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Archive link for this week's edition. Web Zen is produced weekly by Frank Davis, and republished here on Boing Boing with kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!).

Last week, San Francisco lost one of the underground art scene's most dedicated supporters. Most recently, Jack Davis was the director of the SomArts Cultural Center, ran the stage production for the San Francisco Blues Festival, and served on the mayor's Arts Task Force. But for decades, Jack has been an icon of the of Bay Area avant-garde culture. He was one of those people who just made things happen. Last year, my friend John Law, himself a legend in SF's underground scene, wrote a tribute to Jack after he suffered a heart attack. With the news of Jack's passing, Scott Beale of Laughing Squid reposted John's tribute. Here's what John wrote:

In any town, any scene, any time, you can count on the fingers of one hand the largely unheralded folks that facilitate almost everything thing of note that happens. They are there early on, giving quiet, confident encouragement – and, as importantly for starving artists, the occasional big break in event cost or maybe various services provided but somehow unbilled. These two or three princes never expect anything in return other than to watch the blossoming and growth of what they consider to be (and usually are) the most worthy enterprises. Other’s who “make things happen” the individuals, deserving or not who do get the lion’s share of the credit – you know who they are – they’re in the papers, on the radio, these folks know who those two or three are and always owe them a debt.

Jack Davis is one of those princes. At crucial points in the life of almost any significant Frisco art endeavor/scene/ organization (underground or established,) Jack has, in some capacity, small or gigantic, been pivotal in its life and growth. As Director of SomArts Gallery in SOMA for the last twenty years, one of the largest, best and most easily accessible art/event/party places in the City, Jack and his wonderful staff have given untold thousands of nascent artists, community groups and provocateurs their first big or pivotal show and a grand forum for promulgating their ideas and spirit in the local scene. Many of these individuals and organizations have moved on to national prominence. Following is a very small sampling of groups that benefited from Jacks involvement and/or support: The Neighborhood Arts Program (one of the founders) this group kicked off most of local Cultural Centers, Intersection for the Arts (past Director,) S.F. Mime Troupe (Board Member,) Burning Man (first big in-town events in the early 90’s were at SOMARTs for extremely low cost,) Day of the Dead, The Farm, Pickle Family Circus, Make a Circus, Dance Mission, Cellspace, S.F. Pride, Survival Research Labs (Jack held the cops off while Mark and crew got away!) The list goes on & on.

Link

Here's a snip from an essay at videoblogging.info:

Lumiere video arises from the tradition of the French Lumiere brothers. Credited with some of the first footage captured, in 1895, the Lumieres are also recognized for holding the first public film screening, showing ten shorts that lasted only twenty minutes total. At the time, Louis Lumiere stated, “The cinema is an invention without a future,” believing that everyday photography and video was ultimately nonsensical. Yet, we stand firm that Lumiere principles are essential to our existence as artists, media producers, visual creatures, and world citizens.

From a documentary perspective, and because Auguste and Louis Lumiere are thought to have produced the rudimentary firsts in this now well-known genre, founders of the field are essential to how we view our work today on a continuum. Lumieres emerge from the belief in filmmakers' distinct points of view; appropriately, lumiere literally means “light” in English. Online video has now for years allowed the advancement of personal narratives and showcased the world through the eyes of other video producers. At best, we display an edited view of our worlds. At worst, we destroy important viewpoints through unnecessary editing.

Link (Link and hed snagged from Warren Ellis)

UPDATE: oooh, there's a competing videoblogging manifesto from snottydouche.info:

The Luxidogmeimerde Manifesto

(For fuller context, you should read the wussified Lumiere Manifesto first. But then come back and read this one, because seriously our manifesto is way way better.) (...)

We followed the Dogme95 conventions until we realized that Dogme film #188 was Big Booty Hoes, which kind of fucked up that for us. We have attempted to find videos usingthe Lumiere Manifesto, which at first thought was good but now we hate. We looked for films that were longer than 60 seconds, no camera movement, no audio, and no editing. Sadly, most of the videos we found that matched those criteria were dudes beating off. After watching several hundred of those videos, we decided that we needed to draft our own set of rules.

