Why is Steampunk the style of the moment?

[NOTE: this essay appears in somewhat different form at DeviantArt.com.  In part it was a byproduct of working on the following image, not included as part of the Journal entry there.  Additional thumbnail images appear in the Journal entry as well.]


Vampiric Steampunk by *ebbixx on deviantART

"Realism" (I use that word ironically) has always been a bit of a challenge for me.

Those who shoot photos casually, often don't appreciate how different a photo is, by its nature, from the sort of image that we see in our eyes or our brains. The general assumption has long been that photos are real, even though there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. This has been even more clear than usual for me, in a way, since my recent injury, which did not especially affect my vision, but did have some odd effects on my hearing, and in particular for my tolerance of noise. Maybe too, it may have affected vision and I'm just not aware of the degree that it has had some effect?

Objectivity is a lot harder than we tend to imagine it being.

So, here are some of the images that have struck me in particular, during a week when browsing both watched images and those I've found by happenstance, or in connection with the galleries I've been looking at. You'll see they're all over the place. Maybe I'll separate some of them with text to describe what pulled me to look at them more closely?


Nunellina by *felina222 on deviantART


Rainbow eye by ~AleLaTriller on deviantART

Images about "women" but in most cases something here is surreal, and in some cases no actual woman was photographed. "Nunellina" in particular was so striking that I had to post my first critique/appreciation since coming back.

Then there are the creations of "mankind" (after the jump)



Will survive by *Brute-ua on deviantART

How do we look at this image? Is it simply a church, or does knowing it's among the structures that were abandoned near Chernobyl give it added meaning, and lead to some of us asking questions about human folly, arrogance and pride? And almost certainly each person who views it with that added knowledge will wind up asking very different questions, and coming to very different conclusions?


istanbul night.. by ~ziyakasapoglu on deviantART

Stone and creations made of stone, and metal. Maybe this relates to my daughter's fascination with Steampunk or maybe my own, and maybe it also has to do with seeing Sherlock Holmes in a definitely steampunk-influenced production design? Just what does that mean?

There was a lot in that movie that resonated for me, even though the things I've been collecting, with an eye towards my next journal entry, are not necessarily (or even remotely, in many cases) actively influenced by Steampunk, or by the current conflict between mysticism and technology, or by the aggressive payback or karmic feedback that some might say women are now engaged in, and about which some may be conflicted. I also just recently saw Coraline which, to my view, very much dealt with that particular web of notions, expectations, signs, symbols and attempts to force women to remain objects, regardless of their individual choices, desires or needs.

Okay, that's abstract enough. Mostly I wanted to make sure that my Journal was not implying that I was needing too much in the way of "kid glove" treatment.

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ECRS Winter Workshop: An Adventure

And I mean that in more ways than one. Here's a slideshow of a few collages from the event. More when I have the time and energy to put them together. All photos are also available in individual form. They are also, it should be obvious, available in much higher resolution and quality. Most of what's presented here is strictly based on raw, unprocessed images whereas I usually try to spend at least 10 minutes and often much longer when presenting photos in "finished" form.

Note that if you click the link to view the images below on their Picasa page, you can see these at full screen size (still not actual size, but especially on older monitors it may be the best choice available).



Video below the fold, so to speak.

The Adventure Game from B Unis on Vimeo.

If I can think of something to add to this post, that too will happen. First I need to get some feedback and ensure this is not something that others might object to.

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Winter strikes coldly.

Just got the lens I should have had years ago, so this is a very fresh shot, processed over the past 24 hours or so. We didn't get slammed by snow nearly as badly as Philly did, but we are closer to the Shore. Though not by that much.


Winter bones by *ebbixx on deviantART



There's nothing much else here to see, except for another, somewhat less stunning shot.


Solitary lunacy by *ebbixx on deviantART

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Waist Deep In the Big Muddy

Part of this post relates to censorship, something we're so great at we do it to ourselves. Or maybe not. The Smothers Brothers seem so innocuous to us now and yet, where do we find something this hard hitting except on underexposed YouTube channels that, if current trends continue, will be no more in a few more months.

In the following Fresh Air program, David Bianculli plays the never-aired last verse of "Waist Deep In the Big Muddy" as sung by Pete Seeger in one of the appearances that finally (sort of) took Seeger off the media blacklist he'd been on since the McCarthy Era.



Take a look too at the TV essays of Harlan Ellison. I had a college friend who knew Ellison as a sometime houseguest and who thought he was a schmuck. But schmuck or no schmuck, the guy had some points to be made.



