domiciliphile

This Thanksgiving, Experience Copenhagen (Sort Of)...

2011-11-23T21:46:00.001-05:00

http://www.kmjn.org/projects/cyanocph/#1

Friend and ITU faculty member Mark Nelson explores the give and take that Google Street View has to offer through cyanotypic "glasses."

http://www.kmjn.org/projects/cyanocph/

Scene at 60 Centre St. courthouse, waiting for the Occupy Wall Street/Zuccotti Park/Liberty Square eviction hearing to get underway. (11-15-11)

2011-11-15T13:22:00.001-05:00

We Know Who Our Enemies Are #occupywallstreet

2011-10-05T20:22:00.000-04:00

Jeff Mangum plays at Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-05T13:22:00.001-04:00

"All we had to do is start a revolution to see Jeff Mangum live." Ha!

From the archives...

2011-09-28T06:53:00.000-04:00

"WAR KILLS PEOPLE." The Philadelphia Independent, Volume 1, Issue 7 (April 2003).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philadelphia_Independent

Excerpts from "To Catch A Terrorist" (Harper's Magazine, Aug. 2011) by Petra Bartosiewisz

2011-09-26T17:39:00.000-04:00

Photo credit: Times Union

On the trend of preemptive terrorism prosecutions:

When asked at a press conference following the sentencing whether there was anything connecting the defendants, particularly Aref, to terrorism, the prosecuting attorney answered, "Well, we didn’t have the evidence of that, but he had the ideology."

On the scope of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs):

The Los Angeles Police Department was the first to introduce SARs. Among the “suspicious activities” listed on its website are joggers stretching “for an inordinate amount of time” and people carrying on “long conversations on pay or cellular phones.”

Read the article:
http://harpers.org/archive/2011/08/0083545

Petra Bartosiewicz' website:
http://www.petrabart.com/

Route 28: The Banality of Travel

2011-09-15T21:25:00.002-04:00

"Route 28" was inspired by an improvised game that took place one evening in the summer of 2010, while driving from NYC to upstate New York. As such, the video is incomplete: a montage of various scenes along Route 28 with minimal background audio. The crux of the piece comes into being when viewed by a participatory audience: with instructions to either say what they see, say what they're thinking, or to read passages from random texts, each individual's utterance towards the screen merges into a fluctuating chorus of cacophony that highlights the fluidity and ease with which travel-inspired listlessness can transform into delirious, interactive game-play.

Presented at Noise! 2010, St. Mark's Church, NYC - 06/26/10.

Before the start of this clip, I gave the audience a little background and instructions on what to do while watching the video. Here's the gist of what I said:

- This video is incomplete, and requires audience participation.

- This video is split into thirds:
For the first third of the video, say what you see on the screen.
For the middle third of the video, say whatever comes to mind while watching.
For the last third of the video, read random passages from $1 books I bought from outside The Strand earlier that day.

Thanks to Galen Joseph-Hunter, Tianna Kennedy, Madalyn Warren and free103point9. Special thanks to the gracious, creative and eclectic mix of people in the audience, without whom this wouldn't have been possible.

-John "Patience" Dalessi
http://wontloversrevoltnow.com/

Noise! 2010: http://www.free103point9.org/events/2281

Wild Yaks, Open Ocean, Anita Fix & the Ecstatic Gestures, Hexa* - 6/3 @ 435 Broadway [Pics, Video]

2011-06-26T08:02:00.000-04:00

The maximum love vibes felt at 435 Broadway epitomize much of what I've come to appreciate from New York: rooftop views; meeting new people; the sounds of bands, either practicing or performing, wafting through hallways; and not having to walk too far to the deli for more beer. Dave and Sarah's house party a few weeks ago had all of these things, along with a few unexpected surprises. Below are some recorded moments of the night.

Hexa (*minus some people I guess; sorry - no video!)

Anita Fix & the Ecstatic Gestures

Open Ocean

Wild Yaks

The Ice Machine and Swift - Live @ St. Cecilia's Gallery - 6/3/2011

2011-06-13T15:20:00.023-04:00

For as long as I've known Nathan, he's been making art and music. This is his one of his latest undertakings with his pal Graham, called The Ice Machine and Swift. Below are videos to two of their songs - "It's On Da Road Tonight" and "Go Inside the Plant" - being performed at St. Cecilia's ~~Convent~~ Gallery for the opening of Art Book Club Presents: held on June 3rd.

Excerpt from Return to My Native Land

2011-05-15T06:26:00.002-04:00

By Aimé Césaire:

I cast your form
formless islands
on waters obedient to the current of my thirst
absurdly I cast your overthrow and my defiance.
Stubborn reason will not prevent me.

My submission to 3rd Ward's Open Call: Siddiqui Trial Sketches

2010-12-18T03:03:00.004-05:00

You can find my 3rd Ward profile page ~~here~~ (not anymore). My submission statement is reprinted below:

I recently had the opportunity to assist with the making of a documentary film about the late artist, Mark Lombardi. Best known for his abstract drawings that depicted the scandal-ridden relationships between international figures of power, Lombardi believed that the most compelling art was based on real world events - events that sometimes remained largely unnoticed by the public at large.

