#THINGS TO NOTE: the secret projects are a part of a larger collaborative work which is why i wont reveal info on them

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO “The Verdict.”

Put a lot of work into this, and now its approaching a close. I hope you all enjoy.

Again thank discord member Eddi for writing the experimental logs and coming up with the scientists names. I hope you especially enjoy what I have done with your work. I really appreciate it, and was super excited to collaborate on a work.

WARNING: Not really any violence in this one, but it does mention drugs, and suicide, so viewer discretion is advised. 

“Are you alright?”

Adam barely heard the question eyes wide and watching as the lights glowed down from overhead inside the sterile, white marbled courtroom.

“Adam?’

He blinked and looked up, turning his head to stare at Admiral Kelly who sat at his side, a hand resting on his shoulder, “Did you hear me?”

“Sorry,, I’m fine.’

She went quiet, eyes narrowed in concern clearly not entirely believing him when he said he was alright, but having no proof otherwise. He had to take a moment to think about it himself, and determined that….. He did feel fine. In fact, he felt better than he had earlier. His palms were no longer sweating and his breathing was coming in a normal, even rhythm. 

He was alright, he was going to be ok.

“The prosecution calls Dr. Wilkenson to the stand.”

Adam lifted his head in surprise, eyes narrowing as the slim man took to his feet, nervously adjusting his tie and his glasses in turn before making his way to the witness stand. This was one of the men who had helped to design the steel eye project.

“Dr Wilkenson, do you mind reading for us, the words that you wrote regarding the Steel Eye project.”

The man was handed a piece of paper, and he nodded it, taking it into his hands before clearing his throat. 

Experimental log #1

I am shocked at the extent to which my ‘colleagues’ are willing to go for greater heights of recognition and achieving their goals. I am attempting to either reduce the pain subjects feel or in some way reduce the reliance on addictive painkillers. I fear however this will all avail naught. The pain induced by the interface itself means that one would have to redesign the entire system. To keep my superiors happy I will also be conducting movement tests. 

-Recording break-

The tests went as well as expected, The soldiers who have volunteered are unresponsive and lethargic when they are wearing the full suit, this is likely to the immense amount of suppressive painkillers they are on. A mixture of fentanyl and Carfentanil, A mixture I would expect to find in painkillers for a horse or even small elephant. I am advising the introduction of a stimulant. However I am also voicing concerns over such a thing as the level of stimulants needed would be far higher than is safe. 

“You seem to have had some doubts about the Steel eye project, Doctor.”

The man nodded, fidgeting with his glasses again, “I did…. Due to ethical concerns. I felt that the testnng was moving to quickly, and I also felt that the introduction of such potent medications would also be an ethical violation. As I worded in my original log, I felt that the dosages required to keep someone functional while wearing the Steel eye suit were well beyond reasonable.”

The lawyer shifted slightly on their feet, “Tell me doctor, why -- after you quite-- did you not bring these ethical violations forward to the proper authorities?”

The doctor shifted nervously, “I would have liked to, counselor, but -- before entering the project-- i signed a top secret nondisclosure agreement that stated: were I to introduct this information to any outside source, that I would be jailed for the rest of my life….” he looked down at his feet, “Obviously, now I regret deeply not having the courage to come forward and say something sooner. 

Audio visual log transcript.

The researcher, confirmed to be Dr.Wilkinson approaches the test subject, attempting to wake them in various gentle manners before finally slapping them with an open palm. Once awoken and adjustments to the drug intake are made by Dr. Wilkinson which resulted in protests from the subject. The subject is encouraged to run laps on a large track which is timed by Dr. Wilkinson. After Which the doctor assists the subject out of the suit and hands him over to a medical worker who seems to have been held on standby. 

The lawyer cleared her throat, reading.

Observers note: 

It is to be mentioned to the Commission that Dr Wilkinson was sworn to secrecy and required to sign the statute of secrets until such a time the information was brought to light in any manner other than his own actions. Additionally Dr Wilkinson took part in the development of the Iron Eye project and was a vocal proponent of non-human test subjects and ensuring the users were as safe and stable as possible. 

“We are not on trial here today for the actions of Dr. Wilkenson who has agreed to testify for the prosecution in exchange for immunity against legal action. We are, however, here to discuss the actions of those scientists who continued on with the steel eye project long after it became clear that there were ethical concerns, and that those ethical concerns were being routinely and blatantly violated.”

The prosecution shifted again, hands gripping the lectern, “The prosecution would like to present experimental log 3 for evidence.” 

Experimental log #3

After reviewing James’s experimental logs and the currently used painkillers and suppressants the current stimulants suggested caffeine and amphetamine. It has been decided that the stimulants lack a level of strength to provide combat effective units. Thus the upcoming experiment will be focused on achieving the right cocktail of drugs to provide optimum combat functionality. The tested stimulants will be mixtures I have personally developed and calculated. As well as commercially available and recommended mixtures that James developed.

-Recording break- 

As expected the mixtures that James developed did not aid in any manner and testing with those ceased after the first failure. The recommended mixtures are only marginally better. I have discovered however, to no shock, that my own mixtures are highly functional. Proceeding forwards, We will be making use of mixture 22c. 

Audiovisual log transcript:

Several volunteers stood in a line in prototype Steel-eye suits, each seeming to be asleep. The researcher stops by each of them to place a second vial of chemicals in the drug port. The first subject seems not to react beyond several flickerings of the eyes and a pained moan. In response to this the researcher dumps several un-tested vials in to a large plastic bucket with ‘Failed’ on it in sharpie. The next few subjects react somewhat more, becoming semi verbal and looking round, however they are still lethargic an slow. Only responding in half words or gestures. The researcher dumps several more untested vials in to the ‘Failed’ bucket. The final few volunteers however become far more alert and aggressive, moving round, pushing each other and joking. The researcher struggles to persuade them out of the suits and is eventually forced to deactivate the suits by removing the power supply cables. 

Observers note:

Mixture 22c appears to be a mixture of methamphetamines and cocaine. There also appears to be an addition of Dimethyl sulfoxide which increases the absorption rate of the drugs but also removes the requirement for precision with the needle insertion allowing for a larger needle to be used to increase drug delivery dosage. 

The court room was silent, silent as the lawyer turned to look at the assembled audience and then back at the judges, “Methamphetamine…. And cocaine, two drugs known to be ‘highly’ addictive and grossly unethical. Drug experimentation on humans is strictly controlled by the EDA and that is ONLY involving the clinical use of newly discovered drugs. At this point it should be more than clear that the use of illicit drugs on unknowing test subjects in a developmental environment goes beyond gross negligence and into malicious tampering. Dr. Ayishat Abara has demonstrated great contempt for Dr. Wilkinsons moderate methods and gone on to produce a cocktail of drugs that is rarely found outside of crackhouses and meth labs. 

With a solemn expression, the lawyer turned to look at the rest of the crowd, “This is not even considering the long term effects and the psychological damage caused to the victims of Steel eye…. Which led many men and women to take their own lives. Experimental log 18 being the prosecution's next piece of evidence.” 

Experiment log #18

After extensive physical testing and further refining of the stimulant delivery system and mixtures of the stimulant and painkillers I have decided that it is suitable to move on to combat testing. The upcoming test will be a simple firearms test, I have requisitioned a modified 30mm rapid fire weapon that I feel will be suitable for use with the Steel Eye suit. This will be a live fire test. I have no intent on taking baby steps when such a project is due to draw such renown. 

-Recording break-

The subject was more than capable of using the weapon. Though seemed to lack the force of will to maintain its use for long. To combat this I will be including small amounts of ritalin as well as increasing the stimulant dosage. This should counteract the negative reactions exhibited by the test subject.

Audiovisual log transcript:

The subject is active and moving around the test area. Different to all the prior times, however the subject also seems to be on edge or hyper aware of something. The researcher wheels in a large caliber short barreled  automatic cannon Attaching it to the Steel eye suits arm and instructing the soldier on how to use it. After a few moments of instruction the subject seems comfortable and begins firing down rage at several targets, Displaying uncanny reaction speed and almost superhuman reflexes. This continued for several minutes, The subject however seems to grow more and more despondent and unresponsive as the tests go on. The researcher leaves the area for a short while seemingly to get more stimulants or ammunition. During the break the soldier places the short barreled against their own temple and discharges the weapon. This subject is registered as the test subject for the past 11 experiments. 

The entire room flinched and gasped. Adam felt his stomach churn again, but less to do with fear this time and more to do with pure disgust and horror. He looked away again as the recording shut off and the lawyer stood before the room for a long moment allowing the footage to sink into the minds of those in the courtroom, “This test subject, this man, Dakota McCallister was on his 11th time as a test subject when this footage was taken. After reviewing all of the testing logs with Dr. Gladstone, we have found no evidence that the subjects were monitored for mental health concerns. Additionally none of them were even screened before testing began. None of the men and women involved in the Steel eye project were ever referred for mental health testing before, during or after the experimentation was complete.”

Experimental log #23

I have discovered the most efficient way to motivate the subjects is to offer further testing time within the suit and increased dosages of the drugs used to suppress the side effects of wearing the suit. This has prevented further unwarranted self removal from the project as occurred in experiment eighteen. The upcoming test is the first live combat test. I have taken one of the subjects and isolated them for a few days, preventing use of the suit. They will be permitted to use the suit and instructed that if they wish to continue using it they will attack a target of my choosing.

-Recording Break- 

The experiment went far better than expected. The subject did not question the instructions given nor did they seem to show any lack of remorse for their actions. Short of a few further tests to ensure subjects can work together. Further testing is unwarranted. 

Audiovisual log transcript:

Within the test arena there is a single individual they appear to be a military volunteer. Missing a limb. Quite possibly a earlier subject from the Steel Eye testing. The subject is nervous and clearly unstable. The researcher enters, alongside the Steel eye testing unit. The subject of the steel eye seems to be hyper alert and jittery. The individual spots the Steel eye suit and panics, attempting to move away from it. The researcher indicates the individual to the subject and the subject charges the individual, striking them with the backhand of the suit. The individual is thrown across the testing area to impact against the far wall. The landing angle indicates not only a broken neck but several other lethal injuries, including a crushed skull. The researcher, seemingly satisfied provides the subject with a vial of some kind, And leaves the testing area. 

“Researchers and test subjects alike died during the experimentation, and yet the scientists did not stop.” She looks down at her notes, “The experiment went far better than expected? What is that even supposed to mean, you expected more people to die? YOu expected the test subject to be more unstable. Furthermore, the use of the suit and the drugs as a reward for the already unstable test subjects is a simple demonstration of how poorly this experiment was run and overseen. These ethical violations should never have begun much less allowed to continue.”

Discussion synopsis regarding further system problems.

