Bridget St. John :: Paris, 1970
1 hour ago
Friday, 23 September 2011
Erik Spiekermann - Putting Back the Face into Typeface
Typographer, graphic designer and businessman Erik Spiekermann has created timeless, influential and, yes, Meta-physical work over the past three decades.
Next to founding MetaDesign and FontShop, the latter being the first ever digital distributor of fonts, and designing more instant classic typefaces than any other, he has been recognized as an outstanding expert internationally as a lecturer and professor.
Listen to the design genius talk about new visual languages, design processes, the analogies of music and typography, and why we need better client culture in our latest Gestalten.tv video and you will easily realize why. Before heading to new visionary pastures, the bike enthusiast will make a short stop to receive the German Design Lifetime Achievement Award 2011 in February.
Watch our complete line up of video interviews on gestalten.tv
(Thanx Stan!)
Music From Saharan Cellphones
Music from Saharan cellphones is a compilation of music collected from memory cards of cellular phones in the Saharan desert. And it's coming to vinyl.
In much of West Africa, cellphones are are used as all purpose multimedia devices. In lieu of personal computers and high speed internet, the knockoff cellphones house portable music collections, playback songs on tinny built in speakers, and swap files in a very literal peer to peer Bluetooth wireless transfer.
The songs chosen for the compilation were some of the highlights -- music that is immensely popular on the unofficial mp3/cellphone network from Abidjan to Bamako to Algiers, but have limited or no commercial release. They're also songs that tend towards this new world of self production -- Fruityloops, home studios, synthesizers, and Autotune.
In 2010, returning to the states, I released a handful of cassettes. Many of the songs were unlabeled, giving no insight to their mysterious origins. But in the past year I sent out hundreds of emails and calls across six different countries and even returned to West Africa. I've tracked down enough artists and I've got their approval to collaborate on a commercial release.
The cassette was ripped onto the internet and has circulated around the world, featured in the The Guardian, BBC Worldservice, The Fader, Pitchfork, as well as a number of other blogs, but has never had an official release. The vinyl release is a chance for the artists in the compilation to get paid and be properly credited. The record will be accompanied by liner notes with a short bio of each musician and group -- artists from Ivory Coast, Mali, Algeria, and Niger.
The funding makes this release possible -- covering a portion of production costs, mastering, distribution, and payment for the artists.
for more info see:
Music from Saharan Cellphones: Vol 1
Music from Saharan Cellphones: Vol 2Christopher Kirkley @'Kickstarter'
William Gibson: beyond cyberspace
It's nearly 30 years since the word "cyberspace" first appeared in print, in a short story by William Gibson for the July 1982 edition of the now-defunct science fiction magazine Omni. In an interview in this summer's Paris Review, Gibson describes, not for the first time, how he came up with the word: "The first thing I did was to sit down with a yellow pad and a Sharpie and start scribbling – infospace, dataspace. I think I got cyberspace on the third try, and I thought, oh, that's a really weird word. I liked the way it felt in the mouth – I thought it sounded like it meant something while still being essentially hollow." The trajectory from Omni to the Paris Review says less about the way Gibson has changed in the intervening years than about the way science fiction has, both in itself and in terms of its status in the wider culture – in large part thanks to Gibson's nine novels. The last six of them – Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996), All Tomorrow's Parties (1999), collectively known as the Bridge trilogy, Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010) – have recently been reissued by Penguin in a new uniform edition. Gibson's influence is evident in everything from the Matrix movies to Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Good Squad, which won this year's Pulitzer prize for fiction.
Gibson is widely credited with having predicted the rise of the internet, but doesn't himself have any delusions about his prophetic powers. "The record of futurism in science fiction is actually quite shabby," he says in the Paris Review. "Novels set in imaginary futures are necessarily about the moment in which they are written. As soon as a work is complete, it will begin to acquire a patina of anachronism."
Cyberspace, as Gibson imagined it nearly 30 years ago, was – or would be – a realm of total-immersion virtual reality: when Case, the hero of Neuromancer (1984), applies the dermatrodes of his cyberspace deck to his forehead, powers it up and jacks in to the matrix, his "inner eye" sees a "transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity", on which, or in which, is "a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system". The idea came to him from watching kids playing arcade games – "it seemed to me that what they wanted was to be inside the games, within the notional space of the machine" – and an advertisement at a bus stop for Apple computers. "Everyone is going to have one of these, I thought, and everyone is going to want to live inside them. And somehow I knew that the notional space behind all of the computer screens would be one single universe."
