Andy Baio on Making Supercut.org

When we first started work on Friday morning, Michael and I started brainstorming what we wanted to accomplish: something visual, high-concept (i.e. explainable in a tweet), and hopefully with a sense of humor.
We quickly realized that our interest in supercuts was fertile ground. Michael's work often touches on structural re-edits and remixes, such as Oonce-Oonce, Battleship Potemkin: Dance Edit, Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet Synced and Played Simultaneously, and his mashup album mixing pop vocals over their ringtone versions.
Both of us were fascinated by this form of Internet folk art. Every supercut is a labor of love. Making one is incredibly time-consuming, taking days or weeks to compile and edit a single video. Most are created by pop culture fans, but they've also been used for film criticism and political commentary. It's a natural byproduct of remix culture: people using sampling to convey a single message, made possible by the ready availability of online video and cheap editing software.
So, supercuts. But what? Making a single supercut seemed cheap. I first suggested making a visual index of supercuts, or a visualization of every clip.
But Michael had a better idea — going meta. We were going to build a SUPERSUPERCUT, a supercut composed entirely out of other supercuts. And, if we had time, we'd make a dedicated supercut index...
New Adam Curtis Documentary on Network Culture "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace"
BBC posts the trailer for the upcoming Adam Curtis documentary, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace." It airs Monday May 23 at 9pm on BBC2. Curtis' previous documentaries (It Felt Like a Kiss, Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares, etc) are available streaming free online at archive.org.
eteam in ArtForum

The “OS” stands for either “open source” or “operating system,” and the German term Grabeland means land for digging, particularly land left over from allotments leased to people during World War I and World War II so they could grow food. As with our ongoing project International Airport Montello, we used eBay to purchase land, but this time we purchased a set of allotment gardens in Dewitz, a village north of Berlin. We became the landlords of a 36,000-square-foot plot of land with eight remaining tenants and seven feral lots. After receiving complaints from our tenants about the lack of access to water, we suggested that we dig a well, an idea our tenants rejected. Their complaint provided us with a connection to the land and the people of Dewitz, and over the past several years we have searched for water in different ways. We have used this exploration both as a motif and as a means of turning the local into the global and connecting the plot in Dewitz with land in northeast Nevada. The water of the Atlantic geographically separates Dewitz and Oasis, but the lack of access to water connects the two sites. — eteam discusses OS GRABELAND in ArtForum
Weekend Clicking