The researchers confirm that all systems are working to their optimum capabilities given the research time and that they have done everything in their power to keep the subjects safe and healthy throughout the testing process and that no undue risk were taken. Dr Abara indicates disdain for Dr Wilkinson’s methods and suggests he be court marshalled for his attempted ‘sabotage’ of the project. This is dismissed by Admiral Ableman. Problems are mentioned regarding power sources and suggestions are raised including back pack mounted power units. This is eventually solved with Dr Nkosi suggests making use of injured soldiers and using the space where their limb would be to mount power packs. The next issue raised is the fact that the Steel Eye suit puts too much stress on soldiers in active combat scenarios as mentioned by Dr Abara stating that ‘subjects fell apart too fast.’  Again Dr Nkosi provides a solution by suggesting the use of augmetics. Dr Stein at this point provides a interface solution using the prosthetics. With all problems solved All relevant papers are handed over to the Admiral and Colonel for the production and shipping out of the combat capable Steel Eye suits.

The lawyer stood quietly before them, hands clasped at her front,  “Experimental testing lasted less than a decade. The pain of the interface was never fixed, and yet they sold it off to desperate UNSC officials in order to win the Drev war. Fifty men and women were subjected to implantation. Thirty of those are dead ten of those are permanently psychologically damaged. Five are still in treatment while five more are the only ones who manage to be functional and hold jobs. However,” She motioned towards Adam, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat, “We also see that -- even then, they are not exempt from psychological dysfunction, though they were never compensated.” She shuffled her papers, “The prosecution has no further comments at this time.” She turned and went back to her seat, pausing to sit and speak quietly with her partner for a moment as the judges deliberated.

Amidral Kelly learned over, “If that was no reasonable doubt, then I don’t know what is.”

Adam nodded, he was feeling pretty good about this all things told.”

Off on the other side of the room, the defence took to their feet. It seemed mostly as if their strategy was not getting their clients out of trouble but simply mitigating the punishments related to the crimes they HAD committed. He heard a lot of tripe and waffling about supposed loopholes in the system and about how they had WON the Drev war after all. There was even a couple arguments about how everyone there had signed an agreement to participate so it actually wasn’t all that bad.

The entire thing seemed as if it was going to be tied up in a neat little bag for them .

That was until.

“The defence would like to call Admiral Vir to the witness stand.”

He froze in palace eyes wide and looked around in confusion. Of course this was perfectly legal and in their  rights for them to do this, but he had no idea what they are going to ask. He stood slowly and made his way towards the witness stand staring at the defence as he took an uncomfortable seat on the wooden witness chair.

“ Admiral Vir, How old are you/”

He had to admit that he didn’t expect that question and paused for an unbelievable amount of time before answering, “Twenty six.”

“So young for an admiral.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

The prosecution stood, “Objection your honor, this information is irrelevant.”

“We will allow it.” The prosecution sat.

“And you are not currently taking any medications for your PTSD.”

“No, but I do have a service dog.”

“And do you receive metal evaluations often, as an admiral.”

He shifted in his seat not sure where this was going, and not liking it one bit, “Yes.”

“So you might say that it is safe to assume that the UNSC considers you mentally sound enough to command an entire armada of ships at the age of 26.”

“I…. yes.”

“Admiral, do you have any phobias.”

He swallowed hard unable to tell at all where this was going on, “No, councilor, I don’t.”

“Do you know anyone who does?”

“Yes, I have a friend who has claustrophobia.”

“And how does that person react in enclosed spaces.”

“They panic.”

“Do they actively seek out enclosed spaces, or do they avoid them?”

Adam shrugged, “They avoid them of course. They don’t even like elevators”

“Right, so it would be safe to say that if someone has trauma or panic related to a certain event or object, they would be likely to avoid that object or thing or association with that object at all costs.”

His hands had begun sweating again. A line of it trickled down the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades, “I would assume so.”

“Admiral Vir, would you please show the court your prosthetic leg.”

His hearing completely cut out and all there was was a loud ringing. He saw one of the defence object but then watched as the judges deny that defence.

He was ordered to stand out in front of the court.

His hearing came back slowly as, shaking hands pulled up his right pant leg.

“Admiral Vir, would you mind removing the prosthetic for us.”

He felt heat rising to the back of his neck and up onto his face. The defence argued for him, but it was no use. The Bailiff brought him a chair, and he nervously, and self consciously unstrapped the prosthetic with a soft snick, quickly moving to cover the injury. He felt about ten times smaller as he handed the prosthetic over to the Bailiff, paraded in front of the courtroom like some kind of freak show.

He tried not to think about it, keeping his chin high eyes staring straight forward.

“Please show the judges the serial number on the thigh.”

The Bailiff did as requested.

“Can you ready that out for us your honor, please.”

“SE490000.”

“Dr. Gladstone can you please examine this prosthetic and tell me what you see.”

Adam was held on standby as the doctor moved forward uncomfortably to examine the leg which the bailiff was holding, “It…. is a modified bioprosthetic with Drev Chitin, I don’t…”

“And who would you say was the manufacturer?”

The man paused before his eyes widened slowly, “This…. This is-” he looked up, “This is a steel eye prosthetic.”

There was silence in the courtroom.

“Thank you Dr. Gladstone.” The defence motioned the Bailiff to return the leg to Adam, who strapped it on with still-shaking hands.

“ Admiral Vir,  the defence requests that you remove your uniform jacket. If you would be more comfortable that can be done in privacy of course.”

Adam stared at them in confusion. The prosecution stood to argue again, but again were denied.

“Would you like to step into the back room admiral?”

Running on autopilot he shook his head probably having preferred some privacy but being far too confused to actually request it.

He stood and slowly unbuttoned the front of his uniform jacket, staring with the high neck collar and then down either side.

He handed the jacket the the Bailiff, who held it form him.

He stood now in only a white undershirt.

“Admiral please turn around and hold your arms out to the side.”

He did as told.

The room muttered softly.

“Dr. Wilkenson, do you recognize those.”

From behind him, adam heard the weak response, “Those are iron eye interface ports.”

“Thank you admiral, you may put your jacket back on.”

He did as ordered feeling his neck and face turn hot red as he took his seat back on the stand.”

“Admiral, if steel eye had such a negative effect on you, then why would you be wearing a steel eye prosthetic and iron eye interface ports. Wouldn’t those exacerbate your condition.”

He opened and closed his mouth.

The prosecution stood, “Objection your honor, Admiral Vir is not the one on trial here, and this is humiliation.”

“Sit down, council.” The defence was looking rather smug, “presenting to the court footage from the Burg war on the Gromm homeworld.”

Adam’s head was filled with the sound of screaming and gunshots. The camera he was watching through was shaky and jostled this wa and that as the figure ran. Up ahead a massive bubble of force dominates the skyline and hundreds of borg ships swarmed around its top like an eruption of bees.

Drev and other marines ran up and beside, and just ahead of that.

He saw a familiar figure.

He saw himself.

Running at the front of the group. Even over the sound of the screaming and the gunfire he could hear the repetitive hydraulic hiss and whirring of the servo motors as the steel eye suit spurred him to impossible speeds. The Steel eye prosthetic hissed the loudest as he was propelled over the ground.

His heart began to beat faster and faster inside his chest, lines of sweat poured down his back and the halo of lights overhead was growing as if to encompass his vision. He felt sick and dizzy all at once, feeling as if he was tiling sideways and going to fall over. He watched as the image of him ran headfirst into a burg, grabbed it by its slimy centipede limbs…. And ripped it apart. His vision blurred and his ears were ringing.

Muffled gasps filled the court.

He gripped the sides of his chair willing himself to stay in reality, to not pass out or be sucked into some horrific sort of flashback.

He wanted to throw up.

The ringing in his ears only stopped a few minutes later with the Bailiff gently shaking his shoulder.

“Admiral.”

He sat up straighter, his hearing still muffled, but at least he could see.

“Admiral, why did you put on the suit again if it had such damaging effects on you the first time.” “I…. It… i... “ He continued to stammer for a moment before stopping and taking a deep breath, “I thought it was the only way. I put on the suit because I thought if I didn’t than I was forfeiting earth to the Burg, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.” “And how would you describe wearing the suit.”

His heart was thundering in his ears. He felt like he was going to fall over, to be sick. Phantom shots of pain ran up and down his spine. He was shaking so badly he wondered if the entire courtroom could see it, “Indescribable pain….”

“But you didn’t tear it off.”

Soft, “No.”

“So, despite the alleged trauma that the Steel eye project caused you, you wear a steel eye prosthetic, iron eye interfaces, and you have even put on the steeleye suit a second time…. Based on those actions, it hardly seems like the behavior of someone who has received laying trauma from the Steel eye project. Could it be, that your PTSD stems from the war itself and not from the Steel eye project.”

His mouth opened and then closed. His ears were still ringing, and it was hard to think around.

No matter how hard he tried he couldn't seem to put two thoughts together. Even his internal monologue had gone silent. 

“Admiral, please answer the question.”

That was when another side of him reared its head. Where the soft squishy 26 year old manchild could not answer the question, there was someone else there t pick up his pieces.”

The admiral, and the Veterin, and the Drev Sentinel,and the warrior stepped into his palace.

His hearing cleared very suddenly and he sat up turning his gaze on the defence.

The targeting system in his prosthetic eye snapped into focus placing the radicals just over the lawyers face.’

“Council, I can see that you are attempting to undermine my claim of PTSD related to the steel eye project to mitigate the lasting effects of the trauma on my person. Based on your argument, I would never have put on the prosthetic or the suit had it caused as much harm to me as I claim. I will have you know, however, that the leg was a gift from a Drev soldier following the war as a gesture of peace taken, discarded from the battlefield and modified. That leg later went on to save my life as it adopted me into the Drev clan. It is an everyday reminder of the war, and the things I lost. It took me months to be able to wear it for what it was -- as a gift-- rather than a reminder of the war. As for the Burg war, I have made mistakes in my time and that was one of them. THe Steel eye suit is a drug, and no matter how much one hates it you always want to come back. That feeling of power, being ten times stronger than you should be, it's like being a god, It is everything you hate and love all in one, and yes I was in ‘debilitating pain’ but i kept going because I  thought at that time it was the only way to save the universe.’ He leaned forward in his seat, “So the next time I am lying in the dark prone in the fetal position because one of the pipes on my ship accidentally made a hissing noise, I will take a moment to think about whether it was te steeleye project or the war.” 

His voice did not quiver or break, and instead of feeling small, he could imagine the defence shrinking slightly at his words, whose volume had never raised. 

“You may take your seat admiral.”

He did as told again straight backed and unmoved by the eyes that stared at him.

Admiral Kelly was staring at him as he took his seat, but he didn’t acknowledge her.

Thedefence  brought forward a few more points crosse examining Dr. Wilkenson before the prosecution stepped forward again.

 “The prosecution would now like to call expert witness Dr. Lemar Dedtric to the stand.”

There was some shuffling for a few moments as another man stood from he crowd and walked forward taking his seat and sworn to truth  before the eyes of the court.

“Dr. Dedric, tell us a little of your credentials here today.”

