Dr. John Taylor was stunned when his plans for the Clock were accepted by the Corpus Christi College Cambridge Committee, appending to their enthusiastic fax that they would be delighted to match his own personal funding, of course. He ruffled through the pages on his workdesk again, marveling at the simple, serrated demonism of his opus. How he had managed to pitch it to the stodgy old boys at the CCCCC was baffling. He had fully expected months, maybe years of back and forth, funds and revocations, audits and blank stares. He had been willing to lay down those years on the altar of the thing. Its golden potentiality was all the faith he would need.
In a few days I will be retracing the path of thousands of ancient conastogas, puttering up Shasta and down Grant’s, charring and grimacing under the Oregon blaze, just to get to my homeland of Seattle, Washington.
It’s very rare that I show my art publicly. After last time, when an angry mob showed up early with torches and pitchforks and ate all the cubical cheese, I had really lost hope in the Seattle art scene. I tried showing down here in the Bay Area, where I now reside, but had to take down early due to hippies protesting a yeti that had climbed one of the campus trees.
It is for this reason that I would be terribly obliged if only you’d find some way to drop in at either one of the art shows I’m launching this weekend.
Based on a remix contest by Radiohead for the song “Nude”, James Houston assembled an elderly choir of obsoletia that grinds, beeps, and chirps their way to something unexpectedly haunting.
Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer - Drums
HP Scanjet 3c - Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array - Act as a collection of bad speakers - Vocals & FX
I was scrambling for this week’s NdJ theme, not having been brung low by any songs lately, and was blessed by this today. I admit freely that I choked up. Not just for nostalgia, though the dot matrix is an old friend and the scanner knows me yet, but for the pathos of pastured machines.
It solidifies for me, this video, that the early consumer-computer era has really passed, can be patted into a packaged time, a turned page. Out of etymological playfulness, what would we call it? Pixelpunk?
Thanks to Fixer667, who I believe Ectotweeted this.
Oh how I loathe conceptual designs. The near constant reminder of a future that lies just out of reach. Well god damn it like Veruca Salt before me I Want It Now. It is highly unacceptable that I (and you as well I suppose) can’t reach within my vest pocket to pull out an ornately scrolled “pocket-watch” to respond to the aspersions cast on my mother in a text message from Brownlee.
One of Ian Burns’ latest pieces, End of an Era, is the ingenious pairing of 16 black and white televisions (all displaying live feeds presumably from the cameras mounted above them) and chandelier. The piece is decidedly dystopian, likely intended to make a statement on the ever-decreasing level of privacy the citizens of supposedly free countries are afforded in this day of near constant surveillance.
However, to many the appeal of this piece will lie in the fact that it looks like something ripped from the crinkly celluloid of Ridley Scott’s cyberpunk masterpiece, Blade Runner. I can’t be the only one that thinks these chandeliers would have fit perfectly among the grungy detritus of a futuristic Los Angeles, or better yet my very own cavernous, abandoned apartment building.
The 5th Element, in spite of being a fairly bad movie, is still one of my favorite films, if for no other reason than the entire thing is absolutely gorgeous. It is a future in which the soft, rounded corners of plastic-everything that we all expect to be permanently spotless and milky white are in actuality smudged with the dirt and grime of a population that built its way out of the polluted, earthen pit they created for themselves.
Everything in the movie is immediately obvious as “futuristic” without looking outlandish or ridiculous (save Ruby Rod, who gets a pass for having a special place in my heart); a problem to which many films set in the future fall prey.
The above grand piano, designed as a collaboration between Schimmel and Luigi Colani, would have fit perfectly in the film. As such, it is awarded my highest praise. Redesigning an instrument that many have a near religious reverence for is a tricky task, rife with perilous design flaws that could very easily ruin the whole shebang resulting in packs of pianists screaming for blood; but Colani and Schimmel have pulled off their design coup with a singular aplomb.
Had I the measly $110,000 that is being asked for this masterpiece it would be snatched up greedily with a haste I’ve likely never before displayed; and thus I would be able to count myself among the lucky 14 that stroke the keys of a piano sent back through time.
