There’s a lot of media coming out lately that aligns with something I like to see: the extension of a chosen medium to make its artistic statement. When the very piece you’re engaging with has its presence be a part of its meaning, that really gets to me. I can’t usually get ahold of such a wealth of this type of art, but this last year has been a veritable cornucopia of content. Mostly depressing or dealing with sad themes, of course.
There is the vaporwave music kick I’ve been on, which uses the philosophy of hauntology and analog horror to imbue musak with a more overt sense of dread and unease. The audio itself sounds possessed by the dreams of mall rats from the 80’s. It’s fantastic.
Effervescent art streams hosted by musical artists once and once only.
The bringing back from the dead of old videos on YouTube.
And a weird right hook I’ve just stumbled across called Cruelty Squad. A game about a hyper an-cap future where you play as a hitman in a gig economy, and features an organ harvesting mechanic where you can sell people’s livers after you’ve eaten them. Pretty grim stuff. The thematics are underscored (or overscored) by PSX-era polygonal graphics and old-school Rainbow Six tactical gameplay, and wearing the skin of a “500 games for $10” disk. Ultra ugly textures and audio that make it almost hard to play at first.
Never taking a moment to explain themselves, these pieces of art are just waiting for someone to stumble across them, and imbue their own meaning.
As climate depression has been hitting me pretty hard this last week or so, seeing the clouds roll in and a light rain take hold has done wonders for my soul. I’ve been able to imbue my own meaning and thankfulness to the cooler air, and I’ve taken that to heart by taking my notebook out again and scribbling a bunch of lines before putting it away.
I have seen some movement here and there on my Redbubble shop which is really cool. First sale I made was from Australia, someone wanting a postcard of a Rainier shot of mine. So I’m a little over the moon.
I have also broken out the Helios 40-2 again. It’s like putting on an old jacket, how comfortable it is to have on the A7. And I’ve begun drawing out designs for an autofocus mount for it so I can throw it on the Pronto adapter and never have to turn its focus ring again. 3d printer is operable once more, so I’ll be able to manufacture a hook and bearing system with PLA and TPU. If this works out I’ll make a whole post for it and upload the files to Thingiverse or something. It’s not so much an undertaking as fighting Blender to make sure it doesn’t crash when I press a wrong button. And waiting for batteries for my calipers to arrive.
And speaking of that DIY ethic, I’ve now got my hands on an actual dual-Xeon server. I may be migrating this whole website at some point, but we’ll see how good with Linux I can get.
Let’s see… what else is there…
Halsey is releasing If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power as an art house music film, and I’ll be at an IMAX theater provided that the COVID numbers here don’t skyrocket much further. If it’s as good as the pedigrees of it’s producers, then it should be a sight to behold and it’ll be an interesting piece of media within its chosen medium.
I think that’s all for now. I’m working on sorting my old poems and releasing them as relevant collections, but it’s slow going. I’m plugging right along with slow but consistent progress.
Thank you guys for reading, and as always
Consume Reality!
Radio Reality City!
Consume Reality! 