the dotmatrix project

The Meltdown

VirusWithShoes understands the man:

Every night, a naked Bill O’Reilly sits hunched over in a dark and airless closet surrounded by untold numbers of boxes of women’s shoes. He opens up a pair of sling-backs, and sniffs them until he almost passes out. When his face is red enough he carefully boxes them away, childlike in his movements, already missing the feel of the leather against his face. Quickly, he then takes a rapidly softening whole cucumber and forces it down his throat, fighting the gag reflex while wanting even more. With tears streaming from his eyes, and his body shaking from the exertion, he mumbles a mantra of self-hatred inaudibly into the darkness and onto the cucumber. After 30 minutes of Bill’s Special Alone Time he slowly pulls it out, enjoying the sensation of it moving from his throat, past his tongue and into the dank air of the closet, the smell of the vegetable and his fevered saliva reminding him of the time he fell out the sycamore tree when he was 6 and bumped his head on a rock - the exact moment in his life when everything began to make sense to him.

His voice is reborn.

He stands slowly, awkwardly, his body stiff from holding the same position for too long, though to him — always not long enough. He reaches out to the shoe boxes to help him steady himself. Salty beads of sweat run down his chest, trickles from the pools in his armpits and under his breasts, cooling as rapidly as his innate anger is warming. His penis — an object of disgust to him for so long now — is as hard as it’s going to get without chemical help. His toes clench and unclench with a staccato rhythm of their own. He opens the closet door, and looks at the poster of John Wayne hanging on the inside — the man he always wanted to be, but never could be, no matter how much he screams into footwear or chokes himself on cucumbers. Wayne looks back with his dead eyes — a two-dimensional construct of a dream that never was.

Bill’s chest hitches, and he starts sobbing. Snot runs down his nose, his mouth opens wide and green stains frame this most silent of screams. He cries for all men, for all America. But mostly, almost exclusively, for himself.

Spent, empty, Bill steps into the shower. Runs it as warm as possible. Until it burns. His tears mix with the water.

His fear, his hatred, his shame — his anger. They all fall down the drain.

The Remix

I have an Ad Design degree from Syracuse University, admittedly much more so because I was convinced by my father that I needed a stable job coming out of college than out of any incessant love for crafting adverts. Illustration was my passion as an adolescent — political cartooning to be precise — but she wasn’t too stable of a pursuit, so I caved early on.

Even before I matriculated, I knew I was never going to use my degree in its proper setting. I had no desire to become a Jr. Art Director, slaving away on terribly boring, listless campaigns at a big agency named after a long dead, old, white male copy writer. But many of the skills that I developed in the VPA program — creative brainstorming, rolling with constructive criticism, putting my feet in the shoes of a person with need, etc. — I find myself using to this day on supply-side projects from time to time, though I do try to do so with positive intent and not simply add to the noise of the media ecosystem.

Doc Searls is a demand-side advocate, and I completely agree with his position on the false construct of our system that attempts to connect markets to product via the boisterous shouting of offers into the wind. Maybe his VRM work will begin to flip the script on that paradigm, maybe not.

In any case, Bill Hicks is genius.

The socially aware, innovative, street artist turn pop icon businessman would’ve been 50 years old two days ago.

Disorder has to be the best way to describe the state of FM radio today.

Here we have this ingenious group of people whose music individually (and now we know collectively) is always on the cutting edge, always leaving us wanting more. They all have such great originality and musical ability.

Why are they not all over the radio like maybe Young Joc, Young Dro, Young Jezzy, Young Buck?

Music is becoming more the business than the art.

So we have to ask ourselves what actually sounds good and makes you feel good? And, if you came up with that feeling on your own.

In business, the best way to sell your product is to know the market. Hopefully you can know it so well that you can make something they like before the consumer even gets to test it out. If you’re very lucky (or the most clever) you can mold your customer to want whatever it is you sell. The latter is the hardest but is that not where record labels have gotten so many people with their huge sphere of influence? An influence that dictates what is played on the radio and what is most accessible. An influence that makes people feel almost inadequate if they are not in with the trends.

