Entering it’s fifth year, this iteration of Blip Festival showcases an international chip community that stands at a crossroads. Now firmly entrenched in mainstream culture with chipsounds and pixel art finding their way into television, motion pictures, and ironically enough, modern video games, Chip musicians and artists find they are no longer expected to educate their audiences but, instead, are free to innovate. As the community becomes less of a genre and more of an ethos, documenting the ever-growing diversification of the community is the Blip Festival’s top goal.
The great news about free awesome stuff happening this summer keeps on coming. Our favorite weirdo songstress from this year, Merrill Garbus, AKA tUnE-yArDs, is playing a free show at Hudson River Park pier 54. The show is happening July 14, which if you bought tickets for Animal Collective in Prospect Park means that you will be having the Best Week Ever that week.
Along with tUnE-yArDs, Deer Tick will be performing at Pier 54 on August 11 and Metronomy will appear on July 28. Opening acts have not been announced yet, but in keeping with the spirit will probably be mind-blowing.
Below, check out a live video of Merrill performing her song “Bizness” on Studio Brussel. It’s all rad.
Several researchers at O’Reilly have discovered an extremely troubling feature of iPhones and 3G iPads running Apple’s iOS 4. In a blog post and accompanying video, the site details that Apple is storing the GPS coordinates of cellular iDevices locally, in an unencrypted and unprotected file. “Ever since iOS 4 arrived, your device has been storing a long list of locations and time stamps,” reads the post. “We’re not sure why Apple is gathering this data, but it’s clearly intentional, as the database is being restored across backups, and even device migrations.” O’Reilly goes on to note that along with a list of timestamped GPS coordinates, the file also contains a list of Wi-Fi access points that the affected device has been in range of. “Anybody with access to this file knows where you’ve been over the last year, since iOS 4 was released,” the brief continues.
When the local, lovable, Greenpoint-based comedy troupe Serious Lunch (recent winners of the ECNY 2011 Award for Best Sketch Comedy), was working on a TV pilot, they needed a quick set dressing – so they hand-drew a bunch of movie posters and hung them on the wall.
“When we hung the first 12 or so in the apartment we were shooting in, and saw them all together tiled on the same wall, it was pretty striking,” says Tim Bierbaum, the main artist in the show. “And one of the early ones I drew, Blow Up, came out surprisingly well which I guess is when I decided there might be some genuinely interesting in drawing this.”
So they kept going, and the result is a show called Poster Party! which opens tonight, at Habitat, featuring hand drawn movie posters by Bierbaum and other Serious Lunch members Bob Officer and Anthony Miale, as well as collaborator Nicole Barth.
“Markers make things look childish and goofy,” adds Bierbaum, “which is a cool lens to see these things through. Translating the movie posters from photo to magic marker is sort of like recognizing how well designed they are.” (more…)
Another edition of shows worthy of your time, tickets worthy of your hard-earned cash and completely made-up words used to describe them. At least there are some things you can count on in this life.
ON SALE:
4/22 @ 12:00p: The words we’ve all been waiting to hear since the band popped up on summer fest bills across the globe have finally been uttered: Animal Collective is playing NYC. See ‘em July 12 at Prospect Park. Tickets are $40. Hits of Molly extra.
4/22 @ 12:00p: The first show announced in this summer’s recently salvaged, OSA-benefiting Williamsburg Waterfront concert series is Kid Cudi on July 6. Tickets are an exorbitant $60. All I gotta say is OSA better figure out the McCarren Park/Waterfront situation before we resort to appropriately-priced cultural activities in Red Hook or some other savage neighborhood.
4/22 @ 12:00p:Cut Copy returns (they played Terminal 5 on 4/2) to get you all dancey-sweaty in Prospect Park on August 11. Tickets are $40.
THIS WEEK:
4/22: Garage rockers Bass Drum of Death headline at Glasslands the night before their Crocodiles/Fresh & Onlys show (see below). So So Glos, Xray Eyeballs and Night Manager also play. I believe the correct term for the evening is “shambling”. Tickets are $10.
4/23: Cali noise-poppers Crocodiles and Fresh & Onlys play Music Hall on Saturday with Young Prisms and Bass Drum of Death. Tickets are under $15. Killer.
4/23:Zola Jesus brings her glazed, dark pop, think Florence + the Machine with balls or Siouxsie without the hair and the sneer, to Bowery Ballroom with openers Naked on the Vague. Tickets are $16.
At this point, after having been doing the parody thing for around 30 years, who is really going to get mad at Weird Al Yankovic for parodying them? Especially when you are essentially a parody of yourself the way Lady Gaga is. But apparently after hearing “Perform This Way,” Yankovic’s parody of “Born This Way” (which was Lady Gaga’s parody of “Express Yourself,” right?) Gaga got all offended and said it couldn’t appear on his new record. It’s like “Amish Paradise” all over again!
But then she came around. Because…seriously! It’s Weird Al! And because he put the song up on YouTube for free and said any proceeds from the song would have gone to The Human Rights Campaign and Lady Gaga didn’t want to be a monster (no pun intended) who withheld money from charity. As far as the song goes, it’s pretty meh… But again, it’s Weird Al, so he kind of gets a pass and a nod of the head in appreciation for what he does.
Attention food lovers: beginning on May 21st the Willamsburg Brooklyn Flea market will be launching an all-food bonanza called “Smorgasburg”. The market will be open every Saturday from 9am-5pm and will feature 100+ food vendors in addition to a GrowNYC Greenmarket with 15-20 farmers!
In addition to the 100 secured vendors, Smorgasburg is looking for the very best food vendors/purveyors/growers anywhere to apply, so they can create the next phase of local/regional market. If you’re interested in applying, go here: http://brooklynflea.com/smorgasburg/
