Filed under: Culture / Featured / Pop-culture / Theory
March 8, 2010A brief excursion into the muddy waters of Urban Exploration, where actions have no consequences and chronic community-driven denial somehow managed to both kill the curiosity of the audience – as well as the cat.
The revenge of rural politics, some dead wolves and a whole lot of explaining covered in an unsavoury, layered cake of lies, mistrust, disinformation and sheer nationwide hatred make up the ingredients for this pretty, modern little fairytale of how the hunter set out for the kill of his life.
Filed under: Culture / Featured / Pop-culture / Theory
January 19, 2010What happens when the denizens of the internet confuse learning with the fast-paced, picnoleptic state of browsing for real learning? These are some notes and thoughts on why tribal learning is indeed a poor idea for advancing a modern society.
It is truly remarkable, and a sign of the progression of ages, that whenever we speak of rock music we see it as a profound expression of western thinking and culture. Remarkable in the sense that rock music (and its derivatives) owes its roots to Africa, and is in structure essentially a form of noise – where truly western, in the sense of European, music strives to eliminate as much noise as possible in both instrument and lyrics. It amuses me no end that some cultures see rock music as the pinnacle threat set upon them by the west.
A discussion regarding any new technology, including the subject of e-book readers, is incomplete without what Neil Postman once brought into the theory of evolving societies: What is apparent yet overlooked whenever we bring new technology into play is that the one-eyed prophets of technological invention rush into things with their aim set on what the new toy can do – while completely forgetting what it may undo.
Not that long ago I stumbled onto a blogpost by one of the leading (not my words) Swedish authorities on… Well. Everything digital really. He published a quick number on the future of readingpads, like Amazon’s Kindle, say. He prophecied that it would surely make the most wanted christmas gift of the 2010. But. What to expect from a tech savvy blog but evangelism, right?
Filed under: Crowdfunding / Culture / Featured / Theory
November 18, 2009Crowdsourcing, or crowding, is the popular term for creating things together, usually with the net as hub. The process is mediated by the vast amount of collaborate, sociodynamically instituted tools available to the general public. Of late, we’re being led to believe that this process is the panaceum for all of those pesky creative ills we’ve all been waiting for.
Filed under: Art / Culture / Featured / Pop-culture / Theory
November 13, 2009Given the modern trends in media, and for intents and purposes, academia (much the same thing, really) – the modern art critic has turned into the obedient soldier of whatever politically correct trend currently prevails. These advance patrols of unreason will typically establish all art as a function of gender, race and class.
Scanning recently published books, and in particular those written by debutant authors is usually a discomforting task. Thin storylines, vague characterisation or downright abuse of language (and not in any creative sense) is par. Will time iconise these works just like they did with the works of the Beat generation? Ginsberg, Burroughs.
Filed under: Featured / Introspection / Music / Theory
October 29, 2009By chance, or RSS, I can upon an interview by my long standing favorite, David Sylvian. Having recently released the much-debated record, “Manafon”, he explains in a precise yet leisurely manner his view on his own work.
Filed under: Featured / Film / Pop-culture
October 26, 2009Upon hearing that Michael Mann was in the process of filming Bryan Burroughs work, “Americas greatest criminals wave and the birth of the FBI, 1933-43″ I began to envision the birth of yet another revamped Miami Vice, just rewound eighty years or so to the great depression bankrobber era of the twenties and thirties.
This will make no sense to you unless you also happen to be able to read Swedish.
Many of my peers, the postmodern internet social media professionals, inasmuch as they can be labelled like that, seem to looking so deep into the social media bucket that they are at risk of losing focus on the matter at hand.
What should have been a brief essay on why exactly it is that I find functionalism such a debasing and human-loathing structure turned into a comparison of polish and american movie posters. Polish poster art has always been a very different ballgame.
Filed under: Crowdfunding / Featured / Film
June 10, 2009You may or may not have heard of ThePact. But you will. Eventually. In a nutshell, the project is all about producing, shooting and funding a crowdsourced horrorfilm. Given the changes that the movie industry is struggling with, these guys may have bet their money (or rather, are asking you to bet them) on the right horse.
Filed under: Featured
April 19, 2009Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really.
There’s an article I’ve been wanting to write for a very long time. The title was supposed to go along the lines of “In defence of Fantasy Literature”. Luckily, I googled it before I wrote it. It already exists – in several better or less well written versions.
Filed under: Featured
February 19, 2009Ok. Fine. So I started out making a simple reading log for myself. I struggled with not letting my thoughts contaminate the purity of the idea. And I lost. So there. Here are the random thoughts, the snippets, the semibiographical entries.
After having finished the omnipresent (and rightly so) Farseer and Tawny Man-trilogies I was left with the unfortunate task of having to find another decent fantasy read. Just browsing the recommended books via Amazon really doesn’t cut it anymore. Perhaps the American taste is so watered down that the audiences seem to be satisfied with [...]