Interview: Making Sense of the High-Speed Society
Chatting with an AI about Burnout.
Talking about burnout with OpenAI tool GPT-3.
In July 2020, OpenAI released Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) for beta testing – a natural language processing system (colloquially, an “AI”) that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.1 …
Free Download: The ‘We Are Not Sick’ Lyric Book
Print and make your own We Are Not Sick lyric book/zine!
We Are Not Sick Zine: Interview w. Geert Lovink
An interview with Geert Lovink for Lange Nacht Festival.
This past Saturday the Band of Burnouts research lab presented We Are Not Sick at Zurich’s annual contemporary music festival Lange Nacht. As part of the presentation, an accompanying publication was available onsite for guests including an interview with one-half of the We Are Not Sick duo, Geert Lovink. …
We Are Not Sick zine: Introduction
This Saturday, my research lab with the School of Commons—Band of Burnouts—is presenting Geert’s band We Are Not Sick at Zurich’s annual contemporary music festival Lange Nacht. You can see all information about the event here.
As part of the intervention, we’ve made a special edition zine which is available onsite at Mehrspur music club. Inside it is an interview between myself and Geert, We Are Not Sick stickers (pictured above), a take-home poster, and micro-publication of the lyrics from band’s debut album ‘Sad by Design.’
Today I’m posting here the introduction to the zine, written by yours truly. …
Announcement: We Are Not Sick at Zürich’s Lange Nacht Festival
On Saturday 3rd July 2021, We Are Not Sick will be hosted by the research lab Band of Burnouts at Zurich’s annual contemporary music festival Lange Nacht (Long Night).
Co-Conspirators: The ‘Rock Revival’ Assembly
Who else is pushing for the return of rock? A continued investigation into mainstream music’s gestures towards a rock revival.
From the Dispatches at NO FUN Magazine.
In Parts I and II, we traced a line from Kid Cudi to Machine Gun Kelly (MGK)—via SNL—to the revival of pop punk in the US musical mainstream. We ended with the co-conspiracy between MGK and Yungblud to “bring back rock’n’roll.” To round off this cultural commentary on what’s brewing in pop music today, this third part ties up their collaboration and makes a link with Miley Cyrus via the mysterious indications provided by SNL’s selection of musical guests. …
The Return of a Genre Nobody Asked For
Machine Gun Kelly is on a mission to ‘bring back pop-punk.’ Can guitar sounds make a comeback after the
total ubiquity of hip hop and rap?
From the Dispatches at NO FUN Magazine.
In Part I, we looked at Kid Cudi’s internet-breaking dress moment on Saturday Night Live (SNL) earlier this month. In Part II, we go further with the SNL musical guests, having noticed something brewing in (American) pop music that hasn’t happened in a long time. It’s strange that the common link here is SNL. Why would a long-running (maybe outdated) comedy sketch and variety show potentially be a present signal, a radar, of what is manifesting within pop music? Though perhaps the question is rather, why not?
Kid Cudi wears a dress. Breaks the internet.
A cultural commentary on Kid Cudi’s dress appearance on SNL and new indicators towards what’s brewing in pop music.
From the Dispatches at NO FUN Magazine.
Kid Cudi showed up on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in a dress, and the internet exploded. Presumably this was exciting because it was a man, in a dress. There is a long history of American popular culture misrepresenting trans people with harmful stereotypes, tropes, and appropriating ballroom culture, etc. This appearance by Cudi (or Cudder as he is fondly called by fans) felt like a re-run of a tonne of problems seen before (for an intro to the missteps of American film and TV in portrayals of trans lives see Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen, a documentary by Sam Feder that premiered at Sundance in 2020 before being purchased by Netflix.)
‘Zoom Etiquette’ as Prescribed by the University
This post continues on from the last dispatch from inside of the institution, ‘Disturbing Moment of the Day (DMOTD): Letter from the University’ to map yet another coordinate onto the University’s strange dealings during, with, and of the context of the digitisation of studying during the pandemic. …