The man nodded, “For the past twenty years, I have headed the  leading psychiatric foundation at the University of Northern Mericanda. I have practiced psychiatry for those same twenty years, published over 100 papers and founded more than twenty psychological foundations for veterans. At the university level I focus primarily on Post Traumatic Stress as related to combat with a secondary focus on the psychological effects of biotechnology implantation.” “And you also reviewed this case like Dr. Gladstone?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And do you believe that there were any psychological effects related to the use of the Steel eye suits on these men and women?”

He nodded, “Most certainly. I think the admiral explained it most clearly when he described the steel eye suit as a drug. As we know, Upgrade addiction was recently added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental illness last march. Studies that led to the institution of this particular illness found that subjects who were exposed to extreme bio interfacing where more likely to continue adding interfaces as time went on. When asked the subjects reported that their desire to augment came from the feeling of power the interface gave them. The steel eye subjects, based on the notes presented in court indicate a proclivity to going back to the project or something similar despite degrading mental health.”

“The prosecution would like to present video testimony from a few of the remaining steel eye operatives.”

With these testimonies, the case lasted well into the day, and far into the night before court was adjourned and reschedule fo the following day. He slept as if in a haze nad returned early to listen to the rest of the cross examination He was called up multiple times for both sides, but never cracked once during that time. It was as if he was watching himself from the outside.

The defence never called up their own people to the stand, and were likely not going to call them up at all.

That was fine by him.

And then finally, mercifully the judges stepped off into the deliberation chambers staying there for a good half of the day before everyone was called back.

“After much deliberation the Geneva court has come to a verdict….. A verdict. A verdict of guilt on all charges which includes the maximum sentence of life in the Turma maximum security prison facility on multiple counts of Torture, mltiple counts of manslaughter, and multiple counts of gross ethical violation, Court Dismissed.”

Adam sighed sinking back in his seat to stare up at the ceiling.

What a long day this had been.

But at least now it was over

[elmidol]

Error: Program Not Found - Thirteen

Summary:  You are in charge of programming the droids that work most closely with both General Hux and Kylo Ren. Unbeknownst to you, each of these two men have it in their heads that your relationship extends beyond the workplace. This causes things to escalate quickly when your two apparently secret boyfriends compare notes on their respective partner who is far too similar for their liking.

Read on AO3 

“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.” - George Bernard Shaw

 Thirteen: Inspirational

 The senator’s arrival had managed to squash your otherwise good mood, and it was the knowledge that you would not be required to approach him until the following morning that kept you from feeling utterly miserable. That as well as the messages that had been delivered to your inbox by Anonymous and Unknown. You worked to unveil which of the identities was Kylo Ren and which was General Hux to no avail. Their similarities were more pronounced in their writing than when conversing with either man in person. This was to be expected given how the written word worked. Droids became less individualized when you were staring at their lines of coding; it was the limitation of relying on the surface of things, the absence of body language to highlight the quirks and unspoken thoughts. Kylo Ren and General Hux were closed off, private, mistrustful.

 Both had sent word of the senator having come to the planet, which led you to believe that they were not in league with one another--unless they were trying to throw you off their scent. It was difficult for you to picture them collaborating together on something of this nature, except in the case where they would make it into a competition. Your lips quirked to the side at that thought. There was something primal about two men fighting over you that made you feel desirable. A little like a piece of meat as well, a sort of trophy. The lack of physical damage to one another saved you from disliking the position you were in. To top it off, it was better to focus on them than your impending interactions with the senator. You still had to determine which aspects of the physical therapy droids that you wanted to share. Leaking too much information could very well result in your idea being stolen.

 With a sigh, you settled back against the pillow and opened one of the new messages that were waiting for you in the inbox. Stress melted away from you with revelation that the message itself was little more than a picture; underneath it was the title of the painting. It was from a local artist that, from what you could recall, was growing in prominence. Depicted was a female humanoid so concealed in luxurious silks and gems that you could not properly note her species. Only her eyes stuck out, lovely things that they were. You were drawn to peer into those depths, which were lifelike. Your breath stilled in your chest as you scanned the entire painting to appreciate all its details. The sender of this message had been Unknown, and you wondered how best to respond to him. It might be that he was a connoisseur of arts or else this one piece had somehow managed to catch his attention.

 You debated for a few moments longer before typing up a line of gratitude that preceded a question as to whether he enjoyed many paintings and, if so, who his favorite artist was. It did not matter the identity of the man at that point; you simply wished to know more about him, what it was that had led him to enjoy the painting enough to send it to you.

 After clicking send on your response to the painting, you returned to the inbox and opened a new message from Anonymous. This correspondence was entirely text-based yet no less artistic.

 To stand upon the hightest tower of Coruscant,

You will miss the brightest land verdant;

The durasteel walls tighten like a cage around you,

Unlike the open halls found on Naboo;

Yet across the skies that they share are the stars above,

Here I pray, though apart, you feel my love.

 You discovered that your mind was piecing together popular images from both planets and arranging them so that they stood in juxtaposition to each other. The fields of Naboo that Coruscant could not boast, the fresh air of the former planet as well. Yet Coruscant had its own beauty amongst those durasteel towers and the pollutants that was known to partner itself with city life. Loveliness in the chaos. You pictured two lonely souls staring up into the sky. Each person on a different planet, longing for more, for one another. A sadness threatened to creep over you. What if, in the end, the two lovers did not meet?

 Shaking your head, you shoved aside that line of negative thinking then grunted in response to Aelin asking if you were fine. He was laying on his bed with both hands atop his stomach. If not for his presence, you might have ventured to pursue a different topic of conversation with the two men messaging you. It had been awkward enough during the last portion of your meal when it had dawned on you that the sexually charged flirtations had occurred in front of Aelin. For his part, he had ignored it as much as he could.

 You chewed on your bottom lip as you started your reply to the poem. Though it had instilled a sense of melancholy, the hopefulness of the words had stuck out as well and left you with an appreciation of the piece. Like with the painting, you wondered what it was about the poem that had caught the sender’s attention and also if they read poetry on a more regular basis. The message read similar to the one that you had sent to Unknown, with necessary changes to better suit the poem.

 You rather enjoyed that the two men held an interest in the arts in some form or another. It set aside the role they played in the looming war that would break out once the First Order was in a better position to take charge. This more human face that you could glimpse behind the safety of a screen helped you to feel less alone. The knowledge that hidden parts within each person were held private for a reason; it reminded you of the droids you had worked on. Lines of code that most would never see despite their importance in the grand scheme of things. Those lines aided in dictating what actions the individual would commit to.

 “You’re smiling again,” Aelin muttered, not unkindly. You rolled your eyes though you felt your grin widening in spite of the audience you had obtained with the expression. “Is it work related? I’m curious.”

 “No, it is not work related,” you said, turning your head and meeting his gaze. His countenance betrayed nothing if he was suspicious of your actions beyond idle curiosity. The decision to alter the course of the conversation before that had a chance to change prompted: "Do you think I should include mentions of the anti procrastination droids as well?"

 Aelin's features twisted, contorting and scrunching as he considered the question. There was merit in revealing that a variety of projects were underway; the senator might be more apt to provide more credits. On the reverse, it spiraled back to ideas being stolen and also could result in him pushing to discuss all projects to include the assassination droids. You half wished that TeeArr was present to aid in distracting the senator despite being fully aware that he would have had the complete opposite effect. While he was continuing to internally debate, you heard the tell-tale sounds of two messages arriving, one a few seconds after the first.

 Though you had messaged him second, Anonymous had been the first one to send a reply. You opened it without reading. Aelin had begun to speak at that same moment. “I would hold onto that information in case he presses to talk about the assassination droids after you’ve already spoken of the physical therapy ones. Gives you another means of changing the subject and putting emphasis on this particular project since it encompasses both droids.” He stifled a yawn with one hand. “Mm. Do you mind if I watch a holodrama?”

 “Thank you,” you said. “And no--go right ahead. I won’t bother me.” You quite welcomed the distraction that Aelin would be offered by the holodrama, whichever one he happened to select. This gave you a semblance of privacy, a lower risk of him noticing the way your expressions altered as you read the messages you received.

 The program Aelin selected was older and you were vaguely familiar with the storyline though you had not watched it yourself. Once he was more immersed in that, you returned your attention to the datapad in your hand and the message displayed thereupon.

 Anonymous: [It is an older poem that I was taught as a part of my education. The senator may be familiar with it should you require material necessary to dissuade him from lingering too long on droids as a subject matter. He will enjoy hearing himself talk.]

 For another time you felt your face breaking out into a smile that was filled to the brim with amusement. He had only half answered your questions, however you were not disappointed. It was thoughtful for him to have done this, and truth be told you had not considered going this route with the senator. This was not entirely surprising given the fact that you had not had much experience one-on-one interacting with senators or other politicians for that matter. Such business was conducted in larger groups, not dissimilar to when  you presented potential projects to the Board at the First Order.

 Music filtered into your musings as the holodrama Aelin watched droned on. Instead of responding to the message from Anonymous, you switched over to the reply that Unknown  had sent.

 Unknown: [Do you know the story behind this painting?]

 Once more, not a proper reply to the questions that you had sent. With a shrug, you composed a brief message stating that you did not along with a nudge that you were now more curious about it. After sending this, you returned to the message from Anonymous to thank him for being considerate and attentive to your needs.

 Unknown: [The artist stated that she is a spectre, a ghost from his past that he saw on three separate occasions. The night before his mother’s passing. A day after his childhood friend left the planet and never returned. The final occurrence was during his graduation from school.]

 You stared at the message without reacting for a beat. Then your eyes narrowed and you found yourself unsure if this meant the woman was an omen for tragedy or success. Was she just some figment of the artist’s imagination. No matter the case, it hit you that Unknown truly was, at least somewhat, invested in this particular painting. To know its history as he did, to have the desire to share it. That was personal. You set aside your datapad and laid down while staring up at the ceiling. These men were going to give you an existential crisis.

 After dozing off for a stretch, you quietly slipped off the bed and entered the bathroom with a bundle of fresh clothing to ensure that you looked more presentable when meeting with the senator. The reflection in the mirror showed subtle signs of exhaustion, albeit nothing beyond what was expected with how life had been proceeding. You wanted to get a headstart on the man you were to meet with as a means of gaining the upper hand. Part of that included taking care of your basic needs before he was out of bed. Prior to exiting the room, you checked your datapad for any new messages yet found nothing of note. Aelin was lightly snoring, nothing obnoxious or that would have wakened you had you not already been up and moving.

 One the items on your to-do list was to purchase food for breakfast given the fact that you had already agreed to do so. Aelin had already given his order, which you had memorized, and you were willing to pay the extra credits to have the meal delivered at a specified time. You grabbed something small for yourself as well. It had been dark out when you had first left the building in which you were staying; one of the stormtroopers escorted you, and the two of you watched the sunrise in a shared silence. You were not yet sure if the stormtrooper would remain with you once you encountered the senator. A part of you did not mind the idea. Another part of you knew that it would be more difficult to make the meeting seem happenstance instead of premeditated. In the end you did not have to worry; returning indoors had been enough for the stormtrooper to break away from you and resume his previous post.

