issue 199
Hello! We’re back from our short jaunt around the North Island - it was a lot of fun and much needed. The vacay blues have already come and gone. A highlight was dropping by the Surrealist exhibit at the Te Papa on the waterfront in Wellington with famed works from Magritte, Dalí, Duchamp, Ernst, and more.
It was overwhelmingly inspiring (much more-so than the game developers conference a floor below) and got me thinking about the obvious. The Surrealist movement unraveled in the early 20s in Europe (Paris of course) and later spread to the Americas in the ensuing decades. Artists quit their jobs and moved from afar to join the community. To start a movement. To create.
Dreamworld. The (literal) dreams were painted, and documented, mostly by the artists themselves in self-published magazines and Minotaure - curation by committee. Exhibit for show. The collective output wildly impressive. A consciousness. Reminiscent of Cahiers and the French New Wave filmmakers. These artists ostensibly altered the course of humanity, and still do to this day. Art prevails. It is forever. A public good. Ownership as ephemera. For audience, everlasting.
The most definitive form of action is creation. It is life-form. It is now everywhere all at once, digital. Our physical body as dirt, as compost. Our online body cryonically preserved, a self-selected memento to be shown eternally. Curation of self. Your profile as a gallery exhibit.
Welcome to the desert of the real.
I think of us today. Our time as a shared memory. The information age knows no end. Movements, social. Everyone as user, as creator and commentator. All consumers. No artist. It’s excessiveness. It’s disposability and fragility. Where content is service for product and marketing alike. Off-grid escapism, to be uploaded later, to be collected as token. The absurdity of it all might very well be the point. Life-form everywhere.
A game of infinite regress, an Escher staircase. The egg as chicken, (de)coupled.
When I play witness to a piece of art, I try to let it wash over me. It is innately interactive. All art is. Such is creation with intent. I want to inhabit the creator and their creation, to occupy their mindspace - art as object, as material capsule of a particular time and place. History manifested. A world apart. A window display as experience. No, a mirror. An abstracted reflection.
Art as portal for perspective and empathy.
I don’t know if this can be said about the majority of content we surround ourselves with today. It’s a hunt for likes, as nourishment. The great feed. It exists as search for kinship. Affection. The content purposefully winks back, in its shimmering plastic glow — a broken 5th Avenue holiday display. This relatability serves as form for discovery, to be known is to be loved.
The metrics of desire will one day be repackaged just to be sold anew.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. Sound Image :: Beauty. See you next week.
Tech
VersusGame, seeks to predict pop culture through interactive games, raised $3m from bevy of strategics Cision
Skillz invests in Exit Games for live multiplayer games tech BW
Quake, subscription podcast co, raised $3.5m Axios
Yield Guild Games raised $12.5m in a token sale for early players Med
MakersPlace, art platform with NFTs for more premium artists, raised $30m Artnet
Voiceflow, conversational design flow tooling, raised $20m VFblog
Polywork, “professional” social network that’s more fun, raised $13m BI
Hootsuite, social CRM. acq Heyday, conversational AI, for $48m GW
Moises, splits vocals from instrumentals, raised $1.6m BW
Apple to scan photos to look for child abuse Verge
Comma, bulk pay salaries insurance and more raised $6m TC
Zynga acq StarLark game studio for Golf Rival for $525m VB
Embracer rolls up 8 game studios for $300m GIB
Yela, Cameo but for South East Asia, raised $2m TC
Hopin, virtual events platform, raised $450m (use Hovercast) CNBC
NovaKid, edtech to teach children English ages 4-12, raised $35m TC
