Things as They Are.?

Lando = Bushwick Bill.

And next in line for the title of Covert Prestige Web Video of the Year is MindTrix, a low frame rate re-enactment of The Geto Boys' "My Mind's Playing Tricks on Me" starring none other than Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Lando Carlissian as the 'Boys themselves. Not for the faint of ear. Definitely for everyone else.

By this time next week, this video will have blown up beyond control. We're talking Badger Badger Badger types of stardom. Guaranteed. Maybe.

Thanks to Prowlin' Productions for bringing us the magic. Good luck with the server load, people.
rev 1.1--Next Up: Wu-Tang Clan's C.R.E.A.M. as played by He-Man figures.

Used to Be a Lighthouse Did the Trick Just Fine.

Name the former contents of this lovingly sculpted chalice:

a) Mai Tai
b) The Suffering Bastard
c) Navy Grog
d) The Fog Cutter
e) All of the above (there's no difference except for the quantity of cheap liquor used)

Though I suspect many observant readers will guess on their own, only those who were there truly know the dangers contained by the serenity of the ceramic surfer-nymph....
rev 1.1--And The Suffering Bastard said: "Give Me a Phone That I Might Call in My Drink Order."

Stunning.

Over the course of my ongoing research into cross-sited narratives (or as I'm calling them now-- narrative networks), I stumbled across an absolutely mind-blowing website-- Imediata-- Brazilian Visual Poetry.

An infinitely diverse multimedia collection, Imediata presents the user with what can feasibly be considered a new (media) vision of concrete poetics, courtesy of Omar Khouri:

"The idea of POETRY as the ART OF THE WORD by excellence is widely accepted and persistent, which is actually true, or partly true, let us say. In fact, poetry has always been associated with other codes/other arts, in more or less explicit alliances. With the advent of the many modernisms and their developments, poetry takes on the role of an intersemiotic art, invading other fields, coupling itself with other universes, breaking any existing borders, which, by the way, also happened with other areas of artistic creation... It would be better to call this art form INTERSEMIOTIC, INTERMULTIMEDIA POETRY OF THE POST-VERSE ERA, because it uses various codes and media and from the start it is already conceived to be carried from paper to CD-ROM, including the video. This is the kind of poetry that in the last twenty-five years has proved that experimentation is an inseparable companion to art-making...Here, Poetry does not fear the most advanced technologies; it just transits through various media, open to the thousands of possibilities of today."

The notion that poetry is intersectional is nothing new, but the practice of this idea as a mandate (I know, I know-- I hate that word now, too) is. The gestural, (inter)multimediary forces that cohere within a concrete poem have only been limited to our categorizations of what can constitute a material poetic form. Much of the work found in Imediata is consciously technotextual (i.e. materially self-interrogating). We see lines ebbing and pulsing across an oceanic page, video swirling around a tree encircled by letters and words, live readings coupled with music and giant ballasting screens. In short, we freshly see concrete poetry as networked media, whether or not we understand Portugese or Spanish.
rev 1.1--Thanks for the quote, Rowe.

Um...No.

Yes they can.

'Nuff Said

Another retort of the oft-repeated resistance to studying video games because they make more money than cinema, via Toasty Frog:

"Direct comparisons between the profitability of films and games may in fact be the most embarrassing piece of perpetual stupidity plaguing this industry. (Well, that or the Army Men series.)

'In the first 24 hours we'll have an opening that's (more) popular than any motion picture has ever had in history,' Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said at a shareholder's meeting Tuesday.

Let me know when they start charging $50 for a movie ticket (or $55 for the ticket that comes in a limited edition tin), eh, Bill?"
rev 1.1--Ever go to a movie in Manhattan?

Welcome to the Uncanny Valley, Part 1

The CG animated version of the popular children's book The Polar Express opens on Wednesday but it's already garnering some strange responses. The core of the story, which my wife tells me is a delightful, challenging take on the Santa Claus mythos, remains the same but that's not the problem. Unless we're talking about the Brothers Grimm or Harry Potter, one doesn't expect to read the phrase "creepy" in a review of a children's film. Not only does David German, AP film reviewer, use this word, but, in describing the amazingly-rendered-but-definitely-not-humanlike characters, he also employs phrases that seem to be describing the Bush agenda circa 2004, such as "likely to induce nightmares", "unsettling", "features of the embryonic pod people" and, climactically, "something eerie and dead about these children's eyes, making them resemble those evil, stoic kids of the 1960 horror flick 'Village of the Damned.'" OK then. Guess I'll be staying home with my niece and watching Shrek. Again. And singing "All Star" with her. Again. Sigh.

There are, of course, psychological reasons for this repulsion. Masahiro Mori documented this phenomenon in the late 1970's while studying robotic anthropomorphism. Apparently it's the gaps in recognition, these almost-but-not-quite representations of humanity, that repulse us humans to the core. Which got me thinking:

Apart from the dreadful Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within CG disaster, what other films/ characters have you seen that have stirred up your "uncanny valley"? And, no, movies starring Ronald Reagan, Ashton Kutcher or David Hasslehoff don't count.

UPDATE: Newsday has a review of the film that speaks of it in the following terms:

• "'Polar Express' derails in zombie land"
• "creepy" (again)
• "dead-eyed"
• "...they should have shelved Performance Capture until it could churn out something a bit more appealing than what seem to be the Children of the Damned."

