MDM Broadcast - 2022

I'm familiar with most of Martin Parr's work, but not so much what he's been doing in the 20-years or so after going digital (with his Atlanta pictures being the exception).

I've definitely never seen this one before, from 2003.

Alex Webb vs. Google Street View, Atlanta edition.

So satisfying to tune-into my old thesis advisor reading her flawless and expertly constructed "The Size of Spokane" starting at 14min here (time-stamped) or just go ahead and read it on reddit, where someone posted it 7 days ago just because.

Photographer Andrew McConell on girls surfing in Gaza and more at 4min30sec https://youtu.be/O-bbKqTrvGE

New BBC3 doc interviewing 7 Instagram whistleblowers called "The Instagram Effect" on the way.

If you've never traveled to Ukraine or Russia and feel like you're missing some of the sounds and textures of the place, I was able to fill-in some blanks for myself from an unlikely messenger, a YouTubeing Brit who made the mistake of staying a day or two too long in Ukraine, and ended-up taking a refugee's spot on the train out of Kyiv.

He's done two vids this week. One charting a journey from Poland, through Lviv, to Kharkiv and to a village on the border with Russia; the second charts his journey out of Kyiv to Hungary after the war started.

His example is why people should not travel to war zones for the likes/faves/clout, especially if you're a fledgling war photographer or just a Brit on YouTube (who's racked up millions of views on these) but there's something about both vids that helped to fill-in the fuzziness of what these places look like (at the end of a selfie stick).

Zelensky’s live address to Euro Parliament that just ended sounded like the live translator was going to break down in tears. Incredible.

Glad to see FRONTLINE uploaded this (from 2015) today. Very much worth (re)watching. I’d forgotten about the early oligarchs who turned on him and are now in exile. https://youtu.be/NIgqhU4lkgo

From the Humans of New York / Brandon Stanton profile in NY Mag. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/humans-of-new-york-brandon-stanton.html

👍🏻👍🏻

This 3-part series from the NYT on Tucker Carlson takes some time to ingest and is an incredible combo of great reporting and data visualization. Fun to see what real budgets & talented reporters can create when combining the Internet Archive's TV News trove + LexisNexis transcripts.

If your family or friends mainline Tucker's fearmongering night after night, it's worth your while to spend time with all 3 of these pieces, and tune your ear to the loudest frequencies of his megaphone (from the wilds of Maine).

Insightful to see to what degree Fox & Murdoch have used "minute by minute" analytics to see which versions of hate/fear/supremacy their audience wants to watch, and give them exactly that, night after night. It's yet another engagement-based feedback loop preying on the basest of human impulses -- the social mediafication of entertainment masquerading as news.

Orson Welles, spoutin' off, from a thread.

Three Brief Experiments

EVEN THOUGH THEY WEREN'T LISTENING AND WAITING IT COULD HAVE BEEN SOMETHING LUCKY THERE SOMETHING ELSE WHERE IT APPEARS HE'S LOST IT HE'S LOST IT WAY RIGHT BUT WE ALL KNEW BETTER

REMEMBER REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE RIGHT THERE YOU WERE SOMETHING SOMETHING ELSE NOT A CLOUD IN THE SKY SOME CLOUDS PASSING BY PASSING QUIETLY OUT OF THE LAST PART OF THE STORY

AT THIS MOMENT AT THE TOP OF THE HILL AT THE END OF THE DAY YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU

I made a version of W. S. Merwin's "Berryman" using 78 source videos on YouTube, found via filmot.com, an incredible new subtitle search-engine.

Definitely make sure captions (cc) are on, for legibility.

Never thought someone would reimagine the central idea behind Christian Marclay's "The Clock") into an indiegogo crowd-sourced time-device project (with a bookish twist).

Really great effort, but the examples have me wondering if they actually have references for every single minute? (Apparently, they do.)

