planetdamage: this was 2017

2017? Too much noise.

Hello. It's been some time. I basically limited my FB activity to a Dunham-number limited (sort of) private group of friends, acquaintances and stalkers called Externalia, based on a newsletter I ran for a time. (Images go to Instagram, my Last.FM scrobbler went to hell and I hate how Spotify lags my box or lacks a lot of stuff I listen to, the Chrome web scrobbler extensions don't work well either and music listening aggregation is something I would love to see in 2018. Just saying.) Released an EP in January, worked on a new one this whole year. Bought a lot of music gear, developed Gear Acquisition Syndrome, then killed it. Sold a lot of board games, bought a few new ones (Pandemic: Legacy S1 is amazing, Eldritch Horror and Zombicide: Black Plague are close to our hearts, This War of Mine is something of a gorgeous ambivalent trainwreck - brilliant but too depressing). Teaching still goes on about digital marketing and upcoming technology trends. Also, a remix of one of my tracks was featured in a dance performance at the Budapest Kunsthalle. Lot of things.  Many of them I might have forgotten about. Lots of bad things. I won't even write about those.

So I bring you photos from this year. There were more, two pre-selections happened, then these ones remained, very focused, in more ways than one.

01


Fuel duo of 2k17: coffee and music. To the right: the essential quality of coffee, according to Warren Ellis, it is something close to Hiroshima strength, same approximation by one of my favourite Italian cafés near Shoreditch is aaaah triple ristretto. This package comes from Bite, I think, but the strongest coffee in the Hungarian capital is in Barako Coffee House, no doubts about that. To the left: that's my new DAW! I switched from Renoise to Bitwig early this year, because it was a nightmare working with vocal tracks in a pattern-based environment, Ableton was too expensive and Bitwig was a new idea, also the UI looked really decent. Looking back a year's worth of music writing and jamming, this DAW is a monster. My new EP Stray Signal (out in February-ish, 2018) was done with Bitwig and I think you can pretty much hear that - if you'll buy the EP off the Two Gods label Bandcamp, you'll also get the audio production diaries as a hidden file.

02

Two months before my first gig, shot by my good friend tlvlp, showing off my gear, live and in-house thrown together. Most of this did not end up on stage, though - I wanted to trigger backing tracks from the SPD-SX in the foreground (because everything looks better if you hit it with fluorescent drumsticks, thanks Ancsur!), then I ended up with using my Android phone, because 1) it's easy, light and works fine and 2) around 11pm with the level of drunkenness I'm expecting on the floor, you won't be able to hear the difference between the DA of a smartphone and an SPD-SX, anyway. For pads and leads I used the Novation Ultranova, for vocals a Roland VT-3 voice transformer box (easily my best music gear buy this year at FriendlyHouse) fed through a Kaoss Pad 3. You will notice I do not have the laptop switched on and for good reason - ELECTRICITY COSTS A LOT IN EASTERN EUROPE trying to do everything without a laptop. That's one of the reasons why I have the iPad there (a surprisingly trustworthy piece) and the Arturia BSP, triggering all things MIDIable. If I can tap the exact sequence, even my coffee machine in the next room can trigger a fucking coffee bukkake fountain, because, you know, CC messages. (Several Easter eggs hidden here.)

 

03


Pre-gig soundcheck, photo by BL Photo & Graphics. Funny thing, my BFF Bess told me not just to practice playing my tracks but also to practice setting up my gear and pulling it down as fast as possible. I think I'm around 12 minutes with this gear and I thought I was super efficient with color-coded cables, marked power adapters and all that and now I know that the next time I play, that marking system's gotta be fluorescent, because I couldn't see shit in a low-light environment such as this one. And, oh yeah, mega thanks to Black Nail Cabaret for letting me to use their in-ear.

 

04


At this point you might think that my debut gig was probably a key point of 2017 and it sort of was - a lot of work, anxiety and research went into it and I'm damn glad and honoured I could share a stage with Black Nail Cabaret and Attrition (and given that Emke's new solo EP was also released through Two Gods Records, that sort of turns the whole event into a Two Gods label romp!) Thanks to each and every one of you who came out to see us - you ladies and gents were awesome!
Top photo by BL Photo & Graphics, bottom photo by Theo.

 

05


Post-gig merch sorting. There's a shitload of merch you can buy from me, because capitalism. A digipak comprising my two previous EPs (that my label started calling an album, because capitalism, I guess? also, 12 tracks), two tees and I also have copious amounts of custom pins from the LD50 days, plus copious amounts of Damage Report books I can sign for you (in Hungarian, though, because laziness) and stickers. But I could just sign you any day of the week without you actually needing to buy anything from me, because creative freedom. Drop me a message if you want some of the merch, though, because I still haven't set up my webstore. Gotta compliment Peter Santha for his awesome artwork/design he put into the P://D merchandise and image and Empire Merch for making all that happen!

06


Post-gig get-together at Krak'n Town (easily the best steampunk pub in Budapest) with Clayfeet Bálint, Black Nail Cabaret Emke, Attrition Kerry and Martin, Jonathan (who's not in a band and why that is still remains a mystery to everyone at this table) and me. Good times! This is also the place where I repeatedly have to say a heartfelt thank you to Bálint for his MASSIVE AMAZING HELP at the Attrition gig and also introducing me to Wolfgang Riechmann's 1978 album Wunderbar.

07


Quite a few great gigs this year, the four best ones to win my heart were Drab Majesty, Skinny Puppy, The Birthday Massacre and Kaelan Mikla. This was also the year when I started buying vinyls at gigs to really support the bands - that merch stall loot grind led me to an amazing find at the KM gig - namely an underground fanzine from Iceland named Myrkfaelni, go check it out!

 

So, 2017. I hope you bleed into hell, because however much awesomeness the crew had, shitstorm's been ballistic.
It's high time for a change.


GHOST IN THE SHELL: Thoughts on the New Trailer

Held the tight-lip policy as long as I could about the live-action adaptation of GHOST IN THE SHELL - up until today, the Tokyo debut of the movie's first trailer, promptly followed by its international release. Kept myself tight-lipped for a good reason: however much of a cyberpunk I am (that extent is really pointless now),  I don't understand and I definitely don't support the fans' public outcry. So first let me just quickly share with you my train-of-thought reactions on the not-so-fresh trailer - had to give myself almost a day to let it all sink in. I'll also rant why you should take five and not whine too much about the 2017 movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTPvnQ2wDlI

