pikachu circuit bending, devilish fun
It's been a few months that I last posted anything about circuit bending. It's been yesterday that I wreaked havoc on the entire office with the bodymod Pikachu and its clone brothers, all of them being musical instruments. Behind all the amygdala-wrenching fun is Japanese circuit bender Kaseo, check his amazing video feed, I've only posted two pieces of gritty wisdom, the Bent Pikachu Limited Edition being so much on par with the Furby torture scene. (via pinktentacle)
gas mask buddha
Icon II: Siddharta Gotama in gas mask, sculpture by Samuel F. Stimpert. (link, via ectomo)
pangender cyborgs, cocks on buildings
Seriously, if last month's penis-thieving stories from Africa didn't cut through your transjournalistic immune system, this won't either. Madrid artist Jaime del Val is walking around the city, projecting his dick onto public buildings, claiming "it is a means of power". At least he's right about that. According to the Metro, Mr del Val actually claims to have a serious message to promote as a self-identified 'pangender cyborg'. He says his visual actions are part of a multi-protest against homophobia, surveillance, control and consumer society. (via boingboing gadgets, via metro)
2009: a true story
Nothing like a fresh whiff of apocalypse for a new day! Fallout 3 is up-and-coming (we'll talk more about it in a few days), the Mutant Chronicles review is still pending, so let's feed you guys with 2009: A TRUE STORY, a 13-episode long webcast on how America's gone to ruins. As IO9 says, cities were blown to bits by an unknown enemy, and the remaining government enforced the Patriot Act under the advertising campaign "America: Keep The Dream Alive." The next thing anyone knew, American soil was no longer a safe place for free thinkers and idealists. (link, via io9)
neuromancer movie poster: definitely steampunk
From Twitch to QuietEarth and a couple dozens of other sites you could have already gathered: we have the first poster for the Neuromancer movie. And looking at the poster, I didn't want to post it for a few days, thinking very much it's a hoax. Because the poster, as you can see, has nothing, nothing to do with cyberpunk at all.
If it were for a steampunk movie, I'd like it. Because how I see it from here, the gears, the nails and all the contraptionry, it has more to do with antique than neonlite and rain. The cranial cables, those are fine. The mood it conveys, could make me remember Straylight. "Based on the book by William Gibson"? Makes me say oh-oh. Hardwired readers say Gibson hasn't even been asked to work on the movie. (UPDATE 1: According to Indiewire, it is Gibson who's working on the movie script right now.) The fact that I found out a week ago that Hayden Christensen is not listed as Case on the movie's IMDB page, it's mostly discarded by other sites. (Hope, that's a hard bitch to kill, man.)
By the way, I watched Kahn's movie, Torque, the one everyone managed to bash. I would so take the helm from him. Give it to Aronofsky. Tsukamoto. Wouldn't say Cunningham, he's been long off the job. Give the role of Finn to Iggy Pop. You know why Johnny Mnemonic was a good movie? Because it had the pop sensibility and the iconic guys of its era. You know why it's going to be hard, trying to revive the Neuromancer spirit? Because we've already sped past it.
two galleries on chernobyl
If you've heard about the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. cosplayers, you know the story's a bit more than two months old now, so it's kind of sad I only post it now. The novelty value is an extra gallery by dr sunrise 3500 from Melbourne who's just gone to Chernobyl for a field trip and posted a slightly radioactive gallery of love, cheers to m1k3y/grinding.be for the hint. (Cosplayer gallery link, dr sunrise 3500 link)
steampunk tee, another wantiness
A couple of you guys have sent me the link to this ThinkGeek tee, so here you go, why don't you just go ahead and order me, size S, the blackest black available. Lovely steampunkiness for the tired, rainy office days.
wim delvoye's gone gothic
Hitch has just sent us this lovely picture of Belgian conceptual artist Wim Delvoye's gothic machine, one of many. Delvoye's just been to Budapest a couple of months ago, that I came to know with pity - although he's been here with the Cloaca contraption afaik (that's pretty similar to the one having presented at Linz, the Ars Electronica festival) and he's got so many more interesting, weird constructs - very similar to the majestic and gigantic ornamented vehicles of the Warhammer 40K universe.
cyberpunk's deemed dead, again
Every now and then the corpse of cyberpunk is being dragged and flailed around a wee bit more, now Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle gives head to to the Krokerian cock saying that the genre's death owes a lot to Longo's 1995 release of Johnny Mnemonic. Getting back to that point is such a bore, really.
Like all great literary and cultural movements – edgy, forward-thinking, smart, and mean – cyberpunk died a thousand deaths, not least of which was the arrival in theatres, in 1995, of Robert Longo's film adaptation of William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic. Any genre codified in the flesh by Keanu Reeves – no matter how good the story – is doomed or, at the very least, clumsily embodied to the point of ridiculousness. You could, of course, make the argument that Reeves, who went on to play two of the most nuanced and socially relevant cyberpunk roles – Neo in The Matrix series and Bob Arctor in Richard Linklater's recent buzz-kill A Scanner Darkly – helped keep the genre alive in the minds of the Great Unwashed far longer than it would have lingered otherwise. But the final, single-tone, flat-line truth of the matter is that you simply don't hear cyberpunk-the-term being bandied about all that much anymore. (via)
zombie haiku: chocolate, but with more screaming
Just when you thought Friday couldn't get any more rabid than this.
