February 9, 2009 - Coffee Break - Kansas City Missouri

59° Cloudy with wind out of the south at 6mph and a humidty of 52%

John Adams is the Care Bear of the American avant-garde – David Hagdu

The weather has changed - it's really coming down. Good thing I rolled up my windows when I got out. Better check the Weater Underground. It was sprinkling earlier but this is unexpected. There was even the reminents of a rainbow to the north (about 10 degrees worth - not even what could be described as an arc). And it pours in big spring guggles. Bubbling and puddeling.

Kansas City is in the midst of a rain - the radar shows it extending from the Iowa border to Arkansas. Yes, heavy rain today - humidity 72%, dew point 48, wind calm, visibility 1.2 miles. And now it has let up. Dribble, dribble, dribble.

The transference bird of little mind has risen high / by its wings of coincidence – James Tate

Little Doggie


An advantage
Consumer attitude
Get on with it
Move on
-
From one
To the other
Get on with it
Move on
-
One after
Another
On with
The progression
-
Of it
Moving on
Advancing
Up the chain
-
Onward and up
Move on
Get on
Go along
-
Whatever happens in a black hole stays in a black hole – Pankaj Joshi



Factoids:

$500m of venture funds were invested in virtual worlds in 2007

The videogame industry will top $57b this year

Online gaming topped $7b last year

Two-thirds of the 18-34 year old population play video games

The Average age of a videogamer is 35

Libraries claim that video games increase readership

I just got back from a talk by Brody Condon at the Kansas City Art Institute. The appropiation of commodities for one's own use well sort of. Culture as a found object - maybe.


Revisiting the 1993 Waco, Texas episode, gamers enter the mind and form of
a “resurrected” David Koresh through a specially designed voice activated, surround sound enabled, hard plastic 3D skin. In an attempt to defend the Branch Davidian compound against internal intrigue, skeptical civilians, rival theologians and the inexorable advance of government agents, each player on the network plays as a ”Koresh”. Ensnared in the custom "Koresh skin", players are bombarded with sounds of government psy-ops, internal voices and the clamor of battle, and empowered to voice messianic texts from Koresh's exegesis of the book of revelation, wield a variety of weapons from the Mount Carmel cache and influence the behavior of both followers and opponents by “radiating” charisma. Waco Resurrection draws on the rhetoric of conspiracy theory, cult activity and apocalypticism to investigate the Waco siege as a cultural milestone