Category Archives: Internet

Jahsonic is the number one Tumblr in Belgium.

Jahsonic is the number one Tumblr in Belgium. It took me three days of intensive posting. I met a lot of great people and was literally barraged with good imagery. The quality of images is quite high and no other platform can compare in quantity. Tumblr is a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, a micro-blog. Users can “follow” other users and see their posts together on their dashboard. Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web. Leading social networking websites Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and XING also have their own micro-blogging feature, better known as status updates. On May the 3d I compared Tumbr with some other blogging platforms: Last November I introduced At Her Discretion[1], my first exposure to the phenomeneon of micro-blogging. Today I took the Tumblr service for a test drive[2][3] and I was quite pleased with it. Tumblr is a web 2.0 micro-blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can “follow” other users and see their posts together on their dashboard. Compared to other web 2.0 social internet services: Compared to Del.icio.us[4]: Tumbler has no social bookmarking. Compared to Facebook[5]: Tumblr is public so it lets you reach a ider audience, but its ease of use is worse that that of Facebook. Compared to Twitter[6]: Tumblr may be a future competitor to Twitter, Twitter does not allow image previews. Compared to WordPress: Tumblr excells at creating little visual interesting posts fast, WordPress is better for the longer more pensive posts. What with the proliferation of these social media and social networking sites, what we need is social network aggregation or lifestreaming.

Jahsonic is the number one Tumblr in Belgium.

It took me three days of intensive posting. I met a lot of great people and was literally barraged with good imagery. The quality of images is very high and no other platform can compare in quantity.

It reminded me of the old days when I used to blog at a maddening tempo over at Jahsonic.com from 2001 Nov until 2006 Aug.

I then switched to WordPress where I’ve had a very good time and my first availability in RSS format. I posted about 3,400 posts from August 2006 until today, an avarage of three posts per day.

Jahsonic @ Tumblr

Last November I introduced At Her Discretion[1], my first exposure to the phenomeneon of micro-blogging. Today I took the Tumblr service for a test drive[2][3] and I was quite pleased with it.

Tumblr is a web 2.0 micro-blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can “follow” other users and see their posts together on their dashboard.

Compared to other web 2.0 social internet services:

Compared to Del.icio.us[4]: Tumbler has no social bookmarking.

Compared to Facebook[5]: Tumblr is public so it lets you reach a ider audience, but its ease of use is worse that that of Facebook.

Compared to Twitter[6]: Tumblr may be a future competitor to Twitter, Twitter does not allow image previews.

Compared to WordPress: Tumblr excells at creating little visual interesting posts fast, WordPress is better for the longer more pensive posts.

So you can expect me to spend less time on FaceBook, Flickr, Del.icio.us to spend more time at my Tumblr.

Introducing Mr.Fox: Darker Deeper

Introducing Mr.Fox: Darker Deeper

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYN5fB_k-uw]

Mr.Fox: Darker Deeper[1][2] is an Anglophone visual culture blog with a focus on transgressive black and white photographs founded in May 2008.

As of May 2009, its most recent entries included Deus Irae Psychedelico[3], Robert Gregory Griffeth[4] , Rik Garrett[5] , Laurie Lipton[6] , Simon Marsden[7] , Sanne Sannes[8] , Jeffrey Silverthorne[9] , Edward Donato[10]

As of May 2009, the blog was connected with Blind Pony, EDK, Fetishart, Indie Nudes, Medieval Art, Morbid Anatomy, Ofellabuta, SensOtheque, With the ghost and Woolgathersome.

Guy Bourdin @80

Charles Jourdan ad, 1976

French fashion and advertising photographer Guy Bourdin (1928 – 1991) would have celebrated his 80th birthday today had he not died of cancer 17 years ago.

I’m not sure when I first consciously came in to contact with his oeuvre, but I am pretty sure it was in the terra cognita that the internet has become by way of this page[1] from the site of music and culture connoisseur Phinn.

Today, a wide selection of his videos is available on YouTube[2]; a large number of his films can be found on Flickr and on the internet at large[3].

However, and although I cannot confirm this, I feel that I had seen the imagery of Bourdin in the pre-internet world, in a Dutch-language magazine called Avenue, which my parents bought during the seventies. It was The Netherlands’ and Flander’s first glossy, and ran from 1965 until 2002. Contributors have included Paul Huf, Eddy Posthuma de Boer, Ed van der Elsken and Inez van Lamsweerde. I distinctly seem to remember the Charles Jourdan shoe photo-ads Bourdin produced during that era. Not coincidentally, Avenue reminds me of that other glossy, Nova magazine, which I covered a couple of weeks ago[4].

