I’m not sure if you have ever witnessed what has passed for journalism within the gaming industry, or even if you would call it journalism at all. Due to the online nature of gaming culture it has become the norm for gaming news stories to be written in a blog style, infected with sarcasm and bias. The focus of video game journalism has been to entertain first, whilst informing second. Journalists within this industry have sub-consciously thought their audience comprises solely of thirteen year old boys with short attention spans so they write short, ”fun” and bias articles to please them. Now... 

Although this website is American, I’d like to talk about the issues surrounding censorship in Australia, specifically in relation to video games. The types of discussions this topic generates are universal and should be thought about even if you do not live in the country it is directly affecting. As with all new forms of media, or new artistic mediums, controversy surrounds the content that should and shouldn’t be displayed. For society to come to grips with new media a period of scrutiny must ensue. During this period society enforces its accepted moral standards upon the new media... 

When society hears the word ‘art’ and ‘computers’ in the same sentence they automatically cringe in disgust. People tend to see art as a purely humanistic creation and shun the involvement of any computational processing. The use of computers, some believe, take away from, or take over, the input humans have into their own expression. What I aim to do in this post is to show people that this is not the case. Indeed, I aim to show that the medium of interactive media has more potential for the expression of the human condition than any other medium that has come before it. How can I say... 

AFI Crash Love, AFI’s eighth studio album, is unlike the band’s last record Decemberunderground. But that is not a surprise. Most fans of AFI, especially the Despair Faction, know that the California band has been experimenting with its sound since 1999’s Black Sails In The Sunset, featuring then newcomer guitarist Jade Puget. But not until AFI’s major label debut on Dream Works Records did the loyal and mostly underground following turn their backs on their beloved band. What those same people cannot admit, or at least in their hip circles, is that Sing The Sorrow gave AFI money and... 

It takes a second look. At first glance, the picture looks almost serene. A mother, staring straight into the camera, holds what appears to be a sleeping baby.Peacefully the baby lies,but a more discerning eye equipped with some cursory knowledge of the Victorian Era knows this to be an example of death photography. In the wake of Prince Albert’s death, a grief-stricken Queen Victoria elapsed into an  period of intense mourning. This heavily influenced the mourning process in the Victorian Era, where gloom and darkness were de rigueur after Victoria’s public heartbreak.In a nineteenth... 

It takes only a brief moment into Brand New’s most recent album Daisy, 1 minute and 25 seconds to be exact, to realize that the first track’s somber operatic entrance is a misdirection. Daisy is not the much-needed, poetic declaration of musical change like Deja Entendu, or its more highly touted work of 2006’s The Devil and God Are Inside Me. Brand New elevates its music on its fourth studio album, brandishing shouts and screams just when main vocalist Jesse Lacey seemed content to lull fans with a graceful and subdued sound. “Vices,” an excellent first track, presents a very unsettled... 

There is something irresistible about the Arctic Monkeys and its catchy guitar riffs and sugary, often prosaic lyrics. The band’s last album, “Favourite Worst Nightmare” was part of a wave of English bands in the 2000s, like The Kooks or the Klaxons, who crossed the pond and into sold out venues and hipster playlists across America. Although ‘Nightmare’ was released when most of the band members were 21 years old, it shines as a display of well-crafted pop rock. It’s one of those records that you can listen to two weeks straight, clap and bob your head to the beat of your favorite... 

All serious bands decide when it’s time for a change. For Orange County, California’s Thrice, it came slowly after its release of “The Artist and the Ambulance.” This work saw the band disconnect from the dizzying punk speeds that fans were not so easy to let go of, into a pop realm that seemed impossible of Thrice. “Vheissu” continued this musical explosion toward experimentation and constant shouting vocals, hackneyed guitar riffs, and endless headbanging breakdowns. Vocalist and guitarist Dustin Kensrue’s raw emotion and gentle voice (at point point, it was nonexistent) carried... 

They say that artists suffer for their art, and that once an artist is dead their art appreciates in value.  Well, crack addicts die for their art to even exist. What you see here will never grace the walls of the Louvre in Paris, or the Metropolitan Gallery of Art. What you see below is “crack art” drawn or painted not on expensive canvases, but on the feces, blood, and urine stained walls of dozens of crack dens. Rest assured, most of these artists are in fact dead or dying; they’ve paid your admission fee to this art gallery with their lives. What I am showcasing here is a... 

BFMin poses in front of a tunnel in Apgujeong, Seoul, Korea. He was among the first well-known graffiti artists to emerge in Korea in the late 1990s. A.K.A. “Case Study in Korean Hip Hop Culture” – Interview with BFMin, a professional graffiti artist from Seoul, Korea July 2007 As hip hop music and culture spreads around the globe at an increasingly rapid pace, it has caught the attention of various academics and researchers. Why hip hop? Why now? Where and how did it begin? It is largely agreed that modern hip hop culture has most of its roots in the United States, born out of...