Purple Wheelchair uses anti-marketing

Purple Wheelchair, a psychedelic rock ensemble that I discovered on MySpace Music, evades their fans. This punk-like strategy is a peculiar trend with deeply underground music: they make it difficult to obtain their product, which revels in its limited edition and obscurity.

This setting of obstacles in the way of fans is a counter-intuitive approach that makes perfect sense on the subconscious level: "playing hard to get". Putting a "Do NOT Open" sign on a door. Taunting people by making something forbidden, mysterious, hard to obtain. We cherish and brag about prizes we possess that were not easily won.

From the Purple Wheelchair "About/Bio" on MySpace Music

The name Purple Wheelchair was taken from one of the best herb ever produced on the west coast called Purple Wheelchair. Aptly named for it's purple color and the fact that those who would partake in it would sometimes become crippled with ecstasy. Dept. started recording with the help of a few friends, under the name Purple Wheelchair around 2001. Since then Purple Wheelchair has recorded a Demo disc called

" DEMO ONE "and also a disc called

" ALL NIGHT RIVER BOTTOM PARTY DONE GOT ALL WASHED OUT " - Both have never been released on disc, but may be with in the next year or so. This year, spring of 2008, Purple Wheelchair will release it's first Disc called

" FIGHT THE RAINBOW " - A limited edition of 100 - Hand made covers and hand printed artwork by Lettre Sauvage. With 10 original songs, this is one disc that you will want to add to your collection.

Since it's creation, PURPLE WHEELCHAIR HAS BECOME THE COOLEST THING IN THE RETATRDED HOSPITAL SINCE THE WHITE CHOCOLATE CRUTCHES PERFORMED THEIR HIT " ABDUCT MY AB SECTION ALIEN CREEP " 4 OUT OF 5 DOCTORS CAN'T BE WRONG...OR CAN THEY ?


Members:


NUMBER 3 - Drums / Guitar

DEPT. - Machines / Vocals / Guitarded / Bass

CLAMMY FOSTER - Machines / Bass

CHARLES MANSION - Vocal

TOOTSIE POPS - Sax

DONNY PLEASURE - Guitar

UMPTEEN SPOOKS - Guitar



Sounds like:

IRIDESCENT FLOWER PETALS FLYING OFF OF WALLPAPER AND SLOWLY SPLASHING IN TO YOUR FACE EYEBALLS DRIPPING OFF THE LEAVES AND BOUNCING INTO THE TRANSVERSE SHADOWS RAINBOW SPHERE PERIOD !

Purple Wheelchair "I'm Downtown Hollywood" (3:00)




Purple Wheelchair "Walkins Way" (8:27)



Videos uploaded by:

DEPT.'s OUTLAW CONDUIT
http://www.youtube.com/user/outlawconduit

Gregory Markopoulos hypno films

I can't think of anything kind to say about avant garde film maker Gregory Markopoulos. He exploits the technique high speed flash cueing to induce trance states of nebulous receptivity to embed "thought images" into the mind of his audience.

His temple environment, Temenos, the only sanctioned and authorized way to experience his films, reveal the grandiose nature of this man's delusions. Markopoulos glamorizes ancient tyranny and uses covert persuasive technology: culminating in processing the viewers of what I call his cultish "training films".

Gregory Markopoulos Bio

In the last ten years of his life, Markopoulos toiled over Eniaios, another, and the ultimate, reworking of his entire earlier film output. It was fully edited and notated, but left unprinted, at the time of his death.

A completely silent eighty-hour long, epic re-configuration of his previous works, it contains 100 individual titles arranged in 22 cycles.

Edited in the manner of the later, black-leader, films, it is to be seen ideally over several weeks, in a yearly summer-fetival held at the Temenos, a special open-air cinema theatre dedicated to Markopoulos's works and those of Robert Beavers.

200 people attend his 8 hour films of blinking images and hidden optical messages of one-frame duration, lasting 1/24 of a second.

Putting a person in a room where they focus on on point of light, and flashing images so brief that the viewer cannot consciously perceive or argue with them resistantly is a classic brainwashing methodology, known as high speed flash cueing.