I must admit I’ve fallen for some of the Soulja Boy songs against my (hopefully) better judgment. My disorder? I go to clubs for business and I would be so disappointed at what I heard, yet, I found myself wanting to like the music like I thought everyone else did.

Thank goodness a friend of mine who was all into this fad admitted to me that he really wasn’t as in it as much as he lead others to believe. Can I be mad that he wasn’t truthful with himself and others? A little maybe, but I was turning into a hypocrite myself.

So since I’m not the only one feeling this way there still just had to be a reason why it’s so popular.

That’s when I realized maybe people just don’t care about what they hear anymore; they just want to have “fun”. Add some deep bass and words they repeat over and over, loudly at that, and it feels “fun”, I’m only guessing? I too let go, my ex roommate Dima wanted to kill me for that; I just told her “It’s just fun, I just don’t think about what I’m listening to and pretend that I really like it, it’s the new thing!” She knew I was kidding, but I don’t think the other people who say that to themselves realize how detrimental this music is to the progress of our music and to the people as well.

We really can’t have more children wanting to be the next [insert sucky rapper] when they grow up.

On a side note, since when did you have to stop thinking to have fun? Oh yea, that goes with those who have to get sloppy drunk to have a good time too…

Try this: Next time your alarm goes off get out a pen and paper and write down what you’re going to eat at the next fast food restaurant you go to… Post the “song” with the “music” from the loud beep on YouTube and it really could be the next big thing.

Just like Wale said “Hip Hop’s not dead,” but I’d add the radio is.

: (

Is the Obama shoulder brush in 2008 the pop equivalent of Clinton playing the sax on Arsenio Hall in ‘91?

Classic.

(via Nah Right)

All that’s left to see is Charles Gibson doing the Superman dance.

(via Ill Doctrine)

Obviously, we’re not going to go to the, uh, you know, superstars and say, “We want a percentage of your…” They’d be like (makes a dumbfounded face)

It must suck to watch your industry fall apart at the seems. Hell, I experienced it in 2001 working in Silicon Alley. Too bad for the music biz that their problem isn’t as simple as the net bubble burst with overzealous investors saturating an immature market.

That’s a correction at worst, not a complete redefinition of industry.

Is the 360 deal the silver bullet? I doubt it. It reads as a way to stop the bleeding, not the necessary organ transplant of the business model. One Golden Goose (record sales) dies, so Flom and company pilfer the remaining geese — that’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, not changing the foundational approach of what it means to be a music label in 2008.

They’re not getting to the heart of the matter.

The music industry’s problem is that too many people can make, find, enjoy, experience and share music without ever needing to step foot in their marketplace. They can sign bands to 360 deals until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is that we’ve moved away from a world of massive record sales and sold-out stadium shows to a world where free music online leads to well attended, yet cozy venues and small festivals.

We are living a more personalized, fun and affordable music experience.

Of course there will always be superstars, and they’ll demand a higher price point across the board, but marketing teams won’t be the genesis of their popularity moving forward. The web enables decentralized power through the aggregate of individuals — whether the individuals are musicians or fans — so our “chock full of choice” world is now aligning along the edges, not within the artificial heart of where the music industry dictates.

The 360 deal is a short-term play for industry executives to keep making coin, not a long-term solution to evolve their business.

Labels, in the business to serve musicians, need to do more with less because the ratio of revenue delivering superstars to nominally successful acts is becoming a smaller integer as each day passes. Indie labels without aspirations of world dominance can swing that transition because they’ve been working smart, sleek and forward-thinking all along.

How does a major label — with all of its bloated, corporate structure — compete in this dynamic environment?

They don’t.

(via KOAR)

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

(via Wooster)

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.