April 2003 Archives

Antonio Negri is free.

D'oh -- so distracted by X2 buzz that I forgot to check out Apple's new music products announcement. Interesting: we're handling the local launch of all this shit, and Apple wouldn't even tell us what the product was. We found out like everyone else in the world. (We were making very educated guesses, though, and there were no surprises.) Most interesting: Apple Australia swore black and blue that they didn't even know what the deal was. I know Apple's been into secrecy these days, but fuck, that's simply loopy. We've got to launch a product in the next few weeks, and we have to resort to crystal balls and geek rumour sites. Lucky the geek rumour sites are usually on the money. Still, it's quite exciting doing stuff for Apple.

Went to the museum last weekend to see the Two Emperors exhibit, and to the art gallery this weekend just past to check out the Archibald Prize show. Two Emperors, which featured some fairly recently unearthed Qing and Han Dynasty artefacts from imperial tombs, was terribly designed and packaged -- really unimaginatively put together. In some ways the film we managed to catch in the theatrette was more interesting, and this tells us a lot about the state of the exhibitionary complex -- it has leaked out of the oldskool authoritarianisms of spectacular presence ("roll up, roll up!"), and into the spectacular distractions of more mobile media. But the doco was also so patronisingly racist -- all these white men wax on (wax off) authoritatively about the quaintly superstitious Chinese. Lena wrote a very long complaint about the whole package in the guest book. I was so embarrassed -- the pages were ruled for one comment per line, and she stood there intently, writing a page and a half of radical invective.

Oh: the exhibit, which touched interestingly on the State's drive to territorialise space by violently standardising measurements, implements and uh, everything, reminded me that I'd lent Brian Massumi's First and Last Emperors: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot to a friend ten years ago, and never got it back. And I also remembered the whacky idea I had years ago for an exhibition of my own -- The Entombed Warriors of Industrial Design, in which rather than having terracotta soldiers, you'd be presented with a tableau of terracotta spaceships of various fictive renown: the Enterprise, an Imperial Star Destroyer, etc, all rendered in unlikely detail. It's a reference to those wonderfully physical prototyping processes that involve the sculpting of putty shapes that will eventually be reproduced in metal or plastic. The juxtaposition of the crafty and the illusive slickness of "technology". Yhe craftily constructed army, designed in the past but from the future. (Physicality is great in design: you can CAD your way endlessly through the design of a motorbike in a computer, but someone eventually has to sit on a physical prototype to gauge how it feels. Introducing this early in the design process opens up a wonderful batch of feedback loops.)

This link between craft and virtuality brings to mind the best thing I saw at the art gallery, which wasn't the stuff in the Archibald. (Which, BTW, was unbelievably crap all round -- the only good thing was the portrait of Mr Squiggle. The show wasn't even proudly reinscribing the reactionary aspects of painted portraiture; it was simply lame.) No, the coolest thing was a huge reproduction of an envelope for a library fine, about three metres tall and an apparently black and white image, but finely dithered in simulated RGB pixels. And every pixel was hand painted. Went with Claire, who has moved to Sydney and is sceptical of my capacity for artwank.

Back from the preview screening of X-Men 2. {smug smirk} No cinematic intensity here (and I don't mean furrowed brows), but damn pleasing all the same. It makes no bones about its calculated franchiseness -- witness the comfortable referentiality that this first of probably many sequels can indulge in, and the flush of joyous, slice'n'dice setpieces in the first half to compensate for the misjudged whimper of a finale in the last film... and then there's director Bryan Singer's very deliberate characterisation of X2 as his Empire Strikes Back. But I think that comparison is partly misdirection, masking the film's ballsy homage to another second chapter of an sf film series: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Hell, it didn't ring emotionally true, but I found myself with a wide smile, thinking, this guy's such a fanboy, and for once in sf movies, that's a good thing.

Grant Morrison took much of his lead from the first movie on his current New X-Men run, and while neither of the films sings the outrageous operatics that only Morrison can, fans (and Morrison) can rely on them for the basic stuff that blockbuster franchises seem so unable to deliver these days: a stylishly packaged setup (of characters, of milieu, of whatever), with multiple explosions, that's modular enough to return to for repeated pleasure. Go, children of the atom!

Niggles: nobody seems to be able to write, direct or act in a cockpit scene these days. (During the lamely desperate flicking of dip-switches, I wanted to yell out, "would it help if I got out and pushed?". Whaddaya mean, "Magneto disabled the hyperdrive"?) And Halle Berry, go away.

Oh, everybody cheered at Hank McCoy's "cameo". Yay!

