It should be as easy to get from a track in iTunes to a webpage related to that track as it is to get an mp3 on the web into iTunes in the first place: it should only take one click. It would also be really easy to accomplish. If there was a “URL” item in the id3 tags, iTunes could then use it to provide links to the web. Bands and podcast-makers could fill these in with their homepages or pages specific to each track. If empty, the links could be auto-populated with the page from which the download originated by iTunes itself.

With podcast subscription capability soon to come it seems inevetiable that iTunes will become more and more connected to the web. The process began when it became a user agent in the first place in order to implement the Music Store. And this seems like a pretty obvious next step.

Note: It’s not nearly as good as Apple doing it, but this would probably be pretty easy to implement hackishly right now via an iTunes plugin that searched the song’s comment field for a valid url and then added an “open link in browser” item to its contextual menu.

Tagged: itunes, mp3, music, podcast, id3, tags, metadata, url, apple

Anyone who’s ever taken or taught an art class knows that art education is at best more complicated than other kinds of organized learning. James Elkins, a brilliant art historian and professor of visual theory at the Art Institute of Chicago has even convincingly argued that Art Cannot Be Taught at all. I think that one of the reasons for this difficulty, at least in serious college and graduate level art education, has to do with the emphasis on teaching students how to talk about their work and evaluating them on how well they do so.

In a talk on Human Nature he gave at Pop! Tech 2004, Malcolm Gladwell told the story of a sociology experiment in which college students were given free posters to put up in their dorm rooms. In exchange, the students had to agree to live with the posters on their walls for three months. The students were divided into two groups. The first group was sent alone into the room with the potential posters, told to pick whatever poster they wanted, and take it home. The second group was given the same instructions with the addition that, before taking their poster home, they had to explain why they picked it.

When the three months were up, it turned out that the students in the first group still liked their posters. They’d largely picked reproductions of impressionist paintings and suchlike. The second group, who had to explain why they liked the posters they were taking, hated them, couldn’t wait to take them down. They’d chosen hang-in-there-kitty-style inspirationals and pictures of sunsets. In other words, they’d chosen posters for which they could easily explain their affinity: ‘it’s pretty’, ‘it’s happy’. Having to articulate their reasons for liking something had changed their criteria for choosing from whether or not they liked it to whether or not they could think of something to say about it, two criteria between which there is no strong reason to expect a correlation.

I think something very similar happens in most art education. As a student, you make work with a giant neon “Why?” hovering over your shoulder, always thinking about how you’ll explain the things you make, communicate their meaning, in critiques and artist statements, and residency applications. The skill you master is being able to make work about which you are good at talking. This is not the same as mastering the ability to make work the even you like, let alone anyone else. I am very good at talking about working as a waiter at a a french dessert shop, but that doesn’t mean that working there is the thing I most enjoy doing.

In the real art world, the artists that succeed are not necessarily the ones that are best at explaining why they make the things they do. Often times they are the ones who either are completely incapable of talking insightfully about their own work or intransigently refuse to do so, Jackson Pollack or Mathew Barney. The division of labor is split between people who make work that is liked (artists) and people who eplain why we like the work we do (critics). In my own experience both as an art student and an avid amateur, I’ve found that the items amongst my own work that I like best in the long run are the ones that just pop into my head as things I’d like to see rather than well-thought out concepts about what would make good or, even worse, interesting or meaningful work.

I’m not trying to advocate for unfiltered stream-of-consciousness in art making or the power of intuition or anything like that. The issue is simply articulability: there is plenty of good art that for which there is no pre-existing pitch and for which had the artist tried to come up with one, they could never have made the work. As Gladwell so effectively points out, one of the biggest obstacles to knowing what things we actually like are the things we think we like or those think we should.

Tagged: Malcolm Gladwell, art, education, criticisim, James Elkins, human nature, intuition

He’s always written. Fiction, movie reviews, essays, whatever is on his mind. He’s got one almost finished novel, one completely finished one, and enough insight squirelled away in old Word Perfect documents to make a Borenstein Reader not the worst buy in the college bookstore. He’s been a defense attorney for more than thiry years from the Manson case through countless death penalty defenses and a successful argument in front of the California supreme court. One of the things he writes about is the law.

