Discover Top Posts Tagged with #john bumstead

Detail from 'BSOTD056, HeN#602565', John Bumstead, 2023

#Glitch Art #Digital Art #Abstract Art #New Aesthetic #Texture #John Bumstead #Glitch Artists Collective

by John Bumstead

#John Bumstead #glitch #analogue #analogue glitch

Your Words, Adrian Cain / John Bumstead / Artur Gaudenzi Luzardo / James Usill, 2020

#Glitch Art #Floral #Databending #Glitch #Digital Art #Collaboration #John Bumstead #Adrian Cain #Artur Gaudenzi Luzardo

Jeff, I’ve been selling MacBooks on Amazon for years, and I have a perfect feedback rating that I’ve worked hard to uphold, but as of today (January 5th), Amazon is prohibiting me ..

Time for a little signal boost. I recently posted a youtube link of John Bumstead’s Paris talk about his work with glitchy laptops. His art is wonderful and John’s a beloved part of the GAC fam. What you may not know is that John makes a living refurbishing and reselling MacBooks and the biggest marketplace for refurbs, Amazon (of course), has made a deal with Apple that effectively bans all sellers of refurbished MacBooks unless they are an authorized Apple shop. Naturally, becoming an authorized Apple Shop requires moving $2.5 Million dollars in inventory every quarter or something, so it’s essentially untenable for any small business to become an authorized reseller. In short, Amazon and Apple is fucking over my friend’s livelihood.

This rings close to home for me because my dad and I used to flip grey market Yamaha digital pianos, musical instruments, and assorted electronics on eBay. This was a serious small business hustle that allowed my undocumented ass to pay $50,000/year for Amherst College while supporting my family until the recession hit. One thing I learned from dealing with big manufacturers like Yamaha and Korg was that their U.S. subsidiaries actively discriminate against small businesses through their pricing, advertising, and consignment policies.. it’s pretty much impossible to make a living by starting up a brick-and-mortar music shop in the United States. So instead we imported digital pianos from Panama and sold them on eBay. Yamaha and Korg even tried to sue us out of existence and get eBay to kick us off their platform, it was a struggle until the recession killed digital piano sales.

This capitalism thing keeps getting more and more rigged. So I feel like I got to express solidarity with John, it’s shitty that Amazon is kicking his business off its platform without giving any recourse. In a free society, people have a right to repair and resell what they own. But Amazon is a platform, and platforms aren’t free at all. So there’s the rub. You know this won’t be getting better anytime soon, so why not support John Bumstead’s glitch work by buying some of it?

#glitch art #john bumstead #right to repair #amazon #apple #new media #contemporary art #macbook