Eniaios, whose title indicates both the “singularity” and the “uniqueness” of the film, reedits many of Markopoulos’s early films around his conception of the single frame as the basic filmic unit. While many of the original films included a sound track, the whir of the projector and the occasional insect provided the only accompaniment here. Reduced to lengths of a few seconds or even a single frame, cinematic fragments extracted from complete films—some of which, never having been printed, were literally respliced, their previous incarnations discarded—present the filmmaker’s oeuvre as a ruin or as an incomplete archive.

- Silent Nights
Art Forum

Still, we have much to learn from Markopoulos regarding his use of erasure, black and white leader tape rhythms, and subtle visual effects. It's the after-image subliminals that are troubling in a fascist thought-control manner.

Gregory Markopoulos on Wikipedia

problem resolution message from MySpace

So seldom does one see well-written user messages and member updates, it's shocking when you eventually do see one. This one from MySpace Music jolted me this morning. It's a model that other Web 2.0 companies should use as an example.

For the sake of analysis, I've added large red numbers to each concept expressed in this message, concepts that I will make clear as I show you why this message is a true gem of customer communications.

At the outset, let me sadly state that, as perfect as this problem resolution message is, ultimately the communication goal, user satisfaction, is not achieved.

There are more problems at MySpace Music, and they're not being addressed. I've been unable to upload successfully any new tunes to the players, nor have I been able to upload new videos. And I'm unable to reposition the tunes in the players, as the Up and Down buttons have vanished.

Latest Update:
Sep 25, 6:00am PDT

1 Attention artists: 2 We are still working on the play count issue. 3 We are re-loading all your stats and plays (including songs you deleted in the past), 4 so that your total plays will be accurate.

5 I know this is very frustrating to not have them accurate at this moment, but please be patient. 6 Your plays will be restored. The plays that have happened since the new changeover will also eventually appear.

Everything is being recorded, the problem is what is displayed on your music players.

7 Just wanted to let you know that I have not forgotten you, and we are working on this issue. 8 It is just a slow process as we have 5 years of data to reload and synch up with your profiles.

9 Thanks for your patience and support!

Analysis of MySpace Music
Problem Resolution Message:


1 States specifically to whom this message is addressed.

2 Identifies specific problem, with assurance that they're solving it.

3 Explains specifically what they're doing to solve it.

4 Defines specific goal, in terms of user benefit, of the fix.

5 Acknowledges the emotional side of the issue: frustration.

6 Makes specific promise in terms of end result users desire and deserve.

7 Soothes the emotional side with friendly warmth and assurance, in terms of what the users are probably thinking and what they need to hear.

8 Explains why the fix is not instantaneous, without blaming users or evading accountability.

9 Ends on a friendly human note expressing appreciation.

Str8 Sounds on Rhizome at The New Museum

Str8 Sounds is a promising and active member, for nearly a year now, of the Rhizome arts community at The New Museum, NYC.

The Str8 Sounds Revolutionary Electrode ensemble are lethargically donating smudge 'n' sludge, i.e., contributing new content, some of it exclusive to Rhizome only, to gradually enrich, or inescapably cripple, the music and film dimensions of their content resources.





Str8 Sounds on Rhizome

http://rhizome.org/profile.php?1054047




Rhizome mission statement:

Rhizome is dedicated to the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology.

Through open platforms for exchange and collaboration, our website serves to encourage and expand the communities around these practices. Our programs, many of which happen online, include commissions, exhibitions, events, discussion, archives and portfolios.


We support artists working at the furthest reaches of technological experimentation as well as those responding to the broader aesthetic and political implications of new tools and media.


Our organizational voice draws attention to artists, their work, their perspectives and the complex interrelationships between technology, art and culture.

Somaya Langley performance art audio at Rhizome

Str8 Sounds is a proud member of the Rhizome arts community at The New Museum, NYC. We're contributing new content, some of it exclusive to Rhizome only, to enrich the music and film dimensions of their content.






Str8 Sounds on Rhizome

http://rhizome.org/profile.php?1054047



I did a search on the keyword "music" on Rhizome and discovered composer / multi media performance artist Somaya Langley. I'm downloading the many FREE audio files that she provides, wisely, to promote gigs and record sales. This music she is creating is among the hippest, most avant garde work coming out of New York. Adjust your ears to it now.

