February 2012
3 posts
THINK OF ME AS EVIL? by Jon Alexander →
Interesting report on advertising and its effects. Is ubiquity the new exclusivity? Does advertising merely redistribute consumption? Is advertising simply a mirror of cultural values? Is advertising purely about the promotion of choice? Is advertising evil, useless or just out of control?
What happened to the social contract? [time to re-read some Jean-Jacques Rousseua] Why can’t we opt...
1 tag
2 tags
THE NEW BLEAK: Trauma, haunting and the cultural... →
A brilliant piece on why so much of the music we listen to is so bleak by Ryan Diduck via The Quietus.
January 2012
2 posts
“Increasingly, our concepts of past, present and future are being forced to...”
– JG Ballard Introduction to CRASH, 1995
December 2011
3 posts
WatchHXM + HNY
“My own area of research relates to what might be called ‘design with intent’,...”
– Dan Lockton in Ballardian. J.G. Ballard & Architectures of Control (via protoslacker)
November 2011
2 posts
1 tag
An erotic deficit in digital communicative culture
I found this in an issue of The Wire Magazine in which Mark Fisher reviews Rustie’s new Glass Swords album.
“An analogy can be drawn here between this artificial inflation of culture and internet pornography and Viagra; they dispense with seduction and aim directly at pleasure. The Italian theorist Franco Berardi has argued that such phenomena have grown in popularity because of an...
October 2011
4 posts
On acid - A field guide to altered states →
A critical geneaology of psychadelic culture by the uber talented William Rauscher. Go buy and learn something new. Plus he has 1,000 of them in his kitchen and he needs to make some room so he can cook dinner.
What we love will ruin us
Foreword to “Amusing Ourselves to Death; Public Discourse in the age of Show Business”
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. the roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had...
September 2011
3 posts
Marketing tat and why you are doing more harm than...
Working in a media & comms. agency I get sent ALOT of marketing tat. Branded pencils, notepads, absolutely shitloads of calendars (seriously I have no room left on my desk for all the calendars I get sent), mousemats, more calendars, usb sticks (I’m thinking of starting a USB stick stall on Camden Market as I have a carrier bag full), etc etc etc I’ve no idea why this stuff gets...
Ryan Gander's The Locked Room Scenario and why it...
Ryan Gander. The Locked Room Scenario. The Fielding Gallery. Hoxton.
As we wander up to the front door the strange blue fur in the skip catches my eye. This might be important I think. We open the door of the building and are confronted by litter strewn steps and two moody hipster teenagers. The girl is doodling in a book. She’s drawn a horse. Is this important?
We wander through an...
August 2011
17 posts
“The past has taken the place of the future in people’s imagination.”
– Simon Reynolds
12 tags
Generation F*cked →
“How Britain is eating its young” Adbusters piece by Maria Hampton.
“Everyone looks for meaning in their lives - all they find is shopping.”
Apophenia
Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data
The USP vs. The MSP
“The Unique Selling Proposition (a.k.a. Unique Selling Point, or USP) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to explain a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brands.”
Me and Sam D. were talking the other day about how the USP...
“Two hours (work) in the late morning, two in the early afternoon, followed by a...”
– http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2929/the-art-of-fiction-no-85-j-g-ballard
July 2011
7 posts
June 2011
8 posts
The ghost of Cobain returns to haunt us
It has been confirmed that Nirvana’s Reading 1992 live set will be broadcast on the Alternative stage at the Reading and Leeds festivals this year via a video screen.
http://www.gigwise.com/news/64467/Nirvanas-1992-Headline-Show-To-Be-Screened-At-Reading-And-Leeds-Festival
I’m currently reading RETROMANIA by Simon Reynolds. The premise is around culture (specifically music...
2 tags
White Car : Empty City →
New jam from one of my favourite bands White Car from their new TOMBS OF TRANSITION cd-r Available here http://white-car.net/. Limited edition of 25 with art print.
I remember talking to James Ford from Simian Mobile Disco last year about how the music industry could end up pulling apart into two extremes. Mass and niche. Instead of the long tail and a gradual curve and decay it will become...
The art of Throbbing Gristle →
Throbbing Gristle: Extreme but beautiful industrialism from the 70s and 80s - from the noize of Discipline to the beauty of Hot On The Heels Of Love. A time when buying one of their releases came with footnotes that took you in search of art and literature as reference points rather than the modern music 2 music referencing. Art and music. 20Jazzfunkgreats is STILL one of the best albums ever...
2 tags
2 tags
The Meccano Grape is born
“I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again … the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul” JG Ballard
The future may well be boring. It’s up to us to make it interesting. Here on The Meccano Grape...