Deep Art Nature

Chasing New Revenue, FIFA Is Considering Major Move to U.S.

FIFA officials toured the United States in September, visiting possible host cities for the 2026 World Cup.

"Looking to expand its global footprint beyond its cloistered headquarters next to a zoo on the outskirts of Zurich, soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is studying the feasibility of moving its financial engine, the commercial operation that produces billions of dollars in revenues for the organization, to the United States. The possible move will be determined by technical factors including the suitability of locations on both coasts, the ease of acquiring work visas for overseas staff members and tax rules, according to an official with direct knowledge of the discussions who declined to speak publicly because a final determination had yet to be made. The operations involved represent a vital part of FIFA’s business: They oversee FIFA’s sale of sponsorships and broadcasting rights, which represent some of the most lucrative properties in global sports. ..."

NY Times

Albert Camus on the Responsibility of the Artist: To “Create Dangerously” (1957)

“Literary statements about the nature and purpose of art constitute a genre unto themselves, the ars poetica, an antique form going back at least as far as Roman poet Horace. The 19th century poles of the debate are sometimes represented by the dueling notions of Percy Shelley — who claimed that poets are the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’ — and Oscar Wilde, who famously proclaimed, ‘all art is quite useless.’ These two statements conveniently describe a conflict between art that involves itself in the struggles of the world, and art that is involved only with itself. In the mid-twentieth century, Albert Camus put the question somewhat differently in a 1957 speech entitled ‘Create Dangerously.’ ...”

Open Culture

amazon

2011 October: Albert Camus on Nihilism, 2014 November: Albert Camus: Soccer Goalie, 2015 May: LISTEN: New Cave And Ellis Soundtrack, 2016 April: Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche, 2016 April: Algerian Chronicles (2013), 2017 November: The Stranger (1942), 2018 July: Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960), 2019 September: Les Pieds-Noirs: Algeria’s Forgotten Footballers, 2020 March: The Plague (1947), 2020 September: An Animated Introduction to Albert Camus’ Existentialism, a Philosophy Making a Comeback in Our Dysfunctional Times

Whistle-Blower Says Facebook ‘Chooses Profits Over Safety’

“John Tye, the founder of Whistleblower Aid, a legal nonprofit that represents people seeking to expose potential lawbreaking, was contacted this spring through a mutual connection by a woman who claimed to have worked at Facebook. The woman told Mr. Tye and his team something intriguing: She had access to tens of thousands of pages of internal documents from the world’s largest social network. In a series of calls, she asked for legal protection and a path to releasing the confidential information. ... On Sunday, Frances Haugen revealed herself to be ‘Sean,’ the whistle-blower against Facebook. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Facebook’s Apps Went Down. The World Saw How Much It Runs on Them

YouTube: Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen: The 60 Minutes Interview

WSJ: The Facebook Files, a Podcast Series (Audio)

******NY Times: Facebook Whistle-Blower Urges Lawmakers to Regulate the Company

How Gramercy Park became the only private park in Manhattan

“The story begins in 1831, when Samuel B. Ruggles, a New York City lawyer and real estate investor, had an idea. The metropolis was growing fast, pushing past its Lower Manhattan borders and creeping up to 14th Street and beyond. The builders of all the new houses and commercial buildings didn’t always care much about urban planning, and Manhattan’s naturally hilly topography was being leveled and turned into streets and building lots. Ruggles knew that elite New Yorkers would pay big to reside in a different kind of setting, even if it was somewhat north of the posh sections of the city. ‘He recognized the value of centering residences around inviting open spaces within Manhattan’s strict city grid,’ stated the National Parks Service. ...”

Ephemeral New York

W - Gramercy Park

Jan. 6 Was Worse Than We Knew

“However horrifying the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol appeared in the moment, we know now that it was far worse. The country was hours away from a full-blown constitutional crisis — not primarily because of the violence and mayhem inflicted by hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters but because of the actions of Mr. Trump himself. In the days before the mob descended on the Capitol, a corollary attack — this one bloodless and legalistic — was playing out down the street in the White House, where Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and a lawyer named John Eastman huddled in the Oval Office, scheming to subvert the will of the American people by using legal sleight-of-hand. ...”

