Liartown, USA is Sean Tejaratchi's (previously) incredible, longrunning visual surreal satire site, and it is the latest casualty of parent company Verizon's decision to purge the site of all NSFW content effective Dec 17. Read the rest
Boing Boing pal Dustin "UPSO" Hostetler has published the fifteenth issue of his long-running print 'zine Faesthetic, the exquisitely-produced visual wunderkammer of art/illustration/design. Faesthetic #15 is themed "Convergent Visions" and I was delighted to contribute an essay about the Voyager Golden Record as an iconic artifact of futures thinking. The issue features work by all of these incredible creators: Christan Mendoza, Jon Contino, Adam Griffiths, Adrian Cox, Alex Barrett, Caitlin Russell, Chris Nickels, Dang Olsen, Elaine Miller, Gabrielle Rosenstein, Janne Iivonen, Prate™, Jeremyville, Jim O’Boyle, John Szot, Josh Row, Julian Glander, Justin Harris, Karen Ingram & Nicola Patron, Kyle Knapp, Leanna Perry, Loc Huynh, Maggie Chiang, Marta Piaseczynska, Max Löffler, Okell Lee, Pedro Nekoi, Tara McPherson, Thayer Bray, Bryan C. Lee Jr, and Alison Conway.
Buy Faesthetic for just $10. Here's the story behind this edition:
Read the restThe idea for “Convergent Visions” took root in the halls of South By South West in 2017. After a mind-boggling keynote delivered by biochemist Jennifer Doudna, Faesthetic publisher Dustin Hostetler and creative director Karen Ingram bumped into Hugh Forrest, Chief Programming Officer of SXSW. This chance meeting sparked a conversation between Karen and Dustin that became a collaborative effort with the 2018 SXSW Art Program.
“Convergent Visions” probes various areas in science and technology through an artistic lens. Overarching themes include Design, Health and Wellness, Social Impact and the Intelligent Future become realized through the creativity vibrating and flowing from the minds and fingers of 30 international artists and designers.
With a nod to Donna Haraway’s characterization of the emerging and many-tentacled epoch of the Chthulucene, “Convergent Visions” showcases the visions of these talented creatives.
In Nieman Labs's "predictions for journalism in 2018" roundup, there's Kawandeep Virdee’s "Zines Had It Right All Along": which celebrates the low-fi, experimental, handcrafted diversity of the golden age of zines (which was the environment that birthed Boing Boing, as it happens). Read the rest
Dean Putney, software engineer, editor of his grandfather Walter Koessler's wartime photojournal and former Generalissimo of Development at Boing Boing, published a lovely zine of photos he's taken over the years from airplane window seats.
Individually, each is just a well-framed shot of the ground from the sky. Collectively, a striking view of the world that puts other things in perspective.
It came in a curious linotyped envelope featuring one of the landscapes. Perhaps Dean'll pop into the comments to explain how he made the stamp!
Matt Furie is the creator of Pepe the Frog, a "peaceful and chilled out" character that appeared in his 2006 zine, Boy's Club. Matt wants to reverse the "negative" branding Pepe's received of late and has launched a Kickstarter for a new zine "reclaiming Pepe's status as a universal symbol for peace, love, and acceptance."
Elly Blue (previously) writes, "Bikequity is the 14th issue of my long-running (since 2010) feminist bike zine, Taking the Lane." Read the rest
Marta Chudolinska is Learning Zone Librarian at the Ontario College of Art and Design University, which hosts a huge zine collection founded in 2007 Alicia Nauta, then a student. Read the rest
Sumana writes, "The Recompiler is a feminist technology magazine launched in 2015. Their goal is to help people learn about technology in a fun, playful way, and highlight a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences. They're running a fundraiser right now, asking for $3,000 in subscriptions, book orders, contributions and ads, to publish the seventh issue on time and sail into its third year, and they've made $2236 so far. And for every $500 raised, podcast host Christie Koehler will record a dramatic reading of a tongue-twister." Read the rest
Zine publisher Jonno Revanche says he likes zines because they are not connected to a network infected with crap: clickbait, tracking, trolls, etc.
