Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Lo in Boston
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1B76o9_Spk
This video just posted, about the Lo crew coming to Boston. I'm in there around 6:44, John right after me. I think it's hilarious to see out-of-towners do adorable things like go on the freedom trail. And also, yeah, Boston shuts down at night and it's really freaking cold.
Also, apparently I am only concerned with silly things like emotions and I say "like" a lot. NOTE TO SELF.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
A Speculative Essay on STEAMPUNK
I say "speculative" for two reasons. One, people seem to have been throwing around the term "speculative fiction" a lot lately and I thought I'd join the party. Two, I've always known what steampunk is but I've never been an expert on it, and educated speculation is still speculation when the extent of your knowledge comes from conversation and poking around on the internet.
Now, onward.
Steampunk is a genre of fiction, and it was always that, first. But the literary genre was defined most strongly by an aesthetic that manifested later in pop culture, most notably fashion and industrial design. From time to time a film (like Final Cut) borrows lightly from the aesthetic but leaves the themes at home.
In my last post I mused as to why it is Britain, specifically, that would have born such a genre. A few people had a few theories on that. Briana said it was cultural ties to the land. Sean said it was discomfort with industrialization. John, like me, said it was the pagan roots. I'm sure that like any true thing, it's a combination.
I remember being in England a couple of years ago. We saw lots of really old things, but it hit me hardest when we saw the Tower of London and some one said that it was over 900 years old. My god! I thought to myself. The United States is so young, we absolutely cannot fathom what 900 or a thousand years of history even feels like. There is no such thing as an American historical figure of 1200 AD. The dust on English shelves is several times older than our government. The closest we get to even existing that early in the record books is some viking who took a boat out and wrote about the land mass in his little viking diary.
So imagine a region like that, whose mythological counterpart is Arthurian legend. They had a good thing going for several centuries, and the most recent of those centuries was spent ping-ponging wildly between - guess what? Science and religion. I imagine it was a difficult thing for a group of little islands to fully accept the industrial revolution when they had roots so deep in magic.
Jules Verne and HG Wells were loose contemporaries of the industrial revolution, which, in case you didn't take 9th grade world history, was totally a British thing until some jerk literally smuggled the designs of the steam engine into the States.
Verne and Wells were futurists and politicos just as much as they were novelists. Their work is responsible for steampunk, but it's not really fair to call them steampunk. At the time they were regular old science fiction writers. Like any good science fiction writer (heh. heh.), they wrote about social structures as much as anything else. They had lived through the Victorian Era, entering into the Edwardian Era, and here before them they saw the birth of marvelous new technologies. When they wrote, they naturally combined the cultural moors of the Victorians with futuristic devices like airplanes, rocketships, submarines, time machines. To a turn of the century man, the future was in steam, just like the real-life, totally game-changing steam engine trains.
Fast forward about a hundred years. The Industrial Revolution in Britain had fizzled to kind of an Industrial Meh, but now it's 1970ish, so, you know, lots of other stuff is going on.
Like punk. I'm sorry, PUNK!!! And not surprisingly, the UK is right there too. You know The Sex Pistols, Clash? Yeah, I'm sure you've never heard of them. The seeds planted by Wells and Verne are rustling in the ground.
I don't know what it was that started this magic brew, but for some reason the punk movement dug out those old books and found a match made in heaven.
I don't know why this happened. Maybe the punks related to the sort of existential crisis posed by a civilization on the brink of a major paradigm shift. Maybe it was Victorian sexual fetishism. Or maybe they just thought it was really damn cool.
Because suddenly the ordinary science fiction of The Invisible Man or 2000 Leagues became a marvelous future that never was, as imagined by people for whom Victorian style was a reality and not a novelty. Since then people have really taken with the notion of rewinding before moving forward.
Steampunk unlike fantasy, usually doesn't deal with alternate dimensions or hidden worlds. It deals with our world, but with key differences, as if we could just back the car up in reverse and take another direction. It has since grown to popularity in other cultures, but at its origin it is a terribly, terribly, terribly British thing.
Which means of course, that there is also magic. And this is the happiest thing of all.
Key Characteristics:
- it's often dystopian or post-apocalyptic, but not always
- It's generally a hash-up of Victorian England and 1980s England, but not always
- Often has paranormal, fantastic, or magical themes.
- Magic and technology have a special relationship, they are either at odds or mutually enabling.
- Steam-powered technology
- Modern writers, having more perspective on the time period that Victorian writers were trying to describe, like to add in other funky time warp gadgets, like wooden computers.