In Gibson's most recent novel, Zero History, a thriller set in the here and now, there's a scene in which one of the main characters, Milgrim, is sitting in a hotel lobby in London, "trying to grasp Twitter", which he is supposed to use as a covert and anonymous way of communicating with a US federal agent. "He was registered, now, as GAYDOLPHIN2. No followers, following no one. Whatever that meant. And his updates, whatever those were, were protected." Milgrim's confusion is partly down to his being in recovery from a 10-year addiction to prescription tranquillisers, but everyone – at least, everyone over the age of 12 – who's joined Twitter must have had similar feelings the first time they logged on. The confusion aside, the banality of it all is a very long way from jacking in to the matrix through an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7 deck. "The strongest impacts of an emergent technology are always unanticipated," Gibson says in the interview. "You can't know what people are going to do until they get their hands on it and start using it on a daily basis, using it to make a buck and using it for criminal purposes and all the different things that people do." (Gibson, who tweets as @GreatDismal, came 37th on Time magazine's list of the 140 best Twitter feeds.)
The most striking feature of cyberspace in Neuromancer, however, the most radical way in which it differs from the modern internet, is its textlessness. Case is, or may as well be, illiterate: his skills as a cyberspace "cowboy" don't depend on being able to read. He wouldn't get very far as a hacker these days. The internet, as we now know it, even in the era of YouTube and podcasts, is still heavily text-based and text-dependent. Tweeting not only looks about as low-tech as you can get, it's also all about language. Yet in another sense, Neuromancer's cyberspace is text-based, or text-generated, because Neuromancer is a novel. One of the attractive contradictions of good science fiction is that its speculations about the technology of the future are recorded and transmitted in a medium that's been around for centuries, the old technology looking to the new without either deference or condescension.
Gibson is as interested in old technology – the ways it persists, the ways it becomes obsolete, the ways objects outlast their functions – as he is in the latest gizmo. Zero History's point of view alternates between Milgrim's and Hollis Henry's. Hollis used to be the singer in a band called the Curfew; she's now a freelance writer. She, like Milgrim, first appeared in Gibson's previous novel, Spook Country (2007), in which it's pointed out to her by a Belgian advertising tycoon called Hubertus Bigend that "in the early 1920s … there were still some people in this country who hadn't yet heard recorded music … Your career as a 'recording artist' … took place toward the end of a technological window that lasted less than a hundred years." It finished, Bigend says, once consumers of recorded music were able to produce it themselves.
In Zero History, Hollis and Milgrim visit Paris on assignment for Bigend. He wants to know who's behind an achingly cool, incredibly hard-to-come-by line of clothing. "Gabriel Hounds" is a "secret brand": it has no advertising, no marketing, not even a regular supply chain. Every so often there'll be a small sale at a market in Melbourne or a boutique in Soho, jealously guarded knowledge of which is spread beforehand by word of mouth. It's hardly surprising that Bigend, as an advertising man, should be curious about a brand that's simultaneously so invisible and so sought after. But his interest in Gabriel Hounds may also have something to do with another of his projects: he's thinking about getting involved in supplying the US military with clothing and other kit. And the people whose turf he's muscling in on aren't happy about it.
Bigend's firm, Blue Ant ("We aren't just an advertising agency … We do brand vision transmission, trend forecasting, vendor management, youth market recon, strategic planning in general"), has bought Hollis a Gabriel Hounds denim jacket, for an exorbitant price, from a dealer in Amsterdam. But bribery isn't the reason, or not the main reason, that she's working for him. She also needs the cash, having lost pretty much everything in the credit crunch.
Milgrim, too, works for Bigend because he feels he has no choice. He's been cured of his addiction at an experimental Swiss clinic and given a new set of teeth, all at Bigend's expense but none of it out of the goodness of his heart: for one thing, he was curious to know if the Swiss clinic's methods were effective; for another, Milgrim has a remarkable eye for detail, which Bigend finds useful. In return, Bigend looks after Milgrim and keeps him supplied with his rehab medication.
