Werner Herzog turns "Twas The Night Before Christmas" into a tale of existential terror

Via teh awesome io9:

The Journeyman Project

Dirty Jobs photographer and cameraman Troy Paff's The Journeyman Project is a beautifully documented survey of the tradespeople and DIYers of the new century.

"In the five years since Dirty Jobs‘ premiere, its small crew has experienced an unprecedented number of vocations. With nearly 300 jobs and 50 states under their belt, Dirty Jobs has investigated – and celebrated – those occupations which, while often unsavory, keep the country running. A common thread which runs through these occupations is a particular character required to do them. It is a fundamental commitment to do a job and do it well, where glamour takes a back seat to service, and where pride in a job done well is its own reward. It is this sense of character that Troy will explore, shining a light on the individual behind the job, and expressing the personality and the motivations of the worker.

"The route Troy takes will be an evolving one directed by the subjects of the project. Some of the subjects Troy knows, or has wanted to meet. While many of the Dirty Jobs alumni will be revisited, referrals from this ‘family’ will further lead him to individuals who exemplify that same through-line of character: the tradesmen and skilled labor who are driven to succeed in spite of the challenges of their vocations and the hardships of the economy, if not because of them.

"The Journeyman Project shall be a celebration of the individual, and over time and the course of a growing compendium of subjects, it will express the collective character of the skilled worker in contemporary America. In an environment where ‘The American Dream’ has been outmoded, themes to explore include the trending decline of the trades and the growing demand for skilled workers, the loss of manufacturing and the effect of trade agreements with Asia and Central America, the decline of infrastructure, high unemployment rates, the housing and mortgage crisis, continued war and national security, ecological catastrophes, and just what ‘recovery’ means in the 21st century."

I love this for a lot of reasons. One of them is the project's focus on truly 21st Century lifestyles. Another is Paff's "celebration of the individual," because we aren't a "we" in the abstract, but a collection of heroes - every last one of us, in our own unique way - who make the choice to work together for greater things. And, of course, because our dear friend Jeff Sturges and our very own Bethany Shorb are featured!

update: It was just pointed out that our pal & MAKE editor Gareth Branwyn posted about The Journeyman Project this afternoon: clickity-click!

The Blast Shack

If you read only one essay on Wikileaks, Cablegate, Private Bradley Manning, Mr. Assange and cypherpunk culture, this is the most erudite and eloquent I think you'll find: "The Blast Shack" by Bruce Sterling.

I'd quote a couple paragraphs here, but you should just read it straight through. It would be like disrupting a meal - a meal filled with melancholy, humor and enlightenment. [I don't think it's quite as melancholy as Bruce says it is. Then again, "optimistic" is one of the two words in my current made-up political alignment.]

If you do read two articles on the subject, perhaps the second best I've seen is this morning's piece by Zeynep Tufekci in The Atlantic: "Wikileaks Exposes Internet's Dissent Tax, not Nerd Supremacy".

Oh, and a Canadian poet prophetically explains exactly why an Australian hacker would target the USA [spoiler alert: optimism.]

You might think an industrial cover of a Fleetwood Mac song wouldn't be awesome...

But you'd be mistaken!

Our newest synth couple BFFs, //TENSE//:

//TENSE// The Chain from tommy boy on Vimeo.

Also see:

//TENSE// - Turn It Off from tommy boy on Vimeo.

Paper Cuts

Paper Cuts from Michigan Daily on Vimeo.

A short video showcasing the work and process of paper engineer and U of M lecturer [and Cranbrook grad and totally awesome guy] Matt Shlian.

Sorry I've been neglecting this blog. Big thanks to our editors who've kept it alive.

I missed posting major Burnlab news like the Detroit Lives premiere [starring T0ybreaker], updates about our hackerspace OmniCorpDetroit and our Satanic techno arm Dethlab opening for Gary freaking Numan last week [and Nitzer freaking Ebb in November!]

Thinking about switching over to Tumblr. Thoughts on that, loyal readers and contributors?

Red Tide

Don't worry. This won't change anything. We all voted for a Muslim Socialist Antichrist just 2 years ago and effectively got George Bush III. Elections are overrated. It assumes millionaire sociopaths will solve your problems. If you want to make a difference, start a community workshop, an ethical business, teach. Ignore authority & don't wait for a savior. You are the one you've been waiting for.