I've heard that during his Etech conference presentation this week, Alan Kay showed video excerpts of Doug Engelbart's mindboggling demonstration, in 1968, of a system of information technology that included a mouse, hypertext and video collaboration tools. I've been hearing about this for years, but never knew that bits of the demonstration were available as streaming video on the web. The stuff is uncanny. Reading about the history of hackerdom is all well and good, but actually watching the buttoned-down Engelbart explain in antique, clipped tones as he uses a mouse to cut and paste text on a metaphorical "sheet of paper" is another thing altogether. I feel as if I'm looking into a bizarre alternate universe, almost as strange as the one in Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine, or more recently, Warren Ellis' Ministry of Space comic, which charts the history that could have developed if the dying British Empire, and not the Americans, had stolen the Nazi rocket scientists at the end of World War II. If MoS is, as Ellis perversely asserts, "the story of how we could have gone to space... maybe the way we should have gone to space," then what is the spectacle of Douglas Engelbart's largely unfulfilled vision? Perhaps something like an issue of Ellis' Planetary, in which the secret history of the 20th Century, so full of heart-rendingly hidden inventions and weird supermen, is excavated piece by piece.

I was shopping in HMV the other night, turned the corner and jumped in surprise to see Trey's new album, which I designed, right in front of me, prominently placed on a rack.

Cor. (Accidentally coming across my own work isn't something that happens much for me these days, since I'm all web-based.) And Trey got a great review in today's Herald:

Demonstrating potentially the biggest leap forward for Australian hip-hop, Tapastry Tunes covers a lot of ground and does so with style. With almost cocksure rhyming, MC Trey takes on flamenco-flavoured hip-hop in the form of "Supercede", skanking dancehall in "The Ultimate", gospel-soul in the glorious "Take Time Out" and shamelessly retro electro in "Arcade Warrior". Every time, she comes up trumps. Koolism's DJ Danielsan is among the local producer types providing deft scratching and behind-the-scenes expertise on a release that oozes class and leaves you wanting more. While Latifah's off conquering Hollywood, all hail the new queen.

Nice one, Trey.

How geeky is Tom Coates? Here's his live blogging (he was adding comments as he thought of them) on Howard Rheingold's paper at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference. Coates is dead wrong, BTW.

Finally got round to fixing those stylesheets for Windows IE6, so everything bloggish is now under control -- and using Kung-Log, I can post in style...

I can't explain how excited I am by this:

(It's gonna be the best thing since Deadenders and Blue Monday. Yeah.)

And today, the boss left his Lambretta downstairs, unguarded, in the foyer of the building. I was this close to saying fuck it, I'm riding off into the sunset.

From Baxter:

(Photos by moz.)

Another dream: we are all on a tropical island. All of a sudden we get bombed the shit out of. People dead everywhere. Huge craters where buildings, bridges and rainforest once stood. Stomach-turning viscera everywhere. And the oddest thing: some bodies completely intact, and yet completely frozen in place.

Did I mention my amazement at the visual effects upon rewatching King Kong the other week?

The other night, something came to me in a dream: what if there were a band that was totally made up of franchise characters, "played" by respected-in-their-own-right but still-replaceable "players"? What if Ziggy and the Spiders was more literal (i.e. that identity was the band, rather than a detachable piece of pop-culture drag), and done over time like the James Bond franchise, or better, like Doctor Who? What if, in the history of, say, "Jennie and the Howlers", Jennie was played first by Grace Jones, and then by Marianne Faithfull? (Amazingly, this was the actual example that came to me in the dream.) Jennie 1.0, Jennie 2.0. Interesting.

Saw Ned Kelly. There was a real lack of social texture and too much of a tendency towards flat sentimentality, but shit, I cried like, three times. It can't not be stirring stuff, and the parallels between the situation of the Irish and that of Arabs today rang very loud to me. Anglo people at large ought to see it, simply to let that penny drop about those "dangerous communities" amongst us. And Orlando Bloom = a bomb, made out of sex.

I'm not at Baxter. Good luck to those that are. Last night they made it to the fences.

Lovely dinner at Coco's Incredible Warehouse Adventure, for her birthday. I got her Eco's Baudolino (kind of a joke -- we gave each other The Island of the Day Before for Christmas a few years ago) and a ticket to the MIDNIGHT SESSION OF THE MATRIX RELOADED.

Mark is working on this amazing sketching app (the illustrations here must have been done with it) that's so intuitive, it hurts. It's the kinda thing Paul Pope would use.

