Dept. of Awesome: The LuvSound Sampler

Recently, longtime friend of Murketing Marc “Disquiet” Weidenbaum became a father. Disquiet.com is a site that he’s run for years, covering the world of ambient/electronic music and all things related, because he’s interested and because he loves it. Disquiet regularly gives attention to musicians, and a corner of the music world, that others tend to overlook. It’s a great thing, Disquiet.

And it turns out that the musicians who are often the site’s subject really appreciate it. Because when the word got around about Mr. & Mrs. Disquiet welcoming a new member to their family, a bunch of those musicians teamed up and created the 11-track Soothing Sounds For Baby.

Now that’s a gift.

You can listen to and even download said gift over at Disquiet, right here.

Books, the idea, cont’d: The Book Bike

Click for more info.

Okay, this is a bit of a cheat, because it involves friend of Murketing Gabriel Levinson, but I have to throw The Book Bike into this series. And in a way, it fits perfectly. Here’s some info:

Everyone has the right to build and cherish a private library.

With this in mind, we present The Book Bike: a custom-built tricycle stocked with 200 lbs of free books. Since July of 2008, The Book Bike has been responsible for placing over 3,000 new and used books into peoples’ hands. In spring and summer, you’ll find The Book Bike at Chicago public parks on the weekends; anyone who wants a book is invited to take something home to read.

In the summer of 2010, The Book Bike puts a spotlight on independent publishers: from hand-crafted zines to literary magazines and books, The Book Bike is a unique resource of the global independent literary scene….

More here. Oh, and if you’re in Chicago and encounter the Book Bike: I’ll be donating some back issues (2008 and 2007) of my annual zine, Where Were You?

Stand by, continued

Following up this post, and this one, another take on the stand-by color bars pattern:

Stained Glass Test Pattern on Make site; click for more.

Nice!

Signficant Objects X Kate Bingaman-Burt X 20×200 — now available!

11×14; edition of 500: $50!

I teased this last week — and now it’s here! We’re really excited to announce the latest Significant Objects team-up, resulting in thoroughly affordable art, and another way to support v3 beneficiary Girls Write Now.

The prints you see on this page are available in limited editions from 20×200, Jen Bekman’s online project that sells a dazzling array of prints from an impressive roster of artists, all priced to meet a mission of making art available to all.

16×20; edition of 20: $200!

The artist is Kate Bingaman-Burt, whose delightful book Obsessive Consumption was just published, and whose combination of thoughtfulness about consumer behavior and mad drawing skills make her our perfect match.

All these prints are created using archival pigment inks on 100% cotton rag paper with a matte finish.

8×10; edition of 200: $20!

Proceeds from the sale of these prints will benefit Girls Write Now, contributing to Significant Object’s grand total donation.

Girls Write Now provides guidance, support, and opportunities for New York City’s underserved or at-risk high school girls, enabling them to develop their creative, independent voices, explore careers in professional writing, and learn how to make healthy choices in school, career and life.

Read more

The Murketing-inspired (imaginary) cigarette brand!

Earlier, the new yet surprisingly comprehensive imaginary-branding-related blog Not A Real Thing made available a template inviting readers to invent their own imaginary cigarette brand. I mentioned it, and to my (happy) surprise, I see that Justin Kirkwood himself has offered up Murks. As he notes, the design is inspired by this site’s rather obsessive cataloging of the idea of the book. (Click either pic for more, and to see his design for a made-up brand of smokes from his spec-screenplay days, Blonde Horses. Nice stuff.)

And yes, that’s right — Murks are unfiltered. The type along the bottom reads: “The Taste Will Consume You.” Yes.

Pictures of stuff, cont’d: Take-out lids, etc.

A few images from a Flickr set by sarcoptiform, courtesy of Shawn Wolfe. Part of a series.

Take Out Beverage Lids

Tea Tags Assortment

Tarnished Dimes

Pictures of Stuff: pictures of pictures of stuff edition

Kate Bingaman-Burt’s book. (Click pic for details.)

So above is the cover of Kate Bingaman-Burt’s new book. Below are some of the interpretations by assorted artists who love her.

I have NO IDEA how it feels to be on the receiving end of an astonishing creative outpouring such as this.

AMAZING.

Frank Chimero

Lis Charman

Lucy Berkley

Ryan Berkley

Always With Honor

Lis Charman

Jason Sturgill

Amy Ruppel

The idea of the book, cont’d.

The Book: Terms Of Service, by Matthew Battles:

I. Privacy
What takes place in the exchange between your brain and the contents of The Book is your exclusive private concern. The Book will never download the contents of your brain, either whole or in part.

II. Intellectual Property
A. The Book often contains ideas and information created by others. The continued appearance of such ideas and information depends on the recognition of a limited property right enjoyed by creators of said ideas and information. But recognizing that the terms of service also require access to ideas and information and the ability to repurpose them in the creation of new works, the creator’s monopoly right shall be understood to be limited and circumscribed.

Continue here. Or check out the video/movie interpretation, here.

I have a feeling David Shields would be particularly into this, no?

One more bit I have to quote, given the nature of this site:

V. Special Provisions
A. The Book will not place ads in your brain, nor seek to control placement of such ads by others.

Tumblr Mosaic Viewer

I love this. If you’re into Tumblr at all, you basically just enter the Tumblr name into the box and voila, as they say. Here’s the Tumbler mosaic for Things That Look Like Other Things. And one for Counterfunctionality: A Gallery. And for MKTG.

Imagine what you’ll see when you enter the names of Tumblrs that are actually good??