Examples:
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (British Comic): Written by Alan Moore and having mutated to lots of other mediums. Pretty hardcore steampunk. Directly derivative of Verne and Wells.
Full Metal Alchemist (Japanese Anime): Basically posits that Alchemist efforts of yore actually worked and have been taken to their logical extreme.
http://www.onemanga.com/Full_Metal_Alchemist/94/00-cover/
Note the big clunky robot, the turn of the century bifocal guy, and the dude in the cape.
Arcanum (American Videogame): Basically if the LotR style traditional fantasy universe went through the Industrial Revolution. In this case, magic is in direct conflict with technology.
FreakAngels (British Webcomic): I was pointed there when an acquaintance read my last post. It's a very good comic, and ongoing, but I'm still waiting for something... 12 young hot things with telepathic/paranormal powers try to run a small urban compound in post-apocalyptic, mostly-flooded London.
If you want a good example of how Victorian meets punk in fashion, just check out KK and Conor's clothes:
http://www.freakangels.com/?p=25&page=5
For the sake of beating a dead horse I should probably tell you that KK dropped a water canteen on the blonde girl because that's what runs her magical steam-powered helicopter bike.
And because I've never read any steampunk novels, here's an Amazon forum with a few people who have, and who have opinions.
That's all I've got. If you have anything to say, or anything you think I would like, send my way please? Thanks.
Now, onward.
Steampunk is a genre of fiction, and it was always that, first. But the literary genre was defined most strongly by an aesthetic that manifested later in pop culture, most notably fashion and industrial design. From time to time a film (like Final Cut) borrows lightly from the aesthetic but leaves the themes at home.
In my last post I mused as to why it is Britain, specifically, that would have born such a genre. A few people had a few theories on that. Briana said it was cultural ties to the land. Sean said it was discomfort with industrialization. John, like me, said it was the pagan roots. I'm sure that like any true thing, it's a combination.
I remember being in England a couple of years ago. We saw lots of really old things, but it hit me hardest when we saw the Tower of London and some one said that it was over 900 years old. My god! I thought to myself. The United States is so young, we absolutely cannot fathom what 900 or a thousand years of history even feels like. There is no such thing as an American historical figure of 1200 AD. The dust on English shelves is several times older than our government. The closest we get to even existing that early in the record books is some viking who took a boat out and wrote about the land mass in his little viking diary.
So imagine a region like that, whose mythological counterpart is Arthurian legend. They had a good thing going for several centuries, and the most recent of those centuries was spent ping-ponging wildly between - guess what? Science and religion. I imagine it was a difficult thing for a group of little islands to fully accept the industrial revolution when they had roots so deep in magic.
Jules Verne and HG Wells were loose contemporaries of the industrial revolution, which, in case you didn't take 9th grade world history, was totally a British thing until some jerk literally smuggled the designs of the steam engine into the States.
Verne and Wells were futurists and politicos just as much as they were novelists. Their work is responsible for steampunk, but it's not really fair to call them steampunk. At the time they were regular old science fiction writers. Like any good science fiction writer (heh. heh.), they wrote about social structures as much as anything else. They had lived through the Victorian Era, entering into the Edwardian Era, and here before them they saw the birth of marvelous new technologies. When they wrote, they naturally combined the cultural moors of the Victorians with futuristic devices like airplanes, rocketships, submarines, time machines. To a turn of the century man, the future was in steam, just like the real-life, totally game-changing steam engine trains.
Fast forward about a hundred years. The Industrial Revolution in Britain had fizzled to kind of an Industrial Meh, but now it's 1970ish, so, you know, lots of other stuff is going on.
Like punk. I'm sorry, PUNK!!! And not surprisingly, the UK is right there too. You know The Sex Pistols, Clash? Yeah, I'm sure you've never heard of them. The seeds planted by Wells and Verne are rustling in the ground.
I don't know what it was that started this magic brew, but for some reason the punk movement dug out those old books and found a match made in heaven.
I don't know why this happened. Maybe the punks related to the sort of existential crisis posed by a civilization on the brink of a major paradigm shift. Maybe it was Victorian sexual fetishism. Or maybe they just thought it was really damn cool.
Because suddenly the ordinary science fiction of The Invisible Man or 2000 Leagues became a marvelous future that never was, as imagined by people for whom Victorian style was a reality and not a novelty. Since then people have really taken with the notion of rewinding before moving forward.