After the most appalling couple of days of surplus value extraction, I'm now convinced that alien abduction is a metaphor for ALIENation under capitalism. What else is the experience of MISSING TIME?? Time to die now.

Oh, Ken Macleod has a blog. Hurrah!

Joe Macare's new comic is online. Reminds me of Jim Mahfood!

The war isn't over, and neither did it start the other week. We will shed tears of blood forever.

Back on the whiny music, obviously. But am mixing it up with some Kylie. Did you know that the Manics wrote a couple of songs on the Impossible Princess album? Okay, I'll shut up now...

Oh, while the Virgin (Sexy) Mary's still on the page ("if you want me, just text me"), here's something interesting from Wu-Ming:

Revolutions and radical movements have always found and told their own myths. They often got trapped in the iron cages of their own myths: their traditions and rituals became alienating, the continuity between past and present was *imposed* on the people instead of being proposed.

Radicals of all ages over-reacted to that situation by becoming iconoclastic, by trying to de-mythologize the imagery and discourse of the movement. By doing that, they simply replaced one alienating imagery with another. Iconoclasty soon became a new iconophilia. The pro-situs who adore St. Guy of Paris are only one of the most striking examples of this. As a consequence, misery and impotence rule, bitter nihilism and defeatism replace theory, and fools rush into the nearest dead end street (primitivism, technofobia etc.)

Myths are necessary. We couldn't live together without stories to tell and listen to, without "heroes" whose example we can follow or reject. Our language, our memories, our imagination and our need of forming communities are the things that make us human beings, and the stories keep them all together. There is no way we can get rid of myths, and why the fuck should we? Instead of wasting our time listening to some bullshitter who poses as the most radical of all, we ought to understand the way actual social movements want to fullfill their need for myths and mythologies, and help them keep mythologies lively, flexible and in motion.

On iTunes right now: Blur's Think Tank and Radiohead's Hail to the Thief. Too early to make a call.

Okay, after getting a dressing down from Nellie last night, I've stopped listening to whiny, mopey music. Right now I'm listening to Britney and Pharrell's heavy breathing on the Neptunes' remix of "Boys". Is that better? And I can't believe Nellie was writing stuff for the Secret Life of Us website! As an antidote to such a demeaning enterprise, I'm pressing for that always-potential masterpiece of guerrilla television, The Nellie Show, on Channel 31. If that Angus doofus from Recovery can gain fame from, uh, noodle commercials, surely Nellie can be the "actually good" version of that TV jammer guy from Dark Angel! Except funny.

And what's better, after arsing around for years, I've decided to follow Eugene's example and hook up my guitar amp to my computer so I can get maximum iTunes action without bothering to buy proper speakers. It's mono, and the frequency response is all "wrong", but that makes it like some bizarre AM radio station from an alternate universe, which is great. (And God, iTunes even makes a key appearance in the latest episode of Buffy in the States. And wasn't it great to discover last nite that all of us there from the old Terragang are still Scooby, so to speak?)

How much more bitterness can I direct at design superstars? A lot. Bring it on.

I see liberals
I am just a fashion accessory
People send postcards
And they all hope I'm feeling well
I retreat into self pity
It's so easy
When they patronise my misery
La tristesse durera
Scream to a sigh
La tristesse durera
Scream to a sigh

-- Manic Street Preachers, "La Tristesse Durera"

("La tristesse durera toujours" ["the sadness will go on forever"] were apparently Van Gogh's dying words.)

Which reminds me of a t-shirt from the old days:

At brunch today, Simon and I, after all these years, can still agree about the greatness of Mel C. I mean, she makes eyes at you in every shot of the "Here It Comes Again" video. What's not to like?

If I hear one more person make some racist, authoritarian-pacifist comment about "how ironic it is to see stupid Leb kids from Bankstown throwing chairs for, uh, peace", I'll crush them in the egg and acquaint them with the pavement, as that wonderful Spartacist phrase goes.

In the meantime, I won't presume to know or somehow "agree" with everything that was going through the heads of any young people who might have been Arab and who might have thrown chairs at the cops at the student strike against the war, but taking a fucking wild guess might yield at least some food for thought. Here's something I wrote last year on what I think is a somewhat related topic:

In the middle of the current deluge of Western supremacist hysteria about "Arab gang rapists", I've had to tactically retreat into my headphones like a schoolboy, trying to find some strength there. I've returned to a song that I listened to continuously last year to weather the last crest of "ethnic crime" mania -- it's New Order's "Rock the Shack".

