#Grid Iron Studios

[gijoe-forever]

[simeonscott]

"Can't Take a Bullet? ...Guess it's Time for Old Faithful."

[idraw-ulook]

Retro Gung Ho has arrived! YO, JOE!!

[themetaphoricalcouch]

Before and after with parts by Pixis Designs and Grid Iron Studios

[samheughanswife]

Sam

Sam was in his element. With friends, Steve and comfortable in the auditorium.

Refreshed from a week of sun,sand and sea. Add in off the socials grid. No random blondes in bikinis, or the gym blonde rats at the North Bondi open gym breathing the same sea air as him instantly given a nickname and assumed bumping curlies.

He shared that he had a session with the famous Bondi Beach lifeguards. He was encouraged to dive off the rocks at the South end of the beach- Bondi. He shared he had never dived in his life( sure that’s not true, just not into the Pacific Ocean) He was shown how to swim back to shore in a rip, ( that’s what drowns people not understanding how to get out of a rip). And generally living a beachside life. He joked that he didn’t sleep in the sand, he had a house (?? 👀).

Loves 🇦🇺. Not the snakes he revealed to an answer re the snakebite episode. Met all the famous animals. And shared that he felt the walk to the top of the bridge more now than when he did it eight years ago ( doubt that). Mentioned the bars he hit up and the restaurants.

A week well spent. As you all have seen he has the tan to show for it.

Two afternoons were lost to late summer thunderstorms. What did he do then?!

He answered the expected questions regarding the end of OL. He is ready to say goodbye. He has been in discussion regarding work. He wants to continue to travel after the S8 wrap.

Mentioned going to Everest and working on getting distribution in 🇦🇺 for SS. And other countries.

Shared a tidbit that when he went to the studio his “things” had been moved for a new younger cast. All tongue in cheek. Said he is looking for to BOMB.

This was a contented man. It was all easy conversation and engagement with just under 945 fans. The auditorium capacity is 945 and there were about 20 empty seats.

He did not bring up the spirits unless asked. He didn’t have a bottle on stage. That bag on the table was Steve’s- with a drink bottle in it and a place to put the discarded written questions. He was not selling his booze, he was riffing. Laughing and just being relaxed.

Asked about Caitriona ( got to say that the audience was a Sam only) and he discussed her getting prepped for directing. Said they had FT her the night before, all the guys and showed her what she was missing. He said how much they had shared and that really “ THEY WERE LIKE BROTHER AND SISTER” ✅ ✅. Crowd liked that.

He said that it will be difficult working away the final time. Very poignant. But he said he is ready.

The rest was the same questions and answers. The event organizers said there will be a USB to buy. So the rest will be there for those who will buy and then share here.

I’ve been told that on the soulless account comments have said that the guys were disheveled and looked unwashed. BULLSHIT. All their clothes were ironed( I am that woman who judges unironed clothes. Sam had ironed his T-shirt and pants. His hair was not oily. And his eau de parfum was that of a man who had showered early and had used deodorant. Those hollow jealous haters were truly reaching for something- anything.

I’m guessing that the Melbourne audience will be just as thrilled and appreciative of the chance to be in conversation with the OL lads. There is a song from one of my teenage favourite 🇦🇺 band Australian Crawl. It’s called The Boys Light Up. It’s the perfect song for the fun day yesterday. The boys did light up.

[withswords]

as usual tumblr is acting very high and mighty about knowing things that other people might not know, and getting very meanspirited about twitter refugees who haven’t heard of goncharov. additionally, there’s a lot of misinformation and jokes floating around that are probably just confusing a lot of people further, which is kind of unfair. the reason you’ve never seen goncharov is because until pretty recently nobody had since the 1970s!

tumblr has always had a thriving community of lost media enthusiasts, and the search for goncharov was kickstarted on here in 2020 after the discovery of a pair of shoes with a label that seemed to promote martin scorsese’s goncharov, a mysterious mafia movie nobody had ever heard of, leading to the ironic ‘this idiot hasn’t seen goncharov’ meme. however, under the surface, a few intrepid lost media excavators wondered, why hadn’t they seen goncharov? was this movie a total hoax?

then in late 2020- an event that got somewhat lost in the jumble of tumblr’s destiel election haze- gonch-heads found an interview with columbia pictures studio head david begelmen (best known for an embezzlement scandal that would be revealed a few years later) that mentioned goncharov. recently the unearthed movie has received praise for its striking visuals, for being a movie truly ahead of its time for the intended 1973 release, so people are often surprised to learn that goncharov was one of the all time production clusterfucks at columbia.