VITALIC San Francisco

A few shots from VITALIC in San Francsico. His set included wo enormous LED walls mounted behind mirrored panels, with everything choreographed to his mindblowing music performed live. Hit the Flickr link for a few videos.

Early 20th century gags from 1929:

Are you an aficionado of various post-Victorian but definitely Vaudevillian pranks and other such contrivance? Look no further. Yes. I certainly would like to peruse this most bully catalog reproduction of vintage parlour tricks:

http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/masonicmuseum/demoulin/

Aaron Draplin in Detroit Thursday

AIGA Detroit and Team Detroit Present: Tall Tales From a Large Man

Born in Traverse City, Michigan, Aaron Draplin is the sole proprietor of Draplin Design Company and created Field Notes Brand. Located in the mighty Pacific Northwest, the freedom fighters of the Draplin Design Co. proudly roll up their sleeves on a handful of projects related to the Print, Identity, Web, Illustration and Gocco Muscle categories.

Hunkered down in his “36th year” the DDC has shipped the goods for Coal Headwear, Union Binding Company, Snowboard Magazine, Grenade Gloves, Gnu Snowboards, Ride Snowboards, Forum Snowboards, Giro Helmets, Richmond Fontaine, Chunklet Magazine, Exit Real World, Timberline, Snowboarder Magazine, Wired Magazine, Chuck Prophet, Nike, Cobra Dogs, Uncle Buck, and the Obama Administration.

Draplin promises to tell his story, show some work, talk some smack, and hawk a mountain of merch. Gonna’ be fun as hell. Be there, or be added to his ever-growing shit list. In Gary we Trust.

Thursday, August 26, 2010 — August 26, 2010 7:00pm - 8:30pm 1515 Broadway
1515 Broadway
Detroit, Michigan

*Less than 20 tickets left!

America Is F*cked.......(Graphically at least) from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

For those of us who dare to imagine a stateless, completely free and transparent future for humanity, that rejects vain attempts by both Bush and Obama to restore the neoliberal glory days of the 1990s [which were in retrospect perhaps morally worse than 1950s nostalgia & Reaganomics combined,] your new charismatic civil libertarian posterboy doesn't make soap. Our 21st Century Tyler Durden is a hacker and talks to TED: TED Talks: Julian Assange

Malaria!

Malaria! - Geld/Money [1983]

Speaking of the great Gudrun Gut, see this new Quietus interview, Women At Work: Greie Gut Fraktion Interviewed

Detroit Lives trailer

VBS.TV and Palladium Boots presents Detroit Lives

Once the fourth-largest metropolis in America—some have called it the Death of the American Dream. Today, the young people of the Motor City are making it their own DIY paradise where rules are second to passion and creativity. They are creating the new Detroit on their own terms, against real adversity. We put our boots on and went exploring.

The full VBS.TV documentary debuts on August 30th. Look for lots of familiar faces!

I have a man crush on Julian Assange. There, I said it.
He is to civil libertarians what Palin is to inbreds.

Thanks, BP

Click.

"yeah thats not what I was looking for at all."

Just read this.

DieHard Battery vs. Gary Numan

AW350M3N355.



[Via Boing Boing]

DeLorean Hovercraft

This is easily the best thing I've seen all day.

From Jalopnik:

Matthew Riese, a 26-year-old grad student, is hand-building what every kid in 1985 desperately wanted — a hovering DeLorean just like in the movie Back to the Future. Now he needs your help...

Now that there is a how a pitch video is done.

Be a micro venture capitalist and donate on Kickstarter to make Riese's dream a reality.

We demand absolute liberation from Newton's gravitational mania

Today's dose of Blixa comes in the form of a satirical manifesto to end all manifestos.


Einstürzende Neubauten - Was Ist Ist [live at Palast der Republik, 2004]

Guerilla Marketing Goes Prehistoric

More advertising should be this clever, humorous and downright weird. A German ad agency planted items such as fake dinosaur legs and saber tooth fillets in grocery stores to promote Bosch refrigerators.



I could totally go for a fresh mammoth steak.

