From Bldgblog:

In the desert 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles is a suburb abandoned in advance of itself?

 
Instructables has a DIY step-by-step tutorial on HOWTO make a duck-footed mouse. Here’s a taste:

Step 1 Obtain and dry duck feet

Find yourself some fresh duck feet. If you or your friends hunt or raise ducks, you’re all set. Otherwise you could visit your local asian grocery, butcher shop, or live poultry source and ask for the leftovers. These feet came from a green-winged teal I shot myself. I ate the rest.

Instructables: Duck Mouse

 
Michel Chion’s 1973 composition “Requiem” is a noisy and surreal deconstruction/recreation of the Funeral Mass. In retrospect it sounds positively pre-industrial and is jam packed with grating, annoy-the-dog high pitched frequencies, snatches of actual church music and some genuinely scary uses of the human voice. Listen loudly in the dark if you dare.

from Modern Illusions:

Chion’s Requiem probably represents one of the defining moments of the musique concrete canon, a work all other pieces must be judged by and one of the few absolute masterpieces of the genre. Things begin with a high pitched tone soon joined by an electro-acoustic, echoing wind and then just after 40 seconds, silence, a man narrating a few lines in French and the start of a slow buzzing, chant-like humming, dripping water, echoes, reverbs and more French vocals repeating the words ‘Requiem Aeternam’. And all of this is only two and half minutes into this labyrinthine construction which comes close to nearly annihilating the standard structure of a requiem. Traces of the traditional Funeral Mass remain (largely through the titles of the various movements), but have been so brutally deconstructed that it’s very difficult to know exactly at which point in the proceedings you are experiencing. In fact, it’s almost as if Chion wants to create all moments at once, stopping time so that everything and anything can happen simultaneously, purposefully disorientating and confusing the listener.

listen to the opening piece here
 

 
And here are two more excerpts with great sound quality but not great (mostly lifted) visuals added by the kind fan that uploaded them.

Happy 2010! We’re starting off the new decade right with the first installment of a two-part, in-depth conversation with cultural engineer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on the occasion of the publication of THEE PSYCHICK BIBLE: A New Testameant, a compendium of Gen’s writing on magick, the occult and sexuality. Part two will be posted next week.

 
The New York Times reports that an important work from 1876 by the Impressionist painter Edgar Degas, has been stolen from a museum in Marseille:

According to the police, ?

Here’s an interesting clock made from a recycled magnetic tape by etsy seller pixelthis. The seller says, “This clock was made from an old Scotch reel magnetic tape that was headed for the trash heap. It is Approximatley 7 “in diameter and comes complete with a new quartz drive and runs on 1 AA battery, included.”

The price for this clock is $28.00.
 
(via Nerdcore )

 
When I was growing up, I could read the Village Voice in the local library and fancied myself “up” on what was going on in New York, at the age of 14, even though I had never been anywhere even close to the island of Manhattan. Having said that, if I wasn’t exactly an expert on New York City per se, I was at least an expert on each and every issue of the Village Voice. (And you can tell a lot about a city from its alt weekly, let’s just say. Reading between the lines = very easy with the Village Voice. True now, and true then.)
 
But in my hometown, one thing I couldn’t experience, even vicariously, was the insane cable access world of Manhattan Cable, now known as the Manhattan Neighborhood Network.I’d read about shows like Ugly George, where a fat asshole in a silver-lame jumpsuit carried a video-camera (the huge old fashioned kind with the outboard decks) around New York and asked women to take their clothes off for him. Many did. Many more told him to fuck off and die. There was also Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party, which I longed to see, it was so glamorous sounding, there was Al Goldstein’s racy Midnight Blue, but most intriguing of all for me, living in Wheeling, WV where nothing ever happened, were Andy Warhol’s cable access programs. I loved the idea that anyone who wanted to have their own TV show could do so and saw myself having one myself one day (and I did, The Infinity Factory talkshow, which was on for over 2 years opposite ER!)
 
A great website I just discovered called Zamboni has files of a few of the Warhol programs for streaming and download. Other shows are knocking around out there, too. Many famous faces here including Halston, Pee-wee Herman, Debbie Harry and John Waters.
 

 
...Or so they claim. Regardless, this is a spooky and moving experiment worthy of your 10 minutes. Extra points for the dead simple, primitive but super effective music. (evidently a bit of Kate Bush’s “Hello Earth” looped and messed with. Thanks, Troy. No wonder I liked it !).

 

 
Here’s an odd collection of hand-drawn movie posters for temporary cinemas in Ghana. From This Blog Rules:

Temporary cinemas became common in Ghana in the 80s because of video cassette technology. When ?

 
Recall the pilfered Warhols of all the sports legends of a couple of months ago? The original Polaroids that Andy Warol shot that served as the basis for these portraits were on display at the Danzinger Projects gallery in New York recently. There’s a gallery of them here.

It’s says that Warhol always used a Polaroid Big Shot camera. I want one! Polaroid is stupid for not trying to keep their instant cameras going for artists. It they did an “Andy Warhol Edition” of the Big Shot, I would so be there…