the interviewer quotes begelmen saying, “We don’t say that word [Goncharov],” in a tone that comes across almost scolding. when asked for clarification, he adds: “You know in theater they have the Scottish play? We have that ****ing Naples movie.”

when you look into it, it’s easy to see why goncharov was internally considered a cursed production. there are more thorough posts out there about all the disasters on the set of goncharov, but i’ll go over the two big ones. the enigmatic presence of ilya was created by practical necessity. his role was originally much larger, before the actor died on set (from a heart attack supposedly unrelated to the filming), and much of his part had to be scrapped. studio shakeups as columbia nearly went bankrupt (not helped by goncharov’s ambitious budget) and moved shooting from gower street to burbank resulted in much of the physical film going missing, thought to be destroyed until nearly 15 years later. around this time, rather than attempt to go into reshoots for an expensive nightmare led by a rookie director, the filming was canned completely.

i think because scorsese is so high profile now, people forget that in 73, he was barely scorsese. he was an up-and-coming director with some borrowed clout, but goncharov was a costly mistake that nearly ended his career. there’s a reason he rarely speaks about it. this was only compounded by matteo j.

a lot of people out there will tell you that j was the real director of goncharov, and this is false, if not an understandable mistake. matteo j has been off the grid for decades now and there’s a lot of speculation about who he was, his involvement with the original goncharov project, and why he went underground. there are rumors that he ran afoul of the actual mafia, but in my opinion that’s just sensationalism- you might as well say that the goncharov curse took him out. all we REALLY know is that he was at some point an employee of columbia pictures who gained access to the lost reels of goncharov.

j may at best be responsible for compiling his recovered goncharov footage in the late 80s, into a film which he tried to release in italy in partnership with procacci, who was attempting at that time to break into production and due to the low profile and attempted studio coverup at columbia was not fully aware of the film’s history. there are conflicting accounts of how much influence j’s editing has on the film, with some people considering him basically the marcia lucas of goncharov, and others believing him to be an opportunist taking advantage of a mostly-finished piece of art for his own gain.

obviously the studio intervened before the film’s actual release, but much of the promotional material including the poster, the shoes, etc. came from this time. it seems that columbia came to some kind of agreement with j vis a vis distribution and profits, probably in the hopes of cashing in on scorsese’s by then ascended name, which was of course splashed across the top of every goncharov poster you can find. however, the release was called off a second time once scorsese himself got wind of it.

and that seemed to be the end of it. the completed goncharov went into the columbia vault, with only a handful of misremembered bootlegs and chopped-up local tv airings even attesting to the fact that it ever existed, until a leaked copy appeared with no warning on archive.org. this seems to have been a prelude from a disgruntled netflix employee to the distribution of the film through the service (although, of course, in inferior aspect ratio, ‘remastered’ and with several scenes edited). you can still find copies of the original film on archive if you want to experience it as... well, it’s hard to say what the ‘intended’ goncharov experience is with such a complicated history behind it, but as close to intended as we can get. i don’t know if scorsese has softened on j’s version of the movie after all this time, or if he’s just let his grudge over it go. all i know for sure is that goncharov really has earned the title of the greatest mafia movie never made

[thisisyourprincipalspeaking]

Love your questions! I’ll place your questions to me in pink! 😉

why do you think he couldn't go down that kind of career path otherwise? (i have my own thoughts but i'm interested in yours)

- I think many of us have witnessed the multiple insecurities this man has unintentionally let everyone know he battles. Anyone belittling themselves in a “joking” way multiple times is very telling. Being confident isn’t arrogant, but talking down on yourself all the time shows insecurity. I believe he’s scared and I know he deals with anxiety issues so I can only hope he works on himself, seeks counseling, etc to reach his fullest potential one day. He’s very talented but his fans can’t want more for him than he wants for himself. As so many have stated, from our limited perspective, it’s like he said screw improving his craft and personal development and went straight for a perceived “easy” route. FAIL!

in your opinion has this been beneficial in that way thus far? or would he have had the same recent opportunities regardless of his relationship status?

- this is hard to say because as we all know or can assume …..being successful in Hollywood isn’t about sole talent unless you are top tier talent level wise, thus you don’t have to resort to silly pr stunts, but as time goes by even some of the most talented are resorting to pr related things just to stay relevant. I will say that when it comes to getting roles THAT is where I think it’s not as easy as many like to believe. I don’t know if Chris panicked, thought this was a good business move, had his agency persuade or threatened his career, studios didn’t see it for him outside of Marvel, etc. (all assumptions of course). I just know when award season draws near, many single stars who are in top related or relevant projects……magically gain significant others around award season and I don’t know Hollywood’s unwritten rules, but I think it’s sad that their personal lives become part of deciding if something, that should be solely based on talent, is obtainable for them or not. The fact Chris and her magically popped up around award party season doesn’t leave my mind either.

