Since the days of pulp paperbacks, the French Minitel and beyond, the pornography industry has developed in unison with media innovation. Porn producers backed VHS in the video wars of the 80s, and in the 90s they blessed the world’s lonely motel rooms with pay-per-view. They then carried the internet on their sweaty backs until every man, woman and child had unlimited access to as much porn as they could ever want.

But the internet has proven to be the porn industry’s very own Judas goat. Since social networking surpassed porn as the web’s premier draw in 2008, the proliferation of amateur content and “tube” sites offering user-uploaded videos has crippled DVD sales and online subscriptions. Worse yet, Apple has in effect hogtied further innovation by blocking porn apps from the iPhone and iPad, and has gone so far as to ban unnecessary instances of the female nipple. Last week Steve Jobs, nowapparently the Franklin D Roosevelt of consumer technocracy, hinted at his company’s broader vision by stating that the iPad will offer its users“freedom from porn”.

With parasitic pirates on one side and anti-porn iconoclasts on the other, just how rough is it out there for adult entertainment professionals? Well, you know the industry is in a tight spot when it starts releasing heartfelt pleas from Ron Jeremy intended to appeal to his audience’s moral fibre.

After years of pushing hardcore to its physical and ethical limits, all the sordid, comic and absurd possibilities of human intercourse have been thoroughly exhausted. And like any pop-culture fin de siecle, porn’s lustre of excess has faded into something entirely banal. A sneaky glance at Pornhub, the leading tube site that currently gets more traffic than CNN, reveals a backlog of neatly categorised niche fetishes that would take years to consume, with new videos being uploaded on the hour.

While the hardcore wing of the porno-industrial complex may have entered into unavoidable decline, softcore television programmingcontinues to flourish. What this suggests is that contrary to what Jeremy says, pornography’s dilemma is one of content, rather than copyright.

In order for porn to move into the 21st century, the productions should be made to appeal to a wider audience and be able to hold a viewer’s attention longer than say, two and half minutes. The most obvious move for the modern pornographer would be to create content aimed specifically at women, who have until recently been all but ignored. Indeed, many women enjoy what’s currently available, but the vast majority of today’s porn is still produced only with male tastes in mind. And though there is no shortage of diversity in terms of the sex acts that appear on screen, racial and gender stereotypes continue to be encouraged by the industry’s status quo, allowing porn to remain one of the only mediums where racism and misogyny are still openly tolerated.

However, the incentive for change is not likely to come from within. The industry’s reaction to Jobs’s crusade and the rise of tube sites has been to push for more technological development, specifically effects-drivenmegaproductions a la Avatar. Which is great, if you’re into that sort of thing. But for anyone interested in the development of new or less caustic forms of adult entertainment, the government of Canada may prove to be a more effective catalyst than the advent of giant 3-D genitals.

In April it was announced that the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission approved the licensing of Canada’s first porn channel. Known as “Vanessa”, it will begin to air in October and will be required to adhere to Canadian content regulations, which mandate that programmes featured on the channel include “equitable portrayals” of the sexes and uniquely Canadian themes and settings. If it proves to be profitable, Vanessa could set the tone for the production of more culturally relevant and socially progressive pornography. If it’s a flop, at least anyone out there with a Canada fetish will no longer have to subsist on decades-old Kids in the Hall skits.

(originally published @ guardian.co.uk)

“A Day of Cool Man Life” was produced by Suki Jarashi, a student at the Japanese Institute of Arts and Sciences. The video demonstrates the utility and benefits of a handheld device that Suki designed – a phone with a physical presence that far surpasses your phone’s vibrate function. Like any helpful girlfriend, it wakes you up with a gentle nudge, helps you find your way to work…and exhibits perceivable suffering when its, em, batteries run low.

What I found so interesting about the video, and Suki’s device, is that it’s another baby-step toward realizing a sophisticated transhuman relationship. If you recall, last year a Japanese man by the pseudonym of Sal 9000, married his in-game girlfriend, Nene Agasaki:

No doubt, a merger of a virtual partners such as those featured in “Love Plus”, with something similar to Suki’s device will be a natural progression. As per my own experience, I can see certain benefits in this sort of unholy union – rarely do I ever wake up to my iPhone alarm, usually I just turn it off, throw it across the room and sleep in, missing whatever important appointments (none) I had that day. But if I had a pocket boo, lovingly nudging me awake, I might be a bit more punctual in my day to day routine. Now watch this documentary film, “Guys and Dolls”, and imagine all of the amazing/depressing possibilities transhuman relationships will soon allow for:

africa.mp3

Mystery Intro

Madlib: Red, Black & Green Showcase

The Last Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble: Tones for Larry Young

Madlib: African Map Watch

Banbarra: Shack Up

Madlib: Afrosound Panorama

Madlib: Warrior’s Theme

Madlib: Afritonic pt. 2

[buy the Madlib Medicine Show Vol.3 here]

BONUS!

“We know that the traditional African society was founded on principles of egalitarianism. In its actual workings, however, it had various shortcomings. Its humanist impulse, nevertheless, is something that continues to urge us towards our all-African socialist reconstruction. We postulate each man to be an end in himself, not merely a means; and we accept the necessity of guaranteeing each man equal opportunities for his development. The implications of this for socio-political practice have to be worked out scientifically, and the necessary social and economic policies pursued with resolution. Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism. Hence, socialism. Hence, also, scientific socialism.”

-Kwame Nkrumah

Here’s a quick n’ dirty video I did for the recently self-leaked and apparently unfinished track “automating”, in anticipation of Darkstar’s upcoming album on Hyperdub.

