The MediaMentor's Text Blog: 20090906

Sunday, September 06, 2009

UbuWeb ... great audio files & more... it's the polar opposite of MySpace

UbuWeb

What is your philosophy?
See our manifesto.
http://www.ubu.com/resources/index.html
[Version française]
http://www.ubu.com/resources/index_fr.html
[Versione Italiana]
http://www.ubu.com/resources/index_ital.html

http://www.ubu.com/resources/podcast.html

[excerpt]

Produced by The Poetry Foundation http://poetryfoundation.org/ , UbuWeb is
pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on a dozen
of Ubu's hidden treasures, highlighting audio works that you really should
know about about but most likely don't. With this podcast, we kick off a
series focusing on the sounds of different regions. Here the focus is on
the very rich scene emerging out of Los Angeles. Blending genres such as
punk rock, visual art, performance art, experimental music and innovative
poetry, we focus mostly on the late 1970s. Featured here are Chris Burden,
Paul McCarthy, The Kipper Kids, Mike Kelley with Sonic Youth, John
Baldessari, David Antin, Eleanor Antin, the Los Angeles Free Music
Society, and Benjamin Weismann. You can subscribe to our podcast here.

http://poetryfoundation.org/podcast_avantgarde.xml

Frequently Asked Questions

http://www.ubu.com/resources/faq.html

[excerpt]

1. When did UbuWeb Start?
2. How is UbuWeb funded?
3. Can I get involved?
4. Can I use something posted on UbuWeb on my site, in a paper, in a
project, etc.
5. How do I purchase something from your site?
6. What is your policy concerning posting copyrighted material?
7. How do I download MP3s?
8. I only have RealPlayer. How come you mostly have MP3s?
9. Are you affiliated with a university?
10. Why are your pages in English? / Why are your pages not in English?
11. Who are you?
12. Where are you located?
13. Why don't you respond to my emails?
14. I'm interested in advertising on UbuWeb. How do I go about this?
15. Why isn't new content posted every day?
16. I'd like to receive notices of UbuWeb updates. How do I do this?
17. Do you have an UbuWeb listserve?
18. What system do you design UbuWeb on? What browser is UbuWeb optimized
for?
19. What is your philosophy?
20. Why is there no Alfred Jarry on UbuWeb?
21. What happened to the image of the nude woman at the top of the Artist
Index page?
22. Why won't you look at my MySpace page?
[...]
Why won't you look at my MySpace page?
It's ugly, crowded, filled with ads, blares music at you, and nine times
out of ten, crashes our browser. Really, it's the polar opposite of
UbuWeb. Just as in meatspace there are certain streets you never walk
down, so in cyberspace, we assidiously avoid the MySpace mall. No ifs ands
or buts. Sorry.

When did UbuWeb Start?
UbuWeb was founded in November of 1996, initially as a repository for
visual, concrete and, later, sound poetry. Over the years, UbuWeb has
embraced all forms of the avant-garde and beyond. Its parameters continue
to expand in all directions.

[...]

I'm interested in advertising on UbuWeb. How do I go about this?
You don't. UbuWeb is completely commercial-free and it will always stay
that way.

Why isn't new content posted every day?
UbuWeb is an archive, not a blog. It has accumulated slowly and steadily
and shall continue to far into the future.

I'd like to receive notices of UbuWeb updates. How do I do this?
UbuWeb refuses to advertise or promote itself. Most of all, we detest the
idea of filling inboxes with more unwanted material. A few times a year,
we post our updates to select mailing lists; that's what they're for,
aren't they? For UbuWeb updates, best to just keep checking back on the
homepage, where notices of all new content appears.

[...]

ABOUT UBUWEB

Concrete poetry's utopian pan-internationalist bent was clearly
articulated by Max Bense in 1965 when he stated, "…concrete poetry does
not separate languages; it unites them; it combines them. It is this part
of its linguistic intention that makes concrete poetry the first
international poetical movement." Its ideogrammatic self-contained,
exportable, universally accessible content mirrors the utopian
pan-linguistic dreams of cross-platform efforts on today's Internet;
Adobe's PDF (portable document format) and Sun System's Java programming
language each strive for similarly universal comprehension. The pioneers
of concrete poetry could only dream of the now-standard tools used to make
language move and morph, stream and scream, distributed worldwide
instantaneously at little cost.

Essentially a gift economy, poetry is the perfect space to practice
utopian politics. Freed from profit-making constraints or cumbersome
fabrication considerations, information can literally "be free": on
UbuWeb, we give it away and have been doing so since 1996. We publish in
full color for pennies. We receive submissions Monday morning and publish
them Monday afternoon. UbuWeb's work never goes "out of print." UbuWeb is
a never-ending work in progress: many hands are continually building it on
many platforms.

[...]

China Google boss departure reignites debate over censorship

China Google boss departure reignites debate over censorship
They were never going to be the easiest of bedfellows. When Google, the
modern face of Western freedom, first decided to launch a censored version
of its search engine inside communist China, civil liberties campaigners
were appalled.

[excerpt]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/6143553/China-Google-boss-departure-reignites-debate-over-censorship.html

That was in 2006. Yesterday the sudden and unexpected resignation of
Kai-Fu Lee, the head of Google China, reignited the debate about how a
business model built on providing unfettered access to information can
possibly thrive in a regime that thrives on control - and whether it
should try to.

Mr Lee, 47, who was born in Taiwan but educated in the US, is seen in
China as an Alan Sugar-type business celebrity - and after four years at
the helm was said yesterday to be leaving to start a venture capital fund
to help young Chinese entrepreneurs start new web-based businesses.

But his surprise departure from a high-flying role in one of the world's
most influential companies has led inevitably to new questions about the
tensions between Google and China's communist leadership.

It follows 12 months in which Google China, despite its decision to accept
restrictions on its search engine to conform with communist censorship,
has come under increasingly hostile fire from the Beijing government.

The company denied that Mr Lee's departure was a sign of anything other
than his desire to embark on something new. But on his blog he wrote that
he wanted to be "actively involved in the work and to have full control
over it" - a hint, some suspect, that he did not feel completely in charge
of events.

Mathew McDougall, the chief executive of SinoTech Group, China's largest
independent digital marketing agency, told The Sunday Telegraph: "He seems
like a guy who tried very hard and in the end got frustrated in the role.

"Since he arrived at Google he's had a difficult job - and myriad bad
publicity in the last quarter. None of that has made his life easier and
it looks as if he's gone off to do something for himself that is free of
the constraints that come with trying to do business in the Chinese
internet market."

In January, three years after Google China (Google.cn) was launched,
Beijing authorities fired a warning shot.

As part of an initiative "to purify the internet's cultural environment"
the government accused the search engine of failing to use effective
measures to block searches for "vulgar, pornographic sites".

In June, state censors went further, announcing "punitive measures" over
the same concern, and blocking all access to the site for several hours. A
spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry accused the search engine of
spreading "large amounts of vulgar content that is lascivious and
pornographic, seriously violating China's relevant laws and regulations".

Google, which had been careful to heavily self-censor during the 20th
anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre a few weeks earlier,
swallowed the ticking off.