But he’s never really had a public venue for any of it, so he wanted a blog. I helped him set one up on Blogger with the name he had all picked out for it: Borenstein’s Law. Then months passed with no posts. I subscribed to the feed, but it stayed empty, until today.

I am not my dad’s most generous critic — he gives me his fiction to read and it starts fights — but I have to say that this first essay is terrific. It takes on one of the central questions raised by his substantial experience in the criminal justice system, as he puts it, “Why our clients act the way they do?” Another way to say that would be: What is the origin of crime? A tough, if not outright intransigent topic that he takes on with clarity, insight, and, hard as it is for me to believe, wit.

So what’s his answer to the question? I’ll let him tell it:

It boils down to what I have called Borenstein’s Law: our clients are more likely than others to act in ways contrary to their best interests. That is how they have become our clients and that is why they often lose their cases, and come to a bitter end.

And in reality, most of us have acted impulsively against our best interests at one time or another. Mostly, we get away with it. Drink and drive, unsafe sex, cheat on exams. Adolescence would not be worthy of the name without these “experiments.” An athlete endangers career and the millions that he dreamed of and worked for all his life in order to get high with the homies. A man risks love, family, security for a fling. He might even lose the presidency over it.

Which brings us to a deeper question: why don’t our clients learn from their bad experiences with the law? Why aren’t they deterred by terrible consequences they know or should know are to come from misbehavior?

He proceeds to wrestle vigorously with these questions, but you the value of his perspective is plain: it lets you see people who commit even the most heinous crimes as human. Not with condescending pity or righteous anger, but with mundane compassion.

I don’t know how many readers he’ll end up with, but as for me, I’m hooked.

Tagged: borenstein, law, california, supreme, court, death, penalty, defense, attorney

All three of us walked out of the movie thinking it was “pretty good” and feeling a sweeping sense of delight (relief?) totally out of proportion to the movie’s quality. Our hopes have gotten so low for these kind of high rent summer ‘event’ movies that seeing one that plain doesn’t suck exceeds expectations. The Daredevils, Electras, and Catwomen have really done a number on us.

I started reminiscing for the days when summer blockbusters seemed fresh, even exciting, or at least yielded even the most occasional surprise or variation in the formula. We tried to make a list of ‘interesting’ or ‘mold-breaking’ blockbusters and we got as far as putting Jurassic Park, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and The Blair Witch Project up as candidates before diverting into a discussion about the definition of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Now, with some more reflection, I think I can make a stab at explaining what’s caused this case of Blockbuster Fatigue of which our perverse over-enjoyment of Batman Begins seems to be symptomatic. I think it may have been The Trilogies. Star Wars: Episode I, with its almost endless avalanche of hype came out in 1999 and the Sith are still in the final throes of acheiving their Revenge as I write this, six years later. In those six years, the three Star Wars movies and the three Lord of the Rings movies earned a total of almost 5.2 billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales (with people still tearing Sith stubs at this very moment), putting all six movies in the top 25 all-time money earners (Episode 3’s gross, not yet on that list since it’s still going strong, is here) and accounting for almost five percent of total US domestic ticket sales during that period.

Basically, the story is that Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have sucked up all of the oxygen in the blockbuster stratosphere for the last six years leaving the aesthetics of these movies exactly where they were before The Trilogies appeared, only more atrophied, barely breathing. The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter aside (both are slightly choppy seas on the far edge of The Trilogies’ sunami), Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are what scientists call a ‘non-repeating phenomenon’, which means something extraordinary and unexplainable that we’re unlikely to see again.