NY Times

2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election, 2021 February: First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack., 2021 February: A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack , 2021 March: Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol, 2021 March: ‘We’ve Lost the Line!’: Radio Traffic Reveals Police Under Siege at Capitol, 2021 April: Capitol Police Told to Hold Back on Riot Response on Jan. 6, Report Finds, 2021 May: Trump Is Marching Down the Road to Political Violence, 2021 June: Senate Report Details Security Failures in Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, 2021 July: Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol, 2021 July: ‘A hit man sent them.’ Police at the Capitol recount the horrors of Jan. 6 as the inquiry begins., 2021 September: Among Those Who Marched Into the Capitol on Jan. 6: An F.B.I. Informant

Van Dyke Parks: Enjoying the Distraction of Collaboration

“A chance to talk with the man who penned the line ‘columnated ruins domino’ in the Beach Boys’ epic song ‘Surf’s Up’? Yes, please. His recent collaboration, Van Dyke Parks orchestrates Verónica Valerio: Only in America – Solo en América, is a sonic treat, featuring Verónica’s vocals and harp and Van Dyke’s unique arrangements, and is well worth checking out. A conversation with Van Dyke is a rollicking affair of big words, grand statements, history lessons, piano tinkling, and unabashed humanitarian positivity. ...”

TapeOp

Episode #145 — Orchestrator Extraordinaire Van Dyke Parks (Audio)

Discogs: Van Dyke Parks Orchestrates Verónica Valerio – Only In America Solo En America (Video)

amazon

2012 July: Van Dyke Parks, 2015 December: Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove (1998), 2016 November: Song Cycle (1967), 2017 March: Jump! (1984), 2017 April: Orange Crate Art - Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks (1995)

VF Live: Jayson Wynters

“Broken beat, house, and techno records from his Birmingham HQ. In VF Live, our favourite DJs take you inside their homes, record stores, and studios, for intimate mixes and performances.DJ, producer, and Cafe Artum founder Jayson Wynters makes his VF Live debut, playing Broken beat, house, and techno records from his Birmingham HQ. First cutting his teeth in the garage scene as an MC in the late ’90s, Jayson has continued his musical journey weaving through different scenes in his hometown, as well as further afield – in the UK and across the globe. ...”

VF (Video/Audio)

Soundcloud (Audio)

Yale Says Its Vinland Map, Once Called a Medieval Treasure, Is Fake

The Vinland Map was unveiled in 1965 by a Yale team that believed it was made in 1440. A new team found a titanium compound used in inks first produced in the 1920s.

“Doubts crept in around Greenland, which looked so good it was frankly suspicious, and questions soon spread all over the map: about the wormholes, the handwriting and, most important, the weirdly crumbling ink. For over half a century, scholars have fought over the authenticity of the Vinland Map, which Yale University unveiled to the world in 1965; at the time, calling it evidence of Viking explorations in the western Atlantic, the first European depiction of North America and a precious medieval treasure. Yale now says someone duped a lot of people. ...”

NY Times

Jah Lloyd - “No Tribal War/Ark Of The Covenant” (1975)

“... Released in 1972, this single is one of the very first to be released by Teem, the label of Patrick Lloyd Francis, Jah Lloyd's birth name. Francis began his singing career with the Mediators in the mid-60s. At the end of the decade, he recorded for Rupie Edwards and Lee Perry. For a while, Francis became their record salesman, frequenting the studios and getting closer to King Tubby, with whom he studied the technical aspect of music. In the early 70s, Pat Francis started producing and founded his Teem label. Inspired by U-Roy, Big Youth or Dilinger, he took the name Jah Lloyd and recorded his first Deejay style productions at Randy's Studio - with the support of Edwards and the help of Perry. ...”

Holland Tunnel Dive

Holland Tunnel Dive: Ain't No Sunshine / Drifting Away

W - Jah Lloyd

Discogs

YouTube: No Tribal War/Ark Of The Covenant, Zion Rock, Channel One

YouTube: Soldier round the corner - Album 32:57

The 12 Defining Scenes of ‘The Sopranos’

“A word of warning: Your favorite scene from The Sopranos is probably not on this list. Yes, that one—the scene whose absence immediately invalidates everything you’re about to read. Poor you. The thing about lists of great moments from canonical shows is that they’re always wrong. Still, the futility of the exercise comes with its own form of validation. You could probably ask 100 die-hard fans to each list the key scenes from The Sopranos and get minimal crossover: This shows not only the sheer number of high points the series hit during six (and a half) seasons, but also the multitudes it contained. ...”