TRAIN OF THOUGHT ABOUT THE GHOST IN THE SHELL TRAILER

Love the glitch behind the ScarJo foreword..need to colorpick that lipstick as well, looks hue-on.. visually striking, that's obvious, we've seen that in the five short teasers.. robotic geishas have the air of cognitive dissonance and ambivalence around them, love that a lot.. city shot well, spectrum's very similar to the opening of the 1995 movie, headgear as well, hope they won't add that cliché-ridden falling-from-the-rooftop-thing.. MICHAEL WINCOTT! The Crow's one of my favourite movies, partly because of Wincott and Alien 4 is damn good a flic as long as he's alive.. expanded spider-geisha reminds me of the opening scene of GITS2, are the producers fishing out the memorable bits?.. Major's doing her regular rooftop gravity romp thing, so that was a rhetorical question.. every fucking piece of GITS work has that in it, after 21 years, I'd really love to see a different method of traveling down a few (dozen) floors.. visuals are still damn amazing.. yeah, second shot after breaking the glass comes damn late, augmented perps would have already double-tapped her.. HANKA.. so that's really The Laughing Man storyline.. right at the one-minute stop Motoko smiles, sexy for ScarJo (WHAT ISN'T SEXY FOR HER GODDAMNIT) but very much out of character for the Major.. Kowloon-like city shots are damn amazing, I wonder if there's going to be a scene where they have to go fight through streets that are so narrow that you can only walk sideways, one person at a time, would go so well with the Kowloon theme.. although the wake-up scene from the first movie seems weird, the view from the window is out of perspective, only possible explanation: she doesn't have a window, only a screen instead of that.. more feelings on Motoko's face that's out of character (and also, works well with Japanese theatrics that often has feelings played inside instead of theatrically posted outside).. connected to something I'm not sounds bland and vague compared to the source material's take on philosophy, so thanks Hollywood and dumbed down teenagers, thanks a lot.. Motoko's lesbian take was even censored in the newer North-American VIZ editions (3 pages, if I remember well), so I'm glad the reference is in there somewhere, what if they'd actually have the virtual lesbian threesome on the boat?.. also, what if you'd have fifteen extra minutes of proper philosophical discussion and references on the DVD that's not shown to the masses because they wouldn't properly understand it all anyways?.. fuck my face, that's actually a slowed-down cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence"? great idea to use a song like that for an international re-interpretation of a Japanese franchise but maybe a song with a more gritty, analogue feel would have added a lot more feel and atmosphere than this version.. we saved you and now you say others, why do you have to put sentences in bold and evident, this is Operation Cockblock aimed out our scene.. Motoko looks out of scene when she pops up in that retake from the first movie.. never been in that big urban jungle before, though, so I wouldn't be able to say if this is fully unreal.. oh give Jess Hall a fucking Oscar for these visuals now, would you?.. did they take Batou's eye implants from Poundland, a 100 yen shop or fucking IKEA? this looks horrifyingly cheap.. okay, Aramaki only had a gun once in the Stand Alone Complex series, he's not a shooter guy, this is a huge deviation even if Beat Takeshi has an itchy triggerfinger, what is this.. more cheap Batou eyes.. I don't know who to trust, Motoko is never this vulnerable in the series or the movies, not ever, not even when she's got an arm ripped off from her body.. Batou without eye implants? does he have a promotional can of Pringles for a cock?... Motoko now goes on a spree to face her past?.. geisha with the expanding face, great reference to the opening scene of the second movie.. okay, is it Kuze in the final scene where he says everything Motoko's been given was a lie? Probably Kuze.. also, that group of wired Buddhist monks is totally a blast, very powerful image.

So, that was two minutes and twenty-six seconds in my head. Thanks for being there. Now dress up and leave.

gits_poster

AND A BIT OF A RANT WITHOUT ENOUGH COFFEE

My take on the whole issue. (I deleted three paragraphs mostly ditching Arad and the unisex use of the expression "cunt talk". Look grateful.) Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese story by a Japanese author about Japanese intelligence agency personnel living in a post-WWIII Japanese world. The GITS manga has a whole lot more tech, pol and tradecraft talk than the anime - this makes it very tight, iconic, cult-like, and also, hard to embrace for anyone who is not into this stuff. Nude geishas shooting everything that moves and then everything that does not? Super accessible. Introversion about artificial personality layering and its impact on a Maslow pyramid? Not accessible at all to most people. There, that's the Ghost In The Shell reinterpretation pitch for you. If Hollywood's doing a version, it's 1) for international waters and it's 2) for money. If you don't like it, go indie, go for the source material or make your own brainwarping cyberpunk/biopunk series on Kickstarter.

But use your brains first. Anyone who's not Japanese and tries to adapt GITS in any shape or form to the screen without thoroughly revisiting its core is prone to a fuckload of errors. (The source material is 100% rooted in Japanese culture, philosophy, technology, psychology - gaijin bastards can't even read the kanas properly and we haven't started talking about the cultural gaps and the highly different take of things in Western and Eastern cultures.) Japanese cyberpunk is miles away from its Western hemisphere counterpart and you know what, I'm actually thankful that the Hollywood industry didn't pick Tetsuo Body Hammer for a rework. (I mean, look at Westworld - given how many reviews I read about how hard-to-grasp it is, I'd be glad to link voting rights to the capability of a proper debate about AI transitioning. Behave like it's 2016.) But this is a rant and the bottom line is: don't expect too much authentic mindwarping cyberpunk stuff from anyone on top. It never worked that way. (And if you wanted proper authentic Japanese Ghost in The Shell, watch the original movie and Innocence once again. They're cultic for a reason, an anchor in time. Want an international or European interpretation? Go watch Avalon. Anything from the 2nd GIG onwards has lost a lot of its original density and coolness, so injecting new blood might not be a bad idea. Sure it won't be smarter but I'm also sure it won't be worse than the IP releases from the last few years.)

On the other hand, look at what's on the shelves now - we're having Blade Runner 2 and Ghost in The Shell on the big screen in 2017. Both promising to be "that one movie of the decade" that has a glorious all-encompassing cast that sort of serves as a carte postale of that era - Johnny Mnemonic, Repo Man: The Genetic Opera, maybe even The Matrix has a postal card on the cyberpunk shelves. It's high time we got one such movie for the 2010s.

Just please change Batou’s optics. They look cheaper than anything the Garbage Pail Kids tried to fuck in that dumpster yesterday. And also: when referring to how cyberpunk ScarJo is, just please stop referring to Her. Lucy is a great reference film but as for Her, it's damn voice acting. Get your concepts straight for once.

Yes, I stopped ranting. A bathtub full of coffee ready to inject in this great hate-spewing temple of mine. That can't wait now, can it.


planetdamage: this was 2015 (in pictures, data and lists)

Hello, cyberpunks, rivetheads, industrial-and-experimental-lovers and weird-people. This blog was more or less a wasteland in 2k15 - content was posted on Facebook or Instagram with a lot of time idly spent in front of a keyboard trying to warp up THAT BEST BASSLINE. Until I conjure up the skills of Bill Leeb (because with basslines that man is GOD), here's a summary of what happened this year.

planetdamage_2015_001_jan

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pd.LIFESIGN (2015 march)

Do you know that painting that has a monstrous, green biotrain swooshing and screaming on its tracks straight into oblivion with the Pripyat wheel in the background? It is also stiff in all the wrong places and there's an orgy in the background with people and things, I guess, but if I don't remember well, it's just glitch with a lot of flesh-coloured curves. Which is usually the definition for sex. Oh hello, by the way. I AM THAT TRAIN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaelLXKLlc8

If I stopped writing here, it would be the best blogpost I've written in a long time and I'd call it Loco Electro and make a teeshirt about it with fluorescent ink and everything. Luckily for you, I have the tendency to push things down the entropy slope. So, promise: no promises about further projects, only masturbating with links pointing to final products. I just deleted half a paragraph with promises about further projects. Life is quite an endless mixture of translations, copywriting, infographics design, book writing and making more music, which makes it extremely hard to focus on one single thing and I could have learned this from any RPG in the 90's that dual-class characters are the bane of class proficiency and triple-class characters are fodder. And as it happens, I'm desperately fighting to get better in graphic design AND music AND writing. I could play level 9000 intergalactic battles with anyone now who'd say specialization might be the best idea now. They'd be right, of course. That's the worst part of it.

And I'm also asking questions, such as: why was Jupiter Ascending such a poorly written movie and why is Person of Interest still the best cyberpunk series left standing? And True Detective Season 2 really has an orgy scene, but does it feature tentacles? And when will I properly have the creative kick to finalize the first card game we're working on? And why didn't I know that Emmon released an album last year entitled Aon? Aaaand will I be happy when the new Ghost in the Shell movie comes out?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVsQ4I4aAew

Board game nights are also a thing now and it's mostly been Eldritch Horror that kept my crew mumbling for the past month or so, because fthagn. If you have some great ideas about gothic/horror/cyberpunk board/cardgames, especially ones that are not especially mainstream, I'd love to hear about them (and here's a BGG profile for reference)! Still don't know whether it would be a smart idea to settle for Android: Netrunner - it is the living epitome of the cyberpunk LCG but I simply don't have the time for deckbuilding and the two-player limitation is not something I like working with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD2ViWd6uVw

And here's a Youth Code live vid, because Sarah just turned 30 yesterday (HAPPY MEGA MENTAL BIRTHDAY, SARAH!) and I just can't get enough of them. And that's also the very first track, Keep Falling Apart that really pulled me in and never really let me go ever since.

