Sdtrk: ‘NCR’ by Ike Yard

James Graham Ballard, one of my favourite authors, has passed away today at the age of 78.

Cult author JG Ballard dies at 78
BBC News | Published Sunday, 19 April 2009

The author JG Ballard, famed for novels such as Crash and Empire of the Sun, has died aged 78 after a long illness.

His agent Margaret Hanbury said the author had been ill “for several years” and had died on Sunday morning.

Despite being referred to as a science fiction writer, Jim Ballard said his books were instead “picturing the psychology of the future”.
the rest of the article is here

My first encounter with Ballard was back in the Nineties: my best friend Sean and I were getting into Industrial music — the proper stuff, such as Throbbing gristle, SPK, and the like — and I’d picked up an issue of a counter-culture magazine with a very sporadic release schedule called RE/Search. The issue I’d bought was number 4/5, and dealt exclusively with Throbbing gristle, William S. Burroughs (another author I admire), and Brion Gysin. As there was no other publication out there that we knew of that covered the subjects and topics we liked, we figured RE/Search would be worth keeping an eye on. Issue 6/7 was the highly-influential Industrial Culture Handbook, whose interviews with luminaries of the scene such as Genesis P-Orridge, Boyd Rice, Monte Cazazza, and others, make it entirely invaluable. Now, there had been mentions of J.G Ballard in both of those aforementioned issues, as his erotic-yet-clinical style of writing was an inspiration to many in those circles, so our interest in him was piqued. So when we managed to find issue 8/9, which consisted entirely of interviews and articles concerning Ballard, it was a must-buy.

The thing I liked most about him is that he wasn’t a science fiction writer; he trafficked in speculative fiction. His earlier works were arguably more straightforward scifi, to which I admit I haven’t read them, but the works he’d written that really resonated with me were stories like Concrete island (a businessman is stranded on an abandoned section of land beneath a motorway overpass), High-rise (the micro-society within a penthouse apartment rapidly degenerates into chaos and warfare), The Atrocity exhibition (a series of experimental short stories that dealt with deviant medical professionals and pop culture icons), and one of his most infamous, Crash, which, in a nutshell, dealt with the sexualisation of automobile accidents, and was made into a reasonably-good film adaptation by David Cronenberg in 1996. The speculative fiction label comes from the fact that the events in aforementioned stories are something I could readily see happening if people in society were given that little extra push, the push that strips away all semblance of civility in a person and reverts them to an instinct-driven being that either has morals that are purely self-serving, or who no longer has any morals at all.

Apart from doing things such as writing fictional stories in the style of medical reports or biographical appendices, his stories were populated by characters who were extremely sexual, yet simultaneously incredibly detached. There’s a starkness to Ballard’s stories that appeals to me — Sean had once mentioned that after reading High-rise, he felt as if he’d been beaten with a baseball bat — and his style will always remain unique and undisputably original

Yes yes, finally.
Sdtrk: ‘Ein neuer Tag’ by Daniela

So what took me so long to get back to this series? Err, laziness? Plus, it was getting to the point where I’d see an interesting house or building or designer I’d want to profile, and I’d bookmark it for later, and the selections really started piling up, and I’d be hamstrung by the sheer amount of choices. Well, I’m getting back into it, baby. Yeeaaahh. And besides, ‘Shouting etc etc’ isn’t a blog strictly about Synthetiks! It’s, err, just mostly about Synthetiks…

Tonight, we profile a structure so famous and ‘This was the Future’-worthy, that I’m slightly ashamed I’ve not already written about it. This would be Case Study House No.8, also known as the Eames House.

Charles and Ray proposed that the home they designed would be for a married couple who were basically apartment dwellers working in design and graphic arts, and who wanted a home that would make no demands for itself, but would, instead serve as a background for as Charles would say, “life in work” with nature as a “shock absorber.”

The first plan of their home, known as the Bridge House, was designed by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen in 1945. Because it used off-the-shelf parts ordered from catalogues, and the war had caused a shortage in materials delivery, the steel did not arrive until late 1948. By then, Charles and Ray had “fallen in love with the meadow,” in Ray’s words, and felt that the site required a different solution. […]

Charles and Ray moved into the House on Christmas Eve, 1949, and lived here for the rest of their lives. The interior, its objects and its collections remain very much the way they were in Charles and Ray’s lifetimes. The house they created offered them a space where work, play, life, and nature co-existed.
taken from this site

Charles and Ray Eames: when they weren’t designing all manner of fab seating, or producing films such as ‘Powers of Ten‘, a short film that explores the scale of the Universe, they were busy with architecture. They weren’t just multitaskers, but design trendsetters in a post-WWII America. Prior to them, the word ‘modular’ wasn’t even in the popular vocabulary.

