—My Dad (standard response whenever I expressed interest in skydiving, bungee-jumping, para-surfing, parkour, driving a motorcycle, skateboarding, driving without a seat belt, crossing the street against a red light, not washing my hands before dinner, forgetting to floss, etc) 1976 – ?
“Have you ever heard of proximity flying? Fascinating. I’m thinking of getting myself a wingsuit for my birthday. If you hear a loud, dull thud, you will know my jump from our roof was unsuccessful.”
—My Dad, 2009
My dad is getting quite XTREEM in his golden years, it would seem! He’s just about the last person I’d expect to get base-jumping links from. Nevertheless, pops just sent me this clip from the Matchstick-produced “action sports” documentary, Seven Sunny Days. It is, hands down, the most beautiful wingsuit footage I’ve ever seen. Instant adrenaline rush. Thank you, Doctor Yay!
Click below for more astounding “squirrel suit” clips from around the world.
Inside your Issue 2 of Coilhouse Magazine you’ll find a love letter to Los Angeles that talks about some of my favorite places in this Angel City Desert. Near the top of the list is The Machine Project– a modern-day salon dedicated to zapping life into this city, one lecture/field trip/class/performance at a time. Art space, home of Dorkbot SoCal [another one coming up this Saturday!], miniature lecture hall and experimental kitchen, this place has hosted some of the best events in town. Visitors enjoy a friendly atmosphere and beer as the boundaries between art and science melt away.
Places like this are indispensable, especially here in big bad disjointed Los Angeles. They cultivate community, learning and provide outlets to brilliant outsiders rarely seen elsewhere. You want Alt Culture? Here it is. The Machine Project mission statement, from the Epic FAQ:
Machine Project exists to encourage heroic experiments of the gracefully over-ambitious. We provide educational resources to people working with technology, we collaborate with artists to produce site-specific works, and we promote conversations between scientists, poets, technicians, performers, and the community of Los Angeles as a whole.
I’ve been an occasional attendee for years now, but this is changed today, when I become an official Member. You see, I received some sad news in my inbox recently. It seems the economy is kicking my beloved Machine square in its mechanical nuts! This wonderful place need help, and it needs help now. Fortunately, helping such an awesome organization is easy and fun. Here are the ways you can be part of The Machine Project:
Mother, I am in love with a robot.
No, she isn’t going to like that.
Mother, I am in love.
Are you, darling?
Oh yes, mother, yes I am. His hair is auburn, and his eyes are very large. Like amber. And his skin is silver.
Silence.
Mother, I’m in love.
With whom, dear?
His name is Silver.
How metallic.
Yes, It stands for Silver Ionized Locomotive Verisimulated Electronic Robot.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
Mother…
Thus opens Tanith Lee’s 1981 future inter-being romance, The Silver Metal Lover, a heart-wrenching exploration of romance, tech and yes, love.
It tells the story of Jane, plain by the standards of her future oligarchic city-state (a combination of Privatopia and Somatopia) and firmly under the thumb of her powerful and rich mother. Seethingly comfortable with her existence, she meets Silver, an entertainment robot, playing guitar and singing in the plaza. She’s embarrassed. Then angry. Then hopelessly in love. Before long she’s thrown her old life to the winds.
Short by the standards of most science fiction, with terrifyingly real characters, it packs a punch that’s not to be underestimated. When the The Silver Metal Lover is called a tearjerker, it’s the blunt truth.
Happy birthday to Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, patron saint of computer programmers. “The Enchantress of Numbers” was born this day in 1815, in London, the only legitimate (tch, what an insulting term that is!) child of Lord Byron. Her mother, Isabelle –a math whiz in her own right nicknamed “The Princess of Parallelograms” by P.M. Benjamin Disraeli– separated from Byron shortly after Ada’s birth, and raised her to be unlike her eccentric poet father, emphasizing tutelage in music and math. (Ada never met Lord Byron, who died in Greece, aged 36.)
Ada Lovelace is best known for her work describing the Analytical Engine, an early mechanical general-purpose computer conceived by mathematician/inventor/philosopher Charles Babbage. Today, she’s recognized as the “first programmer” for her work on the computing machine that Babbage hadn’t even built yet. Unlike Babbage or anyone else, she had the foresight to recognize the potential for computers to evolve past simple calculations and number-crunching. Her voluminous notes included predictions for future developments as far-out as computer-generated music! She accomplished this in an era where, to put it gently, noblewomen were not encouraged to engage in such rigorous intellectual pursuits.
