Flippin Chips
CHIPFLIP is a new blog by Swedish 8-bit wunder-kid, Goto80 ( also “Extraboy, Susanne, 4D-Man, Skrubier, or other even sillier names”), where he aims to collect and discuss things regarding chip music and 8-bit art for an MA degree. “It’s about low tech visual and sonic creativity, not nostalgia.” In other words, lotsa links and projects to explore, downloads to be had, things to read. Which you’d expect from one of the boys behind the 365 songs project.
Sample post?
“8-bit noise music is not very common, which means that good 8-bit noise music doesn’t really have best of compilations (yet!). Maybe .. the certain particularities with a genre that make it so good, are quite tricky to reproduce with an old soundchip. Here are a few examples of 8-bit noise music I appreciate, and if you have more suggestions feel free to leave a harsh / random comment with maximum content. I must have left out a lot of gems, right?” (( post goes on to list extensive links ))
The sidebar sections are especially interesting, featuring extended sections on – plagiarism where artists have heavily sampled videogame use without acknowledging ( or paying ) the original artists, – timeline of chipmusic from 1951 ( in Sydney!) to today, – a how to section for emulating commodore 64’s with today’s machines, – and an exploration of chipmusic as medium, form and culture.
More Feathers in Your Life
Stunning sculptural feathery works, from the Frozen Mammoth.
Travel Bug vs Swine Flu?
The 1918 Pandemic flu, now that was big, carving a fair chunk out of the global population, right at the tail of world war one as well. AIDS? Also declared a pandemic. As of 2007, lived with by 33 million people worldwide and having killed 2.1 million. Swine flu? So far around 1000 people have been identified as infected, a much smaller number killed by it. Worryingly, it especially threatens the artistic population – as people cling to their bunkers with stocks of baked beans, travel prices inevitably come down, inevitably luring starving artists to other pastures, great for cross cultural dialogue an fertilisation, but maybe removing artists from the gene pool in a cruel twist on the viral media they hope to create. In other words : lots of my friends seem to be travelling to lots of far-flung places at the moment.
Hungry Like A Domesticated Wolf
Or How to Get Rid of Stuff : A guide to downsizing your belongings by Bruce Sterling. I first read this in 2008, but I found it in the back of my internet lounge again recently, and it jumped out more on a second browsing. Lots of fun in there, and extensions of these ideas :
– As long as I’ve got broadband, I’m perfectly at ease with the fact that my position on the planet’s surface is arbitrary.
– You need to re-think your relationship to material possessions in terms of things that occupy your time. The things that are physically closest to you. Time and space.
– The things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get.
– Sell – even give away– anything you never use.
Which maybe vindicates a recent decision to spend a fair bit of money getting my bicycle fixed, and upgraded in various ways at the same time. In other news, The Human Powered Cycle crew who did the job are starting up a cafe on 562 High st, Thornbury beside their shop, hopefully featuring muscly thighed boys and girls pedalling under desks to provide banana smoothies, grind coffee beans and the like.
Netlabel of the week? Acroplane, with free downloads including Mad EP’s ‘Twenty Four Breakbeats’, a composition project that started off to compose a breakbeat in every major and minor key. ( via Lucy Benson, who has a new blog )