Now where would he be currently had he stayed single or kept his private life……ACTUALLY private. Idk. What I do know is popularity wise he’d be in a much better place and maybe that would have helped Jinx or ASP or whatever else he’s promoted the past few years. Now majority of the fandom quit or barely care and he’s got a slew of projects coming out that could be great or bomb and if they bomb, no telling what may happen regarding this shitfest, but by that time this fandom may no longer exist. 🤪

do you feel like there hasn't been enough time for this to show fruit just yet and we will potentially see more later?

- at this point, I see no benefit. He/his team dropped the ball big time. If this is real, there should not have been any trolling, 7482893 of irrelevant articles, orchestrated pap shots, mess, etc he simply could have posted her to his IG grid, turned comments off and went about his business. Ironically this would’ve given them more attention, appeared natural than the Central Park horror show they used to debut this mess. He had a great position and huge fanbase, well large enough to get him trending with every post. Too late now though unless they end this, disassociate from her but again they are “married”: she’ll be known as his first wife unless they have a plan to make this disappear 🙄 and regroup his career, but even then the trust is broken. They instead squandered that and whatever benefits he had or has just seems wasted. I still refuse to believe this isn’t a pr stunt because you can’t tell me a bunch of adult collectively thought THIS was the best option to debut his personal relationship if legit. Too much crap has happened even with two “weddings”. It either shows his team is incompetent and since he’s in charge that means he agreed to this mess or CAA has more power than we know. Either way Chris comes off as the complete opposite of what everyone has come to love/like him for.

- Will this ever end, not sure maybe not for a long while or not at all. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I will say anything can happen at this point so I’d just suggest those heavily invested in this just walk away until this ends or is confirmed to be legit in a way I refuse to waste time typing. But even if this never ends, I don’t see Chris returning to his once loved and respected status among fans nor the general public. Even if the age gap were the only issues, he shows he has issues. A mature man isn’t marrying a twenty something yr old, period. He’s lucky the general population isn’t aware of EVERYTHING His fandom is aware of …..but maybe this would have needed sooner if the backlash was that dire and huge.

I expected better from this man, but this is also a huge example as to why we shouldn’t place expectations on other humans let alone ones we don’t actually know nor should we put them on pedestals which is why Hollywood thrives unfortunately.

Hope this answers some stuff, just my random thoughts & opinions, fell free to ask anymore questions. 😎☺️

thank you for coming back and answering my questions, nonnie. i do agree with you on some points.

i do think celebrities can hide their true selves when needed. and we have seen some celebrities do this for long periods of time over the years. but i also will not give leniency to a celebrity, with lots of money, access and the ability to get help (therapy) if they want it. many many people have anxiety, depression, or other mental health concerns and function every day. he has anxiety? okay. but that is not a crutch i will give him as a multimillionaire who chose his path and has money for therapy, treatment, physicians, etc. many others do not have that luxury and still go about their daily lives.

one reason i can see this being "real" is because of how messy it is. her friends are trash and troll. that's obvious. she's lazy and gets access to many rooms more talented, more hard working, or more accomplished actors don't because of this association and she's done nothing with it. if it's real, his team didn't get a say. they just got told to make it known to the public and make it look okay. if that's what happened. okay. there is no professional on earth who could work with this scenario and make it look okay.

but thank you, nonnie. i do enjoy seeing your thoughts! please come back any time!

[optikes]

an Australian painter in the streets of New York...

John Firth-Smith (born 1943) Australia

1 White Street # 3 (1982) acrylic on stretched 300gsm rag paper, 104cm x 104cm

2 Black Street # 27 (1982) pulp paper and mixed media, 35cm x 35cm

3 Place, Orientation and Navigation (1983) oil on linen 305.0 x 335.5 cm

4 Winter Rounds (1982)

5-7 the artist connecting dots & lines in New York

8 the artist’s photo-documentation of line and shape on New York streets

9 Marshall Islands stick chart

A   Professor Peter James Smith   from  menziesartbrands.com

In 1981 John Firth-Smith travelled to New York to experience the city, to paint there as a local and allow the powerful New York art scene to wash over him. It was a time in the city (that the writer experienced first-hand) when graffiti clogged West Broadway and adorned the walls of the cross-town subway platforms. The locals were producing abstract paintings that had active, brushy surfaces. The curator Barbara Rose, in 1979, produced a show of such work called American Painting: The Eighties that looked like Abstract Expressionism with a college education, and heralded the rise of art stars Susan Rothenberg (1945- ) and Elizabeth Murray (1940-2007). It was the perfect time and place for Firth-Smith’s painterly surfaces to evolve.

