PLANETDAMAGE

Panelists discuss whether controversial decisions by the Robot Congress and President Executron indicate robots have too much control over our lives. (via boingboing)

Sydney-based cyberpunk duo ANGELSPIT has a new take on blipverts. If blipverts mean anything to you, you probably are old and weary, as they were first introduced to science fiction fans back in 1987 in the series Max Headroom. Max Headroom was the first British (and as far as I know, also world-first) cyberpunk TV series about a reporter named Edison Carter. Carter works for a network called Channel 23 and he gets into trouble while uncovering things his bosses would like to keep in the private. One of these scandals is about the blipvert, a hi-speed visual medium that condenses advertisements into a few seconds, thus effectively killing people with the overload.

In the past 20 years anything in the ad scene that got related to or was called a blipvert was basically a brief advertisement, sometimes laced with subliminal effects. Wikipedia has more to say about that, check out Richi Jennings and the image-based spams with subliminal BUY BUY BUY messages.

As for what Angelspit sez: the cult movie Max Headroom used the term ‘Blipvert’ to describe a short and intense information-packed video that would make people explode. We are hoping ours will do the same. Angelspit Blipverts are designed to inform and inspire people to get active and be creative! Only three YouTube videos (How to Write Lyrics, Songwriting, Destroying Bass) are available at the moment - if you dig tongue-in-cheek commentaries and love your mind being expanded (although these videos work much better for a younger audience), you gotta so love this. Max respect for Zoog & DestroyX.

The Green Tea Bride, 2006

The Cyber Bride, 2003

The Mao Bride, 2006

Photos of Kimiko Yoshida, representing herself as a bride in various cultures. Link to Yoshida-san’s official but not completely worksafe site (landing page still okay), via pinktentacle.

Visioncoax has this amazing piece of clockworkry for 9975円, done from ABS plastic gears, a metal stem and a wooden base. 本物の盆栽をかわいがるように、BONSAI GEARを眺めてみてはいかがですか？ (link, via gearfuse)

Came across yusheng’s superb flickr set about an abandoned housing complex near Taipei. According to yusheng, this place was built in the 70s as a resort but was later abandoned. I couldn’t find any definitive explanation about why exactly it was abandoned, however. There’s some talks about failed partnerships and/or real estate bubbles. The original source at notcot also lists another flickr gallery with some interior shots and also speculates that the complex was apparently built in the early 1980s as a series of vacation homes marketed towards affluent Taipei residents seeking to get out of the city. (via notcot, recommended by dH!)

If Syd Mead in the last post was a visual futurist, Toronto’s very own Headscan is his musical counterpart. Planetdamage is still a few steps away from starting its own dossiers on cyberpunk musicians (and their related kin) but until we hit it off, here’s today’s big news: Headscan is out with a new track, Tomorrow Square (full streaming version on MySpace). Impressive, inspiring and immersive, as always, quite on the Haujobb - Clock DVA axis with a twist of neon-lit Chiba on a sad dose of vasopressin. According to what MySpace hints, the new album is TBA 2008. (via razzor)

UPDATE 1: VividFluxury rightly warns all of us that Tomorrow Square has been released two years ago (omfg) on the Re:Connected compilation on Alfa Matrix, which sort of makes me feel uneasy. Arigatou, nevertheless.

UPDATE 2: You can download the full-length track from last.fm.

Half the tech/design blogs in my blogroll ran this post and I don’t really know who to via this for, really. This very flickr set features some 18 pics by “visual futurist” Syd Mead, the guy who did all the design work for Blade Runner and Tron. If this is not enough for you, CGSociety has just had a brief resumé on Mead so check that out as well while you’re at it.

I see the future as a contest between human intelligence being degraded by dogma, and human intelligence being allowed to invent itself to solutions and to its own credit.

It’s a shame I don’t cover the new steampunk contraptions but Dardenbahst, this amazing piece of LEGO machinery could make me reconsider. You have a full-on schematic to use your old Technics pieces with - if you’re laziness incarnate (or just too young), do try out the free LEGO Digital Designer. You might have a chance. (via bb gadgets)

Fumihiko Sori’s new cyberpunk/biotech movie Vexille gets a UK trailer and all you lucky British cunts can watch it from the 9th of May on them huge frigging screens. The UK trailer is really here, the YouTube above is just the Japanese version with English dubs. Here’s the synopsis if the title doesn’t ring a single bell. (via)

“The year is 2077 - 10 years has passed since Japan had decided to leave the United Nations to go into isolation. They have completely blocked the islands with an ultra magnetic field which prevents anyone to see what is going inside. This was a result to opposing to a treaty which UN has passed, preventing the development of all bio and robot technology which has evolved drastically and has become a threat to the human beings. When Japan finally begins to move, the US government sends in a special force team SWORD, lead by a female commander Vexille, to find out what is really happening inside the country.”

Hardwired shows off some new (concept) images from DICE’s cyberpunk parkour game Mirror’s Edge. Gamers at the HW forum have a hard time deciding whether Faith (protagonist) is a well-equipped woman or not but honestly, martial arts and physics-heavy sports are sort of more geared towards this kind of build. (Check my previous post on ME here.)

(via hardwired)