INFOGRAPHICS: Tastebuds in Numbers

IG_Tastebuds_in_Numbers_by_@planetdamage

My latest infographic, done for the company I'm currently rocking with - that would be music-based community site Tastebuds. Check out all my previous infographics-related works here.


BOOKMARKS FOR 2013-03-19 (interviews, music and whatthefucks)

Hello. I still don't have time to write here excessively, most of my creative capacity goes into finishing up my ebook (publishing company bailed out on me, leaving me to do DTP, errata checks and distribution), working on my second book (novel, stuck at mid-synopsis limbo and those who've read it can't believe I did it without any mindbending chemistry) and the new issue of The Dose magazine (still working on the x minutes into the future premise) and generally (and mostly) trying not to go mad and keep on going which is an extremely interesting challenge in London this time of the year. Stick with this staccato love I give you for the time being.

INTERVIEWS:

  • Swans Leader Michael Gira On Aging, Social Networking, And Life After The Seer: Since everything is accessible everything tends to be denuded of content and equalized. In my time you had to go to a record store and search. It was a real process of discovery. But that’s just the way culture is now. I think it’s very good that the music is available.
  • “Through That Darkness You’ll Find the Light”: A.J. Samuels interviews Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan: You can’t think your way into doing the right thing. You have to act your way into it.
  • David Byrne’s Multiple-Personality Interview Of Himself: The idea was to adhere to a format “like 60 Minutes on acid”.
  • Many Lifetimes: An Interview With TVO: And you can have harsh noise, but you can still hear playfulness, or you can hear somebody manipulating it in a way that lets you know there's somebody in there, that you're getting something of the person.

    MISC:

  • Men Jailed In China For Stealing Corpses For ‘Ghost Marriages’: Ritual ghost marriages, which is believed to date back to the 17th century BC, is a custom in which parents find “spouses” for their unmarried, deceased children so that they can have a family in the afterlife. The tradition is rare in contemporary China, but still practiced in rural [areas].
  • Can a Sufficient Dose of Psilocybin Mushrooms Cure Someone of Atheism?: Whether you believe in the reality of unknown forces lurking behind the scenes and shaping the world you live in, you should probably get used to it. They’re called thoughts and you can’t see any of them, but they’re sure as hell shaping everything. Welcome to the wacky world of the Occult.
  • Let's Save Great Ideas from the Ideas Industry: Picasso would never have been invited to deliver a TED talk about Guernica because it offers no quick, easy, palatable solution ("Human Violence: Let's End It!!" #fivewordTEDtalks). Instead, it offers the precise opposite: a hard, unflinching, uncompromising portrait of grief. TED talks get rapturous standing ovations — but stand in front of Guernica for 18 minutes and exactly the opposite will happen: you will, and should, cry.
  • Sound from Silos: Live Experimental Audiovisuals Rumble a Man-made Cave: Making connections between Argentina and Germany, across an international collective of audiovisual artists, FxLD’s latest project invades a disused grain silo in Berlin. Literally in the shadow of Kreuzberg’s famed techno haven Watergate, the base of the silo is a narrow, concrete cave, broad-shouldered beams criss-crossing the space.
  • I WANNA BE JOHN PEEL EP 1: @MiikeTeknoist: my 1st attempt at presenting my own radio show with interviews with guests @DaveTheSect & @Subheads

  • LOVE: More Hackers

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    Acid Burn & Zero Cool.


    BREAKING: Neuromancer still in casting phase!

    According to the guys at moviepilot.com the Neuromancer movie is still at the casting phase - or at least this is what director Vincenzo Natali told them. Visit their site for all the details - here's a little bit of what Natali had to say about the movie.

    The reason it takes so long is because you must have the right cast, and it takes forever to find the right actors.


