REVIEW: burnt like brilliant trash (J. G. Barnes - Thieves)
Thieves is exemplary. And problematic. A cyberpunk short film focusing on an interrogation gone completely amok, it's both great for its writing/background story and how J.G. Barnes and his crew tries to deliver the best out of a $300 budget and a crew of amateurs. At the same time - its obvious shortcomings are needlessly emphasized by its promo campaign and its unintelligible intensity. Still, as I said, good writing. Verdict? 4/10.
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REVIEW: god's zoo gone punk (Ebbëto - Analog)
God twitches. Facial muscles and hand-eye coordination goes out the window. The first woman really was created from the first man. Behavioural conditioning probably inspired by Aphex Twin, a grin never completely primordial, nor balancing on the edge of cocaine-induced grit teeth mania. Sleeping. Perchance to dream. God might have been an intergalactic surgeon with faulty implants. If his hands went faulty, what of his brain? Welcome to Ebbëto's Analog, an arthouse experimental sci-fi short coming from Brazil. Verdict? 10/10.
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BOOKMARKS for 2012-07-18 (jones' addiction)
- The Top Thirteen Occult Detectives in Comics:See, Agnes was an occult detective. In service to the Queen and, really, anyone else with the right connections. It’s an honorable, if thankless, occupation. It’s also one of my favorite topics to read about. Luckily, there’s a great deal of crossover in comics. Let’s do up a list, shall we?
- Soviet synthesizer bridged occultism and electronic music: This isn't a new Dorkbot or Maker Faire oddity. It's a nearly forgotten Russian synthesizer designed by Evgeny Murzin in 1938. The synth was named after and dedicated to the Russian experimental composer and occultist Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (1872–1915). The name might not mean much to you, but it illuminates a long running connection between electronic music and the occult.
- A TRIBUTE TO ZDZISLAW BEKSINSKI' CD: A tribute to one of the darkest painters of the 20th Century, released on the 2 year anniversary of his death in 2005. As his paintings were never titled, all tracks are unnamed as well. Special, exclusive, Dark Ambient tracks, inspired by the Polish artist from: Asmorod, Contemplatron, Desiderii Marginis, Gustaf Hildebrand, His Divine Grace, Hybryds, Inade, Job Karma, Kratong, Necrophorus, Svartsinn and Zenial.
- What may be the world’s first cybernetic hate crime unfolds in French McDonald’s: Steve Mann, the "father of wearable computing," has been physically assaulted while visiting a McDonalds in Paris, France. The Canadian university professor was at the restaurant with his family when three different McDonalds employees took exception to his "Digital Eye Glass" device and attempted to forcibly remove it from his head. Mann was then physically removed from the store by the employees, along with having his support documentation destroyed.
BOOKMARKS for 2012-07-08
- Alan Moore hates films based on his comics so he's making his own: Moore is working on a new, indie short film series dubbed Show Pieces, and he's teamed up with photographer Mitch Jenkins to make it happen. Considering how vehemently he has opposed films based on his comics, it's definitely interesting to see him branching out into the medium.
- Gateway of the Mind: In 1983, a team of deeply pious scientists conducted a radical experiment in an undisclosed facility. The scientists had theorized that a human without access to any senses or ways to perceive stimuli would be able to perceive the presence of God.
- What Happened to Cyberpunk?: Cyberpunk, in the popular consciousness, conjures a glut of dissociated images: Blade Runner’s slummy urban landscape, hackers in sunglasses, Japanese cyborgs, grubby tech, digital intoxication, Keanu Reeves as Johnny Mnemonic. But it began as an insanely niche subculture within science fiction, one which articulated young writerly distaste for the historically utopian optimism of the medium and, in turn, provided an aesthetic reference point for burgeoning hacker culture, before metastasizing into a full-on cultural trend.
- Bike cross country in your basement with Google Streetview: Biking cross-country is a worthwhile pursuit, but then you’ll have to deal with terrible drivers, rain, bugs, and heat. [Jeff Adkins] over at lowendmac has a neat solution to exploring the country via bicycle without ever leaving the safety and air conditioning of your basement.
(Links sent by @sajtoshu and @honeymooncroon - dunno the source for the goggled monochrome crow lady of ROCK)
TRAILER: RZA screenwrites, directs and fights through THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS
Ever dreamed about a real Wu-Tang infused martial arts flic? RZA's latest book The Tao of Wu and his samuraiity in the latest season of Californication somehow gave away the inclination and now it's finally here with a red band trailer - THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS featuring not just the Master RZA but also Russell Crowe, Jamie Chung, Lucy Liu, Dave Bautista and a lot more... dying to finally see this on screen! Synopsis goes like this: In feudal China, a blacksmith who makes weapons for a small village is put in the position where he must defend himself and his fellow villagers.
