Sunday, May 31, 2009

The Shattered Utopian Pods of Sanjhih 三芝

"BAD NEWS: These buildings [were] torn down in Jan. 2009.
Sanjhih is a small town on the north coast of Taiwan. It's near Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.

In late 70's, a keeper of a rubber company worked out the prototype of the UFO house using his own factory. He want to build a contemporary style holiday resort. However, the rubber company closed down in the energy crisis in 1980. The UFO houses that was just begining was sealed up by the bank. In that time, there was only foundation and FPR compoments..."
-- cont. at cypherone







"If you can bribe a member of Bespin's Wing Guard into taking you on a spin around Cloud City, you won't regret spending the credits. The views are stunning."
―Excerpt from Ullok's Underground Guide to Bespin

Friday, May 29, 2009

birth of the transgenic marmoset

"The first genetically modified primates that can pass their modifications to their offpsring have been created by Japanese scientists ... "The birth of this transgenic marmoset baby is undoubtedly a milestone ... The cumbersome and often frustrating process of making a transgenic animal from scratch need now only occur with founder animals."
-- from
wired science


"Kac considers himself a "transgenic artist," or "bio artist", using biotechnology and genetics to create provocative works that concomitantly explore scientific techniques and critique them. Kac's first transgenic artwork, titled "Genesis," involved him taking a quote from the Bible (Genesis 1:26 - "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth"), transferring it into Morse code, and finally, translating that Morse code (by a conversion principle specially developed by the artist for this work) into the base pairs of genetics. After obtaining the genes from a laboratory which creates genetic sequences on demand, he implanted the genes into an unspecified bacterium, which he then grew in a petri dish. This petri dish was placed in a box under a UV light which could be activated by online viewers, who could see Genesis by webcam. Kac intended to present the viewer with a philosophical problem, a dichotomy: If the viewer disagrees with allowing man to have dominion over nature as the quote from the Bible suggests, then in order to destroy the idea (i.e. activate the UV light which causes mutation in the genes, thereby altering the statement), he must assert his own power over nature, thereby in a way contradicting himself. A viewer with the opposite viewpoint would have the opposite-but-equally-problematic dilemma."
-- from Wikipedia: Eduardo Kac


"My transgenic artwork "GFP Bunny" comprises the creation of a green fluorescent rabbit, the public dialogue generated by the project, and the social integration of the rabbit. GFP stands for green fluorescent protein. "GFP Bunny" was realized in 2000 and first presented publicly in Avignon, France. Transgenic art, I proposed elsewhere, is a new art form based on the use of genetic engineering to transfer natural or synthetic genes to an organism, to create unique living beings. This must be done with great care, with acknowledgment of the complex issues thus raised and, above all, with a commitment to respect, nurture, and love the life thus created."

"I will never forget the moment when I first held her in my arms, in Jouy-en-Josas, France, on April 29, 2000. My apprehensive anticipation was replaced by joy and excitement..."
-- from Eduardo Kac: GFP Bunny



"Telepresence and Bio Art: Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots" by Eduardo Kac

http://www.ekac.org/

ekundayo

http://www.myspace.com/pronetoroam



R.S. Connett

"To make Art is a basic, instinctive need for the human animal. It pre-dates all language and civilization. I think it's Interesting that it is seldom an occupation that makes much money for the artist. Perhaps that is because anyone can do it? Or perhaps because people feel that art does not serve a 'functional' purpose? Perhaps this is because people do not "understand" what art is, and thus can not properly or confidently evaluate it?

It seemingly has no purpose other then to reach a deep yearning of the human spirit ... A deep yearning to 'create', To externalize our ideas and to emulate our visions of God. We want to create our own worlds, just like God. We can not command the seas to rise or the mountains to move ... but we can draw them any way we wish.

This need in us to make art, so unique to us, is the basis of all the cultures and human civilizations of the Earth. All that man has accomplished, the domination of the planet, all has it's basis in the creation of art."

-- R.S. Connett




Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Drained Swimming Pools

"Exiled from the Paradise of the Ordinary"
J.G. Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009)



The following excerpts I transcribed from Eleanor Wachtel's 1993 interview with Ballard for CBC Writer's & Co.


"People in the west, in particular, Western Europe, Canada and the United States -- for all the civil unrest you find in places like Los Angeles and Northern Ireland and so on -- we lead extremely stable, settled lives. We're certain that, on the whole, our fabric as a society that we live in is not going to be torn to shreds overnight. Governments may change, but basically, our way of life, and all the civilities of our way of life, remain intact. Now, in Shanghai, first in 1937 and then of course in an even bigger way after Pearl Harbour in December 1941, everything came to an end. The comfortable country club existence that I and my parents led, protected by the wealth of the Europeans and Americans, ended absolutely, and suddenly we were in as much danger as any beggar on the streets of Shanghai ... This was a profound lesson which I learned well. And I've never forgotten. Reality, even the most reassuring reality, was nothing more than a stage set whose entire cast and scenery could be swept aside overnight."

"The Doctor / Psychiatrist for the last forty or fifty years has taken the role of the priest, as the man who takes the spiritual pulse of the people at large, the man who prescribes for the spiritual ills from which people suffer, he enlists science for the aid of the soul ... I think the experience of dissecting a human cadaver is a profoundly moving one. There's no question that the whole process, day by day, of paring away the skin, separating the blood vessels and nerves, delving down through the muscles, laying bare the physical being that once walked this earth, is deeply moving, and is as close to a human being as one can ever get."


