DIY « Wow Cool

Scott Smallwood - Solar Trashfence Phone

1 weekend, 1 thrift store toy, 1 Arduino, and 1 obsessed geek.
Scott is one half of Evidence, Brown Cuts Neighbors’ former steel pan player and the original drummer/co-conspirator in nickname: Rebel.

Wow Cool News and Reviews

Photos from Anno Domini's Art of Zines Show

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ArtofZines11, originally uploaded by Marc Arsenault – Wow Cool.

The Art of Zines show opened at Anno Domini Gallery in Downtown San Jose this past Friday. Stacked on shelves along the walls are dozens of [...]

Go Bookmark: homemade musical instruments

During at least the last two February’s, Ranjit Bhatnagar has built and blogged an instrument a day for the whole month. Ranjit works with interactive and sound installations, with scanner photography, and with internet-based collaborative art; and, he has been maintaining his personal web site moonmilk.com in one form or another since 1993.

The moonmilk [...]

Fluke Fanzine #8

In case you missed Fluke on tour recently with Andrew Jackson Jihad, you can pick up the latest issue from me at Anno Domini’s Art of Zines show in San Jose this Friday. Published in Tucson, Arizona, 2010. 68 pages, half size, offset print, $2.00 by hand, $4.00 by mail. interviews with Christ on Parade, [...]

NEWAVE! Got Boinged

There is a nice little writeup of the NEWAVE! Minicomics book by the esteemed Mark Frauenfelder on today’s edition of BoingBoing. Go read that thang.
NEWAVE! is now in stock and ready to ship from Amazon.
UPDATE: Some photos from the release party at the Fantagraphics Bookstore/Gallery.

Art of Zines Show at Anno Domini Announced

Get on down to the glorious DTSJ (that’s Down Town San Jose, folks) for the South First Friday art walk this coming February 5th; and, do not fail to stop in at Anno Domini for their Art of Zines show. Wow Cool will be at a table there hawking our wares, too. All the details [...]

NEWAVE! Underground Mini Comix Book Release Event

It’s Official! Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle, Washington will be hosting a release party for this massive brick of a book on January 30, 2010. The event marks the debut of their new Spectacular Saturday series. The show will feature original art and graphics by underground mini comix pioneers Jaimie Alder, Jim Blanchard, Wayne [...]

Video preview of NEWAVE! The Underground Minicomics of the '80s Book

More previews and info on Fantagraphics site.
Pre-order yours today! Newave!: The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s on Amazon.

Wow Cool at Art of Zines Show in San Jose

Plan to go see Wow Cool’s and about about a bazillion other publisher’s zines at Anno Domini’s 2009 Art of Zines exhibit. It opens on Friday, February 5, 2010. Reception begins at 8pm. There will be live music and Marc Arsenault (me) will be there in the stinkin’ flesh. Thanks to Cherri from AD for [...]

Call for ZINES- Art of Zines exhibit at Anno Domini

That’s pretty self-explanatory. Details follow.
For those that don’t know, Anno Domini is the best gallery in San Jose. They’ve been written about here before.
We at Anno Domini are resurrecting our Art of Zines exhibition (a former annual event) and we are contacting you because we are still in need of great zines. We believe zines [...]

No Pigeonholes Wow Cool Special

I was invited to be a special guest on Don Campau’s excellent No Pigeonholes show at KKUP 91.5 FM’s new studios in San Jose on Sunday, December 13th, 2009. We breezed through 20 years of the Wow Cool label in two hours; and, featured at least a dozen tracks: from the first Wow Cool cassette [...]

SHARE San Jose jam video

SHARE SJ Jam October 28, 2009 from Marc Arsenault on Vimeo.
Villa Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA
SHARE San Jose open jam. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into a common system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video.
Participants at this meeting included Tim Thompson with his Loopy Cam, Fred Lakin with matchbooks [...]

Gold Bear Lego Bricks

Gold Bear Lego Bricks, by Marc Arsenault on flickr.

An entire brand new bag of Haribo Gold-Bears was left in the car. They melted into a nasty gummy blob. I plopped it on top of a Lego silicone ice brick mold under glass out in the sun. It melted back down into bricks. Leave to cool, [...]

nickname: Rebel song in new film Radio Free Blissville

nickname: Rebel’s song ‘August’ opens the new film from John Culhane: Radio Free Blissville. See it at a film festival near you in 2010. We will update the events page here with screenings as they are confirmed. Trailer, photos and more information on GlassCapsule.com.
The year is 2013. There has recently been a huge satellite war [...]

Target.com Quietly Drops Thousands of Indie & Small Press Products from Online Store

For many small and independent authors, publishers, musicians and filmmakers, Amazon Advantage has been a terrific program to get your product out to a national audience and offer it for sale. For the last few years Advantage members have had the bonus of having their products available through Target.com as well. It seems that that [...]

Why We Do This 4: Tim Yohannan

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Tim Yohannan and late-80’s Gilman Street crew, originally uploaded by acrofish.

He was the general contractor on that which we did that was secret. He was a good friend and inspiration and is still greatly missed. [...]

New Scientific Maps Album – Free Download

Former nickname: Rebel champion all-’rounder Aaron Smith has been busy. He spent most of February writing and recording an entire album titled ‘hold on whoever you are’. Almost thirty minutes of brand new songs. It was all for the RPM Challenge , where you’re meant to record an album in 28 days. nickaname: Rebel and [...]

nickname: Rebel Listen To Me 2008 finalist on Dandelion Radio

Genius DJ Mark Whitby has placed my band nickname: Rebel in the list of the final 10 nominees in his “Listen To Me 2008“. Tune in to his show on Dandelion Radio to hear who came out on top. Be sure to also check out the nine other excellent bands. In case you are not [...]

Alternative Distribution Methods

If you’ve ever self-published… from the old xerox and staple to things like Blurb and Lulu… then there’s a chance that you’ve done the classic method of non-standard distribution of your product: The old ‘reverse-shoplift’ yourself onto the shelf of a local store that otherwise wouldn’t deal with you (I think I only ever did [...]