Art Market report 2002 for no reason.

A new version of Amy Alexander’s The Bot. Enter a search term and the bot will search the net, choose a search return and read a fragment of text in a wonderful Stephen Hawking type voice, it then follows a link from the page and repeats the process leading you on a machine controlled journey through the net.
Choose your search term carefully and the results are truly surreal. When I was artist in residence in Arthouse in I used to set the earlier version of this running and leave it running most of the day as a background accompaniment to my work, it seems the longer you run it the better the results. It had the added bonus of making the suits distinctly anxious.

The Soukous Allstars do their thing in Dun Laoghaire yesterday, also particularly good were the Dhol Foundation
Today check out King Masco at 2pm and Los De Abajo at 5pm

The downside of Flash Mobs.

If you’re in Dublin this weekend head out to Dun Laoghaire for the Festival of World Cultures Highly recommended especially if the weather is good and mostly free!

My latest toy, the Horizon 202 a 120° swing lens panorama camera which arrived from Kirov, Russia yesterday in a parcel wrapped with brown paper and tied with string (underneath it was properly packed) bought from Rugift.com. Delivery took 4 weeks but it arrived in good condition and at a very good price. Expect lots of panoramic pix.

I assume this is a scam that’s gone far but.. The US Army in Iraq are taking photoshop pix of Saddam’s head on various bodies, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Elvis etc and making them into posters to put up in Tikrit to help identify Saddam loyalists and show them Iraqis who’s boss.
“The bad guys are going to be upset,” Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Russell told Reuters. “Which will just make it easier for us to know who they are.” Sergeant David Cade, a psychological operations specialist, added: “It’s mostly good for troop morale, but if we can put these posters up in Tikrit and the enemy can’t take them down, then at least it shows who owns the streets.”
No wonder they rule the world!

From the Bonnie Prince Billy tour diary I learnt that the bonnie Prince surfs! I saw Blue Crush last night so now I have this mental image of the writer of I see a darkness riding a pipe or tube or whatever the hell they call them bloody big waves

Roman Reyes one of the lead designers of Lord of the Rings is giving a free talk about the creation of Gollum at the Digital Hub, Dublin Wednesday at 7pm.
Enquiries and confirmation to Ashley Moran-Nunn at
T: 00353 1 669 1750 M: 00353 86 386 1223
NOSPAManunn@digitalmedia.ie

The New Yorker tackles the thorny issue of Chan’s live “performances”. Compared to Dublin it sounds like they got her on a good day.
I’ve been thinking about that concert in Whelans and what I can’t figure out is why she does it. The line you most often hear on messageboards and discussions is that she’s painfully shy. Nothing could be further from the truth, compared to what she does singing her songs is by far the easier option. Certainly Dublin was a battle of wills where she effectively tried (pretty successfully it must be said) to impose her will on the audience, it was a very weird power play that I really can’t even begin to understand.
from Fimoculous the obligatory Avedon photo
And from photographer Stefano Giovannini’s site a clue to where some of her problems come from.