I have a relatively short list this month, because we’re going to be traveling and I want to get this out before that. “The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score,” by Jodi Kantor and Arya Sundaram, discusses the increasingly common use of systems that continually track employees to measure how much of their time at …
Tag: infrastructure
June 2022
The debut album from Japanese artists Hatis Noit came out toward the end of June, after what seems like a very long wait. It’s (almost?) entirely made from vocal sounds, manipulated and duplicated. There are points where it reminds me a little of Lisa Gerard and Dead Can Dance (the beginning of “Angelus Novus”, for …
August 2021
August 2021 A bit late this month, because we were traveling (!), but here are a few recommendations: First, you should watch Summer of Soul if you haven’t yet. I don’t think I have anything particularly new or interesting to say about it, but it is, indeed, extraordinary and absurd that the Harlem Cultural Festival …
May 2021
I’ll start off this month with some music, beginning with this playlist by Jace Clayton, for ArtForum. Jace Clayton is also DJ/Rupture, and he’s probably best known for finding and promoting interesting new music from parts of the world that aren’t the United States or Europe. (I quoted from his book Uproot, about the way that digital culture is changing …
November 29, 2018: Playing the Changes
After the new year, I will again be teaching the course I call Place and Power in the City, and one of the things I am thinking about as I start to get ready for it is the way that built environment creates, in the most literal way, “facts on the ground.” That is, whatever …
March 31, 2018: Behind the Scenes
I’ve just finished teaching a new class about cities, and one of the things that the experience made me think about was how the built environment of urban spaces is the outcome of a long process (or series of processes) that is itself basically invisible. That is to say, you can see what the city …
September 24, 2017: What is Lost
I’ve recently begun playing the game Nier Automata, which takes place (as so many things do) on a far-future earth where machines have taken control, exiling humanity to the moon, from which they stage attacks on the machines below. Describing that setup by itself doesn’t do the game justice; it’s beautiful to look at, the …
June 18, 2017: The Ties That Bind
I’m developing a new course right now about cities and power, and as part of that, I’ve started to think of a city as, in part, a built response to its environment. Chicago, for instance, is where it because of water—specifically, the proximity of one river system to another, allowing people and goods to be …
Recommendations for May 29, 2016
Article: “Sunk” by Mitch Moxley A few years ago, I read somewhere that there are only four countries in the world where most of the music people purchase is made by artists from their own country: the US, the UK, South Korea, and Japan. I don’t know if that’s still true— it seems like China …
Recommendations for July 26, 2015
Kind of a long one this week, so lets get right into it. Fist, while you’re reading you can listen to… Mix: FACT Mix 505 by Alessandro Cortini I’m not sure exactly how much of his own imprint Cortini is putting on the tracks here, though I think it must be quite a bit. In …