LONDON | Openned

Benjamin Penguin

2008-07-05T09:04:21Z

Penguin's new front cover for Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

Image Fulgurator

2008-07-04T08:21:28Z

'The Image Fulgurator is a device for physically manipulating photographs. It intervenes when a photo is being taken, without the photographer being able to detect anything. The manipulation is only visible on the photo afterwards. In other words, with the Fulgurator it is possible to have a lasting effect on those kinds of individual moments and events that become accessible to the masses only because they are preserved photographically. In this context the Fulgurator represents a manipulation of visual reality and so targets the very fabric of media memory.'

Congratulations

2008-07-03T10:25:10Z

To James Davies and Alex Middleton, who brought Kaj Louis Middleton into the world today. X

E·ratio Editions

2008-07-03T00:06:56Z

'E·ratio Editions, a series of elegantly produced, quick loading e-chaps, is reading for poetry, innovative narrative prose and recollection and critical and theoretical essays.' Link

otoliths

2008-07-01T00:24:37Z

'The intention is for Otoliths to appear quarterly, to contain a variety of what can be loosely described as e-things, that is, anything that can be translated (visually at this stage) to an electronic platform. If it moves, we won't shoot at it.' Link

William James Austin

2008-06-30T23:30:48Z

'several hundred xeroxers were employed and soon the scientific world rattled the universe darker than africa as it was contained in the report in their wagging hands' Link

Third Factory/Notes to Poetry

2008-06-29T08:49:22Z

Steve Evans has created an inward spiral of documentation, lists and more lists of his reading life, then pushed in outward shards forming, when the path is traced like a turtle on an Acorn, a web. Link

Vispo

2008-06-28T22:58:24Z

Jim Andrews: 'Walt Whitman wrote one book: Leaves of Grass. He changed it throughout his life. Vispo.com is my 'book'. And it isn't a book at all but, hopefully, something that you can experience as many times as you like and find different things each time--very different, and of a new and ongoing life in writing/art/sound/programming.' Link There are fascinating design choices made for many poetry sites. While the blog is understandably the most dominant form, there is a subset of intentionally backward-looking, anachronistic websites. Vispo is a good example, as is Jodi. Harking back 10 or 15 years in web design terms is the equivalent of 10 or 15 decades in terms of printing technologies. In fact, it makes me wonder how important 'prettiness' is going to be in terms of making online publishing successful. Perhaps text on screen will only reach a tipping point when Jonathan Ive has crafted us new eyes out of polyester twine and sports socks.

radiOM

2008-06-27T23:02:48Z

'Other Minds (based in San Francisco) welcomes you to radiOM[ray-dee-om].org — the website that brings you the sounds of revelationary new music and the voices of the revelationists themselves. Our offerings include interviews with some of the most influential composers of our time including Lou Harrison, Brian Eno, John Cage, Laurie Anderson, György Ligeti, and Anthony Braxton. We also offer concerts, sound poetry performances, lectures and documentaries in classical music, jazz, experimental music and other forms. The material you will find here is gleaned from thousands of hours of audio recordings from KPFA-FM radio in Berkeley (1949-1995), and concerts and talks produced by Other Minds in San Francisco (1993-2005). We urge you to search our site often as new programs are added each month. Use of this site is free, but for unlimited access to the material registration is required.' Sign-up take two and one half minutes and is well worth it. Link

Shampoo

2008-06-26T23:24:40Z

The best way to Shampoo is to randomly click names and see if you find something you like. Any kind of methodical approach is bound to lead to a classic wheat/chaff scenario. All the people can't like all things all of the time, but some of the people can like some of the things, some of the time. I think Barack Obama said that. Link

Cannibal Spices No. 1

2008-06-25T11:51:57Z

No. 1 in an occasional series. Will also be distributed in advance to our mailing list. Please e-mail us to join the mailing list if you would like the convenience of this publication being dropped in your inbox. It's not painful. Cannibal Spices No. 1

Openned 12: Excerpt

2008-06-24T14:53:15Z

An excerpt of a collaboration between Becky Cremin, Ryan Ormonde and Steve Willey is now available in the Readings section.

Bozo

2008-06-23T23:20:12Z

'The next morning we began looking once more for Paddy’s friend, who was called Bozo, and was a screever—that is, a pavement artist.... Bozo had a strange way of talking, Cockneyfied and yet very lucid and expressive. It was as though he had read good books but had never troubled to correct his grammar. For a while Paddy and I stayed on the Embankment, talking, and Bozo gave us an account of the screeving trade. I repeat what he said more or less in his own words. "I’m what they call a serious screever. I don’t draw in blackboard chalks like these others, I use proper colours the same as what painters use; bloody expensive they are, especially the reds. I use five bobs’ worth of colours in a long day, and never less than two bobs’ worth. Cartoons is my line—you know, politics and cricket and that. Look here’—he showed me his notebook—‘here’s likenesses of all the political blokes, what I’ve copied from the papers. I have a different cartoon every day. For instance, when the Budget was on I had one of Winston trying to push an elephant marked “Debt”, and underneath I wrote, “Will he budge it?” See? You can have cartoons about any of the parties, but you mustn’t put anything in favour of Socialism, because the police won’t stand it. Once I did a cartoon of a boa constrictor marked Capital swallowing a rabbit marked Labour. The copper came along and saw it, and he says, “You rub that out, and look sharp about it,” he says. I had to rub it out. The copper’s got the right to move you on for loitering, and it’s no good giving them a back answer."' - Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell

The Burning Babe, Illustrated

2008-06-22T08:07:26Z

Jerome Rothenberg: 'In 2005 Granary Books published – in a very limited edition – Susan Bee’s illumination of The Burning Babe, a series of poems that I had written over the preceding several years. While the poems reappear in Triptych, which New Directions brought out in 2007, the illuminated work has been largely inaccesible till now. That work, in which Susan Bee appears at the height of her artistic powers, can now be viewed in full, courtesy of PennSound & the University of Pennsylvania.' Link

Manifesto of the Disabled Text

2008-06-21T11:01:13Z

'1. Discomfort with a translated text is discomfort with a disabled text. (“But the text can’t stand on its own!” “But something is lost, ruined, missing!”, etc.) 2. As do disabled bodies, disabled texts create a nervousness with reference to able, or enabled, texts and bodies. They give the lie to the supposed centeredness, completeness, originariness of able, enabled, or ‘original’ bodies and texts. Such nervousness is already an admission that all is not as stable—with our bodies, selves, and texts-- as we are led to believe we should believe.' Link