Steampunk unlike fantasy, usually doesn't deal with alternate dimensions or hidden worlds. It deals with our world, but with key differences, as if we could just back the car up in reverse and take another direction. It has since grown to popularity in other cultures, but at its origin it is a terribly, terribly, terribly British thing.
Which means of course, that there is also magic. And this is the happiest thing of all.
Key Characteristics:
- it's often dystopian or post-apocalyptic, but not always
- It's generally a hash-up of Victorian England and 1980s England, but not always
- Often has paranormal, fantastic, or magical themes.
- Magic and technology have a special relationship, they are either at odds or mutually enabling.
- Steam-powered technology
- Modern writers, having more perspective on the time period that Victorian writers were trying to describe, like to add in other funky time warp gadgets, like wooden computers.
Examples:
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (British Comic): Written by Alan Moore and having mutated to lots of other mediums. Pretty hardcore steampunk. Directly derivative of Verne and Wells.
Full Metal Alchemist (Japanese Anime): Basically posits that Alchemist efforts of yore actually worked and have been taken to their logical extreme.
http://www.onemanga.com/Full_Metal_Alchemist/94/00-cover/
Note the big clunky robot, the turn of the century bifocal guy, and the dude in the cape.
Arcanum (American Videogame): Basically if the LotR style traditional fantasy universe went through the Industrial Revolution. In this case, magic is in direct conflict with technology.
FreakAngels (British Webcomic): I was pointed there when an acquaintance read my last post. It's a very good comic, and ongoing, but I'm still waiting for something... 12 young hot things with telepathic/paranormal powers try to run a small urban compound in post-apocalyptic, mostly-flooded London.
If you want a good example of how Victorian meets punk in fashion, just check out KK and Conor's clothes:
http://www.freakangels.com/?p=25&page=5
For the sake of beating a dead horse I should probably tell you that KK dropped a water canteen on the blonde girl because that's what runs her magical steam-powered helicopter bike.
And because I've never read any steampunk novels, here's an Amazon forum with a few people who have, and who have opinions.
That's all I've got. If you have anything to say, or anything you think I would like, send my way please? Thanks.
Monday, April 20, 2009
I Have a Question
In my very last semester of college I took a class called Magical Realism/Virtual Reality. On the very first day of that class I asked a question which was possibly embarrassing, which was, "what about them?" We can learn about their histories and so on, but what's the relationship? The professor laughed and told me that I would figure it out. By the end of that class she still hadn't told me.
It was weird taking a class predicated on some one else's theory, but they won't tell you what the theory is. It's like reading an essay with no hypothesis.
Anyway I eventually figured out that there was some sort of relationship in the way people sublimate their existential discontent through "unrealistic" fiction, first world industrial countries through extremely high-tech Jeff Noon Waichowsky Brothers Philip Dick debacles, poor undeveloped countries through myth-weaving, old gods, sentient nature, and the extraordinary commonplace. It's as if you use what's in front of you. If you have nature you use nature. If you have technology you use technology.
And I as a person, though being born in a first world nation whose one measure of global worth is our ravenous consumption of techo-gadgetry, was still also born in the middle of the woods where vinyl records long outstayed their welcome and household computers were unheard of and religion was everything.
And my fiance, being the High King of all gadget-nerds (you dare challenge him?), goes on and on about this stuff. Sometimes I feel like I'm missing the point, missing something very important. Why do other people care so much? Why do people camp in front of the Apple store whenever they have some new model of the iPod? Why is it that my friends can go on about this or that doohickey, when I don't so much as give a gosh damn?
But my fiance, who also knows me about as well as a person could, tells me that it's probably because I never made that bond when I was young. Like the poor undeveloped countries without computers, I found my first intellectual roots in nature. My first atoms of self-awareness were formed on the backdrop of bark and grass and dirt.
I was in to science fiction for a few years as a kid. I even wrote a really terrible science fiction book. But I left it for fantasy, at least, as soon as I realized fantasy existed because my parents went to great lengths to keep life boring. But I think my fantasy is still a little more metallic than most.
But so going off of this neat little dichotomy, that science fiction is 1st world and magical realism is 3rd world because people improvise off the tools they have access to:
Then what does that say about Britain? They are the original industrialized country, still as first world as their lily white skin and as developed as their CO2 emissions.
I think I can safely suggest that the UK totally owns the fantasy genre. Not magical realism, but fantasy, which is different yet similar in its rustic qualities. It's nature based, it draws on old religions and myth. Why does Britain get to tread this line? Do they have some cloistered cultural memory? What forces are those that produced Tolkien and Lewis, Barrie or Carroll? And today, still, Rowling and Gaiman and Alan Moore?
