Favourite YouTube Videos

  On 11/26/2024 at 10:44 PM, Rubin Farr said:

Drum break material 

 

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  On 12/5/2024 at 10:12 PM, Nebraska said:

 

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Devin Townsend's pre-SYL days were pretty out there.

^^^ love the gez varley interview

david Lynch doing comedy

  On 12/8/2024 at 4:06 AM, Rubin Farr said:

 

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  On 12/6/2024 at 3:43 PM, Rubin Farr said:

 

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seems pretty bitter with warp

  On 12/8/2024 at 4:06 AM, Rubin Farr said:

 

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Interesting. Looks like it’s inspired by generative AI’s hallucinations. The blending of the arms look like a play on genAI hallucinating. GenAI is feeding back into art. I like it

  On 12/6/2024 at 3:43 PM, Rubin Farr said:

 

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It's weird that Warp didn't want to release his G-Man stuff.  Kind of a bummer actually.

  On 12/8/2024 at 8:03 AM, Satans Little Helper said:

Interesting. Looks like it’s inspired by generative AI’s hallucinations. The blending of the arms look like a play on genAI hallucinating. GenAI is feeding back into art. I like it

what makes you think it isn’t AI?

  On 12/5/2024 at 9:30 PM, Rubin Farr said:

 

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  On 12/8/2024 at 7:20 AM, ignatius said:

 

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I watched this whole talk, having not heard of this guy before. He had some good points but I feel like he misses some really obvious things in his thesis that nothing "new" will ever happen again. The feeling of newness that (at least) western cultures experienced between ~1950-2000 was entirely an illusion created by analog broadcasting. The fact that radio and television could only present one thing at time meant that they had to chose one thing over the other. Commercial interests meant keeping as many people glued to those stations as possible which meant constantly bringing something new and encouraging people to let go of the previous style. This was incredibly successful until the internet got to the point where it meant that there were effectively infinite broadcasting channels and people could listen or watch to the new, the old and any kind of style in between.  

This change obviously had a huge impact on culture because there isnt really a ubiquitous monoculture in the way there used to be. Of course there is the occasional Taylor Swift that a huge group of people gather around, but it's entirely voluntary and very easy to completely ignore. This wasnt true in the past where people like Michael Jackson basically took over television with a new music video etc. There wasnt anything else to see in broadcast media. 

Also the idea of a counterculture was more monolithic. If a counter culture got big enough to leave its original niche (like Punk for example), it became one of the only widely understood counter cultures. Now there are infinite micro-cultures and none of them can really be counter to anything because that lack of a ubiquitous mainstream. People merely assume the cultural identity they like but it's not in direct conflict with any one thing simply because there are too many micro-cultures coexisting.

This is both bad and good and might in-and-of-itself be the newness that people are missing. I agree with the sentiment that money pressures and a lack of institutions backing the arts is bad but I think that was also always the case. We just had more examples of the lucky few who managed to earn a decent living making music because the funnel was so small. The people you listened to were by default successful because only successful people could be broadcast to you in the first place. Now I can listen to music uploaded by someone on the verge of homelessness as easily as I could the latest Kendrick Lamar album. I'm therefore more aware of people's struggles and just how many people are struggling. It's depressing but its more real than only knowing about the people who "made it".

  On 12/8/2024 at 6:08 PM, exitonly said:

what makes you think it isn’t AI?

i didn't say it wasn't ai? i said someone *purposefully* went for hallucination kind of artefacts from genAI. these weren't unexpected accidents.

  On 12/8/2024 at 7:36 PM, exitonly said:

I watched this whole talk, having not heard of this guy before. He had some good points but I feel like he misses some really obvious things in his thesis that nothing "new" will ever happen again. The feeling of newness that (at least) western cultures experienced between ~1950-2000 was entirely an illusion created by analog broadcasting. The fact that radio and television could only present one thing at time meant that they had to chose one thing over the other. Commercial interests meant keeping as many people glued to those stations as possible which meant constantly bringing something new and encouraging people to let go of the previous style. This was incredibly successful until the internet got to the point where it meant that there were effectively infinite broadcasting channels and people could listen or watch to the new, the old and any kind of style in between.  

This change obviously had a huge impact on culture because there isnt really a ubiquitous monoculture in the way there used to be. Of course there is the occasional Taylor Swift that a huge group of people gather around, but it's entirely voluntary and very easy to completely ignore. This wasnt true in the past where people like Michael Jackson basically took over television with a new music video etc. There wasnt anything else to see in broadcast media. 

Also the idea of a counterculture was more monolithic. If a counter culture got big enough to leave its original niche (like Punk for example), it became one of the only widely understood counter cultures. Now there are infinite micro-cultures and none of them can really be counter to anything because that lack of a ubiquitous mainstream. People merely assume the cultural identity they like but it's not in direct conflict with any one thing simply because there are too many micro-cultures coexisting.

This is both bad and good and might in-and-of-itself be the newness that people are missing. I agree with the sentiment that money pressures and a lack of institutions backing the arts is bad but I think that was also always the case. We just had more examples of the lucky few who managed to earn a decent living making music because the funnel was so small. The people you listened to were by default successful because only successful people could be broadcast to you in the first place. Now I can listen to music uploaded by someone on the verge of homelessness as easily as I could the latest Kendrick Lamar album. I'm therefore more aware of people's struggles and just how many people are struggling. It's depressing but its more real than only knowing about the people who "made it".

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it's worth checking out his other talks. there's a ton on youtube about him and his books.  he has interesting things to say and i agree w/a lot of his observations. there's another video he talks about how a lot of the interesting and new things are living in a avante garde niche environment and not being shared as a mainstream cultural experience that is a shared experience amongst the culture at large. he doesn't always mention that but sometimes does. i think it's an important footnote.. because often people comment "i wonder if he ever heard Sophie or autechre..." etc and what might his thoughts be. 

so, while, sure, he's not mentioning everything under the sun he's mostly talking about mass cultural experiences and the recycling of everything instead of people adopting things that are genuinely new. and why this happens and how it's a function of our capitalist system and social media etc to provide nostalgia as a low hanging fruit for consumption and profit. 

Capitalism Realism is probably his most well known book. if ya take his stuff in the order it was written it makes more contextual sense. I find him really interesting and it's a bummer he killed himself. He'd surely have more to say.