 The lull in activity offered the opportunity to digest the fact that neither Anonymous nor Unknown had sent more messages. You took into consideration the fact that they might have been aiming to not overwhelm you since the both of them were aware of the senator. Plus, you thought after a second, Aelin’s presence might deter them. You smiled a little at that, recalling the thrill you had felt when racing against the clock as you masturbated. Their behavior during the meal was just as exhilarating. Your mind began to race through scenarios wherein you found yourself alone with one of them. Would they kiss you? With no one watching, would they touch you? Your face heated up at the memory of the message that had been sent regarding you being fucked in front of others during the meeting.

 What if both of them had you? One of them inside of your cunt and the other in your mouth? “Ah!” You yelped out a swear at the sound. Turning, you spotted the speaker. The senator was escorted by one of his guards and accompanied by a single advisor. The small entourage caused you to inwardly groan. This was something that you had expected, however it did not make you any less annoyed; having the senator one-on-one would be less taxing. “I did not mean to startle you.” There was a slight purr to his voice that you had heard in the past whenever he felt he was in control of the situation. This, naturally, put you into the exact position you wanted to be in: on his good side.

 You placed a hand over your chest to feign a more exaggerated rattled state than what you were truly in. “Sorry, I did not mean to swear like that.” The best way to go about this conversation was to rely predominantly on truths. He shook his head and took a step nearer to you. “I was hoping to find you, actually.” You worked through ways to seem submissive simultaneous to taking charge. The man’s advisor was frowning, his eyes pinched halfway closed as he glowered at you in suspicion. You jerked your gaze away from his then chewed on your bottom lip before speaking again. “It stuck with me, your interest in the...thing we discussed in the previous meeting.”

 “Oh?”

 “Mm,” you hummed with a nod. “That one is a bit ways off, what with needing proper programming and trial periods. I hope that is not disappointing.” The senator and advisor shared a look. His guard was generally unresponsive to anything that did not involve fulfilling his duty. This was enough to increase your pre-existing suspicions that he had sought out others for the droid series. You inwardly bristled while outwardly you maintained a calm facade. Kylo Ren’s words echoed in your head, the permission he had given you to lie. “Thankfully we hold the appropriate patents to dissuade others from pursuing a similar model.”

 Both were frowning, frustration blossoming on the advisor’s face while the senator appeared more angry than anything. You waved a hand in the air dismissively. “That is beside the point. I just wanted to thank you for the vote of confidence in the project and for your secrecy.”

 Maker, I am bored talking to this man. Your mind kept drifting back to the thoughts that had taken residence directly before his approach. Until this point, you had not realized just how much you wanted physical intimacy. Or even just sex, take away any other element that might exist. Your mind circled back to intimacy, however, and the poem that had been sent to you along with the art. It was the poem that you mentioned as a means of breaking up the silent conversation that had been transpiring between senator and advisor while you had been distracted by your reverie. You wanted to keep the physical assistant droids as an Ace up your sleeve during the meeting. You would still not put it past the man to mention the TR8-0R droids, more so now that he believed his plans to go around the First Order were compromised. Sex really would be preferable to this.

 Introducing the poem had a powerful impact. The senator pulled away from his advisor with a soft smile that you had never witnessed on his countenance before. You were tugged away from your negative line of thinking. As tantalizing as sex was, you realized that these interactions could translate into your future conversations with General Hux and Kylo Ren. Shift away from business, leave behind work, and focus on something that others would think trivial. A poem of all things, which was evocative of countless emotions. You had been handed a weapon, albeit not one to harm others. One that was a key of sorts. The senator could not duck away from any questions you posed his way as easily as Anonymous and Unknown had; there was no screen for him to hide behind.

 Relaxing into the conversation, you listened as the senator began to speak in a more animated, less haughty fashion than he was wont to do. Though you heard everything that he said, some portions were not committed to memory. Your mind drifted in places. You remembered the conversation that you had had with Kylo Ren in the training area. How personal that had been, how it had led to the kiss. Next your encounter with General Hux.

 Armitage and Kylo… Both, truly, were the woman in the painting; elusive, puzzles you could not figure out.  What did they represent for your personal life?

 “There was a sister poem to that one,” the senator said, drawing you out of your thoughts for another time. His advisor lingered several steps behind, your small party having started to walk through the hallway. “It compared Arkanis and Tatooine.” A desert and a planet that rained so frequently. You felt your smile widen at that. This glimpse into a side of the senator that you had not known existed was humbling. It reminded you that you saw only portions of people. This was precisely how you had missed the fact that General Hux and Kylo Ren had each believed themselves to be involved with you.

 I need to speak with them one-on-one in a setting that isn’t...a ship or a base… I need to use this time wisely. Lunch and maybe dinner. Or between meals.

 “Was the poem with Arkanis written first?” You recalled that this was the birth planet of Armitage Hux, and you were curious if he knew of the poem. If he knew of either of the poems; it was again driving you crazy to not know which man was Anonymous and which was Unknown. Simply more motivation to get them by themselves.

 The senator held up a hand haplessly. “I am afraid there are contradicting statements on that.” So much less pompous. The less time he spent conferring with his advisor, the more you enjoyed his company. Maker above, you hated politics. “I do know that the poet is said to have been related to a Jedi.”

 Kylo then? He would know more of that, wouldn’t he? Except...the Jedi were involved in politics. You ran your tongue along your lips. “I think I am going to have to do some more research.” He chuckled then suggested the title to a book as a starting point. This you did commit to memory, promising yourself that you were going to mention it to the sender of the poem. See how they responded. It was your goal to unmask them before the day was through.

[oscopelabs]

3D, Part 1: James Cameron and the Broken Promise of the Third Wave by Vadim Rizov

[Note: This essay is the first in a two-part series on 3D. Part 2, coming soon, will discuss the unexpected peak of 3D as an artistic form. —ed.]

It’s not fair to say that James Cameron ruined projection standards by pushing for a digital changeover—the industry impetus was already under way—but Avatar left less of an impression as a movie than as technological advocacy, resulting in unintended, still-lingering side effects. Cameron dreamed of 3D cinema arriving, finally, at what he viewed as its overdue narrative fruition; he couldn’t have imagined compromising projection standards or undermining film archiving in the process. This is a two-part essay: The first is a grim recap of the Third Wave of 3D, which has unfolded over the last decade. The second will advocate for a secret classic of 3D cinema at its inadvertently experimental peak.

****

The not-too-reductive standard narrative goes like this: 3D was popularized contemporaneously with widescreen in the ‘50s as half of a two-pronged initiative to lure audiences away from their TV screens by giving the theatrical experience something unavailable at home. By decade’s end, widescreen was normalized; ’60s and ‘70s one-offs excepted, 3D wasn’t. 1980’s Comin’ at Ya! kicked off its second wave, which had a similarly short lifespan. In both runs, 3D failed to transition from passing gimmick to standard filmmaking option, mostly due to the diminishing thrill of seeing things flying at you, but also due to technological flaws that made the results physically difficult to watch. This history’s a bit of an oversimplification: like sound, color, and widescreen (all of which were experimented with long before they became standard options), 3D had test-run incarnations well before its ‘50s boom. Still, this story is largely accurate. So what makes the third wave different?

Cameron’s ideal 3D would be to create totally immersive worlds, refusing to throw objects at viewers the way the first two 3D waves had done. These effects were presumably cheap grabs for attention, while Cameron was focused more on depth rather than breaking the proscenium. In a (troublesomely unattributed) quote from 2009, a collaborator summed up his approach: “There’s a scene early in [Avatar] where something jumps out of the screen. Jim said, `I just did that so that they would know I know how to do it. But then I stopped doing it because that’s not what 3D is; 3D is bringing the audience completely into the environment of the movie.’” Narrative disruption was not on the agenda; Cameron’s films have always followed conventional dramatic arcs, and Avatar has a particularly unchallenging (“archetypal”) story. This meant yoking 3D to digital projection, which would straighten out the format’s numerous problems once and for all by eliminating both the visual eyestrain and eyeline problems of watching 3D, either polarized (the default standard until digital) or in anaglyph (the infamous red-and-blue glasses format that became a stand-in image for the format, despite being relatively rare) and the double potential for error caused by an incompetent projectionist. Cameron had spent years preparing audiences—and, more importantly, the industry—for a digital conversion. In 2005, he, George Lucas, and Peter Jackson appeared at ShoWest, the trade theater convention to boost for 3D and, by association, digital projection. “I’m giving you guys plenty of warning,” Cameron said. “You’ve got two years to get ready.” His timeline was off, the larger idea was not: In 2009, 16,000 screens worldwide were digital-ready. The next year, that had shot up to 36,000.

It’s not clear digital projection is the optimal way to see Avatar; the late 3D advocate Ray Zone saw the film five times in multiple formats in its first run, concluding not only that film-based IMAX 3D (with two 70mm projectors running simultaneously) was the correct way to see the film, but that “One hint that IMAX 3-D 15/70mm was the native 3-D format for Avatar was that the new large platters would only hold two hours and forty minutes of 15/70mm film—the exact running time of the film.” Nonetheless, Avatar’s overwhelming success sped up a slow-moving push to digital conversion, which the industry had been inching towards for some time. George Lucas had some digital screenings of Phantom Menace, but locally, I remember digital first rearing its head at the arthouse—specifically Austin’s long-closed four-screen Dobie Theatre, an independent that had by then been bought by Landmark Theatres. The arthouse chain went in early for digital projectors, a bright future ushered in Windows Media Player 9. (From a press release at the time: “The film is a milestone in digital origination — a genuine work of art that takes full advantage of new technology. Windows Media 9 Series will show it in all its glory.”) “We can hear the techies in the crowd oohing and ahhing already,” The Austin Chronicle’s Marc Savlov wrote. “It'll only be a matter of time before the entire industry goes digital and the notion of scratched and blotchy film and frazzled frame adjustments will seem very quaint indeed. Progress, baby. We live for it.” My first screening in that format was Russian Ark, Alexander Sokruov’s one-take Hermitage film that would have been impossible to realize on celluloid, with its inherent time limits on how long each reel can be. That projection (the Dobie was only one of four US theaters to play it that way in the film’s initial run) made sense: digital in, digital out.