Atrocity Exhibition 2010

A Taiwanese news network has created video game style 3D animations of current events ranging from Tiger Woods' SUV crash to the Leno/Conan debacle. The latest one - graphically depicting Al Gore's alleged sexual assault of a Portland masseuse - takes it to a new level. Far more of a car wreck you can't look away from than some golfer smashing his Cadillac while fleeing from his enraged wife.

Watch below for the visual metaphor involving a poodle.



A couple things come to mind.

First: imagine your most embarrassing moment. Now imagine that interpreted by someone you've never met half way around the world and rendered in glossy 3D animation. Is it accurate? Doesn't matter. It's out there. All over the world.

Second thought is: if some contemporary artist had done this before a tabloid news program did, they'd be bigger than ol' Damien Hirst right now. Could you imagine? Huge! Imagine digital reenactments of fictional scandals involving historical figures. Lincoln is never going to live down that blowjob he gave Hitler.


[via io9]

Interpol's brand new video is top-notch surreal ritualistic science fetish Prada-goth

Directed by Charlie White - with a splash of Matthew Barney and a dash of Steven Klein.



update: embedded video fixed

Reed Ghazala, the father of circuit bending

Via the always excellent Wire to the Ear

Give the man an ashtray.

If I could be 10% as cool as Alexander Robotnick when I'm 60...

Born Free

Yowza.
The new M.I.A video directed by Romain Gavras looks and sounds like something Atari Teenage Riot might do. It's a powerful [and explicitly violent] piece of politically-charged art. I don't see stuff like this from mainstream artists much, if ever. If you haven't seen it yet, you might want to be sitting down.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Philip.K. Dick: A Day in the Afterlife

Here's an extraordinary documentary about PKD from the BBC program Arena, originally broadcast on 9th April 1994. You'll spot cameo "endorsements" by Terry Gilliam and Elvis Costello in this first of six parts below:



Watch all six parts of Philip.K. Dick: A Day in the Afterlife here.

[Thanks to our dearest at Ghostly International for the link!]

Xeno & Oaklander

Cold waves, warm hearts: Brooklyn's Xeno & Oaklander on Weird Records.


Xeno & Oaklander - Rendez-Vous d'Or [2010]


Xeno & Oaklander - Sentinelle [2009]

Sustainability is the New American Dream

Ogilvy & Mather - one of the biggest ad agencies on the planet - totally gets the state of the world. Their 2010 Post-Recession Consumer Study has me cheering from my rented patio furniture.

An excerpt:

MARKETERS NOT CONNECTING WITH TODAY’S CONSUMER
RESEARCH REVEALS EMERGENCE OF RADICAL NEW INDIVIDUALISM
Sustainability is the New American Dream

CHICAGO, IL, March 15, 2010 – Today’s consumer is emerging from the recession with a radically new definition of the American Dream and a renewed sense in their own resourcefulness and priorities according to a just released quantitative study of 1200 consumers and qualitative research with nearly 700, conducted by Ogilvy & Mather Chicago in partnership with leading consumer insight company Communispace.

New View of the American Dream

Among the study’s key findings is that “having it all” is an unrealistic goal with 75% of those surveyed saying they would rather get out of the rat race than climb the corporate ladder – and instead, 76% said they would rather spend more time with family than make more money. Moreover, Americans are showing disenchantment with the pursuit of money with 75% again saying they would trade job security over a job that offered an opportunity for raises.



“The most surprising thing about our study was how much consumers were saying what they would NOT do for money, even when money worries are high on the list,” explained Graceann Bennett, Managing Partner and Director of Strategic Planning at Ogilvy & Mather Chicago. “Prioritizing your life based on money is seen as a sure way to be disappointed since the pursuit of money is often reliant on factors outside of consumers’ control. They have gone down this road before and are saying that they are not necessarily happier or better off as a result.”

In fact, the recession has revealed important new consumer priorities with quality of life and peace of mind at the top and a focus on living life in a more sustainable way both from an environmental and financial point of view.

“Sustainability” takes on a new Meaning

According to Manila Austin Ph.D., Communispace’s Director of Research, “Consumers didn’t fully understand the idea of sustainability until they found themselves living unsustainable lives – working too hard, carrying too much debt, and not living or planning for the long term. Now consumers are re-imagining their lives for a sustainable future for themselves and their families.”...

