art as criticism
redefining the bourgeois public sphere with a new term: the "public facebook presence"
Following up on a previous post, "Spare Me Your Private Facebook Rhetoric, Please."
It should be added that back in Nov. 2014, Art F City applied a shocking double standard by liberally screenshotting Ryder Ripps' Facebook account, which is accessible to friends only, and yet scrupulously refusing to copy the complaints against his project from a "private, women-only Facebook group."
They used Ripps' words to his "friends" to try to hang him but spared their friends in the super secret man-haters chamber. Maybe there was some eloquent, well-thought out stuff in the chamber, and they aren't man-haters. We'll never know!
When called on this, Paddy Johnson claimed that Ripps had a "public facebook presence." Interesting convoluted turn of phrase. Here's a screenshot of what I, a proud non-Facebook user, see when I visit that "public" account of Ripps':
That doesn't look very public! An AFC commenter added: "Facebook is obviously now open to everyone." The hell you say.
Way to advertise for Facebook -- more suckers will sign up to read the dirt on Ryder Ripps.
But seriously, if Facebook is going to be the new Artforum or October magazine where weighty art matters are decided (shudder), we better agree on some basic etiquette. Otherwise, it's "to err is human, to screenshot (selectively) is divine."
Found art of the day
Here's a homemade clip of the end credits of Godzilla: Final Wars.
This could be Jean-Luc Godard doing Leni Riefenstahl, as interpreted by Junior in his mom's basement, using a phone to film a laptop. As the camera shakes and struggles to stay centered (difficult when filming widescreen in "extreme portrait" mode), Mom can be heard off camera yelling at Junior to pay attention to her.
The credits are a series of "money shot" clips of monsters flying, fighting, and screaming in rage, close-ups of anxious human faces (that you saw earlier in the movie), people fighting in space suits, and choreographed explosions.
This exciting montage (rolled over by credit-text) is accompanied by a rather haunting symphonic synthesizer score by prog rock titan Keith Emerson. (He said in an interview that only a portion of the music he wrote for the film was used, but this is intact, apparently.) The scale-climbing classical crescendos, in an earlier era, might be written with the same intensity by a composer such as Tchaikovsky to commemorate a major battle. The sound quality on Junior's phone is good enough to pick up most of the musical bravado while the action mayhem is being savored.
Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) is an almost note-perfect continuation of the '60s Japanese monster tradition of Destroy All Monsters. There's almost nothing in it to tell you it wasn't made in 1968.
distracting popup about distraction-free writing
The latest Word Press release (are they still naming them after jazz musicians?) contains this gem. You've spent ten years typing blog posts into a white box and ignoring everything outside the typing field and suddenly some genius UX types decide you need to be free of these distractions. So they distract you with a popup telling you about distraction-free writing.
Update: Also note that the "tooltip" is out of alignment with the icon it's supposedly pointing to (hat tip ryz).