And what fascinates me now is steampunk, Wells and Verne. Because that genre literally describes that rather bipolar amalgamation of high and low tech. Maybe only the UK could have done steampunk right.
But why the fantasy at all? Was it the pagans? Was it the Crusades?
It was weird taking a class predicated on some one else's theory, but they won't tell you what the theory is. It's like reading an essay with no hypothesis.
Anyway I eventually figured out that there was some sort of relationship in the way people sublimate their existential discontent through "unrealistic" fiction, first world industrial countries through extremely high-tech Jeff Noon Waichowsky Brothers Philip Dick debacles, poor undeveloped countries through myth-weaving, old gods, sentient nature, and the extraordinary commonplace. It's as if you use what's in front of you. If you have nature you use nature. If you have technology you use technology.
And I as a person, though being born in a first world nation whose one measure of global worth is our ravenous consumption of techo-gadgetry, was still also born in the middle of the woods where vinyl records long outstayed their welcome and household computers were unheard of and religion was everything.
And my fiance, being the High King of all gadget-nerds (you dare challenge him?), goes on and on about this stuff. Sometimes I feel like I'm missing the point, missing something very important. Why do other people care so much? Why do people camp in front of the Apple store whenever they have some new model of the iPod? Why is it that my friends can go on about this or that doohickey, when I don't so much as give a gosh damn?
But my fiance, who also knows me about as well as a person could, tells me that it's probably because I never made that bond when I was young. Like the poor undeveloped countries without computers, I found my first intellectual roots in nature. My first atoms of self-awareness were formed on the backdrop of bark and grass and dirt.
I was in to science fiction for a few years as a kid. I even wrote a really terrible science fiction book. But I left it for fantasy, at least, as soon as I realized fantasy existed because my parents went to great lengths to keep life boring. But I think my fantasy is still a little more metallic than most.
But so going off of this neat little dichotomy, that science fiction is 1st world and magical realism is 3rd world because people improvise off the tools they have access to:
Then what does that say about Britain? They are the original industrialized country, still as first world as their lily white skin and as developed as their CO2 emissions.
I think I can safely suggest that the UK totally owns the fantasy genre. Not magical realism, but fantasy, which is different yet similar in its rustic qualities. It's nature based, it draws on old religions and myth. Why does Britain get to tread this line? Do they have some cloistered cultural memory? What forces are those that produced Tolkien and Lewis, Barrie or Carroll? And today, still, Rowling and Gaiman and Alan Moore?
And what fascinates me now is steampunk, Wells and Verne. Because that genre literally describes that rather bipolar amalgamation of high and low tech. Maybe only the UK could have done steampunk right.
But why the fantasy at all? Was it the pagans? Was it the Crusades?
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Flatlining in the New World
in the new world,
death will be an allegory
turned into an idiom
which means
“to hesitate” or
“to cease momentarily”
as in:
“Mary, I’m dying on this menu.
Baked penne
or pasta prima vera?”
as in:
“Joe died at the green light
and missed his chance.”
as in:
“Die before you leap.”
in the old world
death is a way of expressing desire
or shock.
as in:
“when he told me he was gay
I just died!”
or:
“I’m still dying to see
the next big thing
in underworld fashion”
Death has a way of implementing
euphemism.
A thousand other words to take its place.
Death has a way
of crawling into other
vernacular spaces
like a mold
to mean a thousand things it is not.
In the new world
death will be a theory
like gravity
or evolution
or strings.
people of the new world
will find better ways
to synthesize a living body
with biodegradable cartilage
and saline fluids
to prolong the great hesitation
people will find better ways
to avoid decay
don’t judge them
you do it too.
your fridge is stocked with produce,
which is dead.
sealed and frozen and sprayed to look undead
to solve our necrophilic urge to consume death
death, death.
in the new world
bodies don’t rot.
they only dissipate
our plastics are environmentally friendly.
we will have
such sophisticated holographic techniques
informed by state of the art archival devices
recorded from birth
that when they are finally gone
you won’t know the difference.
you won’t even miss them.
They would have wanted it this way.
death will be an allegory
turned into an idiom
which means
“to hesitate” or
“to cease momentarily”
as in:
“Mary, I’m dying on this menu.
Baked penne
or pasta prima vera?”
as in:
“Joe died at the green light
and missed his chance.”
as in:
“Die before you leap.”
in the old world
death is a way of expressing desire
or shock.
as in:
“when he told me he was gay
I just died!”
or:
“I’m still dying to see
the next big thing
in underworld fashion”
Death has a way of implementing
euphemism.