Funny how it turns out that you guys are still reading this and are actually hungry for more. I know that many of you can't actually contact me or life is a lot faster where you work and directly getting back at bloggers is just not something that you do in 2015 anymore, but hey, thanks for the feedback - it actually means a fucking lot to me. 2015 = VERY STRANGE, UNEVEN, UNBALANCED TIMES. Let's make the best out of that.


FROM THE DAMAGE VAULT: An interview with Jimmy Edgar [NERO Homme #2]

nerohomme2

My interview with Jimmy Edgar for fashion/altcult magazine NERO Homme #2 has finally ended up online this week. Further comments aside, go read it now.


REGULAR RECAP ROMP [2015.004]

Weekly news recap from Planet://Damage, a magnet of cyberpunk, glitch, music production and anything else that can look black and neon-tinted at the same time. Enjoy your stay.

Wounderland-post-mortem-fairy-tales.__605

Wounderland-post-mortem-fairy-tales.1__605

This week's "best find" title goes hands down to the Mothmeister duo. Their seriously thwarted taxidermy photos depict a world not unlike the one I'm working on in my novel at the moment and their photos are brilliant, both technically and aesthetically. And they're clearly disturbing, according to a lot of commenters who blame it on their fear of clowns, a phobia I'm unable to relate to, maybe because I wasn't scared of It in the first place? Still, if you're as much in awe as I am (and I hope you are), go check out the post on BoredPanda that began it all, then go and follow Mothmeister on Instagram!

Click on READ MORE for obviously more poor impulse control about music and tech!
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REGULAR RECAP ROMP [2015.002]

Weekly news recap from Planet://Damage, a magnet of cyberpunk, glitch, music production and anything else that can look black and neon-tinted at the same time. Enjoy your stay.

motoko_scarlett

Scarlett Johansson is reported to play Motoko Kusanagi in DreamWorks' live-action reinterpretation of GHOST IN THE SHELL and boy, did that raise an army of haters on the cyberpunk and anime boards. I remember one similar occasion from a few years back, when there were talks of Hayden Christensen playing Case in the Neuromancer movie (which is supposed to be directed by Vincenzo Natali and insiders have been really silent about that one) and the vocal minorify of the interwebs went berzerk ballistic on his ass. Ramifications for that aside, it's interesting to see how anime stereotypes and gender conditioning gets in the way for people to actually be able to imagine how Johansson could very well do the Major. One of last year's best movie experiences for me was clearly UNDER THE SKIN, a film of Kubrickesque dark chemistry with a hearty vat of WTF. If she could pull THAT off, Kusanagi's going to be a relatively easy ride. Check this Variety source with a lot of namedropping.

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this was 2014: dreams in pockets

i have a hyper-velocity religion metric rack
i caught the centre bullet first
and i wonder what i'm going through

It's been a blink of a blind eye, 2014. I've succumbed to the whole fiftyfiftyish conundrum this year: [there's a good side to bad and a bad side to good to equalish amounts, so all is good at the end]. Regardless, this year's been 15% good, 85% bad and the whole conundrum can go fuck itself, bidding it kthxbai with the last days of 2k14. Even wording this makes me feel... strange. My year in London made me realize quite fast that even though in Hungary we are well used to drama blogging, trauma news and catastrophy awareness, that's less the case, stabbing westwards - everyone has someone who's dying and noone puts it in the shopwindow. So I really sat down, shrink theory and all, to count the things that were good (good first!) and bad - yeah, it was still a bad year. Which makes the good points stronger. And makes me want to ditch the half-assed waiting even more and launch the products and projects we've been brainstorming in times of woe, the tracks I was composing at post-3am insomnia bubbles, the blog posts I've never posted, the slam poetry drafts that ended up in the strangest mailboxes on the strangest hilltops. (Yes, I can hear you reaching out and listening.)

Q3-Q4 was something I can easily call a period of the dark night of the soul, with all its occult implications and whatnot but it sounds needlessly dramatic so I opened up my mega folder of EBM, industrial and new beat to find a nineties' release title that fits this year. I really wanted to stick to Skinny Puppy releases (after their Eye Vs Spy tour with Front Line Assembly, Haujobb and Youth Code I can only hope they'll repeat that in Europe in 2015!) but Too Dark Park and Last Rights or even Inquisition sounded way too catastrophe-ridden.. so I stuck with Dreams in Pockets, an EP by Insekt, from 1993. Those dreams might even be hatching, as we speak.

KLING KLANG

Better known as "work". My amazing friend TheLastLaugh Julie is behind this wording: and this is a very vocal thank-you to her that she helped me fight through the very fucking worst weeks of this year. I owe you a lot for that and everything else, Jules ;)

  • Wrote a new book, it's non-fiction and it needs some extra insight and addition from others, but it's mostly ready. 2015 Q1 will be about wrapping that up and either finding a publisher or releasing it independently (on Amazon, most probably.. do you guys have any ideas, insight or experience re:self-publishing?). A note to all my friends on this globe and beyond: it's in English! Those of you on Instagram: you might have seen a few thumbnails already!
  • My first novel is still in synopsis form - but it's gotten a lot more wicked since I turned my ideas into plot summary words this January. All the trauma experiences I had this year (I have more lives than a feline) gave me a great idea and mindset for the first chapter. Yes, it's going to be a head-on mindfuck, yes it's also related to new technology and it's also related to ancient tech we still haven't figured out how to use decently (and no I'm not talking about organic anal bleach here). Stay tuned for more.
  • Had a number of lectures and talks this year: re-visited International Business School Budapest to teach youngsters about social media, PR pitfalls and digital marketing; talked about music profiling at a Virus event hosted by Kati Oltai and properly mindwarped some five hundred devs about the future of mobile tech at HWSW!App - and the list goes on.
  • I'm NDA'd about a lot of things I did this year - but they mostly had to do with infographics and scripts. I'll let you guys know more once we get greenlit for one of the projects that we especially liked working on. (We've been expecting that email in December, guess we have to wait some more.)

hwsw01

Photo: HWSW.

capa02

Photo: @aorcsik.

MUSIC

Music was probably the best thing that happened to me this year. I stopped writing music in 1997 and that was one of the worst decisions I made that promptly started a domino of many, much more worse decisions. So I just decided that all the time I spent procrastinating with social media, gaming and whatever else could be put to proper use with turning off the internet and going back to mad audio knob-fiddling! Best times ever.

  • Bought RENOISE and got a M-Audio Oxygen 49 controller and started jotting down ideas. Renoise is goddamn amazing! When I was making tracks back in the days, I mostly used FastTracker, so getting back to a very similar workflow and arrangement is something that appeals to me a lot. Also, cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy, Download and SubCon uses and endorses Renoise, so what could really go wrong?
  • I have a lot of ideas and patterns and half-songs (stored in either Renoise or CAUSTIC, another great music making software, not as complex as Renoise but infinitely fun, especially its modular synth module!) Those on Instagram: a couple of 15-sec blips are posted there and you might notice that I love arps a lot.
  • The first track I made this year is entitled GLITCH BABY GO, a complete rework of Syskon from quite a few years back. My musician friends were totally supportive and gave me great feedback - thank you Zoog/Angelspit, Istvan from FA4S, Lhasa Mencur, Emke/Black Nail Cabaret and all you other soundmakers, you know who you are!

  • A remix is in the making and another remix for a 2015 release is being talked about. Watch this space for more strangeness!

glitchbabygo-1

PERSONAL

Total disaster, a trainwreck. I might happily add, though, that I really have the life expectancy of a whole ballroom of cats. If I have any guardian angels, chances are, they're very, very drunk by this time of year. Not really wanting to add specifics. Move on, everyone. Oh yeah, one more thing to add: this year's SHE PAST AWAY and DEATH IN JUNE gigs were great! Also Björk's Biophilia live screenings were touching beyond words. Yep, we went to see it twice with the amazing Brigiri. And now I want to buy hang drums.

xwordpuzzle

Do I get an achievement for ending up in a crossword puzzle? (Thx, Kolos, I owe you one for this :))

emke_k

Funny how I always end up not having photos about me and my friends together (or myself), so I'm really happy to have this - straightening the LDN/BUD axis a bit with Emke and K. Mostly talking about Arturia, Nordleads and mike sensitivities, if I remember right. AND Star Wars.

laptop

Yeah, still hiding circuitry under slabs of colored paper.

onosendai

And that's a new creative corner. Without the tee. Usually.

inspirationboard

And something of an inspiration board that I quickly compiled from all the flyers and cards I found while figuring out where I might have put my notes from a few years ago. Nope, didn't find it, but this one totally made the search worthwhile.

labdeco

People are usually startled when they see this. The lodge has mostly been closed this year so the few people who have actually seen this were... mostly baffled. Good, but completely beside the point.

