I’m working on the endgame of THE WILD STORM today, and tripped over this big, muscular piece of techno that is fitting the mood I need perfectly.
WARREN ELLIS LTD Articles.
Good meditative film, very much in the zone of Things I’ve Been Thinking about: 24 FRAMES, the last film by Abbas Kiarostami. He was thinking about the relationship between his two passions, photography and filmmaking. But he starts with a painting by Bruegel the Elder. It’s, obviously, a still image, filling the screen. And then the smoke coming from the chimneys begins to move, and the birds hop along the snowy branches and the painting breathes. It’s limited, clever and tasteful animation.
(I work in comics, and I work in animation, and I work in film and television generally, so, yes, it would seem obvious that I would be interested. But I’ve also been in a k-hole of thoughts around slow cinema and the black-and-white image for a year or two now. God knows what that will output as.)
It is, in fact, 24 frames. Frames that are still, and then move. Until you can no longer tell the difference between a still and a long take. 24 frames per second, of course, is the speed of analogue film. It is mesmerising. There’s a whole lot to unpack about the frame itself, about the screen as window – and the windows on/in the screen and the image – (-and, maybe, the panel?-) – and it is generally a lot bigger, conceptually and textually, that “a film about 24 frames” would suggest.
I bought a goddamn Blu-Ray drive to watch this.
I loved it.
This is extremely useful, from Venkatesh Rao at ribbonfarm:
A traditional blog series is a waterfall-planned longer work that’s something like an ersatz book for lazy vanity publishers. A blogchain on the other hand:
1. is improvised rather than planned
2. is responsive to salient events in the environment
3. evolves at a certain tempo
4. acts like a themed, bite-sized commitment ratchet; gradatim ferociter
5. …but without the oppressive intention-debt of a traditional series
6. is designed for sustainability, more sitcom than movie
7. is suitable for multi-author collaboration like my Worlding Raga
8. is structurally a way to build over time (“construction”)
9. is capable of supporting an inter-process messaging protocol with adjacent blogchains
10. has no necessary or scripted “ending” but more of a crash-only/infinite game character
I’d been looking at forms of serial writing here, but was getting tripped by intention-debt. Yes. Useful thinking.
I am writing the introduction to BETTER THAN IRL, a forthcoming book of essays about the early social internet, which you can find out more about at this link here. Fiction & Feeling, run by my old friend Katie West, will be launching a Kickstarter for it sometime this month.
It appears that auld comrades Molly Crabapple, Damien Williams and Melissa Gira Grant are also writing pieces for it, which is obviously Very Good.
My friend Kristen Sollée, with whom I attempted to drink How The Light Gets In dry last year, has a new book announced. She’s very good, very smart, and if you read WITCHES SLUTS FEMINISTS you already knew that.
This is the write-up:
“Interweaving historical research, pop culture, and original interviews, Kristen Sollée reclaims the cat archetype as a source of feminine identify and sexual power.
“The cat: A sensual shapeshifter. A hearth keeper, aloof, tail aloft, stalking vermin. A satanic accomplice. A beloved familiar. A social media darling. A euphemism for reproductive parts. An epithet for the weak. A knitted hat on millions of marchers, fists in the air, pink pointed ears poking skyward. Cats and cat references are ubiquitous in art, pop culture, politics, and the occult, and throughout history, they have most often been coded female.
“From the “crazy cat lady” unbowed by patriarchal prescriptions to the coveted sex kitten to the dreadful crone and her yowling compatriot, feminine feline archetypes reveal the ways in which women have been revered and reviled around the world—in Greek and Egyptian mythology, the European witch trials, Japanese folklore, and contemporary film.
“By combining historical research, pop culture, art analyses, and original interviews, Cat Call explores the cat and its indivisible connection to femininity and teases out how this connection can help us better understand the relationship between myth, history, magic, womanhood in the digital age, and our beloved, clawed companions.”
Out in September. Up for pre-order now: (UK) (US)
Catching up on my long queue of “stuff I marked to listen to later” at Bandcamp.
MUSIC IN THREE MOVEMENTS FOR WHEN THE WORLD FALLS APART by Dag Rosenqvist is, indeed, useful music for when everything else is moving at sloppy speed.
MITHRA by Ager Sonus is misty atmospheric time travel.
Stag Hare is always great, and I’m filling in gaps in the discography. Long shimmering tones and drones.
