The Year
In The
Internet
2006
We asked some people what their top ten links of the year were for 2006. This
is what they said.
- Michael Bell-Smith & Cory
Arcangel
(BONUS: If you use del.icio.us, tag
YOUR best of '06 with the tag bestof06
to share your links with the internet).
THE PEOPLE
THE LINKS
- Political blogs (tie): 27B
Stroke 6 Legendary hacker Kevin Poulsen's blog had excellent
coverage of EFF vs AT&T and similar cases, in 2006. One Good Move rounds up the
best quicktime clips from the Daily Show, Colbert Report, Olbermann,
etc. Perfect for the girl who moved to NYC with no TV!
- Internet surfing blogs (tie): Nasty Nets is a clubhouse for
some of the coolest internet users out there, with solid cross-comment
action. RSS Jockey is Rick
Silva's & Abe Linkoln's collaborative mash-up of the goodness that
pours through their RSS fountains. Honorable mention to Cabbie & Co,
at Supercentral.
- VVORK: No art magazine is as cool
as the VVORK blog, which presents a variety of excellent work, often
in a sequence the constitutes some very creative curating.
- Short Music
videos - Guthrie Lonergan
- 787 Cliparts
video-loop - Oliver Laric
- The
First Thousand Numbers Classified In Alphabetical Order: Sometimes
one feels they've heard it all, and then Claude Closky comes along and
makes work that speaks your language in a fresh way that just feels
right. Yes, I'm a fan.
- Let's Paint TV: John
Kilduff's public access TV show (archived on YouTube) kills me. Let's
Paint, Exercise, And Blend Drinks!
-
- Suicide
Notes of Famous People: Nuff sa[i]d.
- Amy Winehouse,
Rehab: This one got me through the holidays!
- Dick in a Box on
YouTube: Love how NBC flip-flopped from yanking Lazy Sunday to
posting the uncensored Dick in a Box on YouTube!
2006's
top ten links from Neil Freeman of fake is the new
real
:
- 20 Sites n 20 Years: Collection of sets of
photographs taken annually along a radius and circumference of a
circle in London.
- Dun.AV - Danube Panorama
Project
: Like Every Building on the Sunset Strip, but
with a barge, a slit-scanner and the Danube.
- Dinosaur Comics: Sort of the
inverse of Exercises in Style (& also
hilarious).
- Invincible Cities: An archive of 30+ years of
photographs of Camden, NJ & Richmond, CA. Mind-blowing depth and
presentation.
- Kicking the Pigeon: a riveting investigation
(published in 2003) into the 'redevelopment' of public housing in
Chicago.
- No Animals
Were Hurt
: Short film about Alan Turing, begins with a sped-up
video feed that slows with each successive visitor, modulo 5000. The
original film is up now, too, and worth a watch.
- pro-football-
reference.com
: Great resource with a functional, unobtrusive
design. In other words, what you wanted the web to be in 1996
.
- r-echos: technology/art blog.
- the show with zefrank
got me to say 'vlog' for the first time.
- Streetsblog might not
seem interesting if you don't walk or ride a bike in NYC.
- Things
Magazine
continues to be great
- US County Formation, 1643-Present
-
VVORK: art blog.
- Yellow Magic Orchestra videos on YouTube - I get tight in my chest everytime I hear (and now see!) YMO - so happy! Seeing their videos for the first time was so profound.
YMO - Rydeen
YMO - Technopolis
YMO - Tong Poo
YMO - Computer Game/Firecracker
YMO - Behind The Mask (Live 1979)
Rydeen on Yellow Magic Show
- Klymaxx - Meeting In The Ladies Room -
I'll never forget the chair dancing.
- TinyPic.com New Videos thumbnails -
There were some points in 2006 when I'm pretty sure I went through ALL the new video thumbnails. Every couple hundred, there'd always be the compressed photos of my dreams. I've posted them on my site under compressed video thumbnails. That was a tough addiction to break.
- my flickr.com favorites - Specifically, Lego at Tullinlokka, Settembre 9, and Future - photos of a futuristic city built out of white Legos.
- Terry Brown: Slow Playing Tape Deck
- Microtel - Way to start the year off right. This was so cool.