Still, the stakes of first digital conversion were relatively small; Avatar’s success upped digital’s presence significantly while coupling it to 3D. This is the part that’s different: where previous pushes for 3D worked with (extensively) modified versions of existing film hardware, this time the medium’s perfection accelerated the wholesale rethinking of film production and exhibition. Striking and shipping 35mm prints was expensive, as was paying qualified projectionists, and said prints would get beat up; the longer you waited to see a film, odds were the worse it would look. And “qualified” projectionists certainly weren’t the baseline standard by any means: I remember going to see Talk to Her improperly projected in 2002, the frame misaligned so that the bottom of the frame showed as a sliver at the top from start to finish. (Here’s a much more dramatic projection fail story from back in the day; probably everyone has at least one.) As with any new tech rollout, unforeseen problems followed: smaller theaters crowdsourced funds for new projectors or risked going out of business, digital files proved anything but foolproof in practice, a push for digital archiving placed the history of film at risk as new storage formats proved highly unstable relative to well-preserved film. (This last sentence is a heavily compressed version of what David Bordwell tracked at length in his highly recommended “Pandora’s Digital Box” series.) More succinctly, this is the first time 3D introduced a specific ghost in the machine: every time you go to a multiplex to see a movie that looks way too dark, the odds are good someone left the 3D lens on, and no one’s around who can fix it or who would even care to. What started as an attempt to perfect 3D had the inadvertent effect of undoing 2D digital projection standards.

Again, none of this is directly James Cameron’s fault. He’s just the one who helped push through a change faster than it might have been implemented otherwise. Avatar’s blockbuster breakthrough was followed the next year by Alice in Wonderland, which harvested a billion-plus dollars worldwide, making the case that it didn’t matter whether 3D was native or, as in Tim Burton’s film, post-converted. Not a year later, Jeffrey Katzenberg—another 3D booster—was already worried “the bloom was off the rose” because cynical types “thought they could just deliver a kind of low-end crappy version of it, and people wouldn't care, or wouldn't know the difference.” Five years later, Katzenberg was blunter, quoting (intentionally or not) Easy Rider to convey the extent of his disappointment: “we blew it.” 3D’s never had as big a year since 2010: its revenue has declined every year since, and production of 3D films has gone down. The technology stuck, but 3D’s potential as a normative storytelling tool remains once again questionable until further notice.

Setting aside the grim trajectory of 3D’s current wave, which has seen revenue (and audience demand) for the format decrease, it’s worth reflecting on Cameron’s original idea that 3D would add “depth” to the familiar, instead of a better brand of comin-at-ya effects. For years, whenever people would ask which 3D movies I liked, I’d say Yogi Bear. This is (not entirely) a smartass answer: obviously Goodbye to Language would be a better response, but Godard sought to dismantle all 3D’s rules one event shot at a time, and no one will (be able to) follow up on its visual inquiries. Pina made visual sense (the performers are dancing outside, depth is important), Hugo looked neat, and Tron: Legacy was a cool lightshow (though that had more to do with sheer color overload and Daft Punk’s super-loud score as rendered on the biggest speakers theatrically available, and a 3D expert friend swears it has some of the worst use of the medium he’s ever seen); otherwise, my 3D sampling has mostly been review assignments of bad-looking movies. The worst are the post-converted monstrosities. A real low here was the new Pete’s Dragon, which Disney screened in 3D: it looked extremely dark, which was predictable, but worse, a bunch of shots which were clearly shallow-focus, had all been rendered as three to four separate planes of depth, casting blurry background areas in semi-sharp relief, each shot an unintentional diorama. It was sort of possible to tell what the compositional intent was, but impossible to really envision it.

So Yogi Bear is peak 3D. Why not? At a cost of $80 million, Yogi Bear renders a depth-filled Jellystone Park entirely on par with Pandora, with all of the depth and none of the tacky colors. Both movies tell stories, both benefit from depth to spatially reconstruct a largely external environment: the differences are mostly details. In an interview Google will no longer let me find, but which I swear I remember, Cameron said only 19 shots (or thereabouts, let me hedge) in Avatar featured zero CG. These are, I presume, the shots of Jake Sully back on base; to me, they’re easily the most memorable parts of the movie, capturing the full depth of a set (and its metal walls) in a way that’s way more compelling than a fully rendered fake ecosystem . What if Cameron was wrong and 3D is, fundamentally, not just a way to enhance immersiveness but one which, when deployed in the non-CG constructed world, can recode the nuts and bolts of narrative filmmaking visual language itself? In Part II, I’ll look back at the much-derided second wave of ‘80s 3D to make the case that 1983’s Treasure of the Four Crowns, a little-regarded Raiders of the Lost Ark knock-off, is one of the format’s greatest, most progressive and inadvertently suggestive moments.

[zloyodessit]

Handelsblatt spearheads Russian propaganda in Germany

On March 18, Germany's Handelsblatt published on its website an article entitled "Shadows of Nord Stream 2: Significant Opportunities for Ukraine." The piece claims U.S.-German negotiations are allegedly under way to ensure increased assistance to Ukraine on the part of Berlin in exchange for the U.S. ceasing efforts to block completion of Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

Well, given that Handelsblatt is one of Germany's oldest daily newspapers, it probably doesn't make sense to mistust its reporters... Or does it?

The thing is that, having faced total fiasco in an attempt to have their pipe finally reach the German coast in the Baltic Sea, Russian propaganda started slowly but confidently to cultivate the narrative of the alleged secret talks being held between Berlin and Washington behind Kyiv's back on the completion of Russia's project.

A number of vested interests both in Russia and Germany are working to circulate these narratives. It is these vested interests that are trying to push these ideas to achieve r own geopolitical and economic goals within the EU media space and beyond.

After the new presidential administration took over in the United States, the intensity of these spins further increased, because it is very convenient to imply that the change of power fits into the paradigm of those "new negotiations" in the framework of which, it is claimed, Ukraine is nothing but a bargaining chip!

Surprisingly, these narratives kept being spun even after the new U.S. Presidential Administration declared a tough stance on Nord Stream 2 and, moreover, expressed readiness to make additional efforts to completely block NS2 completion.

Hence the question – what is the Handelsblatt piece is even talking about if realities show that things are exactly the opposite across the pond? The United States never changed its stance on the Russian pipe – moreover, it is radically strengthening its intentions to not let Nord Stream 2 be completed.

Here it would be wrong to turn a blind eye to the fact that it was Handelsblatt that was among the first media outlets to attack the AstraZeneca vaccine, as part of a larger-scale campaign to discredit the Oxford-made drug. In January 2021, Handelsblatt claimed in its piece that the vaccine is practically ineffective for the elderly recipients. However, in that material, a "respected" newspaper practically spread rumors, manipulated data on the number test subjects per certain age groups, and the efficacy rates. As a result, a scandal erupted, which called into question the newspaper's credibility.

Recently, Handelsblatt went on to publish another piece, mainly based on rumors, insider information and tips from unnamed sources, in the absence of indisputable facts that should be inherent in "high journalism" unlike paid puff pieces.

In both of these cases, it is worth noting that the attack on AstraZeneca and claims of some secret negotiations between the U.S. and Germany on Nord Stream 2 were all consonant with long-standing propaganda narratives designed in Russia. It seems that Handelsblatt journalists draw their inspiration from Russian news feeds!

And perhaps this isn't just an impression… Perhaps it's the newspaper itself, which, by the way, has collaborated with Russia's RBC agency for more than ten years, actually works to channel Russian propaganda in its latent and veiled ways. And perhaps it's from their eastern counterparts that they receive the so-called temniki (this is how Russians call secret instructions for the media on how to cover specific events) on compromising Astra-Zeneca and spinning rumors of U.S.-Germany talks on NS2. And no one seems to care about journalistic standards and controversial essence of claims spun.

Obviously, this is exactly the case.

https://medium.com/@zloyodessit2.0/handelsblatt-spearheads-russian-propaganda-in-germany-f1e274a22ffe

[whoisblackamerica]

Possible Solution?

The Ethnic Discovery Project

    As a young girl, I grew up in a loving household where my parents made sure that my siblings and I were cultured and knew where we came from. As much as they, my parents, could. And I, being the typical naive, young child, I thought that what they told was all there was to our heritage and culture. That my family’s history began with slavery and we’ve always been from the United States. Once I started getting older, I noticed that classmates of mine, white and other people of color, were able to trace back their lineage and family trees miles farther than I was able to. Other African American youths suffer from this confusion too, and in turn can affect them in different ways. 

In the black community, there is an issue with self-identification, in which we don’t know where we come from because of the culture lost during the slave trade.  More specifically, Black people in America face an identity crisis through loss of ancestry, negative stereotypes and images, and low self-esteem. The issue developed once the first Africans were brought to America in 1619. Along with being forced into labor, they were also forced to drop their African customs and cultures. This issue became more prevalent during the civil rights movement because that was, arguably, the birth of Black Nationalism. Black people in America face an identity crisis through loss of ancestry which was scientifically proven to contribute to low-self esteem. I propose that we create a non-profit organization of people who will dedicate time to searching archives and documents, specifically those that are made by, kept by, and created by other African Americans, for people to discover more about their personal heritage, thus finally filling the void that was created by slavery. We could build our own genealogy site, or offer to work with existing ones. This resource would be a cheap, maybe even free, source for curious people who want to know where their family is from, and who right fully deserves it. I think that people who have faced hundreds of years of oppression, racism, and discrimination are owed a lot for their perseverance. However, this resource wouldn’t be limited to only people who identify as African-American, but it would also be for the benefit of  all mixed-raced people.

   Black America has dealt with a lot of oppression since slavery, before and after it was abolished. Some significant events to note are the L.A. riots that were triggered by the brutal beating of Rodney King, the recent police brutality against black people in the past decade, and the gang violence within the black youth, across the country. With the constant fighting within the community and outside of it, it’s very difficult for things to get done to positively uplift out people. Thus, the self-esteem and mental well being of our people is affected. It’s no secret in the black community that our racial identity directly affects our dignity and self-respect. I have known plenty of people, including myself, who felt as if they were worth less because they were born black or a person of color, almost as if being white was so much easier and our lives would actually be worth living. The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism agrees and propose that, “Understanding identity, or individuals' beliefs about the groups to which they belong can help explain variation in their physical and mental health, educational attainment, income levels, and wealth.” (Mason) A general definition of Identity would be a distinguished idea of an individual through certain traits and qualities. The difference between being black in America and being black in Africa is that Black America is only color but Black in Africa is surrounded by language, cuisine, and customs, that many people of my generation and many generations before us haven’t gotten the chance to experience or discover. The Encyclopedia of African American Society states that, “The earliest studies that measured racial identity among African Americans were originally attempts to study black self-esteem. These studies were based on the concept of "reflective appraisal"—the idea that people develop a self-concept based on the way that other people view them.” (Jaynes)

To go further into the actual source of this self-hatred, we can discuss the role that stereotypes and the false representations of African Americans in the United States. White people further influenced the questioning of who we are, by making us feel like less than people. Things like the Three-Fifths compromise (which was a decision agreed upon in 1787 that stated that for population counting purposes for the House of Representatives, slaves would count as 3/5ths of a person or 3 out of every 5 slaves as a person) and not being able to vote in a country we were forced in are just a few examples. Additionally, black youth aren’t being taught the whole truth about slavery. They are learning the watered-down version of American History that is meant to spark patriotism in young one’s minds. I viewed a film in my African American history classed titled: Ethnic Notions: Black Images in the White Mind. The film’s narrator mentioned