BEST MUSIC THIS YEAR?

Expect a post about this super soon: Angelspit, Black Nail Cabaret, Biosphere, The Future Sound of London or Perturbator released some amazing music this year and they deserve your attention and hard-earned YouTube money. If it's not this year, it's early next year. Beware! Also, some terrific S13 mixes to end up in my ears this year!

All the more fun to look forward to in 2015, hopefully with less woe, goofing off and leaving good ideas unfinished. Not really a fan of making new-year's-promises but if I can keep up these three, gods save you all, hahaha. Thanks to all the lovely friends, acquaintances and the beautiful people for keeping the pumps working.

HUMANMEAT IS NEONGREEN, 2015 IS HAVOK.

damage_a


DAMAGE CAPTURE FILE 03: a tree in the shape of WTF [cyberpunk, glitch and counterculture]

Hello. Etape 3 for Capture File: a coffeebreakful voyeurism into cultural products of cyberpunk, futurepresent, glitch culture and whatnot, every Friday from now on in the eurozone. This week: @dawe_'s idea of what it can be like in my head nowadays in the form of a Japanese abstract/glitch video (above, HiDM2_9 by Japanese visual cacophony masters BRDG), followed by stuff like: a possible reason for the Neuromancer movie's delay, news about the Blade Runner 2 script, loads of music finds and some music production links as well. If you have anything to add, share or comment, do so in the comments or drop me a mail to info@planedamage.com. And, yeah, have a great weekend.

BALLISTIC AUDIO LOOT:

My recent ballistic audio loot is pretty much governed by a refueled interest to write music again. I was into *FastTracker 2.08 a lot at the end of the nineties (you can check some of *my stuff I've uploaded to Soundcloud), a bit of *Rebirth.. and after reacting quite badly to a Hungarian music producer's reponse (who thought that you can only make music with real gear, not softsynths... a year later Yonderboi's LP came out, all done on a single PC... fate is apparently not without a sense of irony) I finished writing music. Time to re-evaluate. So I'm pretty much motivated by lots of oldschool stuff at the moment. (Or I'm just getting old and nostalgic, could be either at this point.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0W8rPPbelI

VANDALAZE's new EP "Dog Jerk" is something I've listened to a lot on Bandcamp recently.. love the cheesy 80s sound with the industrialish/cyberpunkish overtones Cory flavours his tracks with - combine that with the Dog Jerk music video's look that clearly has a lot in common with early MTV days, it\s just a must-have. Review will be coming up soon on it, until that, *grab this EP from slimetrax.bandcamp!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgPHVTDjbFA

Synthwave, outrun electro, retro electro or however you call it, a heartfelt return to the 80's pop/synth sound is making a comeback now and I've been listening around for powerful artists.. if you want to take a quick bite, *PERTURBATOR is the guy you'll need. Amazing production quality, great tracks, very coherent production, mind-blowing atmosphere. His recent new album Dangerous Days is a further proof of godlike qualities. If you want to grab more synthwave stuff, try *CARPENTER BRUT or *VOGEL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5dHl2kDyh4

There's always room on my Nexus for soothing ambients. Pete Namlook & Mixmaster Morris' project DREAMFISH is something I don't delete from my music-storing devices ever, but here's a close contender, the first track off the 2011 album "Someone Gave Me Religion" by Arnaud Rebotini (of the Black Strobe fame). Delete the ambient channel from GTA IV and play this in your car on repeat! (As a subtle side effect, it's gonna rain. Always.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STcVIPvr6lE

I have a lot of demoscene music in my queue, but this one should be the very first, a mixtape of Amiga tracks with a whole lot of beat to them... and be prepared for some great demoscene materials in the upcoming Capture Files!

MOVIE NEWS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUwxc8LmY5k

Opinions on AUTOMATA, the latest android-craze movie featuring Antonio Banderas went (and are still going) from fiery to icy.. personally I would really love to see a different and realistic take on AI portrayal, without big budget movie clichés, as a form of compromising for a wider audience. The possibility is there but I won't say anything until more materials emerge... shown from October 10th in the USA. And as for other news:

  • Minority Report TV show reportedly in development: "The director is reportedly working to turn his classic sci-fi film into a television show, which would be produced by his company Amblin Entertainment. Amblin is reportedly looking toward Max Borenstein, writer of this year's Godzilla, to write and create the series — it isn't clear if Borenstein has signed on just yet, but he has been thanking people who congratulate him on Twitter.
  • Peter Hoffman Can't Escape Prosecution Over Film Tax Credit Fraud: Hoffman, who is an executive producer on the upcoming $60 million budgeted Neuromancer, is known as an important middleman between Louisiana tax breaks and film companies. The case figures to be closely watched by insiders.
  • Blade Runner 2 script finished and "damn good" according to Ridley Scott: The story will bring back Harrison Ford, who starred in the 1982 film as one of the eponymous replicant hunters. Scott says that Ford's character is "a survivor after all these years," which, certainly, is a curious fact in and of itself given the ambiguous ending of certain cuts of the film.

MUSIC TO LOOK OUT FOR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6GpiJbFzSk

*THE FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON, one of my favourite projects of all time, returns with Environment Five, an album that contains 13 all-new tracks that were composed in the first half of 2014! It's a concept album focusing on "the space / time / dimension that exists when we die". That's gonna be some real interesting bardo work when this gets released on September 15th!

Texan splatter industrial gods *MENTALLO & THE FIXER release the 3CD pack `*Zothera` on Alfa Matrix this autumn. Two CDs contain their seminal albums Revelations 23 and Where Angels Fear to Tread, whereas the third CD entitled Apocrypha would contain rarities, remixes and the like. Release: Sep 26th, expect a review a lot sooner!

New-wave EBM powerhouse duo *YOUTH CODE are about to punch us all in the face with their new EP "A Place to Stand" that comes to us sooner than a month via *Dais. Pitchfork *shared a track off the new LP (embedded on top) - is that an indication as to where the new LP is headed? Release: Sep 23th!

*Tympanik Audio's always amazingly cerebral compilation Emerging Organisms just got to its fifth etape. Contains stuff from a whole generation of great new artists, from Zinovia to Idlefon, from Tangent to Ocoeur... release: Oct 7th!

STUFF THAT WILL SEND YOU REELING:

http://vimeo.com/102919605

Mike Winkelmann aka *beeple. His stuff came to me on half a dozen platforms in a week or so, so I have to share his greatness with you: his site's *here and one of the best sites this year, The Creators Project, recently released *this post about him.

These are "audio life forms", 3D objects that react to bird sounds in a droolingly glitchy matter. Amazing. Visualizing is done by Andy Thomas who shared a lot more from his amazing work *on his site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGkfEZk4t1M

cEvin Key of *Skinny Puppy telling great stuff about the bass grandiosity of *SubPac and the not so great stuff about how touring can turn your ears into flipflops.

Facial projection mapping. I got this from literally everyone, a bit sad that I ended up sharing this with you a lot later.

MUSIC PRODUCTION LINKS
A buddy of mine started writing music in *FRACT OSC (which is a game about returning sound into a silent world and also about setting up a sequencer and some oscillators in the meanwhile) and I'm busy making an ambient tracks with *Caustic's Modular synth but I fail every time because the loop I made sounds so good I just put it on repeat while I'm working on my new book and then two hours later I realize I didn't tweak a single knob. Caustic's actually free for PC, so feel free to download it and have a go, the *YouTube tutorials are AMAZING.

