WMFU's "I am on the Internet IRL" Olivia Bradley-Skill from 'Radio Ravioli'
Internetausdrucker Closing Party – Olivia Bradley-Skill Q&A – NEW INC Art & Code Group Exhibition – Teaser Cory Arcangel screening highlights
Internetausdrucker Closing Party: Olivia Bradley-Skill’s ‘I am on the Internet IRL’
This Thursday May 25th, 6-8pm, will be the closing party for Rhizome’s Internetausdrucker Bookstore + Reading Room. Come by Dunkunsthalle for your last chance to browse and read from their curated shop of internet-printed matter, including the shop’s newest acquisition Identity Pitches by Stine Janvin and Cory Arcangel. 100% of shop purchases go to the artists.
For the party sound and radio artist, Olivia Bradley-Skill will be DJing from her collection of songs about the internet. The set began as a broadcast entitled, I am on the Internet for her WFMU show Radio Ravioli, and has continued to grow into a vast collection of internet-themed songs. A limited number of I am the Internet CD’s will be available for purchase at the event.
In anticipation of the event, we asked Bradley-Skill about her curation of internet-theme music and her characterization of the genre.
How did you start collecting music for I am on the Internet IRL?
As with some of the best moments on WFMU, which is completely freeform and DJs can do whatever they want, it happened on a whim. On the day of my show, I randomly ran across a couple of songs that all mentioned the internet. I started to think it would be fun to do a whole radio show on that theme, but I didn’t have enough material. I started searching online and finding lists of songs that other people had compiled, but still needed more to fill all three hours.
While on the air, I asked listeners if they had any songs they could send me so that I could keep it going, which carried the show along. After the show aired, I started to see examples everywhere and would try to immediately add any song I found to my list. People who had heard the show also sent me more songs, which was amazing.
What are some distinctive qualities of music about modern technology?
Technology moves so quickly, which can make songs that reference outdated technology/apps/social media/etc easily sound dated, cheesy, or silly. For me, however, that is the charm. I think a lot of artists want to make timeless songs, so it’s rare to find songs so firmly rooted in technology-of-the-moment, but that is what makes them special to me.
In the songs that I’ve found, you can hear how much our feelings about being online have changed in the last thirty years. There’s a lot of optimism and naivete in the songs from the early 2000s, whereas now there is more dread or irony. There’s also a surprising amount of prescience from some artists anticipating what was to come. Both feel accurate to me, as the internet is a place that so many of us have a love/hate relationship with, and so it seems challenging how to make a song that recognizes our complex feelings about being online.
Is there a theme or question you would like people to carry into the event?
Can we ever be offline again? Is that something we even want anyway? I wonder about the permanence of the internet, just since it has wreaked so much havoc on our planet and our attention spans and our IRL communities. People are supposedly lonelier than ever, and the internet is to blame. But in spite of all these things that I’m told, I don’t want it to go away either?
I have so much nostalgia for getting my first computer or my first iPod, torrenting music online on Limewire, joining chat rooms, signing up for Twitter, the list goes on and on. A lot of those things are gone now, and the capitalist machine constantly voiding old technologies has made some of the excitement fade away. The fragility of it all, and the good and bad of it all, and the desire to leave it all behind even as I login one more time… all of these ideas get activated for me when I’m listening to these songs.
Find Olivia Bradley-Skill on Instagram
NEW INC Art & Code Group Exhibition
Opening June 16 6–8PM at Dunkunsthalle, join us for an exhibition showcasing the works of NEW INC’s Art & Code track members as part of DEMO2023. This exhibition curated by Celine Katzman Wong, invites you to explore the profound potential of communication technologies, digital interfaces, and poetic computing to offer glimpses into the future and reflections on our current existence.
In this exhibition, the theme of circles and circularity unifies the diverse artworks. Jackie Liu presents a captivating CD-ROM memoir and game, while John Provencher explores generative and imperfect circles. Jaehoon Choi deconstructs and reconstructs a watch, unveiling its inner workings. Cassie Tarakajian, Roopa Vasudevan, and Chelsea Thompto delve into the implications of self-reflection through digital tools, encompassing monstrous figures, AI interpretations, and the discomfort of online self-perception.
The show will be on display until June 25th with gallery hours 12PM-6PM daily. For more information visit https://www.demo2023.org/
Curated by Celine Katzman Wong, Rhizome Curator. Presented in partnership with Rhizome
If you missed the Cory Arcangel screening ‘So Shines a Good Deed in a Weary World (dunkindonuts.com)’ —
Thanks to all who came out to last weekend for Rhizome’s screening of Cory Arcangel’s film So Shines a Good Deed in a Weary World (dunkindonuts.com) (2014) .
Stay tuned for our next post with our highlights video of the event.
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