Get her live electroacoustic performance works (sound installations, live electronics, radio transmissions, instrumental works, and soundtracks) at CriticalSenses.

http://www.criticalsenses.com/audio.html







I strongly recommend such tracks as:


* Shimmer

* Electronic Explorations

* Patterns of Nothing

* aphasing II

* bleeptrain

* Selfacade

* Fool's Day

* Parliament

* out | side | in

* Trans + Mute (live at the National Festival of Womens Music 2001)

* Passion in the Protest

* Live at Liquid Architecture 6






From her About page at CriticalSenses:

Somaya Langley is a sound and media artist (www.criticalsenses.com).

Her work has been presented and performed in festivals and conferences throughout Australia and internationally including Transmediale.08, Tuned City, New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), das kleine field recordings festival, Liquid Architecture 6, the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Sound Lab Channel III, Electrofringe, the Australasian Computer Music Conference (ACMC), the Australasian Sound Recording Association (ASRA) Conference, the Totally Huge New Music Festival, the Melbourne Fringe Festival and Skylounge at the National Museum of Australia.

In 2005 she completed commissions for Experimenta’s New Visions and the National Film and Sound Archive’s Ten Minutes of Passion, for which her piece Passion in the Protest also received a finalist’s award. Highlights over the past three years include surround-sound compositions for tele path, a trilogy of video works by media artist David McDowell, funded by artsACT and sound for the solo theatre work The Minutiae of Inertia, as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. She also participated in the Performance Space’s Time_Place_Space 5 workshop, which was supported by an artsACT 2006 Travel Grant and participated in the Australian Network for Art and Technology’s Create_Space 2005 New Media Lab, which was supported by an ANAT workshop grant.

In 2007, she attended the Australian Network for Art and Technology’s re:skin Media Laboratory that was supported by an ANAT workshop grant. Subsequently, she travelled overseas to attend the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference in New York, the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD) in Montreal plus a collaborative residency at STEIM in Amsterdam ,which was made possible by an Australia Council for the Arts Run_Way grant.

For over a decade she hosted a weekly radio programme, SubSequence, broadcast across the Australian Community Radio Network and until mid-2007 was the National Library of Australia’s Digital Preservation Officer.

Over five years of employment at the Library, her work included creation of MusicAustralia and the Library's online Digital Collections. Additionally she developed models and workflows for long-term sustainability of complex digital objects as part of the Library's Digital Preservation Project.

In 2006, she was the recipient of the inaugural Friends of the National Library of Australia Travelling Fellowship to research models for archiving complex born-digital objects, in California USA.

She is currently co-director of the 2008 Electrofringe festival in Newcastle, Australia, is guest co-curator for Transit Lounge 2009.

During the daytime, she works for the Australian Music Centre as their Online Projects Officer and for the Australian Network for Art and Technology as their international media correspondent. With suitcases spread across the world, she lives in transit - mainly between Sydney and Berlin.

promoting Top Friends on MySpace Music

See this marketing tool in action, at:


Str8 Sounds on MySpace Music


Metaphysical Platypus on MySpace Music

In the realm of social media marketing, you often engage in anti-marketing. You must do the opposite of a mammonist corporation. You sacrifice for others, instead of bullying them. You serve, instead of enslave or trick.

For example: you promote yourself, paradoxically, by demoting yourself, eg being humble and self-effacing, and praising others. It's good for the eternal soul and it's smart from a practical business standpoint. Bands tend to enjoy and promote other bands. Establish good relationships with kindred artists. It's a win-win situation. A no-brainer as the suits say.

I call it "business karma", something the capitalist financial and manufacturing giants are feeling now as it bites their skanky butts.

Above this text you see the new art image I'm putting on the MySpace pages of all the music bands that I participate in and market (Str8 Sounds, La La Landers Masochistic Orchestra, Wainwrights of the Mind, Old Door, Metaphysical Platypus, etc.)

The purpose of a MySpace Music display of avatars of your Top Friends (configure to show 40, be generous in advancing the success of fellow struggling musicians!)? To show who inspires and interests you, and to help fans of your band discover more music they might like.

Sunbeam bread commercial 5

Fresh tempting Sunbeam. The bread you need for energy.