The Ringer (Video)

The Ringer’s Definitive ‘Sopranos’ Episode Ranking (Video)

2011 June: The Sopranos, 2012 March: The Family Hour: An Oral History of The Sopranos, 2013 June: James Gandolfini, 2015 April: David Chase Reveals the Philosophical Meaning of The Soprano’s Final Scene, 2019 January: Television Learned the Wrong Lessons From The Sopranos, 2019 June: Don’t Stop: The Sopranos ends, 2020 July: The Sopranos - Season 1, 2020 July: Season 2, 2020 August: Season 3, 2020 August: Season 4, 2020 September: Season 5, 2020 December: Season 6

Balanchine, the Teacher: ‘I Pushed Everybody’

“The setting is a ballet class, and the year is 1974. George Balanchine throws up his arms in exasperation at the sight of a dancer executing a step incorrectly at the barre. ... The new film ’In Balanchine’s Classroom,’ directed by Connie Hochman, focuses on the teaching of the groundbreaking choreographer — and how it instilled his dances at New York City Ballet with articulate, musical brilliance. It’s both enthralling and heartbreaking. To love Balanchine is to love this film; to love this film is to love ballet, specifically Balanchine’s kind and his kind of dancer: daring, fast, strong, free, at one with the music. Each is different from the next. That mattered to him. ...”

NY Times

W - George Balanchine

YouTube: IN BALANCHINE'S CLASSROOM - official US trailer, Balanchine PBS Documentary 1:54:27, I, George Balanchine (2018) 44:02

Minor Threat

Downtown Pulaski, Virginia.

“Derek Craft, a six-foot-eight right-hander out of east Texas, carefully guided his 1995 Toyota pickup through the final winding miles of his journey to Pulaski, Virginia. Worn-out after a long day driving north from Florida, Craft felt a spike of adrenaline as the night enveloping Draper Mountain gave way to the bright lights of Calfee Park. Perched proudly above the darkened town of Pulaski like a citadel, the stadium has lit up summer nights there for more than eighty years, immune to the forces that have eaten away at this once prosperous textile and railroad town. It was the spring of 2019, and Craft, a sixteenth-round draft pick, had been assigned to pitch for the Appalachian League’s Pulaski Yankees. ...”

Harper’s

Astronomia Playing Cards (1829)

“... One particularly fine example is the Astronomia deck. Transcending the earthly concerns of betting and regal motifs, this pack focuses exclusively on the heavens. From the collection of card aficionado Melbert Cary, which contains another lovely celestial spread from c. 1717, the Astronomia pack — printed in London in 1829 and reissued in 1831 — recalls the mystical origins of playing cards. Whereas the Tarot tradition followed astrology into occult realms, this deck remains soberly astronomical. Above the skyscape on each card is a table of cosmological data for particular extra-terrestrial objects: its distance from the sun, orbital eccentricity, and progression-per-hour are displayed on decorative curtain swags. Were you to fan them across a table, it would be like gazing through fifty-two windows onto outer space, framed by classical stone columns. ...”

Public Domain Review

Will We Remember the Victims of the Kabul Drone Strike?

Graffiti denouncing US drone strikes in Sanaa, Yemen in 2014.

“As a parting shot, on its way out of Afghanistan, the United States military launched a drone attack that the Pentagon called a ‘righteous strike.’ The final missile fired during 20 years of occupation, that August 29 air strike averted an Islamic State car-bomb attack on the last American troops at Kabul’s airport. At least, that’s what the Pentagon told the world. Within two weeks, a New York Times investigation would dismantle that official narrative. Seven days later, even the Pentagon admitted it. Instead of killing an ISIS suicide bomber, the United States had slaughtered 10 civilians: Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a US aid group; three of his children, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 10; Ahmadi’s cousin Naser, 30; three children of Ahmadi’s brother Romal, Arwin, 7, Benyamin, 6, and Hayat, 2; and two 3-year-old girls, Malika and Somaya. ...”