Related: Bruce Sterling's brilliant contemporary I Ching, the Viridian Design Movement

Crossing the Kcymaerxthaere, Eames Demetrios' parallel universe

The American Airlines in-flight magazine has an extensive travel feature on the fictional[?] world created by geographer-at-large, steward of a design legacy, multi-media artist and all-around inspirational weirdo-supreme and great guy Eames Demetrios.

Crossing the Kcymaerxthaere
An excerpt:

Exploring the Kcymaerxthaere requires a hearty imagination because Demetrios’ fictional universe is based on the theory that we can change how we perceive our visual environment, or as Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” With a bit of mental flexing, these stories — accessible online, at individual physical sites, at Demetrios’ Kcymaerxthaere lectures and in two travel guides — are not just amusing but also interesting, with inventive characters like time-slipping Grwosts and seven-legged Gnaciens, deer-resembling creatures that have highly nutritious prime-numbered legs but poisonous (and ultimately deadly) nonprime ones. Similar to our linear world, the Kcymaerxthaere is separated into continent-like shapes called rezhns that are then divided into distrykts and gwomes, or nation-footprints. Each gwome has its own texture flag, a unique cultural symbol that Demetrios often displays at gallery shows. All of the Kcymaerxthaere’s plaques and stories relate in a larger context but not necessarily to all the others.

The son of sculptors Lucia Eames and Aristides Demetrios, Eames Demetrios was born and raised in San Francisco. At an early age he developed an interest in film (a passion shared with his grandfather Charles) and later, while volunteering at the city’s Steinhart Aquarium in Golden Gate Park, he became interested in biology. However, when Demetrios graduated from Harvard in 1984, it was with a BA in general studies — a “rare” degree, he says laughingly, received as a direct result of being thrown out of both the school’s film and biology departments. A year later, Demetrios moved to Los Angeles to pursue filmmaking and has since made dozens of pictures, including The Giving, an award-winning black-and-white film about a computer programmer who reprograms ATMs to give back to the homeless. Today, Demetrios runs the monthly movie website DasFilmFest.com and is director of the Eames Office, which celebrates and preserves his grandparents’ legacy. He resides in linear Greater Mar Vista, Calif., with his wife and two sons, but spends a quarter to a third of each year on the road, during which time he researches new Kcymaerxthaere sites, installs plaques and spreads the word of his fictional universe.

Once I learned about Demetrios’ Kcymaerxthaere project, it took me a few hours to realize that it would be nearly impossible to visit every point of intersection in the linear world. In addition to a truckload of time and travel funds, sturdy walking shoes and a rock-solid GPS system, I’d also need a scuba-diving license, since a plaque detailing the Unsoiling of Rockall lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, “about an hour’s steaming from Oban,” states my Kcymaerxthaere guidebook. In fact, not even Demetrios has visited every point of -intersection, instead opting to study photographs and satellite images for possible installation sites. “It’s sort of deliberate,” he says, “so I’m not just telling stories that bounce off local history.” He’s also careful not to assign physical depictions to his characters and cultures; instead, he allows imagination free rein — one reason the Kcymaerxthaere especially resonates with children.

Previously on Burnlab: alternate realities, mythology of the Eamespunk meme and more

Orwell's 1984: the BBC teleplay

Until yesterday, I didn't know that the BBC produced a live teleplay of George Orwell's iconic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four starring a young Peter Cushing in 1954. They sure did.

1984 was made for the then astronomical figure of £3,249. Nigel Kneale (Quatermass, The Year of the Sex Olympics) wrote the script and Peter Cushing headed the cast. Director Rudolph Cartier even stretched to commissioning an original score, which was conducted during the live transmission.

The live performance on Sunday 12 December 1954 scored the highest ratings since The Coronation. Critics were excited at seeing what the new medium was capable of, calling it "a landmark in the at-present short history of television drama" but furious watchdogs campaigned for the planned second performance a few days later to be cancelled. The BBC's Head of Drama Michael Barry refused to concede, and that second live performance was recorded.

Watching 1984 today one cannot help but marvel at the ingenuity of the production. Actors move through 22 sets while the cameras perform a high-speed waltz around the studio to capture the full horror of Orwell's dystopia; filmed sequences are played while sets, cameras and actors are repositioned.

It is interesting that while television makers today, standing on giants' shoulders, can achieve so much with so little effort, there has been a desire in recent years to recapture some of the strange magic that live television offers.

