Shows
Downstream from What?Ep. 05— Ben McCarthy: Sound, the Demon, and the ArchiveIn this episode, Ken interviews Ben McCarthy, cocreator, editor and composer of Downstream from What.
Ben McCarthy’s compositional practice takes found sound as source material. Sometimes using text or audio documentary underscored by synthesizers and voice, his compositions and installations raise questions about acoustic epistemologies specifically around the social and economical conditions that produce the listening subject.
McCarthy has been recording music for 15 years as a solo artist and collaborator. He won the Dora award for Outstanding Sound Design and Composition in Independent Theatre in 2019. His work with art video game collective SpekWork has been shown at the Venice Bi...
2023-06-1648 min
We Make Media#WeMakeMedia Season 1 Trailer - On Making Art in the Age of the InternetIn this first series, I talk with new media artists about the experiences making art in the age of the internet.On this season:Lorie Berberian, Keiona Broderick, Fatma Jadoonand Abigail MacBean - Friday, May 29th, 2020Mike Relm - Saturday, May 30, 2020Maya Ben David - Friday, June 5, 2020James Kerr - Saturday, June 6, 2020Quentin Vercetty - Friday, June 12, 2020Jenn E Norton - Saturday, June 13, 2020SpekWork Studio - Friday, June 19, 2020Jeremy Bailey - Saturday, June 20, 2020
2020-08-0201 min
We Make MediaArt Apps and Capitalism , with SpekWork Studio and Tough Guy MountainIn this episode, I talk with Jonathan Carroll and Cat Bluemke of SpekWork Studio along with their Tough Guy Mountain performance collective member Iain Soder. We talk about how and why to make apps for art going audiences, how precarious employment isn’t just for artists anymore and how capitalism killed the brand-potential of Art.
2020-08-011h 01
Art/Work/PlayAWP15: streaming king leer / influencers / P90X ‘creativity’Ok, so here’s a fun one (sincerely!). We’re all on COVID 19 lockdown, our gigs and jobs have been cancelled, and so we had on SPC Weir to talk about a video game art installation he and Ben showed in Toronto in February. Along the way we talk about the confluence of gig economy work, influencer marketing, art-trepreneurs and, of course Kim Kardashian. Readings from Natasha Stagg’s Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011-2019 recorded into WhatsApp by Saira Sabri.
Tim Heidecker ‘Work From Home’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGs1-bfiYFQ
Workman Arts: https://workmanarts.com/
Natasha St...
2020-03-241h 11
Art/Work/PlayAWP14: Erin Gee / ASMR drones / affective technologyInterview szn, bb. The Real Erin Gee drops knowledge on ASMR, electronic music and affect in the circus of contemporary technology. Erin shares her casual brilliance with us, a beer, and her galaxy-brained pups.
Find Erin:
https://eringee.net/
FB (her main squeeze): https://www.facebook.com/erin.marie.gee
IG: @_eringee
Twitter: @_eringee
Check out Erin’s work:
Project H.E.A.R.T. dev blog: https://combat-therapy.tumblr.com/?fbclid=IwAR2FblEbXHWGCIxYOIWY6SrjZGjzKUpBeiOSpQgASI45Fy5hHZn5jB3Ux2s
LaughingWeb.space: https://laughingweb.space/
Cosey Fanni Tutti:
The piece Erin was referencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5wY...
2020-03-061h 11
Art/Work/PlayAWP13: oil thugs / The Yes Men / CO-OP Copter ScabsIn this episode we talk about all things flightsim and spiritual succession. We talk about the Yes Men’s SimCopter ‘himbo’ intervention and Cat and Jon’s new game, produced for the Global Game Jam, Co-op Copter Scab. We also talk about the RCMP as big oil Pinkertons.
Play CO-OP Copter Scabs: https://spekwork.itch.io/coop-copter-scabs
Get the Scabby the Rat instagram filter: https://www.instagram.com/a/r/?effect_id=2503745169841908
WTO protests in Seattle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests
Global Game Jam: https://globalgamejam.org/
Four Sisters podcast (Ben’s gf says it’s too arty for mai...
