Day: November 10, 2014

firefox vlc plugin not updating -- minor note to others with this issue

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Minor note to Firefox/VLC users:
The latest version of VLC is 2.1.5. Logically they should rename their browser plugin to conform to this numbering scheme. But they didn't! The npvlc.dll file still says 2.1.3.
So Firefox compares the .dll to the latest version of VLC and again, logically, informs you in the Add-ons tab that your VLC plugin is out-of-date and vulnerable.
When this was pointed out to VLC the developer, Rémi Denis-Courmont, got damn snotty in response:

What part of "This is a Firefox bug" do you not understand?
Complain to Mozilla. At this point, I am closing the discussion. This is a waste of time.

Sometimes "open source" means head up the you-know-what. VLC is clearly in the wrong here. I realize you are volunteers, but update the .dll, please.

Andy M (and thoughts on outsiderdom)

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andy_M_imgonnaloveyou_BW

remix GIF based on a YouTube vid by John Andrew Medeiros, aka Andy M (hat tip frankhats)

Artist, musician, and YouTube channel dynamo Andy M stands alongside Kathleen Daniel, aka Silicious, in the small pantheon of outsiders who rival or exceed the creative abilities of many self-identifying net artists. Let's say up front that he's a better musician than he is a videomaker, and the catchy songs he writes, sings, and produces, in a trance/synthpop vein with angelic, slightly discordant layers of barbershop harmony, would work very well on their own.

The videos, done mostly in the Poser and Blender programs, are 3D puppet shows that illustrate the songs, with a bevy of off-the-shelf effects. The outsider part of the equation is that Medeiros hasn't heard of the uncanny valley (a YT commenter asked him about it) and doesn't seem aware that the surrealism in his vids functions on two levels: the trippiness of his own imagination and the unintended grotesqueness of the frozen-faced puppet automata that dance, sing, and fly apart into geometric tile patterns. An insider has a filter, a nagging, internal voice that is always aware of the art world consensus and rejects certain ideas as too stupid to use. The outsider has no filter and just gives his/her imagination free reign.

The pigtailed Gretel in Hansel and Gretel Dance Video reminds me of a Poser character Kristin Lucas made for herself around 2000 or so, which went on a video tour of the basement of the former World Trade Center, via animation inserted into live footage. Virtual Lucas was clumsy-looking and routinely defied the laws of physics but it wasn't just for giggles -- the viewer always knew it was capital-A art.

But in a way I prefer Andy M's video, with its non-irony-based song he wrote and the enthusiastic-but-bizarre dance moves of his puppet characters. You can say a label like outsider is condescending and elitist but you can be completely confident that Ed Halter will never write an Artforum cover story about Andy M and you will never see Hansel and Gretel Dance Video on Rhizome.org, so don't blame the messenger.

The video from which the above GIF is taken, I'm Gonna Love You, might have more of a chance in the art world -- its pistol-packing drag queen main character could be tied into some Ryan Trecartin-carnivalesque discourse, but then Andy M goes and extensively quotes MC Escher, who is artistically déclassé -- a popular artist who, despite his mathematical precociousness, is not written about in histories of the avant garde.