A thousand other words to take its place.
Death has a way
of crawling into other
vernacular spaces
like a mold
to mean a thousand things it is not.
In the new world
death will be a theory
like gravity
or evolution
or strings.
people of the new world
will find better ways
to synthesize a living body
with biodegradable cartilage
and saline fluids
to prolong the great hesitation
people will find better ways
to avoid decay
don’t judge them
you do it too.
your fridge is stocked with produce,
which is dead.
sealed and frozen and sprayed to look undead
to solve our necrophilic urge to consume death
death, death.
in the new world
bodies don’t rot.
they only dissipate
our plastics are environmentally friendly.
we will have
such sophisticated holographic techniques
informed by state of the art archival devices
recorded from birth
that when they are finally gone
you won’t know the difference.
you won’t even miss them.
They would have wanted it this way.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
MAXAT Corp.
A man named Tempest
wasn't walking home
he took a long train down
to a place that - in English -
means "one bridge"
He spent his last stolna
and wagered his bearings to be on that train
he had nothing to give
no north star, no moss
Tempest doesn't know English
He doesn't know any language except mutt.
His parents named him by pointing in a dictionary
to erase his clues.
His family were the birds that ate the breadcrumbs.
This morning a Jehovah Witness knocked on my door.
You sound solid, sad, without couth. without graces.
I kept looking at his silent protoge, a kid in freckles.
The old man asked
if I thought it was possible for the world
to get any better
And Tempest walked across my head.
He lives in the future and follows lots of maps.
I said yes but only if we accept
that these current paradigms work no longer, sir.
That includes your religion, sir.
That includes your suit, sir.
That includes the hegemonic renegotiation of rights, sir.
But then, who's really got a right to anything they didn't kill?
Tempest came on to a man with a cart
selling goat meat by the river
the man told Tempest that amputees could regrow parts,
but not without loss.
The man told Tempest that he took the form
of whichever creature observed him.
Tempest wondered if he was hungry enough.
The man at my door reads a passage from Revelations.
I wonder how hard it is to be snatched.
God's precious hostage.
The man asks me what a good world looks like.
I ask him what this world looks like.
I said "we're both philosophers sir, and I admire your will, sir
I'm glad you know the answer, sir,
but I don't live here,
and neither do you."
Tempest puts his hand on the doorknob.
"No one is ever home," I tell him.
But he doesn't understand a word.
wasn't walking home
he took a long train down
to a place that - in English -
means "one bridge"
He spent his last stolna
and wagered his bearings to be on that train
he had nothing to give
no north star, no moss
Tempest doesn't know English
He doesn't know any language except mutt.
His parents named him by pointing in a dictionary
to erase his clues.
His family were the birds that ate the breadcrumbs.
This morning a Jehovah Witness knocked on my door.
You sound solid, sad, without couth. without graces.
I kept looking at his silent protoge, a kid in freckles.
The old man asked
if I thought it was possible for the world
to get any better
And Tempest walked across my head.
He lives in the future and follows lots of maps.
I said yes but only if we accept
that these current paradigms work no longer, sir.
That includes your religion, sir.
That includes your suit, sir.
That includes the hegemonic renegotiation of rights, sir.
But then, who's really got a right to anything they didn't kill?
Tempest came on to a man with a cart
selling goat meat by the river
the man told Tempest that amputees could regrow parts,
but not without loss.
The man told Tempest that he took the form
of whichever creature observed him.
Tempest wondered if he was hungry enough.
The man at my door reads a passage from Revelations.
I wonder how hard it is to be snatched.
God's precious hostage.
The man asks me what a good world looks like.
I ask him what this world looks like.
I said "we're both philosophers sir, and I admire your will, sir
I'm glad you know the answer, sir,
but I don't live here,
and neither do you."
Tempest puts his hand on the doorknob.
"No one is ever home," I tell him.
But he doesn't understand a word.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
LUZIDEN!
Luziden is coming up quickly. Very quickly.
I want to invite everyone out to the premiere, which is at Space 242, connected to the Dig Offices.
Here's the specs:
April 24th
6-8pm
242 E. Berkeley St.
Boston MA.
You can get there easily by taking the Silver Line from Boylston, into the South End. Get off at the East Berkeley stop and take a left.