When you subtract The Trilogies from the equation, the evolution of the Blockbuster Industrial Complex makes a lot more sense. In the late nineties, it had found the Comic Book movie as a kind of stable platform and formula on which blockbusters could be based and made sustainable (through sequels and slight variations on successful formulae), rationalizing what had, up to that point been the frightening purview of a small number of 800 pound industry gorillas (Stephen Spielberg and James Cameron) and incomprehensible grass roots media trends (The Blair Witch Project). Hollywood — being, after all, a bank — looks for predictability. It breaks new ground (or watches someone else do it) and then rapidly moves with formulae and franchises to protect it and monetize its every available inch. In the process it wears ideas out of their freshness. Formulas become cliches. Franchises get stale. Something new comes along.

We have, after all, since Jurassic Park (as good a point as any to mark the beginning of the contemporary blockbuster), had five Batman movies, two X-Men movies, two Spiderman movies, the Matrices, two Daredevil-related movies, the Hulk, and countless more forgetable others (including at least three Blades). We’re right now on the verge of The Fantastic Four and Superman, the father of them all. This formula is stale. Even the best of these movies (like Batman Begins) are so bloodless that they feel more like actual zombies or vampires than any creature from their own genre. And some of them (Daredevil, Electra, Catwoman) have begun to fail at the box office, even with big name stars.

It’s just that because of The Trilogies no one noticed that this blockbuster formula had shriveled up and died and it was time for a new one. Ticket sales were beyond strong (remember, this period we’re talking about is the highest grossing one in the history of movies), the movies were relatively well received critically (at least LoTR was), and seemed full of variety (Wagner in space or in New Zeland or Mutants). Now that they’re gone, though, it feels like we’ve been watching the same mediocre cardboard cutout comic book movie over and over for ten years. Look even at the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton Batman movies. They seem like edgy art films, character studies compared to this new edition, which is amongst the best of this recent batch. Anyway, here’s hoping that it doesn’t take Hollywood too long to unlearn the lesson of the last five years and that we start seeing new kinds of blockbusters, rather than ever-more anemic versions of existing ones, soon.

Tagged: batman, begins, summer, blockbuster, comic, book, movies, star, wars, lord, of, the, rings, jurassic, park, daredevil

Now, I know that this post completes a five-fecta of navel and semi-navel gazing posts about myself and projects I’m involved with, and I’ll be returning to the pretentious and emotionless pseudo-essays you’ve grown to love shortly, but I had to write a brief note about the little show of geek bravado I put on last night.

Friday night, Cary made an idle email suggestion to the PDX Pop organizing group that someone might want to write a Dashboard widget counting down the days to the festival (and bringing you to pdxpopnow.com if you click) as a kind of silly and pointless promotional effort. Having written a Konfabulator widget in the past, this seemed just my speed. Last night, after getting home from work at 3:15am, I jammed for three hours and got it done. Putting together the graphic from a chunk of Tyler‘s design for the PDX Pop ballot took about a half an hour and the rest of the time was spent figuring out a quirk in Dori‘s javascript (Dori is the random stranger on whose Serenity Countdown widget code I based the date math).

By the time everyone else had gotten up in the moring the thing was working. Today, I uploaded it to the PDX Pop Now! website and submitted it to Apple for inclusion on their Dashboard download page. And now I’m proud to say you too can download the Totally Unnecessary PDX Pop Now! 2005 Countdown Widget. I just checked it for the first time after midnite on a day not the one on which I wrote it and. . .It still seems to work.

Tagged: pdxpop, dashboard, widget, countdown, portland, oregon, music, festival

Today, I realized that there’ve been a bunch of really exciting things happening for Disjecta that I hadn’t mentioned on here and so thought I would do a little survey of recent advancements.

If you haven’t heard of it before, Disjecta was a gallery and performance space in Northeast Portland for the last four years. It hosted some of the best contemporary art in town during that period. Also, during its run, its staff helped put on The Modern Zoo, a temprary large scale exhibition of 125 contemporary Portland and Pacific Northwest artists held in the summer of 2003 in 120,000 square feet of wharehouse space in the St. John’s neighborhood of Portland.

Late last year, Disjecta’s space in Northeast Portland closed down due to a change in the building’s ownership and Disjecta director Bryan Suereth, along with long time collaborators Sonya Masinovsky and Paul Mittendorf, began planning to expand Disjecta into a professional mid-level arts institution, the first of its kind in the city.

I have been part (to differing degrees) of the effort to acheive just that since last fall. Lately with the rise of PDXPop, I’ve had less time to spend on Disjecta and so have had to watch the project’s recent successes in delight, if from afar.

The big goal for Disjecta all since about December been to raise enough money to sign a lease to occupy the Templeton builing, an historical building that occupies the first frontage on the eastside of the Burnside bridge in the center of Portland. After a somewhat difficult time getting started with organizing and fundraising (including doing setup work such as applying for 501(c)3 nonprofit status), Disjecta’s staff, pulled off the coup of convincing the building’s landlord to give them access to it for three weeks in order to show what they will be able to accomplish if their fundraising efforts do succeed. We are right in the middle of the first week of the occupation and what they’ve accomplished turns out to be pretty impressive.

They’ve arranged a truly staggering number of art events including exhibitions by Mary Mattingly and Theo Angell, a concert featuring Tara Jane O’Neil and the Get Hustle, and an art auction hosted by local art impresario AC Dickson and city coucilor Sam Adams.

The quality of these events has been widely acknowledged in the local press. Today, OPB Radio ran an interview with Bryan. This past weekend, the Oregonian Lifestyle section ran a feature on the project and the Mercury put it on the cover.

Now, whether the whole thing becomes a reality or not just depends on if all of this attention can be transmuted into gold before the month runs out. So, get down there and take a look at this vision of what the city’s artistic future could be like while it lasts. And bring your friends with deep pockets with you so that it will.

Tagged: Portland, Disjecta, art, contemporary, OPB, Mercury, Oregonian

In addition to hosting great blogs, they just finished the first season of their smash hit “reality blogging competition,” The Ultimate Blogger. UltBlo was funny and irreverent as well as involving and compelling, something few reality TV shows acheive. The competition sparked a log of interest across the net and deserved every character of it.

I’ll provide more information about the timing and details of the switch-over when I know them.

Tagged: UrbanHonking, blog, Ultimate Blogger, UrHo, UltBlo, IDFDZ

Also, there’s a great little blurb about the festival and compilation in Pitchfork. Since we started this thing at about the peak of its hipness arc, getting mentioned on there has always been a kind of goal for us, and it feels really satisfying and reassuring to hit that landmark just as we’re really getting into gear on this year’s festival.

Now, go vote!

Tagged: pdxpop, portland, oregon, music, Pitchfork, compilation, indie, rock, free

After much waiting, ear bleeding, hair pulling, and paperworking, the 2005 PDXPOP Now! compilation has finally gone off to the duplicator and printer. As with any process like this, there was a lot of great music that didn’t make it and not every track on there is for everyone, but I think the overall level of quality and divsersity of stlye is pretty amazing.

Also I’m totally in love with the album art (the image here is the cover) by Portland’s own Tyler Stout

So check out the list, keep an eye on the PDXPOP Now! website for upcoming announcements, including a release date for the CD (we’re gonna have a party!) and the bill for the festival. Enjoy!

An asterisk denotes a previously unreleased track.

Disc One

• “Rollercoaster” – Sleater-Kinney
• “I’m So Low” – The Minders*
• “While We Have The Sun (4-track home)” – Mirah*
• “Pile of Gold” – The Blow*
• “Uh-Oh” – Nice Nice
• “To Destruction” – Dolorean
• “Radio Radio” – Swords
• “Clawz” – Please Step Out of the Vehicle*
• “Second Sickness” – Desert City Soundtrack
• “Evil Falls” – Holy Sons*
• “Windows & Walls” – Modern State
• “Daydreams With Daffodils (Stepperz Remix)” – YACHT*
• “Lovin’ Machine” – Glass Candy
• “No Sound” – 31 Knots
• “Just Expect” – Copy*
• “Why’d You Have to Die?” – Toothfairy*
• “Descender” – Point Line Plane
• “These Trees Are For Resting” – Alan Singley
• “Mountaintops in Caves” – Talkdemonic
• “Chemical Reaction” – Spooky Dance Band