The Nation

The Lenox School of Jazz 1959

Percy Heath

“1959 was the year Ornette Coleman broke into the jazz consciousness, a big bang event that forever changed the perception of what jazz is and the esthetics of the genre. In May of that year, while still in the west coast, he recorded his debut on Atlantic Records, the milestone album The Shape of Jazz to Come. In November he opened a two week engagement at the Five Spot Café in New York City, which expanded to ten weeks and generated a heated debate about his music. In between these events, that watershed year also included a period of three weeks that gave Coleman a flavor of what’s to expect from the jazz community, in particular fellow musicians. ...”

The Music Aficionado

W - Lenox School of Jazz

amazon: The Lenox School of Jazz: A Vital Chapter in the History of American Music and Race Relations

Discogs: Featuring Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry And Kenny Dorham – Lenox School Of Jazz Concert, 1959 (Video)

amazon: Lenox Jazz School: Concert August 29 1959

Revolt of the Delivery Workers

“The Willis Avenue Bridge, a 3,000-foot stretch of asphalt and beige-painted steel connecting Manhattan and the Bronx, is the perfect place for an ambush. The narrow bike path along its west side is poorly lit; darkened trash-strewn alcoves on either end are useful for lying in wait. All summer, food-delivery workers returning home after their shifts have been violently attacked there for their bikes: by gunmen pulling up on motorcycles, by knife-wielding thieves leaping from the recesses, by muggers blocking the path with Citi Bikes and brandishing broken bottles. ...”

THE VERGE

August 25, 4:30 P.M. Between the lunch and dinner shifts, delivery workers rest at an underground garage that serves as a makeshift break room.

The Desolation Age - Beyond the Ghost (2021)

“Beyond the Ghost presents his second album in the Europa Series, a futuristic, bleak and moving sound voyage that merges electronics and acoustics. London, the year is 2061. War is raging across Europe. Ultra-nationalist powers are fighting against each other, trying to conquer more territory and assert their supremacy. In London, enemy armies of cyborg soldiers and drones are taking over the city. The capital is quickly falling into ruins, the dust from the rubble is still suspended in the air. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

Bandcamp: The Last Resort (Audio)

YouTube: The Desolation Age, You Disappeared

Among Those Who Marched Into the Capitol on Jan. 6: An F.B.I. Informant

Records show that an F.B.I. informant marched from the Washington Monument to the Capitol and told his handler that Trump supporters were entering the building.

“As scores of Proud Boys made their way, chanting and shouting, toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, one member of the far-right group was busy texting a real-time account of the march. The recipient was his F.B.I. handler. In the middle of an unfolding melee that shook a pillar of American democracy — the peaceful transfer of power — the bureau had an informant in the crowd, providing an inside glimpse of the action, according to confidential records obtained by The New York Times. In the informant’s version of events, the Proud Boys, famous for their street fights, were largely following a pro-Trump mob consumed by a herd mentality rather than carrying out any type of preplanned attack. ...”

NY Times

The Internet Should Be a Public Good

ENIAC, the first general-purpose computer. US Army

“On October 1, the Internet will change and no one will notice. This invisible transformation will affect the all-important component that makes the Internet usable: the Domain Name System (DNS). When you type the name of a website into your browser, DNS is what converts that name into the string of numbers that specify the website’s actual location. Like a phone book, DNS matches names that are meaningful to us to numbers that aren’t.For years, the US government has controlled DNS. But in October, the system will become the responsibility of a Los Angeles-based nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).ICANN has actually already been managing DNS since the late 1990s under a contract with the Commerce Department. ...”

Jacobin

Should the Internet be a Public Good?

Kawina, coups, and Sranan soul: a brief history of Surinamese music

Lieve Hugo and The Happy Boys

“A culmination of political windfall has struck the country of Suriname in recent months. President Dési Bouterse, who had held office since 2010, was found guilty in July 2019 of the murder and execution of 15 political opponents in the aftermath of a 1982 military coup. ... Though no arrests have been made, Bouterse, the 74-year-old politician, faces a potential 20-year prison sentence. In celebration of this historic victory for the Surinamese people, and in celebration of the country’s original independence day from Dutch colonial rule on November 25, 1975, we want to look into Suriname’s volatile political history and explore how, through the trials of the centuries, Surinamese music has become a symbol of hope, strength, and perseverance. ...”