TRAILER: The Prototype
Nothing to do with the game. Nothing too interesting after Robocop and Universal Soldier, either. (Still, it'd be great to see the flaws and finesses of a man-machine interface.)
JAPAN: Ghost in the Shell goes live with Daedalus network surveillance system
Ghost in the Shell hit the screens 17 years ago and apart from showing much of the Mirrorshades tropes in a hip Japanese anime, it didn't have much of a novelty crash. Thermoptic camouflage, artificial limbs, neural interface links, network surveillance - we all had that from Bethke to Gibson, Shirley and Maddox. What was new, though - thanks much to the GitS manga, especially its second etape, Man-Machine Interface, hitting the gaijin crowd in 2003 - was the oceanic representation of the matrix and how it relates to a living, organic biomass of data.
Until I finish the post that I've been planning for some time about how the representation of the matrix evolved, here's the latest software the Japanese security industry threw at us: Daedalus (Direct Alert Environment for Darknet and Livenet Unified Security). Check out what Diginfo has to say on Daedalus/Nicter and if you're interested in the progress, check out how Nicter looked like back in 2010.
Daedalus renders attacks on networks visible in real time. The sphere in the center represents the Internet, and the circles moving around it represent networks under observation. The state of an attack is shown using 3D graphics, and can be viewed from any perspective. (more at diginfo.tv)
TRAILER: total recall (official trailer)
Remake or not, this babe is still a stunner. At least for those 150 seconds. (Thumbs up for Columbia: they won't touch the storyline one single bit so all we have to not worry about is the action sequences and the gritty future visuals. Which we have aplenty. (thx Riplakoidase for sending this my way!)
DATA VISUALIZATION: Pizza delivery goes TRON
How do you turn your pizza delivery bike into a TRON light cycle? Simple: slap a GPS tracker on the back, run your delivery routes, then add the light ribbons in later. Do that with enough bicycles, and you get the beautiful view of nighttime delivery routes featured here. (more at io9.com)
DAILYKAWAII: steampunk kato ebay auction
Check out Kato's eBay auctions. Image was Hiroshima-strength when we saw it first, still is. (more here)
TRAILER: Dredd
The future America is an irradiated waste land. On its East Coast, running from Boston to Washington DC, lies Mega City One- a vast, violent metropolis where criminals rule the chaotic streets. The only force of order lies with the urban cops called "Judges" who possess the combined powers of judge, jury and instant executioner. Known and feared throughout the city, Dredd (Karl Urban) is the ultimate Judge, challenged with ridding the city of its latest scourge -- a dangerous drug epidemic that has users of "Slo-Mo" experiencing reality at a fraction of its normal speed.
During a routine day on the job, Dredd is assigned to train and evaluate Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), a rookie with powerful psychic abilities thanks to a genetic mutation. A heinous crime calls them to a neighborhood where fellow Judges rarely dare to venture- a 200 story vertical slum controlled by prostitute turned drug lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) and her ruthless clan. When they capture one of the clan's inner circle, Ma-Ma overtakes the compound's control center and wages a dirty, vicious war against the Judges that proves she will stop at nothing to protect her empire. With the body count climbing and no way out, Dredd and Anderson must confront the odds and engage in the relentless battle for their survival. (This came in from a variety of sources, first transmission by Riplakoidase and if you're interested - the opening music is La Roux's In For the Kill (Skream remix), unfortunately turning completely into dubstep and not d'n'b AS. IT. SHOULD.)
WTF: Creepy Alien test footage with Bolaj Badejo
You may remember that the titular xenomorph in Ridley Scott's 1979 classic Alien was sometimes depicted by a man in a suit. Here's test footage of 6'10" Nigerian actor Bolaji Badejo practicing his extraterrestrial motions. Even with a mock-up of the xenomorph's head alone — and Badejo running around in his underwear — these reels remain unsettling. (via io9)
MUSIC VIDEO: In Strict Confidence - Morpheus (Hecq remix)
Remember Hungarian pop culture oddities like BugZ and 14sec? Director and subculture freak Tamas Mesmer has just released his new music video for the Hecq remix of In Strict Confidence's Morpheus and he's got Angelspit's Violence MV coming up soon (go check out his MV for Angelspit's Toxic Girl if you want some new-world-wtf cyberpunk, the uncensored edition!)
ono sendai: a prototype
- Flip up and pull apart monitor from flexible LED technology
- Touch sensitive keyboard areas, with nanotechnology. Buttons rise from the surface to provide haptic feedback
- Custom key arrangement for maximum ergonomics
- Flip case at front hides jack-in plugs and earpiece on retractable cords
- Handle on rear for easy mobility
- Fully integrated wireless cyberspace fusion, access, and processing
phatandy's take on Neuromancer's Ono Sendai cyberspace deck via ripperdoc
TEASER: Azarkant
This is the first official teaser of my upcoming short film Azarkant. It will be a sci-fi Full CG animated film, which tells of the adventures in deep space.
