Sdtrk: ‘Hey double double’ by Add N to (X)

Meghan Laslocky’s Salon.com article is finally out, and it’s available for your edification right here. 🙂 (Unless you have a subscription, you’ll have to sit through an advert to read it for free, but it’s brief, painless, and non-invasive.)

As she’s informed me that Salon had to edit her story due to length constraints, she’ll be posting the full version to the vastness of the Internet sometime soon; at which point, I’ll alert the lot of you. But what’s displayed on Salon.com makes for provocative, thoughtful and fecking ace reading, and really isn’t bad at all. Plus, Shi-chan and I feature rather prominently in the article, so we’re a bit biased..

I’d also like to wave broadly and say a grand Hallo, to all new visitors stopping round to ‘Shouting etc etc’ from Shi-chan’s site, Meghan’s Salon.com article, or the search engine of your choice. Do leave a comment, or a charming message on the tagboard to below left, if you’re so inclined

Sdtrk: ‘Suzunne Erica is Sunohara Yuri’ by Merzbow

It’s finally out!!

128 pages, 72 colour plates, and with a foreword by Elisabeth Alexandre. Plus, dig this: Elena is selling signed copies through her website for $40, which includes the shipping and handling. Why not order one? Why not order a couple?

Also, for those of you residing in West Hollywood, CA, Elena will be signing copies at the Sunset strip location of Book Soup, on 25 Oct, at 7pm. Shake her hand, call her friend, etc.

YEAH!! *throws fist in air, camera freezes, cue Simple minds song, credits roll*

Sdtrk: ‘Ba ba ba boof!’ by Pussy Cat

Kim Jong-Hwan, I like the cut of your jib.

Sex and the single robot

Jonathan Watts, East Asia correspondent
Wednesday February 2, 2005
The Guardian

Scientists have made them walk and talk. There are even robots that can run. But a South Korean professor is poised to take their development several steps further, and give cybersex new meaning.

Kim Jong-Hwan, the director of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Centre, has developed a series of artificial chromosomes that, he says, will allow robots to feel lusty, and could eventually lead to them reproducing. He says the software, which will be installed in a robot within the next three months, will give the machines the ability to feel, reason and desire.

Kim, a leading authority on technology and ethics of robotics, said: “Christians may not like it, but we must consider this the origin of an artificial species. Until now, most researchers in this field have focused only on the functionality of the machines, but we think in terms of the essence of the creatures.” That “essence” is a computer code, which determines a robot’s propensity to “feel” happy, sad, angry, sleepy, hungry or afraid. Kim says this software is modelled on human DNA, though equivalent to a single strand of genetic code rather than the complex double helix of a real chromosome.

Kim said: “Robots will have their own personalities and emotion and – as films like I Robot warn – that could be very dangerous for humanity. If we can provide a robot with good – soft – chromosomes, they may not be such a threat.”

Although he admits his ideas sound fantastic, Kim is no crank. In the mid-1990s, the professor launched the robot football world cup, which has since become one of the most popular means for robotics researchers to measure their progress against competitors from around the world.

It’s plainly obvious that we must give this man the necessary funding that he requires, without question or hesitation

Sdtrk: ‘Cosmic country noir’ by Stereolab

Although I missed it by a couple of days, I observed on rotten.com (caution: not safe for anything) that 4 Oct was the 19th anniversary of the infamous ‘What’s the frequency, Kenneth?’ incident, where television news anchorman Dan Rather received an unforseen thumping from professional psychotic William Tager. This shit still unsettles me to this day.

“What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” – Not Just an R.E.M. song!

The Assualt: On the evening of October 4, 1986, Dan Rather was attacked by William Tager who, contrary to popular belief, had a very good reason for attacking Rather.

Bill Tager was born in the year 2265. Bill Tager is from the future. Bill Tager is not from our planet. Well, technically he is from earth but not from our earth. Tager comes from an earth in a parallel universe and was sent here by the government of his planet. On Tagers earth, the entire planet is under the control of one government. Tager’s world wide government has been experimenting with travel to other parallel universes (which involves a warp of the space/time continuum) for almost 150 years. Bill Tager, a convicted felon on his planet, volunteered to be the first human test pilot on the condition that he be given a full pardon if he returned safely.

On Tagers earth the Vice-President of the world is a man named Kenneth Burrows, who just happens to look exactly like Dan Rather. (I should explain here that most everyone on our earth has a double on all of the other earths in all of the parallel universes.) Before Tager entered the travel chamber he was paid a visit by Vice-President Burrows and was told that he had a transmitter implanted in his brain and if he chose to remain in the section of time/space that he was being sent to and didn’t return at the designated time, he would be barraged with messages to return until he came back and reported on his mission. Then, and only then, would the transmitter be removed and he be given his full pardon.

