Here's a little personal history. I remember when I first realized that erotic appeal of counterculture screw-your-homework-read-nietzsche transgression married to radical visual and audio culture. I'm a composer, and so maybe that's why it was first with a book called "Jamming the Media." It was probably junior year of high school - when I was still publishing a zine - and I think I bought Oval's Ovalcommers that same month. To me, Autechre was shiny and new, and I had a feverish need to absorb anything I thought would take me deeper into a world of skipping CDs and homemade literature. Reading Jamming was a simultaneous experience: I could absorb a history of radical media activism, while learning and marveling at what was for me at least a completely radical and beautiful presentation. The design made the book easy to fetishize. I remember it being thrilling to first read about the book, and then to own my own copy and feel the exhilaration of reading an essay about mail art couched under a fractured typeface. Even the type of paper was new to me - the visual experience was striking, I had never seen a book like this. But it wasn't just the beautiful design - I was as tantilized by the aesthetics of the design as I was by the aesthetics of the content of the book. The revolutionary immediacy of directly subverting a real power - the media - was entangled with punk rock and avant garde art and all those other cool things I knew enough about to know that I wanted to slip into their culture somehow.More later...
ps, if anyone is listening, dial the knob to this: [mp3]
tobais on the air - ignore the annoying host if you can.
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