PAM (Video)

W - Music of Suriname

YouTube: Suriname KASEKO MIXTAPE VOL.1 35:15, Folk Group NAKS_This Is Suriname (Album) 42:08

Parliament of Republic of Suriname; people with signs bearing slogans (Surinamese) Date: December 1, 1975

The Louvre Under Snow - Camille Pissarro (1902)

“You can see the echoes of Japanese prints by Hokusai and his contemporaries in this Impressionist picture of the floating world. Pissarro’s brush alights on the passing beauty of a winter white-out, observing central Paris from an apartment he rented for its great view of the Seine. The cinematic way he frames the scene, the sense of ephemerality and immediacy, even the joy in winter as a beautiful season all speak of Pissarro’s debts to Hokusai. He shares this enthusiasm with Van Gogh, Whistler and Monet. Japanese art hit Europe’s avant garde in the the 19th century like a great wave.“

National Gallery

Fire Music: a history of the free jazz revolution, writer/director Tom Surgal

“Although the free jazz movement of the 1960s and ‘70s was much maligned in some jazz circles, its pioneers – brilliant talents like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane – are today acknowledged as central to the evolution of jazz as America’s most innovative art form. FIRE MUSIC showcases the architects of a movement whose radical brand of improvisation pushed harmonic and rhythmic boundaries, and produced landmark albums like Coleman’s Free Jazz: A Collective Inspiration and Coltrane’s Ascension. A rich trove of archival footage conjures the 1960s jazz scene along with incisive reflections by critic Gary Giddins and a number of the movement’s key players. ...”

Fire Music (Video)

Film Review: “Fire Music: A History of the Free Jazz Revolution” — Informative but Incomplete

Guardian - ‘It didn’t adhere to any of the rules’: the fascinating history of free jazz (Video)

Sun Ra Arkestra

Harvest Moon - Nina MacLaughlin

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, ca. 1558

“In 1957, the first satellite was launched into orbit around the earth. A gleaming metallic sphere about two feet in diameter with four long antennae, it had the look of a robot daddy longlegs. It weighed a hundred and eighty-four pounds and sped through space at about eighteen thousand miles per hour. After three months and more than fourteen hundred spins around this planet, it reentered earth’s atmosphere, blazing into flames. ...”

The Paris Review

2021 May: What Color Is the Sky?, 2021 June: Strawberry Moon, 2021 August: Sturgeon Moon

‘The Village Detective’ decays into the avant-garde

“It was probably inevitable, baked into the chemical essence of film, that the medium’s own ephemerality would become a metaphor for time, aging, and death. Filmed images outlive the people in them, but time’s army eventually catches up, and what we’d long thought was immortal confronts the laws of decomposition just as we do. Movie images are ghosts, but eventually the ghosts themselves begin to rot away. It may’ve been because cinema was finally a century old, or due to a leveling-up in the world of film preservation, but it was in the ’90s when artists began recycling old film not for its subject but for its nitrate collapse. Emerging around the same time as Dutch archivist Peter Delpeut, Bill Morrison quickly became this domain’s archdruid; soon, he was, and still is, America’s most viewed and most distributed avant-garde filmmaker. ...”

Voice

NY Times - ‘The Village Detective: A Song Cycle’ Review: Soviet Film Hero Emerges (Video)

Senses of Cinema - Sunken Film: Bill Morrison Talks The Village Detective: a song cycle

2012 June: Bill Morrison, 2015 October: Decasia (2002), 2017 December: The Miners' Hymns (2011), 2018 January: The Dockworker's Dream (2016), 2018 October: Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) , 2018 November: Director Bill Morrison

When the Nobel Prize Committee Rejected The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien “Has Not Measured Up to Storytelling of the Highest Quality” (1961)

“When J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books appeared in the mid-1950s, they were met with very mixed reviews, an unsurprising reception given that nothing like them had been written for adult readers since Edmund Spencer’s epic 16th century English poem The Faerie Queene, perhaps. At least, this was the contention of reviewer Richard Hughes, who went on to write that ‘for width of imagination,’ The Lord of the Rings ‘almost beggars parallel.’ Scottish writer Naomi Mitchison did find a comparison: to Sir Thomas Malory, author of the 15th century Le Morte d’Arthur — hardly misplaced, given Tolkien’s day job as an Oxford don of English literature, but not the sort of thing that passed for contemporary writing in the 1950s, notwithstanding the serious appreciation of writers like W.H. Auden for Tolkien’s trilogy. ...”