My friend in fashion-fecundus, Jilly, once asserted that deconstructed fashion, by and large, is in a positively woeful state; and to be perfectly honest I am apt to agree. Chopping out the neck of a t-shirt, ironing on a few patches, and sewing ribbon in a few places to effect a gathered look does not an item of deconstructed couture make.
Further, visible stitches in old olive cloth, safety pins, and runs in haphazardly stacked stockings also does not an item of deconstructed couture make. Yet otherwise observant people seem convinced that this is the way these fashions are meant to be executed, applying their incorrect opinions to work that more often than not results in something awful.
Gibbous Fashions is the antithesis to those that can not understand, creating perfect (a word I refuse to use lightly) understated, deconstructed fashions. Do the models all look like hobos? You’re god damn right they do; impeccably dressed hobos with whom I want to while away my days in ivy covered gardens drinking weak tea from chipped sets and looking fabulous in the process.
The photography of her pieces may be a bit dark, making a good gander at the high level of detail that’s gone into each piece difficult, but the items in the shop (yes, there are in fact pieces for sale that don’t cost your first born) speak for themselves. Have a look, and if you have the means snatch up any items that remain. Not to do so lands you squarely in “remiss in Ectomo Fashion Brigade duties” territory, and the penalties for that, dear reader, are high.
In your daily meanderings through the hallowed halls of Ectomo you may at some point have taken note of my odd name. I can assure you it isn’t the result of air-headed, hippie parents and in spite of my questionable ancestry and modern American nature I still have quite a bit of reverence for parts of my dubious heritage.
As such, I can’t help but love this outfit recently featured by fashion aficionado The Sartorialist. This woman is the spitting image of the pack of post-apocalyptic Neo-Bedouins that stalk across the vast expanses of my imagination. I adore the combination of flowing, layered fabrics employed as shawl and head dress, and the tight, boot strapped pants easing mobility, all of which unites to form the image of an ancient wanderer fit for a modern age.
The transformation of mankind’s idealized future over the last century is a fascinating thing. Our tendency to speculate wildly is our greatest trait, resulting in a rich history of lofty, unrealistic goals and incredible literature that only serves to drive us to speculate further; to hope for a future like nothing we’ve ever seen.
From a sky full of hot-air balloons, from which dapper gents doff their hats to ladies on pedal powered flying machines, to pill-food and brushed chrome flying cars, to now, where our idealized future includes skull-mounted USB jacks and HUD’s. However, our visions of the future have a distinct difference from those of our forebears. Namely in that we envision the possibility of a dystopian future, a blasted, rusted heath on which we eke out our misery filled days; which we dream of alongside the optimistic fantasy of a future of soft, off-white plastics, bio-integrated technology, and utopian ideals.
It’s almost as if in the last 50 years or so we’ve finally started to realize that the future might not be coming to save us, but that it might just be one more boot to humanity’s collective chin.
The civilised world lies on its knees, a sickness wracking its body. The affliction causes a necrotising of tissues so perfectly uniform in distribution that victims take on the appearance of corpses long before death occurs due to organ failure or secondary infections. The crumbling remnants of academia swing from fatalistic resignation to maddened optimism in their addressment of what could be done to fight the sickness.
The vast numbers of doctors attempting to stem the tide of infection, invariably falling victim to the malady they treat, have begun to form fanatical extermination squads whose policies are condoned by authority. A notion forms, twisting the tenets of the Hippocratic oath to say that when the oath taker is subject to the half-death of infection they are obliged to spend their lasting days attempting to destroy the source of the contagion.
The paramilitary forces formed from the infected medical practicioners find themselves deigned to mete out persecution to the sufferers they were formally treating. Equipped with the leftovers of dissolved military forces, the Doctors’ Militia are organised to burn all infected areas and sufferers; a campaign which stalks across blasted lands, mirroring the wave of infection in an addled attempt at backtracking all the way to some imaginary source.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