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/author-clock-a-novel-way-to-tell-time#/

"She’s not on Twitter, Instagram or any social media. She has no website or podcast, hasn’t done a special in years and doesn’t even have a computer, smartphone or email address."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/14/movies/janeane-garofalo.html

Saw two exceptionally large flags flying near highways in the last two weeks.

One was an absolutely huge Confederate flag flying high and proud above route 29 near Tightsqueeze, Virginia (srsly) -- the other was a huge American flag flying over I-78 on the south end of Trump's country club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

The sameness of the experience of seeing each is the terrifying part.

Wanted to find a recent photo of the shoreline that once surrounded Spiral Jetty. This is from back in May. Wow.

https://www.ksl.com/article/50430315/spiral-jetty-a-barometer-for-the-great-salt-lake-or-a-work-of-art-unto-itself

Always useful to tune-into Cory Doctorow, especially on DRM & Audible/Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/

Appreciating Haidt's take in this commencement address on how Gen-Z needs to fight-back against a culture in which their parents view them as inherently fragile. (Though his Dale Carnegie recco is tired, and the same as DJT...)

"How can you overcome the obstacles that your caring parents put in your way?”

Folks are finally getting it.

Fun screenshot to surface from March 10th, 2022, the day before Rudy Gobert tested positive and the NBA shutdown along with everything else -- there were only around 600 reported cases in the US at the time.

“In an unusual twist, Mark had worked as a software engineer on a large technology company’s automated tool for taking down video content flagged by users as problematic. ”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html

For the last week or so we’ve had the Kenai bear livestream rolling every evening, and if you haven’t tuned in yer missing out.

I mean, it's bordering outrageous that this IS NOT a photograph taken by Roger Ballen, but instead is an artificial intelligence model built (in-part) on public images of Roger Ballen's work, over which Roger Ballen has no control (of course) but wow. https://lexica.art/prompt/b3ce216d-ced1-435a-9f63-c35c0434bc42

Great piece, especially the three time-lapsed photos from Utrecht, which unlike our American examples, shows resolution. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/08/opinion/urban-highways-segregation.html

Always rewarding to spend a few evenings working on an obscure effort and have it find a handful of viewers who appreciate (or hate!) it. Replies are a mess this morning, but at least one said “so this is what it’s like to have a stroke.”

To answer the question no one asked, I made this to highlight how the entire effort from LIV/Norman/Saudi is pure puffery, a brand marketing exercise operating outside the bounds of market forces. It’s got the professionals of the game roasting over an ethical spit, and it’s been fascinating to see who’s most eager to be burned.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/arts/design/moma-wolfgang-tillmans-review.html

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/baldwin-lees-extraordinary-pictures-from-the-american-south

Pretty outta the loop, but realized last night there's a "new" mini-season of (pizza-focussed) Chef's Table on Neckflitz. First episode with Chris Bianco in Phoenix is phenomenal, worth watching, and reminds you why the series is so parodiable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chef's_Table#Chef's_Table:_Pizza_(2022)

very stable genius

Even Pulitzer prize-winning poets are caught up in the winds of whether or not Mastodon is a viable replacement for their urge to microblog

Insightful dataviz from NYT about the changing sands of the film canon, including the rise of Akerman & Varda over time (plus appearances from Marker & Weerasethakul).

Can't help but recall the screening I helped organize of Akerman's #1, "Jeanne Dielman..." what a quiet revelation.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/02/arts/sight-and-sound-best-movies-of-all-time.html

Great to see a music reviewer at Pitchfork pulling out the best scene from the Rolling Thunder documentary in their perfect-10 review of Joni's "Hejira"

Can't recall a more dramatic example of scene stealing

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/joni-mitchell-hejira/

“Taking a shortcut, they headed down a lonely path that had no park lamps. Their talk livened when they discussed the poetry of Lewis Carroll, the piano compositions of Ravel and the evils of TikTok. Elena pointed at the night sky.”

Can GenZ shine the light for Boomers, GenX & Millennials to reject surveillance capitalism (or are we already too far gone)?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html