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it isn’t possible to create something that doesn’t serve a purpose. what “good” artists and other art professionals have that makes them experts is 1) an understanding of this fact, then 2) knowledge of semiotics and history among other related areas that afford as deep an understanding of potential meanings as possible — this is the tricky part, because it requires real work

that has less to do with japan and more to do with the fact that niche music doesn’t attract laypeople. you can find the same kinds of shows all over the united states for example

i recently discovered that this approved list of things that currently matter actually has a name, it’s called the overton window: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

I disagree, I think the keyword is $1, because at least for me as strictly a user (not a stakeholder or business owner) generating a meme is simply not worth that cost no matter how easy it is to pay it.

Modern "EDM" producers actually receive a lot of criticism for these practices from both critics/academics and laypeople. I think the massive commercial success and general enjoyment of this music actually comes from the spectacle of the "live" events, and so as an extension even just listening to it at home, the spectacle is implicit and can be experienced vicariously to some degree. On top of this, this music as a product is obviously extremely easy to produce in comparison to other genres/processes and is thus lucrative to profiteers.

Another reason why such utterly cheap production habits have been wildly accepted is because of the already established history of house music and techno, which was originally revolutionary, because those sounds and the contexts for which they were experienced ironically represented newfound human feelings of liberation, from a youth movement to escape a bankrupt Detroit to the fallen Berlin wall. Techno was a way for people to grab the rising technocracy by the horns so to speak and make something specifically human out of it.

Seems like you're criticizing the powers that be that act as authorities for what should be considered art. The importance of this kind of criticism has been historically recognized by many artists and cultures for a long time [1][2][3][4][5][6], and will obviously continue to be relevant, so it's actually constructive that you brought it up even if you didn't mean for it to be so. But I think the most important thing to realize is that "art" isn't a monolithic thing — it means different things to different people. For some artworks are profitable commodities and socioeconomic status symbols, and for others its an anti-positivist exploration of what it means to be human. What it "really" is is an ongoing struggle between such differing points of view.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_des_Refus%C3%A9s [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) [3] https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81384?locale=en [4] https://blogs.uoregon.edu/hanshaacke/2015/02/16/shapolsky-et... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auOKsXnMmkg [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diy_culture#Music

don't data centers and the rest of our electrical infrastructure still need natural gas and other limited resources to function?

Don't know if I agree with this assertion, but food for thought:

“…as far as power is concerned, the streets are dead capital! Nothing of value to the power elite can be found on the streets, nor does this class need control of the streets to efficiently run and maintain state institutions. For [civil disobedience] to have any meaningful effect, the resisters must appropriate something of value to the state. Once they have an object of value, the resisters have a platform from which they may bargain for (or perhaps demand) change.” http://www.critical-art.net/books/ecd/ecd2.pdf

Yeah if anything /pol/ is driving the success of it as a catalyst for thought, they're keeping it relevant and worthwhile. Idk much about Shia's intentions but never underestimate an artist's awareness of how such things can play out.

Well that's kind of like going to a library and complaining that nobody wants to chat. Art goes to the MoMA specifically to be "taken out of the world" and isolated.

Reminds me of something Putin said to journalists regarding global balance of power:

"International Relations is much like mathematics — there is nothing personal about it."[1]

[1] https://youtu.be/kqD8lIdIMRo?t=11m25s

do you really think all art should be universally accessible and as convenient as possible? do you really think you can have meaningful experiences with that mindset?

A computer's capability for imitating a human doesn't take away the value of human-made art. If anything, it's another medium. Otherwise you're arguing that people don't care about understanding the human condition, which I don't think will be a valid claim anytime soon. AI can definitely take over the production of decorative objects though, of course.

The arts/humanities maybe? Because the human intellect and human emotions will always be relevant and valuable to other humans.

Sidenote: when I say "arts/humanities" I'm not just referring to entertainment but also the branches of society that deal with introspection and cultural criticism for the sake of human autonomy.

oh the humanities

The burden for some may be too much for leaving the country to be a more viable option than staying and fighting for change.

Also some would argue that you can't run forever.

