Just posted video that I shot of Aaron Kunin’s excellent reading at the Poetic Research Bureau on Nov. 1.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUweaR79z58

For fans of Ryan Trecartin, this clip from the Japanese “horror” flick Hausu is just too good. More videos of this director, Nobuhiko Obayashi, can be found on ubu.com.

I’ve just put the video of my reading at La Bota in Mexico City up on Youtube.

It was a long reading, partly because a good number of the poems were read in Spanish (such as the rather long one, “We Make,” which was published in Tierra Adentro in Román Luján’s translation). Other poems read in Spanish by Román include “They’re Putting a New Door In” and “The Slush of Meaning” (which I actually translated myself with the help of Babelfish and Román).

There are forty minutes of it on Youtube, but the video actually doesn’t include the last three or four poems I read because the camera ran out of space. The Youtube also doesn’t have the introduction by Jorge Betanzos, most of which wasn’t recorded, but I’m going to put what part of it there is online soon.

Some really nice ambient noise in this recording. La Bota is the same restaurant where the paella party featured in my Facebook photo album took place. Good times.

There’s something quite perfect about this old bit from Psychic TV.

Sample footage of algorithmic poem/painting digital projection Scriptor, version 1, captured from the computer screen by CamStudio.

“The Scriptor series is meant to bring some of that free form doodling into the digital world. For the project, I created my own letterform creation program that, purposefully, lacks many of the elements of professional graphics programs such as Illustrator and Flash that encourage symmetry, cut-and-paste, and the mathematically precise placement of objects that we associate with digital design, not to mention much digital art. These letterforms and doodles are all by hand, and by eye — they are a version of penmanship for the screen, but one in which each line or stroke of the letterform can be animated algorithmically (something you can’t do with standard fonts). The words themselves are parsed from news articles interesting phrases are randomly picked out, given randomly generated sizes, placements and trajectories, as well as a crazy level (that’s the name of the variable in the program) that determines their legibility. This crazy level can grow or shrink — once the crazy level reaches a certain pitch, the letter explodes, but in some instances letters can be brought back from the brink of disaster to reach a stable state again.”

Well, now that I’ve published my booklist I assume no one thinks I’m a total idiot. That leaves me room to post this video by Morrissey, a live bit of him performing “I’ve Changed My Plea to Guilty,” which is quite marvelous. He reminds me a bit of the King below (that’s Elvis, not Michael Jackson), in the not-too subtly exaggerated hair and a few of the gestures.

But here’s a trivia question (which I don’t know the answer to): can anyone think of another pop song that uses the word “dissuade”?

Anyway, here’s a bit of “the King” for comparison.

Here’s Leon Botstein, the president of the college I went to, Bard, from which I graduated in 1992 (when he still had hair), on the Colbert Report. It’s pretty funny… maybe not as funny as Bruce Andrews on the O’Reilly Factor, but not bad.

Ah, now here’s a PS… I found the video of Andrews and O’Reilly on Youtube. Seemed that, back when it happend, it was quite difficult to link to. Thanks, Web 2.0. Now if O’Reilly only started by busting Bruce about his hair…

I’m not sure which of these two is better, the original film of wild solo by Branca in a NYC loft in 1978 or the algorithmic re-edit of the footage circa 2007 with Max/MSP (Jitter). I wanted to learn Jitter just so I could do work like this — check out my Flash Polaroids for algorithmic editing of photographs — but never got very far with it. I also didn’t like the reduced image quality, but it’s perfect for Branca imagery — bad compression of mediocre super-8 equals good clean fun — and the sound is great.

Analog versus digital — a goon with a tie, guitar and amp attacking music as we know it versus a geek with a laptop and software playing techno primitive, but in the same avant-garde tradition created by aforementioned goon. Analog has never looked or sounded better since digital music and video entered the scene, but I think it’s all becoming one big mix now, the one feeding off the other, and original of an original of a copy. Well, I’m black and white with envy.

Reminds me of the fact Guy Maddin, for all of his simplicity in terms of the machines he uses — one of his favorite special effects tricks when shooting is rubbing Vaseline on the lens — is a way ahead of the curve in terms of editing. Check out “Sissy Boy Slap Party” if you can find it on DVD (don’t watch the YouTube version, the magic is lost at that frame rate), or “The Heart of the World.”

Here are videos from each of the stages of Scott Walker’s career — enough to get you started in any cocktail conversation — from his early days as teen idol with the Walker Brothers to his early solo career (notable for his covers of Jacques Brel tunes but also his wonderfully orchestral original material), then on to the darker solo material which is really indescribable. He hasn’t performed live for several decades, but did do a few television appearances, which is the fourth vid here. The final one is from “The Drift,” his release from 2006 — a beautiful video in itself.

Walker (his real name is Noel Scott Engel) has become my big music obsession over the past year, and I highly recommend nearly everything he’s done, even the early pop stuff, since his baritone is so distinctive for being at once affectless (he trained himself to erase any vibrato from his singing) and yet rich and fluid. He was a big influence on David Bowie (who covered the Walker Brothers’ “Nite Flights”) and Bryan Ferry when he decided go all new Romantic on our ass (don’t blame Walker for that).

Walker, notable for being a recluse and walking away (puns!) from fame and money in the sixties, is now putting out one album every, oh, ten years or so, partly because he couldn’t get a contract, which is too bad but it seems like he’ll be recording more with all of the attention he’s been getting — a couple of recent books about his life and music, a feature length documentary called 30 Century Man, and now mention on Free Space Comix: the blog! If you don’t believe me when I say he’s genuinely strange and brilliant, watch “Rosary” first!

(BTW, for all you trivia buffs, the background singer on “Track 3” — which doesn’t seem to be loading properly, but maybe will straighten out later — is Billy Ocean!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTljMHlyA1o
“The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore”

“Jackie”

“Track 3” (preceded by “The Sun” live recording and an interview)

“Rosary”

“Jesse”

I am just about to slip off the homepage of DVBlog, which is not to say my videos won’t be accessible there, just that time flies. Two sections of “Vex” and “Ferrari Dogs” have been featured there for the past couple of weeks.

There’s a rather curious assessment of my work, too. Something along the lines of “I thought it sucked, but now I think it’s great,” which in some ways I find more reassuring than a straight “I think this is great.” Why?

Anyway, check it out. This is a really great site, I check it everyday (I’m downloading three new videos now.)

http://dvblog.org/

I posted a notice on FSC about these videos below.