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This page was initially drafted on 31 July 1998 as a selection of the best links from the Robot Wisdom Weblog archives. A few layers of refinement have been added since then, with the aim of gradually constructing a concise introduction to net.literacy on each of these topics. So stay tuned!
The opposite of art is ego, imho.
When art fails, the complaint is usually that ego got in the way of creative expression.
On the Net there's a ton of ego bound up in mastery of technology. This is part of why computer art is often ugly, and why software design is often awkward.
The best antidote I know for ego is meditation. Three sources that offer guidance are William Blake, Vladimir Nabokov, and J. Krishnamurti
Salon tends to be over-enthusiastic about interactive art, but even if this over-the-top VR-art tale weren't for real, it'd make a lovely fiction. And this one about motion-captured dance isn't interactive, but it's similarly thrilling.
A great old Wired dialog on interactivity-theory
A new sort of interactive art, Artificial Changelings
Described as a "romance thriller about shopping," the work oscillates between two protagonists: Arathusa, a Parisian madamoiselle with a soft spot for the ultimate in impulse buying, and Zilith, a 21st-century hacker who appears repeatedly in Arathusa's dreams.
Salon has a really nice appreciation of a (Java-intensive) online Smithsonian exhibit
Chris Crawford's Erasmatron story engine tries to make video games psychologically mature.
Fashion show with spray-paint robots (12 pg sequence):
http://www.firstview.com/WRTWspring99/ALEXANDER_MAC_QUEEN/P105.html
The most revolutionary form of net.art is to live one's life openly, in the newsgroups and/or with a webcam. Doctress Neutopia is an example of the former, Ana Voog the latter.
Another route is to post creative works to the newsgroups, which can intensify them in a unique way. Lisa Rea's confrontational surrealism is a champion here.
Sha Sha Higby makes the most mind-boggling costumes I've ever seen. Interview
Julie Taymor made art of the Broadway Lion King: http://arts.endow.gov/explore/Taymor.html Review
Performance with cellphone scanner: http://www.villagevoice.com/columns/9908/bunn.shtml
A hilarious profile of the Bill-Gates pie-thrower, the truly heroic Noel Godin
Talk about merchandising! Karen Finley, the brilliant performance artist, has an implausible 900 number
Deborah Jowitt is a killer dance critic. Her informal history of nudity in modern dance.
Cirque du Soleil: http://www.macleans.ca/newsroom072798/cov1072798.html
Newsgroups:
Ana Voog, Laurie Anderson,
Spalding Gray
Susan Kare is the genius behind the Mac's look. An especially good profile of Kare
Grafica Obscura is a brainy, tasteful computer-graphics site
Jewelry collaboration with insects: http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/articles/duprat/duprat.html
A premier site for high-fashion gazing. Or for the most recent Paris shows
Word has a nice gallery of pix of people in offices. And Word's archive looks interesting . . . if overdesigned. A warm eulogy for Word (with links that witness to its legacy). (It was shut down, then bought and revived by Zapata.)
Molecular visualizations as gorgeous art. Ditto microphotographs. And a tasteful page of links to Hubble Space Telescope pictures and news. Beautiful satellite photos
A nicely done museum of teletype-style ascii-art from the 60s.
A GREAT subway map (NYC) using color ascii-art
French "Photo"
A visual-esthetics personality test
The range of human feeling represented in popular music is infinitesimal. You have to look to jazz and experimental music to find new rhythms.
Chicago's WZRD frequently plays an awesome new genre of 'sampled word' pieces that build rhythms around televangelists, politicians, movie dialog, etc. I have no idea where this stuff is talked about!
