exorcisms by Evan J Peterson.

• RIP Jean Benoît.

• Street haikus.

• I Put A Spell On You (1965) by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins; I Put A Spell On You (1965) by Nina Simone; I Put A Spell On You (2001) by Natacha Atlas.

Weekend links 25

A commemorative Borges coin.

He says, “Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment’s objectivity or the individual’s psychic history.” There, of course, he sums up all of realism, no? “Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument and forges, beyond spatial and temporal prisons, a personal vision.” That’s Borges.

• The Borges Behind the Fiction: Colin Marshall talks to translator Suzanne Jill Levine. Related: The Garden of Forking Paths.

• From The Quietus: Blondie in Conversation with William S. Burroughs by Victor Bockris, 1979; An Interview with Laurie Anderson by Robert Barry, 2010.

In 962 Abd-er Rahman III was succeeded by his son Al-Hakim. Owing to the peace which the Christians of Cordova then enjoyed […] the citizens of Cordova, Arabs, Christians, and Jews, enjoyed so high a degree of literary culture that the city was known as the New Athens. From all quarters came students eager to drink at its founts of knowledge. Among the men afterwards famous who studied at Cordova were the scholarly monk Gerbert, destined to sit on the Chair of Peter as Sylvester II (999–1003), the Jewish rabbis Moses and Maimonides, and the famous Spanish-Arabian commentator on Aristotle, Averroes.

Entry for The Diocese of Cordova from The Catholic Encyclopedia (1917).

• Professor Newt’s Distorted History Lesson. A riposte to the ignorance of the wretched Gingrich. Related: the Mezquita de Córdoba.

Jorge Luis Borges and a cat. Via.

• Joseph and His Friend—A Story of Pennsylvania (1870) by Bayard Taylor, America’s first (?) gay novel. Related: 20 classic works of gay literature.

• Elegies For Angels, Punks and Raging Queens at the Shaw Theatre, London, from 10–28 August 2010.

• Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony is released later this month. Café Kaput’s first release, Electronic Music in the Classroom by DD Denham, appears in September.

• “Just relax and enjoy it.” k-punk on the ambition and vision of David Rudkin’s Artemis 81.

• Chris Watson explores Alan Lamb’s The Wires: three audio recordings to download.

• Jonathan Barnbrook: Tuxedomoon fan, 1988, and Tuxedomoon designer, 2007.

• Rob Young’s Electric Eden reviewed by Michel Faber.

• Brian Eno gets the Warp factor.

• No Tears (1978) by Tuxedomoon; Atomic (1979) by Blondie; Everything You Want (1980) by Tuxedomoon; Next One Is Real (1984) by Minimal Compact; Hologram (2010) by These New Puritans.

Weekend links 24

Delta-Wing (2009) by Chloe Early.

• “Feted British authors are limited, arrogant and self-satisfied, says leading academic”. Stating the bleeding obvious but it still needs to be said, apparently, especially when the announcement of the Booker list this year caused the usual confusion when Amis Jr. and McEwan weren’t included, as though the mere existence of their novels makes them prize-worthy. And as someone pointed out, the word “male” is missing from that headline.

• Hero of Comic-Book World Gets Real: Alan Moore again, in the NYT this time. Related: a review of Unearthing live.

• Announcing The Hanky Code by Brian Borland & Stephen S Mills, a 40-poem book to be published next year by Lethe Press. For an explanation of the Hanky Code there’s this, and there’s also an iPhone app.

• Folk—the ‘music of the people’—is now hip again, says (who else?) Rob Young who can also be heard on the archived podcast here. Related: the folk roots of Bagpuss. Related to the latter: The Mouse Mill.

An endpiece from The Firebird and other Russian Fairy Tales by Boris Zvorykin.

• ‘Yes’ to Catastrophe: Roger Dean, Prog and SF. A lengthy and thoughtful analysis of Roger Dean’s early work.

• Into the Media Web, the enormous Michael Moorcock book which I designed, is officially published this week.

• Cassette playa: in praise of tapes. I’ve complained about tapes in the past but people continue to find them useful. Some technologies die harder than others.

• Boy BANG Boy: “Quiet moments made suddenly very loud with the attitude and opinion of what it means to be a young male in an impossibly diverse world.” An exhibition opening at Eastgallery, London, on August 5th.

• Empty your heart of its mortal dream: Alfred Kubin’s extraordinary novel, The Other Side.

• Ghostly and Boym Partners devise a new way to deliver digital music.

• Besti-mix #27: a great selection by producer Adrian Sherwood.

• Agnostics are troublemakers. Amen to that.

• RIP Harry Beckett.

• Acousmata.

• Let Us Go In To The House Of The Lord by Pharoah Sanders (live, 1971): Part 1 | Part 2

Weekend links 23

“The Go-Go wonder of Paris — That’s space girl. Transistors never wear down, they just go on and on — Even her heart is made of vinyl — It’s a marvy life — With nothing else to do but dance — Why not? – Love? — Forget it, baby — Not for her —” From Mod Love (1967) by Michael Lutin and Michel Quarez.

• “Gay people are not advancing themselves in the (publishing) industry, they’re just regurgitating familiar territory. Of course, artists are always ahead of gatekeepers. That’s the way it works—artists innovate. But in order to fulfill your promise as an editor, agent, publisher or reviewer, you have to be a person who’s embracing the new and looking to elevate what is not yet known. And unfortunately, there’s not a discussion among publishing professionals about enhancing this aspect of people’s responsibilities. In fact, it goes the other way. So there needs to be a psychological revolution on behalf of the people who are controlling what information is allowed to be seen.” From an interview with Sarah Schulman at Lambda Literary.

• Jonathan Ross meets Jim Steranko. Also at the Guardian: Unearthing the truth about Alan Moore.

• Photographing an abandoned Art Deco skyscraper. From the people who photographed Neverland at night.

• Powers: “aural sculptures” by Andy Partridge inspired by the strange science fiction art of Richard M Powers.

La Paresse (Laziness) (1924) by George Barbier.

• Lautréamont’s poison-drenched pages. Roger Cardinal reviews a new edition of Les Chants de Maldoror and Poésies.

• The Wire‘s Top 50 Rhythms of All Time, a list from 1992. Some great recommendations but it’s impossible to imagine that being written now without a mention of Klaus Dinger. And where’s Fela Kuti?

• The Wire Salon at Cafe Oto, London, on August 5th presents Rob Young discussing his forthcoming book, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music.

• American Pictorial Photography, 1912–1955. Another astonishing picture set at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

• The Beats: Pictures of a Legend. Edmund White on a new exhibition of Allen Ginsberg’s photographs. Related: the trailer for Howl.

• The Dream Machine is a point-and-click adventure game made using hand-crafted animation.

• Fuck yeah Francisco Lachowski: Brazilian model cutie has many Tumblr fans.

• Polly Morgan’s wings of desire. The taxidermy artist interviewed.

• Thomas Dolby’s solar-powered boat studio.

• Rückstoss Gondoliere (1971) by Kraftwerk: pt. 1 | pt. 2