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20170724

Managed to build a working microGranny 2.5 unit. Messed up a connection ribbon but other then that the build went decently. I got the midi working (with a Novation Circuit) but I don’t have a usb-to-midi dongle so I can’t test the units midi CC parameter changes (I trust it’s ok). The midi-clock synced “RANDOM SHIFT” for grain playback direction is great! The unit came preloaded with Slavoj Žižek samples, which the unit can run as automated drum-like stutter. Unfortunately the file menu browser is slow and sometimes the faders behave oddly. Judging from the forums this is because the unit is based on an Arduino. It’s rather noisy too but I like it a lot.

Working on my first proper FCPX project. Added keywords to clips and marked favorites/rejects. Learning keyboard shortcuts and how to sync video to external audio. Tomorrow I’ll add the clips to the timeline.

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20170407

Brown and gray colors schemes used by early 1900 Finnish artists served as tools for our nationalist agenda, argues Irmeli Hautamäki in Kansainvälisyys ja kansallisuus suomalaisessa taiteessa (In Finnish). I don’t agree.. Dull tones (best manifested by the November-group) protest against glamour and they taunt the bourgeois aesthetics of impressionism – Globally. Framing the brown-and-gray movement as nationalistic dissolves it’s critical agenda. November is the post-revolution month. Žižek asks what happens after the revolution.. Brown and grey happens.

Critics from Edit-media Rosa Kuosmanen & Tuomas Laulainen hit hard against the Ars17 exhibition in Hello World! – Goodbye kuratointi (Fi.). They blame the exhibitions awkward feel on curatorial decisions and argue that the fetishizion of art objects (performed by the museum through their exhibition architecture) detaches the artworks from the social and technological reality they are intended to touch and interact with. The critics state that the internet has changed the way we make art but Kiasma has failed to evolve and to change the way art is presented. I agree full heartedly but I think we should also criticize at the way the artist exhibited their works. Majority of pieces were presented carelessly (like at a hobbyfair), projected on walls without effort and they looked as they were installed by robots. Perhaps this attitude was a form of protest against Ars17.

We are backing down from Kontula Electronic gig. The schedules are too tight.

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20170120

​Slavoj Žižek defending his stance against political correctness in Zero Squared #95: Žižek And The Double Blackmail podcast. He argues (in short) that political correctness comes to play only after public moral and decency has been corrupted. Political correctness tries to enforce decency through rigid dogma and etiquette, but it’s doomed to fail because decency is not a matter of form, it’s a mode of existence. 

He also shares interesting notes on academic power, arguing that it is: 

  1. The power to employ. 
  2. To fund research. 
  3. To make publication. 

And that academicians do not have this power!

He also outlines a new memesis for the political left: “Liberal fascists” i.e right wing politicians who execute social transfers which benifit the working class. He claims that the possibility for “liberal fasism” arise from the lefts lack of motivation to adapt to new political realities. Hes mapping a route to leftist populism.

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20160629

Found a gem of an artwork which I had uploaded 2012 and forgotten. Added subtitles to it: Prototyping Augmented Reality (2012).

“EU should learn from Brexit and not repeat it’s mistakes” they say. I can’t teach people who don’t want to learn. I can’t help, if the dream to make EU an egalitarian welfare state is too much for you. (Bla bla bla)

Slavoj Žižek on Brexit, the crisis of the Left, and the future of Europe on Brexit, the crisis of the Left, and the future of Europe: “The British attitude, of leaving the EU to its fate, is the logic of the wrong era in an age of global problems: ecology, biotechnology, intellectual property. Britain all alone will be even more vulnerable, exposed to the pressure of international capital without any of the protections. I don’t see any strength gained in standing alone.”