2020-02-211h 09
Art/Work/PlayAWP12: renoviction / Sagan Yee / Hand Eye Society2020 is interview season for the pod. This week we speak to Sagan Yee, who talks about their collaborative art and video game practice, their role in running the not for profit Hand Eye Society, and the relatively recent emergence of labour politics on to the video game making scene.
Find Sagan here: http://www.saganyee.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaganYee
Check out the Hand Eye Society: https://www.handeyesociety.com/
Or follow them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HandEyeSociety
Artists and artworks mentioned in this podcast:
Nadine Lessio: http://nadinelessio.com/
Hannah Epstein: https://www.han.ski/
Kenton de...
2020-02-101h 00
Art/Work/PlayAWP11: dull-beige lineaments of the law / Rogue-like Perlin noise / Tower Fantasy“And what I now see is that the new virtual world that our children are growing up in is so addictive precisely because it satisfies the need for reply and response, and because it does so immediately. In this way the virtual penetrates to the core of the social and provides us with all the rewards of the social realm without requiring us to pay the corresponding price, so that we can now sit entirely alone, on our own island, without the mechanical interaction ever causing the urge for other human beings to rise within us and tear wildly about li...
2020-02-021h 07
Art/Work/PlayAWP10: Thomas McKechnie / gig worker organization / literal class warA special episode with activist, playwright, gig-worker and union organizer Thomas McKechnie. Thomas talks about the under-reported case before the Ontario Labour Relations Board between Foodora and its employees. He also takes us through strategies for organizing app-mediated gig-workers and his motivation for writing Remembering the Winnipeg General.
Caveat emptor: Because Ben’s computer is ancient and it’s battery dies unpredictably, because his art practice does not afford him the ability to keep himself in working gear, our recording died midway through the session. Happily Jon took a back-up recording, which if you squint your ears ably captures Thomas and...
2020-01-271h 05
Art/Work/PlayAWP09: art history / Paris Burned / Assassin's Creed UnityAnd we’re back. Cat takes us on an art history tour of late-medieval Paris vis-a-vis Ubisoft’s virtual Notre Dame Cathedral, constructed for Assassin’s Creed Unity.
Etienne Boileau’s “Le Livre des Metiers,” written in 1268 outlines regulations and penalties overseen by the various trade guilds (French): http://virtuater.free.fr/Le%20livre%20des%20metiers%20d%20Etienne%20Boileau.pdf
Giorgio Vasari, who first used the term “Gothic” to make fun of what had until then been referred to as “French Work” in his 1550 book “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.” http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25326
Vitruvius wrote even more than Cat...
2020-01-2157 min
Art/Work/PlayAWP08: Military Industrial Academic Entertainment Complex / drunk / Counter Strike“Every new technology necessitates a new war.”
— Marshall McLuhan
We have SPC. Cale Weir back for a AAA Let’s Play of Counter Strike. The gang talks about passé discourse, the myth and intoxication of war, while Ben and Cale get a little drunk and Jon and Cat eat dinner.
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/books/wars-are-made-not-born.html
Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FRW5jw19y0
War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict by Corey Mead: https://www.theatlant...
2019-12-091h 24
Art/Work/PlayAWP07: norm-lore / postinternet kink / Sonic Dreams‘Everything is permitted, but nothing is possible.’
-- Michel Clouscard
Coldwar, dystopia, americophilia, the posttruth world, reality control, sonic the hedgehog, furries, vorelords, stealing videogame valour. It’s all here, and also is not. How the famous, design-by-committee ‘Needle Mouse’, and his incoherent lore, produced a culture of post-internet kink and uncanny valley normativity.
This week’s episode art are OCs produced by Cat Bluemke. Very nonheteronormative!
2019-11-301h 11
Art/Work/PlayAWP06: Bullshit Art Jobs / indiepocalypse / Art Sqool“Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression “free as a bird,” Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, ‘You know? They’re not free: they’re fighting over bits of food.’”