San Fransisco street gang film 1961

"Ask Me, Don't Tell Me"

artist Julian Schnabel sings

Julian Schnabel is a contemporary artist. His 1995 Polygram album "Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud" is his attempt to produce music and sing. Amazon.com has new and used copies starting at $1.25 and it's also available on cassette.

If you like Leonard Cohen, The Magnetic Fields, Tom Waits, and other deep voiced singers, with a lofi spin, check it out.

FREE mp3s on Ubu Web: Julian Schnabel "Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud"
http://www.ubu.com/sound/schnabel.html

From Amazon review by Geoffrey Himes:

Julian Schnabel is the successor to Andy Warhol as a Manhattan painter turned celebrity, and he has used that media clout to secure a recording contract even though he has no discernible talent for making music.

He could be described as a cross between Michael Bolton and Leonard Cohen, but unfortunately he writes songs like Bolton and sings like Cohen instead of the other way around.

The combination of his treacly sentiment, pretentious poesy, tuneless croaking, and minimalist melodies is comic for a short time but soon turns annoying. Typical of the album is "I Tried," which finds a self-pitying Schnabel nasally whining over folk-rock guitars...

Wikipedia "Julian Schnabel"

Julian Schnabel at IMDb (Internet Movie Database)

Starker Plays Kodaly VIDEO

I just bought the Starker Plays Kodaly CD tonight at Barnes & Noble. I am quite impressed with the innovative beauty and almost brutal complexity of composer Zoltan Kodaly. The composer personally guided Janos Starker in playing his music perfectly.

Here is a video of Starker playing Kodaly, an excerpt of a work on this CD. It often sounds to me that there are two instruments being played by two individuals.

Janos Starker plays Kodaly Solo Cello Sonata, 1st movement




Janos Starker plays Kodaly Solo Cello Sonata, 2nd movement




Janos Starker plays Kodaly Solo Cello Sonata 3rd movement excerpt

my current sneakers and Google Chrome

For all the sneaker pimps and sneakerheads, here are my current rides for my feet. As you check them out and compare their artistry and magnificence with your own ordinary tennis shoes, I'll be cruising around in Google Chrome (beta) for Windows, the sleek new open source web browser that Mashable likes so much.

Expect my usability report on Google Chrome in a day or two here on Pluperfecter.

"7 Really Awesome Things About Google Chrome" by Stan Schroeder, Mashable.

Sneaker Pimps art show

Sneaker Freakers: latest releases

Web Usability Testing in InterBusinessIssues

My little outline of why web usability testing is mandatory. Thanks to Jonathan Wright for requesting and publishing this.

Web Usability Testing
http://www.peoriamagazines.com/ibi/
2008/sep/web-usability-testing

Large Hadron Collider black hole machine

Is the Large Hadron Collider going to generate uncontrollable black holes eating Earth inside out? From CERN: makers of the Web [Tim Berners-Lee]. 03:11 PM September 09, 2008

People of Earth: we can no longer tolerate your mad worship of technology and science. Splitting atoms for bombs was bad enough. Then you started sending satellites and mechanized exploration robots to our surface to pester us, even steal our soil.

But now! Now you seek to force protons to collide, traveling at 99.99% speed of light, so fast they almost disappear in time! Stop this madness, unplug that infernal Large Hadron Collider of CERN. Them voracious black holes, after they finish eating Earth and its moon, will then come after us, Mercury, Venus, and etc.

-- Mars Publicity Ministry

The Large Hadron Collider is trying to emulate the energy of the Big Bang on a small scale. This will be weaponized to fight the Martians. about 8 hours ago

"Collision of hadronic beams at 99.99% lightspeed is perfectly safe and blinking black holes never hurt anyone!" - Professor Moneywaste. about 8 hours ago

@tinbashr - But the Technological Imperative states: if you can do it, do it, fuck humanity, Technology is God. This is their motive. 03:30 PM September 09, 2008

Technological Imperative (tech determinism/inevitability) coined by Langdon Winner http://tinyurl.com/5b6n3h 03:34 PM September 09, 2008

@cshirky the Technological Imperative silenced the critics of accelerating hadronic beams at lightspeed. "LHC is nice," they commanded. about 7 hours ago from web in reply to cshirky

@cshirky - Yes, LHC made blinking black holes, but CERN assures me they're transitory and no more harmful than eating enriched plutonium. about 7 hours ago

When the LHC officially begins its experiments, multiple terabytes of data per second will flow out of Europe via fiber optic cables to thousands of researchers spread across the globe, including over 1700 in the United States. This experiment will significantly increase the amount of data that the U.S. scientific community must transport and manage.

Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), Internet2, the country’s leading research and education network, and USLHCNet, which provides transatlantic network connectivity from the LHC facility to the United States have prepared for moving the massive amounts of data to U.S. sites where scientists can analyze the information.

These organizations have worked closely together to aggressively deploy the most advanced networks with enough bandwidth and capabilities to reliably transport multiple streams of 10 Gigabits of information per second – the equivalent of transmitting 500 hours of digital music per second for each 10 Gigabit line. The LHC will be the first experiment to fully utilize the advanced capabilities of these networks, which will connect DOE national laboratories and university researchers across the country to the LHC data.....

.....

The LHC has been nicknamed the “Big Bang Machine” because scientists will use it to recreate the cosmic conditions one trillionth of a second after the big bang, in hopes of finding insights into the origins of matter.

It consists of a 27 kilometer tunnel and cathedral-sized caverns 100 meters underground. The accelerator magnets that guide the beams on their circular orbit are supercooled to a temperature just slightly above absolute zero, which is colder than outer space. It will accelerate matter to 99.999999% the speed of light, and recreate conditions a trillionth of a second after the big bang.



-- Internet2 newsletter report on LHC

Big Bang background radiation, I'd like to introduce you to the universe-destroyer, the Large Hadron Collider. Here it goes.....BANG BANG! 03:35 PM September 09, 2008

@David_N_Wilson The Large Hadron Collider disaster may make "global warming" seem like a stroll through the park in comparison. LOL 03:37 PM September 09, 2008

If self is derived from an anonymous "Big Bang" that farted randomly in proto-space many moons ago, death is not a doorway. about 9 hours ago

I trust the CERN scientists as much as I trust the nuclear energy frauds who lied in the 50s about the safety of radiation and nuclear waste about 9 hours ago

"Ladies & gentlemen, some sub-atomic transitory blinking black holes have escaped the collider & are now eating the Earth. Sorry. Run!" CERN about 7 hours

@CoolMomsRule - I have a field tested metaphysical soccer play that will kick the butts of those black holes. I will protect the Earthlings! about 7 hours ago

The disciples of the Technological Imperative whose determinism is irreversible and beyond debate, want to reassure us that making a mini-Big Bang is perfectly safe. Indeed, a very nice thing to do. Don't worry about those blinking sub-atomic black holes. They don't eat much.

Hell, you can buy a whole jar of Black Holes for only $26.95. What do we need LHC renegade black holes for? http://tinyurl.com/593rvm about 2 hours ago





CERN Large Hadron Collider publicity page

Large Hadron Collider home page

Death threats made to CERN scientists (Telegraph UK)

Large Hadron Collider Wikipedia article


That's a renegade post-boring transitory flickering LHC black hole, perfectly safe & nice, eating the crap out of my face. Be afraid! about 7 hours ago

I'm quite confident that Big Pharma has some pill or vaccine shot that'll take care of this LHC black hole that's eating my face. Certainly. about 7 hours ago







Will somebody who loathes the Technological Imperative please tell CERN to turn off that particle accelerator? My face is almost gone now. less than 5 seconds ago



'

Chemical Brothers the golden path VIDEO

As the study of social media marketing for music continues, let's look at a fine example of the music film. Chemical Brothers is one of the best electronic bands in the business.

Chemical Brothers "The Golden Path" (3:59)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hqiQPHa3_Y

Social Media Marketing parody VIDEO

The old persona I used for web usability and web content writing business, "Vaspers the Grate (abrasive, not terrific)", is no longer with us on this Earth. The new Pluperfecter focuses on social media marketing (SMM) and online music marketing for various (nefarious?) clients.

When I abandoned and renounced this instrument of commerce and controversy, I rapidly attempted to do a parody video of Vaspers RIP.

THIS...is the sad and unremarkable result...(!)

Vaspers the Grate: "Social Media Marketing" (2:17)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCWkM_iSuZc

Post-social Norms VIDEO