“Contained in these cultural images is the history of our national conscience striving to reconcile the paradox of racism in a nation founded on human equality - a conscience coping with this profound contradiction … through caricature. What were the consequences of these caricatures? How did they mold and mirror the reality of racial tensions in America for more than 100 years?” (Notions)

Now think about this. How could this nation have been founded on equality, when it literally was not founded on equality. Additionally, The Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History by Colin A. Palmer explains,

“In the history of race relations in the United States, stereotypes preceded and accompanied the origins and legalization of slavery. Equipped with stereotypes, whites fastened the dogma of inferiority on Africans and African Americans. With the termination of slavery, stereotypes were then extensively employed to legitimate segregationist policies. Throughout the course of American history, such ingrained stereotypes have subverted black identity and seriously undermined the formation of a biracial society based on egalitarian practices. “ (Palmer)

Images like the Mamie, and exaggerated black face were prevalent before the 1960s. After that, black people stopped viewing themselves under the white’s eyes. Because of the civil rights movement, black people began to care more about their people as a whole rather than an “every man for himself” type of mentality. The Encyclopedia of African American Society found that “In fact, when black researchers began to develop their own theories of racial identity, they found that African Americans' sense of self came mainly from the messages they received from parents and friends, not the negative views of whites.” (Jaynes)

To address this issue, I suggest we create a non-profit organization, that’s goal is to search the archives, documents, and records of African Americans from 1619 (the first slaves brought to America in Jamestown, Virginia) to now, to help people discover more about themselves, the families they came from, and the cultures they may have lost during history. The difference between this organization and other ancestry and genealogy sites (ancestry.com, 23andme.com, etc.) is that this won’t stop with finding out where these people’s DNA leads to and is made up of but it will also teach them about the cultures of that area, and hopefully connect them with other people from there. It would be ideal if this organization could partner with a genealogy website, to provide these people with discounted DNA tests or maybe even free. If that is unable to happen, it would be in our best interest to find a laboratory or a scientist willing to do this for little to no money/profit. This organization would mostly have to rely on government funding, fundraisers, and donations because they wouldn’t be selling anything or making a profit. This would be specifically a non-profit, because its main goal would be to enrich the lives of our people and make them more comfortable in their own skin, even when surrounded by the constant negativity around them. This organization could have many benefits, such as creating a larger sense of community, because its black people helping other black people discover themselves and open their minds to a whole new side of them that they hadn’t discovered. There could be offices in place with high populations/concentrations of black people and mixed-race (with black) people, for convenience for them. The amount of offices would depend of the money and revenue that the organization gathers. If they were only able to have a few, let’s say 6 offices with one being the headquarters, would be 1)New York, New York, that has the highest number of black people (at 8,175,133 people!)  2)Detroit, Michigan, which has the highest percentage of the total population of the city at 84.3%, 3) Jackson, Mississippi, 4) Miami Gardens, Florida, 5) Beaumont, Texas, and finally 6) Los Angeles, California.  Unfortunately, the West coast would only have only one official office because the majority of black Americans live in the southern part of the United States and the East coast. Los Angeles, like New York, is a “melting pot” (for lack of a better term), with many different kinds of people, such as mixed-race people and immigrants living there. The headquarters would be in New York, because I feel as though by serving the most amount of black people in America, they would dedicate a lot of time to the cause.  We could collaborate with AfricanAncestry.com,  which is a genealogy website dedicated to find African DNA lineages. On their website they claim that, “African Ancestry uses the world’s largest database of African DNA lineages to determine your country and ethnic group of origin, all with a simple swab of your cheek.” (AfricanAncestry.com homepage) Having a black-owned and black-ran genealogy testing service would provide more credibility to the organization, and attract more black people.

    Unfortunately, African Ancestry’s tests range anywhere from $274.00 (for 2 or $299.00 for one) to $680.00. That is an astronomical price to pay for something that should be in your right as a human being to know. On the website, 23andme.com's services’ prices range from $99 for just the ancestry service to $199 for the “Health + Ancestry” Service. Though, along with ancestrydna.com, they are known for giving somewhat vague results occasionally. ( i.e. broadly sub-Saharan African, or broadly East Asian) The main issues with genealogy test is that it doesn’t address the whole issue that we are presented with. Sure, we get the satisfaction of learning a little about where our ancestors we’re from up until today, but it doesn’t connect us to the culture in anyway. There are also things that have nothing to do with genealogy, but more about the identification itself and not the physically scientific aspect of things. The Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity, or the MIBI for short, is a tool used to asses racial and ethic identity among African Americans in the United States. Patrick L. Mason, a Professor and the Director of African American Studies at the University of Florida states that, “According to the MIBI and the model on which it is based, the Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity (MMRI), the unique sociocultural history of black Americans both psychologically unifies the group and creates variability in the ways blacks identify with their race. To capture similarities and distinctions across blacks, the MIBI measures racial identity along three dimensions: (1) centrality, (2) regard, and (3) ideology” (Mason).  The issues with this test and others like this is that it only focuses on blacks personal identification in comparison to other blacks, which doesn’t really have anything to do with the issue, which is not knowing the actual places we come from. These tests only asses the effect of the problem. That doesn’t change the fact that it could be very eye opening and interesting to observe, it just isn’t enough.

   Overall, we have plenty of resources to make this proposal happen, however, our current political climate might prevent this from being an easy task. As long as we keep advancing through history and fighting for each other and our rights, anything is possible. Obviously, the psychological well being of African Americans wouldn’t magically become 100% better after my proposed solution, but, it is a huge step in the right direction, and hopefully others think so too.

[anyasmith]

semester 2- week 1

today we got to know marcus and what the module will have in store for the rest of the semester. 

key reading:

izhaki, r. (2018) mixing audio: concepts, practices and tools 

moylan, w. (2014) understanding and crafting the mix 

rayburn, r.a. (2012) eargle’s microphone book 

senior, m. (2015) recording secrets for the small studio

assessment:

a .wav/.aif audio file of your final mix bounced from logic 

a .zip archive of your logic session folder/file.

an 8 minute production video 

recording:

as part of a group, compose and record an original 3 – 4 minute track with vocals which implements the module ideas and techniques. N.B. you may not submit a track for this assessment that you have already submitted, or are planning to submit, to another module.

the majority of the work should be recorded, produced, mixed and mastered using the university facilities where possible, though this may be supported by your own personal production set up and reflected upon in the production video

you must record all instrument and vocal parts

for this assessment, any session performers can only be other L4 popular music students

you may use any acoustic source, including any hardware synthesisers or hardware drum machines. you may not use loops. you may not use logic drummer or equivalent. the majority of the production should use sounds that were recorded, rather than using DAW software instruments

 final mix

each student is required to create and upload an individual final mix of the track. if there are 4 group members, there will be 4 mixes of the same track

whilst you may work as a group in the recording and composition phases, the final mix should be individual, and should not be worked on together. be certain you do not plagiarise another students work in the final mix

production video:

each group will collaborate to create an 8-minute production video detailing the technical and aesthetic aspects of the production process 

to complete the project successfully, you should aim to create short episodes whilst you are recording, composing, mixing, which make clear references to any independent reading you have been doing to support your learning, to showcase the techniques that you are using, and to demonstrate key decisions you’ve made about the recording process (e.g. why you’re using a particular microphone etc)

in preparation for L5 and L6 assessments, each episode of the production video should be of a standard suitable for use on social media to aid promotion

edit the episodes together to create an 8-minute video that examines the production process, and which clearly shows how each member of the group has contributed to the production of the track.

3 minutes of the production video should be used to show your research and analysis of the technical and aesthetic production process of an existing piece of music that is a creative reference point for the track you are making. this analysis could be interleaved with your own episodes to demonstrate the application of your research, or could be completed in a single chunk

he also spoke to us about the student passport which we will be induced on one of the ypf weeks on how to use the studio. if we don’t show up or fail it we cannot use the studio! it will consist of a 10 min one to one with a technician showing them you know your way around the studio and how to work things 

we then had the task to post on padlet a technique or musical element that you use in mixing and mastering. as i hadn’t done any before this was quite interesting for me to look at the different techniques that are used. 

https://padlet.com/marcusj4/d5utxhzhuhlwwfjj 

music studios:

traditional commercial music/recording studios are fundamentally a place where high-fidelity sounds can be captured and combined in order to create a single distinct outcome:  consumable songs

the source of these sounds can be: acoustic instruments; electric instruments; voice; software/DAW; other sounds or samples

the source sounds are captured and treated with various audio processing techniques.

these sounds are combined either using a mixing desk or DAW software and captured/recorded on a computer’s hard drive or tape machine, or a combination of these.

once the product is finished, the completed audio files or tapes are ‘mastered’ for mass reproduction.

pre-production:

preparation that goes into the planning of a recording session and, ultimately, the production of a song.

working on a song before spending time in the studio can allow you to ”iron-out” any issues you might encounter before recording, such as; timing – can all of the performers involved perform their parts in time?; tempo – of the whole piece or certain sections

helps any other non-group/artist members involved understand the make-up of the song (producer, engineer, etc.)

saves a lot of time and money! 

musical ideas:

a sample or set of samples

a chord progression or arrangement

lyrics & lyrical themes

melodies

a whole song

that feed into and form part of demos:

voice note / memo from your phone

a recording from a rehearsal session

a home recording

a DAW project

a previous studio recording session

https://moodle.glos.ac.uk/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=854713 

billie eilish: pre-production example:

played around in her room

used EQ and compressor layered to find the best sound for the piece

layered instruments over each other

used humming in the recording process to help with key but then left it in

used different sounds like humming

stacked harmonies- over 800 takes on one bit

used inspo from plants vs zombies and wizards of waverley place

used the australian crosswalk sound as a sample and had to quantise it to fit the tempo

we were then given the task to listen to the 20,000 Hz- sound 101 with bill nye podcast and also read pages 3-36 of understanding and crafting the mix by noylan