Like her father, Lovelace was headstrong, prone to fits of melodrama, and she died young. Her family buried her next to Lord Byron in the yard of the Church of St Mary Magdalene in 1852.
And you thought those recruitment firm spam faxes were annoying. How’s this for some intrusive ambient advertising? Sancho BBDO in Bogotá, Colombia apparently compiled a large target list of non-menopausal business women, and faxed them this single sheet ad promoting Stayfree’s Ultra-Thin hygienic napkins. “Sally? You got a tampon fax. Where do you want it—your in-box (sorry)?” Seriously what were these people thinking? Taking into account the maturity level of many “businessmen” I know, I see a lot childish red ink doodles and Dockers® with taped on protection and paper tampon blindfolds and…you get the idea. I guess this stunt does get across the selling point—thinness. But it does it at the risk of unprecedented office humiliation. (image via AdsOfTheWorld)
A heads up to anyone with a hankering for some really fantastic “practical” steampunk worldbuilding and storytelling who isn’t yet familiar with FreakAngels: the first story arc of Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield’s groundbreaking webcomichas been collected in a scrumptious 144 page trade paperback. It’s available today in North America, and tomorrow in the UK and other territories. Meanwhile, all past installments of FreakAngels will remain online as a free serialized weekly. You can check them out, starting here.
As far as how it works: it’s the TV model. FreakAngels is free-to-air, but the eventual collected editions will cost money. I can watch pretty much any TV show I want, on the box or on the net, but for something I like, I’d rather have the complete DVD handy.
Look about you and you’ll see there’s always something funny happening. – Jacques Tati
Imagine a Paris of the future, as envisioned by someone in the 60s. The city landscape is a series of towering glass and concrete constructions, filled with uninviting black, vinyl modernist furniture and efficient businessmen wearing indistinguishable dark suits. The only glimpse of the remaining romantic image of Paris is a ghostly reflection of the Eiffel Tower in the polished glass door of a high-rise building. Offices are operated by incomprehensible switchboard systems that would have made HAL bewildered; trade shows supply visitors with identical looking furnishings and pointless implements of efficiency, like doors that can be slammed without making a sound, or trash cans shaped like Grecian columns; and every apartment, airport, building lobby and street corner looks exactly the same.
Sounds devastating, I know.
Somehow, director Jacques Tati managed to fill this drab, colorless world with an assortment of characters and plot turns, creating one the most lighthearted and whimsical spectacles I’ve seen in a long while.
In 1967, Tati wrapped up three years of filming (including 9 months of editing) of Play Time, his third film featuring an endearingly bumbling character named Monsieur Hulot, played by the director himself. The movie was a grand undertaking shot entirely in 70mm, with elaborately constructed sets and a stereophonic soundtrack that was quite advanced for the time. It was also a tremendous financial flop that sent Tati into bankruptcy.
The best way to go into the film is without expectations, only to come out smiling. The title is appropriate – the movie is a farce, but such a sweet and kind-hearted one, playful yet extremely stylized. Any plot description, long or short, won’t convey the effects of the meticulous character choreography, the clever visual humor, or the deliciously crisp audio track. However, Play Time’s basic synopsis is such: through a series of coincidental interactions, two bewildered characters (Hulot, with his too-short pants and smoking pipe, and a young American woman traveling with a guided tour group) barely cross paths, while trying to navigate the confusing maze of downtown Paris. The two finally meet at a new restaurant – so new, in fact, that the construction workers are still building parts while the hosts welcome their first diners to the grand opening. Everything that could go wrong, does, and the result is a chaotic, tremendous, swinging party that would have made Peter Sellers well up with pride.
Despite being mortally afraid of arachnids, I wish more than anything that I could be there right now to see “La Princesse” coming to life. I’m sure many of you do as well. Is any of our UK readership getting a chance to witness this? Please, drop us a line!
Photo by Exacta2a via their wonderful Flickrstream.
First and foremost, thanks to everyone who already bought our first print issue! They’re swiftly on their way and will be trembling in your arms soon enough. Now I need to know – what do you see below? A comb? Binoculars? A fishing reel? You may need to guess again!
BBC News has a charming quiz up that tasks the reader with a serious mission – figure out the intended purpose of Victorian devices on display this week at the British Library. While some of us suffer from a ratherunhealthy gadget-love, not all of these contraptions are as obvious as one might assume! Take the quiz here, and after [only after!], see another small gallery of the exhibit, here.
