F H card letter b

Monday, March 03, 2008

Today's Productivity Buster



and new internet meme, via Brainiac...

"... A couple of weeks ago, a Los Angeles-based Flickr user who calls herself Karakrio (Occupation: Live Concert Production) started a Flickr group photo pool titled "CD Cover Meme." She challenged other Flickr users to "make your own CD cover" using the following formula:

1. Generate a name for your band by using WikiPedia's random page selector tool, and using the first article title on whichever page pops up. No matter how weird or lame that band name sounds.

2. Generate an album title by cutting and pasting the last four words of the final quote on whichever page appears when you click on the quotationspage's random quote selector tool. No matter what those four words turn out to be.

3. Finally, visit Flickr's Most Interesting page -- a random selection of some of the interesting things discovered on Flickr within the last 7 days -- and download the third picture on that page. (Even better: Click on this link to get a Flickr photo that's licensed under Creative Commons.) Again -- no cheating! You must use the photo, no matter how you feel about it.

4. Using Photoshop (or whatever method you prefer), put all of these elements together and create your very own CD cover, then upload it to the CD Cover Meme photo pool.

As of this writing, over 1,000 CD covers have been generated by 650 Flickr users."

The weird thing, as the Brainiac columnist, Joshua Glenn, notes is how much these random, made-up elements resemble real CD/record covers. The French theorist Baudrillard called this the "precession of simulcra" problem, where the original seems like a copy.

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