Shopify to soon add NFTs to payments Bberg
TikTok testing Stories Verge
Saltech is Vtuber livestreaming software in beta STtwtr
Substack now betting on comic creators (IDW just went public at a $50m market cap..) SSblog
Topps and Bundesliga partner with Avalanche for NFTs Med
Focus Home Interactive acq Streets of Rage publisher Dotemu for $45m GIB
CommandBar, helps make web-based app searchable, raised $4.8m TC
Mclub is a DAO supporting creators and communities Mirror
A look at the New Lab x Verizon 5G startups VB
Zedge acq Emojipedia for emoji info AE
CES to add a NFT track Var
Media
AT&T and TPG finalize DirecTV deal BW
Puck, new digital media news site, launched beta Axios
Spain’s LaLiga sells 10% stake for $3b NYT
And Messi going to PSG (I guess it’s public vs private ownership) ESPN
Pershing Square raising $1b for its UMG deal Bberg
Barstool and MLB in discussions to air midweek games online NYP
IDW, comics publisher, raised $9m in IPO RenCap
HBO Max launching branded content studio THR
Starz subs stay flat at 16.7m Stream
AMC expects 9m SVOD subs by eoy IW
YouTube sets aside $100m for short form creators Bberg
DraftKings acq Golden Nugget online gaming for $1.5b GN
SpaceX partners with GEC for billboards in space (pls no) Byte
Facebook PPV movie premiere (we were doing this with Spondo almost a decade ago lol) Axios
iMedia acq Synacor for OTT commerce tech GN
Crunchyroll tops 5m subs Stream
Vox acq LongForm (can’t believe they were indie this whole time) Vox
Penn Gaming to acq Score Media and Gaming for $1.75b yahoo
Amzn’s IMDB and Procter Gamble bring laundry relief to communities and will make series about it Adage
Roku 55m active users THR
HBO Max looking to be a home for podcasts too Verge
Pluto TV achieved $1b in rev this year under ViacomCBS Dead
NYC and a community mesh network (this could be a very interesting application with a DAO, play to earn internet with nodes - but is very complicated for my simple brain, think this might be what Twitter’s BlueSky could be about) NYT
Entertainment
South Park Creators sign $900m deal w/ Paramount+, many spinoffs Bberg
Gordon Ramsay new prod co with Fox acquiring his old word THR
Kerry Washing to star/produce Rockaway for Netflix (I’m getting a lot of asks from producers/reps about surfing world, something’s abrew - also follow Textured Waves IG) Var
Streamers bidding on JLaw as Sue Mengers film directed for Sorrentino (Matt Belloni got it first) Dead
STX shopping its film library to resolve its debt Var
Duplass Bros making a Tony Hawk doc (thought they had a Nflx deal?) Var
Bad Robot shopping Overlook hotel series since HBO Max passed THR
A24 and Ari Aster’s Square Peg to produce Loneliness of Long-Distanced Cartoonist for tv Var
Concord launches Original division to mine film/tv/pods from music catalogue (go Hopkins!) Var
Kismet is a new Aus/NZ distrib w/ Sony home ent and Foxtel deals Dead
Mike Richards likely to host Jeopardy (he’s an EP on it) Var
Netflix orders Inspiration4 docu-series from Last Dance filmmakers, about Spacex civilian flight Var
Bill Lawrence, Vince Vaughn set Bad Monkey at Apple Var
Ron Meyer to rep Qatar’s Doha Film Institute for a cool $6m/yr THR
Amazon picks up Coyote Blue with Sterling K Brown and Derek Kolstad Var
Justin Simien inks overall Paramount tv Var
Scooter Braun extends Amazon deal for film/tv Var
IATSE agrees on union study to measure diversity var
Screen Media takes NA rights to One Shot var
Deepak Chopra Audible deal Var
Sam Elliott, Faith Hill Tim McGraw to star in Yellowstone prequel (idk why but I find this funny) THr
Airbender tabletop rpg raised $1m in 15mins IW
Breaking down the Hello Sunshine deal Info
Collaborative
ReThink report on climate change and ESG PDF
Intergovernmental panel on climate change report six IPCC
State owned newspaper slanders gaming in China, Tencent slips WSJ
Pentagon is using pre-cog like tech like from Minority Report Engadget
Q2’21 state of viewership report Samba
Google Auto Draw AI art experiment GAD
Gaby Goldberg on curators as creators with NFTs GGblog