20,000 Hz- sound 101 with bill nye podcast:

sound is a pressure wave- meaning that energy is moving through air but the air is hardly moving

sound is created by vibrating molecules bumping into each other creating energy and pressure which can be heard by different creature

to reach your ears sound needs something to travel through which is called a medium- air, water etc. without this medium sound cannot be created which is why there is no sound in space as there’s nothing to bounce through

sound is measured by frequency or Hz- this is based on wave amount; if a sound is 500 Hz then there is 500 waves per second 

the higher the Hz the higher the pitch

each animal can listen to different Hz levels- humans have a range of 20-20,000 Hz however this varies due to exposure of sound (may not be as high of you are frequently surrounded by loud noise)

sound travels well through water

lower sounds travel better than higher because high frequency sounds have short wave lengths (they bounce around and loose energy as they bump into particles) and low frequency sounds have larger ones meaning they can travel farther without bumping into each other 

some materials are good at absorbing sound like sound proofing sponges in studios which reduce echo

when an echo occurs a single sound is bounced into lots of directions

when sound waves meet they have different reactions- can cancel it out or add them together which makes them louder as the waves are combining

noise cancelling headphones has a microphone which then creates the same sound which is why the noise gets cancelled out

airplanes and modern cars have a noise cancelling effect on them to reduce external noise

speed of sound is 767 mph and doesn’t matter about pitch they will arrive at the same time however if the medium is changes eg; in water sound travels 4x faster than air as it’s denser than air (has more molecules for the sound waves to bump into)

the higher you go into the atmosphere the slower the speed of sound is as there air is thin so there isn’t as many molecules for the sound to jump to 

temperature also affects sound as temperature changes the kinetic energy of modules- the more energy (the hotter) the faster the sound travels

if you push the molecules faster than they naturally go they will bump into other molecules and slow down immediately (a shock wave- like a whip or a fighter jet) 

the sound created by shock waves are called a sonic bomb and are only 10,000 of a millimetre thick (smaller than a sheet of paper)

most sonic booms are caused by human inventions but not all of them- pistol shrimps create them under water and are only an inch long. they hunt by snapping their claws at their prey, creating a bubble bullet moving as fast as 62 mph. when the bubble collapses, it creates a sonic bomb stunning or killing their prey

the B2 bomber plane is very expensive but in order to achieve its top speed, the exhaust travels at the speed of sound so the sonic boom created gets very hot so they put the exhaust on the top of the plane so enemies couldn’t track where the plane was through heat

understanding and crafting the mix by noylan:

audio recording is the act of capturing the physical dimensions of sound and then putting them on a platform (vinyl or digital etc) which then is turned back into its physical state

the recording process shapes the piece and controls what sound is produced in the end product

there are 3 states of sound within the recording process: sound as it is physically; sound as humans can hear it (how the sound is transformed and interpreted in the mind); and sound as an idea (a concept, or emotion or symbolism etc)

the audio recording process ends in a physical sate (on speakers or played) which is how it started (played or sang into a microphone)

each listener has their own meaning of sound and then create their own relation and links to a song

there are 5 physical dimensions of sounds: frequency; amplitude displacements; time; timbre; and space

frequency is the how many waves there are and is measured in waves/s. 

amplitude is the height of the wavelength and is measured in decibels

timbre is the result of the amplitude and frequency which creates the sound (quality of sound). it has 3 primary component parts; dynamic envelope, spectrum and spectral envelope

dynamic envelope of a sound is the contour of the changes in the overall sound, they vary per instrument, and examples are attack, delay, sustain and release time

spectrum is the composite of all of the frequency of the sound (harmonics). this has helped create the harmonic series and is why instruments have different pitches

the spectral envelope is the composite of each individual dynamics and how an individual note is made up of more than one note

sound alters in different environments and is related to the characteristic of the space the sound is produced and the location of the sound within the environment

the aspects of space that influence sound in audio recording are the distance of the sound compared to the listener, the angle of the sound to the listener, the geometry of the environment snd the location of the sound within the host environment 

reverberate sound is the reflections of the sound arriving at the listener at once

the angle of which the sound is played into the microphone is important to hear a full sound

the physical dimensions have perceived parameters: frequency= pitch; amplitude=loudness; time=duration; timbre=timbre (overall quality), space=space

pitch is there perception of the frequency of the waveform, it is the position of a sound on a scale and is low or high, pitch cannot be measured so we gave assigned values to pitches allowing us to create relationships between two pitches, most humans can’t identify specific pitch (perfect pitch) but have learnt relative pitch where they can learn the pitch in relation to another

loudness is the perception of the height of the waveform, referred to in relative values ( louder than, soft, very loud etc), in order for a sound to be heard a certain amount of pressure needs to be present, sound after a long time and too loud can fatigue the ear causing the loudness to diminish, as loudness increased the ear requires more time to be able to accurately hear sound at the correct level again, the ear becomes desensitised to noise and a high pitch noise can be heard (tinnitus)

duration is not perceived individually, cannot accurately measure time without a reference (heartbeat counts), the duration creates rhythm, metric grid is an underlying pulse which the listener is able to make rhythmic judgements on and is a common factor of tempo

time plays a peripheral role in the rhythm, time in a piece is separate and distinct from a clock (time may appear to speed up when listening to music)

space is an important characteristic when sound is played, the acoustic of theenuevironment can alter the perception of sound (echo can cause dissonance and carpet can absorb sound), need to put the speakers in the correct space so sound can be heard accurately, at concerts the speakers face out to the crowd so it is hard for the artist to hear the track so they have the track played into their ear

sound waves are almost often different at each ear which alters the perception of the direction of the music 

the characteristics of the host environment are perceived through: the time difference between arrival and until reflections; spacing of time in early reflections; amplitude differences between the direct sound and the arrival of the initial reactions; timbre differences between the direct sound, initial reactions and and reverberant sound

the perception of any parameter of sound is always dependent upon the current states of the other parameters, altering any of the perceived parameters while cause a change in the perceived state of at least one other parameter

sufficient duration is needed for the ear to perceive pitch, when the sound is short the noise is just perceived as ‘noise-like’

loudness and pitch perspective in humans is link and usually when there is a change in pitch then dynamics change

loudness can influence perceived time, when two sounds are played simultaneously, they will appear to have staggered entrances if one is louder than the other 

loudness perception is altered by duration and timbre

masking occurs when a sound is not perceived because of the other qualities of another sound- the simultaneous sounding of two or more sounds can cause a sound of lower loudness level to be masked

audio equipment can produce ‘white’ noise that may mask sounds of many frequencies, a entire program might be mask by the noise of the sound system itself, which will be noticed in high frequencies 

-29/01/21

[psychicmedium14]