Bigend makes a habit of recruiting anyone more than half-interesting who crosses his path. In Pattern Recognition, Cayce has been brought to London to give her opinion on a new logo for the world's second best-selling brand of running shoes. She has an unusual gift: she is, for want of a better word, allergic to branding; the stronger the brand, the worse her reaction – the first time she saw the Michelin Man, as a child, she was nearly sick. This makes her invaluable as a marketing consultant. After she gives the new trainer logo the thumbs down, Bigend makes her another, less conventional proposition. Cayce is a fan of "the footage", an abstract film that's being uploaded to the internet in short segments, which appear unannounced and at unpredictable intervals in various quiet corners of the web, "somewhere where it's possible to upload a video file and simply leave it there". (The novel, set in the late summer of 2002, was published in February 2003, more than two years before the first video was uploaded to YouTube.) Bigend wants Cayce to track down the maker of the footage. Cayce agrees, not least because she'd like to know who's behind it herself, and sees that with Bigend's resources she may be able to find out. It's also, in Cayce's head at least, complicatedly bound up with the disappearance of her father, a retired spook last seen heading towards downtown Manhattan on 11 September 2001 (the Los Angeles Times recently called Pattern Recognition "the first – and still, in many ways, the best – book of fiction to emerge from the tragedy"). But one of the things that Cayce and Bigend both value about the footage, though for very different reasons, is that it has (so far) defied commercial exploitation; Bigend's involvement will necessarily change that – he's late capitalism's answer to King Midas, though unlike the mythical Phrygian tyrant he's more than happy with his status.
"We've arrived at a level of commodification that may have negated the concept of counterculture," Gibson says in the Paris Review. "Consumers don't buy products so much as narratives," Bigend says to Hollis, elaborating on what he means when he talks about "brand vision transmission". She tells him the idea's old (which it is, though the rise of the ebook gives it a literal new twist), and he concedes the point. "Once you have a way in which things are done," he continues, as if this were the line he'd wanted to take all along, "the edge migrates". In an interview last year, Gibson described Bigend as someone "who presents himself as though he knows what's going on, but who in fact doesn't … he's bullshitting himself". Which is clearly true, and the way he talks is a finely judged send-up of vacuous marketing-speak. But at the same time there's no denying that Bigend is very successful, very rich and very powerful. The "edge" that he's most interested in is the edge of his own sphere of influence. He seeks out whatever lies just beyond it and finds a way to incorporate it, and in that way his sphere of influence expands.
Strictly speaking, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country and Zero History aren't science fiction: the technology in the novels isn't speculative but already exists; the world they're set in is recognisably the world that we live in. Gibson explains that they are "attempts to disprove the distinction or attempts to dissolve the boundary. They are set in a world that meets virtually every criterion of being science fiction, but it happens to be our world … It has, to my mind, the effect of science fiction." And, in common with science fiction, the books explore what happens when a trend – technological, sociological, environmental, political – is taken to its logical conclusion.
If the Sprawl in Neuromancer and its sequels is a fantastical extrapolation of late 20th-century urban development, so Bigend is a fantastical manifestation of some of the mechanisms of late capitalism. He isn't merely a very successful brand marketing consultant; he's brand marketing personified. When Cayce first meets him in Pattern Recognition his smile is described as "a version of Tom Cruise with too many teeth, and longer, but still very white". As supervillains go, he's disturbingly lacking in malevolence, and chillingly banal. Then there's the matter of his ridiculous name, which as well as making him sound like a remnant of the 1970s porn industry carries more than a hint of apocalypse. One of his current enthusiasms is the "order flow": "the aggregate of all the orders in the market. Everything anyone is about to buy or sell, all of it. Stocks, bonds, gold, anything … If someone were able to aggregate that, the market would cease to be real." And Bigend, last seen on a giant hovercraft heading for Iceland, may be about to crack it.
Thomas Jones @'The Guardian'
Thursday, 22 September 2011
ioerror Jacob Appelbaum
If I was a betting man, I'd bet @correcthealth has some computer troubles after they murdered #TroyDavis; profit over people isn't justice.