"We've shut our eyes to the dead in the West. In England today, most people have never seen a dead body. People don't die in the home anymore, for the most part, they die in hospitals surrounded by high-tech medical equipment, nurses and doctors screen the bereaved from anything more than a fleeting glimpse of the dead. And we've filled this vacuum in human experience and human grieving with a whole set of conventions: memorial services, and our way of remembering those close to us who have died, are really elaborate fictions ... Most of the people alive today in the world lead lives ... racked by civil war, famine, and destitution ... very much closer to what I described and what I went through in China during the war. Living in Canada, Western Europe and the United States today -- it is WE who are exceptions to the rule, and I think one should realise that fact ... I wouldn't say we're blinkered in any way, but we've chosen not to make too much of one of the most important ascpects of existence, and that is our finite lives."

"My characters embrace their own obsessions. They willingly endure anything to fulfill themselves psychologically. I feel this is what the human race is really about. That is how we find happiness -- by defining what our own mythology is, what our own obsessions are, and pursuing them whatever the cost. That's the only way to find happiness!"


"It's true, I do love writing about abandoned hotels and drained swimming pools. I wish I could write about nothing else! I feel an immense affinity with these states of mind -- it's obviously something that happened during the war, when indeed I did see a great deal of drained swimming pools and abandoned hotels, empty apartment blocks -- there is a sense that one is returning to psychic-zero. That everything can start again afresh is what draws me to these images. Because after all, a drained swimming pool can be filled. It's pulling the sock of reality inside-out. We are surrounded on all sides by a world that is totally conventionalized in our minds. We accept everyday reality, whether it's our own living rooms and kitchens, or the streets and offices we move through... and it's good to see everything inverted suddenly. It refreshes us. It's like walking through a deserted town. There's a mystery in the air! In fact, a deserted town has more psychological presense than a town that is full of people ambling about doing their pointless shopping ... It's true, I've gone to great lengths to avoid filling any of those drained swimming pools. One is the victim of one's own past. My fiction is a kind of modest attempt to make sense of the world in which I find myself."
-- J.G. Ballard R.I.P.




Sunday, May 24, 2009

Who is this ??

please tell me if you know who this is!



K Lolley

"Giant elk stumble over towns clasping bottles, is it a remedy they hold or just a beer?"
http://www.kathleenlolley.com/




Andy Kehoe

"Andy Kehoe was the son of a sea merchant that was killed by pirates when he was just three years old. His father barely had time to throw his son overboard before the cargo ship that usually carried pickles and kittens to Spain, carried the burning corpses of his father and all his closest friends to the bottom of the ocean. Young Andy endured three days in the ocean before washing ashore on the Galapagos Islands. There he was raised by iguanas and learned much about the world. Like how to lie in the sun to raise his body temperature and how to swim underwater for 15 minutes to get to the yummy green algae on the bottom of the sea bed. Andy even swam like an iguana… head forward, arms at the side and legs hanging still. How he did this without a tail is still a mystery. One day, Andy found a gloriously warm spot and lay out comfortably on his belly under the sun. To Andy’s surprise ..."

http://www.andykehoe.net/




ZAMAK!

"While attending art school in Tours, France—and in between a rigorous schedule of all-night partying—Olivier Bucheron (aka Zamak) worked in a foundry. As he explains, "it was a dirty and filthy place where we made whatever for whoever—a hot spot, I'll tell you that!" It was there, amidst the grit and grime of machinery and alloys, that Bucheron first conceived the idea to build his own machines. But unlike the practical machinery surrounding him, his creations would be more surreal..."
-- Made You Look: Zamak
http://www.zamak.fr/flash/

Ooh.. wicked!





Shadow of the Colossus

"Shadow of the Colossus... sense of solitude... overwhelms you with simultaneous feelings of calmness and despair. Whereas most games rely on scattering their environments with living and breathing creatures, intricate structures, various types of foliage and the like to bring their worlds to life, the near-complete lack of any of these in the world of Shadow of the Colossus forces you to essentially paint your own picture of how the world came to be as it is, why it is essentially a wasteland, or even a prison if you will, for the colossi that inhabit said land."
-- 'Shadow of the Colossus' by Chris Roper

...yeah, and Lucas could have learned a thing or two before over populating the re-releases with redundant, comical fauna.








The LCARS Gui!

"In the Star Trek fictional universe, LCARS (an acronym for Library Computer Access/Retrieval System, pronounced /ɛl karz/) is a fictional computer operating system depicted in the Star Trek television series and motion pictures. Within Star Trek chronology, the term was first used in Star Trek: The Next Generation and in subsequent shows. In a real-world context, the term "LCARS" is frequently used to describe the style of the computer displays of the LCARS system, especially the screens from The Next Generation. The term Okudagram, named for Michael Okuda, the designer of the graphics, is also used to refer to this style. The design is popular among Star Trek fansites."
-- excerpt from Wikipedia: LCARS

http://www.lcarscom.net/









Thanks to Syd "mother f*cking" Heresy for mentioning this!
The Yage used LCARS for the cover of a recent release.
Wicked!


http://www.myspace.com/theyage

Retro Future

"A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made."
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/70sArt/art.html