GM_QUADRANT_WS1

It's one thing that the *Glitchmachines site is full of amazing high-res wallpapers (they're not categorized as wallpapers per se, but it's hard not to use them as wallpapers when they lok this good) but they also have a HUGE batch of free sample packs (around 1.5 gigs altogether) and also two great plugins, one for buffer effect, the other one's for glitch delay. I'm weeping now, obviously.


pd.LIFESIGN [2014 march]

straying not for the lesser sentiment of folly but for the greater sentiment of dereliction, someplace else this is a tree in the shape of hatred

Three months of unevenly distributed focus is what happened. Sometimes I drank a coffee and then went out to the kitchen to make another one and I didn't fully realize a day passed and I hadn't noticed. Living on borrowed Tumblr attention deficit time. There were weeks of toothache, I remember that, because I now know the map of street samurai grey clinics who do things in your mouth that you don't want to fully remember. On other weeks projects flourished and exams were passed gloriously, like driving theory and gun & rifle theory and practice, because fuck you that's why. Post-thirtyish fear of closure, typical of our generation. Then there were long weeks when I couldn't write and that meant trouble (Zinta was the first to call me trouble and she was SO right about that) because three books mean a lot of stress if two of them need serious worldbuilding. So I started writing a fourth one because I could easily do 20 pages a day about abstract visuals. Quite a tricky period to wade through, waist deep in bad timing and worse circumstances but things just never give themselves easily, do they.

But do I fucking hate telling you all my projects are in progress, so at least one book's coming out by Q3. Hopefully two altogether by the end of the year but after all the challenges that seem to end up on my windshield... let me digress.


Kopi luwak is off my bucket list. Comes via cold drip with a faint fruity touch and I might even think it's overhyped. Italian triple ristretto is still Hiroshima strength for the mind.


#whatsinmybag - nowadays with a whole lot more painkillers


Don't even ask.


Took up Yang style taiji after long years of hiatus and as it's springtime, my original Sinred is out from the freemasonic shed - this was taken during an urban tour: this was the place where I loved for one and a half decades and more importantly, this is the place where ld50.hu was conceived, born and raised.

Which inevitably leads us to my next point, which is...


AD RIPOFF: blackphone / else mobile

Politically correct rephrasing would go for inspiration or idea osmosis but I'm sick to the guts with polcorrect even after a year of London. So, my friend Dawe_ (who happened to hand over the first draft translation of my debut book yesterday) sent me this video just a few minutes ago about an Android phone called BLACKPHONE which, according to promised details, could be Snowden's favourite phone if it comes to its privacy settings. Here's the vid. Watch it. I'll tell you what my problems are after the break.


Introduction to Blackphone from BLACKPHONE on Vimeo.

So, my problem is that I know where this could have come from and there's a strong chance it did. Five years ago The Visionare produced an image video for this company called ELSE MOBILE and the music was done by one of my favourite musicians ever, Ben Lukas Boysen aka HECQ. Copy's VERY similar, protagonist character type very similar, AR-enriched shots very similar.

What's your take on this?

If you want a good ad, go for this instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtqfT6gPygU

UPDATE 1
The Blackphone ad in question has been removed. Here's a new one for you. Visually different, copywise it still strikes a few familiar chords but then again, what doesn't?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WczXWirN9oo


DAMAGE REPORT: szindrómára stockholm

planetdamage-2013

" Közmegegyezésre épülő hallucináció, melyet minden országban törvényes felhasználók milliárdjai tapasztalnak meg naponta, egészen a számtani alapfogalmakat tanuló gyermekekig… Az emberi világrendszer összes számítógépének tárolóiból származó adatok grafikus megjelenítése. Hihetetlen összetettség. Az elme nem-terébe nyújtózó fényvonalak, adatgalaxisok és adatcsillagzatok. Mint a távolodó városi fények…"
(William Gibson: Neurománc)

0, HOMMAGE

Eredetileg, tiszteletadásként is, csehtamásos-bereményis stílgyakban terítettem volna a kis- és nagy- elé, hogy mit tett velem az internet, f-moll, disz-moll, ezt tetted velem, irén, szomorú madár a dashboard tetején, hideg a kávé, benne olvadt koponyás cukorkanál, mint a kibaszott szerelmünk meg a daguerrotípia, irén, kétezerhétszáz olvasatlan levél, egyiktől sem könnyebb a bőrönd, sem a lélek november elsején, spamekből sajog a lelkem, arad-tizenhárom EBM a dashboard tetején, írd meg nekem, irén, kredencen pohár víz, milyen finom, tüttürűrü, tüttürűrü. Saccperre ilyen egy szocmédia (szocháló, szocház) előtt hajnaligragadó tinédzser, majd egyetemista, majd munkanélküli (javítsd, állásnélküli) estéje, lejtője, élete - színre, formára és szagra

meg az ártatlanság idő előtti nettóplusz elvesztése; amiről hallani sem akartam, azt még meg is mutatják, majd persze újra meg is nézem saját akaratból (ez a legrosszabb, hol az alufóliasisak), majd lájkolom, hogy el ne felejtsem továbbküldeni, persze napi harminc (háromszáz) ilyen után kafkai a közöny. A KÖZÖNY. Aztán ráfrissítek a dashre, a readerre, a glassra, az életemre. Megint.

Szóval:
az internet, mint a neon horizontot unottan bámuló, energiaitaltól és ingertúltengéstől fásult, felhőkarcoló szélén ülő koravén tinédzser popkulturális metaforája (és a szerző portréja), avagy miért perelném be az internetet, ha nem lenne Stockholm-szindrómám, ez egy új cím, én adtam ennek.

internet_gondolkodas_veszelszki
A [szindrómára stockholm] az Eötvös Kiadó 2013 decemberében megjelenő, Veszelszki Ágnes által szerkesztett A világhálóba keveredett ember című tanulmánykötetben jelenik meg. Jelent meg. Fog megjelenni. Idő sem létezik, miért küzdesz egyáltalán.

A szöveg a szerkesztő előzetes engedélyével szerepel itt - a kötetben szereplő változat némi stilisztikai változtatást tartalmazhat. Kávé sincs bennem, nem értem, miért küzdök egyáltalán.

MEGKATTINTOD.
A tanulmánykötet Facebook-oldala.
Könyvajánló, tartalomjegyzék.

KÖNYVBEMUTATÓ.
A bálnacet szemében (Jónás Kézműves Sörház, Fővám tér 11-12), december 16-án, este hattól. Facebook event itt.

Ez volt a kötelező önreklám, megyünk tovább.
Ja amúgy gyertek könyvbemutatóra, dedikálok bármit bárkinek bárhova, bocs, ha becsúszik pár sigil.
Proj on.

1, A MEMÓRIÁD MEG EGY KITŰZŐ (AZ EXOMEMÓRIA DISZKRÉT BÁJAI)

"Az okos mindent tud, a még okosabb meg tudja, hogy hol kell keresni" - a hetente rendszerszerűen másnak tulajdonított mondás 2k13-ra jobban bevésődött a fiatal generációnak, mint a jaigensálsapka. Éppen tegnap veszítettem jelentős összeget a még névtelen, de az elmúlt hónapokban egyre gyakoribb antijátékon: az fizeti az asztaltársaság teljes fogyasztását, aki először veszi elő a zsebéből (vagy az asztal közepére feltornyozott kupacból) a telefonját, mi meg éppen nem tudtuk, ki festette a mellettünk ékeskedő festményt, de ott a szignó, keressünk rá a… snitt, kétségbeesetten keresem a főpincér szemét, színváltoztatom az íriszemet, hátha a kedvezmény... hát nem.

A gadget-kodependencia (a 24/7 online-kodependencia, a szinte kötelező érvényű örök standby, a párna mellől alig kiforduló első reggeli Gmail-, Facebook-, Twitter- és Instagram-check, a lutraalbum halász-vadász ösztönét meglovagoló Foursquare-t a maga gamificationjével már hadd ne említsem), az EU- és startup-pénznyelők éppen lefutott buzzwordje, a cloud, a blogegyszerűen indítható wikik egymásra tornyozódó rétegei a nagy néprétegek számára (elől) kidobták a lexikális tudást az ablakon és még utána is köptek egyet - az információbeszerzés és -feldolgozás (és mint olyan, a 21. század komplett szociális és üzleti élete) teljességét mostantól az energiaszektor tartja sakkban (a Snowden-botrány így is új felvonást hozott az information age végére, ha nem éppen annak végjátékát), legjobb esetben is dinamót hajthatunk, ha lemerül az elem annak bármelyik értelmében, akkor az internet addig nem él, amíg nem helyezzük át új platformra mind az információtárolást, mind annak fenntartását. Kíváncsian várom a véráramból táplálkozó iPhone, majd router koncepcióját, csak hogy az FMCG-szektor bevételéhez is hozzájárulhassak valamelyest.

A mandzsettagomb helyén virító exomemória kényelmetlenül kényelmes fogalmával majd az oktatásügy vívhat evolúciós küzdelmet. Nem mintha a barlangrajzoktól kezdve a nagykönyvtárakig nem beszélhetnénk ugyanúgy exomemóriákról, de a hozzáférési sebesség és adatsűrűség valahol elmossa az emberek agyában a tényt, hogy a legtöbbjére azért emlékezni sem ártana. Két generációval később kellemetlenebb és időszerűbb lesz ezt visszaolvasnunk. Amúgy.

INTERMEZZO

Tegnap (igen, törzshely) hallottam egy viccet: hogyan ismerhetsz meg egy embert a legjobban? Úgy, hogy lemásolod. Túl gyorsan jöttünk rá, hogy ez igazából nem vicc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7drBeuxX814

2, PERSZE HOGY PARALÍZIS, PERSZE HOGY ADHD

Poszt-hidegháborús kémfilmekben megnyitott vízcsap mellett adják le az igazi titkokat: a poloskák ugyanis képtelenek kiszűrni a fehér zajként folyó csapvíz mögül az emberi hangot. (A barna mögül sem, munkahelyre ajánlom, persze a fizetésemelési ajánlatot se hallod meg, de hát valamit valamiért.) Pont ilyen a web is, na még egy linket, na még csak a harminc megnyitott tabot, a keleti parton most ébrednek fel és most posztolják ki a reggeli kávé mellett az új linkeket, akkor azt még megvárom. Ja hogy már hajnal van. Akkor már nem is alszok. Alszom. De ezt még meg kell néznem a neten, hogy hogy írják helyesen. Mi az hogy Grétsy, mi az hogy Chomsky, mitől komparatív nyelvészet, mi az hogy okkult lingvisztika, miért John Dee, biztos szabadkőművesek. A borgesi Aleph tökéletes paralízist kalapál az arcom közepébe, kapkodást vagy éppen túlzott, óráig is elnyúló előzetes mérlegelést, még utánanézek a flownak, ahogy zuhan a toronyház tetejéről.

Tabok számában, inboxban felgyűlt olvasatlanban (értsd, hasznosszennyes) kvantált fogalom az ADHD, amit hiába gyógyszerezne a DSM-IV-TR, diagnózisa öröktéves: nincs krónikus figyelemhiányosság a gyerekeknél, ők hardkódolva érkeznek ezzel, nálunk sincs, csak mindig van még valamit csinálni, így veszíti el a világ lassan az érdeklődést a szex iránt is (ilyen azért soha ne történjen meg), mindent láttunk már, mindent megcsináltunk, mindig van továbbhorgolni az extrémet kétszer is, a chan-gag-tumblr hármas biztos kézzel építi a wtflandet, epilepszia színű passportom lesz oda, ha olyan koncepciózus iratokat nyomtatnak majd nekem, mint amilyet a laibachista NSK adott.

Épp ezek miatt unalmas (annyira 2012, annyira huszadik századi, annyira OLD) minden, a Folyamat cerebrálisra vált és kiteljesedik a Weltschmerz igazi értelme: a test sosem képes meghaladni a szellem igényeit, legfeljebb majd akkor, amikor az internetszolgáltatók pincéiben nyitott megaillegál szexklubokban full body suitok, fétis- és orgiaszoftverek lesznek. (Jahogy vannak, valóságnak hívják és az is egy hagymahéj. Milyen meta.) Remekbeszabott konzumerista zárványpontok és zombibuborékok lettünk, no way out no way out no fucking way out, kivéve, ha kiírjuk magunkat a nagynarratívából, a britek már persze tesznek arról is, hogy ilyen ne történhessen meg, a pornó mellett az okkult is tiltott tartalomnak számít majd hamarosan a szolgáltatóknál, így múlik el a világ dicsősége mellett Blake, Yeats és Conan Doyle is.

3, LOCAL IS THE NEW GLOBAL

"Csak olyan embernek vagyok hajlandó hinni, aki egy kilométeren belül él", mondja egy éppen Ázsiát járó barátom. A kábelmodem mellől magát szopadék göndörhajú modellnek kiadó párhónapos mexikói kölyökkutya ijesztő reality checkje ugyanolyan aktuális, mint 25 éve: fizikai, kézzelfogható, triplecheckelhető bizonyíték kell ahhoz, hogy valami tényleg igaz legyen, a kávé jó, a kávé rossz, a kenyér rákot okoz, mégsem, hadd maradjak meg az egészségtelen, de boldog halálnál inkább annak minden tudatlanságával felvértezve. A paranoia (vagy bullshit detector, BSD, hogy legyen még egy hitelességet sugárzó anagramma) örökre belém égett, józanparasztiésszel és médiatapasztalattal vegyesen - randira, állásinterjúra, újemberhez több körös háttércheck kell, magyar cikkhez külföldi forrást kell keresni, hogy hol a félrefordítás vagy a kihagyás, külföldi cikknél kulcsszavakat, hogy hol az ellenoldal, majd az egészet (mindent, bármit) urbanlegend- és hoax-szűrőkön, háziasszonyok pletykákkal megszórt hosszas telefonbeszélgetéssel is fogyaszthatják.

A hírcímek befektetőknek szánt kattintásgenerátorok, az investigative journalism bozóttűzön keresztüli menekülés (note: mindig is az volt), inkább hadd lássam, hogy mi történik a környékemen, abban jobban megbízom. Hinni persze kell valamiben, mindig kell valamiben és mindig kell valaminek, de én inkább meghallgatnék mindenkit és nem hinnék el senkinek semmit. Olykor, kávé nélkül magamnak sem. (Olykor, kávé nélkül remek reality show alapanyag lennék, a média a maya sokadik rétegét fekteti elém, én pedig egyre újabb és újabb christophernolani szintekre ébrednék fel a sokadik képzelt valóságban.)

A paranoia aztán az univerzum narratív gépezetében is megül, a darkwebből előkapart, izgalmasabbnál izgalmasabb és szubverzívnél is szubverzívebb cikkek felett ülök, hogy mindez igaz vagy szándékosan plántált, gondosan kicsiszolt hazugság, hogy a hozzám hasonlóakat megvezessék? A Question Everything globális, vicsorgó tépőfogas paranoiára bíztat minket a folyamatos társadalmi-gazdasági-politikai csatornázás és terelgetés miatt, így kezdett el az összes szubverzív barát kényszeresen sportolni és hobbizni harminc közelében és felette, így hal ki a láng, így múlunk ki mi is csendesen, hegymászó-biztonságikötések, DIY-csavartrükkök és házi receptek végtelen halmai között.

4, GEVULOT

Aztán jött a fantomcsörgés és a fiktív értesítők bal zsebben haldokló érzete, a mai napig szeretném azt hinni, hogy a bal combom ágyékmagasságban külön tudatra ébredt és jelez, ha munkaemailem jött vagy bringázni hívnak, aztán persze lehet hogy csak öregszem, de örülnék, ha nem. Az ilyen internetérzék jó százaléka mintakövetés, akár rá is érezhetnék tudat alatt, hogy mikor jönnek leveleim, de a Zeitgeist új gondolkodást követel meg tőlünk, új sebességet, új reakcióidőt, új kommunikációt, új nyelvet, új érzékeink ugyan miért ne alakulhatnának ki, gondolja Stirlitz. Hannu Rajaniemi újvonalas scifije, a The Quantum Thief גְּבוּלוֹת névre hallgató fogalma pont ilyen: a gevulot egyszerre technológia, hatodik (vagy sokadik) érzék és privacy-alapú védőmechanizmus: ezzel lehet emlékezni, hozzáférni az exomemóriához (mint tudásbázishoz, mint kollektív tudatossághoz) vagy az egyes találkozók privacyjét és nyíltságát szabályozni. A mintakövetők, nemzetvédelmi adatelemzők és anomáliaként élő tinédzserek scifikben létező, szinesztéziáig menő adatérzékelése valóságért kiált.