From his studio on 20th Street, Firth-Smith could look down on the first winter snows in the city. In the early morning the snow appeared as a soft white blanket, a shroud that covered everything, but later in the day it was stained and marked by the black tracks of car tyres and the footfalls of passers-by. He became fascinated by the ethereal gothic nature of what he saw: steaming ventilators were often to be found in the middle of busy streets, their smoke stacks rising through the traffic, their warmth contradicting the presence of winter snow and sludge. Such is the sensibility that is vividly painted in Winter Rounds 1982, an attractively-proportioned canvas that effortlessly supports the New York dynamic.

Winter Rounds 1982, is ingrained with the gritty, wintry ambience of the city. Like schematised patterns taken from a subway map, or a diagram drawn in an attempt at directing a stranger, there is a frenetic congested intensity in the work that is broken by dots and splashes of colour.’

This painting shows Firth-Smith’s familiar arabesque line, sweeping through the rising red veils of smoke and graffiti, to challenge the gridded infrastructure of the city. Notions of infrastructure usually revolve around trains, bridges, roads and buildings; however with a different kind of infrastructure in mind, the artist deploys a series of connected straight lines and dots to the heart of his picture. In his monograph on Firth-Smith, writer Gavin Wilson describes how the artist had become fascinated with the Victorian cast iron manhole covers found at street level. They often had elaborate decorative surfaces and had holes drilled through them. Firth-Smith tied small weights to the ends of strings, and dropped the weights down the holes making the strings pull tight between the holes; so the sequences of dots and connected lines were born. He later photographed these microcosms, and like an industrial espionage operative, these found their way into his painting process. Ironically, these patterns are reminiscent of stick charts from the Marshall Islands – structures formed by tying small sticks in a gridded pattern to represent the sea, with shells knotted at the intersections to represent the locations of islands. The sea is never far away from the artist’s concerns.

Only in New York could Firth-Smith have had such fertile exposure to the early stages of neo-expressionism. He embraced many deterministic methods of applying paint with drawn lines and dots, then overpainting, then re-positioning more gridded lines and dots; but these methods always relied on chance and randomness. He painted and repainted layer upon layer. ‘The effaced surfaces of the completed work were like a palimpsest, leaving only the faintest trace of his earlier marks.’  It is the beauty of those effaced surfaces that captures the imagination with their daring trails of snow-lines, and the monochrome expanse of restless white.

search @ www.khanacademy.org    www.smithsonianmag.com

[lizzygrantarchives]

T: The New York Times Style Magazine, February 9, 2012

For some reason, Lana Del Rey and her sultry songs drive some people nuts.

CURVACEOUS AND PRETTY IN A DRESS, she brims with catchy songs, all a bit retro, ironic and modern. Without straying too far off the pop grid, she’s the perfect antidote to Rihanna-Gaga overload — dare we say, a skinnier Adele, a more stable Amy Winehouse? Since posting “Video Games” to YouTube last summer, she’s amassed tens of millions of hits, sold out concerts to fashion’s who’s who and now, finally, has released her long-awaited album, which is currently No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200 in America, and No. 1 in Britain, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and Austria. If you were going to manufacture a star for this moment, you’d manufacture her. Some people believe that’s precisely what happened.

Sitting in her producer’s Chelsea studio in jeans and an oversize sweater, smoking Pall Mall Blues that share space — in a beat-up snakeskin bag — with an old Tennessee Williams paperback, Lana Del Rey tries to shrug off the suggestion that her father bought her success, that her face went under the knife, that she is some sort of industry creation, all accusations floating around the Internet. It’s absurd or maybe flattering, but despite her laugh and smile, it hurts.

“I mean, I met everyone who is anyone in the music industry over the last six years and I was unsignable,” she says. “That’s what I was told by everyone. I would play my songs, explain what I was trying to do, and I’d get, ‘You know who’s No. 1 in 13 countries right now? Kesha.’ ”

There’s a formula for a pop song and a prescribed length for radio. Nothing Del Rey’s written obeys either. “ ‘Video Games’ was a four-and-a-half-minute ballad,” she says. “No instruments on it. It was too dark, too personal, too risky, not commercial. It wasn’t pop until it was on the radio.” And even “Born to Die” — her first big video — was, with its double chorus that never lifts, described to her as “another monotonous depressing song.”