- Young Marble Giants - Brand New Life
- Apple II Pirate Lore by Jason Scott -
I got a big kick out of this one day at work this past summer. "oh god! They know I took Karateka" hahahahahaha
Not that this needs explaining, but I didn't get into Apple II until the PC days, and even then, I was pretty lucky. My parents' pursuits were/are very, very minimal. And one day, in the early 90's, we got an Apple IIc for free for opening a savings account at some bank. All I had was BASIC, a couple impossible games, and AppleWorks, but I sensed there was more out there, so this audio is really funny and exciting to me.
- an assortment of YTMNDs
http://loldialup.ytmnd.com/
http://timetraveler.ytmnd.com/
http://mariahcareybutter.ytmnd.com/
http://am.ytmnd.com/
http://smb3fall.ytmnd.com/
http://picardiswily.ytmnd.com/
http://andygildehaus.ytmnd.com/
http://ohnoeskarateka.ytmnd.com/
http://mariopaintbear.ytmnd.com/
http://dragonzordpower.ytmnd.com/
http://tightgraphs.ytmnd.com/
http://pokemonmon.ytmnd.com/
http://mst3kindianchant.ytmnd.com/
http://mspainttribute.ytmnd.com/
- Google search for small black and white bitmaps - I know I posted this as a bonus last year, but 2006 was another big year for small black and white bitmaps. One day I'll post a zip file or something of all my favorite ones (maybe many thousand, who knows how many???).
Tom Moody - Best of the Internet Under 100 Kilobytes
(all images from Journalpics.net's LiveJournal animated GIF scraper)
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- January 2006 - West End Girls - 'West End Girls' music video [.MOV] - Swedish female Pet Shop Boys cover band? Hot damn!
- February 2006 - Hecklerspray - 'Did The KLF Invent Pete Doherty?': "It was a meant to be a quick stunt to show the frailties of our celebrity-obsessed culture," said Cauty.
- March 2006 - Pancake Meow: 'the original scented dessert jewelry'. There can be no other!
- April 2006 - Zombietime - deconstructing the ridiculous kooks at Bay Area protest marches - the Hall Of Shame is a good primer.
- May 2006 - Sony E3 2006 Press Conference in 1 Minute - sure, it's obvious, but it got so big that Hirai resorted to self-parody in an October press conf ("happily/knowingly yelling 'Riiidge Racer'"), and even Sony-published PS3 title MotorStorm makes fun of 'massive damage'? Wouch.
- June 2006 - 419Eater: Nigerian 419 scammer makes wooden replica of Commodore 64 for 'Del Trotter' - Oh. Em Gee. This is the Trotter-related reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Fools_and_Horses (not vital to know, but a bonus!), for those not schooled in UK television.
- July 2006 - The Horrors - 'Sheena Is A Parasite' - almost subliminal, first Chris Cunningham music vid for 7 years (!!!). Worth it.
- August 2006 - Rifftrax.com - Mike Nelson's MST3K-ish downloadable MP3 commentaries for movies .
- September 2006 - Guilt-inducing Internet ad of the year - THIS IS WHY THE INTERNET SUCKS.
- October 2006 - Reuters: "Paris Syndrome" leaves Japanese tourists in shock: 'Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations.'
- November 2006 - LJ: Dachshunds dressed as Fall Out Boy for Halloween - THIS IS WHY THE INTERNET ROCKS.
- December 2006 - Mega64 - ICO parody - OK, they posted this earlier in the year, but I only just noticed, and no Xmas should be complete without Mega64. So there.
- Dragan Espenschild's - Winter 2006 - We can't let these things go unchecked.
- Web 2.0 ponders net.art - Part 1: JODI, Part 2:Cory Arcangel, Part 3: John Michael Boling
- Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn
- Curatorial art blogs - Vvork, Hanne's Art Blog, Channel 53, Expanded Cinema - taught me a lot this year.
- This blog dedicated to hand drawn signage that uses all capitals except for the letter "L," thus creating a situation where "L"s look like "I"s is working a pretty good niche.
- I really like this animated gif which comes from this myspace page. If you're not feeling it, you could always explode it.
- Game 6 of the 1986 World Series Re-enacted in RBI Baseball.
- The editorial cartoon that Michael Lohan drew in prison.
- John Michael Boling's table drawing of a Big Mac and a Whopper,
- With the weird web increasingly entering the mainstream in '06 (VH1's "Web Junk," E's "Cybersmack," Bravo's "Outrageous and Contagious: Viral Videos") and my own web surfing getting more jaded by the link, it was nice to find a website this intense, bizarre, wonderful, and utterly mindblowing.