    BOOKMARKS FOR 2013-03-08

  • Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation: Physicists have devised a new experiment to test if the universe is a computer. A philosophical thought experiment has long held that it is more likely than not that we're living inside a machine.
  • Dude Has 75 Percent of His Skull Replaced By 3D-Printed Replica: A man has had the first ever 3D-printed skull-replacement fitted, swapping out a whole 75 per cent of the bone in his head for a man-made replacement.
  • Tumblr CEO David Karp talks monetization, user franchises, and the power of the reblog button: In fact, Karp revealed, if an original piece of content is published to Tumblr, that content is on average reblogged nine times, appears in four Facebook feeds, and five Twitter feeds. So among the 80 million blogs on Tumblr, only between 10 and 15 percent of the content is deemed “original.”
  • Human brain treats prosthetic devices as part of the body: The researchers found that wheelchair-bound study participants with spinal cord injuries perceived their body’s edges as being plastic and flexible to include the wheelchair. Patients with lower spinal cord injuries who retained upper body movement showed a stronger association of the wheelchair with their body than those who had spinal cord impairments in the entire body.
  • How Big is Our Observable Universe?: Well, if the Universe is expanding and cooling, that means that in the future, it will be larger and cooler. But it also means that in the past, it was hotter and denser! In fact, we can extrapolate all the way back to an arbitrarily early time, where things were as hot and dense (and compact) as we care to allow them to be.*
  • Dolphins may be calling each other by name: "Each dolphin produces its own unique signature whistle that describes its individual identity," the researchers said in a University of St. Andrews press release. "The new study suggests that in fact dolphins are mimicking those they are close to and want to see again."
  • Brown University creates first wireless, implanted brain-computer interface: Researchers at Brown University have succeeded in creating the first wireless, implantable, rechargeable, long-term brain-computer interface. The wireless BCIs have been implanted in pigs and monkeys for over 13 months without issue, and human subjects are next.

  • BOOKMARKS FOR 2013-03-07

  • The Emperor’s Vintage Clothes: how Goth and EBM recycled themselves: Like a rather bedraggled and dusty phoenix, goth has rebirthed itself in a way that echoes its 30+ year history as well as explores new ground.
  • 16 Ways The Crow and Robocop Are The Same Film: For no real reason other than for curiosity’s sake, I’m going to demonstrate how the first film adaptation of The Crow is essentially the fantasy version of Verhoeven, Neumeier and Miner’s sci-fi masterpiece. Where Robocop uses science to explain the plot’s impossibilities, The Crow uses the supernatural.
  • 4 Ways to Amplify Your Creativity: According to Bruce Nussbaum, author of a new book titled Creative Intelligence,”Creativity is learned behavior that gets better with training—like sports. You can make creativity routine and a regular part of your life.”

  • BOOKMARKS FOR 2013-03-05

  • How a Social Network Unravels: I’m sure Nabeel agrees network effects are great and all, but he had an awesome devil advocate one-liner that gave me pause. He said, “Companies that are social on the way up are social on the way down.”
  • Jean Michel Jarre: Metamorphosis: RA's Aaron Coultate talks to the iconic French artist about vintage synths, vaporized techno and society's fear of the future.
  • E.S.P. Exists: Inside Sony’s Corporate Research: Why would one of the world’s most successful and innovative technology corporations research a highly controversial subject and risky future product opportunity such as E.S.P. (extrasensory perception) and then – oh by the way – tell the world they proved it existed?


  • PLANETDAMAGE S13E01: How Damage Report Is At The Moment

    Radio silence now officially over, I guess. This is Damage Von Rock and that word tapestry of ROCK above is the ebook cover of Damage Report, my debut book (paperback published in 2012 by publisher house Mangafan) - once again produced by my good friend Vera Moiré. The downloadable version will be available in early March, unfortunately for English readers, only in Hungarian. The book itself is similar to an updated version of a Mondo 2000 New Edge Guide, only with more blood-and-cum-spitting gonzo. If you don't speak Hungarian, I can't blame you, it's a tough bitch to learn, apparently. My second book - a novel - is in the works, it's in English and no, it doesn't have a publisher just yet.

    Now go and watch Cult and Black Mirror.
    Reporting back in when the stars look nice and I have a caffeine overdose.

    Always,
    The Damage


    IMPORTANT: in need of a Mage: The Ascension Tarot deck

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    This is actually important. Lots of research and extra brainpower is being invested into the new book. Due to numerous reasons (which are mostly attributed to that research processs), I am in dire need of a Mage: The Ascension Tarot deck (depicted above). If you want to sell yours or know someone who would sell theirs, please get in touch at planetdamage[at]gmail[dot]com. Thank you and please pass this message to those who know.


