15 Minutes of Shame

The Winnebago Man video is the granddaddy of all viral. Foul-mouthed, vitriolic outtakes from a real promotional shoot starring an RV salesman named Jack Rebney, it circulated underground on VHS tapes in the 1990s, before YouTube turned “the angriest man in the world” into a phenomenon. Spike Jonze is rumored to have sent out copies [...]

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“Pale Fire” Redux

One of the highlights of new releases in poetry this fall is a long poem by John Shade that begins with the remarkable line “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain.” It’s all the more remarkable because John Shade does not exist. Shade is a creation of Vladimir Nabokov, and his 999-line poem is [...]

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360 Staff Pick: The Badger Game

The Badger Game Matt Schickele Matt Schickele is a tragically underrated songwriter who has put out a handful of solo records of piercing strangeness and beauty. Delicate and jagged, Schickele’s harmonies constantly edge toward the dissonant while staying just this side of earworm. On The Badger Game, he sings over perfectly realized small chamber arrangements, [...]

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Outclassing the Mad Men

Over the last few days, the internet has ooed and aahed over a viral marketing campaign from Old Spice.  In just two days, a production team and a charming actor named Isaiah Mustafa created 183 short videos; instead of paying for TV airtime, Old Spice simply uploaded them to YouTube.  It was the kind of [...]

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Mama-Say What?

The first-ever disco song, the one that spawned the entire American craze, made its debut in the Top 40 this week in 1973.  Only, back then, it wasn’t yet disco.  In fact, it wasn’t even American. The song was “Soul Makossa,” and most music historians credit its popularity with disco’s inception.  It comes from the [...]

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360 Staff Pick: Infra

Infra Max Richter You wouldn’t guess that Infra, an ambient-classical piece by Max Richter, was originally conceived as a score for Britain’s Royal Ballet; nothing about it screams “dance” to me. While the music leaves the choreography to our imagination, it translates into an album quite nicely. Richter contrasts melodic chamber arrangements with subtle swaths of static [...]

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MoMA’s Chicken Coup

Be careful what you wish for. New York’s MoMA thought it had commissioned a group of artists and architects to create a farm in the courtyard of it’s Queens outpost, P.S.1.  And on opening day they didn’t disappoint. Surprise! Unbeknownst to MoMA, a “tool shed” the architects were building was actually a chicken coop. On [...]

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How To Play A Cactus

“Our first cactus was in B flat” says Jason Treuting. And so goes Kurt’s conversation with Matmos and So Percussion, two bands who’ve come together to make Treasure State, an album made using the sounds of aluminum sheets, pails of water and yes, a cactus. If you’re wondering exactly how this works, and how dangerous [...]

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Drawing on Captain Ahab

Illustration is hardly a new art form — after all, it’s been around for just about as long as stories have, although it’s generally been confined to children’s literature (where it’s thrived).  But illustration has recently had a bit of resurgence in the grown-up art world.  Take Zak Smith‘s exhaustive project to depict every page [...]

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Does the Guggenheim Need YouTube?

It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? Until one of the art world’s most renowned institutions began trafficking in amateur YouTube videos… That’s the turn New York’s Guggenheim Museum is making. Instead of enlisting high-art hot shots, the museum will look to the masses for their fall schedule. Internet nobodys are currently submitting their video [...]

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