J. G. Ballard + Social Media -- the Virtual & the Real

The ever-relevant Ballardian.com has put up a new article, this one about J. G. Ballard predicting Social Media.

Here's a quote / preview:

[Everybody] will be living inside a TV studio.  

That's what the domestic home aspires to these days ... 

We're all going to be starring in our own sit-coms, 

and they'll be very strange sit-coms, too, like the inside of our heads.  

That's going to come, I'm absolutely sure of that, 

and it'll really shake up everything.

-- J.G. Ballard

Read the rest of the article here:

 ['No Original Response: J.G. Ballard Predicts Social Media, CCTV, Reality TV' ]

(what better way to talk about the condemnation of social media than on my personal blog?)

Although the article's title makes mention of Reality TV, 

it doesn't talk at much length about the topic, 

but I guess it shares principles with CCTV & Social Media?

Reality TV sort of borrows CCTV's "form" but applies the mechanics of traditional entertainment TV & Social Media.

I'm not the most familiar with J. G. Ballard's work, I've read The Day of Creation and a few of his short stories, but what I have read was intriguing -- and Ballardian.com has a lot of interesting articles and essays applying Ballardianism to our present day and age.

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[ The Virtual Audrey ]

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Alternate 'A Scanner Darkly' Pitch -- Ghost Cinema -- Animation

(I found this via the Total Dickhead)

    

Scanner Darkly Pitch from Brian White on Vimeo.

What a different aesthetic than Linklater's adaptation; I really dig it.

Much more surreal and genre inspired.

A Scanner Darkly (2006)

dir. Richard Linklater

Although I have respect for Linklater,

and I think he did a commendable job with Scanner,

the visual style I always was always unsure about.

Why the choice to rotoscope?

And why rotoscope so closely to the real?

I suppose it gives a slightly "unreal" quality to the image all the way across the board, but, at the same time, I wished it were either more real or more stylized.  That might be strange to say, since A Scanner Darkly is one of those Dick novels which avoids planting both feet on the same plane, but I do feel it's the case.

Animation is quite versatile and expressive because each frame can be produced without regard to limitation, save for the trace of the human eye; to confine it to what a human body is capable of is to work against the craft.  At the same time, we never really get to witness the genuine acting or emotions of the actors on screen... which is also unfortunate, because that's what animation doesn't produce: human faces.

Still, the animation in Linklater's Scanner is not quite trying to be real.

It's uncanny, but also not.

It's life trying to be a drawing, which is stranger than a cartoon trying to be real.

Now I'm just babbling.

I'm glad a film was made; it exposed more people to one of PKD's better stories, and did so in a respectful manner.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~EDIT / UPDATE * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

JUNE 8th, 2013 UPDATE:

I had meant to cross link to my other post about the CGI Audrey Hepburn ad, but forgot.

So here's the link now:

First Post: Digital Audrey Hepburn -- Galaxy Chocolate, "Chauffer" -- Framestore

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[ The Virtual Audrey ]
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- out

Paranoia 1.0 -- One Point Oh -- trailer

trailer for Paranoia 1.0 (2004)

dir. Jeff Renfroe, Marteinn Thorsson

"The False Mirror" + "Bladerunner"

"The False Mirror" -- Rene Magritte

"Bladerunner" -- dir. Ridley Scott

What is the false mirror? 

Is it the eye? The image of the eye? Perception itself?

Of course, Magritte also plays with windows (i.e. 'The Human Condition') so maybe here, the eye is an extension of his mirror / hole-in-the-wall motif:  the eye is a window is a false mirror; it does not reflect, but opens into the world?

The false mirror does not reflect the world, but ingests it; the exterior becomes interior, and vice-versa.

There is no foreground in this image.  The eye and the sky are both given equal precedence.

And what is a replicant?
A false human?  A false soul?

"Junkopia" -- Chris Marker

I guess this is roundabout where i live now.

"Junkopia"

dir. Chris Marker

w/ Frank Simeone 

& John Chapman

RIP Chris Marker
(29 July 1921- 29 July 2012)

"Stalker" -- Andrei Tarkovsky -- The Rain Room

"Stalker" (1979)

dir. Andrei Tarkovsky

Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" + NIN's "Tetsuo III: Bulletman theme"

Dangerously close to a week without an update from me.
So here's a link to a video I cut a while back.

(of course you can click it & get the HD version..)

"Metropolis" (1927)

dir. Fritz Lang

"Tetsuo III: The Bulletman theme" 

by Trent Reznor/NIN

video cut by Russ Kiel

Beyond Apollo Blog: "British Interplanetary Society, 1949"

image: R.A. Smith/British Interplanetary Society

retrieved from wired.com

The "British Interplanetary Society" or "BIS," founded in 1933, which may be the oldest existing space-flight program.  It's like something from H. G. Wells or Sir Arthur Doyle.

Read the full story at Beyond Apollo.

The Beyond Apollo blog (now hosted at Wired.com) is dedicated to space-flights which never happened; it's an amazing compendium of alternate histories and unrealized futures.

Certainly one of my favorite corners of the web to visit.

"First Men in the Moon" (1964)

Dir. Nathan Juran

Effects. Ray Harryhausen

Based on the novel by H. G. Wells

"Split Atom I" -- Russ Kiel

"Split Atom I" -- Russ Kiel

Cesar Velasco Broca -- "Avant Petalos Grillado"

"Avant Petalos Grillado"
dir. Cesar Velasco Broca (2006).