THE DOSE: confirmed dormant, meaning, possibly dead
Egyszer el kell oda érkezni, hogy lezárjuk, ami nem működik, ne vonjon el több energiát, töltődjön át inkább olyan helyekre a reserve energy, ahova tényleg kell. Ennek jött most el az ideje. (Lehetett tudni ezt régóta, nekem kell az, hogy mindenkinek kimondjam.) A THE DOSE magazint hivatalosan lezártam, nincs rá időm, energiám és kedvem hiába lenne, hosszú távon non-profitban megcsinálni értelmetlen. Rengeteg jó anyag gyűlt össze ebben a három számban is, büszke is vagyok rá, köszönöm is minden érintettnek, aki közreműködött benne és a részese volt. Lesz helyette más.
To all those who don't dig Hungarian: I've declared the magazine dormant due to a lack of time.
tron 2 aka tr2n trailer is out
You are about to see the camera version of the first trailer for TR2N (recorded at the San Diego Comic-Con fest), the sequel to Disney's cyberpunk legend TRON, that has all the basic goods that we all came to love: Syd Mead designs, neon wireframes, artificial intelligences and of course, fissures. (And for the sensitive ones, Jeff "my smile crumbles walls" Bridges.) The script is supposedly written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz from Lost and the tone is going to be way more menacing than the original.
christensen "force pulled" out of neuromancer?
Just noticed the fact that Hayden Christensen is no longer listed as Case under the Neuromancer page on IMDB. Did Seven Arts Pics or Peter Hoffman finally realize that you need an iconic piece of battered and bruised junkie to do all the work? Page was last updated on the 10th of July.
gaia anomalies: angles in structures within satellites
One of the thirty amazing satellite images over at Environmental Graffiti. This one is the once vast carpet of rainforest in the Amazon basin (...) fanning out from the large blocks of land cleared by ranchers and loggers radiate arrangements of fields and farms, the remaining healthy vegetation appearing in bright red. Below, dunes of the Kalahari Desert, Namibia.
fijuu2: 3d realtime music engine
Watch these images carefully, as they deliver traces of glory, cyberpunk bravado and unholy, sizzling sperm of Richard D. James.
And that's a music-making software alright. FIJUU2, the brainchild of Julian Oliver and another guy named pix, features six unique instruments that you sculpt with PS2 gamepads. (Because, as Oliver will neatly tell us in a video embedded below, PS2 gamepads are pretty much like guitars.) The spinning rings on the images (well, more like in the videos) are the tracks, the sexily weird 3D shapes are the instruments.
The project was all opensource, you can download the source code from the project website and run on your Linux box. I think I'm soon off to install Ubuntu (what to install?) and buy a devilish gamepad. Above, a four-minutes long demo of Fijuu2 in action. Below, a documentary of Cybersonica & Encompass Sonic Art Exhibition (London, 2006) where the system was shown to the public to massive appraisal.
no thanx: emoból cyberpunk? nem. nem, nem.
Lóg a petyhüdt telihold az égen, az Animal Cannibals szerint drogos szomorú emók a cyberpunkok, az Origo egy hete cikkezte ki, hogy cyberpunk lett az első magyar "hivatalos" emo-grupp, a No Thanx, lehet valami a levegőben. Egy pillanatig elgondolkodtam azon, hogy bedobom ide a videót, hogy meg lehessen róla bizonyosodni, hogy nem azok, de higyje el minden olvasóm, kurvára nem azok. Hogy az Origo szakavatott újságírója miért használja a catchwordöt, nem tudom, de ha annyira menő dolog lehet, hamarosan felvirrad a PDnek és gyönyörű, gyönyörű napjaim lesznek.
Ami menti a helyzetet, az a Magyar Képregény Akadémia és jegyzett tagja, Geek, aki a Gépregény (legutoljára ezt Bernáth/y Sándor apánk játszotta el kísérleti techno-magazinjával, a Gépszavával, amiben amúgy több fantázia és design volt még tíz évvel ezelőtt is, mint a hazai lappiac jelentős részénekjelenleg) albumhoz rajzolt kísérő-képregényt. Felkérem olvasóimat, juttassanak el hozzám egy példányt, mert garantáltan nem fogom megvenni az albumot érte.