    BOOKMARKS FOR 2012-02-20

  • 5 examples of how the languages we speak can affect the way we think: Chen designed a study — which he describes in detail in this blog post — to look at how language might affect individual’s ability to save for the future. According to his results, it does — big time.
  • Scientists find weird new property of matter that breaks all the rules: The new theory of order, which involves the spin of electrons, breaks double time reversal symmetry and exhibits quadruple time reversal symmetry.
  • THE CYCLES OF CHAOS: DECONSTRUCTING INITIATION: St. John of the Cross, a Christian mystic, wrote of this experience as "(it)...puts the sensory spiritual appetites to sleep, deadens them, and deprives them of the ability to find pleasure in anything. It binds the imagination, and impedes it from doing any good discursive work. It makes the memory cease, the intellect become dark and unable to understand anything, and hence it causes the will to become arid and constrained, and all the faculties empty and useless. And over this hangs a dense and burdensome cloud, which afflicts the soul, and keeps it withdrawn from God".

  • "Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus": Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined? Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment?
  • More human than human: how Philip K. Dick can change your life: You might note that, alongside Dickensian and Kafkaesque, we now have an adjective to describe this state of affairs. Phildickian. And the world seems more phildickian every day.


  • DIE ANTWOORD: before Die Antwoord there was Max Normal and Max Normal.TV

    Amazing to see how Die Antwoord's stage and interview personae differ from those of their previous projects Max Normal and Max Normal.TV. Ninja and Yo-landi talking at length about their fuck-the-corp-hack-the-world attitude and looking like they've just came out of Hackers - this is just amazing, mental, post-cyberpunk insanity from a corner of the world where the future looks very, very different from what we've been fed. The future doesn't get any more interesting than this. (more on wikipedia, weirdestbandintheworld)


    BOOKMARKS FOR 2013-02-14

  • First Bionic Eye Sees Light of Day in U.S.: Consisting of 60 electrodes implanted in the retina and glasses fitted with a special mini camera, Argus II has already won the approval of European regulators. The US Food and Drug Administration is soon expected to follow suit, making this bionic eye the world's first to become widely available.
  • WHEN WORDS COLLIDE: The Helix Files - Chaykin & Cameron's "Cyberella": Cyberella -- the riot grrrl with the Bride-of-Frankenstein haircut -- was the face of Helix prior to the line's launch. When it was originally announced, by the name "Matrix," Cyberella was the face we saw. And when the name "Matrix" became Helix (because of a then-in-production Warner Brothers movie called "The Matrix" which turned out to be a pretty big deal a few years later), it was Cyberella chastising us that access had been denied and we'd have to learn to call the line by its new name.
  • MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE: Syfy Mini From Ridley Scott & Frank Spotnitz: Syfy has finalized a deal to adapt Philip K. Dick’s Hugo Award-winning novel The Man In The High Castle into a 4-hour miniseries event with Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files, Hunted) attached to write and serve as Executive Producer, Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions will produce.
  • LOSING MY INTERNET CONNECTION IS LIKE GOING DEAF: American TV news provision is famously awful. I was treated to the view of Anderson Cooper, presiding over CNN like some slick straight-to-DVD supervillain, sending reporters out into lethal blizzards and forcing them to describe what standing unprotected in the middle of a lethal fucking blizzard is like.