Tager’s trip was successful and he landed in New York on September 1, 1986. All was going as planned and Tager was preparing to return to his own time and world when he was mistakenly arrested for putting coins in expired parking meters. After spending 30 days in jail (and staying on our planet 14 days longer than he was supposed to) Tager started receiving extremely hostile messages from Vice-President Burrows telling him to return immediately. His window of opportunity had passed and he would have to wait another week to try to return but there was no possible way to let Burrows know this. The constant voices were driving him insane. He wasn’t even able to sleep at night. If there was any way Tager could find out the precise frequency that was being broadcast to his brain he could possibly override the voices and be able to sleep at night until he was able to make his return trip.

As he walked the streets of New York late on the evening of October 4, 1986, Tager saw a man who he thought was Vice-President Kenneth Burrows. He quickly came to his senses and knew that Burrows would never make the risky trip himself and figured it must be Burrows’ double on our earth. However, he thought, what were the chances that out of over 5 billion people on this planet, he would meet the twin of the man who had been sending hostile messages directly to his brain for over two weeks?

Tager called out to the man, “Kenneth! Kenneth Burrows!”. To his surprise, the man, whom we know to be Dan Rather, turned to see who was yelling and was knocked to the ground. Tager repeatedly kicked Rather as he lay on the ground and yelled “What’s the frequency Kenneth?” hoping to learn the frequency of the signal being broadcast to his brain and stop the voices. When Rather didn’t respond, Tager realized he had made a terrible mistake and had indeed attacked Burrows’ double on our planet. He fled the scene and later missed his second, and last, chance to return to his home planet.

Years later, in 1994, in an attempt to get in contact with someone who might be able to identify the frequency and put an end to the voices that had haunted him for so many years, Tager shot and killed an NBC technician outside the “Today Show” studios. Today, William Tager sits in a prison in New York, the voices, now an automatic message that replays itself every 20 minutes, still play in his head.

While in prison, Tager wrote various stories and drew odd cartoons depicting his adventure.

I also still can’t believe that that incident occurred almost 20 years ago! Furthermore, I would kill to see Tager’s stories and cartoons. Well, ‘kill’ is too strong of a word; I should probably say ‘assault’.

NOTE TO SELF: Don’t go outside, there’s loonies from parallel dimensions about

Sdtrk: ‘Black moon bog’ by Xenis emputae traveling band

Stuff that Davecat likes that has (almost) nothing to do with RealDolls, Gynoids, or Sixties architecture? Unpossible!!

+ This would be the only reason for me to want to become a father. The Ultraman Dream Stroller. It’s naturally made in Japan, and its colours are red and silver, of course. Raise your infant to want to grow to gigantic proportions and beat the living hell out of kaiju! This is what being a responsible parent is all about

+ Speaking of Ultraman, buy me a replica of the original Ultraman’s beta capsule, and I’ll be your sex slave for the rest of your life. I could display it next to my sonic screwdriver. O wait — I don’t have one of those, either!

+ Here lies a trailer for a Jack Nicholson film. It’s not new — it’s from the Eighties, so I guess it was shelved for quite a while — but it’s proof that not all of his roles are either ‘crazy guy’ or ‘screaming maniac’. Although I have to say it kinda resembles something I’ve seen before..

+ Fab archive of vintage reel-to-reel taperecorders, auf Deutsche. There’s a staggering amount of pages on the site, so make yourself a cuppa, and commence right-clicking in earnest! (arigatou for the link, Steve)

+ Speaking of retromode sound recorders and players, the German team (again with the Germans!) of Markus Bader and Markus Wolf have redesigned three iconic playback devices from the Sixties through the Eighties, with contemporary standards. In other words, they look the same, but they have updated functions, such as the ‘Audio 1 Kompaktanlage’: originally designed by Dieter Rams for Braun in the Sixties, the new ‘ReBraun‘ version sports an integrated .mp3 player and wireless LAN connection. Ooo, sexy

+ Sometime soon, Criterion will be releasing the first Truffaut film I fell in love with (which was also the first French ‘new wave’ film I saw as well), ‘Shoot the piano player‘. It’ll be whenever they get round to it, I guess

+ Also; shitty american cover art notwithstanding, ‘Godzilla: Final wars’ will be out on DVD in December. Ryuhei ‘Versus‘ Kitamura directing? Gigan with twin chainsaws? Gojira beating the living hell out of the hideous american wanna-be Godzilla? Worth the price of admission

+ I’m hoping one day, some enterprising individual at Bandai America will release all of the Gundam Evolve and MS igLoo material on Region 1 DVDs. It’s Gundam! It’s practically a license to print money! I mean, come on.

+ And finally, the last volume of Mitsukazu Mihara’s Doll will be out on the 11th of this month. Of course I had to get something Gynoid-related in there, just so that no-one forgets what blog they’re reading..

