Yhancik Magazine

Zombie movies always (or, say, often) take place in an alternate reality where zombie movies don't exist.


Corollary: since we have zombie movies, we're not in a zombie movie ?

Two weeks ago I went to Brussels' Contemporary Art Fair, and the alarming high number of blingified objects (golden skate board, hand grenade encrusted with Swarovski crystals, golden steel shed, etc) brought Damien Hirst back to my mind. Not that I had really forgotten him, unfortunately.. it was more a form of denial ;p

Anyway this also brought me back to the Stuckists.
I had already stumbled on their wikipedia page in the past, but didn't really took time to read their stuff. Now I have (a bit).
They could be reduced to "anti-YBAs", but it's a little more than that.

I quite enjoyed reading their Critique of Damien Hirst, and I'd love to share it with you. So I'll paste it here to avoid you the inconvenience of clicking a link.

In the 19th century, the art establishment was sure of its greatness. Critics, artists, collectors and curators agreed that the standards they proclaimed were of great art and would endure. They were wrong.

The current art establishment is likewise sure of its greatness. Critics, artists, collectors and curators agree that the standards they proclaim are of great art and will endure. They are also wrong.

The fact that this current establishment is only open to those who put themselves forward as anti-establishment is its truest irony.

In fact, the career of Damien Hirst, its most successful proponent, was launched by advertising mogul Charles Saatchi's invention of YBAs rather as one might launch a new product such as a jar of coffee.

Art, to have value, must have meaning and the first person to experience this is its creator. This is why an artist such as Vincent Van Gogh could endure hardships of poverty and obscurity.

It is inconceivable, on the other hand, that anyone would spend 20 years pickling sheep for the sheer love of it. This is because the primary motivation of such work is not its intrinsic worth but its employment as a commodity and for the celebrity status it brings its manufacturer.

Hirst's best known work is a tiger shark in a tank of formaldehyde. It is titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. This purports to address a profound issue but renders its author not an artist but a cumbersome poet with a rather excessive visual aid.

A major current critical fallacy is to assume that the display of an object, which is an intrinsic part of an experience, in any way interprets a theme or deals with the issue of that experience.

A dead shark displayed as an art work does not tell us anything about death (or for that matter about sharks) that we would not know through the ordinary experience of seeing a dead shark, completely regardless of its art context.

A dead shark in a tank of formaldehyde does not address the issue of death: it is just dead. The only possible comment that it makes is that to be dead is like being in a contemporary art gallery.

Though best known for his installations, Hirst also paints. His spin-paintings are produced by pouring paint on a spinning canvas; his dot-paintings are rows of randomly coloured dots. This mechanical method of painting is said to mirror the processes of contemporary society.

Thus again we find a direct equivalent to Victorian academia, whose sentimental, moralising genre pieces did exactly the same for their age. The fact that Hirst's work does mirror society is not its strength but its weakness - and the reason it is guaranteed to decline artistically (and financially) as current social modes become outmoded.

What Hirst has insightfully observed of his spin-paintings in Life and Death and Damien Hirst is the only comment that needs to be made of his entire oeuvre: 'They're bright and they're zany - but there's fuck all there at the end of the day.'

Billy Childish and Charles Thomson
Co-founders of the Stuckist Art Group
December 2000
from http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/H/hirst/against.html

In the same spirit, you can have a look at their A Dead Shark Isn't Art (they DO love Damien, don't they ?). Then read their manifesto, that I certainly don't fully embrace, but still find incredibly refreshing !

As mentioned earlier :

It's the year 2008 and we keep getting closer to that future.

Here's the cute Nexi :





And the creepy, helpless, black tighted Big Dog (that looks more like a huge insect to me)

Ou plutôt Sie Sie Sie Sie Sie Youtuben ?

Non mais... y'a donc sur le site précité des vidéos de Louis de Funès en Allemand...
ça prend un certain relief :p



( Mais aussi, par exemple... )

We're living exciting times !



MC Hammer just launched his (mostly hip-hop) dance video sharing website. Some kind of HammerTube, except it's called DanceJam.

Talking about youtube, they're currently beta-testing a new "personalised page", a bit like iGoogle
http://www.youtube.com/iyt
IYT for iYouTube, I suppose :p

Using recorded brainwave activity and eye movements during REM sleep to determine robot behaviors and head positioning, "Sleep Waking" acts as a way to "play-back" dreams. Through this piece we hope to investigate one of the possible human-robot relationships.

Read more on that at wmmna.

Dreams are an interesting subject. Because when you're sleeping, you go totally out of control. And your brain tricks you into an alternate reality.