From his piece in The Guardian:
There’s a liberty to creating, or witnessing subversive material knowing that it won’t be monitored, that the information is contained only within the pages of the zine. The trustworthiness of a physical object in our current age is strangely compelling. Links shared via Facebook or messenger apps can be intercepted, logged, or dispersed otherwise into the ether. Especially for teenagers, zines counter the anxiety and subsequent frantic deletion of browser history so that your family can’t see it. Hide it under your bed instead, or in a zipped inner sanctum within your school bag.
(Thanks, Kathi!) Read the rest
John Park writes, "Check out what Tony D just posted at Adafruit after he visited the Living Computers Museum + Lab." Read the rest
"'Disobedient Electronics' is a zine-oriented publishing project that seeks submissions from industrial designers, electronic artists, hackers and makers that disobey conventions, especially work that is used to highlight injustices, discrimination or abuses of power." Read the rest
Chloe Eudaly, whose zine emporium Reading Frenzy (previously) and publishing makerspace the Independent Publishing Resource Center are PDX institutions, is running for Portland City Council, campaigning on affordable housing for all in a city whose longterm residents are being left behind by runaway rents and spiraling housing prices. Read the rest
See sample pages from this book at Wink.
Free Press: Underground and Alternative Publications 1965-1975
by Jean-François Bizot (editor)
Universe
2006, 264 pages, 9 x 1.1 x 13.5 inches (softcover)
$(removed) Buy one on Amazon
The mid-1960s were an exciting time for art, music, youth culture, society, and politics, all of which were transforming at dizzying speed. The left wing underground press of the time reflected these mind-boggling changes in their design, content, and distribution methods. Underground newspapers from around the world joined the Underground Press Syndicate, sharing articles and illustrations free of copyright restrictions.
These papers gleefully taunted the establishment by promoting recreational drugs, recreational sex, black power, gay rights, women’s liberation, anti-authoritarianism, and anti-war activism. The covers of the papers were bold, experimental, and subversive. When I was designing bOING bOING (the late 1980s/early 1990s zine) I was inspired by the precious few samples of The East Village Other, The Realist, and The Gothic Blimp Works that I could find in used bookstores. I wish I’d had a copy of Free Press back then! Almost every page of this book has a full-color photo of a cover or interior page from dozens of well-known and obscure newspapers from the era. Though much of the design is amateurish and ugly, there are examples of brilliance, too, making this a worthy reference for designers.
Phrack has been publishing erratically since 1985, but the four year gap between the previous issue, published in April 2012, and the current issue, published yesterday, was so long that many (me included) feared it might have died. Read the rest
The Torist is a newly launched literary journal, edited by University of Utah Communications associate professor Robert W Gehl and a person called GMH, collecting fiction, poetry and non-fiction. It is only available as a file on a Tor hidden service -- a "darkweb" site, protected by the same technology as was used by the likes of Silk Road. Read the rest
Original Crap Hound and Internet graphic sarcasm sultan Sean Tejaratchi is back with his annual calendar, sold to benefit Reading Frenzy, Portland, Oregon's world-beating zine store and independent publishing emporius. Read the rest
I loved Tower Records. Not for the records (though I bought a lot of them there), but for the tremendous book and zine section. That's where I discovered Re/Search books and a ton of great obscure periodicals. It pains me whenever I see the crappy boring businesses that now occupy the former Tower Records store locations in Los Angeles.
Read the restEstablished in 1960, Tower Records was once a retail powerhouse with two hundred stores, in thirty countries, on five continents. From humble beginnings in a small-town drugstore, Tower Records eventually became the heart and soul of the music world, and a powerful force in the music industry. In 1999, Tower Records made $1 billion. In 2006, the company filed for bankruptcy. What went wrong? Everyone thinks they know what killed Tower Records: The Internet. But thats not the story. All Things Must Pass is a feature documentary film examining this iconic companys explosive trajectory, tragic demise, and legacy forged by its rebellious founder, Russ Solomon. Directed by Colin Hanks.