There will be an open bar, so get there early if you actually want free beer. The line gets long. Luziden is showing as part of the Weekly Dig's Final Fridays, which is an event designed to showcase their new exhibit of the month. This month it's DESTROY BOSTON. I'm excited for that as well. It's a really sweet space, too, if you haven't been there.
Luziden was also selected to show at the Huret and Spectre Gallery at Emerson (being an Emerson kid doesn't get you in automatically, trust me). That's running May 1-18th, in the Tufte Building.
A short documentary called "In the Dreaming Mind", which I guess I'm making, will be showing at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on May 15th. I'll post the times as soon as I know.
Wait, something I'm making is going to play at the Coolidge? I'm sorry, that just occurred to me and it blew my mind a little. Wow. Yeah. Okay, moving on.
If you go to the BFA screenings (which you should, in any case), they will be May 17th at the Museum of Fine Arts. Still don't know the exact time of that, either. But stills, and possibly production stills, for Luziden will be playing at intermission. At that point though, there will only be one more day to see it at the Huret and Spectre, so you better get with the program.
Here is an overview of the entire deal:
If traditional cinema is, as Jacques Lacan claims, a Freudian dreamstate, Luziden
attempts to be the cinematic equivalent of a lucid dream - one in which the viewer
asserts some degree of control over what transpires.
To create the materials for the piece, numerous individuals were asked to submit dreams
they had experienced. Submissions were made via first-person interviews, anonymous
emails, and via the official Facebook group. These dreams were analysed in order to find
common themes running throughout. The themes discovered in this way were used to generate
original examples of dream elements, which can be combined dynamically. This process is
designed to attempt to tap into a Jungian collective unconscious, and make the dream
experience more authentic for viewers.
The materials include HD video (shot in 1080p), audio, and HDR (high dynamic-range) photo
backgrounds. The installation is being programmed in Quartz Composer and Ableton Live.
The triptych widescreen display is being handled by a Matrox TripleHead2Go breakout box.
If you want to see some composite stills, go here, and scroll past the giant mouth: http://www.capseat.com/John/resume/newmedia.html
How did I end up with so much work? At least it's awesome. Go Capseat Go!
I want to invite everyone out to the premiere, which is at Space 242, connected to the Dig Offices.
Here's the specs:
April 24th
6-8pm
242 E. Berkeley St.
Boston MA.
You can get there easily by taking the Silver Line from Boylston, into the South End. Get off at the East Berkeley stop and take a left.
There will be an open bar, so get there early if you actually want free beer. The line gets long. Luziden is showing as part of the Weekly Dig's Final Fridays, which is an event designed to showcase their new exhibit of the month. This month it's DESTROY BOSTON. I'm excited for that as well. It's a really sweet space, too, if you haven't been there.
Luziden was also selected to show at the Huret and Spectre Gallery at Emerson (being an Emerson kid doesn't get you in automatically, trust me). That's running May 1-18th, in the Tufte Building.
A short documentary called "In the Dreaming Mind", which I guess I'm making, will be showing at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on May 15th. I'll post the times as soon as I know.
Wait, something I'm making is going to play at the Coolidge? I'm sorry, that just occurred to me and it blew my mind a little. Wow. Yeah. Okay, moving on.
If you go to the BFA screenings (which you should, in any case), they will be May 17th at the Museum of Fine Arts. Still don't know the exact time of that, either. But stills, and possibly production stills, for Luziden will be playing at intermission. At that point though, there will only be one more day to see it at the Huret and Spectre, so you better get with the program.
Here is an overview of the entire deal:
If traditional cinema is, as Jacques Lacan claims, a Freudian dreamstate, Luziden
attempts to be the cinematic equivalent of a lucid dream - one in which the viewer
asserts some degree of control over what transpires.
To create the materials for the piece, numerous individuals were asked to submit dreams
they had experienced. Submissions were made via first-person interviews, anonymous
emails, and via the official Facebook group. These dreams were analysed in order to find
common themes running throughout. The themes discovered in this way were used to generate
original examples of dream elements, which can be combined dynamically. This process is
designed to attempt to tap into a Jungian collective unconscious, and make the dream
experience more authentic for viewers.
The materials include HD video (shot in 1080p), audio, and HDR (high dynamic-range) photo
backgrounds. The installation is being programmed in Quartz Composer and Ableton Live.
The triptych widescreen display is being handled by a Matrox TripleHead2Go breakout box.
If you want to see some composite stills, go here, and scroll past the giant mouth: http://www.capseat.com/John/resume/newmedia.html
How did I end up with so much work? At least it's awesome. Go Capseat Go!
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