7.24.2007

Cyberpunk & The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit


So I've taken to trying to understand the bizarre stylings of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU). While many of the words and connections elude my attempts to parse them into familiar modes of cognition there is something about the blurring of thought space science culture and fiction that makes the most perfect sense. (verbal technobatics and all)

"Cyberpunk torches fiction in intensity, patched-up out of cash-flux mangled heteroglossic jargons, and set in a future so close it connects: jungled by hypertrophic commercialization, socio-political heat-death, cultural hybridity, feminization, programmable information systems, hypercrime, neural interfacing, artificial space and intelligence, memory trading, personality transplants, body-modifications, soft- and wetware viruses, nonlinear dynamic processes, molecular engineering, drugs, guns, schizophrenia."

"The impetus is not so much inter- as anti-disciplinary, the concrete problem being the freeing up of thought as synaptic-connectivity from its prison as subject-bound logos. Following flows where they want to go leads not into random noise but out onto what Deleuze and Guattari call the plane of consistency . 'If we consider the plane of consistency, we notice that the most disparate things and signs move upon it: a semiotic fragment rubs shoulders with a chemical interaction, an electron crashes into a language, a black hole captures a genetic message... There is no 'like' here, we are not saying 'like an electron,' 'like an interaction', etc. The plane
of consistency is the abolition of metaphor; all that consists is Real.'"

We should start with Sadie Plant.

And this article: Writing Machines by Mark Fisher (quoted above)

7.19.2007

Savoir Faire (part deux)



I'm very pleased to announce the second installment of Savoir Faire.
Savoir Faire is a magical event which features 4 brilliant female fronted bands.

We Lisps will perform along with Mattison, El Jezel, and Vermillion Lies (who will be on tour from california)

And DJ Ladybyrd from WhoNeedsRadio.com will spin throughout the evening

Friday August 10th
we'll start at 8pm @ Fontanas 105 Eldridge btwn Grand and Broome

do come.

7.09.2007

Red and Blue

Composer Zeljko McMullen just posted his new double album Red and Blue.

It's a formidable amount of music, and wonderfully crafted. The recordings are binaural and best listened to on headphones. However I got a chance to listen to Blue in a 10.2 ( i think) speaker arrangement. I haven't listened to every track but here are some things it makes my think about.

1. Hypnosis
2. Mental Transport
3. How does the emotional intensity of sound operate in relation to volume.
4. Bass Fatigue/Addiction
5. I think I'm very well suited for the recorded version rather than the installed, because I have a hard time with loud music in general (aka low threshold of pain), but I also don't completely like headphones, because a major aspect of these pieces is bodily.
6. The intense bass is what at times gave me the most pleasure and at times drew me out of the music.
7. The spaces between the pieces can become very enjoyable.
8. memory = resonance
9. commitment to a certain sound world.
10. vertical musical form?

[mp3] - Zeljko McMullen - diffusion (from Red),
[mp3] - Zeljko McMullen - blue (from Blue)

Also check out Zeljko's other projects Sadjeljko and Shinkoyo

7.02.2007

Moving Beyond Kyoto


Al Gore's op-ed in the New York Times, is chilling. He is definitely trying to invoke a sci-fi-esque global call to arms which perhaps will resonate with our nation of "Armageddon" fans. I don't know if people will catch on until the sky actually catches on fire and you need a scuba tank to get to your wall street job.

"In the last 150 years, in an accelerating frenzy, we have been removing increasing quantities of carbon from the ground — mainly in the form of coal and oil — and burning it in ways that dump 70 million tons of CO2 every 24 hours into the Earth’s atmosphere.

The concentrations of CO2 — having never risen above 300 parts per million for at least a million years — have been driven from 280 parts per million at the beginning of the coal boom to 383 parts per million this year.

As a direct result, many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several “tipping points” that could — within 10 years — make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet’s habitability for human civilization."

full article here...