* No script or scenes or actors or dialog or locations
* No artifical lights or real lights or black lights
* To maintain a total sense of reality, NO credits are allowed either before or after the film.
* Or during the film, either. * In order to maintain the artistic integrity in shots involving visual effects for explosions, if you use an Explosion element, it must be ONLY from the ArtBeats Reel Explosions Volume One library in the Zero-G folder and can only be composited into the scene using either Shake or Fusion (NOT After Effects) and you may only use Add or Screen modes and more no than three rotoscoped mattes, including the scene's general garbage matte, per shot. Also, no more than seven (7) nodes per shot, including the background plate AND any color correction, either done pre-comp or post.
* No costumes
* No soundtrack, audio, music, sound effects except for a high pitched whine
* Trailer may not use Don Lafontaine for voiceover
* Camera may not be put on a tripod or other artifical camera putting on thing.
* Lens Cap On
* No Battery Or Other Power To Camera
* Camera In Bag
* First Camera Bag Put In Another Bag Made Of Dark Heavy Canvas
* Doubled Bagged Non Powered Camera Buried At Depth Of Six Feet
* No fatties

The following are not rules for filmmaking or film makers but represent a complete philosophy of life.

Only films that follow all of these rules will get props from us on MySpace.

Linkidogmeimerde (actually written by Lee Stranahan)

Design Observer has a slideshow of images of Burma in 1989 by William Drenttel. Snip from intro:

According to Wikipedia: 8888 Uprising was a national peaceful revolution demanding democracy that started on August 8, 1988, in Burma (now Myanmar), when university students started the initial demonstrations in Rangoon. The Uprising ended on September 18, 1988, after a bloody military coup by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Thousands, mostly monks and civilians (primarily students) were killed by the Tatmadaw (Burmese armed forces).

I spent a month in Asia in early 1989, and was fortunate enough to purchase an entry visa into Burma from Thailand. On February 24, 1989, my passport was stamped number 263, meaning the Burmese government admitted less than 300 tourists that month. Only four months earlier, the military regime had killed an estimated 3,000 civilians during the 8888 Uprising.

This slideshow of photographs from 1989 is dedicated to the people of Burma — as they again confront one of the most brutal regimes in the world.

Link.

Previously on Boing Boing:

Burma: 'net cut as brutal crackdown worsens

ABC reporter files from inside Burma via cellphone

Burma: internally displaced demonstrate in rural areas

Burma regime cracks down on protesting monks

First tourist snapshots from Myanmar (Burma)'s new capital

Elephant landmine survivors on the Thai-Burma border

Mediabistro snip:

When ABC's senior foreign correspondent Jim Sciutto crossed into Myanmar today from neighboring Thailand the authorities took away his camera. So he filed his report for World News and the webcast, with the next best thing, his cell phone.

Link

AT&T has brought down new Terms of Service for its network customers. From now on, AT&T can terminate your connection for conduct that "tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries." So AT&T customers aren't allowed to write/podcast/vlog critical things about AT&T, its billing-practices, or its cooperation with illegal NSA wiretapping, on pain of having their connections disconnected. Link (via /.)

I just had the immense pleasure of reading the latest Terry Pratchett Discworld novel, Making Money, the sequel to one of my favorite books in the series, Going Postal.

Making Money is the continued adventures of Moist von Lipwig, the con-artist who was bullied into going straight and re-establishing the Ankh-Morpork post office in Going Postal. The post office is now running like clockwork, and Moist is growing bored, doing stupid, dangerous things with lockpicks and climbing-gear just to convince himself that he's still bent.

But all that changes when he is put in charge of Ankh-Morpork's major bank, in charge of the city's thoroughly disordered monetary supply. Like The Truth, which recapitulates much of the true history of the early days of newspaper publishing as a comic fantasy novel, Making Money tells the tale of the difficult transition from the gold standard to an economy based on fiat currency. And, like The Truth, Making Money manages to extract an enormous amount of humor, pathos, and keen insight from the subject, especially through its use of well-drawn and well-realized characters (the secret to good comedy).

There are 33 Discworld novels out there, and I imagine that being confronted with that many books would be a little daunting (on the other hand, Vernor Vinge told me that when he finally started reading Pratchett, a couple summers back, it was like being 10 and discovering a writer like Baum or Howard with a huge corpus of works, something that hadn't happened since he'd caught up with all those writers, decades before). Luckily, the books largely stand alone. You can probably enjoy Making Money without reading any other Discworld novel, and you can definitely enjoy Making Money if you read Going Postal first.

Moist von Lipwig is fast becoming my favorite Discworld character, a flawed, likable, canny comic hero who manages to surprise and delight with each volume. And Pratchett remains one of my favorite writers in the world, a man who is clearly having so much fun, he must be breaking some law, somewhere. Link to US edition, Link to UK edition, Link to UK audiobook