Via: Suicedewatch, but before you click on the link, know that much of what’s posted there is NSFW.

Kate Bingaman-Burt Wants To Draw Your Mixtape

She explains:

I want to draw your mixtapes. I want your sad songs, you love jams, your sing at the top of your lungs car tunes, your break-up tape, your make-up tape and your BFF-4evah cassette.

I am only drawing the tape. If you want to participate, please snap a picture of the best side of your favorite tape and email it to me (see my profile) or upload it to your flickrstream and let me know.

A couple of months ago I was rooting through a box of cassettes, and thought about the old mixtapes as a potentially interesting photo project — the ones people gave me, the ones I made for myself. They’re so junky, but at the same time they have such personality. And of course each one brings back memories and so on, they’re often very attached to a time and place, and I guess even to a version of my identity/persona at the time they were made. So maybe I’ll get in on this.

Bonus links: 2006 Consumed about Kate Bingaman-Burt. PopMatters column argues “Why the nostalgia movement won’t touch the cassette.” Missing link: I found that PopMatters piece while trying to track down a Rob Horning meditation dealing in part with an a box of old cassettes, but I couldn’t find it so maybe I’m remembering wrong. I’ll update if I locate it.

How to devise your public-radio name

Obsessed with ” impossibly named” NPR/public-radio hosts and correspondents? (Corey Flintoff, Korva Coleman, Kai Ryssdal, Renita Jablonski, etc.) This person, Liana, was, and devised a way to join them:

You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name.  Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited. So I’m Liarna Kassel.

That works!

(Via Coudal.)

A hundred-year view

One of the more pleasing discoveries made during the period when I was most heavily promoting Buying In was the KERA-Dallas radio show, Think. I enjoyed that interview so much, I ended up subscribing to the Podcast. Which brings me to my point:

On the February 26 episode of the show — archive here — Krys Boyd interviewed George Friedman president and CEO of something called STRATFOR. He has a book out called The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. And that’s what he talked about: His hundred-year view.

I usually have very little patience for futurist types, but I thought this guy was fascinating. Apart from hearing him make the case for why Turkey and Poland are both likely to be rising powers in the century ahead — not something I’ve ever heard before, to say the least — I was interested in his attitude toward the current economic situation. Bottom line is it was refreshing to hear someone talk about that with a longer-term view, as opposed to the nonstop panic on every news site I look at. Oh, he had some interesting stuff to say about solar power via satellite.

Again the audi0-archive link is here. They refresh it as new shows are done and this episode will disappear in a few days. So if you’re interested, grab the MP3 now.

Great product descriptions

For Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Datebook Volume 2:

Product Description

Straggling behind the mild 2003 success of cartoonist Chris Ware’s first facsimile collection of his miscellaneous sketches, notes, and adolescent fantasies arrives this second volume, updating weary readers with Ware’s clichéd and outmoded insights from the late twentieth century.

Working directly in pen and ink, watercolor, and white-out whenever he makes a mistake, Ware has cannily edited out all legally sensitive and personally incriminating material from his private journals, carefully recomposing each page to simulate the appearance of an ordered mind and established aesthetic directive. All phone numbers, references to ex-girlfriends, “false starts,” and embarrassing experiments with unfamiliar drawing media have been generously excised to present the reader with the most pleasant and colorful sketchbook reading experience available.

Included are Ware’s frustrated doodles for his book covers, angry personal assaults on friends, half-finished comic strips, and lengthy and tiresome fulminations of personal disappointments both social and sexual, as well as his now-beloved drawings of the generally miserable inhabitants of the city of Chicago. All in all, a necessary volume for fans of fine art, water-based media, and personal diatribe.

This hardcover is attractively designed and easy to resell.

And for his Acme Novelty Library #18:

Product Description

In keeping with his athletic goal of issuing a volume of his occasionally lauded ACME series once every new autumn, volume 18 finds cartoonist Chris Ware abandoning the engaging serialization of his “Rusty Brown” and instead focusing upon his ongoing and more experimentally grim narrative “Building Stories.”

Collecting pages unseen except in obscure alternative weekly periodicals and sophisticated expensive coffee-table magazines, ACME Novelty Library #18 reintroduces the characters that New York Times readers found “dry” and “deeply depressing” when one chapter of the work (not included here) was presented in its pages during 2005 and 2006. Set in a Chicago apartment building more or less in the year 2000, the stories move from the straightforward to the mnemonically complex, invading characters’ memories and personal ambitions with a text point size likely unreadable to human beings over the age of forty-five.

Reformatted to accommodate this different material, readers will be pleased by the volume’s vertical shape and tasteful design, which, unlike Ware’s earlier volumes, should discreetly blend into any stack or shelf of real books.

Who could resist?

Just Looking

luchelibre

Randomly encoutnered on the Web site of Handmade Galleries, L.A.: Thumb wrestling masks.

Maybe these are old news. I don’t care.

Just looking

Shepard Fairey on Obey Giant site:

The day Obama stated his interest in adopting a dog from the shelter was a slightly brighter one for the approximately 7 million adoptable dogs & cats killed each year in this country. The staggering reality is that for each one sold at a pet store or by a breeder, another perfectly worthy one is killed.  Our nations shelters are filled to capacity with all kinds of amazing adoptable animals including, as Obama put it, “Mutts like me.”

On the heels of Obama’s comment, I got a call from Pia Salk, an animal advocate who works with North America’s largest non-profit pet adoption website, Adopt-a-Pet.com. Pia simply asked if I might be willing to collaborate on a way to have my art help these animals.

Read the rest here.

Earlier: The Art of Politics in Consumed.