The exterior of the Eames House is available for visiting at practically any time; however, you have to be a member of the Eames Foundation to actually step inside for their annual tour. With a building that culturally significant and just plain cool, it might be worth the price

Sdtrk: ‘The angel of the odd’ by Merzbow

Just a heads-up: ULTRAKILLBOT has generously posted Part II of their interview with yours truly, which details me rambling at length about iDollators, life with Shi-chan, the future of Androids and Gynoids, and… Toronto. What better way to spend an Easter Sunday, I ask you??

Tell me a bit about your interest in Gynoids.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been enthralled with artifice as a whole — I’ve always been drawn to things that resemble something from nature, yet aren’t actually natural. I’m completely in love with the whole Sixties-era obsession with plastic, for one. I believe two of humanity’s greatest achievements are developments in robotics, and the replication of things that Nature usually creates, and Synthetik humans are a fine combination of those two things. Creating robots in general supports my philosophy of every man being his own god, but when you wrap all that technology up in a very humanlike appearance, it’s easier for Organik humans to embrace the idea of robots as valid members of society. That’s why I always use the terms ‘Synthetiks’ and ‘Organiks’ — it’s my hope that in the future, people will see Androids and Gynoids as simply another type of human. Although they’re not meat-based like we are, they’re human as well, in their own fashion.

A fine interview, and a fine site, with fine staffers. Go check it out!
Also, eerily relevant, courtesy of my new favourite online comic strip, Married to the Sea:

Sdtrk: ‘Another rattle’ by Nothing people

Spotted this in an article on I Like recently: for the 1965 World’s Fair in New York, Robert Moses constructed a scale-model panorama of the city of New York, which stretches about 9,335 square feet, and contains 895,000 individual structures. Luckily, the Panorama was preserved, and it currently resides at the Queens Museum. In order to fund maintenance costs for the model, the museum is now allowing people to ‘buy’ buildings for a donation of $50. Larger amounts will enable donors to ‘purchase’ landmarks, or ‘name’ certain buildings, etc. Apparently you can buy the Brooklyn Bridge (pictured below, middle); a snip at just $10,000! A fab idea, to be certain.

The city’s too small to act out your Godzilla fantasies, but you can pretend you’re Galactus instead

Now, if I had the available funds, I’d totally grab a piece of micronised New York City real estate. Honestly, though, the only place I’d really want would be a building located at 231 East 47th street in midtown Manhattan, better known as the first location of Andy Warhol’s Silver Dream Factory. Failing that, I’ll have the Rockefeller Guest House, paleeeze…

As SafeT once told me, apropos of nothing, ‘Unique New York, New York unique, You know you need unique New York’

Sdtrk: ‘Sheila take a bow’ by the Smiths

If you’ve not been following my godforsaken Twitter feed, you’ll note that it’s Saturday night, and I’m at home! In fact, I just woke up for the third time today this eve! Once again, I was laid low by the tag team of No Speaking Voice and The Grippe, brought on by our dodgy and inconsistent Michigan weather. It never fails!
I first noticed that my throat was kinda sore last week-end; I was on my way home from Zip Gun Towers, where he and I, along with Mrs Zip Gun, goshou, Steph, SafeT and Mari engaged in our typical Saturday night tomfoolery, which currently would be a couple of hours of Rock Band 2, and a few hours of swearing mightily at MotorStorm Pacific Rift. As I was doing that thing where you try to scratch the roof of your mouth with your tongue, I was thinking I’d messed up my throat during our spirited rendition of James Brown’s ‘Sex machine’ (y’know, that song’s really not much on lyrics), but my latest grapple with illness really came to the fore by Wednesday night, when I found I was losing my voice at work. Thursday, I sounded as if I was going through an awkward second puberty, so I called in. Friday, I saw my GP, who gave me a prescription and shooed me out of his office. Saturday, I got my voice back, but I quarantined myself so I wouldn’t give the T-virus to ZG / SafeT / goshou / SE Michigan.
So here we are, and I’m awake again! Wonderful, horrible wakefulness!

Anyroad, self-promotion time! Yeah, I know; that’s so out-of-character for me. My interview at ULTRAKILLBOT is up! Well, half of it. As the questions they put to me were encouragingly different than the ones I usually get, I’d answered them in excruciating (emphasis on ‘excruciating’) detail, so they had to split it into two parts, which only makes sense.