Weekly horoscopes will start back up in March, I hope that these monthly horoscopes can serve you until then. Please remember that horoscopes are meant to be read as inspiration. If you know both your rising sign and sun sign, please read both horoscopes. They both contain important information. Take what works for you, leave the rest. February begins on the highest, fullest note possible: in the midst of eclipse season. As January came to an end, the total lunar eclipse punctuated the first, and opened the second, month of 2018. The eclipse that occurred on January 31st is the first of two eclipses. The second is a solar eclipse that happens at 1:06 PM PT on February 15th, at 27° of Aquarius. Eclipse season isn’t something to take lightly, but its messages are, more often than not, misunderstood. Expecting giant events to take place on the day of an astronomical event isn’t a failsafe or helpful way to work with astrological information. Every astrological occurrence is part of a larger unfolding. Eclipses are no different. Because they occur over a period of time in the same signs (which equates to the same house, or area of your life), we need to consider the entire time period as a framework for unpacking their message and meaning. We just experienced the 3rd of 5 eclipses in Leo. The 1st occurred on February 10th, 2017 and the 2nd on August 21st, 2017. Think back to these time periods and consider the house that these eclipses are taking place in (if you need a reminder, check your January horoscope, but make sure to read your rising sign if you know it for the most accurate information). Because the eclipses in Leo are north node eclipses, the general theme of them will be about something in this area of your life increasing. Events around the north node can teach us about our hunger, our greed and our wanting. Some of it helps us to achieve great things, while some of it disturbs our ability to experience contentment. Each eclipse will most likely teach you a little about both. Remember that we are only a little more than half way through the story. The next eclipse in Leo will occur on August 11th, 2018 and the last will occur on January 21st, 2019. The 1st of a series of 4 eclipses in Aquarius began on August 18th, 2016 (this was an incredibly mild eclipse however, which some wouldn’t count as significant at all); the 2nd occurred on August 7th, 2017; the third will take place this month, on February 15th; and the 4th and final one will occur on July 27th, 2018. The eclipses in Aquarius are happening around the south node of the moon. The south node helps us to empty out, drain or release something from our lives. Their teaching is about letting go of control and allowing something bigger than ourselves to work through us. More spiritual in nature than the north node (which can tend to be a little more materially inclined), south node eclipses can help to bring us back to what truly matters most. Check your horoscope below (remember to read your rising sign, if you know it, for the most accurate information) to consider what these eclipses might be trying to communicate to you. For those with Aquarius rising, one or more of these eclipses may impact your energy, your motivation, and your appearance, in some way revealing what you need to let go of in order to live more authentically according to this moment in your life. For those with sun in Aquarius, one or all of these eclipses may be helping you to shed a layer of your identity. Something slowly peels away from the persona so that more of you is revealed. For those with moon in Aquarius, one or more of these eclipses may teach you something important about the nature of your body, its needs, and its wisdom. Remember that any planet or point within a couple of degrees of an eclipse will be the most impacted. For this eclipse, it would be planets or points between 25°-29° of Aquarius. In general, we might want to use the eclipse on February 15th to ask ourselves what is unworthy of the space it takes up in our hearts, lives, and especially our minds. Aquarius, the Water Bearer, is the bringer of cool, thirst-quenching and refreshing libations. Usually given out in the form of innovative ideas and humanitarian gestures, Aquarius brings us back to our senses. This eclipse aims to help us do the same. Sextiling Uranus and Mars, this eclipse has the ability to help us to create change. To not only disrupt what has become stagnant, but also to create space for new information to flow to us and through us. The rest of the month is fairly fluid. No retrogrades occur. No major clashes of the titans take place. Mars moves through Sagittarius for all of February and half of March, heating up the part of our chart that contains the free-wheeling fire sign. Mars brings with it the opportunity to work with conflict, but also to move with courage towards what needs our action and energy. Mars is in Jupiter’s sign now, and Jupiter is in Mars’s. They aren’t natural friends. Jupiter opens up new terrain for us to traverse and Mars fights for its own (or invades that of others). But their swapping of domiciles helps us to find a balance between the two. Which opportunities for growth come with a little conflict and how might that thorn in your side teach you how to thrive? Venus also spends some time in a Jupiter ruled sign. Traveling through Pisces, the sign of its exaltation, Venus works its wonders. Here from February 10th through March 6th, Venus delights in all pleasures imaginable. Venus in Pisces will help us to connect, create and combine what we love with what we wish to make more of. Incredibly fertile, Venus in Pisces proliferates, so make sure that you are creating what you want a lot of. Aries & Aries Rising: Love comes into your life this month through the wisdom of those around you. Seek the counsel of elders in your life that choose maturity over conformity. Surround yourself with those that do the hard work and heavy lifting of becoming masters of themselves. Make sure that you are in contact with those that know how to withstand public pressure and are true to themselves no matter the popularity it will win or lose them. The solar eclipse on February 15th reminds you of how important it is to reorganize your social sphere every once in a while. You might need to cleanse your event calendar. Declutter your cohort of colleagues. Realign yourself with the groups and community projects that are a top priority and let the rest, rest for now. Pay attention to the essentials and save the extra time for your own development. With Mars in your 9th house of learning, teaching, traveling and seeking out the meaning that makes life worth living, there are many directions pulling at you. This is a time when your efforts and your visions align. Don’t hold yourself back when thinking about your future. Don’t hem yourself in when pondering what is possible for you. Don’t get stuck thinking that you have to stick within a certain course of action. This is a time for you to color outside the lines. Let yourself imagine what else might be possible, what you might be missing, what you might be cutting yourself off from for fear of failure or rejection. Then move beyond the fear to sense what might be a workable solution for you. When all else fails, pray. Do ritual. Do ceremony. Do something that reminds you that what is up to you can be done by you, but what is out of your control is being held by something holy. Be in contact with it. With Venus in your 12th house of hidden life, good feelings come from the inner work you are able to do. Luxuriate in any peace that you have been able to create within you. Try not to explain it. Dissect it. Deconstruct it. Just appreciate it as much as you can. Like a secret joy. Like something you have for yourself. Like something no one can change, challenge or destroy. Taurus & Taurus Rising: Love yourself enough to know when to edit. Revise. Rework your big plans for life. What version of your career is outdated? What vision of your professional life is in need of a review? What aspects of your professional aspirations are no longer filling you with energy, drive or determination? It’s OK to change your mind. It’s OK to set a new intention for your work in the world. It’s OK if the job/title/situation in your dream scenario is morphing and meandering into some new shape. Shapeshifting is what eclipse season is about. The solar eclipse on February 15th occurs in your 10th house of career and reputation. The thing about this kind of eclipse is that it wants to help you release what isn’t serving your long-term progress. Exfoliate your professional dreams and goals, scrub clean their true purpose, and reveal the simple message you need to put forth so it might prosper. Use this eclipse to (re)commit to it. Just before the eclipse takes place, Venus, your ruling planet, begins its month-long excursion through your 11th house of good fortune and friends. Here from February 10th – March 6th, Venus brings you many pleasures and opportunities to connect to those that want to and are capable of supporting your professional ambitions in generative and generous ways. A mutual benefit wants to happen here, so instead of looking up, think of how you can build across your social networks. Who in your groups is also clarifying their purpose and working towards things that align with your aims? With Mars spending the next month and a half in your 8th house of shared resources, it’s the perfect time to get fired up about the right collaborations. You don’t want just any kind of partnership, you want the ones that will be of the greatest mutual benefit possible. Gemini & Gemini Rising: This month’s solar eclipse sees to it that you remember your right to love your life. Whatever ideas you have developed that get in the way of you knowing that need to go. This eclipse will help you to purge yourself of such sentiments, but it won’t do the heavy lifting for you. It’s up to you to rework your more difficult thought patterns. Your more burdensome beliefs. Your less forgiving philosophies. Our suffering can situate us in such a way that we are more appreciative of the moments of clarity and conscious awareness that visits us. It can help us to study, in greater depth, the beauty that lives in-between striving for what we want and attaining it. It can help us to remember that planning out parts of our life is important, but that listening to how life demands to be lived at any given moment is a more pressing directive to be aware of. February’s eclipse affirms some plans while doing away with others. Let your schedule be un-done by the gods of change. You might find that certain goals have different end games in mind than you are interested in achieving. There is no failure in this, only the success of being able to be true to the moment and what it is asking of you. And it is asking great things of you. With Venus in your 10th house of career from February 10th through March 6th, your professional position is incredibly favorable. Folks will want to work with you, for you, and alongside you more readily. Choose your partners well. This isn’t a make it or break it transit, but it is one that can grease the wheel in such a way that it sends you in an important direction. Notice the career strides that you make this month. Notice what was easy. Enjoyable. Pleasing to your spirit. With Mars in your 7th house of committed partnerships, you’ll be asked to learn a little more about the fine art of arguing. Just make sure that you are clear about one thing in your relationships: would you rather rather be right or would you rather be happy? Sometimes you can’t be both. Sometimes the only right thing to do is be gracious. Reserve your energy for the fights that really matter. Cancer & Cancer Rising: Love is to be found in the meaning that you are able to make out of your experiences. Love is to be found in the processing of your pain, in the way you break it down, in the way you are able to hold a little of it at a time. Love is to be found in the fullness of your experience, by giving yourself permission to find value in the entirety of your journey. Getting what we want is never the point of pursuing a meaningful life. Loving ourselves through the sorrows and the sweetness, as best we can, is. This month reminds you of the importance of unpacking what has caused you anguish or despair, not so that you can wallow there, but so that you can better work with the material your life is made up of. Knowing which of our life experiences can be translated into assets is part of how we move consciously towards our life’s calling. Eclipse season reminds you that it is important to empty out your understanding of what you have to work with from time to time. Most of us get used to our strengths and, dependent on them, we often forget that our growth edges can be incredibly energetic resources to draw from. Notice what you are being challenged to work with, develop and share with others at the moment. If it’s challenging in the right ways, it will motivate you to move beyond your usual limits, creating new channels for success to flow through. With Mars moving through your 6th house of work projects and health issues for the entirety of February and the first half of March, you have much on your plate to accomplish. This should be a time where considerable effort is put towards completing professional tasks. A professional task that is worth that kind of work. You’ll most likely be inspired to take risks so take time to sharpen your tools. Be bold with your work, but do so in a way that takes incredible skill. This is a time to be impressive with your abilities more than your bravado. As Venus travels through your 9th house of teaching, learning, and long-term plans, you are encouraged to enjoy the blessings you have acquired along your path. It’s time to share some of your knowledge, share some of your light, share some of your journey thus far. Especially the lessons that you have learned about love and how to love. Leo & Leo Rising: Love how love changes you. Challenges you to grow up. Encourages you to wake up. This month your relationships, your loves and most precious partners undergo important transformations. These shifts change the nature of your wants and needs. They get you to investigate any demands you might be placing on others, and the demands they may be placing on you. Expectations need to be investigated. Contracts need to be recalculated. Hearts need to be reeducated. Love left unexamined is left to languish. Be more interested in what your important partnerships are growing into rather than what you are getting from them. Be more interested in what they need now rather than what they used to be. Be more interested in what this is helping you to develop rather than how it is inconveniencing you. Because the relationships that are coming to an end will be obvious and explicit. What needs to be released will inform you of its departure. It will not ask for your permission, but it will clarify the importance of what stays. Work with what is with you. As Mars spends the next month and a half in your 5th house of creative pursuits and passionate affairs, you get to experiment with new ways of channeling your energy. Don’t be afraid of the raw emotions. In fact, create space for them to flow. Find projects and pursuits where your rage, hunger, and determination can be put to use. Find the right vehicles for the fuel you’ve got to go on. As Venus rolls through your 8th house of shared resources from February 10th through March 6th, you are able to connect more easily to the funding, collaborators and co-conspirators that you and your projects need. Free your time and energy from what takes more than it gives. Work on respecting the exchanges that have greater ease about them rather then fretting about the ones that leave you frayed. Gather yourself up so that you can give yourself to what works. Virgo & Virgo Rising: Love wants your attention. It wants your celebration. It wants your invitation. Have you asked it on a date lately? Offer to pick it up. Take it out. Dress up for it. Stay out late for it. Situate yourself so that you are in front of it. From February 10th – March 6th, Venus moves through your 7th house of committed partnerships and important relationships. It’s a time where the rock-solids in your life will be more interested in what can be built by sweetness than by stress. Show up for it. Show pleasure a good time. Show your interest to those you find interesting. The returns will be more than you could count. Venus wants to help not only your romantic life, but also your business one. See who in your life is curating creatively sound situations to get in on. To offer your energy to. This is a time that, with hard work, could bring in quite a few mutually beneficial bonuses. And there is much work to do. The eclipse on February 15th highlights the heavy lifting of your daily chores and duties. It points to some of the restructuring that your work life is undergoing or is in need of. There are innovations that are ready to be implemented in your professional projects. Don’t delay. Notice where fear gets in the way of efficiency. Imagine what it would be like to care less about failure. Imagine what it would be like to retire your worry about being liked. Imagine what it would be like to decrease your insecurity about your work, and instead just get busy doing it. What’s the one thing you wish you had less hesitation about doing? Start there and see what the eclipse can help you outgrow and grow into. With Mars spending all of February and March in your 4th house of foundations, home and family, much from the depths gets stirred up over the course of the next month. Feelings that usually lie at the base of your life, like sediment, start to swirl around. This mix of the past and present might make you a little sea-sick at times. Old emotions find their way into the present moment. Historically hot topics sear themselves into the ethers around you. All this is for you to work with. Whether it brings up issues in your present home situation or not, there are worm-hole like explorations that you are being asked to go on. Digging around the past leads you to a clearer understanding of your present. Libra & Libra Rising: Love needs your willingness to give into it. Love needs your consent. Love needs your commitment so that it can actualize in your life. Even the smallest nod in its direction can put its wheels in motion. Let it move towards you. Imagine yourself in front of love. Imagine talking to it. Non-verbally. Non-rationally. Non-linearly. Imagine you are partnered with it. Wherever you are, it is with you. Working through you. Unwilling to leave you to face life on your own. Imagine what you will allow yourself to create when you really believe this. Create in love’s honor. In its likeness. In and with its immense power. This month’s eclipse asks you to review the ways in which you get in the way of your own creativity. When shame overshadows your talent, it is your job to find ways to outsmart its devious devils. You don’t have be healed in order to engage in meaningful work, you just have to be willing to learn how to win at your own games. The solar eclipse helps you to clear out old doubts about your creative capacities so that you can realign yourself with the generative genes you have inherited. What would your ancestors have created had they the option? Who do you feel is with you now, supporting you to strive and thrive in your present and for a long future to come? Leave some space to communicate with the ancient ones this month. Ask for inspiration. Ask for regeneration. Ask for instructions going forward. Give yourself some time to receive what you might otherwise be too busy to notice. And you will be busy. With Mars moving through your 3rd house of daily activity for all of February and the first half of March, you might feel rushed to get things done. Being rushed can often feel like a rush, but remember not to get too intoxicated with being busy. Instead be purposeful. Direct your time and energy towards the things you want to accomplish instead of being directed by the chaos of the day. Set achievable goals for your days while staking claim to your own time. Feed yourself first. From February 10th through March 6th, Venus tries to help you make connections that pivot your professional life towards greater ease and enjoyment. Look for folks that know how to work from a place of appreciation. Gratitude. Joy, even. Look for partnerships or work situations that are pleasing to be a part of and notice the quality of the creations that your unions produce. Scorpio & Scorpio Rising: Love lives wherever generosity is. Love builds a home in all kinds of kindnesses shown. Love multiplies where appreciation resides. Make more ways for love to live through you. With Jupiter moving through Scorpio for the next 9 months, your ability to conceive of the kind of life you want to live is amplified. Take it up on the ride. While Venus moves through your 5th house of pleasure, love and progeny from February 10th to March 6th, it assists with this growth. Here, