the dotmatrix project

Two years ago this month, I had the pleasure of catching the world premiere of The War Tapes at the Tribeca Film Festival as a guest of the director, Deborah Scranton.

If you’ve never seen TWT, the style and genre can only be described as Documentary 2.0 — soldiers on the front lines with cameras affixed to their shoulders, guns, the hoods of their vehicles, telling their stories while you watch what goes down, with Deborah IM’ing them each night from across the world to coordinate the progress of the film.

Tomorrow evening, Deborah’s latest film, BAD VOODOO’S WAR, will be broadcast by FRONTLINE at 9 P.M. ET on PBS.

If you miss the broadcast tomorrow night, be sure to catch the film, streaming, on the Frontline website.

Congratulations, Deb!

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch breaks news of a $5 “tax” that Warner Music is cooking up to impose on ISP’s — per individual customer — to guarantee protection from future liability caused by their customers downloading music, regardless of the fact that only a minuscule fraction illegally download music, let alone download music through proper channels at all.

Admittedly, this degree of hubris reaches a new level for the Industry, but dying business models will be dying business models.

The important question to focus on is: What’s going to replace these dinosaurs?

Cause there’s no way this scheme will ever fly.

In the comment thread, Dennis Ramirez makes a few good points:

[…] no, a band does not need a manager nor a label to play a local coffeeshop nor VFW hall. sometimes, they may even be able to organize a small tour for themselves.

if they are content with that, fine. more power to them.

but the majority of artists themselves are not, and there are only 24 hours in a day, so it is much more efficient if a band can hire someone to route touring, get them P.R., reviews, solicit labels or investors, etc., so the band can find time to write songs and record them.

a couple can do it, like Ani DiFranco, but they are overwhelmingly teh excpetion, not the rule.

and the manager needs to be paid (i dont know where you get the 25 manager thing from, bands only have 1), as does the booking agent, the recording engineer, the producer, the artist who designed the cover artwork, the web designer, their rent, their bills, etc. etc.

and that’s if they distribute everything themselves.

a music label can help a great deal with that, just like a VC helps a great deal in getting a startup off the ground. it’s not hard to understand that.

Ramirez names at least eight disparate communities that must be involved in an artists world to assist them in their quest for exposure and compensation. Right now, that’s what the label offers. So what could take its place?

Sounds like the perfect storm necessary for creating an industry-specific social network.

Sketching…

Time Squared from Matt Trecartin on Vimeo.

G.R.L. @ M.o.M.A. from fi5e on Vimeo.

(via Wooster)

A hundred years ago the Lower East Side was the first stop for waves of newcomers to America. Today this is the patch of town everyone is talking about. With streetscapes that are livable in scale and rich in history, there are scores of new restaurants, vintage and designer owned fashion and furniture stores & a diverse & vibrant night life.

The profile of the typical renter in the area is changing from the counter culture hipsters to the more mainstream hipster and young professional.

You are a downtown person and you want to live in the neighborhood you love.

The switch — boutique style quality and elegance. Five unique luxury 11 floor through homes located in New York’s Lower East Side.

Are you ready to make the switch?

A whole new view of the Lower East Side.

These two panels were stumbled upon by Molly while we waited outside to see a show at ABC No-Rio.

UPDATE: I found a clip of the documentary, 156 Rivington:

Mowgli
I Don’t (Mean) [Short Version]
Unsigned, from Chapel Hill, NC

Mowgli is a band that tends to blur the boundaries of song style. Vocalist Anthony Watkins’ soothing but sturdy voice enhances absurdly catchy keyboard progressions in tracks like ‘Prodigal Song,’ yet in other, more placid material, like ‘Velvet,’ the band takes it down a notch, as simple but effective guitar melodies provide the backdrop for Watkins to again astound listeners with his rich sound and passionate lyrics. The band’s presence is palpable in each track, and on the stage, this doesn’t change: when Mowgli plays, you can’t help but perk your ears up and listen.

- Bennett Campbell of The Daily Tar Heel

 
Pipes Badges are damn cool mechanisms for presenting custom feeds of data on your blog, though I have to admit — even being a web guy myself — that the user input field nomenclature can be confusing as hell at times.

For example: In the video, the prompt field for the User input > textinput defaults with “textinput” so Paul changes it to read, “enter keyword:”

My question: Does that change actually affect the output results (read: does the user need to have implicit knowledge of commands) or is Paul simply providing a metadata wrapper for the saved Pipe in order to provide context for future usability?

When I used Pipes in the past it seemed like I ran into these types of usability questions pretty often, which probably means that more explicit nomenclature or structuring of the widgets would help. You know, like be super clear about what each field means or if, as in our example, a field is simply metadata, then shift the addition of metadata to the end of the workflow; make it a part of the save process itself.

I realize that developers use Pipes, but obviously content creators are target users as well.

Big props to my buddy Paul Donnelly at Yahoo! Pipes, who was a killer Front-End Engineer in my User Experience team at Ameritrade back in the day.

Rock star!

New office artwork — found on Mercer, below Prince Street in Soho.

More of Russomano’s work can be purchased here.

One of the many reasons I love visiting NYC is that I know I’ll most likely discover an inspiring indie film that has zero chance of reaching theaters back in Greensboro. Aside from the art house section within Carousel Cinemas, there just aren’t many theaters in the area that cater to such a niche.

Persepolis is a beautifully told and engaging, animated story of a young Iranian girl growing up during the Islamic Revolution and experiencing the changes that Islamic Law brought to her sense of freedom. Music is a huge element of the story, as she finds punk and metal to be the antithesis of acceptable forms of expression and a vehicle for rebellion — a similar post-puberty approach to rebellion by millions of kids back in the states, except this form of rebellion could get you hung… or worse.

The film is a tad bit long, but the story cries for details as it’s far more expansive than a coming of age story. Persepolis paints a vivid picture of life in Iran — how the Shah both entered and exited the scene, presenting a position on the United State’s role in the Iran/Iraq war and expressing day-to-day life in a country where freedom is more cherished by its people than oxygen — a complex situation often painted in broad strokes by Western media and history books.

The animation’s art direction is spot on and highly original. There were a few short war and protest scenes where the imagery seemed to be loosely referencing elements of The Wall, but much more as an ode to than a straight bite.

Persepolis is one of those films that really should be seen.

Along the lines of historical knowledge being dropped through art; if you’re looking for a song to provide factual, historical context to the situation in the middle east, I highly recommend Head (Of State) by The Coup.