PLANETDAMAGE

Jonathan Mak’s Everyday Shooter ended up as something of a concept album for the abstract shooter hardcore afficionados. Eight completely different levels, in theory, forty-something minutes of an all-guitar soundtrack for your geometric senses. Check the yt above for complete demonstration of the first three levels and embrace godly love - although it was originally released on the PlayStation platform, it’s now available on Steam (been for a while) and according to what Kotaku writes, the game will be available for the PSP around November. (via wired)

Synthespians (Gibson’s version of personality constructs) are on the rise thanks to Image Metrics, the guys behind GTA’s animations. Their artificial construct, Emily (on the yt above) is controlled by a new system that takes facial control down to the pixel level - that, the extreme focus on the perfect timing of eye movements and the subtle imperfections and asymmetries make the constructs into real humans. Sites fantasize about chatbots and CG movies that pwn live-action ones. Yes please. Longer history on synthespians and idorus later, on the new version of PD. (via Times Online via Technovelgy via IO9)

(via boingboing.tv)

One of the thirty amazing satellite images over at Environmental Graffiti. This one is the once vast carpet of rainforest in the Amazon basin (…) fanning out from the large blocks of land cleared by ranchers and loggers radiate arrangements of fields and farms, the remaining healthy vegetation appearing in bright red. Below, dunes of the Kalahari Desert, Namibia.

Watch these images carefully, as they deliver traces of glory, cyberpunk bravado and unholy, sizzling sperm of Richard D. James.

And that’s a music-making software alright. FIJUU2, the brainchild of Julian Oliver and another guy named pix, features six unique instruments that you sculpt with PS2 gamepads. (Because, as Oliver will neatly tell us in a video embedded below, PS2 gamepads are pretty much like guitars.) The spinning rings on the images (well, more like in the videos) are the tracks, the sexily weird 3D shapes are the instruments.

The project was all opensource, you can download the source code from the project website and run on your Linux box. I think I’m soon off to install Ubuntu (what to install?) and buy a devilish gamepad. Above, a four-minutes long demo of Fijuu2 in action. Below, a documentary of Cybersonica & Encompass Sonic Art Exhibition (London, 2006) where the system was shown to the public to massive appraisal.

If you were really into MySpace and how industrial/cyberpunk bands started making friends on community sites some two years ago, THE DOSE might ring a bell. It was a free PDF magazine (that I designed to be print-ready just in case I got the possibility to make it into a commercial venture that I failed miserably, but anyways) focusing on a single city in every issue, showing all the interesting music, bands, DJs, pieces of art that we thought would be fascinating for you. I learned how to do proper DTP and layout with the mag. I also came to know excellent people and musicians, made the magazine count at a few places. I made three issues (Budapest, Tokyo, London, consecutively) and then I became a full-time journalist and decided I didn’t have the time to continue this project anymore, because, let’s face it, the majority of the work was done by me. (This is how I get good results. But I digress.)

So now I declare extended hiatus and also upload the previous issues to Scribd. Share the love, download the mag, contact the bands and also drop me an email to planetdamage at gmail if you think this idea is good enough to monetize. Or tell me you love the mag and break my fucking heart in two.The Dose website is in a state of death and dismay, by the way.

If last week’s Syd Mead interview with Joel Johnson of boingboing wasn’t enough, here’s part two. (via)

I’m either applying for an armored company SUV or my favourite yellow hazmat suit I haven’t actually ordered some ten paydays ago or so. Order three and you get a lady free. Picture originally comes from Fauxred’s feed, Hazardous Conditions.

Without getting too intense and hot on Darren Lynn Bousman’s Repo! The Genetic Opera, this piece of art is one of the best things that’s gonna happen to the cyberpunk movement this year (apart from the first Doktor Sleepless trade paperback and the hopefully promising re-make of Ghost in the Shell and Pearry, trust me, you don’t release The Gene Generation in 2008, we’re so releasing doom in your pants. And me going to Twitter): it is all above fusion, blending and a generous amount of tetrising around previously unmatched blocks of art.

It’s Bioshock live. Golden age aesthetics with all the cyberpunk clichés burped back into life: evil organ-selling zaibatsus, hired killers, hot women in black, a cabaret of decadance, Blade Runner meets Rocky Horror Picture Show, they say.

And the blocks fit nicely, from Nivek Ogre of Skinny Puppy to Sarah Brightman and the postmodern top-down DIY media icon Paris Hilton: it’s all crossover cyberpunk opera and you all need to devour it. Limited theatrical release is reported to start on November 7th, 2008.

Japanese fans, scream away in anal glee. Yoshiki Hayashi of X-Japan fame is behind the soundtrack (and is also credited as a producer alongside Bousman). A Rubik cube of glory, really. (And read the interview with Bousman on creature-corner, while you’re at it.)

Need a backup story? The Repo! Wikipedia entry sez An epidemic of organ failures devastates the planet. Panic erupts and scientists feverishly make plans for a massive organ harvest. Out of the tragedy, GeneCo, a multi-billion dollar biotech company, emerges. GeneCo provides organ transplantation for a profit. In addition to financing options, GeneCo reserves the right to implement default remedies, including repossession. For those who can’t keep up with their organ payments, collection is the responsibility of “organ repo men”, skilled assassins contracted by GeneCo, ordered to recover GeneCo’s property by any means necessary.

cubo.cc’s morphing Flash technology is also visible on motionportrait. you’ll also fuck up your time generously watching a mildly retarded Japanese girl following your cursor with the interest of a fruitfly on rohypnol. (yes, link)