Warp Earth Catalog

Warp Earth Catalog is a mixtape of ideas to inspire, inform, enable and energize creativity and positivity in a time of global disruption and uncertainty. Based on the classic countercultural guide the Whole Earth Catalog and its credo of ‘access to tools’, these are tools for strength, awareness and thoughtful entertainment. From wherever in the world we are, let’s support each other, make things and help maintain the ecosystem of independent creativity.

A small goofy collection of sk8r style "issues" laid out in a 1999 grid format with Larry Carlson-esque surreal landscape images and the Warp Records logo for cover art.

Each "issue" is ~30 bookmarks for 'alternative' (if you think an 2016 article about Adam Curtis in the NYT is futuristic) music, interviews and minor curiosities.

There are no "tools" that I could find (and no discernible structure beyond issues being a simple repetition of folders) but each issue has a ToC entry called "Directory" with 5-10 arbitrary links to services or charities having no reason nor rhyme beyond personal bookmarks.

It's a reminder of the quaint 90s when every young dweeb with a PC went through the epiphany that his mind was indistinguishable from the universe and gained a messianic purpose to share the vast scope of his awareness of an uncountable number (say 100) of things on myspace or geocities.

Seen as art project, it inadvertently and charmingly deconstructs the childishness of the Whole Earth Catalog: Stewart Brand's goggly-eyed mid-apprehensions that if he put the seminal photo of the "Blue Marble", taken during Apollo 8's lunar flyby, on the cover of a phat zine that was half catalog of homesteading / animal husbandry suppliers and half 60s countercultural know-how that a world-commune modeled on the central California under the aegis of NASA and Bucky Fuller would blossom into a gorgeous self-actualized utopia (again messianic).

That was a lovely dream that all too quickly was overrun by financiers, cable TV providers, and the PC industry. It's nice to be reminded there was such a simple time.

But seriously this Warp thing is nothing but a few hundred personal bookmarks with link rot.