For an hour, Del Rey and her producer Emile Haynie play songs from the album. She points out jazzy idiosyncrasies, quirky lyrics and favorite melodies. Sometimes she sings; often she gets up and dances. The last song they put on is “National Anthem”:

Red, white, blue’s in the skies Summer’s in the air and Baby, heaven’s in your eyes I’m your national anthem … I sing the national anthem, While I’m standing, Over your body … Money is the anthem God you’re so handsome

It may not be her most lyrically complex song, but it feels emblematic. As she did in the “Born to Die” video (in which she wraps her body in an American flag), she equates her sexuality to the national anthem. And she knowingly conflates love with material success. It feels like a wink at the listener. The Twitter generation loves a wink.

There’s also more than a little of Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” in the song. Both you could play alone dancing in your bedroom, sing along to in your convertible with the top down or (it might surprise Cyrus’s Disney producers) find yourself gyrating to at an illegal warehouse rave. Whereas Cyrus’s song is a bland pop confection that somehow wound up cool, Del Rey’s track comes from someplace dark thematically and unstructured musically and ends up with pop appeal.

I explain my theory to Del Rey, in a roundabout way, and she nods, sings a bit of “Party in the USA” and ponders the matter for a few moments. “I really like that chorus,” she says. “I love an interesting melody.”

Haynie is more direct. “That’s the beauty of it,” he says. “That’s kind of the magic. She is supercool. The songs are as cool as it gets, sonically and aesthetically. But it’s like, ‘Wait a minute, this could resonate with the world.’ She started underground, small and kind of tight-knit, but some of these recordings are like, ‘Wow.’ I mean, that’s what I heard when I listened. It’s cool and it’s dark, but I thought, This could be big, you know?”

***

We head to a 10th Avenue Italian restaurant that her publicist has chosen. It feels tacky. “Do you want to just get a coffee across the street, and sit on a stoop? It’s not too cold?” she asks. I agree, though it is in fact too cold.

At the pizza place she orders a large coffee with no sugar, lots of milk. The server spots the old Tennessee Williams paperback in her purse, which sparks a conversation about 1950s movies and Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra.

Then he asks, “Are you two a couple?” and looks at me and says: “Today is your lucky day. I wish I was lucky like you.”

The presumption doesn’t stop him from flirting with Del Rey. “Big cup for you,” he says, handing her her coffee. “Just a little kiss for me.”

Del Rey laughs and hits him right back with: “Sure. Just a little kiss. Where do you want it?”

There was no kiss, but the subject of Del Rey’s mouth is an irresistible one. So, sitting on the steps of a 25th Street brownstone, I ask the seemingly preposterous question. “It’s fine,” she assures me. “They’re real lips, I mean. In real life my lips don’t look that big. I think because I cartoonized the footage of myself in the video for ‘Video Games’ things look exaggerated.”

If that video is to blame for a pernicious rumor, it is also to blame for putting her on the map. What it didn’t do was get her a record deal. Not until Fearne Cotton, a BBC D.J., stumbled across it and played it on Radio 1 last June. Suddenly the world was calling.

“I was struck by the wonderful combination of spine-tingling video footage, her haunting voice and the simplicity of the song,” Cotton wrote in an e-mail. “I watched it about five or six times in a row and became slightly fixated with it. The lyrics then started to really stand out and it became my song of last summer. … I had been waiting for a song like this.”

Hers is the typical experience. But falling in love with a video or a studio recording can set unrealistic expectations for Del Rey’s live performances. Look for her to break it down Nicki Minaj-style and you’ll be disappointed. Her turn on “Saturday Night Live” in January was widely criticized. She told me presciently about her anxiety beforehand: “I’m not by nature a showstopper. I love to write and play songs, but onstage, all these things come into play. I’m always saying to myself, Don’t mess up. Don’t mess up.”

Del Rey is a small-town girl. She grew up Elizabeth Grant in Lake Placid, N.Y., neither rich nor poor. She remembers as a kid asking herself cheesy meaning-of-life questions and thinking she was really special for doing so. Then, in high school, she took a philosophy class and realized she was like everyone else. While a philosophy major at Fordham University, she started finagling gigs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the East Village. At 19 a small indie label signed her as Lizzy Grant for $10,000. “It was amazing. I got my own place to live. I lived on that money, finished school. At that point I envisioned having a very nice career touring small clubs, continuing my studies in philosophy and volunteering,” she tells me. “It’s actually the same vision I have today. I have a serious life here. I have a really big family. You know, I’m needed here.”