  • How Music Label Vlek Makes Ephemeral Sound Physical, While Giving Away Their Catalog [Gallery, Interview]: When music moved from live venues to radios and recordings, artists had to find a way to respond. Now, labels struggle to be heard in the era of Spotify and streaming, always-on, always-overabundant media. We could talk grander themes, but the possibilities of this conflict are most vivid in a microcosm.
  • Is an unseen planet skirting edge of our solar system?: A planet four times the size of Earth may be skirting the edges of the solar system beyond Pluto, according to new research. Too distant to be easily spotted by Earth-based telescopes, the unseen planet could be gravitationally tugging on small icy objects past Neptune, helping explain the mystery of those objects’ peculiar orbits.
  • The top 30 indie games to look out for in 2013: So here it goes, 30 indie titles that all look like they're going to be an absolute blast to play, in one way or another. Not including SpyParty, of course. You already know how excited I am for that one.
  • NEIL HARBISSON IS A CYBORG WHO HEARS MORE OF THE WORLD THAN WE SEE: But Neil’s life would change drastically when he met computer scientist Adam Montandon and with help from a few others, they developed the eyeborg, an electronic eye that transforms colors into sounds. Colors became meaningful for Neil in an experiential way, but one that was fundamentally different than how others described them.

  • LECTURE: William Burroughs on wishing machines and the occult

    Audio recording of a lecture & writing class with Q & A with students at Naropa University. Poet Allen Ginsberg is also in the audience & asks some questions. Burroughs covers topics including paranormal phenomena, magic, synchronicity, precognition, dreams, his cut-ups technique for writing, & he answers many questions from students & from Ginsberg in a Q & A. He reads from some of his fiction & non-fiction writings. The woman who asks many questions near the end & thanks him at the end I believe is Anne Waldman of Naropa U.

    This recording comes from Naropa's audio archives available free to stream at archive.org. There the recording is listed as: "William S. Burroughs class on the technology and ethic of wishing - Part 1 (June 25, 1986)", plus Part 2. I've joined both parts together in this YT upload & edited out nothing. The short silent gap somewhere in the middle is found in the original too.


    BOOKMARKS FOR 2013-02-12


    Shiv-R, May 25, 2013, Slimes!

  • Another blog post that won’t make any money: Journalists certainly shouldn’t spend their time worrying about how to make their articles more attractive to advertisers.
  • S ALEXANDER REED. ASSIMILATE: A CRITICAL HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL MUSIC. BOOK: In Assimilate, S. Alexander Reed provides the first ever critical history of this fascinating and enigmatic genre tracing industrial music's trajectory from Throbbing Gristle's founding of the record label Industrial Music in 1976, to its peak in popularity on the back of the band Nine Inch Nails in the mid-1990s, and through its decline to the present day.
  • Finally, A Fashion Show for the Freaks: Burgeoning label Chromat — which made the costumes for Beyoncé's Super Bowl backup dancers — debuted at fashion week with a wonderful celebration of weird. Like every subculture of Tumblr come to life.

    Kandy-Raver-Tokyo-Dolores-Harajuku-2013-01-26-DSC8624-600x900

    (via tokyofashion.com)


  • VIDEO INTERVIEW: Damage interviews Zoog Von Rock of Angelspit

    Angelspit frontman Zoog Von Rock has been a long-time comrade on the battlegrounds, fighting the war against apathy, boredom, fake revolutions and grey culture. We put the internets on our coffee table of ROCK and gathered around it, Zoog in New York, me in London and talked about social media, music and the future. How do you talk to your fans? What sort of effort do you need to put into communication? What do you need to sacrifice to live your dreams? And more words of wisdom ahead.

    zoog

    As you might have noticed, there's a lot of Angelspit activity on my blog, always have, always will be. This is because I don't just support their music that I love a lot, but also appreciate their know-how and how they decide to share that with all their fans, how they constantly try to renew themselves and how they put all that change into terms and processes that are simple to grasp, yet are powerful to live by. Support them if you like what you see and hear - here's their site at angelspit.net and you can buy their stuff on Black Pill Red Pill.

    Always,
    Damage


    BOOKMARKS FOR 2013-02-06

    Finnabair-cyberpunk-art5


    DARE: Hand in Carbon Fiber Film

    Pierre says he would most definitely go in for cancer treatment after a party trick like this. I've drank glowstick fluid and I'm still alive and kicking, so I bet I could second his sentiment. YouTube comments usually dare the guy to put his dick in the carbon fiber film. We would rather not comment on that.


