September 2005 | Technoccult

MonthSeptember 2005

Interview with Pop Surrealism editor Kirsten Anderson

September 30, 2005 / Klint Finley

Traffic magazine has an interview with Technoccult pal Kirsten Anderson about the “pop surrealism” movement.

Now Pop Surrealism – did I explain to you why the book is called Pop Surrealism? When I decided that I wanted to do a survey of this art genre, a big chunk of the artists didn’t want to be in a book called Lowbrow Art because they felt it was it would be misconstrued as being insulting, and that it implied a lack of sophistication or skill. . . . They thought it just sort of sounded like a downgrade term, and that it didn’t really capture the spirit of the work anymore.

So that meant that I had to come up with another title for the book, which was incredibly stressful because who am I to say what this is genre is going be called?

[…]

So I spent six months talking with everybody from Robert Williams to Billy Shire (who owns the La Luz De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles) . . . and asked them what they thought it should be called. No one really wanted to go there. And I wrote up lists of, you know, fake movement names. Something that could encapsulate everything. And I couldn’t come up with anything. But there had been this term floating around called Pop Surrealism [and] . . . that . . . was the one term that everyone felt okay about. And I notice it’s being used pretty extensively.

Full Story: Traffic Magazine: Kirsten Anderson

Holy Ghostbusters

September 30, 2005 / Klint Finley

holy ghostbusters

Full Sized Image

(thanks Brennio)

Brain-computer interface prototype is up and running

September 27, 2005 / Klint Finley

Nature:

Called a brain-computer interface, the device detects activity in certain brain areas linked to movement, and uses the signals to mimic that movement in a virtual world. The technology could one day help paralysed patients to move robotic arms, or help sufferers of motor neuron disease to type out words on a virtual keyboard.

Full Story: Nature: Computer users move themselves with the mind

Wes on new Tori Amos book

September 27, 2005 / Klint Finley

I’m not terribly interested in Tori Amos’s music, but her new book, written with Ann Powers, sounds interesting:

Interesting stuff when you’ve decided to find the cracks in the dominant paradigm.. If you’re into gnosticism (which seems to be experiencing a resurgence) then check out Piece By Piece by T. Amos & Ann Powers. It’s a close look at Tori’s career on one level, but her mysticism brings this book up to an entirely different level, one where the goddess as co-creator is discussed in depth. & if our society reclaims christianity as a religion involving both Christ and his lover Mary Magdalene.. well church might get a lot more interesting (and a lot less repressed.)

Full Story: Mutato Nomine: The “Little Mermaid” and the Archetype of the Lost “Bride.”

Biopunk: Grim Meathook Future

September 23, 2005 / Klint Finley

A good complement to my Biopunk essay:

The upshot of all of this is that the Future gets divided; the cute, insulated future that Joi Ito and Cory Doctorow and you and I inhabit, and the grim meathook future that most of the world is facing, in which they watch their squats and under-developed fields get turned into a giant game of Counterstrike between crazy faith-ridden jihadist motherfuckers and crazy faith-ridden American redneck motherfuckers, each doing their best to turn the entire world into one type of fascist nightmare or another.

Full Story: Zenarchery: Grim Meathook Future

Personalised drugs ‘decades away’

September 23, 2005 / Klint Finley

BBC reports:

Individually tailored medicines have been ‘over hyped’ and are still many years away, leading scientists say.

BBC: Personalised drugs ‘decades away’

(via Brennio)

Two New Grant Morrison Interviews

September 22, 2005 / Klint Finley

Pop Thought interview Morrison on the craft of writing:

I wrote The Invisibles Vol 1 issue 23 on my living room couch, hallucinating, and dying of MRSA-related septicaemia, (those cranky descriptions of demons and the crystal crown biting into Mister Six’s head and the Gnostic Christ saying ‘I am not the God of your fathers…’ were scrawled notes from the delirious no-man’s land between life and giving up) and the following issue was written from a hospital ward, waiting to hear if the near-fatal staph aureus infection I’d contracted had spread to my heart. I was there for two weeks, working as often as I could between tests and treatment, with the intention of writing myself out of trouble (as a mad sidebar, after beating off the infection with the aid of antibiotics, I became inexplicably obsessed with eating raw carrots for the remainder of my stay in hospital – only to find out last week that staph aureus – ‘golden’ staphylococcus – gets its distinctive color from carotene. I must have been so stuffed to the fucking guts with carotene-pigmented bastards when the bacteria was swarming through me that I went into withdrawal for the stuff when the bugs were finally wiped out!).

And Silver Bullet interviews him about his current and future DC projects:

I’m armpit-deep in the “52” project which I’m plotting and writing along with Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka and Keith Giffen with JG Jones on covers, I see this project as the first ‘album’ from DCs first creative ‘super group’ and it’s been the most fun I’ve had in this business to date. I just got back from a series of incredible creative summits in New York and couldn’t believe the energy, imagination and refreshing lack of prima donna ego bullshit on show. “52” is being planned meticulously and written like a TV drama. Based on the material we’ve got so far, I think this project will break new ground for mainstream comics and I can’t imagine any other company being capable of anything like it right now, so it’s going to be very unique and absorbing read, squeezing down four years of continuity into one. It’s the first real, full-length ‘graphic novel’ about superheroes and is likely to change the way we think of what can be done with them.

The Lone Haranguer

September 21, 2005 / Klint Finley

Everyone should check out my friend Sky’s blog The Lone Haranguer. Maybe the increased traffic will make him post more.

Jeb Bush invokes “mystical warrior” in bizarre public ritual

September 20, 2005 / Klint Finley

WTF?

After more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about “unleashing Chang,” his “mystical warrior” friend.

Here are Bush’s words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:

“Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.

“I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.”

Gainsville Post: Gov. Bush & his mystical buddy