Needed by whom? She hints at family, which makes sense given the darker, psychosexual context of many of her songs.

What about love and loss, the other dark note in her oeuvre? “I felt the same way for a really long time, and then I met someone who I guess I fell in love with,” she says. “I just didn’t know I could feel differently. That time with him became sort of a place that I fell back to in my memory.”

And the breakup? “Well, I mean, the breakup is a part of it in the way that in the midst of loss you try to still look towards the light and not fall to pieces or do self-destructive things.”

She grows quiet, looks at her watch. It’s getting late. She admits that she doesn’t have an important industry meeting, as her publicist told me, but has to baby-sit for a friend.

Before she goes, I ask her where she lives. She’s looking to buy a place, but for now is in Williamsburg. “Staying with my ex-boyfriend,” she says nonchalantly, then bursts into nervous laughter and admits, “I live on his couch.”

I give her a look like, You just told me all that about falling in love and breaking up and you’re on the dude’s couch?

She pins it on the touring, letting out another embarrassed laugh. “Because no, I’m busy though!”

Originally published on nytimes.com with the headline A Star Is Born (and Scorned), and in abridged form in the February 19, 2012 issue of T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

[dustedmagazine]

Rob Burger — Marching with Feathers (Western Vinyl)

Rob Burger has played all kinds of instruments in his life and career, electronics and guitar, pump organs and synthesizers, banjos and music boxes, but it all started with the piano.  In Marching with Feathers, the composer returns to his home base with nine tracks that include many varieties of tone and drone, but center around the piano.

Burger has worked in a variety of contexts and ensembles, from major studio film soundtracks (he composed the music for Ocean’s 8), to John Zorn’s Filmworks series, to the experimental traditionalism of the Tin Hat Trio to a longstanding partnership with Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam. His most recent album before Marching with Feathers, The Grid, pulsed and percolated with electronic energy. Its title track buzzed in shadowy dissonance, a rough friction grinding against dreamlike Krautish propulsions. The new record is just as mysterious, just as lovely but more organic.

“Waking Up Slowly” scatters ghostly, Satie-like keyboard simplicity across hallucinatory arcs of pedal steel (that’s Paul Niehaus, by the way). It stirs to sentience gradually, its parts whirling in a slow motion dance. “Hotel for Saints” is more emphatic, blasts of synth sound swelling around staccato piano motifs, a hard backing of drums keeping pace. “Still” is heartbreaking and distilled to essence, a melancholic piano drifting in from another room. And the title, “Marching with Feathers” splices unruffled sound washes with glitch beats, setting limpid pools of mood in motion. A string section warms up as the piece gains density (Teddy Rankin-Parker is credited with cello), and layers of tone shift on and over one another. A march implies purposeful forward progress, feathers soft sensuality and adornment; the piece merges both in a meditation that moves.

Still, the cuts that pare back to just piano (or mostly) wield the quietest kind of power. “Figurine”’s soft rounded notes float in like a dream of a memory, right there but also out of reach, with transience, mortality and regret in their slow progression.

Jennifer Kelly

[gijoe-forever]

[mukiidigitallab]

Digital Lab

week 10

We then resumed our work on our projects. We took cornflour to the studio since the iron filings had arrived and Joe was preparing to the honeycomb grid carved out using the laser cutter. While he was down there, we began experimenting with the cornflour and water combination we had proposed employing to suspend the iron filings.This initial attempt failed because, as we placed the mixture to the grid, we rapidly realised that the board was absorbing all of the moisture from the cornflour, preventing it from remaining in a thick liquid consistency. To address this issue, we chose to back the honeycomb with acrylic instead.While this was far more effective in terms of preserving the original solution, the honeycomb structure itself had an arch to it, which we believe was caused by the laser cutter. This meant that unless the honeycomb was thoroughly secured to the acrylic substrate, the solution may become caught below the structure and additional solution would be necessary for the item to work properly.

Our group spent the remainder of the day being really productive since we understood what we wanted to achieve with our thought lab output. Niamh spent the day cutting out the cardboard she had previously painted to make a 1:25 model room. I scaled down the building's interior with fabric, cardboard, and foam using the same scale Niamh used.

Meanwhile, Joe began working on his sculpting figure. He began by padding out his building with newspaper, but discovered that it provided a foundation that was too weak to support the weight of the clay, so he switched to a tin foil base instead.