A gépek és az emberek világát ötvözõ, cyberpunk hangulatú füzet elkészítésére a Magyar Képregény Akadémia tagjait kérte fel a kiadó, így a képi világért Ábrai Barnabás, vagy mûvésznevén Geek felelt. A többek között a Pinkhell és a Sushi Strip képregényantológiákban is megjelent rajzoló mellett olyan kiváló illusztrátorok mûködtek közre, mint a Zorro de Bianco néven is ismert Fehér Zoltán, vagy az Unicum képregényes kampányát jegyzõ Gáspár Tamás, írja az Origo és függetlenül attól, hogy amúgy jogosan siker- és lehetőségéhesnek tartom a hazai képregényrajzoló szcénát és egy pillanatig nem tartom rossz ötletnek azt, hogy lehetőséget adnak nekik még egy ilyen ötlethez sem, a magyarjának csak a képzavar fog megmaradni. Az is rosszul.
korg ds-10: something to cling to
Cptamorf (blog, deviantart) knows me and my love for modular soft synths, touchscreens and electro, so he says "you'll so NEED this" and sends me this video. So what do I need now, two Kaoss Pads or this?
THE DOSE issue 1 - Tokyo cyberpunk on Scribd
If you were really into MySpace and how industrial/cyberpunk bands started making friends on community sites some two years ago, THE DOSE might ring a bell. It was a free PDF magazine (that I designed to be print-ready just in case I got the possibility to make it into a commercial venture that I failed miserably, but anyways) focusing on a single city in every issue, showing all the interesting music, bands, DJs, pieces of art that we thought would be fascinating for you. I learned how to do proper DTP and layout with the mag. I also came to know excellent people and musicians, made the magazine count at a few places. I made three issues (Budapest, Tokyo, London, consecutively) and then I became a full-time journalist and decided I didn't have the time to continue this project anymore, because, let's face it, the majority of the work was done by me. (This is how I get good results. But I digress.)
So now I declare extended hiatus and also upload the previous issues to Scribd. Share the love, download the mag, contact the bands and also drop me an email to planetdamage at gmail if you think this idea is good enough to monetize. Or tell me you love the mag and break my fucking heart in two.The Dose website is in a state of death and dismay, by the way.
miltech calendar girls with weapons
This is basically for those who still remember the old LD50 logo - a riot grrl with red hair and a submachinegun. This is basically the same, only with an Asian twist, right from calendar.cyberpunk2020.de.
Source for the picture: request1a by ~savemiette on deviantART
morav: gritty mecha realizm
The reason why I really-really loved Robocop? I'll honestly tell you, it was the ED-209 and whatever bad-ass robo machismo the show had, it was really the stop-motion mecha scenes and not Murphy at all. (And I bet half of you really feel the same. Yes? No? Comment!) So it comes as a heart-warming surprise, seeing MORAV, and the more you read off the website and the more you follow the links, the more intriguing the whole show becomes.
Morav is basically a military drama with mecha/sci-fi overtones, gritty realism in a Middle Easternish region with the mecha work all done in stop-motion, not CG. Fon Davis, the series creator sez we have enough chronology to do webisodes, comic books, a television series and motion pictures without touching the same story twice. We have always remained flexible since we do not yet know what production opportunities will arise first. (And if you check Fon Davis on IMDB, you'll be instantly impressed seeing him having worked on all six Star Wars movies, Matrix 2-3 and so forth.) Not much material on YouTube yet, but hang on, this looks promising. (Robots moved with telemetry suits, oh my god, yes.) (via cyberpunk2020.de)
the week in games
Quickly browsing through the hottest piece of screaming sexy junk on Kotaku and HW, an E308 without babes (also receiving immensely negative reviews, the lack of quality in anything, I mean, eat the Duke Nukem trilogy trailer, that's the worst trailer the game industry released in the past decade, it's that bad) and here's what delivers.
One of Steve Schofield's dramatic cosplay pictures, full gallery here. (And check the FANTASTIC Half-Life 2 Combine aggro mashup pic on Kotaku!)
MadWorld, the uberbloody machizmo fatality quasi-TV show for Wii got a new trailer and it's got some newer and more surreal kinks. Question is, how many ways do the devs implement for us not to get bored? If this gets released, I buy a Wii, that's for so sure.
And some more Mirror's Edge that's becoming less attractive the more details I see - future parkour, fantastic. Running around on rooftops, great. Running around for five minutes in urban areas where all the elements look practically the same - less than intriguing. Missing out all the funny parts, like, running in parks, manoeuvering yourself in the dense urban traffic, through/above/under cars, pedestrians, cars and giant ebola fetishists from Connecticut - not that good. Yes, I know Asian parkour chicks rock the geeks but come on, this is not really worth it.
On a final note, Flagship Studios died, the financial/marketing disaster flushing both neo-Gothic-futuristic Hellgate:London and the WoW-clone Mythos down the drain. I regret both of them, as Hellgate:London could have been the next WH40K-clone MMO if handled perfectly, whereas Mythos was based on Fate, the next best substitute for Diablo 2 in the long years of desperate waiting. Bill, you should have hired me instead of Ivan, ehm ehm.