Postmaterial culture

Reconsidering the physical artifact in the digital age, when new media confronts material history.

[sadburro]

Go see your personal movie crushes on your own time!

[myjetpack]

My book of cartoons ‘You’re All Just Jealous of my Jetpack’ is available now: US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1770461043 UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1770461043 Other stockists and info at www.tomgauld.com

[postmaterialculture-blog]

Sol LeWitt, Line Drawing 289 via MASS MoCA

[ubeforeaexceptafterc]

This is unfortunate. 

[laughingsquid]

Nicholas Carr on What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

[new-aesthetic]

MeCam $49 flying camera concept follows you around, streams video to your phone

[postmaterialculture-blog]

Paul Klee's “Angelus Novus” as an animated GIF. Benjamin would be proud? 

[jasonashlock]

We need to stop looking solely to publishers for innovation; it’s up to writers to forget about books and to think about technology as a fundamental part of a story. After all, it was James Joyce who came up with all of the stylistic inventions of Ulysses, not Sylvia Beach.

Jeff Gomez (of Penguin and Beside Myself) sharing some thoughts with me as part of The Change Agents series at Digital Book World. (via movabletypenyc)

[devourmetonight-blog]

bookcrossing.com

BASICALLY, you take a book you own and you register it on this site. You then get a BCID (book crossing ID), you label your book with the BCID and any other distinguishing marks you wish to place in/on your book, and then you release it. Either by leaving it somewhere someone will find it or giving it to someone. Once a book with a BCID is found you go to the site and type in the ID and the person who released it gets an email and TA-DA! The magic of some random person finding your book. And who knows how far your book may travel!

If this isn’t the coolest thing you’ve seen in a while, you’re lying. We should all do this and see who gets our books. I’m in. 

[prettybooks]

[postmaterialculture-blog]

Bookplates for those who spurn organization.

[postmaterialculture-blog]

JACK WHITE: RECORD STORE DAY 2013 AMBASSADOR

Owns a record store. CHECK. Heads a record label. CHECK. Makes all kinds of records. CHECK. We can think of no one better to fly the flag for Record Store Day 2013, can you? Let’s let Ambassador White speak for himself, both on video and in his official Ambassadorial quote.

Years ago someone told me that 1,200 high school kids were given a survey. A question was posed to them: Have you ever been to a stand-alone record shop? The number of kids that answered "yes" was... zero. Zero? How could that be possible? Then I got realistic and thought to myself, "Can you blame them?" How can record shops (or any shop for that matter) compete with Netflix, TiVo, video games that take months to complete, cable, texting, the Internet, etc. etc? Getting out of your chair at home to experience something in the real world has started to become a rare occurrence, and to a lot of people, an unnecessary one. Why go to a bookstore and get a real book? You can just download it. Why talk to other human beings, discuss different authors, writing styles and influences? Just click your mouse. Well here's what they'll someday learn if they have a soul; there's no romance in a mouse click. There's no beauty in sitting for hours playing video games (anyone proud of that stop reading now and post your opinion in the nearest forum). The screen of an iPhone is convenient, but it’s no comparison to a 70mm showing of a film in a gorgeous theater. The Internet is two-dimensional…helpful and entertaining, but no replacement for face-to-face interaction with a human being. But we all know all of that, right? Well, do we? Maybe we know all that, but so what? Let's wake each other up.

[ebookporn]

“Japanese consumers still seem dead set against adopting e-books, showing less interest in them than even the print-worshipping French. According to an R.R. Bowker study, 72% of Japanese consumers said they had not tried e-books and did not want to try them. That compares with 66% of French respondents polled. Overall adoption rates in Japan remain the lowest in the developed world. Only 8% of Japanese readers have downloaded and paid for an e-book compared with 20% in the U.S.”

[laughingsquid]

(via Lumio, LED Lamp That Looks & Opens Like a Book)

[laughingsquid]

A Keyboard Rubik’s Cube

[nypl]

Since snow is on all of our minds right now, we thought we’d share this photo from our Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs of a squirrel hanging out in a snowy Central Park in 1916. It’s not a regular photo, though - it’s a stereograph, or a popular photographic form in the early 1900s that placed two almost identical photographs side-by-side. When placed through a special machine called a stereoscope, the images make a 3-D image (see original of Mr. Squirrel here). NYPL has thousands and thousands of stereographs, and has built an online tool called Stereogranimator that allows you to make your own 3-D images, as well as moving GIFs, like this incredible dancing squirrel we’ve created. The weather’s terrible - stay inside and make your own moving images! And, remember, NYPL has delayed openings today!

[artpartner]

QR Codes Embedded into Sidewalk to provide tourist information.

Rio De Janeiro has embedded QR codes into their sidewalks to help tourists learn more about the city and more easily get to where they are going. The codes have been embedded into the city’s traditional mosaic sidewalks in the form of black and white tiles. When the tiles are scanned with a smartphone, a local map and information is provided to the user in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. Brazil plans to embed roughly 30 QR codes at beaches, vistas and various historic sites around the city, helping Rio’s two million foreign visitors each year get around.

[nabildo-deactivated20161011]

FRANK by NABIL