Watch the entire program on the George Orwell Youtube channel. [Embedding disabled. I will never understand why people check that box.]

Do watch it. The production is incredible - especially considering it was performed live! I have to think this teleplay had an impact on Terry Gilliam while making his own dystopian magnum opus Brazil.

Hacking Metro Detroit

Metromode has a great feature on Detroit makers this week, Hacking Metro Detroit by Michelle Martinez
Some excerpts below:

Nick Britsky is inspecting a rough spot on the tire well of a cupcake-shaped car, hoisted wrapper-side up onto a worktable. The accordion-shaped spray-painted steel was cut by hand, and a few jagged edges still need to be filed down.

Britsky is converting the one-man car into something that could roam indoors. "I'd like to make a fleet of them," Britsky says. "Maybe four or eight."

Britsky is a member of i3Detroit, a group-operated hackerspace, recently moved to Ferndale from Royal Oak. Above Britsky is another member project -- a hand-carved wooden canoe hanging from the ceiling; beside him are two motorized 'bots that resemble small moon cars, and in the corner is a stack of arcade game parts that look like they could be used as spares for Centipede or Donkey Kong. One room over, an antiquey-looking player piano that plays music it downloads and prints from the Internet is pushed against the wall.

It's all the work of i3 members, affectionately called "hackers." Far from gangly cyber-punks hacking their way into your credit card information, hackerspaces are about like-minded tinkerers, crafters, artists, and self-titled geeks gathering to work individually or collectively on projects. One such example is i3Detroit's mentoring of Clawson and Oak Park High School students in robotics, with the moon cars the result of the venture.

And they're not alone. Worldwide, there are nearly 350 self-described hackerspaces, with more than 150 in the U.S., including a handful in Michigan, according to hackerspaces.org.

"There's a lot of interesting stuff happening," says Dale Dougherty, publisher and editor of MAKE Magazine, which showcases DIY projects and their makers. "There's always been a group of enthusiasts who love to play with technology, are curious and want to learn ... but the power today from the Internet is that it can connect people to each other more easily to share ideas and projects."


Got hack?

In Metro Detroit, the idea is taking hold. i3Detroit got its start from meetings at an area coffee shop last April, moved into a sparse Royal Oak loft in September and by the following April landed in an 8,000-square-foot former industrial space in Ferndale. Ann Arbor-based hackerspace All Hands Active was started last September, and another yet-to-be-named group is growing in Detroit's Eastern Market --the brainchild of former New York City Resistor member Jeff Sturges and Detroit- based artist Bethany Shorb (founder of Cyberoptix).

"As soon as we talk to one, they have other people we should talk to. It's really organic," Shorb says.

MAKE Magazine's July 31 - August 1 Maker Faire, the tech-boosted Woodstock for the DIY and hacker set is in Detroit this year, appropriately taking place at The Henry Ford.

"The plan this year was to have it in New York," Dougherty explains. "We're still going to do that, but we thought that this was a place where this could really matter. ... This is a region with a lot of people who make things, are inventive and creative. There's a lot going on [in Detroit] -- a strong crafting community, emerging hackerspaces like i3Detroit and several other initiatives. We're trying to connect people together."


Hacking for the greater good

Infusing hackerspaces in Metro Detroit is the earnest belief in the power of collective brainstorming. If one could be used to build cupcake cars, vinyl cows with space helmets, and pirate ships (an upcoming i3Detroit project), the thinking goes, it can also be a space to engage entrenched societal problems.

New York City transplant Jeff Sturges is working to build a Detroit-based fab lab. It's an idea inspired from the work he did with a Sustainable South Bronx and MIT program aimed at teaching "digital fabrication" to solve community problems.

"Once I got involved in the FabLab and hackerspace, I thought it would be awesome for Detroit. I've had that dream since 2004," he says. Sturges studied architecture from 2003 to 2005 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art before going back to New York.

Outside of Detroit, efforts are underway to make brainstorming big problems a global hacker endeavor. Eric Michaud, founder of Chicago's Pumping Station: One and a serial hackerspace developer, says that a monthly global hackathon has started to gain followers, and is working its way towards engaging "bigger, grander goals and projects."

