November 25, 2011
Ryoji Ikeda (b. 1966) is a Japanese sound artist who lives and works in Paris. Ikeda’s music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of ‘raw’ states, such as sine tones and noise, often using frequencies at the edges of the range of human hearing. The conclusion of his album ‘+/-‘ features just such a tone; of it, Ikeda says ‘a high frequency sound is used that the listener becomes aware of only upon its disappearance.’
Rhythmically, Ikeda’s music is highly imaginative, exploiting beat patterns and, at times, using a variety of discrete tones and noise to create the semblance of a drum machine. His work also encroaches on the world of ambient music; many tracks on his albums are concerned with slowly evolving soundscapes, with little or no sense of pulse.
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November 25, 2011
‘Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions’ is an 1884 satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott. Writing pseudonymously as ‘A Square,’ Abbott used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to offer pointed observations on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture.
However, the novella’s more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions, for which the novella is still popular amongst mathematics, physics, and computer science students.
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November 25, 2011
Dieter Rams (b. 1932) is a German industrial designer closely associated with the consumer products company Braun and the Functionalist school of industrial design. Rams studied architecture at the Werkkunstschule Wiesbaden as well as learning carpentry from 1943 to 1957. After working for the architect Otto Apel between 1953 and 1955 he joined the electronic devices manufacturer Braun where he became chief of design in 1961, a position he kept until 1995.
Rams once explained his design approach in the phrase ‘Weniger, aber besser’ which freely translates as ‘Less, but better.’ Rams and his staff designed many memorable products for Braun including the famous SK-4 record player and the high-quality ‘D’-series (D45, D46) of 35 mm film slide projectors. He is also known for designing the 606 Universal Shelving System by Vitsœ in 1960. Many of his designs — coffee makers, calculators, radios, audio/visual equipment, consumer appliances and office products — have found a permanent home at many museums over the world, including MoMA in New York. He continues to be highly regarded in design circles and currently has a major retrospective of his work on tour around the world.
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November 25, 2011
In the jargon of the media-industry, ‘development hell‘ is a period during which a film or other project is trapped in development. A film, television program screenplay, computer program, concept, or idea stranded in development hell takes an especially long time to start production, or never does.
The film industry buys rights to many popular novels, video games, and comics, but it may take years for such properties to be successfully brought to the cinema, and often with considerable changes to the plot, characters, and general tone.
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November 23, 2011
Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848 – 1933) was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass in the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements.
Tiffany was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists, which included Lockwood de Forest, Candace Wheeler, and Samuel Colman. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels and metalwork.
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November 22, 2011
Vampirella is a fictional character, a comic book vampire heroine created by Forrest J Ackerman and costume designer Trina Robbins in Warren Publishing’s black-and-white horror comics magazine ‘Vampirella’ #1 (1969). Writer-editor Archie Goodwin later developed the character from horror-story hostess, in which capacity she remained through issue #8 (1970), to a horror-drama leading character. As comics historian Richard J. Arndt describes, ‘Forrest Ackerman created, or at least had a strong hand in creating, Vampirella and he clearly had a major influence in shaping the lighthearted bad-girl story style of this issue as well.’ Vampirella was originally presented as an inhabitant of the planet Drakulon, a world where people lived on blood and where blood flowed in rivers. Draculon orbits twin suns that were causing droughts across the planet, marking certain doom for Vampirella and her race. The race of which Vampirella was born, the Vampiri, were able to transform themselves into bats at will, sprout wings when required, and drink blood.
The story begins with the inhabitants of Drakulon dying slowly due to the drying up of its blood. The last few lie dying when a spaceship from Earth crashes on the planet. Vampirella, sent to investigate, is attacked; retaliating, she discovers that the astronauts have blood in their veins. In order for her race to survive, she manages to pilot the ship back to Earth where her adventures begin. Vampirella becomes a ‘good’ vampire, and devotes her energy to ridding our world of the homegrown ‘evil’ kind.
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November 22, 2011
‘Space Jazz: The soundtrack of the book Battlefield Earth’ is a music album and soundtrack companion to the novel ‘Battlefield Earth’ by L. Ron Hubbard, released in 1982. Hubbard composed the music for the album. A 1983 press release put out by the Church of Spiritual Technology subsidiary company Author Services Inc. marketed the concept album as ‘the only original sound track ever produced for a book before it becomes a movie.’
The album includes performances by Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Nicky Hopkins and Gayle Moran. The album included music from the Fairlight CMI synthesizer; it was one of the first professional uses of this device. A demonstration of the ‘computer space jazz’ soundtrack was one of the festival displays at the 1982 US Festival rock concert in California.