Packy McCormick on owning a cryptopunk as a status symbol NotBoring
Interview w/ Matt Stone about the Viacom deal (lol at Dauman lines) bberg
TikTok as launching pad for musicians ChiTimes
How satellite growth can impact life on earth Hustle
A bunch of legends share their fave music vids Interview
Attempting to profit off launching a shitcoin NYT
Interview w/ Jules Urbach (Otoy) around digital art and NFTs Frieze
Apartments with rooms for TikTok influencers (this but malls) Fastco
UAV tracking so drones can fly at night with AI PDF
MG Siegler proposes incognito mode for Netflix (i like it) MGblog
Chris Potts on characterizations of NLP for social responsibility YT
Miami to be the first city to launch its own crypto SCW
Jon Stewart, Pete Davidson set 9/11 charity comedy event Var
There are 1million more job openings in America than ppl out of work CNBC
How DC comics hopes to rebuild (I see more press about execs than their projects) THR
A potential future with space elevators thanks to a new design Mash
USA Surfing using data analytics around biomechanics for athletes in Olympics WSJ
Italo, gold medal surfer winner, snuck his sponsors sticker on his winning board Stab
40x40 is a new female focused mentorship initiative from Markle and McCarthy THR
Thread of all the famous ppl who showed up in Miami Vice DHtwtr
Tanay Jaipuria on quarterly earnings on ad-supported tech giants (and the emphasis on “creators”) TJss
The mystery failure of the great Segway invention Slate
Interview w Gale Ann Hurd Var
Interview w/ YouTube’s chief product officer and creator economy Verge
Sam Lessin on how venture capital is changing (widely shared in SV circles — also, I know deeptech investors who’ve made more on their shoe and coffee bets) Info
Netflix Q2 earnings transcript (Ctrl F games) Fool
Virgil’s Off White and street artist Katso launched a mobile game around fashion HB
Louis Vuitton making mobile game with NFTs (trend here) Engadget
AR commerce and fashion is nearly here Vogue
Prada to add RFID to most new items (woah) Vogue
The rise of the Vtuber in Japan ROW
Profile on the stem cell researcher and bone marrow transplants Neolife
Kate trailer YT
Lucas Shaw on society being buried in an avalanche of entertainment Bberg
NYC mandates vaccine cards for indoor ent and eating Dead
How Leaving Records is pushing into DAOs Decrypt
Reid Hoffman as philosoph-entrepreneur pod GLblog
Op-ed on the Olympics needing esports FT
Data on BBC’s H1 streams BBC
A look at podcast usage data from H1 2021 (there was a bug with Apple Pods which messied things) Podtrac
How AI and robots can help school teachers WSJ
Singapore setting its sights on esports and crypto hot spot Bberg
Kim Hart on pushing the PBS for the internet Axios
Julia Angwin on FB and ad oversight board shutting down academic projects Markup
Isaacson writing an Elon Musk bio CNN
Metaverse trends report Newzoo
The difficulty of making CGI skin look real vid Vox
Almodovar’s Parallel Mothers teaser YT
Interview w/ Tyler the Creator YT
A look at FuboTV and Draftkings as exposure to sportsbooks SA
Write your resume so AI can pick you out MIT
Learnings from corporate WFH experiment in China (more productive at home, but get promotions if you show face) Stanford
GS breaks down the first gov’t issued bond from Japan GS
Joi Ito (MIT Media Lab w/ ties to Epstein) to run Japan gov’t Digital Agency TR
It’s nearly $5k/night at Disney’s Star Wars hotel Gizm
Frank Ocean launches Homer, fine jewelry co GQ
Snoop profile NYT
The possibility of editing or deleting memories Gizmodo
Joy Loftus on NFTs and IP Med
Games industry is waiting for its Spotify and Netflix moment Prot
Using science of dopamine to stay motivated (mine depleted about a year ago) IG
A press blackout of the war “ending” in Afghanistan NewYorker
Meow Wolf Denver sold 35k tickets Fastco
Your screenshots as your personality NYT
A look at consumerism and behaviors during the pandemic Atlantic
Subscriptions are changing in the digital media landscape NYT