Earlier this evening indie-rockers Grandaddy delighted longtime fans and latter devotees alike with a live performance of their “Sophtware Slump” (2000) record in its entirety to mark the breakthrough album’s 25th anniversary. The crowded silver jubilee show at Brooklyn Steel comes near the close of a reunion tour that has spanned the width of America over the past two months, wrapping in Philadelphia this Saturday.

Grandaddy’s performance consisted of three sets: Every single track off The Sophtware Slump in order, followed by a first encore heavy with Sumday (2003) tunes, and a second encore closing with the raucous career-early hit A.M. 180. After the show I headed backstage to say hello to the band. (It’d been several years since last chatting with them in person as part of an impromptu interview for my music and politics rag, Tweed Magazine.) I sheepishly passed Jason a little handwritten “thank you” note for all the countless hours of enjoyment his music has given me—and for not suing me when I made my fan video for Jed’s Other Poem.

This week marks twenty years since publishing my music video for Grandaddy’s song “Jed’s Other Poem”—a musical elegy for a deceased robot character. What began as a renegade fan video would eventually become embraced by the band and their label, V2 Records.

It feels like a lifetime ago; an entirely different online landscape. Before smart phones existed. Before social media took over. In honor of the anniversary I spruced up my old description of the project with more photos, screen grabs, and personal anecdotes. I’ve even caved and added the Jed source code to GitHub. Also timely: Grandaddy is currently on tour in the US in celebration of the 25th anniversary of their breakthrough album, The Sophtware Slump. Catch ’em while you can!

This week makes three years since publishing my (unsolicited) browser-based music video for Thom Yorke’s 2006 track Black Swan. Rather than film footage, video, or pre-composed animation, my music “video” is composed of website elements pushed around in realtime as you watch it via a mixture of style sheet and JavaScript commands.

It was a fairly dark autumn in America, with the presidential election contest between democracy and fascism looming against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic which had so abruptly turned the country upside down half a year earlier. (Not to mention climate change; the hottest summer and autumn on record to date.) Revisiting this old animation idea was a pleasant break from the reality around us—and served as a birthday present of sorts for Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood who share my birth month of October; the best month. Read more about the Black Swan music video here, or visit and execute the animation here.

ASCII lyric vids are music videos made primarily of a song’s lyrics rendered as computer text and animated over time to pair with the vocals. [What is ASCII?] These pure lyric vids are distinct from representational ASCII art vids which use glyph shapes as abstract textural components, rather than as text meant to be read. These genres are not mutually exclusive, however. [What is ASCII art?] To celebrate being blown away by the new Petula Clark video, here are a few notches in the genre listed in reverse-chronological order. If you know of more do mention it.

Stefan Post of PostWare recently took it upon himself to port the source code for our Jed's Other Poem music video from its original Applesoft BASIC form to Commodore BASIC. This means Jed can now run on the Commodore 64! You can read Post's notes and download his C64 port here: http://www.postware.nl/site/Jed2.html
Mac OS X users can download Vice 2.3 which is a package of several related emulators. When downloaded, open the x64sc emulator and from the File menu select Smart attach Disk/Tape (or hit Command+O). Select Posts's PRG file and before long you will see Jed's blinking cursor. Adjust the emulator's speed as necessary.
Of course you can still download the original Applesoft BASIC code and run it on an Apple 2 emulator. For OS X we recommend Virtual ][ which emulates the Apple ][, ][+, and //e. And if you happen to have an actual vintage Apple laying around you can use the audio file included in the source code package to load Jed onto it via the cassette port—just like the guys at Panic Software! See their blog post about it: An Apple //e, an iPad, and Jed.

A look back at 2011.

The year is at its end—a moment to reflect upon twelve months of experiments, achievements, and blunders. 2011 opened with multiple trips to Karlsruhe, Germany to collaborate with the ZKM Center for Art and Media on a very early version of trans_actions. In February Stewart served on the judging panel for TED's Ads Worth Spreading competition and tutoring a month long workshop at the RCA with Jürg Lehni. April was packed: More visits to ZKM, the Creativity and Technology conference posted my Code Play lecture video, Paola Antonelli wrote an article for Domus about data visualization that used Exit as an example, and I posted some odd X-Files triptychs.

Studio Music is a blog that "provides an insight into the creative process of visual practitioners, through the music that they listen to whilst working." (Text from their About page.) And today they've posted my current top ten countdown complete with little anecdotes per song. (The direct link is http://studiomusic.fm/_smith.html.) Because a lot of these tracks have a nice music video visual component I've posted YouTube embeds here along with the original text. —Stewart

01. Wolves. Phosphorescent. 02. Figure 8. Elliott Smith (covering Blossom Dearie). 03. Paranoid Android. Radiohead. 04. Going to Georgia. The Mountain Goats. 05. Everytime I'm with You. Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse, featuring Jason Lytle. 06. Drift. John Larsen. 07. Falling Man. Blonde Redhead. 08. So. Central Rain. R.E.M. 09. Hated Because of Great Qualities. Blonde Redhead. 10. * For the Damaged Coda. Blonde Redhead. 11. World Leader Pretend. R.E.M. 12. Hairshirt. R.E.M. 13. Tonight. Sibylle Baier. 14. Lizzy. Ben Kweller. 15. Soothe. Smashing Pumpkins. 16. Two-Headed Boy Part 2. Neutral Milk Hotel. 17. Famous Blue Raincoat. Leonard Cohen. 18. Mill Town. Bob Martin. 19. Do Re Mi. Nirvana. 20. Figure 8. Blossom Dearie.