>the awesome lifestyle of flitting from grant to grant as a semi-celebrity in the international jet-set art world

This reads like a snide remark toward art and artists in general... if it is, why?

Wow:

Total number of operating satellites: 1,381 (includes launches through 12/31/15)[1]

Wasn't aware that the +15,000 satellites (loosely defined) currently orbiting the Earth (according to SATCAT) are mostly junk...

But one other really interesting thing I found once in this data was that a huge percentage of all earth orbiting satellites are debris from China's Fengyun 1C sat, which they blew up into currently over 5000 pieces to test a missile [2]. I just think it's funny that China did this, and now we have to track every single piece indefinitely. :)

[1] http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/space-weapons/satellit... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fengyun

Today rbobby submitted a video [1] explaining a new(ish?) "polymagnet" technology which earned 13 points, then 4 hours later iheredia posted the same topic [2] which currently has 331 points. It must be a bit of timing and titling nuances mixed with luck... so yeah, here's to hoping HN points never become indicative of any sort of clout.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11323758

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11324880

Could be, but that'd be an assumption at best, and "negging" at worst.

Also, one could just as easily see a "massive" assignment as arrogance from the employer.

I was a product architect in advertising for a brief period. About half the job involved writing all sorts of technical documentation, including functional specifications for developers, internal and user-facing API docs, and user guides for websites, apps, and installations we built. I loved this part of the work because of how it was a mix of both info design (you're practically a graphic designer in this respect) and rigorous research that usually involved consulting the designers and devs for knowledge, but sometimes external specialists as well.

To be a product architect you need to:

- Express interest/expertise in learning (constantly) about existing and emerging products/systems/technologies

- Be creative (product definition is your job after all)

- Understand all the moving parts of software development (what do the BE developers do, what do the UX designers do and when, etc)

- Be business savvy

IMO the broad skill-set requirement and critical nature of the position makes it a hard job, but if you love technical writing and already know a bit about software/programming then you could easily fall in love with this line of work.

For further reading that spans more broadly with the underlying idea here, I recommend: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/objectivity

I'm not done with it but so far it's been an epistemological history lesson that has me thinking a lot about how the current era of Big Data / rising ubiquity of mechanical objectivity (esp photography — from WWI photojournalism to google earth) has been altering humanity on all fronts, from the sciences to the arts to the justice system... particularly how seeking truth is seemingly no longer a burden when everything is recorded by computers, yet at the same time there is still the very real burden of communication (presentation/interpretation) when said data is given an audience.

Am I wrong to think about the "graphical" aspect of visual programming languages as another layer of abstraction? If this is the case, doesn't that take some power away from these users, in the sense that their capabilities are limited to the abstractions/interface given to them by the language's developers?

Not exactly trying to question whether it's a good/bad thing (as I'm aware that for many creators this might be exactly what they need), just trying to understand.

mattdotc's idea of a Real Hipster in the actual fringe, trend-setting-in-2016 sense may or may not be accurate, but that's not necessarily critical to his/her intention behind using "hipster" — that people are buying into vinyl culture for superficial reasons.

A point which I think wrongly implies that there is no substance to the upsurge in record sales beyond profits. I feel like it also has a lot to do with our increasing involvement in digital media / computer fatigue[1]. People's 200gb iTunes libraries have made them numb.

[1] http://www.tokafi.com/news/computer-fatigue-and-rise-human/

Super interesting, thanks.

>A contemporary aesthetic that the fools in our art departments crafted in the 1960s under the guiding hand of the CIA

Wait what?

Better here than hosted on some volatile service that'll be gone again in 5 years.

Baking soda is pretty versatile. I wash my face with it, and I bet one could use it in combo with some other natural minerals or oils to make an effective toothpaste.

Thanks for introducing me to this extension. I've been using my hand to cover news feeds on fb, twitter, etc when I need to go in and respond to a message or something. Although it's easy for me to do that as social news feeds don't hog my attention as much as they induce anxiety.

I believe entertainment media to be more powerful than people give credit for. But yeah, people should have the freedom to take creative liberties in this context, so we should at least be having an ongoing discourse about it as it fills more of our living experience every day.