The more I learned about Lombardi's artistic process of intense research, the more I felt compelled to continue in a similar vein with my own work. Much too often, today's galleries are filled with works that are heavy in technique and form, but light in substance. While at the same time, there are complex and sordid stories behind the headlines of newspapers that remain largely unnoticed. Therefore, my aim is to make better use of creative tools so as to retell and reinterpret significant events, in hopes that the stories may reach a more diverse audience and their lessons not be forgotten.

The content of my submission are sketches I made during the trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. On September 23, 2010, Siddiqui received a sentence of 86 years after being found guilty of numerous charges - among them, attempted murder of U.S. soldiers and federal agents.

What makes Siddiqui's case unique are the questions that still remain in light of her trial. Where was she prior to her arrest in Afghanistan in July 2008? Was she, as some have alleged, being held in a secret prison at Bagram as Prisoner #650? After all three of her children disappeared, two have turned up - where were they, and what is the fate of her third and youngest child, Suleman?

The fact that some of these questions may never be answered (without the revelation of classified information) highlights some of the shortcomings of the U.S.-led War on Terror. But more broadly, the limits of law, as an ideal of modern, constitutional liberalism, come to the fore. And it is precisely this condition of incommensurability with our ideals that I had in mind when producing these courtroom sketches.

Stylistically, these sketches intentionally differ from the rote, courtroom sketches usually made for evening-news panning. Either finished and flat, or rough, with notes on the side, they retain a resistance to a completely fleshed-out story: their incompleteness is eponymous. A deference to skepticism is maintained, paralleling that which is deserved for Siddiqui's case, as well as any other instance in which a nation proclaims "Victory" over its enemies.

Aafia Siddiqui Trial Sketches

2010-10-04T08:27:00.000-04:00

From Aafia Siddiqui Trial Sketches

The included sketches are from a series that were made during the trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. On September 23, 2010, Siddiqui received a sentence of 86 years after being found guilty of numerous charges - among them, attempted murder of U.S. soldiers and federal agents.

What makes Siddiqui's case unique are the questions that still remain in light of her trial. Where was she prior to her arrest in Afghanistan in July 2008? Was she, as some have alleged, being held in a secret prison at Bagram as Prisoner #650? After all three of her children disappeared, two have turned up - where were they, and what is the fate of her third and youngest child, Suleman?

The fact that some of these questions may never be answered (without the revelation of classified information) highlights some of the shortcomings of the U.S.-led War on Terror. But more broadly, the limits of law, as an ideal of modern, constitutional liberalism, come to the fore. And it is precisely this condition of incommensurability with our ideals that I had in mind when producing these courtroom sketches.

Stylistically, these sketches intentionally differ from the rote, courtroom sketches usually made for evening-news panning. Either finished and flat, or rough, with notes on the side, they retain a resistance to a completely fleshed-out story. A deference to skepticism is maintained, paralleling that which is deserved for Siddiqui's case, as well as any other instance in which a nation proclaims "Victory" over its enemies.

(A digital piece based off of these sketches is in the works...)

Xtranormal: for the increasing need to say something, via an animated/avatar/de-humanized voice.

2010-08-17T16:07:00.001-04:00

http://www.xtranormal.com

For example, a discussion on the gender politics intricacies of "Michfest," the annual, all-womyn music festival, and their trans- admittance policy (Created by Amita Swadhin):

Nerd Alert: Context Highlight - Awesomely Useful Add-on for Firefox

2010-08-17T14:39:00.004-04:00

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/239/

Allows you to quickly and easily highlight all instances of a word or phrase within the current page. Simply select the text you want, right click and choose "highlight"...

A good workaround for a "multiple-find word" option, provided that you can already find one instance of the word(s) you're looking for on the page. Holding Ctrl- while selecting "Highlight Word" from the context menu allows for multiple, highlighted words, à la Google Cache.

On dump.fm

2010-06-29T04:56:00.001-04:00

I don't think I'll ever be 100% convinced by the micro-blogging of image-macros (saturation is finite; over-saturation is finite, too), but I can still appreciate this:

...if one GIF can be a "grammatical molecule", than 100 can be a "complete sentience" and 10,000 can be a "book"...

- Ryder Ripps, in a response comment following his article, "Introducing: dump.fm" on Rhizome.org

(Btw, I'm reading "sentience" as intentional.)

Way to go Ryder!

http://dump.fm/

France. WTF? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-cabinet-unites-to-pass-burka-bill-that-has-split-country-1977571.html

2010-05-21T13:11:00.000-04:00

Upon the occasion of yet again, some person I know in academia getting undue praise...