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November 22, 2011
Terry Richardson (b. 1965) is an American fashion photographer. Richardson was born in New York City, the son of Bob Richardson, a fashion photographer who struggled with schizophrenia and drug abuse. Richardson was raised in Hollywood. He was shy as a teenager and at some times deemed ‘completely lacking in social skills.’ He played bass guitar in the punk rock band The Invisible Government for 5 years. Richardson began photography when the band broke up and his mother introduced him to Tony Kent, a photographer who hired him as an assistant.
Richardson’s photographs often contain graphic sexual subject matter. Richardson has shot advertisements for fashion designers and editorial photographs. His alleged attitude towards models has been criticized by Danish model and filmmaker Rie Rasmussen and others, who have accused Richardson of exploiting and sexually abusing the models he photographs.
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November 22, 2011
Glamorama is a novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1998. Unlike Ellis’ previous novels, Glamorama is set in and satirizes the 1990s, specifically celebrity culture and consumerism. Ellis wanted to write a Stephen King-style ghost story novel (which would eventually become ‘Lunar Park’); finding it difficult at the time, he began work on the other novel which he had in mind, a Robert Ludlum-style thriller, with the intention of using one of his own vapid characters who lack insight as the narrator. The novel is a satire of modern celebrity culture, featuring models-turned-terrorists.
A character remarks, ‘basically, everyone was a sociopath…and all the girls’ hair was chignoned.’ (A chignon is an arrangement of long hair in a roll or knot at the back of the head). The novel plays upon the conspiracy thriller conceit of someone ‘behind all the awful events,’ to dramatize the revelation of a world of random horror. The lack of resolution contributes to Ellis’ artistic effect. The obsession with beauty is reflected in consistent namedropping; this satirizes Victor’s obsession with looks, and perhaps is indicative of the author’s own attraction to glamor.
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November 22, 2011
Emek (b. 1970) is a popular graphic designer and concert poster designer since the early 1990s. He is widely credited with helping to revive the rock poster scene. He is the brother of artist and author Gan Golan. His style, known for its attention to detail and layers of meaning, infuses socio-political commentary into pop culture imagery.
In the tradition of psychedelic posters from the 1960s, Emek still draws his posters by hand. He was shaped by both rock art posters from the 1960s, and punk flyers from the 1980s. Emek’s poster-making career accelerated in the 1990s with alternative rock acts from Europe and North America, including Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, and Marilyn Manson.
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November 21, 2011
Steve Haworth is a body modification artist based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is responsible for the invention and popularization of subdermal and transdermal implants, such as the ‘Metal Mohawk.’ He designed specialized medical instruments called dermal elevators for this process. He has also done pioneering work with surface bars, ear shaping, tongue splitting, magnetic implants, and artistic branding (using electrocautery units). He has worked on individuals noted for their extensive modifications such as The Enigma, Katzen, Stalking Cat and The Lizardman. Many other respected artists in the body modification community cite Haworth as an inspiration. Fellow body modification artist Samppa von Cyborg says that ‘He’s the most important, most respected body modder out there.’ Shawn Porter of body modification blog ‘Scar Wars’ explains, ‘I directly credit Steve’s branding as a main influence on the newer generation of scarification artists; his high detail branding (which caused a stir when it was featured in ‘In the Flesh,’ ‘Body Art,’ and ‘Bizarre’) showed people that you could do more than just dots, chevrons and geometric shapes.’
Haworth’s father was a manufacturer of surgical equipment, and he continued in the family business, eventually branching into piercing jewelry and body modification instruments. Currently he is retired from regular piercing, preferring to concentrate on 3D implants and other types of body modification. He continues to manufacture body jewelry and tools for body modification. He and his business partner Jesse Jarrell create unique silicone jewelry for large-gauge piercing with their company Kaos Softwear. Haworth travels around the country and the world frequently, and conducts seminars on his body modification techniques. He founded the body suspension group ‘Life Suspended’ and performs suspensions with them on regular basis. He is also the co-founder of the production company ‘Horns & Halos,’ which puts on several fetish-themed events every year.
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November 21, 2011
A suspension is the act of suspending a human body from hooks that have been put through body piercings. These piercings are temporary and are performed just prior to the actual suspension.
Multiple hooks are usually located around the shoulders, upper arm, and back, as well as around the knees (depending on the position in which the body is to be suspended). Finding the proper hook placement and number requires an understanding of human anatomy and physiology, as well as the durability of the individual’s skin. If the number of hooks are too few, the suspended individual’s skin will be unable to withstand the body’s weight and will rip.
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