Links for your weekend:
Sarah Morris sued by origami artists for copyright infringement concerning crease patterns (Tech Dirt, Joy Garnett) Play Hunt the Wumpus (1973) with a JavaScript PDP-11 emulator Dziga Vertov's Storyboard for Man with a Movie Camera Upcoming Jonathan Lethem book of essays "The Ecstasy of Influence" (The 2007 Harper's essay with the same title, LA Times interview) I found early on that I wasn't even watching the foreground dancers despite the very advanced and edgey dancing they are doing. When an artist has her audience transfixed by the background, she's truly gifted. (Fatova Mingus, This is Not Swan Lake on Marie Chouinard's Body Remix-Goldberg Variations) Time Spent Alone (via tinkerkid) Tumblrr, superimposes Tumblr images as a single image It’s about time people started rendering unto Liquid Sky. Its long lipstick trace is smudged through much of indie cinema. The sights we see in Liquid Sky are riding the wave of genius punk sensibility from the late 70s, but by '83 are in full morph into the weird, technological forms we love. The broad bell-bottom analog curves of the 70's had given way to neon grids and skinny ties, and it was great. (Metafilter) Frank Chimero's new blog The Mavenist Protect your privacy shades (Forbes) SSION at MoMA PopRally Beautiful paintings activate the brain like love. (via Jen Bekman) openpaths.cc an iPhone/iPad location data visualize tool (more) Daphne Oram's Oramics Machine at London’s Science Museum Also in London: Great list of speakers for The Piracy Project lecture series Marina Zurkow interview in BOMB BBC podcast on Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (via Morbid Anatomy) Four Films from Kamran Shirdel, (Bidoun and UbuWeb) Museum of Arts and Design retrospective David Bowie, Artist and David Bowie ...
Shana Moulton with Rachel Mason at LMCC Open Studios May 13-15th
Shana Moulton at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Open Studios May 13-15th:
7:30 pm - Friday the 13th (with Rachel Mason LIVE)
3:00 pm - Saturday the 14th
3:00 pm - Sunday the 15th
RSVP
This performance will also be exhibited at Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College May 18 - 22:
(Re)Move/(Re)Frame Performances by: Brody Condon, Shana Moulton, and Yemenwed May 1–May 22, 2011 Curated by Courtney Malick (Re)Move/(Re)Frame presents three performances occurring at different times and places and explores the possibilities of exhibiting performance documentation inviting viewers to participate in the documentary process via the project's accompanying website at: www.r-e-m-o-v-e.info
Editorial Fellow
The Editorial Fellow is ideally based in New York and must be able to commit to 16 hours of work per week for 5 months. This position is unpaid, but academic credit may be arranged. The Editorial Fellow will coordinate and assist in production of Rhizome's website and weekly newsletter Rhizome News. Fellow will support daily publishing and maintenance of the blog, as well as researching and writing editorial essays, reviews, and opinion pieces.
QUALIFICATIONS: Candidates must have a high level of familiarity with contemporary art and technology. Education or advanced experience beyond the undergraduate level is preferred. The candidate must have very strong writing, editing, and analytical skills, and very high internet literacy.
TO APPLY: Please email a cover letter, resume or c.v., two references, and three writing samples (url or attachment) to Joanne McNeil at editor(at)rhizome.org. Deadline Dec 28, 2012. Review of applications will begin immediately. Starting date is January 2013.
Improving Prometheus
Editorial Fellow
The Editorial Fellow is ideally based in New York and must be able to commit to 16 hours of work per week for 4 months, beginning in Summer 2012. This position is unpaid, but academic credit may be arranged. The Editorial Fellow will coordinate and assist in production of Rhizome's website and weekly newsletter Rhizome News. Fellow will support daily publishing and maintenance of the blog, as well as researching and writing editorial essays, reviews, and opinion pieces.
QUALIFICATIONS: Candidates must have a high level of familiarity with contemporary art and technology. Education or advanced experience beyond the undergraduate level is preferred. The candidate must have very strong writing, editing, and analytical skills, and very high internet literacy.
TO APPLY: Please email a cover letter, resume or c.v., two references, and three writing samples (url or attachment) to Joanne McNeil at editor(at)rhizome.org. Deadline Aug 24, 2012. Review of applications will begin immediately. Starting date is Sept 17, 2012.
NA - Further Thoughts
Thanks so much for these comments. You are right that the New Aesthetic is a broad conversation, but James Bridle's investigation is definitely political, unfortunately many of his points have been missed in the ongoing metacommentary. It seems a lot of people are confused by the visuals, which aren't *the* the New Aesthetic so much as artifacts *of* the New Aesthetic.
The NA Tumblr was Bridle thinking out loud, and something to consider in tandem with his writing/talks. Meanwhile, the conversation about these ideas has gone on for over a year now, over a number of blogs, mostly based in London
In addition to James Bridle's talks and notes, this is what I recommend reading to understand what the New Aesthetic conversation is really about:
Aaron Straup Cope's notes from SXSW:
http://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2012/03/13/godhelpus/#sxaesthetic
Chris Heathcote: A New Fashion Aesthetic
http://anti-mega.com/antimega/2012/04/02/a-new-fashion-aesthetic
Many, many BERG posts:
http://berglondon.com/blog/2011/05/13/sensor-vernacular/
http://berglondon.com/blog/2012/02/06/robot-readable-world-the-film/
http://berglondon.com/blog/2011/08/03/the-robot-readable-world/
We are the droids we’re looking for: the New Aesthetic and its friendly critics by JJ Charlesworth
http://blog.jjcharlesworth.com/2012/05/07/we-are-the-droids-were-looking-for-the-new-aesthetic-and-its-friendly-critics/
Honor Harger:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind1204&L=new-media-curating&F=&S=&P=20818
Tom Armitage:
http://infovore.org/archives/2011/05/21/waving-at-the-machines/
Greg Borenstein:
http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2011/06/07/on-the-future-and-poetry-of-the-calibration-pose/
Natalia Buckley:
http://ntlk.net/2012/04/12/on-the-new-aesthetic/
Other notes from SXSW are linked here:
http://booktwo.org/notebook/sxaesthetic/
this was my favorite New Aesthetic tumblr post, btw:
http://new-aesthetic.tumblr.com/post/21437296950/i-used-to-go-to-the-trocadero-in-central-london-as
Editorial Fellow
The Editorial Fellow must be based in New York and must be able to commit to 16 hours of work per week for 3 months, beginning in Summer 2012. This position is unpaid, but academic credit may be arranged. The Editorial Fellow will coordinate and assist in production of Rhizome's website and weekly newsletter Rhizome News. Fellow will support daily publishing and maintenance of the blog, as well as researching and writing editorial essays, reviews, and opinion pieces.
QUALIFICATIONS: Candidates must have a high level of familiarity with contemporary art and new media. Education or advanced experience beyond the undergraduate level is preferred. The candidate must have very strong writing, editing, and analytical skills, and very high internet literacy.
TO APPLY: Please email a cover letter, resume or c.v., two references, and three writing samples (url or attachment) to Joanne McNeil at editor(at)rhizome.org. Deadline May 4, 2012. Review of applications will begin immediately. Starting date is June 4, 2012.