prostethics: used as substitutes for real limbs of flesh and blood. The mechanic counterparts were always unwhole, strange, unnatural, robotic pieces of compensation, for what was real, for what should have been there.
Now it looks like the table is turning, slowly but surely. Not only do prosthetics nowadays approach the behaviour and abilities of flesh and blood limbs in a much more accurate way than the wooden leg of captain Hook did, but they can even exceed them, and add new features (the "Terminator arm")
Other than that, I would love to have a camera in my head. I would sacrifice one of my eyes, for sure. They're pretty big so it should probably work well. As far as the surveillance - sou-veillance society is concerned - I don't know. The camera eye is definitely a fully integrated interface. Which could mean that a human being is used as a surveillance camera, of course. But it stretches much further than that. Other data could be called up, one could wire up an iphone to the camera eye and fix up data in realtime. Or layers of augmented reality.
An exciting new era has started. Donna Haraway has never been out, but she's more present than ever. It's not purely coincidental that an athlete with two prosthetic legs just successfully participated in the Olympics. The first cyborg victory, and a start sign to whatever will be next. Will my grandparents need that artificial hip, or will they just go for a brand new set of rabbit legs that will give them the force to hop on forever? How will my generation grow old? Will we at some point have a moment in our lives when we decide to go bionic, and just float on into eternity with our bodies made of light and steel?
29.8.11
The better kind of internet session: text on the net
Mostly, when I go on the internet, I don't think and I just go windowshopping at some places. I watch the same youtube videos and go to bed after a quick look at my mailbox.
Sometimes, when I go on the internet, I think "let's enrich myselves" and I go looking at blogs with a different text / image ratio and usually what follows is an overwhelming cascade of jawdropping pearls of intelligence, consumed by the greedy eyes of yours truly, who is found enthusiastically nodding at the screen from time to time.
I am not one of those people naturally attracted to poetry, but on one of those better kind of internet wanderings, this appeared in front of me
eratiopostmodernpoetry.com
Eratio is, as the title page says, an e-journal for poetry. Post-modern poetry. "Il Pleut" by Apollinaire serves as an introductory message. The latest issue of the e-journal is presented by a simple frame mimicking the back of a book, as one would find it in a library. The whole idea is fantastic, the only minus for me is the poems are offered in a pdf format. That is still too much a 'bounded' form, instead of the imaginary boundless stretches an internet page has.
Somehow, poetry and other linguistic forms of expression seem much more suitable and sense-making on the net than visuals, more often than not losing quality due to the fysical limits of the screen, overenthusiastic uses of flash and other misuse.
Another brilliant example of text-on-the-net is
TheThing.net
Made by an early internet artist in the nineties; it screams geocities, makes use of blinking text and it's just great in general, even if the story has no point at all; it's the idea that counts.
That's it for now, I must sleep. The next one will be probably about that guy who had a camera implanted into his eyesocket.
Sometimes, when I go on the internet, I think "let's enrich myselves" and I go looking at blogs with a different text / image ratio and usually what follows is an overwhelming cascade of jawdropping pearls of intelligence, consumed by the greedy eyes of yours truly, who is found enthusiastically nodding at the screen from time to time.
I am not one of those people naturally attracted to poetry, but on one of those better kind of internet wanderings, this appeared in front of me
eratiopostmodernpoetry.com
Eratio is, as the title page says, an e-journal for poetry. Post-modern poetry. "Il Pleut" by Apollinaire serves as an introductory message. The latest issue of the e-journal is presented by a simple frame mimicking the back of a book, as one would find it in a library. The whole idea is fantastic, the only minus for me is the poems are offered in a pdf format. That is still too much a 'bounded' form, instead of the imaginary boundless stretches an internet page has.
Somehow, poetry and other linguistic forms of expression seem much more suitable and sense-making on the net than visuals, more often than not losing quality due to the fysical limits of the screen, overenthusiastic uses of flash and other misuse.
Another brilliant example of text-on-the-net is
TheThing.net
Made by an early internet artist in the nineties; it screams geocities, makes use of blinking text and it's just great in general, even if the story has no point at all; it's the idea that counts.
That's it for now, I must sleep. The next one will be probably about that guy who had a camera implanted into his eyesocket.
10.8.11
PARIS IS BURNING
I really wanted to write something about the seminal documentary about drag and gay black and latino (eg: the ones who'd be ruled out statistically from EVER being succesful in anything, y'all) culture in NY from the seventies, to the eighties, and slightly rolling into the nineties, who ever hadn't fell victim to AIDS by then. I learned about this documentary through Marjorie Boston, whom I interviewed about a year ago. She is now director of MC Theater in Amsterdam, but started out studying mime, and this was a movie she loved so much, she named her first production "Made in da Shade" after one of the houses mentioned in the film. Watching the movie you can definitely see the mime-ish movements being made, meant as a dance, but more than that wording something through gestures and other body movements. A dance style known as "vogueing", a mime-ish type of dancing in which clothing takes a special part as to make "the better shape" It's a battle, basically: "Instead of fighting, you would dance it out on the dance floor"
The balls, the fashion, the dancing, the poverty, the oppression, way of life and everything goddammit. It's a great documentary, it's viewable on youtube chopped into 9 parts. Watch it!
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