Off-grid geodesic dome cabin in Jujuy, Argentina
I love that little space station.
WARREN ELLIS LTD Articles.
Forgive the big quote, but this whole piece from Venkatesh Rao is good and useful and I want to preserve this bit for myself:
We increasingly respond practically to the world without even attempting to make sense of it.
One mental model for this condition is what I call ark head, as in Noah’s Ark. We’ve given up on the prospect of actually solving or managing most of the snowballing global problems and crises we’re hurtling towards. Or even meaningfully comprehending the gestalt. We’ve accepted that some large fraction of those problems will go unsolved and unmanaged, and result in a drastic but unevenly distributed reduction in quality of life for most of humanity over the next few decades. We’ve concluded that the rational response is to restrict our concerns to a small subset of local reality–an ark–and compete for a shrinking set of resources with others doing the same. We’re content to find and inhabit just one zone of positivity, large enough for ourselves and some friends. We cross our fingers and hope our little ark is outside the fallout radius of the next unmanaged crisis…
I think this is a valid observation. I’ve seen it in others, and I’ve seen it in myself. If there’s any difference in my state, perhaps it’s that I spent a couple of decades hyperconnected and processing large amounts of global information streams, and now, to preserve my ability to think and create, I’m rebuilding my garden instead. Maybe that’s no difference at all. Maybe I don’t care.
This is warrenellis.ltd, the personal journal about storytelling, knowledge work and culture by Warren Ellis, New York Times-bestselling author of GUN MACHINE and the Amazon Top 100 2016 author of NORMAL, co-creator of graphic novels including TRANSMETROPOLITAN, PLANETARY, TREES, FREAKANGELS and RED, and the creator, writer and co-producer of CASTLEVANIA on Netflix.
In public, I write this journal and a free weekly newsletter, ORBITAL OPERATIONS, which can be sampled and subscribed to at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com.
I haven’t had the time this site really needs to have devoted to it over the last few months, as I’ve been creating and writing a slate of audio-drama podcasts which will be launched soon. I need to figure this out, so I’m starting by testing the old computer channel/chronofile model for this week. Your indulgence is appreciated, reader.
The horizontal waveform has become a ubiquitous visual signifier of audio. It was popularized in particular by SoundCloud, but existed long before that in various digital audio tools, and can be tracked back further to the height of the multi-band stereo-system equalizer in the 1970s. The waveform’s deployment in a New York Times feature story this week (about intercepted phone calls home from Russian military personnel carrying out the campaign in Ukraine) turns the now generic symbol into an urgent harbinger — part surveillance sigil, part ethereal lifeline, part literal cry for help.
Amazing images from a photobook by Christian Spencer:
I have spent all day sawing, pruning and cutting. I am tired and covered in scratches and I am entirely happy. In my little patch of darkening England, out here on the Thames Delta, there is new light. It feels really good. I feel young.
Also I couldn’t do work because I got whipped right in the eyeball by a wisteria vine but what the hell
Newsletter goes out as normal on Sunday. Otherwise, I seem to be resolutely away from internet engagement; working on podcast-slate pre-production, doing admin with publishers, starting autumn garden prep, starting to plan work and life design for next year. Back soon. I meant to experiment this week with returning to a computer channel model, but I guess that’ll have to wait.
Inbox: 112, apparently. Huh.
Listening:
I was lucky enough to get in fast – only 8 copies of the CD left as I type this. But you can stream the whole thing for free through the magic of Bandcamp, which remains a pure joy in the murky misery of 2020s internet. The middle tracks clinched it for me: perfect early autumn sounds.
Message from Ourobonic Plague reads:
over the last few weeks I’ve been working out something of a live show that doesn’t require a computer.
I thought I’d share one of my favourite sessions so far, for anyone interested.
it’s a ~25 minute improvised, one take, ambient/drone/noise type of thing.
Lovely noises.
“….acclaimed figurative painter Eric Fischl declared Aleah Chapin “the best and most disturbing painter of flesh alive today…” The art of Aleah Chapin.
“Deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, an organization called Yakum is seeding a better, cleaner, greener future for the indigenous Siekopai” – Planting The Future.
The act of writing itself takes the least amount of time for me. For Beautiful Country, I spent three years (and one might say, most of my life) thinking about the book, researching through my diary and retracing my steps, and processing how I wanted to write it. But actually writing it took me just shy of three months. The long initial marination stage is awful and terrifying, because it looks and feels exactly like procrastination.
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Kathy Hinde – Earthquake Mass Re-imagined, 2022:
Earthquake Mass Re-imagined from Kathy Hinde on Vimeo.
Hinde consulted with Mexico’s top seismologists to inform the artwork. Seismic data from the earthquake that shook Mexico on 19th September 2017 shapes the behaviour and playback of the record players. As seismicity rises, the vocals become more fragmented and shift in density. As the earth re-settles, the voices are reconfigured in a new way, yet remain disjointed.
The pure, untreated vocals on the record players are accompanied by a textural, spatialised soundscape created from processes inspired by seismological research. Hinde resonated the vocal recordings in locations with significant historical seismic activity in Mexico, including 16th century monasteries that sustained damage from the 2017 earthquake. She further displaced the recordings by re-recording them travelling through the earth at relevant locations in Mexico. Seismic data has also been directly translated into sound within human hearing range.