    CONCERT VIDEO: Death in June (2002, New York)

    DEATH IN JUNE has always been a strange, subtle and powerful influence over the years. When I started submerging myself into the underground, the first concert I went to was that of Der Blutharsch, the second included Death in June, NON and Boyd Rice (with Scivias being the support act at both events). When I was writing Death Beat Club, my first collection of writing (that's going to make it into the ebook edition of my first published book Damage Report), it was mostly Zeromancer and Death in June that was on. When there are longer periods in my life that need retreat and silence, it's Death in June. Douglas P. has a lot to do with the sombre little fucker in my heart that I often end up being. Today, in the offices - another day when work needs music, not that the loud and disturbing kind. So I end up listening Douglas P. Again. Enjoy this gig. Truly amazing. According to my friend Pierre a single DIJ track has more power than a whole gabber setlist. His words are not without a seed of truth.

    Death+in+June+DeathinJuneDij03


    GNOSIS: You Program Reality

    you-program-reality

    “Everything is literally entangled, it can all be communicated with and affected ‘at a distance’ because there is no distance, only a simulation of apparent separation which our limited consciousness feeds us second by second at 11 bits. The ‘telepathy’ which brings people together is no more or less supernatural or unlikely than the ‘telepathy’ which brings two of your fingers together when you think about it. Patience, participation and constant close observation of what’s going on, on the inside and on the outside will soon make you a fine sorcerer, if that’s what you want to be.” (via temple of electric light)


    BOOKMARKS FOR 2013-02-02

    • Electronic Insects—If William S. Burroughs Did Cyberpunk: If William S. Burroughs had cyberpunk leanings then he might have conjured up these insects made from various electrical components—but they’re not from the mind of the Beat novelist, instead these are the work of photographer Luca di Filippo.
    • Is Your Mind for Sale? Inside the Allure of Digital Sweatshops: Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and author of the book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, suggests that "grad students will do this all day long because it's probably the only source of positive feedback in their lives."
    • Genetic algorithms become programmers themselves: [Kory] has been experimenting with genetic algorithms. Normally we’d expect his experiments to deal with tuning the variables in a control system or something, but he’s doing something much cooler. [Kory] is using genetic algorithms to write computer programs, and in the process bringing us one step closer to the Singularity.
    • Scientists record the first video of thoughts forming in the brain: Japanese researchers have recorded a real-time video of thoughts forming in the brain of a live animal as it stalks its prey.

    How to Master Your Time: Say No. Unplug the TV. Kill notifications. Schedule your priorities. First things first. Less volume, more time. Ignore.


    LOVE: Hackers

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    My favourite movie, if I had to pick one. Iain Softley's Hackers from 1995 with Angelina Jolie, Laurence Mason, Matthew Lillard and Jonny Lee Miller.


    SCI-FI SHORT: R'Ha

    Feast your scifi loving eyes on this jaw-dropping short by Kaleb Lechowski, a 22-year-old German student attending the Mediadesign Hochschule school in Berlin. Yeah, he's already heading to Hollywood. Synopsis: "A member of an alien race is being interrogated and tortured by a machine." Sound is by Hartmut Zeller and voice acting, by Dave Masterson. (more at quietearth.us)

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    RESEARCH: A Retrospective Editing of Consciousness

    A new study has found that conscious experience can be altered retrospectively, so that experience of visual information can be changed almost half a second later by manipulating where our attention is drawn. (more at mindhacks)


    MAGAZINE: Matrix Revelations Issue 4

    alfamatrix4

    Fourth issue Alfa Matrix magazine featuring interviews with Helalyn Flowers, RECOIL, GLIS, Dunkelwerk, Lovelorn Dolls, Ayria, Junksista, Aesthetische, Implant, Cynical Existence, Freakangel, Technoir, Daniel B. Prothèse, Kant Kino, Krystal System, Mentallo & The Fixer, I:scintilla, Mari Chrome, Diskonnekted, Siva Six, Metroland.

    Machete Girl issue 8 is ALMOST out, the new issue of The Dose mag will be launched in May, Auxiliary's pumping hard the new issues and now Alfa Matrix spits out a new mag issue? This promises to be an interesting few months ahead. No rivalry on the table, so feel free to come forward and download this warbaby - the Mentallo interview is PURE ROCK! (read on issuu)