Open Culture

2010 January: The Lord of the Rings, 2018 January: An Atlas of Literary Maps Created by Great Authors: J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island & More, 2019 January: The Largest J.R.R. Tolkien Exhibit in Generations Is Coming to the U.S.: Original Drawings, Manuscripts, Maps & More, 2020 January: Hear Christopher Tolkien (RIP) Read the Work of His Father J.R.R. Tolkien, Which He Tirelessly Worked to Preserve, 2020 August: The Complete Guide to Middle-earth - Robert Foster (1971)

John Ashbery: On The Inside Looking In by Roger Gilbert

Hudson: A gloom one knows. Dining room.

"Some poets invite us into their homes. W. B. Yeats’s Thoor Ballylee and Robinson Jeffers’s Tor House figure prominently in their poetry while remaining coldly majestic edifices. Not so Gertrude Stein’s Paris apartment, whose rooms and objects spark the verbal fireworks of 'Tender Buttons,' or W. H. Auden’s Kirchstetten cottage, lovingly displayed from bathroom to attic in 'Thanksgiving for a Habitat.' James Merrill’s Stonington residence plays an intimate role in his work, especially the flame-colored salon in which the poet and his partner contacted the spirit world. ... John Ashbery is not exactly that kind of poet. His poems contain little in the way of conventional description. ...”

Rain Taxi

Hudson: Much has been said about Ashbery's fondness for conjoining specimens of high and pop culture—Ariosto and Happy Hooligan, Milton and Daffy Duck. Upstairs sitting room.

Cabaret Voltaire: Biography by John Bush

“One of the most important, influential groups in the history of industrial and electronic music, Cabaret Voltaire combined the absurdity of Dada with the D.I.Y. ethos of the punk movement of the 1970s, then gradually evolved their sound and approach throughout the coming decades, mirroring the developments in electronic dance styles such as electro, acid house, and techno. Originally a free-form experimental unit consisting of Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder, and Chris Watson, the group signed to post-punk institution Rough Trade in 1978, producing razor-edged avant-pop singles such as 1979's ‘Nag Nag Nag’ and seminal full-lengths like 1981's Red Mecca. ...”

allmusic, allmusic: Discography

John Peel Archive

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Landslide (Live), Sensoria (Live), I Want You & Hells Home Live Sheffield 17.12.85, Live At "La Edad De Oro" (1983)

YouTube: Walls of Kyot, Don't Argue, Do Right (Remastered), Talking Time

2009 December: Cabaret Voltaire, 2015 June: #7885 (Electropunk to Technopop 1978-1985), 2017 November: The Original Sound Of Sheffield '83 / '87 (2001), 2018 March: Micro-Phonies (1984)

Green Guerillas

“The Green Guerillas are a community group of horticulturalists, gardeners, botanists, and planners who work to turn abandoned or empty spaces in New York City into gardens. Formed in the 1970s, the group threw ‘seed grenades’ into derelict lots and developed community gardens, often without going through official channels. It became especially popular after the concerted redevelopment of a dangerous, trash-filled space at the corner of Houston Street and Bowery in Manhattan. The resulting press coverage and word of mouth led the group to broaden its activities from active gardening to education, training, and support for a number of community groups working on their own gardens. The Green Guerillas have been credited with beginning the community garden movement and popularizing the idea of guerilla gardening. ...”

W - Green Guerillas, W - Seed bombing

How to Make a Seed Bomb

Green Guerillas

YouTube: How radical gardeners took back New York City

Revisiting Some Texture

“Listen through the shimmer. Listen through the held tones, and the bell tones, and the swelling notes. Listen past the asynchronous patterning and the resulting chance chordal play. Listen instead for the frictives, the less sinuous textural elements, the way vinyl surface noise (or its approximate) moves across the stereo field. Listen for the clatter, and how it lends a sense of scale to the sonic space. Then listen to the more tonal material, and how the presence of the less inherently sedative elements bring out textures in the seemingly texture-less. I don’t think I’ve re-upped a recording in a while, but I just love this piece, so having written about it back in April, I wanted to mention it again. This video is part of my ongoing YouTube playlist of fine live ambient performances. Video originally posted to YouTube by the talented Jae Ryan.“

disquiet (Video)