In the future, a team of astronauts are sent on a ten year journey to a distant planet to find new life. On their way, they encounter a large, abandoned spaceship that is drifting in the orbit of a mysterious planet. They board the ship with anticipation of the great discoveries to uncover inside. However, they do not know what terrible secret this spacecraft keeps -- a nightmarish threat which is far bigger and scarier than anything they could have imagined. (This trailer comes from PD reader Jeremy Stanz - thx! - who said "Plays kinda like a baby Prometheus." and it does!, more here)
KICKSTARTER: support the California Deathrock Book!
Kickstarter crowdfunding just succeeded for a book of deathrock subculture photography by Amelia G and Forrest Black. Best known for their work with Blue Blood, the photography of Amelia G and Forrest Black has also been published by Rolling Stone, Playboy, Tattoo Savage, Picture, MTV, Orkus, New Grave, Permission, Alternative Press, Meltdown, Ghastly, Sonic Seducer, and many others.
For more than a decade, Amelia G and Forrest Black's personal work has been documenting various subcultures. Amelia G says the West Coast deathrock scene has been one of their favorite subcultures to shoot. Publishing a fifteen year retrospective of deathrock imagery would definitely be a labor of love, so the subculture documentarians appealed to their friends and
readers to back a Kickstarter project to put the book out. (kickstarter link - donations accepted from 5USD)
cameras made from human skulls (the works of wayne martin belger)
Just gotten another idea for the fiction projects I'm working on - and bone as a ritual apparatus (either technological or occult) is a powerful fusion. Find out more at Wayne Martin Belger's Boy of Blue site and this all comes, weirdly, from IO9 (you can check out photographs done with skull cameras at both sites).
Third Eye Camera - Designed to study the beauty of decay. 4"x5" camera made from Aluminium, Titanium, Brass, Silver, Gem Stones and a 150 year old skull of a 13 year old girl. Light and time enters at the third eye, exposing the film in the middle of the skull.
Yama (Tibetan Skull Camera) - Yama's eyes are cast from bronze and silver with a brass pinhole in each. A divider runs down the middle of the skull creating two separate cameras. A finished contact print mounted on copper is inserted in to the back of the camera to view what Yama saw in 3D.
Yama is made from Aluminium, Titanium, Copper, Brass, Bronze Steel, Silver, Gold, Mercury with 4 Sapphires, 3 Rubies (The one at Yama's third eye was $5000.00), Asian and American Turquoise, Sand, Blood, and 9 Opals inlayed in the Skull. The film loading system is pneumatic. A 300psi air tank in the middle of the camera powers 2 pneumatic pistons to move the film holder forward and lock it into place. The switch to open and close the film chamber is located under the jaw.
MUSIC: the Mid-May random jukebox
Every four to six weeks I realize I have way too many bookmarks, filter out the music videos and make a random jukebox post of them. This is one of those posts. Until the interwebs finally give birth to a PROPER video playlist service, I'm posting you a linklist. Inside: DJ Mad Dog, Dolphins Into the Future, Electro Cypher, Electrosoniks, Florrie, Genki Rockets, Hecq, Kaskade, Moby, Modestep, Omega Lithium, Phantogram, Quelle Chris, Snog, Suicide Inside, The Ghosts of 3.13, The Glamour Manifesto, The Nasty Boyz, Tonikom, We Plants Are Happy Plants.
SHORT FILM: Mute - The Matrix meets The Artist
MUTE was directed by The Brothers Strause of Skyline fame and AVP: Requiem infamy a few years back and at the height of cyberpunk mania. It's about a world where people can't hear and there is no music.
Now, before you cry foul, yes, "Mute" was created by Alpine Electronics. It was created as part of Alpine's long-term, global marketing strategy to subtly promote the 25 year-old brand in a fresh and relevant way to younger consumers. Having said that, Mute contains no blatant product information or corporate messaging other than visuals of the sound system. (via quietearth)