"What I'd love to see is what if we work on a project for 24 hours? For one week?" he poses. "Grab this collective expertise and let's give them a goal: Something that can eradicate malaria, for example, cheaply. ... We got to the moon with that kind of focus; a lot of technology came out of that."

The Revolution Party, circa [Mondo] 2000

As a former art school student with Skinny Puppy and H.R. Giger inspired paintings on his biker leather, a Leebinator haircut, 1950s style eyeglasses and always smelled like a welding shop when going into the local bookstore to pour over the latest issue of Mondo 2000 and as an adult desperately searching for a political identity which combines both the ideals of absolute freedom and individual exceptionalism of Libertarians and Objectivists with traditional Liberal and Humanist values of social responsibility, equality and compassion, I'm totally embarrassed that I was not familiar with Mondo 2000 publisher R.U. Sirius' political party and run for president in 2000.

I've got nothing to add to this:

THE REVOLUTION PARTY OVERVIEW

No, the Revolution party is not a bunch of wild-eyed insurrectionists hell-bent on the violent overthrow of an oppressive regime.

As founder R.U. Sirius explains it, "The Revolution is a new political party that aims to be the voice of the non-voter, the alienated, the visionaries, the rabble, and the Internet. Combining left and libertarian politics with a kind of post-political futurism and the love of a good laugh, The Revolution¨ intends to bring all the subcultural tribes together to wrest control of worldwide political systems from the drug warriors, the cultural ayatollahs, and the various corporate mega-destructo gangs, ranging from the military-industrial complex to the HMOs ad infinitum."

OFFICIAL PLATFORM STATEMENT FROM THE OFFICIAL WEB PAGE

15 POINT PARTY PLATFORM FOR NATIONAL POLITICS

"NOTE: All of these platform points are stated simply in three-or-less sentences. The reality is far more complex. Each one of these will be detailed, one by one, in the months to come.

1. We will repeal five times as many laws as we pass. We need to simplify and clarify the rules of the game. We will do a better job of enforcing and obeying a few reasonable rules than thousands upon thousands of incomprehensible statutes.

2. End all corporate welfare. Let allegedly-free enterprise stand on its own two feet.

3. No Federal Personal Income Taxes for individuals with incomes of less than $100,000. Encourage states and counties to also end taxation of middle-class and poor individuals. Institute a flat tax on income over $100,000.

4. Legalize most pleasure drugs, prostitution, and gambling. Institute a 'sin tax,' taxing these activities at 100% to make up for some of the funds lost as the result of #3. Use part of this tax income to make counseling and rehabilitation easily available in all locales.

5. Close down the prison/industrial complex. Pardon all prisoners who are in for non-violent crimes involving sums involving $25,000 or less, provided they have no known history of violent activities. Pardon all prisoners listed with Amnesty International.

6. Defend civil liberties. For the first time in recent memory, let's have a federal government that respects The Constitution and The Bill of Rights. Let's have the ACLU and the EFF and other pro-rights organizations inside the federal government.

7. Stop policing the world. Become just another member of the UN, with responsibilities equivalent to our numbers. Reduce the Pentagon's budget by at least 50%.
8. Close down the National Security State. Since the end of World War II, representative democracy has been hostage to the National Security State. Release all secret documents (excluding only those recent ones that present a very clear and present danger), fire the CIA, and reform the federal intelligence apparatus.

9. Put environmental concerns before profits and jobs. On the other hand, put scientific consensus and reason ahead of emotion-based environmentalism. Protect the environment while limiting Orwellian bureaucratic absurdities.

10. Open federally-funded birth control clinics all across the country, guaranteeing women in every locale reasonable access to her legal right to abortion and other forms of birth control.

11. Allow 'autonomous zones.' Offer ways in which localities and even households can -- with a very few limits -- opt out of the system.

12. Re-establish social services at pre-Reagan levels, for starters. Study the possibility of a 'workfare' state that would create an ultimately self-sustaining 'generic' maintenance economy that would involve those who don't receive income independently, or through employment, in the production, distribution, and receivership of life's essentials. Ultimately, an advanced high tech society will need to end the employment/make money ethic entirely or risk a total psychotic break from the social/environmental pollution wreaked by billions of desperate people on a hustle.