2006's best links according to Brett
O'Connor
- The Stencil - Their lovingly obsessive posts on the Buffalo Bills/Sabres - from trades to uniforms to superfans - made for some of the best coverage of sports media in 2006.
- Refrederator - Free public domain cartoons for your video iPod, wild shit.
- Members of TTC and other French dudes collect their favorite lyrics from Timbaland accomplice Magoo.
- Get Right On It - Busy Signal pon the semi-legendary, still-unreleased "Benny Hill" riddim.
- Park Slope in 2009, as envisioned by the Emilio Estevez / Mick Jagger 1992 film Freejack.
- Jimi Hendrix stage banter.
- "UNCLE PHILL WAS FRIGGEN SHREDDER"
- Dissecting Gradient & Transparent Logos - How "updated" gradient versions of corporate logos are made.
- Jae Millz Myspace Page - His MySpace bulletins were consistently next level:
IF U IN ATL, ILL B DOWN @ CLUB FREQUINCY 2MARR.. ITS GONE B CRAZY.. SHAWNA (DTP, WHADDUP MA), MIKE JONES, YOUNG CASH, AND WHO ELS BUT YA BOYINGTON.. JAE MUTHAFUCKIN MILLZ... WE BOUT 2 ROLL UP.... I MEAN... IM ABOUT 2 ROLL UP..????? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.. AINT U BORED & SOBER, LOL. NAH SAY NO 2 DRUGS.. BALEEV ME ... JUST SAVE ALLLLLLL THA PIFF AND KUSH 4 MEINGTON.. ITS WANNA WANNA WHAATTT! CATCH YALL ON THA CROSSOVER... HOLLA HOLLA HOLLA HOLLA HOLLA
- INVISIBLE BIKE! - I was obsessed with these cat pictures, a lot of which are collected here.
Ed Halter: The Year in Internet 2006:
- The Dizzies & The New-York Ghost - Former editor at the V---- V---- (a weekly newspaper that shall remain nameless), Ed Park has stepped up the blogging at The Dizzies since his unwarranted departure. There is nothing like Mr. Park's keen, punctuation-driven observations on all things bookish and belle-lettrist to help you get through your workday. He's also the publishers of the outstanding "New-York Ghost," the weekly PDF newsletter you print out at work.
- Birds.mov - Cats get way too much play on the internet. As a dog person, I must celebrate this link.
- YouTube keyword search "puppies" - Same reasons as above. Try it sometime if you are having a bad day—it's my anti-drug.
- Kent Lambert's videos - Master remixer uploaded his oeuvre onto his webpage. His latest, "Hymn of Reckoning" is something indeed with which to reckon.
- "Amarillo (Royal Dragoon Guards)" - I'm not British, I don't know this song, and I don't even know what a dragoon is. But I do know that this video, made by a large number of British soldiers stationed in Iraq, is something remarkable to behold (don't they have ANYTHING ELSE BETTER TO DO?), and it sure kicks ass over that "Lazy Ramadi" SNL spoof that our boys over there made.
-
"Body Magic" -
I downloaded this to my laptop and watched it on a 2-hour train ride over and over and over again. It is a perfect thing, and it makes me happy to be alive.
- "Night of Bush Capturing" - Al Qaeda really made a media comeback this summer with this little number: a first person shooter in which you hunt down GW Bush and Blair, ostensibly made for recruitment purposes a la America's Army.
-
Nornna -
Contrary to what Time Magazine thinks, the person of the year wasn't "You." It was Nornna, and the remarkable Nornnasphere that grew all around her. A true Youtube superstar who deserves the Wikipedia entry that she has been so long denied. (thanks to Eliza Wicks-Frank for informing me of Nornna's existence!)
- www.jonasmekas.com -
Jonas Mekas, 80-something and one of the founding figures of American avant-garde film as we know it today, launched this site with original videos made to download, created from decades of his video and 16mm archives of autobiographical filmmaking. Check out the world's first vlogger, now outdoing all the kids at their own game.
- 9/11 conspiracy videos: TerrorStorm | Not in Plain Sight - I'm not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, but this summer got into watching this huge library of amateur-made documentaries that were thrown onto Google and YouTube. Kind of like paranoid-critical folk art, with weird visual idiosyncracies and formal borrowings from mainstream documentary-not to mention a huge underground following. For the slickest, check out "TerrorStorm" by Austin TX's Alex Jones. For the weirdest, see "Not in Plain Sight," which claims to debunk yet another conspiracy theory videomaker as part of a counter-conspiracy.
Bonus Lists!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