Julian Assange: Statement on the Unauthorised, Secret Publishing of the Julian Assange “autobiography” by Canongate
(Issued by WikiLeaks at 1am)
I have learned today through an article in The Independent that my publisher, Canongate, has secretly distributed an unauthorised 70,000 word first draft of what was going to be my autobiography. According to The Independent, Canongate “enacted a huge security operation to secretly ship books out to thousands of stores nationwide without tipping anyone off as to the content of the book”. It will be in the bookshops tomorrow.I am not “the writer” of this book. I own the copyright of the manuscript, which was written by Andrew O'Hagan. By publishing this draft against my wishes Canongate has acted in breach of contract, in breach of confidence, in breach of my creative rights and in breach of personal assurances. The US publisher, Knopf, withdrew from the deal when it learned of Canongate’s intentions to publish without my consent. This book was meant to be about my life’s struggle for justice through access to knowledge. It has turned into something else. The events surrounding its unauthorised publication by Canongate are not about freedom of information -- they are about old-fashioned opportunism and duplicity--screwing people over to make a buck.
On 20 December 2010, three days after being released from prison and while under house arrest, I signed a contract with Canongate and US publisher Knopf. In it I agreed to authorise a 100,000-150,000 word book - part memoir, part manifesto - in order to fund legal defences and to contribute towards WikiLeaks' operating costs. On the 7th of December 2010 Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Western Union folded to US pressure by arbitrarily and unlawfully cutting WikiLeaks off of its financial lifeline. The blockade continues. The European Commission is due to issue its first findings in October. My legal defence fund was similarly targeted and closed.
The draft is published under the title "Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography" - a contradiction in terms. It is a narrative and literary interpretation of a conversation between the writer and me. Although I admire Mr. O'Hagan's writing, this draft was a work in progress. It is entirely uncorrected or fact-checked by me. The entire book was to be heavily modified, extended and revised, in particular, to take into account the privacy of the individuals mentioned in the book. I have a close friendship with Andrew O'Hagan and he stands by me.
The publisher has not been given a copy of the manuscript by Andrew O’Hagan or me. Rather, as a courtesy they were shown the “manuscript in progress” by Andrew O’Hagan’s researcher, as an act of generosity, and for viewing purposes only – expressly agreed to by Canongate. Canongate physically took the manuscript, kept it, and did not return it to Mr. O’Hagan or me.
Contrary to what The Independent reports, I did not pull the plug on the deal, nor was I unwilling to compromise. Rather, I proposed on 7 June 2011 to cancel the contract as it stood in order to write up a fresh contract with a new deadline. I informed the publishers of this on 7 June 2011, having explained that with the upcoming extradition appeal in the High Court and an ongoing espionage Grand Jury against me in Virginia, I was not in a position to dedicate my full attention to a book that would narrate my personal story and my life's work. On 9 June 2011 I received an email from my agency, PFD, informing me that the US and UK publishers (Knopf and Canongate) were interested in renegotiating the form of the book, and insisting on canceling the contract as it stood: "The primary publishers [Canongate and Knopf] very much like this idea [of changing the book agreed to in the contract into documentary form] and understand that we cannot address this until after 12 July [the first day of the extradition appeal]... Both Jamie [Byng] and Sonny [Mehta, from US publisher Knopf] (who is here at the moment) insisted on cancelling the existing contract." It is this contract, that had been agreed to be cancelled by all parties, that Canongate is basing its actions on.
The initial advance my agent refers to was the first of what should have been three instalments. The advance was paid direct into my former solicitors' (FSI) bank account wholly without my consent. The money sits unspent in FSI's “Julian Assange” client account. FSI has refused to release the money to Canongate as a result of a legal fees dispute (FSI initially agreed to handle my extradition case “pro-bono”, or without fee). The FSI fees have been audited by an independent costs draftsman. The audit shows extreme over-charging. One of the firm’s solicitor’s has resigned, in part to protest the issue. The outcome of this dispute is pending, but a favourable finding would release the entire advance, which has not been touched, back to Canongate and Knopf...
I have learned today through an article in The Independent that my publisher, Canongate, has secretly distributed an unauthorised 70,000 word first draft of what was going to be my autobiography. According to The Independent, Canongate “enacted a huge security operation to secretly ship books out to thousands of stores nationwide without tipping anyone off as to the content of the book”. It will be in the bookshops tomorrow.I am not “the writer” of this book. I own the copyright of the manuscript, which was written by Andrew O'Hagan. By publishing this draft against my wishes Canongate has acted in breach of contract, in breach of confidence, in breach of my creative rights and in breach of personal assurances. The US publisher, Knopf, withdrew from the deal when it learned of Canongate’s intentions to publish without my consent. This book was meant to be about my life’s struggle for justice through access to knowledge. It has turned into something else. The events surrounding its unauthorised publication by Canongate are not about freedom of information -- they are about old-fashioned opportunism and duplicity--screwing people over to make a buck.