13. Study the possibility of restructuring the economic/money system toward making money consistent with actual value in an age where money-as-information is excessively abstracted from the creation of real wealth and unfairly favors those who know how to manipulate it. Also, question the oligarchic power of those who control the money system, such as the Federal Reserve, the IMF, and the World Bank, reforming or possibly eliminating those organizations.

14. Fund a 'Manhattan Project Toward Utopia.' Finance and encourage altruistic scientific and technological projects geared towards breakthroughs that can diminish or eliminate scarcity, disease, and other forms of suffering that most people would prefer not to experience. Establish a principal of universal access to the products of such breakthroughs.

15. Victory Over Horseshit! The political process in America is hostage to certain obvious absurdities that are an embarrassment before the civilized world: like the continuing embargo against Cuba (and particularly the Helms/Burton bill), the excessive numbers of state executions, our refusal to sign the land mine treaty, the opposition to policies like needle exchange that are geared towards slowing down a plague, refusal of funding for international birth control, ad infinitum. Let's have a national government that calls ridiculous horseshit what it is."
R.U. Sirius/The Revolution

There's a book too, titled The Revolution: Quotations from Revolution Party Chairman R.U. Sirius, if you can find it.

Neill Blomkamp on the science of extraterrestrials and evolution

[thanks Douglas!]

Imagining a World Without Money

[Not as hippieish as it sounds. Has more to do with robots.]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Time Magazine's recently published The Dropout Economy is a stunningly accurate picture of where middle class America's mindset is headed. People on the ground are suffering because the old systems don't work anymore. It's frustrating to see so many resources - physical, financial and intellectual - being used to keep crooked, antediluvian institutions on life-support in a vain attempt to hold on to an unsustainable and idealized image of late 20th Century "prosperity".

This conservative way of thinking and fear of real change prevents us from putting resources into energetic and relevant new ideas and enterprises, and worst of all, stagnates evolution toward a more civilized and sustainable society.

While trying to imagine how a stateless, jobless, decentralized society might actually thrive (rather than turn into primitive feudal suburban favelas - at least hopefully with Philippe Starck-designed wind turbines,) I came across this video on Rob Walker's excellent Unconsumption blog:



So how the heck have I never heard of Jacque Fresco? It's kinda out there, but this is the kind of big picture thinking we ought to be putting our energy into. This is all classic technocracy futurist utopia stuff, but it is refreshing and quite timely to think about.

The Venus Project blog

Connected

I've been curiously following the making of Danish sci-fi short Connected for some months. The wonderful little morally-loaded dystopian film is now complete and available on the official site to view. Definitely watch full-screen with the sound up, as suggested.

Set in the distant future, Connected is a story about survival and greed with a post apocalyptic wasteland as its backdrop. Survivors of an unknown disaster shuffle through a desolate landscape, as it quickly becomes clear that not everybody has the strength to survive.

Shot in deserted Faxe Kalkbrud, Denmark, and directed by Jens Raunkjær Christensen and Jonas Drotner Mouritsen, Connected is a unique short film, a sci-fi western with a tiny budget, but huge ambitions. A relatively small, but very enthusiastic and talented crew helped bring this bleak vision of the future to the screen. The film is produced with support from The Film Workshop / The Danish Film Institute.

High quality live Skinny Puppy video from 1986 surfaces

Our friend Greg [one of the super-humans we're fortunate enough to breathe the same air with... dude works at NASA JPL and "was there" well before James Murphy] sent this video our way last night.

Swiss dark electronic music community & magazine Sanctuary has an exceptionally high quality [by VHS standards of the time] recording of Skinny Puppy performing at Dolce Vita Club in Lausanne, Switzerland Halloween night 1986.

So far they've uploaded the clip of "Assimilate" below, and just a couple days ago, this clip of "Smothered Hope".

I don't know how many times I watched this today. Not only is it the best quality recording of an old Puppy show I've seen, Ogre's movements are possessed and his genius for theatricality really shines through - especially around the seven minute mark...


Skinny Puppy - Assimilate [live in Switzerland, 10/31/1986]

Tears in Rain (in LEGO)

Blade Runner - Tears in Rain (in LEGO) from Zach Macias on Vimeo.

[via the always awesome Awl]

Still my favorite LEGO movie remake: Silence of the Lambs: the musical [NSFW, I suppose.]