‘Shouting to hear the echoes’. Wasting more time than heroin, but infinitely cheaper

Sdtrk: ‘Moderns’ by Pizzicato five

So this afternoon, I was on campus a couple of hours before my Document processing and production class, playing Death from above 1979 on my secondhand .mp3 player (thanx Tomas!) and working diligently on my homework. This bloke who couldn’t have been much older than I am stopped in front of me, and got my attention. ‘Excuse me, did you go to Shrine?’ he asked. ‘Actually, yeah I did,’ I responded, the little gears whirling furiously in my head as to 1) who the hell this person was, and 2) how the hell they knew what highschool I attended.
‘I thought you looked familiar!’ he said. ‘I walked by the lab windows and saw you in there, and had to stop and see if you were who I thought you were.’
‘Yeah!.. I’m Dave. And you are..?’
‘I’m Kyle.’ He extended his hand to shake.

Now here’s the eerie part of the story. We each clasped each other’s right hands, and it was at that point that I noticed his left arm, up to about halfway up the forearm, was robotic. Well, actually, it was just a prosthetic arm, but saying it was robotic is something you’d undoubtedly expect me to say.
You have to understand; at this point, I’ve got the name Kyle in the cyclotron of my mind, repeating kyle KYLE kyle KYLE kyle at high speed over and over, and without any results whatsoever. I’d say about 80% of the people in my graduating class are kids that I went through several grades previously with, so anyone outside of that group of familiar faces either stood out for some reason or other, or was entirely innocuous. And had Kyle posessed his bionic arm back in highschool, he definitely would’ve stood out. But nope, I was drawing an utter blank on him.

So he asked if I was attending this year’s class reunion (that’s a negatory), and I asked if he was taking classes at this campus this semester, which he answered he was. After three minutes’ worth of what passed for a conversation, Kyle said that he’d let me get back to what I was doing, and bid me farewell. I replied ‘Hopefully, since you’re taking classes here, we’ll run into each other again!’ And that was that..

I have to say that he’s got one hell of a memory if he was able to recognise me, despite my radical change in appearance, after an absence of fifteen years. Until I got home and checked my yearbook, I thought he was some sort of assassin, confirming whether I was the correct target. ‘You’re Dave? From Shrine, right?’ *robotic hand pops off, 10-inch steel blade snaps out of forearm* You know how it is.
I’m rather curious to know the story behind his new mecha-hand, but polite conversation dictates that that’s not the sort of thing you ask someone who was barely a casual aquaintance fifteen years ago. Very good memory, though, squire! Almost too good..
…
O shit, he really is a cyborg assassin! If you’ll excuse me, I have to run for my life, right now. Back in a few

Sdtrk: ‘Square wave’ by Ecstasy of St.Theresa

One of the many things I’d like to do before I expire would be to make a pilgrimage to Switzerland. Apart from the streets being paved with Nazi gold and fountains overflowing with the world’s finest chocolate, it also contains a city named Neuchâtel, which is the home of three of the most well-preserved examples of automata from the 18th century.

The Draftsman, the Musician and the Writer

The three automata were built over a period of four years by the Swiss-born father and son team of watchmakers, Pierre and Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz. The first one, the Writer (oddly enough, none of them have names) sits at a desk, dips his quill pen into an inkwell, and skilfully writes out one of a handful of phrases. His head moves as he writes, and his eyes follow th motion of his hand.

The Draftsman, the second automata, is a little more fun, as he’s a wee artiste. He can draw up four different things — a profile of Louis XV, profiles of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, ‘my doggie’, and a cherub in a butterfly-drawn chariot (?) — and much like his brother, his head and eyes follow his work. Additionally, as he draws, he moves the hand not holding the pencil away from the paper, so he can evaluate his work, and he actually blows away any dust the pencil makes. An anecdote tells of during an exhibition where Jaquet-Droz was showing off his automata, he was asked to have the Draftsman draw a picture of Louis XV, and the Draftsman drew ‘my doggie’ instead. Luckily, no-one was beheaded.

Both the Writer and the Draftsman are similar in appearance; they both resemble very well-dressed, androgynous, baroque toddlers. The third automata, however, is a young maiden in probably her late teens seated behind an organ. As it says on Lutèce Créations:

This automaton, whose body, head, eyes, arms and fingers have various natural movements, plays itself five different music pieces on an independent organ, with much precision : its head and its eyes are mobile in all directions, so it alternately looks at the music and its fingers. At the end of each tone, it curtseys to the audience, bowing its body and nodding its head. Its throat alternately lifts up and down regularly, so that the spectators believe they can see it breathing.

Very ace, and despite the Jaquet-Droz kids not necessarily being the first automata ever made (I might well cover that topic at a later date), they remain stunning accomplishments for the technology at that time.

I’d just like to point out here that it’s a wee bit difficult finding decent photos of the trio of automatons, and finding footage is even harder. During a break in our filmmaking, Allison De Fren informed me that there’s only one videotape available of them in action, and that’s only because only one person has thought to film them. The somewhat-overpriced tape’s available from the gift shop on the site linked above. *shudders* Ugh, videotape. But yeah; one of the many reasons for me to visit the Museum of Art and History in Neuchâtel would be to get some more film out there in the world, at the very least..

What I personally think would be absolutely perfect, would be if the Osaka lab staffers were to bring the Ando-san version of Actroid to the Museum, and have her present a video segment about them. I’m sure Jaquet-Droz père and fils would approve