I hate that idea, too, not that I like Brian Eno's solution better (or that he looks all that great):

"I started to notice that you could buy keyboards of such complexity that you basically press one note on them and you've got a career as an ambient artist. I thought, there doesn't seem much challenge in that any longer." Instead, he says, he has been trying to rethink the way songs are written. His voice on the album comes laden with effects, in an attempt to "break down the idea that the voice represents the personality of the music and that that voice is my voice, speaking to you - I hate that idea".

Brian Eno interview in the Guardian on why he tried to unseat Tony Blair.

Barbara Kruger and William Gibson -- a marriage made in heaven or hell, depending upon your point of view -- talk about information at Tate Britain last year:

Internationally renowned artist Barbara Kruger, notorious for her photographic and text-based works that challenge mainstream ideas and ideologies, joins novelist, William Gibson for this discussion. From I Shop Therefore I Am to recent large-scale installations, Barbara Kruger is a key figure who has shaped the way art audiences think about ideology and information.

Alan Sonfist's Time Landscape is a fenced-off quarter acre or so at the intersection of Houston and LaGuardia in New York City and looks as though it's always been there: a small patch of pre-colonial Manhattan that through some miracle evaded the developers. In fact it was conceived by Sonfist in 1965 but not completed until 1978 -- a year after I moved to the city -- and only landmarked for protection in 1998. Thousands of people pass it every day though few probably take the time to read the informational plaque at the south end or know the name of the artist who made it -- or that it is, in fact, art and not just an abandoned (or more likely, contested) Manhattan weed patch.

The June 2005 gatepage for artport, the Whitney Museum's portal to Internet art, features the C5 GPS Media Player:

artport.whitney.org

The C5 GPS Media Player was developed in conjunction with The C5 Landscape Initiative, a series of projects initiated by C5 that involve mapping, navigation and search of the landscape using GIS (Geographic Information Systems). The Landscape Initiative examines the changing conception of the landscape as we move from the aesthetics of representation to those of information visualization and interface.

Employees at Wal-Mart who can't afford the company medical plan are adivsed to apply for Medicare so we all subsidise the billionaires who own the company.

Robert Greenwald is making a documentary about Wal-Mart and is asking people to send in stories and/or video for the project.

Memorial Day seemed like a good time to go to the Metropolitan Museum and Central Park to take pictures. Of course it wasn't unless I wanted to take pictures of lots of people so instead I walked over to the new Time Warner building on Columbus Circle and found the crowds more endurable. Lots of sailors (it's Fleet Week in NYC) and families with what I call the Orlando look that comes from buying all your clothes together at Wal-Mart.

Inside The Thing World Headquarters and up on the roof:

pictures

From Wired News:

Acting on detailed information provided by the motion picture industry, federal agents descended on administrators and users of a popular pirate-friendly file-sharing site Wednesday in what the government is calling the first criminal law enforcement action against BitTorrent users.

Madge Weinstein tours the Sirius Satellite Radio studios in NYC:

mp3

shownotes

Podcasting in iTunes 4.9

via Six Apart:

Our co-founder Mena Trott is attending the D: All Things Digital conference, where she just sent word that Steve Jobs did a demo of iTunes 4.9. The big news is, the new version of the popular music management app beloved by iPod owners will feature integrated support for podcasting. Current plans call for podcasts to be free downloads: Users will submit their podcasts and Apple will be hand-picking the content it makes available to iTunes users.