TuneGlue

While there are plenty of music maps out there, TuneGlue takes the idea to the next level by using Amazon and LastFM data wrapped up in a gorgeous, simple UI to allow for nearly endless exploration of musical relationships.

Tour des Convoyeurs

Some beautiful industrial architecture projection mapping at MUTEK 10, by the talented folks at AntiVJ. More on the project here.

AntiVJ - MUTEK 2009 from AntiVJ / Joanie on Vimeo.

Think you've got signal to noise problems?

This clip by Masters of Architecture candidate Keiichi Matsuda in Nic Clear's Unit 15 at the Bartlett School of Architecture is like wandering the Gibraltar Trade Center on bathtub psychedelics.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

[thanks Andrew Sliwinski]

aswefall, fun is dead

I'm really looking forward to aswefall fun is dead being released on isolering/module this March. Beautiful, precise and cold, it should be just the ambient/cold wave/electro/minimal/electronica fix I need.



In the meantime, I'll continue enjoying the brilliant new album by Kasper Bjørke, Standing on top of Utopia. Efficient Machine has been on repeat nearly constantly since acquiring it here at Bitboy HQ South.

The Creatures - Exterminating Angel, live

Not the best quality clip, but incredible live performance here of one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite [sadly, former] couples in music.

Nuit Blanche

Love.

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

Jarvis Cocker covers Eye of The Tiger

Wow.

Musings on nanotech Japanese gummy candy, Karl Lagerfeld's robot body, etc.

Don't know if it's the combination of a rare good night's sleep, a proper diet of coffee, deep-dish pizza and vitamin supplements, the end of Mercury Retrograde or what, but the grey blob in my skull is spitting things out in overdrive today. Not in any productive way, mind you, but entertaining to myself nonetheless.



Some things I've uttered in 140 characters or less this afternoon:

Edible nanotech Japanese gummy candies respond to different food pairings & placement on the body by changing color, flavor, temp & rhythm

Shaped like tiny Zaha Hadid models. Molecules reconfigure into different bots based on chemical input. Will revolutionize cuisine & sex toys

#randomsaturdaymorningideas

I love Lagerfeld's tall shirt collars, but starting to think they just function to cover the seam between his head & replacement body.

Why isn't there a Karl Lagerfeld PEZ dispenser? Seriously.

[Of course the Lagerfeld PEZ dispenser would cost $100K & spit out little Chanel embossed blocks of cocaine, packaged in gold leaf.]

[Zeitgeist alert] Kenyan Sci-Fi Short Pumzi Hits Sundance With Dystopia http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/01/pumzi/

[Bank of Zimbabwe's font is very heavy metal.] RT @benhammersley One hundred trillllllllion dollars. http://twitpic.com/zebi2

Now I'm thinking Lagerfeld probably has a closet full of pre-dressed replacement bodies with various super powers for different tasks.

The necks are fitted with contact rings and a threaded hub, like a steering column.

We saw Lagerfeld in Paris once. Looked up to see what was blocking the sun - a GOLD Hummer with Kaiser Karl in the passenger seat. F'realz.

My mistake. Karl's H2 was platinum, not gold. Those heinous wheels are unforgettable: http://tinyurl.com/ydo8ncd [Still love him anyway.]

The fingerless gloves? Same deal as the collar. His real fingertips screw on to the robot. The tech isn't there to replicate fingerprints.

Listening to Fever Ray cover one of my favorite Nick Cave songs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBDZfzNM7Ew

FAC251: THE FACTORY

20 years since the birth of Madchester, the building that started it all and ultimately destroyed it all....



FAC251: Head office of Factory Communications... Built by Tony Wilson, designed by Ben Kelly & Peter Saville, paid for by NewOrder and broken by the Happy Mondays returns on Friday February 05, 2010.

More info here.

Finches

Yes, it's been over a month since I last posted here and there's a ton of important and awesome stuff backlogged in the queue. [Been participating in more than documenting the Zeitgeist of late - which is good, I think.] For now, please enjoy this:



Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at The Barbican, London

Trained as a musician and composer, French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates works by drawing on the rhythms of daily life to produce sound in unexpected ways. His installation for The Curve will take the form of a walk-though aviary for a flock of zebra finches, furnished with electric guitars and other instruments and objects. As the birds go about their routine activities, perching on or feeding from the various pieces of equipment, they create a captivating, live soundscape.