feed my eyes

Two new awesome tunes from Thievery Corporation. Making my...

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:47:01 -0700

Two new awesome tunes from Thievery Corporation. Making my morning move along nicely…

I dreamt about you last night

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:39:26 -0700

I dreamt about you last night

Would love to play with this!

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 13:37:18 -0800

Would love to play with this!

Yes!beyondneptune: Ten-Minute Art School Course Brian Eno’s...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:21:57 -0800

Yes!

beyondneptune:

Ten-Minute Art School Course

Brian Eno’s Diary: A Year With Swollen Appendices

excerpts via austinkleon and notational

Art is about scenius, not genius.

Eno rails against what he calls the “Big Man” theory of history, “where events are changed by the occasional brilliant or terrible man, working in heroic isolation.” Instead Eno believes that the world is “a cooperative enterprise,” “constantly being remade by all its inhabitants.”

The reality of how culture and ideas evolve is much closer to the one we as pop musicians are liable to accept — a continuous toing and froing of ideas and imitations and misconstruals, of things becoming thinkable because they are suddenly technically possible, of action and reaction, than the traditional fine-art model which posits an inspired individual sorting it all out for himself and then delivering it unto a largely uncomprehending and ungrateful world.

Art is not an object, but a trigger for experience.

Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences (Roy Ascott’s phrase). That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue about whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andres Serranos’s piss or little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ (…_ Suppose you redescribe the job ‘artist’ as ‘a person who creates situations in which you can have art experiences’.

All artists are con(fidence) artists.

The term “confidence trick” has a bad meaning, but it shouldn’t. In culture, confidence is the currency of value. Once you surrender the idea of intrinsic, objective value, you start asking the question “if the value isn’t in there, where does it come from?” It’s obviously from the transaction: it’s the product of the quality of a relationship between me, the observer, and something else. So how is that relationship stimulated, enriched, given value? By creating an atmosphere of confidence where I am ready to engage with and perhaps surrender to the world it suggests.

Eno also suggests, “People should be trained in lying from a young age. That way you become healthily skeptical (and also train yourself to imagine what things would be like if something else was true).”

The limitations of a new medium will one day become its signature.

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit — all these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.

It’s the sound of failure: so much of modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

“Try to make things that can become better in other people’s minds than they were in yours.”

Eno rejects the term “interactive,” and suggests “unfinished” instead. He suggests that new culture-makers will move away from providing “pure, complete experiences to providing the platforms from which people then fashion their own experiences.”

Once we get used to the idea that we are no longer consumers of ‘finished’ works, but that we are people who engage in conversations and interactions with things, we find ourselves leaving a world of ‘know your own station’ passivity and we start to develop a taste for active engagement. We stop regarding things as fixed and unchangeable, as preordained, and we increasingly find ourselves practising the idea that we have some control. Most importantly, perhaps, we might start to think the same way about ourselves: that we are unfinished (and unfinishable) beings whose task is constantly to re-examine and remix our ideas and our identities.

Art is where we go to become our best selves.

What a bastard Beethoven sounds — arrogant, paranoid, disagreeable. Why am I still surprised when people turn out to be not at all like their work? A suspicion of the idea that art is the place where you become what you’d like to be… rather than what you already are…

Stop obsessing over all the possible journeys you could take, and just start off on one.

Over and over, Eno expresses a desire for less choices in the process of art-making, not more. ”Less exploring of all the possible journeys you could make; more determination to take one journey (even if the choice of it is initially rather arbitrary) and make it take you somewhere.“

My ideal is probably based on the story I heard years ago of how the Japanese calligraphers used to work — a whole day spent grinding inks and preparing brushes and paper, and then, as the sun begins to go down, a single burst of fast and inspired action.

That cultural image — which you find throughout Japanese culture from Sumo to Sushi — is very interesting and quite different from ours. We admire people who stick at it doggedly and evenly (I also admire them) and put in the right amount of hours. But more and more I want to try that Japanese model: to get everything in place (including your mind, of course) first, and then to just give yourself one chance. It seems thrilling.

“If you don’t call it art, you’re likely to get a better result.”

Eno says, “people do much better when they don’t think they’re being artists,” and when they do think decide they’re being artists, they “suddenly turn out crap.”

Oldenburg’s earlier stuff — before he knew what he was doing — looked best. So often the case that people work best when they are stretching out over an abyss of ignorance, hanging on to a thin branch of “what-is-still-possible”, tantalized by the future.

And some one-liners:

“People who don’t seem to care whether or not they’re liked are nearly always in some way likeable.”

“‘Why the fuck am I doing this?’ — the question that always precedes something worthwhile.”

“Cooking is a way of listening to the radio.”

“Luck is being ready.”

“Spending lots of money is often an admission of lack of research, preparation, and imagination.”

“By the time a whole technology exists for something it probably isn’t the most interesting thing to be doing.”

If you don’t feel like picking up the book, watch this lecture instead. It contains many of the ideas, and Eno draws!

Time to fall inlove with music again.

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:31:43 -0800

Time to fall inlove with music again.

carlosbaila: Marina Abramovic meets Ulay“Marina Abramovic and...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:14:28 -0800

carlosbaila:

Marina Abramovic meets Ulay

“Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again. at her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed ‘The Artist Is Present’ as part of the show, a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Ulay arrived without her knowing it and this is what happened.”

“En los años 70, Marina Abramovic mantuvo una intensa historia de amor con Ulay. Pasaron 5 años viviendo en una furgoneta realizando toda clase de performances. En 1988, cuando su relación ya no daba para más, decidieron recorrer la Gran Muralla China, empezando cada uno de un lado, para encontrarse en el medio, abrazarse y no volver a verse nunca más. En 2010 el MoMa de Nueva York dedicó una retrospectiva a su obra. Dentro de la misma, Marina compartía un minuto en silencio con cada extraño que se sentaba frente a ella. Ulay llegó sin que ella lo supiera, y esto fue lo que pasó”

Amazing

"I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly..."

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:33:11 -0800

“I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.”

- Franz Kafka; from a diary entry dated 23 March 1914. (via pretty-procrastination)
My new bio blurb

The people have spoken

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:17:00 -0800

The people have spoken

Still a genius

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 11:12:40 -0800

Still a genius

agusrm: ¡SOY MI PROPIO ALTAR! Genio

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 02:27:18 -0800

agusrm:

¡SOY MI PROPIO ALTAR!

Genio

My latest obsession

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 12:08:00 -0800

My latest obsession

Chase - Kat Eyes

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:04:44 -0800

Chase - Kat Eyes

Lindsey -Fire3

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:57:26 -0800

Lindsey -Fire3

Kelly Sweet - Promo Shot

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:30:42 -0800

Kelly Sweet - Promo Shot

Closer

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:23:18 -0800

Closer

Kelly Sweet -Promo Shots

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:22:03 -0800

Kelly Sweet -Promo Shots

Chase 2013

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:49:53 -0800

Chase 2013

Me dejarás dormir al amanecer entre tus piernas…

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 22:48:00 -0800

Me dejarás dormir al amanecer entre tus piernas…

Chase 2013

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:22:00 -0800

Chase 2013

Spider

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 15:01:22 -0800

Spider