— John Cage
The spekwork longfrom social media account tackles bullshit jobs, the force that the PMC (professional managerial class) exerts over the arts, the oversubscription of cultural labour markets and Julian Glander’s Art Sqool.
Note: Amusingly, the freeware Jon downloaded to capture the videogame audio for this episode was for trial purposes. This...
2019-11-221h 18
Art/Work/PlayAWP05: gig-core / sf / Death Stranding“Everyday’s leg day now, bro.”
— James L. Burling
The gang is paying their dues in the attention economy and doing a play through of the much anticipated release from Hideo Kojima and Sony, Death Stranding. For this episode we’re joined by SPC. Weir, AKA Mr. AAA. Ben tries to talk theory, but Cale won’t let him :(
Technoscience and fiction: https://www.palgrave.com/br/campaigns/robotics-and-ai/why-science-needs-fiction
Closing track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9hagVL-__c
SPC. Cale’s excellent music: https://taxhaven.bandcamp.com/
To rent at the Brandscape you can contact us here: http://brandsc...
2019-11-151h 24
Art/Work/PlayAWP04: pessimism / philosophy / Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy‘If the reader wishes to see shortly whether [it is true that the pleasure in this world outweighs the pain], let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.’
— Arthur Schopenhauer
We’re in the content production grind and flow now bb. We talk Bennett Foddy’s Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy in the light of Arthur Schopenhauer’s Studies in Pessimism, and explore various instances of game maker snobbery.
QWOP: http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html
Studies in Pessimism by Arthiur Schopenhauer:
On the Sufferings of the World: https://en.wikisourc...
2019-11-081h 08
Art/Work/PlayAWP03: idealism / simulation / SimCity 2000‘My savant boy is only as good as the game he plays.’ Ian Cheng
The gang talks sandboxes, compare credentials, white flight, urban blight, Will Wright, Ian Cheng, SimCity 2k and desperately apply topical political references to whatever circumstances they encounter. We continue to grapple with the podcast as medium for videogame playthroughs.
Since recording this podcast Ben has begun obsessively playing the SimCity Build It phone-based game. Build It focuses upon construction and property value development and is a game that seems impossible to succeed in without in app purchases. Despite his awareness of these ideological allegiances both in the...
2019-11-031h 08
Art/Work/PlayAWP02: vr / empathy machine / resourcedWe discuss our experience at the Ryerson conference on 'VR as Empathy Machine' and take up our ambivalence about the medium. We offer several lukewarm cultural critical takes on contemporary digital media and the supposed connection to the real it affords, riff on Baudrillard, frontline work, kvetch about budget cuts, and do a playthrough of our VR documentary ‘resourced’ with a sickly and solemn 9 yr-old.
ARTIST STUDIO SPACE FOR RENT AT THE BRANDSCAPE : http://brandscape.club
RENDEZVOUS WITH MADNESS FESTIVAL : https://workmanarts.com/rendezvous-with-madness/
Simulations Jean Baudrillard Semiotext(e):
https://www.e-reading.club/bookreader.php/144970/Baudrillard_-_Simulacra_and_Simulation.pdf
...
2019-10-081h 14
Art/Work/PlayAWP01: organization/food/ Aisles of Glory (No Frills)In episode 1 the Spek Work gang discusses the goals of the new pod, its themes and format. We talk about Foodora workers unionizing, and do a playthrough of the No Frills browser-based game, Aisles of Glory: Back to School. Hiiiii!
ARTIST STUDIO SPACE FOR RENT AT THE BRANDSCAPE : http://brandscape.club
RENDEZVOUS WITH MADNESS FESTIVAL : https://workmanarts.com/rendezvous-with-madness/
TOUGH GUY MOUNTAIN AT HALIFAX NOCTURNE : https://downtownhalifax.ca/event/nocturne-art-night-festival-2019
LIBRA SZN PLAYLIST : https://linktr.ee/notsawry
Stream url : https://www.twitch.tv/spekwork
Spek.work : http://spek.work/
Aisles of Glory (no frills game): https://aislesofglory.nofrills.ca/
Hauler...
2019-09-301h 00