{technology} – Page 27 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 210

Crashing Diseases And Incurable Airplanes (2014) by USA Out Of Vietnam. Artwork by Amy Torok.

Amy Torok’s cover art for the debut album by Canadian band USA Out Of Vietnam is pleasingly reminiscent of the surreal and psychedelic collages of Wilfried Sätty. The music within has been described as “a cross between ELO and Sunn O)))” which it is up to a point, although to these ears the group are more in the Sunn O))) camp than the post-Beatles pop of Jeff Lynne and co. The sound is big whatever label you apply, and promises much for the future.

• Mysterious creatures of Monterey Bay Aquarium’s ‘Tentacles’. The Aquarium bought one of my drawings last year for this exhibition which juxtaposes tentacular artwork with live creatures. The show runs until 2016.

• Jon Hassell’s 1990 album, City: Works Of Fiction, has been reissued in an expanded edition including a live concert collaboration with Brian Eno, and a collection of remixes/alternate takes.

• Photographer Jonathan Keys uses antique camera equipment to give his views of contemporary Britain a patina of the past.

• Roman Polanski and the man who invented masochism. Nicholas Blincoe on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Venus in Fur (sic).

• Mixes of the week are by James Pianta, E.M.M.A. (whose Blue Gardens album I helped design), and Balduin.

• Sweet Jane unearths another great article about psychedelic London: The Fool and Apple Boutique, 1968.

• “Did Chris Marker think history to be not only an infinite book but a sacred one?” asks Barry Schwabsky.

• Front Free Endpaper on the story behind the cover photo of A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White.

• Mapping the Viennese Alien Event Site. Christina Scholz explores another Zone.

• Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue. The first and only movie about Moondog.

• Rick Poynor on rediscovering the lost art of the typewriter.

• At BLDGBLOG: 100 Views of a Drowning World.

• Miguel Chevalier’s magic carpets

• Venus In Furs (1967) by The Velvet Underground | Sex Voodoo Venus (1985) by Helios Creed | Venus As A Boy (1993) by Björk

Two steps forward, two steps back

After less than a week of stability I again find myself without a functioning phone line. The company responsible assures me that it will be repaired by June 2nd. I’ve been rewatching Deadwood recently so rather than pen a useless rant you may imagine me fulminating à la Al Swearengen. Service may be restored sooner than the 2nd, of course (although knowing BT I wouldn’t bet on it), so stay tuned. Again.

Update: Phone line is back again so normal service will resume.

Hiatus

Ho hum. Internet problems here mean posting will be sporadic for the next few days. My apologies. In the meantime the archive feature has been activated to bring up posts from the past. Stay tuned.

Update: Still contending with a week of All The Technical Problems, not only internet-related but things like my main work computer throwing kernel panics like they’re going out of fashion. Consequently I’ve been rather preoccupied while I attempt to get back to the usual operational status and do important things like attend to deadlines. It’ll still be a few more days before there’s further activity here, I’m afraid. Stay tuned.

Update 2: UK residents will tell you that the iniquities of British Telecom are like Walt Whitman’s contradictions: vast and multitudinous. All being well, however, normal service should be resumed here on the 20th.

Lines and colours

OMG Particles II.

From the Algorithms Are Fun Dept., some of the more colourful examples of script pyrotechnics and coding samples at mbostock’s pages. Many of the routines have data-crunching applications but a few eye-candy pieces may be found among them. What’s most surprising is how many of them work immediately, and also operate at great speed which makes them difficult to capture in screen grabs. Via Coudal.

Lorenz Toy.

Transform Transitions.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Eyecandy
• The Kaleidoplex
• Colorscreen

The Last Angel of History: Afrofuturism, science fiction and electronic music

There’s been a resurgence of interest recently in Afrofuturism (see this recent newspaper article, and this site), not before time when the term has been around since 1993. The concept itself goes back a long way, at least as far as the remarkable body of work produced by Sun Ra (1914–1993) whose vast discography dates from 1956, and has to be considered the first concerted attempt to craft an expansive cosmic/futuristic mythos in music.

Sun Ra and his Arkestra make fleeting appearances in The Last Angel of History (1997), a 45-minute documentary by John Akomfrah which looks at Afrofuturism via its manifestations in fiction, contemporary music, and in space travel. The connecting tissue is a somewhat dated bit of cyperpunk fluff but it’s worth sticking around for the cast of interviewees. On the musical side there’s George Clinton, Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Carl Craig, DJ Spooky, Goldie, and A Guy Called Gerald; on the writing side there’s Ishmael Reed (whose early novels would have been published by my colleagues at Savoy Books if the company hadn’t gone bust in the early 80s), Samuel R. Delany (Savoy did publish one of his novels), Octavia Butler, Kodwo Eshun and Greg Tate; Nichelle Nichols has a chance to talk about something other than Star Trek for once, since she helped with NASA’s recruitment programme. There’s also Bernard A. Harris Jr, one of the first African-Americans in space. The techno-fetishism seems overheated now that we’ve all calmed down about computers and the internet, but that doesn’t negate the important points: SF as a reflection of the present moment and a means to imagine a different situation or way of life. With 2014 being Sun Ra’s centenary year I’m anticipating a lot more of this.

• The Last Angel of History: part 1 | part 2 | part 3

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Rammellzee RIP