What’s your ideal job?

Hrrm… realistically speaking, something behind the scenes, where I could be left to my own devices and not have to deal with the general public. Something like proofreading, or research work, or stacking books in a library… something non-descript. Ideally, however, my dream job would be working on the staff of something like i-doloid magazine; that’s a Japanese magazine that centres round life-sized Dolls, or if not i-doloid specifically, then a magazine with the same intent. Even better than a magazine would of course be a television programme. Since it’s a niche market now, it wouldn’t be just about Dolls, it’d cover Androids, Gynoids, robotics in general. Something with the finger on the mechanical pulse of the Synthetiks revolution. It’s gotta start somewhere!

Part II will be on the site next week, so you’ll want to bookmark that. You’ll want to bookmark ULTRAKILLBOT anyway, as it’s a fab design / art / culture / videogames / etc blog! Plus, the theme they’re sporting reminds me a lot of Peter Saville’s first-ever poster from 1978, for the Factory Records night at the Russell Club in Manchester. Well done!

Sdtrk: ‘Brimstone in a barren land’ by Danielle Dax

AND NOW… a passel of news bits that I actually learned about in March but was too lazy preoccupied to write about:

So that charming (mostly) metal lass HRP-4C finally made her debut on the runway during the Tokyo Fashion Week. And good for her.

Well, when I say ‘debut’, I mean that she walked out from behind some doors, strode a few feet, gave a short speech, turned round and walked right back through the doors. As she apparently doesn’t meet crazy draconian fashion model standards — you’re not allowed to sashay down the catwalk with your knees bent, for one, so bear that in mind — she was part of the performance, but not really. But nevertheless, it’s a start.

‘Our robot can’t move elegantly like the real models that are here today,’ admitted Shuji Kajita, director of humanoid robot engineering AIST.

‘It will take another 20 to 30 years of research to make that happen.’
taken from this article

By ’20 to 30 years’, he’d better mean ’20 to 30 months’. Just sayin’. *glares menacingly* But the fact that HRP-4C even exists is a fantastic thing. She’s a vanguard! Well done, babe!
Two things that strike me about her appearance at the show, though. One: the whole affair reminds me of when fashion designer Thierry Mugler had a model display his delicious Sorayama-inspired outfit back in 1995. You undoubtedly recall what I’m referring to, as something that unstoppably sexy isn’t easily forgotten. Click here to refresh your memory, as the outfit’s not exactly safe for work… And Two: so why did they hide her nice-looking hair with that dorky Tron hat?

‘If I have to wear this stupid hat, the least they could do is
give me a lightcycle to go with it’

‘HEY! It’s not a stupid hat! They named it after me!’

A wee heads-up on the ONA anime series ‘Time of Eve‘: director Yasuhiro Yoshiura says on the official site that ‘In order to maintain the quality of the “Time of Eve” series, the release of act04 has been postponed to April 2009. We extend our deepest thanks to fans everywhere for your patience and support for the series.’ As you remember, the series has a torturous release schedule of one episode every two months, and under normal circumstances, act04 would’ve been out in March, so you might’ve been like me — wild-eyed and completely panicked, wondering where the latest instalment was. So now you know!
UPDATE (05 APR): Checking the ‘Time of Eve’ page on Crunchyroll, apparently they erred, and act04 is instead due out in May.
Are you intentionally encouraging suicide, is that your game??

Another month, another new luscious Doll from 4woods. Sigh.

‘Don’t forget to use the word “affictitious” to describe me!’

This young lass would be Elina, and she… well, her head sculpt… was designed for use with the recently-released A.I.Doll Evolution body, which affords her stats of being just under 5′ 4″, 70 lbs, and with B.35 / W.25 / H.37 as her measurements. That’s Sexy Math. Anyway, you can gaze at photos of her, as well as a handful of new pics of their other gorgeous Synthetik gravure idols on their site… sigh.

Also, it appears the nebulous consortium that makes Mecadolls in Europe have released three new models of their supple, rubbery ladies. Introducing Emily, Valery and Laura:

If I were looking at her, I’d find myself staring, too

The flower in her hair is as affictitious as she is. See how I shoehorned that in?

