More Links: favorite links from the creators of boldnewlook.com

Art Manifestos

Futurist Manifesto Published by F.T. Marinetti in 1909, this classic manifesto evokes gritty urban environments pulsing with the life of machines and other manmade structures. "Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world!"

Manifesto in a Clear Language Another classic, this one by Antonin Artaud. "The eternal conflict between reason and the heart is decided in my very flesh, but in my flesh irrigated by nerves."

OK Art Manifesto On the lighter side, a clever send-up by Suzie Ramsay and Raphael Lozano-Hemmer.

Avant-Pop Manifesto There's a lot to argue about here, but that's what makes for a good manifesto. "Literary establishment? Art establishment? Forget it. Avant-Pop artists wear each other's experiential data like waves of chaotic energy colliding and mixing in the textual-blood while the ever-changing flow of creative projects that ripple from their collective work floods the electronic cult-terrain with a subtle anti-establishment energy that will forever change the way we disseminate and interact with writing."

Manifesto and Anti-Manifesto for Outer-Art Strangely compelling? or just strange? You decide. We admire its frankness and lack of pretension. "Pain-ting in turmoil and in uproar. I discharge my soul, and feel free. As I did in a political refugee camp in Turkey, and nobody carried about my (outer-)art and miserable situation … I don't pretend to be a painter, that's why I dare to paint(!)" The author, Florentin Smarandache, is credited as the founder of the Paradoxist movement. Here's how he describes the essence of Paradoxism: "(a) sense has a non-sense, and reciprocally (b) non-sense has a sense." Now, does that make any sense to you?

Music

John Hudak Hudak's current sound work focuses on the minimalism and repetition of sounds below the usual threshold of hearing, sounds that are typically filtered out or considered non-musical. Enjoy his "networks" and his "audio samples." (The site is best viewed with Internet Explorer.)

Monotonik Monotonik is an Internet music label that releases music online in the .mp3 format. All of its releases are freely downloadable and distributable. The label was founded by h0l as an outlet for talented electronic musicians who weren't getting the attention they deserved.

Outsider Art

American Visionary Art Museum The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM), near Baltimore's Inner Harbor, is a national treasure. The Smithsonian museums in DC, the Metropolitan in New York, the Tate in London — yeah, they're great, but none of them speaks to my condition as much as the AVAM. The museum's permament collection has striking UFO-related art; artwork made by prisoners; and some very creepy Henry Darger drawings. Many of the great outsider artists are represented in its collection.

Raw Vision The premier international outsider art journal: great articles, high quality reproductions, and more. Check out the What is Outsider Art? section of the Raw Vision website.

Interesting Ideas We love this site. Lots of great outsider art links, roadside art, and more.

Intuit:The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art This nonprofit organization was established to "recognize the work of artists who demonstrate little influence from the mainstream art world, and who instead seem motivated by their unique personal visions." The Intuit Web site has some great links to sites featuring environments.

Postmodernist Theories

Wars, famine, the melting of the polar ice caps. Toward the end of the twentieth century there was plenty to fuel the speculations of the millenarianists. But there were few signs that more clearly augured the end of the world than the ascendancy of postmodernism in the academy. The opening line of Ginsberg's Howl describes it best: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked …."

The Social Text Affair In 1996, the prestigious cultural studies journal Social Text published an article by New York University professor of physics Alan Sokal titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." When Sokal revealed that the article was a hoax, all hell broke loose …

Alan Sokal Alan Sokal is a hero to those of us who for years have been quietly insisting that the postmodernist emperor has no clothes. His site has some great links relating to the Social Text affair (see above).

The Postmodernism Generator Are you confused by postmodernist theories? Well, your confusion is clearly fueled by the conventionalized bourgeois rationalist paradigms that center on such outmoded epistemological notions as "sense" and "understanding." Want more abuse? Try the Postmodernism Generator: pure twaddle at the click of a mouse!

Other Favorite Sites

Abnormal Behavior Child This is the site boldnewlook.com wants to be when it grows up. Stunning, surreal cyber-environments with compelling soundtracks. Great for people who don't need or want narratives.