Presentation

This presentation outlines our lab's goals, objectives, and research. as well as the meaning of our work.

[niamhsdigitallab]

Week 10~ Digital Lab

(Tuesday)

Our morning session brought another group roundup/ presentation of where we were in our creative process.

We then continued on with our projects once again. Since the iron filings had arrived and I knew Joe would be going down to the workshop to get our honeycomb grid cut out with the laser cutter, I brought cornflour with me to the studio. While he was down there, I started to create different consistencies of the cornflour and water mixture we had discussed using to suspend the iron filings. I found the most successful ratio to be two heaped tablespoons of corn flour to approximately 4 tablespoons of water. When Joe had arrived back, we then set out to make some prototypes before we tried creating our final outcome for the materials lab. We initially used a hot glue gun to seal the sides of the honeycomb onto a cardboard backing. This first attempt wasn't successful as once we added the mixture to the grid, we quickly became aware of the face that the board was absorbing all of the moisture from the cornflour, preventing it from remaining in a thick liquid consistency. To combat this issue, we then decided to use some acrylic to back the honeycomb instead. while this was a lot more successful in terms of keeping the solution as it is originally, the honeycomb structure itself had an arch to it which we suppose was from being cut out with the laser cutter. This meant unless the honeycomb was completely secured to the acrylic backing, the solution had the possibility of getting stuck underneath the structure and more solution would be required for the object to function how we intended it to.

(Wednesday)

For the first time, I decided to come into the studio on the Wednesday in order to get a head start on the practical side of our thought lab outcome. I spent the day painting corrugated card white and then using black paint to create splattered accents that would create a sense of "wallpaper". I then left these to dry so that they were ready for our session on Friday.

(Friday)

The extract for the week was from "New Dark Age" and was based on consumerism and how the algorithm works with technology these days. I related to this text in the way that the author was speaking on how children are affected by unboxing videos on YouTube. Personally, I enjoy this type of video, specifically those of unboxing technology such as iPad/ iPhones and gaming consoles as there is a satisfying element to this genre of video as aesthetics are the main focus. It did however surprise me how popular this type of video was as I learnt many different videos would be classed as a "surprise unboxing" video.

Our group spent the rest of the day being very productive as we knew what our end goal was with our thought lab outcome. I spent the day cutting out the cardboard that I had previously painted to create a room of 1:25 scale. I used the hot glue gun to bond all of the components together. Muki made the contents of the building to the same scale using fabric, cardboard and foam. Meanwhile, Joe made a start on his sculpture figure. At first, he used newspaper to pad out his structure but found that it created a foundation that was too weak to hold the weight of the clay so opted for a tin foil base instead. Here are some images of what we had by the end of the day:

[idraw-ulook]

More weapon upgrades.

[thecreaturecodex]

Dinosaur Tank

Image © Tsubaraya Studios, accessed at the Ultraman Wiki here

[The 700 Kilometer Run! is one of the worst episodes of Ultraseven. The aliens have no personalities and the plot makes no sense. One of the characters, Amagi, is suddenly deathly afraid of explosives, which is a problem because the team transporting a deadly explosive cross country under the cover of a motorcycle race. This despite the fact that the character had been shown blithely setting and detonating charges like three episodes previously, and the fear is never brought up before or after this episode. And the “plan” to “cure” his phobia is basically to traumatize him into thinking he’s about to die in a fiery explosion, only he doesn’t. It’s terrible. And then, with five minutes left in the episode and the aliens seemingly defeated, they unleash their secret weapon: Dinosaur Tank! And suddenly it’s still stupid, but much more charming. A legless dinosaur bolted to a tank is the exact kind of creature design you’d expect a creative eight year old to come up with, and his fight is one of the better ones in the series.

Although Dinosaur Tank never appeared in any Ultra TV series since then, he’s a common presence in the tie-in video games. Probably because he’s easy to render. My statistics are a hybrid between the giganotosaurus and the annihilator robot. The biggest addition was the trip/crushing trample combo, which is based on his tactics in the TV show. I was somewhat vague about his origins in the flavor text below, because I try to keep that Pathfinder Lite. In Paizo’s canon, I’d say that Dinosaur Tank was built by the crew of the Divinity (or their mad AI Unity), using a dinosaur collected from Castrovel. He’d make an excellent bonus boss for the Iron Gods campaign.]

Dinosaur Tank CR 20 LE Magical Beast This creature resembles a great carnivorous dinosaur riding atop some mechanical conveyance. It has no legs, merely a grid of metallic panels where its hips should be, fusing it to its metal lower half.