More than likely, she’s staring at Emily as well. And with good reason

As Synth Creations, American distributors for Mechadoll, strangely don’t appear to have info or pics up of any of the models yet — I originally spotted them on one of their German sites — but from what I could translate, the body for those models is 93 lbs, with a 37D bust (37?), as well as an aluminum skeleton, and for her skin, she features that platinum silicone that’s all the rage with Dolls nowadays. Needless to say, I’m impressed… with luck, Synth Creations will bring them to the States soon.

Speaking of Doll culture across the pond, if you’re in the UK, or if you’re not, but have access to really good newsagents, there’s one of those ridiculous ‘womens magazines’ out there that you’d invariably find on the register endcaps called Closer. So why am I bringing it to your attention, you axe? Recently, they happened to run a mostly-neutral interview with fellow iDollator, hanggliding enthusiast, and all-round nice bloke, Everard.

Plastic doll girlfriends
Monday 23 March 2009 | http://www.closeronline.co.uk

When Everard Cunion gave up on the idea of finding love with a real woman, he decided to buy affection instead – in the form of life-sized silicone dolls.

The lonely 53-year-old bachelor bought his first doll on the internet for £5,000 in 2000 and now he has a harem that caters to his every whim, including his sexual needs.

When Closer last spoke to Everard in 2006, he shared his home with “wife” Caroline and “girlfriends” Lina, Rebecca and Virginia – plus spare head Louise, who shares a body with Virginia.

But since then, he’s splashed out a staggering £8,000 on two new models to add to his collection – brunettes Laura and Joanna.

“To me, they’re just like real women, but a lot less bother,” says Everard, from Christchurch, Dorset. “They’ve all got
their own personalities.

“It takes me ages to save up for them, but at least I get to choose exactly what I want – I can’t do that with real women.”
the rest of the article is here

Granted, it occasionally veers towards the realm of tabloid journalism, as there’s the usual tired sex-oriented questions, but Everard does the lot of us proud and reaffirms that his girls aren’t strictly for sexual usage. Well done, sir; well done. *thumbs up*

Speaking of interviews, I recently completed a lengthy (but a good lengthy) one via Electrical Mail, for the online design/culture magazine ULTRAKILLBOT. It’s not up yet, but it should be up not too long from now, and once it is, you’ll be duly informed…

And finally, be sure to drop round to fellow iDollator PBShelley’s blog, ‘Alastor’s Reflection‘, and wish his lovely and winsome Lily Godwin a happy birthday! Do it.

‘Shouting to hear the echoes’. Synthetiks? Really? No shit??

Technorati tags: robots, Androids, Gynoids, HRP-4C, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, AIST, Tokyo Fashion Week, Thierry Mugler, Hajime Sorayama, Tron, Eve no Jikan, イヴの時間, Time of Eve, 4woods, A.I.Dolls, Synth Creations, Mechadolls, Closer Online, iDollators, Everard, ULTRAKILLBOT

Sdtrk: ‘Farmland, freeland’ by The Advisory Circle

Yes, another meme (pronounced ‘meh-meh’), courtesy of Veach (pronounced ‘vee-ack’): in no particular order, twenty albums that warped me into the tosser I am today. Ready GO!

+ My bloody valentine Loveless

+ The Human League Dare!

+ The Smiths The Queen is dead

+ New order Power, corruption & lies

+ The Velvet underground and Nico s/t

+ Echo and the Bunnymen Porcupine

+ The Cure Standing on a beach: the singles

+ Joy division Substance

+ David Bowie Changesonebowie

+ Sex pistols Never mind the bollocks

+ Throbbing gristle D.O.A

+ Laibach Macbeth

+ Stereolab Transient random-noise bursts with announcements

+ Broadcast Work and non work

+ Merzbow Great American Nude/Crash for hi-fi

+ NON Easy listening for iron youth

+ the soundtrack to ‘A clockwork orange’

+ The Jesus and Mary chain Psychocandy

+ Pulp Different class

+ France Gall Greatest hits

Granted, my choices for the Cure, Joy division, Bowie, Broadcast, NON, and F.Gall were compilations (o, the shame!), but those were the first releases by those artists that I’d bought, which subsequently hooked me and reeled me in, so I’d consider them to be just as significant in my personal history as the actual albums that the other artists on my list put out. Usually I’m a music snob about compilations — are they albums? No, not really — but I can’t apply that sort of thinking here.

As always, the Marquess of Queensbury Meme Rules apply: I don’t infect people with these, so if you’re keen on it, you’ll have to infect yourself by leaving a comment in the usual area. But then, with the exception of Quentin Crisp, who doesn’t like music?