5, KTHXBAI

Úgyhogy enyhén luddita blues, az internet nélkül egy évig nemcsak létezni, de élni is tudó Paul Millert irigylem, értékválság is volt, amikor félre kellett ütnöm a hírportálos ajánlatot, hogy meddig vagyok képes utánozni az internetnélküliség bódhiszattváját, semeddig, bringán is csak azért nem netezek, mert vagy erősebb a maslowi túlélőreflex, vagy megint bekanyarodtam a hattizenhetes rakpartos lány mögé. Sikerélményt akarok és két kardvágásból győztes ütközetet, az internetek meg egy pavlovi gombbal megadják nekem, az agyam jutalomközpontjai karácsonyfaként világítanak, ha van áram, főként, hogy alapvető emberi jog lett az elme áramvonalas, kandírozott mandarinzselé színű tápláléka, jó kis szimbiózis lett ez, irén, sildessapkás amerikai turista gonosz énem, csak zabál, csak zabál, nekem csak a kredencszéli víz jut, az is langyos már, az internet meg széttárja az ölét, túl sok neme van, mind világít.


pd.LIFESIGN [2013 november]

Two months since the last lifesign blip, so hi and everything. Got a few pictures for you from a Tuesday talk I held at an ELTE university event about "Future Shock by way of Toffler and Rushkoff interspersed with my overtly chaotic take on anything". For those of you who've attended: that chain of associations was a hydra, I know! Thanks for keeping the pace, the faith, the eyes in those sockets.

Writer Viktor Kubiszyn and le moi at the ELTE event. Photo by the lovely Panka Jancso.

A twin from the Land of Meta: this is how a heartwarming polaroidproof of ROCK gets to be made (Top one by me, bottom one by Sajtos.) Find more pics here at ELTE Online.

ON ANOTHER NOTE
Kreativ.hu published their list of the 25 Most Creative Hungarians in 2013 - I'm apparently one of them. That's quite an honour being vouched in to a talented company of creators, but then again, these people at Kreativ haven't seen me in the morning hours without coffee. Heh heh. Heh. Hhhhrhh. So yeah, mag's just out of the printer's and that's really a quick shot (the image photo was shot by Balazs Kassai), online version should be up soonish! ROCK!

MORE NOTES OF ROCK
Oh. For those of you who asked me why I fell off the face of the webs of the inter - sorry for not sploshing a diarrhea of links over you. I'm working on two books simultaneously with visible/public results or pimpage in 2014 - if everyone sticks to their deadlines and the gods think it's time for ROCK EVALUATION, of course. Apart from that, life's a kipu of trickery, great moments, bad juju and a weird soap opera. And great music. Watch this space for more.

Oh, and I'm a level 65 ele arrow ranger in Path of Exile. I think it says it all.

Always,
damage_a


New info on NEUROMANCER: THE MOVIE - teaser imminent, script finished a long time ago

afm2012d

SCRIPT
Vincenzo Natali, the actual director incarnate to helm William Gibson's visionary cyberpunk work has launched his horror movie Haunter. The exclusive Crave Online interview with him also sheds some light on his involvement and the state of the script. If you're interested, head over to Crave for more intel on Haunter, Splice and a lot more!

What’s the latest progress on Neuromancer?

It continues. It seems to be indomitable. It’s a long haul, like all good things and all things like it that are audacious and challenging. It’s not on the fast track but it’s very much alive and I’m hopeful.

How close do you think the script is to a final draft?

Oh, the script has been ready for years. That’s not the holdup. The challenging part of this is putting the money together. It’s big movie.

So you cracked the script?

I think I have, yes. Strangely, that wasn’t the hard part. I benefited, first of all, from developing the script very much with the influence of William Gibson, which was tremendously helpful. Then I also had, frankly, the benefit of looking at all the versions previous to mine and learning from their mistakes. I had a lot of beta testing before I went in and did my version. Actually, I’m quite faithful to the book. I basically went back to the book and made some alterations to contemporize it but it’s in there. The book is very dense, but the trick is just kind of knowing what strands to follow. In fact, it wasn’t all that difficult.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p0jmewhXeU

TEASER REEL

Seven Arts Entertainment, according to their press release on Yahoo, is going to screen a four-minutes long teaser reel at the American Film Market 2013 (starting on November 8th, which luckily coincides with the debut of Almost Human, a cyberpunkish TV series that seems to be quite the rehash of the series Total Recall 2070 that noone seems to remember.) Read the complete press release here.

At the upcoming American Film Market, the Company will introduce a four-minute teaser reel for its upcoming production "Neuromancer", created by the renowned previsualization house The Third Floor, Inc. ("Third Floor").
CEO Kate Hoffman stated, "I am thrilled that Seven Arts' association with Tony Lytle has got off to such a great start and have every confidence in continued success going forward. We are also very excited by the Third Floor previsualization which we believe will progress the production of our film based on the legendary science fiction novel "Neuromancer"."

All in all, ladies and gents, this November seems to fulfill quite a promise - hold on to your neon coffeemugs and retinas until the blast.

If you're interested about more intel about the movie adaptation of the seminal cyberpunk novel, check out these links, also brought to you by planetdamage.com:


planetdamage: lifesign, 2013 september

Relocated to Budapest last week, packages and bike arrived surprisingly intact (if you ever need BUD-LDN / LDN-BUD package transport, contact Meliza:London). Numerous project meetings, reading up on band biographies and UI design. Fighting procrastination and webfloating. Yes, this is a new word. Mostly listening to amazing new finds such as Youth Code, Cold Cave, Dead When I Found Her or numerous 242 side projects such as Holy Gang, Modern Cubism or MORF. Apparently Clock DVA released a new album as well entitled Post-Sign. Blog/site restart after un/successful reacclimatization. If you want good content, subscribe to my Facebook feed, if you want personal (fucking stalkers), go to Instagram. Or drop me an email instead, I tend to like those.

Nothing is True, Everything's Permitted.


PERSONAL: the last loot from london

And this morning marks the arrival of my last Amazon order, goddamnit, Plane tickets bought, countdown is now officially on, boxing at 90%, deadline in 5 hours for something amazing.


planetdamage: lifesign, 2013 august

UPDATE: So yeah, it really might be 2013 and not 2012. That just explains the whole London limbo phenomenon in greater detail. Thanks, @honeymooncroon, appreciate the reality check :)

Relocating to Budapest from London in... two days? Two weeks? It was great and eventful and eye-opening in loads of ways, met lovely and amazing people and most of my recollections of events, realizations and cultural deep structure diving are just too weird to describe. But I'm waving goodbye to all of it and moving onwards. Even this relocation is temporary, everything is. (So, umm, is temporariness temporary? there's a black loop to entangle.) Most of the stuff (apart from The Original Sinred) that I need to get moved is books, a whole lot of them, most of them coming from Magma Books, Forbidden Planet and Oxfams scattered throughout North London. And I'm afraid I'll have to order a few more before I'm really leaving, like Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music, Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen and Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible and Fried: My Life as a Revolting Cock. Great title, by the way.

Camera 360

Camera 360

As for everything else: the Damage Report translation is a lumbering beast but it's coming - no release dates yet, though. That book might need a decent overhaul and that requires some time. Also: whatever I've said about The Dose so far will not happen - the deal we've done this January got defaulted horridly. All the concepts and ideas that were grown during the production period will be shifted to a new project. There are a couple of infographics and publication ideas along the way - watch this space for more.