On 20 December 2010, three days after being released from prison and while under house arrest, I signed a contract with Canongate and US publisher Knopf. In it I agreed to authorise a 100,000-150,000 word book - part memoir, part manifesto - in order to fund legal defences and to contribute towards WikiLeaks' operating costs. On the 7th of December 2010 Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Western Union folded to US pressure by arbitrarily and unlawfully cutting WikiLeaks off of its financial lifeline. The blockade continues. The European Commission is due to issue its first findings in October. My legal defence fund was similarly targeted and closed.
The draft is published under the title "Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography" - a contradiction in terms. It is a narrative and literary interpretation of a conversation between the writer and me. Although I admire Mr. O'Hagan's writing, this draft was a work in progress. It is entirely uncorrected or fact-checked by me. The entire book was to be heavily modified, extended and revised, in particular, to take into account the privacy of the individuals mentioned in the book. I have a close friendship with Andrew O'Hagan and he stands by me.
The publisher has not been given a copy of the manuscript by Andrew O’Hagan or me. Rather, as a courtesy they were shown the “manuscript in progress” by Andrew O’Hagan’s researcher, as an act of generosity, and for viewing purposes only – expressly agreed to by Canongate. Canongate physically took the manuscript, kept it, and did not return it to Mr. O’Hagan or me.
Contrary to what The Independent reports, I did not pull the plug on the deal, nor was I unwilling to compromise. Rather, I proposed on 7 June 2011 to cancel the contract as it stood in order to write up a fresh contract with a new deadline. I informed the publishers of this on 7 June 2011, having explained that with the upcoming extradition appeal in the High Court and an ongoing espionage Grand Jury against me in Virginia, I was not in a position to dedicate my full attention to a book that would narrate my personal story and my life's work. On 9 June 2011 I received an email from my agency, PFD, informing me that the US and UK publishers (Knopf and Canongate) were interested in renegotiating the form of the book, and insisting on canceling the contract as it stood: "The primary publishers [Canongate and Knopf] very much like this idea [of changing the book agreed to in the contract into documentary form] and understand that we cannot address this until after 12 July [the first day of the extradition appeal]... Both Jamie [Byng] and Sonny [Mehta, from US publisher Knopf] (who is here at the moment) insisted on cancelling the existing contract." It is this contract, that had been agreed to be cancelled by all parties, that Canongate is basing its actions on.
The initial advance my agent refers to was the first of what should have been three instalments. The advance was paid direct into my former solicitors' (FSI) bank account wholly without my consent. The money sits unspent in FSI's “Julian Assange” client account. FSI has refused to release the money to Canongate as a result of a legal fees dispute (FSI initially agreed to handle my extradition case “pro-bono”, or without fee). The FSI fees have been audited by an independent costs draftsman. The audit shows extreme over-charging. One of the firm’s solicitor’s has resigned, in part to protest the issue. The outcome of this dispute is pending, but a favourable finding would release the entire advance, which has not been touched, back to Canongate and Knopf...
'I am – like all hackers – a little bit autistic'
“To All” – A message from Troy Anthony Davis
To All:
I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.
As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.
I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.
So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.
I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,
“I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”
Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!
Via
thinkprogress ThinkProgress
"I did not personally kill your son, father, brother. I am innocent." -- Troy Davis to victim's family just before execution
Farewell to R.E.M. (until the 2018 reunion tour and album with Bill Berry) Revised discography follows.
Discographies Discographies
R.E.M.: 1 mmbl; 2 mumble; 3 ye olde mumble; 4 Mumble; 5-6 MUMBLE; 7-8 ♫mumble♫; 9-10 m*u&m#b^l@e; 11-12 mumbl; 13-14 "mumble."
R.E.M.: 1 mmbl; 2 mumble; 3 ye olde mumble; 4 Mumble; 5-6 MUMBLE; 7-8 ♫mumble♫; 9-10 m*u&m#b^l@e; 11-12 mumbl; 13-14 "mumble."
thinkprogress ThinkProgress
FULL TEXT: Troy Davis' emergency petition to the Supreme Court thkpr.gs/rbJ8Om #toomuchdoubt
exilestreet Mona Street
Another one, Georgia; watching from Melbourne, Australia. #troydavis #toomuchdoubt
Fugn'ell!!!
The Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church who has visited Davis in the past, was denied a chance to see the condemned inmate this afternoon.