Disc Two

• “Alive With Pleasure” – Viva Voce
• “It’s Over” – The Gossip*
• “God and Country (live)” – The Thermals*
• “A Plague Upon the White House” – Blues Goblins*
• “Sista Social Theme Song” – Menomena*
• “Gore Appeal” – Die Monitr Batss
• “To An Angel on No Condition” – Lkn
• “The Untold Story” – Myg feat. Mikah 9, Sleep*
• “Hi-Fi” – M. Ward
• “Emma” – Sexton Blake
• “Smallest Man” – Sunset Valley*
• “Move your Body” – The Snuggle Ups*
• “Freilechs Von Der Chuppe” – Shicky Gnarowitz and the Transparent Wings of Joy*
• “Laughing Gasping” – Wet Confetti*
• “What We’ll Admit” – Jessica Jones
• “I Am the Only Master of the Ten-Key” – Binary Dolls
• “Cardboard Box” – Point Juncture, WA
• “A Gilded Age” – Norfolk & Western
• “Homebody” – Cajun Gems
• “All of These Things” – The Helio Sequence*
• “From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea) (Demo)” – The Decemberists*

Tagged: PDXPOP, Portland, music, compilation, Tyler Stout, CD

The films of the PES animation collective profoundly excel in this second aspect. They make short witty stop motion films that tightly intertwine their materials with their subject matter, often in breatakingly surprising ways.

For example, in Kaboom, they give us a skyline made of oil cans, salt and pepper shakers, trophies, drill bits, tea balls, and old fashioned razors. The surrounding city grid is perfectly implied by loaded circuit boards. When the (peanut shell) bomb lands, shiny spherical Chrismas ornaments make for an especially cheery explosion. Rendering skyscrapers and bomb blasts with such transient and informal objects is a perfect match for the movie’s apocalyptic narrative since it both underlines the fragility of even large scale human endeavors and simultaneously adds an irony of underemphasis to the destruction of the city, transforming it into a child’s trashing of his model town.

This obsession with toys and brightly-colored baubles, is especially evident in another film, Fireworks.

This film follows the progression of a fuse setting off fireworks-launching coin wrappers whose amunition explodes into concentric bursts of children’s candy and shiny change. At the start, two back-to-back yellow and orange candy corns make for a highly believable lighter’s flame. The materials make physical the childlike wonder we feel at fireworks while playing with their sentimental and nostalgic resonances.

A third film, Wild Horses Redux (originally made as an ad for Nike), uses this material intelligence to explore classic themes of the Uncanny.

The film shows a team of toy football players stampeding across a furry landscape before passing through an opening into a cave with walls of meat (tunnels constantly recur in PES’s films) before exiting back into the landscape and disappearing into the distance as the slogan “made to move” fades up along with the Nike “swoosh.” All of the material choices, from the people represented by dolls (Hans Bellmer) to the furry ground with its exposed fleshy interior (Meret Oppenheim), use classic surrealist strategies for creating an Uncanny confusion between human and animal, living and inanimate. The frozen plastic football team rumbles like a herd of animals while the meat inside the cave implies that the whole landscape is itself a (formerly) living thing. All of these factors combine to create a confusion between a football game and a primal animalistic charge, which exactly fits Nike’s larger branding aesthetic.

PES’s films tend to last exactly long enough for you to notice what everything in them is made of and no longer (with the exception of Pee-nut, which rambles on trying to wring something more out of what is essentially a bawdy one-liner). Although this short format perfectly suits their reliance on these rich uses of materials, it would be exciting to see PES try to sustain a more complex story over a longer film, using multiple environments and sets of materials. With the right subject matter, PES could make a film that would find a place alongside The Triplets of Belleville in the growing niche in mainstream moviegoing for quirky and independent animation.

(via MeFi)

Tagged: PES, animation, stop motion, Nike, short, film