I shouldn't be surprised about this. At this point we censor ourselves in part by imagining we're somehow past those times. Are we?

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Doubt: the Live Action Role Play

Follow the link. See the movie. I've seen it. Now I'm living it.

What is that? Doubt. Too bad the version I'm living now is much more poorly written. And it doesn't have Meryl Streep.

Here's the bad copy of the trailer from YouTube.



I know it's probably asking too much, but please see the movie as a whole before you think you know anything. And if you watch the trailer, just watch the trailer and don't stay for the dimwitted blather that follows. There are better versions of the trailer at the official movie site, so you should probably watch there.

If you're one of my friends and supporters through this travail and travesty, then go ahead and watch the twits. They are good for a small laugh. I just wish I still had a sense of humor about this after having my daughter harassed in school on Friday, based on some fairly uninspired invention on the part of individuals unnamed.

My favorite quote was (and remains) "And that is gossip."

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Tonight is About Fear

Tonight's show (starting at 9:30 Eastern) is all about fear. Appropriate for Friday the 13th, especially when my daughter told me earlier about the people killing themselves in anticipation of 2012 (the year, not the movie).

Tune in on my stream or find me at the Velvet, in Second Life.

Stills on a related note:


Freezeframe of the Apocalypse by *ebbixx on deviantART


Nothing actually comes after. It's a trick.

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Movie of the week: Slipstream

Anthony Hopkins directed it, hoping (at least what he says in the commentary) to provoke a reaction, to get some people to question the form of the movie itself, or at least step back and look at what they are doing, both with their lives and with the art of film. At least that's my impression of what he said.

Unless you are a Hopkins fanatic you probably did not see this movie in theatrical release -- even if you are it's unlikely you saw it in a theater, since its release was limited to a few film festivals, and a limited run before going to DVD. Which I find terribly sad, since it's one of the most inventive, interesting and risk-taking movies I've seen in years, especially if I limit that list to movies made in the Hollywood system, excluding European movies of the 60s and 70s. This is definitely not a typical Hollywood-style movie, and by Hollywood-stlye I mean the structure that tends to be imposed not just on cartoon adventure movies, but a great deal of the "indie" film making world as well, at this point in the adventure.

Still, I suppose this is to be expected, since the movie directly challenges in many ways the conventions of what a movie is and how it should operate. It's also one of those rare movies that doesn't feel obliged to offer an explicit road map to make the viewer more at ease with what transpires. It shocks, it confuses, and at the end you are left with many questions. Some of those questions can be answered by watching the movie closely again a second or a third time. I suspect a few may never be answerable, but when logic (or the human compulsion to impose "sense" on a random and unjust world) fails there is still the gorgeous camerawork to fall back on, as compensation for not getting all the answers in a simplistic little package -- if you actually think you need to be compensated for that, that is.

What struck me on watching Slipstream at first, without the amendments of explanation or intention, was the way in which it manages to represent, at least as well as something as mechanical and limited as a film can represent it: human consciousness. And perhaps that's where the negative reactions came from? From those who work hardest to avoid accepting how random and free of specific meanings or intentions our own stream of consciousness is?

I found it especially amusing to hear that critics had been upset about the color changes made in post-production to the Corvette that features in the introduction of the characters played by Christian Slater and Jeffrey Tambor. Apparently they'd been text messaging during the minutes that led up to that bit of signalling that, no, this is not your conventional narrative.

There's also a great deal here about the nature of conscience, and a commentary on the mostly American commonplace that we are somehow responsible for our fates, if not through dint of our personal will and good (or bad) deeds, then -- perhaps an even more pernicious notion -- through the workings of our subconscious. In other words, putting paid to the notion that if we "fail" it's somehow a product of our consciousness "creating" that failure.

This is put strongly, yet ambiguously, in an early scene where Hopkins' character is disoriented, while his gorgeous, yet mildly annoying young companion is going on about various New Age notions of past life regression, channeling and 12-step psychobabble, while the narrator's consciousness is flashing up images that counterpoint that sort of grandiose and ultimately egotistical claptrap -- images of the Holocaust, and mass evil from 20th century Nazism and Soviet terror, visited on people who are unlikely to have ever had the luxury to indulge in such fantasies of control.

I could discuss this movie at length, or I could encourage others to find a copy and experience it for themselves. I'm going with Option B.

After all, I can always write a follow-up piece. Unless I get hit by a bus.

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