Camera 360

Camera 360

If I'm not dead, detained, desecrated or abducted to a higher dimension, I'll see you guys in September. Until that - expect the occasional info fragments and links. Wish I could reveal more but I just can't yet. Have a great summer or whatever else you're having in August/September. Damage out.


BOOKMARKS FOR 2013-08-03: the world's tallest slum, South African EDM, chemicals in rich people's bodies & Second Reality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1p9jlQUW0k

Welcome to the world's tallest slum: poverty-ridden Venezuela's Tower of David. Squatters took over this very unfinished 45-story skyscraper in the early 1990s, and they've been there ever since. The tower was originally intended to be a symbol of Caracas' bright financial future, complete with a rooftop helipad, but construction stopped because of a banking crisis and the sudden death of the tower's namesake, David Brillembourg.

  • Rich People Are Full of Different Chemicals Than Poor People: People from higher socioeconomic status showed higher levels of mercury, arsenic and benzophenone-3. Researchers think that the first two come from higher consumption of shellfish and seafood, whereas the benzophenone-3 likely comes from sunscreen. The chemical profiles of people from lower socioeconomic status are completely different. Their bodies are full of lead, cadmium and different types of plastics. These chemicals could come from cigarette smoke but likely come from poor diet.
  • A Guide to South African EDM: It may have taken outrageous Zef rappers Ninja and Yo-landi Vi$$er of Die Antwoord to first make the world sit up and take notice, but more and more South African music is making its way into international ears – and, as it turns out, their EDM scene is blowing up at the moment, too, particularly in Cape Town.
  • Second Reality: Source code and data of Second Reality by Future Crew in 1993. This release is made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the demo.

AKIRA out of producer hell with Jaume Collet-Serra

jaume-collet-serra-akira-director

Jaume Collet-Serra is in discussions to return to the “Akira” directors chair, signing on to helm Warner Bros. adaptation of the popular anime pic. The helmer left in early 2012 after production stalled.

[...]

In early 2012, the studio shut down pre-production so that fixes could be made to the script, including tightening the budget from its original $90 million range. At the time, Collet-Serra was in such high demand coming off the recent success of the Liam Neeson action pic “Unknown,” that he decided to leave instead of waiting for the changes to be made so that he could pursue other projects.

[...]

WB acquired the potential tentpole project for a seven-figure sum from Japanese manga publisher Kodansha in 2008. Set in New Manhattan, the cyberpunk sci-fi epic follows the leader of a biker gang who must save his friend, discovered with potentially destructive psychokinetic abilities, from government medical experiments.

Appian Way’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran are producing with Mad Chance’s Andrew Lazar. Katsuhiro Otomo, who wrote and directed the 1988 Japanese anime pic of the same name, will exec produce. (more at variety)

Well, all 80s/90s cyberpunk source materials are knee-deep in production hell, so I wouldn't exactly get my hopes up.. Neuromancer, The Diamond Age, Ghost in the Shell, Idoru, Battle Angel Alita, Akira... and to be honest, I'm definitely not surprised at all. Many of those materials are so thick and dense with ideas (that could spin off entire books, series and franchises on their own) - many of which dripped into mainstream movies and books and our daily lives -, that production crews, producers, directors and screenwriters would need to machete many of them off and re-lace them with new ideas and the steady and deliberate moronization of the audience would not allow that to happen. Books are still the best drug to turn to if you want to get away. Or a pen and a paper. Don't trust your tablets. Trust your grey meat, pen and papers.


RUBIX: Folding Cities Like Origami Silk

http://vimeo.com/68214079

“The aim of the rubix project was to develop an animation that described a conceptual tool for deploying these malleable virtual environments that could be used by their creators to shift space around us. The rubix concept stemmed from the need for an algorithmic formula for controlling the use of redirection techniques; it allows for many different spatial combinations whilst a level of control is constantly maintained. In the animation the initial Escher-esque space is a representation of our perceptual system where huge amounts of information arrive in the brain from multiple streams. The process of perception involves the brain selecting and rejecting contradicting pieces of information leading to a perception of reality that only gives us glimpses into the world we are in.” (more at TARDIS: Architectural Thesis)

I'm actually more supremely impressed by Chris Kelly's thesis than his movie accompanying it. Rubix, his five-minute short deals with malleable, almost fabricesque qualities of urban spaces, shifting our perception, turning ready-made buildings as hindrances or signposts of attention into trenches of possibilities and absences of space to fill. I'm definitely nowhere near professional architecture, but I'd say reallocation of urban space has already been an important factor, especially in Japanese destruction porn anime/manga (wherein architecture itself is endowed with a phoenix-like constant resuscitation) - and that destruction is apparently mirrored in recent superhero movies like The Avengers or Man of Steel.

Folding (or real-time manipulating) urban space is not an old trick in mindbending SF: we've had Dark City, Inception or even The Matrix dealing with that issue and demoscene products are also abundant with swirling cityscapes (as it hits you conceptually as much as visually and that procedurally generated process is not just kinky, it's quite crunchable) - and parkour's obviously something of a mindset we cannot overlook. And, oh, do you remember Bruce Branit's brilliant VR-melancholy piece World Builder?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzFpg271sm8

This obviously doesn't mean for one single second that you shouldn't shove your face into Rubix - it's infused with Avalonesque sepia sadness and some Brian Eno, if I hear it right. Brilliant work and I'd love him to work on some mental, mental conceptual work for a mental, mental video game. But check out his thesis on Issuu (godly PDF), it's mouthwatering.


AD CORNER: Satanic Furbies and Earth Juice Squeezers

I could quite easily inject myself with truth serum and tell you about my adventures to the center of this globe, the lemur midget porn (Cameron just flagged this, you're welcome) and how I learned to love making concept bomb with an iris, but instead, I'll give you not one but two commercials, both of them perfect introductions to how my brain looks like from the inside. I fished them out from a loooong list of bookmarks, so unsure about the sources.. one of them might have been Lhasa Mencur!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHbaBd3h0FU

Satanic Death Furbies by Mike Diva & Jan-Michael Losada

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nITLob098W8

Vytautas, a Lithuanian mineral water that's quickly put on par with apocalypse, boobs, colossal cosmic bears squeezing Earth Juice... and a lot more. Pour a few coffees near my hungry, squiggly, tentacle-ridden brainstem and this is what you get.


DO IT YOURSELF: Amputee Prosthetic Leg Made With LEGO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8fdXNN0irI

Amazing idea. Made me think how you could achieve actually taking it out for a walk and not having it snap right off (yes Cult reference get over it) after a step - that's where K'NEX or 3D printing comes in. I don't give a damn about flying cars, I want my home makers right now! (via kotaku)


MUSIC VIDEO: Watch Dogs leaps into lands of barking drum'n'bass (thank the Buddhas)

http://youtu.be/cyS7F1caVCI

Dan Bull strikes again with another game summary rap, this time it's about Watch Dogs, the open-world hacker in the vein of the Person of Interest TV series (wait, that was quite a jump, nevermind, everyone's made that) and although Kotaku readers don't seem to especially love that, I have to tell you - it's exactly the atmosphere you'd expect from a game with a futurepreset setting. I'd personally glitch his stuff over a mad, pill-crazed neurofunk track, whatchathink?


2013 Q1 & Q2: the planetdamage stats

I hesitated / before restarting P://D
that bound my personality together.

I'll need a bit of time before laying down new foundations. Until neoconcrete solidifies, I thought visual reminders and summaries would work well. They come from the Foursquare Time Machine, Xefer, Last.fm and Wolfram Alpha respectively. I'd appreciate behavioral pattern analysis softwares. Or jobs that land me with access to softwares like that. Yes, freelancers love experimenting.

On another note: if you see design glitches around, that's completely normal, I'll be trying to come up with new solutions for a HQ. Working with multiple content platforms with future shock speed can land you in a sad, fucked up port of cognitive dissonance with not enough caffeine or porn. Oh yeah. Jobs that land you with access to behavioural analysis software don't appreciate personal blogs about porn references. Or do they.


[The Foursquare Time Machine]


[Xefer]


[last.fm]

[Personalized Facebook Reports from Wolfram Alpha]