Category: Blog
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Junkspace
OtherInter.net, a small consulting group co-run by my friend Toby Shorin, has started up a series of workshops with folks from the community. Drew Austin of Kneeling Bus is teaching a course called the Digital Transformation of Physical Space, which I’ll be enrolled in over the the next four weeks. I’ll be keeping track of…
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Tossouts from The Color Purple
As I wrap up editing the follow-up volume to 2017’s La Vento, I wanted to preserve some of the quotes and lines and ideas that won’t make it into final cut. Simon Reynolds, Shock & Awe The impossible perfection of a Moment or an Image—it could be a lover, or the tableau of the in-crowd…
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Panic in Central Park: Predictive Hermeneutics in Girls S5E6
Dez & Marnie are sitting on their marital bed. She has headphones in, sitting cross-legged staring intently into her Macbook; he’s got puka shells around his neck and strums an acoustic guitar, bobbing his head at her, raising his brow, trying to get a look. It’s harmless but needy, like a puppy who deep down…
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Predictive Hermeneutics
A preprint of “A Bayesian hermeneutic” — the cogsci paper Thomas Rutten & I worked on last summer in Mexico City — is available at Research Gate here. It aims to introduce a new subfield of hermeneutics we term “predictive hermeneutics.”
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Sexual… Narcissism?
One end of sexual desire’s many spectrums is self-reflexivity, a desire not for the other but for the other’s desire. That is to say, desire indirectly for the self. Culturally this manifestation of sexuality is associated more with women than men. I’ll refrain from commenting on how gendered or inherent this kind of desire is, and…
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Flowers in a Pop(ul)ist Paradigm
Spilled Reality, “One more on The 1975?”: The 1975 bloomed late in pop critics’ multi-decade questioning of masculine-rockist values like authenticity and edginess. In the new pop(ul)ist paradigm, entertainment value and its near heuristic, melodic propulsion, are strong arguments for aesthetic quality in themselves. Authenticity is redefined, less a matter of sheer aesthetic originality (anxiety…
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Teenage v. Depressive Ontology
Taken from Ghosts of My Life by Mark Fisher, esp. “No Longer the Pleasures: Joy Division,” and “K-Punk, or the Glampunk Art Pop Discontinuum.” On Teenage Ontology: Romanticism is the dressing-up of Teenage Ontology as an aesthetic cosmology. Teenage Ontology is governed by the conviction that what really matters is interiority: how you feel inside, and what…
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Bodega’s Endless Scroll
The band members’ silhouettes are soft against Brooklyn Bazaar’s trademark stained-glass as Bodega starts their set. Madison of ONWE channels David Byrne’s hollow stare, set in concentration. Nikki Belfiglio plays a converted computer keyboard as percussion before bite-smooching frontman Ben Hozie’s cheek. Live audio, Bodega at KEXP. Catch lyrics from Neil Young’s “Harvest” and Can’s “Vitamin C” from…
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Against Expression
In his introduction to The Ubuweb Anthology of Conceptual Writing, Craig Dworkin positions conceptual writing in opposition to romantic expression, to writing that conveys “the emotional truth of the self.” But he replaces it with a vision of writing that’s true to its linguistic self, writing that can’t be conceived of as taking any other form.
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Enthusiasm, Play, and “Cool”
Idea: Young animals of countless species have been observed engaging in play, exploring their environment, testing boundaries, and entering low-stakes simulations of behavior that will in adulthood become high-stakes (e.g. wrestling, hunting, dollhouses). In humans, playful exploration in this sense is associated with the sincere enthusiasm of discovery—young children can still be surprised or highly…
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Sontag v. Top-down Frames
The title of Sontag’s “Against Interpretation” is misleading, and regularly confuses readers who believe her “erotics of art” precludes interpretive dot-connecting and inference. This is not the case: the piece is more accurately titled “Against Allegorization,” or “Against Ideological Readings” — those hermeneutic approaches that set out to find “encoded” and symbolic meanings in a work…
Suspended Reason 