vortex dot net dot en zed

The Sea, the Sea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:38:51 +1200

The Sea, the Sea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list | Jacket Copy | Los Angeles Times

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:38:51 +1200

61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list | Jacket Copy | Los Angeles Times

Manifesto about 'personal' websites

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:29:00 +1200

Manifesto about 'personal' websites:

Written by one of my internet heroes ten years ago, the advice is still just as solid today:

Put your head down and don’t listen to anything anyone says about it…It just has to make your world a better place. It has to fill some need in your life. It has to make you happy.

"There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that..."

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:18:18 +1200

“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.”

- Doris Lessing

It’s done, despite many touch-and-go moments where I...

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 08:48:00 +1200

It’s done, despite many touch-and-go moments where I wasn’t sure if the deadline (Auckland Zine Fest tomorrow) was positive or negative. I am resisting the urge to redo a couple of pages as per usual. Edit, edit edit, editeditedit time is OVER.

It’s 28 pages of text and images. This is a completely different look & feel to any of the previous editions of vortex so I will be interested to see what historical readers think… and of course, what everyone thinks of the writing!

Got to go and suss out copying costs today - they’ve dramatically increased since 2003 - and will then be able to say what you can order it for if you so please. Regulars, check your mailboxes in a week or so!

Kurt Vonnegut at the Blackboard - Lapham’s Quarterly

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:16:29 +1200

Kurt Vonnegut at the Blackboard - Lapham’s Quarterly:

megpickard:

Transcript of a lecture given by Kurt Vonnegut about visualising storytelling using Caretesian graphs.

Inception visualised

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:31:59 +1200

Inception visualised:

Echoing several others, I am going to need to watch this again.

Also: <3 Ellen Page.

Letters to punctuation

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:59:26 +1200

thebronzemedal:

Emdashes recently asked readers to contribute letters to their favorite punctuation marks; I think this one takes the cake:

TO: The Period

FROM: Western Union

Regret that telegrams never used a period STOP Official standards required replacing period with word stop STOP This was true for entire history of the telegram despite efforts to stop stop STOP Powers that be made sure that efforts to stop stop stopped STOP Happy to report that in 2006 use of telegram came to a stop stopping use of stop STOP Repeat there will be no more telegrams period STOP

Western Union

Seems meta in a way that I can completely get behind. No one has addressed the exclamation point yet which I may have to rectify!

Beautiful live cover by Amanda Palmer on piano/vocals and...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:07:00 +1200

Beautiful live cover by Amanda Palmer on piano/vocals and accompanied by haunting strings.

(You can also buy the song)

"One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:37:00 +1200

“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

- Chekhov, explaining what has become the narrative technique ‘Chekhov’s gun’. If you put a gun on the stage in the first act it will go off by Act 3.

OMFG! (neon sign) and Elaborate Hoax (thirteen variously...

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:20:00 +1200

OMFG! (neon sign) and Elaborate Hoax (thirteen variously destroyed paintings).
OMFG! at C3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne, 2009. Group show with Adam Cruickshank, Hit & Miss, Rob McLeish, Dell Stewart, Kotoe Ishii, Simon Pericich, Emile Zile. Co-curated with Dell Stewart.
OMFG! was foremost an investigation into the subjective nature of offensiveness, combined with the sometime related aesthetic of DIY. In a world where big culture costs trillions, is cynically target-marketed and controlled by even bigger economics, the individual artist deciding she or he can brazenly contribute to culture on their own divisive terms is tantamount to fucking revolution. (via @darren)

Can I just give a really fucking huge HELL YES! and maybe even a fist pump to this. I love scripty, lurid neon signage.

See also: Hopscotch Films logo which has a slightly geometric yet scripty feel to it (look ma, I’m trying to describe fonts!). When I was a kid I used to write my name in script as one word (amandawheeler); when I’m rich from clocking the internet & writing several best-selling-though-not-truly-understood novels I will have my name spelt out in a neon sign just like that. Now you know.

sundaybreakfast: Wendy Kawabata, Withdrawn From Circulation,...

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 12:46:13 +1200

sundaybreakfast:

Wendy Kawabata, Withdrawn From Circulation, 2008

Corban’s Art Estate, Henderson, Auckland, NZ.

Kind of blasphemous but kind of amazing! I may have to go and look at it very soon.

Thirty days to thirty

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 07:12:34 +1200

Thirty days to thirty:

We’re ten days in. What else do you want to see? Ask!

bitsbobbins: WHORANGE: will break for crafters !!!! <3

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:29:07 +1200

bitsbobbins:

WHORANGE: will break for crafters

!!!! <3

Experiments in real life

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:13:00 +1200

R. observed: You live only half in the real world when you are here. You live through the camera instead of living in the present.

R. is the type of friend whose thoughts generate thought; I trust his creative instinct and his critical eye. His intelligence is well respected. He shuns time online as lifestyle choice rather than luddism.

The comment crystallised into an experiment. I decided to restrict my camera use for six months to see what would happen. To see if I would actually live a little more in the present and to see what it would do to the memory process.

From January to June I took minimal photos. Where I did, these were usually iPhone shots or a few on my small camera. I made conversation, I waited through pauses while others set up their shots and ignored the twitch towards camera case.

The outcome? A six month gap in my timeline.

There’s no artifact to mark Peter and Katherine’s visit, the Pixies concert or remember the particular moments in time: that light or the attempt at visual representation of an idea. I remember these things but have no sense of context and order (was the Pixies concert before or after P&K were here? when did summer end?). Other people’s photos are like crime scene recreations without the personal layer, the EXIF data of my memory.

I’ll go back to chasing and then tagging the butterflies on pins. R. may disagree, but I’ll know when I see him next. There will be another photo of him & me.

New project starts today - Thirty Days to Thirty: a countdown...

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:28:00 +1200

New project starts today - Thirty Days to Thirty:

a countdown to thirty
a reflection on personal status quo
some nice pictures (one a day for thirty days, in fact)

"I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be..."

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:42:17 +1200

“I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.”

- Leo Rosten (via caterina)

samwieck: Auckland Zinefest is approaching! Come along and get...

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:04:00 +1200

samwieck:

Auckland Zinefest is approaching!

Come along and get a copy of Subject’s second issue, which quite literally has words and pictures in it. We’ll also have some other words and pictures, printed out on pieces of paper, and stapled together.

In even more exciting news, Amanda is going to be right next door to us with her own picture and word based products!

It’s a great day, and you can get a whole swag full of interesting, unique stuff for like $20, or, goods of equal value. So come.

Yes! Come!

I will have a new zine, some copies of old zines & some of Cameron’s new poetry zine “declarations and wine”.

As far as i know, old zine friends like Moira and Amber are going to be there also, so it will be just like 2003 all over again.

xo!

YouTube playlist of videos made of the (mighty) Code Blacks...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:06:27 +1200

YouTube playlist of videos made of the (mighty) Code Blacks during FullCodePress 2010.

Code Blacks timeline o' tweets

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:24:00 +1200

Compiled in a very manual fashion for your viewing and my archival pleasure.

View slideshow for tweets & related photos in the timeline or browse through from the beginning for related links etc where relevant.

♥