2010-04-19T21:55:00.001-04:00

... I couldn't help but think of this classic. From Insider Baseball, by Joan Didion (1988):

It occurred to me, in California in June and in Atlanta in July and in New Orleans in August, in the course of watching first the California primary and then the Democratic and Republican national conventions, that it had not been by accident that the people with whom I had preferred to spend time in high school had, on the whole, hung out in gas stations. They had not run for student body office. They had not gone on to Yale or Swarthmore or DePauw, nor had they even applied. They had gotten drafted, gone through basic at Fort Ord. They had knocked up girls, and married them, had begun what they called the first night of the rest of their lives with a midnight drive to Carson City and a five-dollar ceremony performed by a justice still in his pajamas.

Later, regarding a Dukakis photo-op, baseball toss:

What we had in the tarmac arrival with ball tossing, then, was an understanding: a repeated moment witnessed by many people, all of whom believed it to be a setup and yet most of whom believed that only an outsider, only someone too “naive” to know the rules of the game, would so describe it.

So I will raise my glass once to forget those unwarrantably honored, and then I will raise it once more for all of the people in academia that have not completely succumbed to cynicism and forgotten why they are there.

Source: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1988/oct/27/insider-baseball/?page=3

Cinema 16 blurb in the New York Times

2010-04-11T18:29:00.000-04:00

Congrats to friends Molly Surno of Cinema 16, Rachel Blackwell, and my old band Dirty Churches for making some ink in the NYT. See the original article here.

A still from Rachel's film Rituals, screened April 9th at Galapagos.

No Immunity for former AG, in Abdullah Al-Kidd v. John Ashcroft

2010-03-30T14:06:00.002-04:00

From AllGov.com and ACLU.org:

Last Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a September 2009 ruling that Al-Kidd may go forward with his claim that Ashcroft bears responsibility for the former's wrongful detention, dismissing a petition filed by Ashcroft to have the decision reconsidered en banc.

"In March 2003, Kidd was arrested at Dulles Airport as he prepared to board a flight to Saudi Arabia to work on his doctorate in Islamic Studies."

Kidd was detained for two weeks, and then asked to live with his wife's parents in Las Vegas for 15 months. His detention was ordered under 18 U.S.C. § 3144, commonly known as the "material witness law." The ACLU, filing suit for the plaintiff, contends that Ashcroft implemented a distorted version of the law to pre-emptively detain Kidd (along with others) with no probable cause, rather than secure witnesses with actionable information or testimony.

Capital is caring less.

2010-03-26T01:13:00.000-04:00

Love, please understand, my first memory of death in the family was a party.

2010-02-28T22:04:00.001-05:00

A short list of Canadian bands that should've been in the Winter Olympics opening ceremony

2010-02-13T14:39:00.000-05:00

Instead of Flaming Lips*, we got flaming penises

Sure - the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games opening ceremony was impressive in terms of logistics and scale (what Olympics ceremony isn't?), but why did "Inspire the World" have to translate into "Bore me to (Ice-cube) Tears?" Why is a former new-waver, Ignatius Jones, giving us Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams?

What the ceremony did inspire me to do was compile a short list of Canadian bands (thanks to Wikipedia) that I would liked to have seen instead:

• Black Mountain
• Broken Social Scene
• Chromeo
• Crystle Castles
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor <- perhaps enough Winter Olympics dough would bring them out of hiatus...?
• Junior Boys
• King Khan (with whatever crew he chooses)
• MSTRKRFT
• The New Pornographers
• Skinny Puppy (can you imagine?!)
• Any of the Unicorns spin-off bands

* - I know the Flaming Lips aren't from Canada - Oklahoma has finally officially recognized them as their own - but the giant bear seemed like something right out of their concert playbook.

Black Mountain - "Wucan"

"Awesome-Blage '09" closing reception at Artjail, this Fri., Jan. 8th, from 7-10PM

2010-01-05T22:35:00.000-05:00

The show I'm in, "Awesome-Blage '09" is having a closing reception this Friday, Jan. 8th, from 7-10PM. With live performances by Big Game and Open Ocean. At Artjail, 50 Eldridge St., 6th Fl., NY, NY 10002.

Something I heard on the radio that resonated with me

2009-10-13T18:49:00.000-04:00

On his Oct. 13 show, Brian Lehrer asks Deepak Chopra the naturally skeptical question about how the pursuit of enlightenment isn't just solipsistic "navel-gazing," to which Chopra responds:

"Because you see, solipsism is self-centeredness, more or less. Whereas meditation takes you beyond the separate self; it takes you to a trans-personal domain. And ultimately, enlightenment is a state where you don't actually believe in your personal identity at all, because you realize that your personal identity is a transient, impermanent, ephemeral manifestation of a more universal consciousness, and that's the only thing that it is. So it's the antithesis of solipsism." (Deepak Chopra, WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show, 13 Oct. 2009)

The form of Chopra's answer has undeniably achieved a level of cliché familarity. But I nonetheless agree with him, and think that recognizing this difference is probably harder than most people would expect, or is a distinction that some people - despite their entire lives - never even consider.

Sharing is caring.

2009-05-31T08:46:00.003-04:00