I still hope for a dreams recording machine, how risky it could be :p

~

In a closer future, i wish i could get one of those



and experiment with brainwaves :p

it really works... kind of...

If you liked Crayon Physics, you're gonna love Phun

Ooops...

In this period between Carnival & Lent/Spring/Easter, many towns in Belgium have those folkloristic processions to celebrate the dead of winter, many of them involving the execution of a personified Mr Winter or Mr Everything-Bad.

In the town of Émines, those executioners are dressed in a medieval fashion, with a white gown and a cone hat. As the origin is uncertain (at least to me :p), it's the same attire than those guys from the Klan.



So on Sunday, a woman of african extraction, unaware of the local traditions, was, understandably, rather surprised, if not shocked, to see those guys walking around in white nazareno. That's a kulture shock for you ;)

Of course she had to call the police and fill a complaint.
"She explained that she saw KKK people, walking freely, and openly affirming their ideology".

Now I understand well that she can be sensible to the matter, but running to the police wasn't maybe the best thing to do. And add to that the two major anti-racism associations that she contacted, and will also have to tell her "but errr.. you know... errr.. it wasn't really the KKK".

And actually since when does the KKK burn poorly crafted (white!) snowmen ?


See, the bastard is even smiling.




[update] It's unrelated, but it's a good one too : "Israeli MP blames quakes on gays".

"We are looking for earthly solutions, how to prevent them," Benizri said. "I have another way to prevent earthquakes. The Gemara says that one of the reasons earthquakes happen - which the Knesset legitimizes - is homosexuality."

Earthly solutions, he said. ROFLOL!


"God says you shake your genitals where you are not supposed to and I will shake my world in order to wake you up".

Keep that in mind the next time you shake your genitals in a potentially inappropriate place, people!

Let's start with Wizkid, the expressive computer-robot.


It will be shown at the MOMA, as part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition (which sounds pretty interesting, but also very far from home :p).

~

Let's jump back in time. Starfire, a vision of future computing, by Bruce Tognazzini.
"In 1992, I launched a project at Sun Microsystems in an effort to both predict and guide the future of computing. It drew together the talents of more than 100 engineers, designers, futurists, and filmakers."

"Starfire, the Movie, showing a day in the life of a knowledge worker in the far-off distant year, 2004."



It needs a contemporary, creepy (or creepier) retro-futuristic remake :p


Or maybe we already have it...



See : Windows Xp - Media Center Edition



~



( blablabla... )

"robot drummer version 2
controlled with ableton live via a proxy program that converts midi data to serial data that is sent into the arduino controlling the actual robot."
by jörg piringer


do you remember



?

If you remember the cover album meme (title from a random wikipedia album, picture from flickr, etc..).

Here's an automatic generator : http://thesurrealist.co.uk/album

It will generate the cover, and even the track titles

My band is Big 12 Conference and our new album is Cypriot Turkish.

1. Jersey cricket team
2. Mark Avsec
3. Sathya Sai Baba movement
4. Parathesis congesta  <- this has to be an Autechre track :p
5. Manzhouli Airport
6. Hampton Bridge
7. Business broker
8. Eagleville Bridge
9. Death of a Salesman
10. Hailey Wojcik
11. Enemy Territory
12. Jonathan Walasiak
13. Bakunawa
14. Viscount Bangor
15. ROTFLOL

This was autogenerated from random Wikipedia article names. Get your own Wikipedia Album.

Do you remember Farfour, the mickey-clone from the children's program of the official Hamas television station ? And how he got killed ?

Well obviously since then, he was replaced by Nahoul* the bumblebee.
^* Michel Nahoul ? :p

Who died too. And is now replaced by Assoud.

Assoud, a rabbit, is actually Nahoul's brother. And yes, like Farfour, they have human parents. Mmmkay.


Notice Hello Kitty, Snoopy or Winnie the Pooh in the background

By the voice, I suspect it is the same actor in a different costume, but don't tell that to the children. Or do, actually.

Jeez...

There is something about this retrofuturistic, somethingpunk, ghostly apparition




and 80s Max Headroom




( or, to a lesser extend, 90s Shodan )


But then, I can't help thinking about Granular~Synthesis' Modell 5


[quicktime]


I can't yet figure out The key concept that makes me both interested in those, and relating them.

There's something on technology, the history of technology, the aesthetic of technology, futurism, retro-futurism, science-fiction, nostalgia, artificial intelligence, artificial, humans, robots, dishumanity.
Something about Today's Possibilities VS Yesterday's Dreams VS Today's Limitations.


( I could go on... )

It's M A G I C !
from this fantastic Waxy post on oscilloscopes