Monthly Archives: March 2011

neuromancer tattoo

Posted on by March 29, 2011
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In a way this is a kind of follow-up to ↵moore’s magic. Somewhen [yes, that’s a word—still] during 2007 and 2008 ↑Nigel Palmer of Brighton has tattooed portions of text from William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ (1984) on ↑the_dan’s arms. The association with Peter Greenaway’s ‘The pillow book’ (1996) is obvious. GREENAWAY, PETER. 1996. The pillow book [motion picture]. Rotterdam: Kasander & Wigman Productions. GIBSON, WILLIAM FORD. 1984. Neuromancer. New York: Penguin. via email from CT—tnx! … Continue reading →

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moore’s magic

Posted on by March 22, 2011
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On Wikipedia I found the following quote from the ↑Philip K. Dick of our times, ↑Alan Moore, author of e.g. ‘↑Watchmen,’ ‘↑V for Vendetta,’ ‘↑From Hell,’ and ‘↑The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,’ illustrating his quite secular vision of magic—the vision of a real magician: I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness … Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people’s consciousness, … Continue reading →

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larry cuba

Posted on by July 14, 2011
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Just dug that one up from my bookmarks—back in the 1970s ↑Larry Cuba, then at the ↑Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), made the computer graphics seen during the endbattle against the Deathstar in the original ‘Star Wars’ (Lucas 1977).     When I first saw those animated 3D line-graphics in the cinema in ’77 I was fascinated.     Three years later, at the first computer-christmas, I got a ↑Commodore 64 (C64).     With a freely programmable computer at my hands I set out to recreate those graphics. For a start I was content with the idea of an anmation … Continue reading →

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pop replicant

Posted on by March 17, 2011
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In the ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung,’ one of Germany’s biggest transregional daily newspapers, I just read a wonderful review of the 3D-documentary ‘Never say never’ (Chu 2011) on Justin Bieber. Jan Füchtjohann begins ↑his review thus: Does the teenie-popstar Justin Bieber dream of electrical sheep? Just like in Philip K. Dick’s science-fiction novel and blueprint of ‘Blade Runner,’ ‘Do androids dream of electrical sheep?’ there indeed is a growing number of people who try to find out if Justin Bieber is a regular boy, or a replicant who should be phased out. [my translation—put the blame on me] ‘Never say never’ does … Continue reading →

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modern times

Posted on by March 29, 2011
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It must have been four, five, or more years ago, when I had a conversation on the anthropology of work with one of my three teachers, ↑Kurt Beck. Somewhere into our talk Kurt mentioned Chaplin’s ‘↑Modern Times‘ (1936), associating the famous scenes of Chaplin at the assembly line with instances of workers ‘fighting against the conveyor belt,’ described in ethnographies of work. The gist was that workers at assembly lines by their practices not necessarily do fight metaphorically against their bosses, or even commit sabotage. Happens, of course, but isn’t always the case. Rather they actively ↵appropriate the technological artefact … Continue reading →

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hugo strange

Posted on by March 18, 2012
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Since the late 1970s, when I first read the story arc ‘Dark Detective I’ (Detective Comics 469-476), aptly named ‘Strange Apparitions’ for a reprint, arch-villain ↑Professor Hugo Strange is my favourite Batman-enemy. ‘Strange Apparitions’ just had everything, the Joker, the Penguin, and with Silver St. Cloud one of the most beautiful spouses Bruce Wayne ever had. Most of the story arc was pencilled by ↑Marshall Rogers (1950-2007), besides ↑Jim Aparo (1932-2005) until today my favourite Batman-penciller. Hilary Goldstein ↑writes at IGN: There is a common misconception among comic-book readers that Batman books were terrible until Frank Miller came along in … Continue reading →

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cyberpunk to come

Posted on by March 8, 2011
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Well, well, more water on my mills [… love that phrase], regarding my proposition that cyberpunk has become a powerful discourse, is unbroken, and still going strong—scal at ↑cpc and Mr. Roboto at ↑cyberpunk review have gathered news about cyberpunk material coming to the screens. Here’s a roundup:     Disney does a prequel series to ‘Tron Legacy’, ↑Tron uprising—the animated series. Alcon Entertainment plans to ↑buy the ‘Blade Runner’ intellectual property franchise and to create material based on it on multiple platforms. A postapocalyptical robot-movie called ‘↑Plug‘ is in the making. The ↑remake of ‘Robocop’ has been resurrected. Pages … Continue reading →

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sterling interview

Posted on by March 29, 2011
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Gunhead, a member of ↑cyberpunk review, recently has done an ↑email-interview with ↑Bruce Sterling. The initial theme of the conversation is the close resemblance of contemporary life to cyberpunk fiction. A well-led interview, and quite interesting, imho. The trend is toward a culture which isn’t even aware that it’s a ‘cyberculture.’ Once everything is ‘cyber,’ nothing is ‘cyber,’ and cyber gets commonplace and boring. (Bruce Sterling in Sterling & Gunhead 2011) STERLING, BRUCE AND GUNHEAD. 2011. An interview with Bruce Sterling. Cyberpunkreview.com 03 March 2011. Electronic document. Available online: http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/uncategorized/an-interview-with-bruce-sterling-by-gunhead/ … Continue reading →

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we, robot

Posted on by March 16, 2011
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About ↑Mark Stephen Meadows I first heard when I still was deep into ‘↑Second Life‘ (SL). His book ‘I, avatar’ (2008) is outstandingly designed—Meadows is a portrait artist and author by profession—and from all physical books on the topic does by far the most justice to SL in terms of visual representation. In terms of content, it until today is the best I read on the issue of ‘the avatar,’ which Meadows does not restrict to the graphical representation of the user-controlled agent in SL. He understands it as a term for all kinds of online manifestation of a human … Continue reading →

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