Yes, it sounds unlikely that an ageing bunch of lily-white English shoegazers (who once flirted with fascist aesthetics!) could have any resonance with the current state of racialised siege, and "Rock the Shack" is considered by many to be simply embarrassing. But fuck the embarrassment -- regardless of everything, this song, in the most unashamedly naive way, crystallises for me what I think an engagement with the contradictory politics of the present is all about. It's raw defence and anger and being grounded in everyday life. Last year I daydreamed of young non-Anglo people storming NSW State Parliament to this soundtrack. An almost perverse vision.

I've put the song here if you want to hear it, and the lyrics are reproduced below. If I were to have a political manifesto at the moment, this would be it. It's crude and yet (to me) strangely profound. And hell, I feel crude.

You know that to have sent an earnest email about a stupid whiteboy song, I must be fucking obsessed and angry. Yes I am. It's time to get up.


Ben


+ + +



Rock the Shack

I've been accused of everything
From Timbuktu to old Berlin
I need some armor for my flesh
I need to stop and take a rest

I've been wide-eyed but couldn't see
I stand accused of being me

I believe in politics
I believe in everything
I believe this world of ours is giving me adrenaline
When I hear a baby cry
When I see an old man die
That's just the way it is

Rock the shack, rock the shack, rock the shack, rock the shack
Rock the shack, rock the shack, rock the shack, rock the shack

Yeah that's the way it is

I took each day the way it came
I put my future out of frame
The signs were there for all to see
Light through our mind to you and me
My hand laid on my beating breast
I swear to you I've passed the test
I'll walk one hundred thousand miles
Ignore the judges 'til my trial
Been my trial

I believe in politics
I believe in everything
I believe this world of ours is just a den of vice and sin
And even on the darkest night
We could reach for the light
And we could get it right

Get it right, get it right, get it right, get it right
Get it right, get it right, get it right, get it right

I believe in politics
I believe in everything
I believe this world of ours is giving me adrenaline
Ten thousand years ago
Crawling on the floor
Well get up Jack
It's time to rock the shack

Rock the shack, rock the shack, rock the shack, rock the shack
Rock the shack, rock the shack, rock the shack, rock the shack

It's time to get up

I love some of those crazy anime dudes. My mind boggles at the frankness of this interview with Kazuya Tsurumaki, one of the producers of Evangelion, on how they took daring advantage of various production problems in the making of the series:

What did you think about developments during the second half of the TV series?
I didn't mind it. The schedule was an utter disaster and the number of cels plummeted, so there were some places where unfortunately the quality suffered. However, the tension of the staff as we all became more desperate and frenzied certainly showed up in the film.

I see.
About the time that the production system was completely falling apart, there were some opinions to the effect that, "If we can't do satisfactory work, then what's the point of continuing?" However, I didn't feel that way. My opinion was, "Why don't we show them the entire process including our breakdown." You know -- make it a work that shows everything including our inability to create a satisfactory product. I figured that, "In 10 years or so, if we look back on something that we made while we were drunk out of our minds, we wouldn't feel bad even if the quality wasn't so good."

I love that shit.

Watched both the Evangelion movies, back to back. I didn't have a lot of sympathy for the endless psychobabble, but damn, it's all put together so well... Excuse my obscure motion graphics trainspotting, but the "DNA spiral" of the end credits made me laugh and clap out loud.

+  +  +

I found Donald Rumsfeld and Henry Kissinger's appearances in that moon hoax mocumentary quite surreal (in the more banal usage of the word). I admit it was interesting, but all that funny stuff about them offhandedly getting Stanely Kubrick to fake the moon landing on a weekend, and then eliminating everyone involved, made them appear even more ghoulish, because in the real world Rumsfeld's very carefully and deliberately trying to bomb a people into the fucking stone age, and Kissinger did the same a few years back. I wonder what they were actually talking about in their interviews (the selected quotes that survived the editing process are excellently vague).

In a way (and Arthur C. Clarke is the obscure link here), they reminded me of right-wing science fiction authors Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (authors of "Third World commie hordes" paranoia sf novel, The Mote in God's Eye) boasting in a documentary about how they'd gotten Ronald Reagan to pursue the Strategic Defense Initiative. Clarke was snubbed by their geeky group for opposing their militarist fantasies (apparently, Robert Heinlein told him to "never set foot in this fucking country again", or words to that effect), and in the moon hoax film, it's the "lunar surface" set of 2001 that's used as the staging ground for the Apollo 11 landing. Only, Pournelle and Niven were utterly serious. Meanwhile, Rumsfeld and Kissinger have a tradition of writing a different, more immediately genocidal kind of science fiction called "US foreign policy".