All Your Base are Belong to Us Have you heard about the "all your base" craze? A wonderful example of the transformative power of the Internet.

Black People Love Us The reactions to this provocative site are often as interesting as the site itself. Check out Your Letters.

Exquisite Corpse I've noticed that National Public Radio listeners generally fall into two camps: those who love the homey essays of cowboy poet Baxter Black and those who prefer the urban sophistication of Andrei Codrescu. I guess I fall into the latter camp. Codrescu's NPR essays brim with wit and humanity. The same can be said of the offerings on his Exquisite Corpse website, chock-a-block with great flash fiction and much more.

Getting Warmer A beautiful, mind-expanding site with lots of movement and no narrative. Many of the large-format animated .gifs relate to the theme of warmth, heat, or fire. Don't even think about going there without a fast connection. NEW

Home Page of Peter Pan Randy Constan has created a classic website devoted to his alter ego, Peter Pan, and to his unique worldview. "Peter Pan's Fashion Pages" make for a fun romp. Randy even got onto television with his "very lovely Fairy Princess" costume (it's our favorite too).

How to Good-Bye Depression According to Hiroyuki Nishigaki, the secret to good health is constricting your anus 100 times a day. Apparently this is "effective for sex hormone, anti-aging, good-bye depression, fine life, beauty treatment, intuition, hair loss, conjugal affection." Seems a small price to pay.

Japanese Engrish "Do you like bowling? Let's play bowling. Breaking down the pins and get hot communication." This site offers up a collection of bad and mostly hilarious Japanese to English translations as they appear on signs, tee shirts, product labels, and other contemporary flotsam. Since turnabout is fair play, check out Tian Ting's blog, Hazismatter.com, dedicated to the misuse of Chinese and Japanese characters in Western culture. NEW

jeffharris.org Simple, elegant — simply the best online journal around, in my opinion.

Lost Something? Simple, elegant — The brainchild of Adele Prince who transformed her talents as a master "thing finder" into a wonderful website. According to Ms. Prince, "The things that people drop or throw away began to fascinate me and, the more I collected, the more interesting it became. ... Now I feel I should share my collection with the rest of the world and, hopefully, trace some of those people who have been careless enough to lose such lovely items."

Museum of Bad Art "Art too bad to be ignored." A wonderful collection of so-called "bad" art that features earnest portraits, inscrutable landscapes, and our favorite pointilist painting of all time, Sunday on the Pot with George.

Quirky Japan Homepage Why are foreigners so foreign? Aren't you glad they are? If you're tired of the homogenization of world culture by rapacious transnationals, then you can draw some comfort from this wonderful site. Check out the quirky TV shows, movies, and peformers in the Japanarama section of the site.

Royal Journal of Found Art Established in 1998, the Royal Journal of Found Art is one of the largest—and oldest—online collections of love notes, discarded writings, humorous signs, and other found pieces of entertainment. It's fun to open a bottle of Merlot and browse the collection at random. The bottle of Merlot all by itself isn't bad either.

Spam Radio Like many of us, the folks at Spam Radio receive a constant flow of spam (junk e-mail). Unlike us, however, they use a text-to-speech engine to convert their spam into a surreal, sometimes hilarious, audio stream accompanied by a trippy electronic music soundtrack. It's brilliant!

Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES PRESENTS Wow. Animated neo-Beatnik poetry set to percussive bebop soundtracks. Does it get any better than this? All of the pieces are good, but Dakota is one of our favorites. (For a related, albeit more abstract, experience, check out the 1987 animation Primiti Too Taa, adapted from Ursonate, a poem written by the late German dadaist Kurt Schwitters.)

Ze Frank Hosea "Ze" Frank is a webculture icon. He made his name with Flash projects like How to Dance Properly and How to Impress Your Date, but his talents range farther and deeper. "I seem to be able to make people laugh by making an ass out of myself," he said in an interview with Fox News. Ze Frank is being modest: he's earned his web celebrity by reminding us why it's more important to be creative than slick. Yeah, he's got slick down too. naughtybird is a big favorite.

EPHEMERISM • GALLERY • WRITERS' BLOC • PROPHETS • CYBERMUSE • LINKS • HOME