Great lo-tech interactive music
Extremely cool fractal music [RealAudio]
An extraordinary experiment covering Eno minimalism
Jane Siberry, Hal Willner, Daisy Debolt
A detailed profile of Jane Siberry
Great Joni Mitchell interview
My favorite music videos are Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean", Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", and Daft Punk's "Around the World". A totally inadequate 2mb sample of this last is available from MTV
music theory: comp.music, alt.music, alt.music.category-freak, alt.music.complex-arrang, alt.music.video-games, rec.music.compose
music practice: alt.music.producer, alt.music.midi, rec.music.ambient, alt.music.makers.dj, alt.music.world, alt.music.independent, alt.music.progressive, rec.music.progressive, alt.music.journalism
the arts: rec.arts.dance, rec.arts.fine, rec.arts.theatre.misc, rec.arts.theatre.stagecraft, alt.arts.ballet, alt.fan.camille-paglia, alt.stagecraft, alt.artcom
Nerve offers "literate smut", including a daily nude and weekly Naughty Bits from classic lit. Their list of links is helpful. [Background on Nerve]
Fine nudes: http://www.nervemag.com/Karsten/ and http://www.nervemag.com/Karsten2/ and http://www.nervemag.com/Tillmans/
A very short, very daring, very x-rated story
More: http://www.nervemag.com/Shapiro/BedOfLeaves/
More; http://www.nervemag.com/Piercy/newkid/
More: http://www.nervemag.com/Siegel/flight/
S&M lite: http://www.nervemag.com/HollandRogers/uncertainty/
Various sources of first chapters: USA Today SJMerc, CNN, and WashPost
Decent poems of the day: http://www.poems.com/today.htm
A huge index of literary mailinglists
Sunday book reviews from: London Times, Washington Post. Biweekly NY Review of Books
Some hip etexts
Blair magazine interviews the Funk Queen of the USA, Lynda J. Barry
rec.arts.books
Utne Reader offers their 'canon' of 150 alternative great works
A difficult comparison of Iris-Murdoch-the-novelist with IM-the-philosopher
The Nation fetes Love and Rockets
A lost fragment of Pride and Prejudice, critiquing slavery? [Deja URL]
I finally saw Clueless and tracked down this list of Austen-parallels:
Joyce Maynard's long biographical portrait of her dying mother. NYT profile of Maynard.
Quite a nice interview with Martin Amis
Patrick O'Brian has written eighteen brilliant volumes of the 18th C. naval adventures of Jack Aubrey. They've inspired a fan-presence on the Web, inventoried here, that in ways surpasses Joyce's. PO'B's secret past: http://www.nymag.com/this_week/view.asp?id=1941
Take three weeks off, and write your first novel (a decent one, too-- I read it!). Her prequel to this essay also makes me want to write
JD Salinger's semi-unpublished novella "Hapworth 16, 1924"
Pynchon kiss-n-tell
Poetry by Debra Bruce
Mark Twain's short masterpiece, Adam's Diary
rec.arts.dance, rec.arts.erotica, rec.arts.fine, rec.arts.int-fiction, rec.arts.theatre, rec.arts.theatre.misc, rec.arts.theatre.musicals, rec.arts.theatre.plays, rec.arts.theatre.stagecraft, alt.ernie-pook, rec.arts.books, rec.arts.books.childrens, rec.arts.books.hist-fiction, rec.arts.books.reviews, rec.arts.books.tolkien, rec.arts.comics.alternative, rec.arts.comics.other-media,
simulation and systems: sci.systems, comp.simulation, comp.theory.dynamic-sys, alt.materials.simulation, alt.earth.system.science, rec.autos.simulators, rec.aviation.simulators, sci.virtual-worlds, sci.virtual-worlds.apps, rec.games.design, rec.games.mud.misc, rec.games.programmer, rec.games.xtank.programmer
vision: comp.ai.vision, comp.graphics.algorithms, comp.graphics, comp.graphics.misc, comp.graphics.visualization, sci.image.processing, sci.med.vision, sci.optics
human psyche: alt.psychology.adlerian, alt.psychology.help, alt.psychology.jung, alt.psychology.transpersonal, sci.psychology.personality, sci.psychology.psychotherapy, alt.hypnosis, alt.psychology.jung, alt.psychology.nlp, alt.psychology.personality
social simulations:
comp.ai.games,
comp.groupware,
alt.mud.moo,
alt.mud,
rec.arts.int-fiction,
alt.arts.storytelling,
rec.arts.books
A lot of famous movie scripts are even available at Script-o-rama
Dogme 95 is a great directorial discipline: http://www.dogme95.dk/
John Sayles on screenwriting
Offbeat video suggestions: The New Age is rich-LA sociology, Dogfight is a nice 1963 period piece
Truly, Madly, Deeply (smart, sad, romantic)
Black Orpheus: http://picpal.com/orphord.html
Interesting actors: Lili Taylor
A heroin survivor reviews Trainspotting
And a long look at director Terrence Malick
And the longest Scorsese interview in recorded history
Francis Ford Coppola is looking for stories! Business Week report and FFC's own page
erotica, production, technical, cinematography, indie, production, silent, visual effects
Tarantino, Branagh-Thompson, Chaplin, Hitchcock, Indian, Indian, Kubrick, Orson Welles, Scorsese, Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, rec.arts.wobegon alt.fan.neil-gaiman,
alt.fan.hofstadter,
alt.fan.rawilson
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