Bonus:

Darkstar: Aidy’s Girl’s A Computer

01%20Aidy%27s%20Girl%27s%20A%20Computer.mp3

Darkstar: Squeeze My Lime

02%20Squeeze%20My%20Lime.mp3

Darkstar: Need You

01%20Need%20You.mp3

Darkstar: Break

02%20Break.mp3

BBC 2/All Black: The Jungle Underworld

BBC 4: Synth Britannia

“n the late 1970s, small pockets of electronic artists including the Human League, Daniel Miller and Cabaret Volatire were inspired by Kraftwerk and JG Ballard and dreamt of the sound of the future against the backdrop of bleak, high-rise Britain.”

BBC 3: Tower Block Dreams (Pirate Radio/Grime)

BBC 4: Krautrock – The Rebirth of Germany

“Between 1968 and 1977 bands like Neu!, Can, Faust and Kraftwerk would look beyond western rock and roll to create some of the most original and uncompromising music ever heard. They shared one common goal – a forward-looking desire to transcend Germany’s gruesome past – but that didn’t stop the music press in war-obsessed Britain from calling them Krautrock.”

Since Nathan Barley crossed the pond a few years back I’ve been subconsciously aware of the unholy brilliance that is Chris Morris, but never took the time to dig through his past work until just recently. If you’re not familiar, Morris is one of Britain’s most prolific satirists, who got his start in BBC radio and quickly established a reputation for his unique brand of comedic genius – eventually becoming the most loathed man on television. Here are a few examples of his radio, tv and film work:

Clip from The Day Today (1994)

Clip from Brass Eye (1997)

Interview with Jerry Springer from the radio show Blue Jam (1998)

Zomby: Helter Skelter, from One Foot Ahead of the Other EP.

Beats by El Michels Affair, via Wu Tang Clan. Visuals courtesy of Nakagawa, Okamoto & Shinoda. Inspired by Samurai cinema/Chanbara poster design:

Fashion brands and designer labels have been using web-video here and there for quite a while now, but video look books (or ‘video looks’) still seem to be a neglected medium, with only a handful of outfits making use of video looks to showcase and promote their work online. A unique mix of advertising, short film and music video, there is serious amount of potential for these types of videos to come into its own as a commercial art form.

Video looks are superior to print look books for a number reasons,  the most obvious being that their isn’t any shipping or off-shore printing involved. But more importantly than the ease of distribution, video looks can better communicate the “feeling” and lifestyle aesthetics that labels want their designs and overall branding to be associated with – especially in terms of impressing upon the viewer the lifestyle-specific jouissance that so much of fashion is dependent upon. Here are a few recent examples of relatively well executed video looks:

Patrik Ervell: High-end minimalist American sportswear (men’s)

Too Black Guys: Toronto-based Canadian streetwear (men’s)

Frankie B: 70s vintage/rock-inspired jeans, etc (women’s)

Bedwin Tokyo: Classically-designed, pop-culture referencing Japanese streetwear (men’s)

Samantha Pleet: Brooklyn-based, Romantic/literary/indie womenswear.

Band Of Outsiders: Classic ’70s Americana (men & women’s)

Uniforms For The Dedicated: Collective-produced, Swedish electro-hipster menswear

Lewis: NYC-based, retro-chic (women’s)

3sixteen: High-end “cut & sew” street-ish menswear.

It recently came to my attention that not everyone is familiar with Adam Curtis, the BBC’s brightest documentarist. It came to my attention because somehow I myself was unfamiliar with his work – I had seen a few of his films but for some reason failed to make the connection and recognize that they were produced by the same filmmaker. Curtis is a tireless crate-digger and a master essayist – stringing together massively profound arguments through the creative usage of unearthed BBC archival footage, narration and  interviews. Here are six of his productions, required viewing for anyone interested in gaining an understanding of the hidden mechanisms which drive capitalist democracies.

Pandora’s Box (1992)

Six part series which examines the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

The Living Dead (1995)

Three part series that investigates the ways in which history and memory have been manipulated by politicians.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

The Mayfair Set (1999)

Four part series that examines how hot-money bucaneer capitalists shaped the political and economic climate of the Thatcher years.

Part One [1/2]

Part One [2/2]

Part Two [1/2]

Part Two [2/2]

Part Three [1/2]

Part Three [2/2]

Part Four [1/2]

Part Four [2/2]

The Century of the Self (2002)

Four part series that chronicles the development of Freudian psychoanalysis and how it served as a precursor to public relations, advertising and the manipulation of the American consciousness.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

The Power of Nightmares (2004)

Three part series that compares the rise of the neo-conservative movement to the radical Islamist movement, arguing that the threat of radical Islam is a myth perpetuated by neo-conservative politicians.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

The Trap (2007)

Three part series that explores the concept of individual freedom and its connection to mathematics, specifically “how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of freedom.”

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Throughout my daily grind, I do a fair amount of art research, which means I spend hours upon hours listlessly trolling through the pages of print and web media for visual content that stimulates and inspires. A few weeks back I stumbled upon a massive cache of virtual VHS tapes – thousands, possibly millions, of digital cassettes caked with the dust of time and long forgotten by those who had once consumed them with cinephilic zeal.

Rather than let these chunks of contextual residue slip into the vacuum of the collective attention deficit – I’ve begun to slice out some of the choicer cuts, in hopes of curating a gallery of cinematic delicacies for all of the bored office workers and uninspired creatives of the world to feast upon. This is Video Heat: cinema burners and molten B-movie hotness for those with a taste for the high and the low.