August242008
Lord of the Memes (exerpt)
By David Brooks. Published in NYT August 7, 2008. ….On or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone.
On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.
Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)
Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.
This transition has produced some new status rules. In the first place, prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever. Maximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem — Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc.
These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples.
Second, in order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.
When you first come across some obscure cultural artifact — an unknown indie band, organic skate sneakers or wireless headphones from Finland — you will want to erupt with ecstatic enthusiasm. This will highlight the importance of your cultural discovery, the fineness of your discerning taste, and your early adopter insiderness for having found it before anyone else.
Then, a few weeks later, after the object is slightly better known, you will dismiss all the hype with a gesture of putrid disgust. This will demonstrate your lofty superiority to the sluggish masses. It will show how far ahead of the crowd you are and how distantly you have already ventured into the future.
If you can do this, becoming not only an early adopter, but an early discarder, you will realize greater status rewards than you ever imagined. Remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upsmanship is forever.
Irony
One might think that the state which houses the CDC might have a better monitoring system…One might also think that pulling state funding from monitoring of an infectious disease isn’t really a great incentive for states to improve reporting.
From NYT August 23, 2008
8 States Cut From System That
Tracks Rate of H.I.V.
By SHAILA DEWAN
ATLANTA — Eight states and Puerto Rico will no longer receive federal money for an advanced H.I.V. monitoring system that showed that the annual infection rate in the nation was 40 percent higher than previously estimated, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
The change will lower the number of jurisdictions using the system to 25, from 34, just as health departments are struggling to react to the news, released earlier this month, that the spread of AIDS is far worse than they had thought.
The jurisdictions that lost financing were Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Puerto Rico….(more from NYT)
I didn’t even know what this was until a couple years ago while hanging out with a bunch of people from Kentucky at a random bar somewhere in Pennsylvania…
“Buckhead’s Hole in the Wall seems like any other club made popular over the past 20 years; young women dance around as cheery guys chug the cheap brew. But the real action doesn’t take place on the dance floor. Rather, the biggest draw at Hole in the Wall is, apparently, beer pong—a drinking game that has escaped its frat house confines and taken the mainstream by storm.” Atlanta bars embrace beer pong | AccessAtlanta
flobots - handlebars (dj shadow remix)
Iis slightly better than the original because the beat is more pronounced. (hat tip Getweird)
Plays: 2
Memory is your image of perfection MCASD DOWNTOWN, 1001 KETTNER AUGUST 3, 2008 THROUGH NOVEMBER 30, 2008 This exhibition takes its title from a black-and-white photograph by Barbara Kruger that juxtaposes text and image to call attention to the part played by memory in creating each of our realities. Photography and video are considered means of recording the past and documenting memories. Yet, memories are also constructions that respond to present desires and needs, and as such reflect individual subjectivity. Memory Is Your Image of Perfection presents the work of women artists who, motivated by a feminist disregard for adherence to established models, have exploited the ambiguity of the photographic medium as evidence of a real event or as expression of an individual viewpoint. Works by Eleanor Antin, Uta Barth, Andrea Bowers, Suzanne Lacy, Sharon Lockhart, Ana Machado, and Yvonne Venegas, among others, span the gamut of approaches from straight documentary photography to pieces that record conceptual performances; video and photography that manipulate the physical characteristics of the medium to imply the personal and subjective; and finally to works that apply formal and narrative strategies from mass media, drawing, and painting, and transpose those into photographic forms. The interpretive elements of the exhibition are sponsored, in part, by The Getty Foundation. (via Exhibitions and Permanent Collection
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Play Time (Miki)2008 / Mixed Media on Canvas / 42x30”Play Time (Miki)2008 / Mixed Media on Canvas / Aug. 20-Oct. 6
From: SCAD “Omo-cha Cha Cha Cha” Exhibition by Yoko Iwanaga
Pinnacle Gallery, 320 E. Liberty St., Savannah, Ga.
The exhibitions department presents “Omo-cha Cha Cha Cha” by SCAD alumna Yoko Iwanaga. This series of new multimedia works was inspired by omo-cha, or toys in Japanese. Iwanaga, who believed as a child that each toy had a soul, reflects on her memories by layering abstract representations of her favorite toys with vibrant colors and soft washes over the canvas. These pieces represent a new chapter in Iwanaga’s ongoing series based on childhood memories. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; and Sunday, 1-4 p.m. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
August182008
Confession:
I opened up an employee credit union savings account today (which I probably would have done anyway) because they were giving away free reusable grocery bags and big water bottles with the University logo on them.
Don’t you hate realizing when you’re a cliche’?
Is it just my reading material, or is Steampunk coming up EVERYWHERE lately? I’m starting to really like it…