• "We write and listen and play music in a cultural environment in which there's intense excitement and anxiety around the idea of music as a social object, not just a commercial one… in order to understand better the ways in which songs are becoming lines in listeners' conversations, we need different ways of thinking about how they've played that role for musicians too." Tom Ewing on music as fanfiction.
  • "After she left, the school began to switch away from Acorn computers to Windows PCs, and computing at school became less and less about actually wrangling the machines for their own sake: programming went away, to be replaced by word processing and the other kinds of useful activities which I'm sure helped a lot of pupils gain the kind of computer literacy they needed for the real world, but it wasn't the kind of computer literacy I needed. I needed the more abstract, joyful, engagement with computers that Sister Celsus provided, and which could only have been provided at the end of the 80s." A lovely post for Ada Lovelace Day from Matt.
  • "In this series I showcase a number of portraits of musicians made out of recycled cassette tape with original cassette. Also included are portraits made from old film and reels." Just gorgeous.

Quark rebrand

12 September 2005

So whilst everyone’s been talking about the Guardian‘s brand new look, a far less significant relaunch almost slipped under the radar. Fortunately, my work email tells me that Quark have rebranded and redesigned their site. All looks a bit shiny to me; quite like the new “Q” logotype, the site’s pretty enough, but I’m not a fan of the pale grass-green at all. Is the whole lot just too futuristic for the slightly cranky product? We’ll see. The preview of Quark 7 essentially suggests it’s playing serious catchup to Indesign CS2 (at long last).