"We did not get a chance to see Troy," Warnock said. "We reached out to the warden and the [Corrections] commissioner to no avail. We didn't get an explanation [why it was denied]. We wanted to do a pastoral visit, to offer comfort and last rights if you will, to pray. It's another insult to this injustice."
Via
Democracy Now Reporting from Georgia Death Row Vigil for Troy Davis (Livestream)
Even this repugnant motherfugger shouldn't be put to death!
jeremyscahill jeremy scahill
If Georgia executes #TroyDavis tonight, our whole nation should hang our heads in shame. #TooMuchDoubt
Thanks
R.E.M. breaks up
“To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.”Formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry (who left the band in 1997), R.E.M. was regarded as a pioneer of alternative rock. Following years of underground success in the early and mid-1980s, the band achieved mainstream status in 1987 with the single “The One I Love”. They spent much of the next decade atop the charts thanks to a string smash hit albums, including 1991′s Out of Time, 1992′s Automatic for the People, and 1994′s Monster. The band continued their dominance into the next century, especially with the release of 2008′s critically acclaimed Accelerate and their most recent LP, 2011′s Collapse Into Now.
Alex Young @'CoS'
In their own words: The guys share their thoughts on why now.
MIKE
"During our last tour, and while making Collapse Into Now and putting together this greatest hits retrospective, we started asking ourselves, 'what next'? Working through our music and memories from over three decades was a hell of a journey. We realized that these songs seemed to draw a natural line under the last 31 years of our working together.
"We have always been a band in the truest sense of the word. Brothers who truly love, and respect, each other. We feel kind of like pioneers in this--there's no disharmony here, no falling-outs, no lawyers squaring-off. We've made this decision together, amicably and with each other's best interests at heart. The time just feels right."
MICHAEL
"A wise man once said--'the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave.' We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we're going to walk away from it.
"I hope our fans realize this wasn't an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way.
"We have to thank all the people who helped us be R.E.M. for these 31 years; our deepest gratitude to those who allowed us to do this. It's been amazing."
PETER
"One of the things that was always so great about being in R.E.M. was the fact that the records and the songs we wrote meant as much to our fans as they did to us. It was, and still is, important to us to do right by you. Being a part of your lives has been an unbelievable gift. Thank you.
"Mike, Michael, Bill, Bertis, and I walk away as great friends. I know I will be seeing them in the future, just as I know I will be seeing everyone who has followed us and supported us through the years. Even if it's only in the vinyl aisle of your local record store, or standing at the back of the club: watching a group of 19 year olds trying to change the world."
Via
REM: end of an era
J. Edgar (Trailer)
Warner Bros. Pictures has released the trailer for Clint Eastwood's latest biopic "J. Edgar" starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts, Armie Hammer, Judi Dench, Josh Lucas, and Jeffrey Donovan
Max Hattler: 1925 aka Hell
1923 aka Heaven + 1925 aka Hell won the Animate OPEN: Digitalis Audience Prize at animateprojects.org in 2011. 1925 aka Hell also won "Best Short Short" at St. Louis International Film Festival in 2010.
1925 aka Hell is one of two animation loops directed by Max Hattler, inspired by the work of French outsider artist Augustin Lesage. 1925 is based on Lesage's painting 'A symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World' from 1925.
The second loop, 1923 aka Heaven, is based on Lesage's painting 'A symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World' from 1923 and can be found here: vimeo.com/maxhattler/1923
The films were created during 5 days in February 2010 with students at The Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark.
facebook.com/maxhattler.artistpage
animwork.dk
maxhattler.com
maxhattler.com/1923
maxhattler.com/1925
Director: Max Hattler
Technical Director: Allan Lønskov
Sound: Adrian Dexter
Previz/Layout: Adrian Dexter
Modelling: Adrian Dexter, Allan Lønskov, Casper Wermuth, David Otzen, Jakob Kousholt, Kristoffer Mikkelsen
Animation: Adrian Dexter, Allan Lønskov, Casper Wermuth, David Otzen, Ditte Frandsen
Lighting: David Otzen
Rendering: Adrian Dexter, Allan Lønskov, David Otzen
Produced by maxhattler.com & The Animation Workshop
Year: 2010
Versions:
- 2 min. festival screening version
- forever-looping 1923/1925 double-projection installation ‘Heaven & Hell’
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