Dinosaur Tank is something of an enigma. Created generations ago using robotics to augment a giant dinosaur, Dinosaur Tank combines prehistoric savagery with futuristic technology. He has little personality or purpose aside from killing, but is capable of entering a period of dormancy when his cruel masters have no need for his services. Dinosaur Tank might be able to eventually escape from bondage and strike out on his own, but countless years of conditioning and cruelty have warped his rudimentary intelligence and left him truly evil.

In combat, Dinosaur Tank combines crushing blows with his natural weapons with fire from three cannons fitted to his wheeled chassis. He can also fire plasma beams from his eyes, and uses these to soften up enemies at a distance. Something of a sadist, his favorite strategy is to knock enemies over with his tail, and then run them down under his treads when they try to get back up. Brave to the point of self-destruction, Dinosaur Tank only retreats from the field of battle if ordered to.

Dinosaur Tank       CR 20 XP 307,200 LE Colossal magical beast Init +6; Senses darkvision 120 ft., low-light vision, Perception +26 Defense AC 35, touch 4, flat-footed 33 (-8 size, +2 Dex, +31 natural) hp 342 (21d10+147 plus 80) Fort +19, Ref +14, Will +11; +4 vs. death effects, mind-influencing effects Immune ability damage, ability drain, disease, emotion, paralysis, poison, sleep, stunning Defensive Abilities constructed, ferocity, hardness 15, stability; Weakness constructed Offense Speed 50 ft. Melee bite +29 (4d6+16/19-20 plus grab), 2 claws +29 (1d6+16), tail slap +27 (2d8+24 plus trip) Ranged 3 integrated chain guns +16 touch (8d8/x4) Space 30 ft.; Reach 30 ft. (15 ft. with claws) Special Attacks adamant fittings, beam gaze, combined arms, crushing trample, powerful blows (tail), suppressing fire, swallow whole (3d8+16 bludgeoning, AC 25, 34 hp), trample (4d6+24, Ref DC 36) Statistics Str 42, Dex 15, Con 25, Int 6, Wis 15, Cha 10 Base Atk +21; CMB +45; CMD 57 (61 vs. trip, overrun, bull rush) Feats Critical Focus, Improved Critical (bite), Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Multiattack, Point Blank Shot, Power Attack, Precise Shot, Staggering Critical, Stunning Critical, Weapon Focus (chain gun) Skills Perception + 26 Languages Androffan SQ all-terrain Ecology Environment any land Organization unique Treasure standard Special Abilities Adamant Fittings (Ex) Dinosaur Tank’s bite and claw attacks overcome damage reduction as if they were adamantine. All-Terrain (Ex) Dinosaur Tank ignore difficult terrain from any mundane material, such as undergrowth, water, mud or sand. He treats boulders, trees and other large obstacles as difficult terrain, dealing damage to them as if using his trample attack as he moves through them. Beam Gaze (Ex) Once every 3 rounds, Dinosaur Tank can fire two beams of plasma from his eyes. Each beam deals 24d8 points of damage in a 200 foot line—half of this damage is fire, half is electricity (Reflex DC 27 half). A creature caught in both beams does not take double damage, but suffers a -4 penalty to its Reflex save. The save DC is Constitution based. Chain Guns (Ex) Dinosaur Tank has three chain guns, which are treated as advanced firearms with a range increment of 200 feet. Dinosaur Tank can process scrap metal into ammunition, and so never runs out of ammo. Combined Arms (Ex) Dinosaur Tank can use his ranged and melee natural weapons simultaneously when making a full attack. When he does so, he treats all of his natural weapons as secondary attacks. Constructed (Ex) Dinosaur Tank is a cyborg, granting him some of the defenses of constructs. He is immune to ability damage and drain, disease, paralysis, poison and sleep effects, as well as to all emotion effects except for those that incite rage, anger or hatred. He gains a +4 racial bonus on all saving throws against death effects and mind-influencing effects. He also gains bonus hit points as a construct of his size. Dinosaur Tank is treated as both a magical beast and a construct for the purposes of spells and effects that rely on creature type. Crushing Trample (Ex) Dinosaur Tank deals double damage to prone foes using his trample ability. Stability (Ex) Dinosaur Tank gains a +4 racial bonus to his CMD against forced movement as long as he is on solid ground. Suppressing Fire (Ex) As a standard action, Dinosaur Tank may use his chain guns to make a single chain gun attack against all enemies in a 120 foot cone.