See a pattern forming here?

UPDATE 2: This one from the Alameda Times-Star:

• "the characters look like they've had too many injections of Botox"
• "Their faces remind you of mannequins' faces at their creepiest...That's Twilight Zone creepy"
• "ghoulish"
• "characters whose faces look spooky enough to unsettle grown-ups"

rev 3.1--Stonehenge

Steve Hawkingy Hawk

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is most likely the first hip-hop album I've ever heard that mentions string theory, Dali, Ahab and 3-D syntax. I'm probably wrong. Meet Noah23.





NOTE: All .mp3s posted are for evaluation purposes only. No song will be archived. All songs posted are owned by the manager of this site. If you own the copyright to this song and wish to have it removed, please contact mruppel{at}umd.edu. Also, please feel free to contact me if you are a band, label or distributor who has something you'd like to share.
rev 1.2--They disappear after a week, Kari, so be quick!

11/3/04

no.

Most of us Americans will not suffer the true fallout from this decision, although the ripples of neglect are already being felt. There are all too-real global consequences of the results of this election, consequences that, sadly, will not be pondered tonight in the cul-de-sacs and open spaces of our former America.

And though it matters little at this point, World, many of us are truly sorry for what has happened here.

11/2/04

Yes or no?

See you on the other side of the great divide.

GTA: San Andreas-- The End of an Era?

Toasty Frog, a writer/ designer for the venerable 1up.com, has just posted his review of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the sequel to what many consider to be the most immersive video game of all time. I picked up the game last week and, though I am probably less than 1% finished with it, there is already a nagging feeling of frustration mounting between myself and the game engine. Or, rather, should I say it's the narrative of the game that's frustrating me? Let me elaborate via a quote from the review:

The narrative is every bit as good as the characterization. Rockstar has made full use of the M rating to deliver a tale that plays like a slick synthesis of the past ten years of Hollywood. You've got your '90s vintage ghetto movie, a bit of The Fast and The Furious, some Oceans 11, even a touch of X-Files courtesy of James Woods' crypto-fascist government spook. The script is excellent -- frequently coarse, constantly clever and occasionally genuinely moving -- and on the few occasions where it stumbles, veteran actors like Peter Fonda and Samuel L. Jackson are perfectly capable of pulling it off anyway. In a nice touch, real life provides the bookends for the plot. The choice of early 1990s California as the game's setting clearly wasn't chosen haphazardly: both the beginning and ending of the story resonate with the infamous Rodney King incident. In other words, the plot tries to do a whole lot, and by and large it pulls it off. The story does seem to lose a bit of its focus once you leave Los Santos, but even that has a purpose: when you finally have your homecoming, you're reminded that in the end it's about family, and about roots.

In a way, the story is perhaps too good for a Grand Theft Auto game.

The GTA series has always been broadly satirical, populated with caricatures and stereotypes drawn from the mob movies, cop shows and other works that serve as its inspiration, which has helped make the questionable content much more palatable. But CJ is more than a cartoonish archetype, and it's hard not to feel attached to him and the people he loves.

What's articulated here is probably pretty close to what I'm feeling at the moment in regards to this game. Perhaps I've seen Boyz N the Hood far too many times but there is direct tension between the open-endedness of GTA: San Andreas and the narrative which constrains it. In other words, the fact that gamers are offered staggering depths of freedom and customization (last night I tricked out my convertible low rider with hydraulics and chrome to take part in a bounce-off in East LA,er, Los Santos) comes into direct conflict with the imposition of plot. In GTA: Vice City, this game's precursor, the missions (although increasingly similar) provided gamers with much-needed jolts of necessity-- there's only so many vehicle tricks one can perform before some variety is needed.

Maybe it's just my early experience, but GTA: San Andreas seems to have ample opportunities for gameplay outside of the missions, and I'm not just talking about side-quests or bicycle tricks. The fact that the areas and population and gameply of GTA: San Andreas more closely resemble those of The Sims than anything else seems to partially account for this tension, but I also suspect that CJ, our protagonist, has been rendered a bit too realistically for successful incorporation into a rather well-defined narratological structure. Like Toasty Frog, I actually care about CJ, something I never really did with Tommy from previous GTAs. The fact that I have to expose him to danger isn't the problem. GTA games only really have mission, not character, death. No, I think it has far more to do with the way I cringe when I have to commit a crime with CJ. Such a thing seems, for lack of a better phrase, far too out of character to do. Don't get me wrong-- that CJ is so well fleshed out is a real triumph to the programmers and, even more importantly, that someone such as CJ exists in a GTA should not be considered a creative mistake, an anomaly in a game that demads a certain degree of callousness. Still, it is the notion of character, then, and it's associated freedoms, that is at odds with narrative and the free-roaming RenderWare graphics and game engine.

I can't help but think that, in some ways, GTA: San Andreas represents the last gasp of this round of video game consoles. Rockstar, the game's creator, is far too clever to not recognize that the structure they've imposed on their game can only sustain attention for a couple of more years. Past that point, gamers are going to be looking for the next GTA to provide them with completely free environments-- free from preset characterization and, it seems, narrative. The emergence of MMORPG's only hint at this possibility-- raids, guilding and blacksmithery are somewhat detached from the GTA dynamic. We want the "real" world, but we want it our way.