To me, Bourdin can only be compared to his contemporary Helmut Newton (although admittedly I’ve also tentavily compared Ralph Gibson [5] to Bourdin) because in the words of Charlotte Cotton and Shelly Verthime he “emphasised fetishism, power relationships, and the potential for sexual violence, as well as the artificiality of the image, its gloss rather than its reality.”[6]

I’ve reported on Bourdin many times, and I am glad that I saw his retrospective at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and was given as a present Luc Sante‘s first monograph on his work: Exhibit A: Guy Bourdin

You can find Bourdin’s work all over the net.

Avenue van A tot Zero

Can anyone ID the photograper of this cover image?

For something different here[7] is a photo of a cover from Avenue.

Questions of color fidelity on the internet

One often does not have a clue of the colors of painted artworks if one is an internet connoisseur. By internet connoisseur I mean someone who has gained most of his/her expertise from the internet rather than traditional media. Questions of color fidelity on the internet should be raised here.

Before October 30, 2008 the only version known to me of Géricault’s Kleptomaniac was this one:

La monomanie du vol by you.

Kleptomaniac, 1822 painting by Théodore Géricault

Compare this photo taken at its current location here:

The Kleptomaniac by Géricault by you.

Kleptomaniac

The detail of the painting was taken with a Sony Ericsson K770i on last Thursday.

The Sony Ericsson is notorious for picking up an excess of blue, but still is a rather faithful reproduction.

The Prince copyright controversy and WMC #54

At the 2008 Coachella Music Festival, Prince performed a cover of Radiohead‘s “Creep” but immediately after he forced YouTube and other sites to remove footage that fans had taken of the performance. Thom Yorke of Radiohead, upon hearing about the removal of the video, asked Prince to unblock the song stating “Well, tell him to unblock it. It’s our … song.” –The Prince (TAFKAP) and copyright controversy.

Look around on YouTube, how many TAFKAP clips do you find? That’s right, none. TAFKAP is convinced that if you want to be entertained by him, you have to pay him. He is right of course, even if it does not make him very likable.

Why is he right?

Companies such as YouTube (a Google owned company) are making millions of dollars on the backs of “minor” artists (the long tail) who do not have the funds to employ an army of lawyers to police YouTube in search of their content.

These minor artists should be paid for their work. Tafkap may set a precedent for this to happen.

Take an artist such as Loleatta Holloway[1] (who may be a bad example since she didn’t actually write many compositions herself, but it will do for the sake of the argument). About 124 clips with her voice are featured on YouTube, providing thousands of pageviews for YouTube. Pageviews generate ad revenue. Does Loleatta get paid? No. Does she gain in extra record sales? No, record sales are virtually non-existent since the advent of the internet, everyone downloads1.

The solution?

Micropayments, subscription based YouTubes (one for the the big four, the major record companies who control 70% of the world music market; one for all the independents who control the other 30%); and YouTube setting up a fund for the artists who are missing out on revenue right now.

P.S. It may sound contradictory (especially in regard to my post on The Cult of the Amateur [2], but I enjoy YouTube and its ability to bring unknown artists to my attention immensely, it’s just that I would not mind paying an annual fee to be able to discover them (and not pay to view the majors’ work). I wouldn’t even subscribe to TAFKAP, for that matter, he’s become to MSM to me.

As a bonus, and to extend the contradiction, it’s time for WMC #54.

[Youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=0qX-G-PUwvg]

“Cry to Me” (1975) by Loleatta Holloway.

1) For the record, I never download. I did it for a period of a month back in 2003/2004, lost the 200 songs I had gathered (I hadn’t burned them on cd, in fact I’ve yet to burn my first cd) and have not repeated the experience since I find YouTube satisfactory.

Accolades

It’s Jahsonic fave Alain Robbe-Grillet day at Dennis Cooper’s [1].

I am honored to have received by John Coulthart the “Arte y pico” award [2].

I’d like to pass the meme to Au carrefour étrange[3], Dennis Cooper [4], Hugo Strikes Back[5], PonyXpress[6], and Trevor Brown[7].

My criterium for selecting these blogs was my willingness to click their new posts when checking my RSS feeds.

The best analysis of this type of internet memes is by Surreal Documents [8], a post he wrote at the occasion of the Thinking Blogger Award we were awarded.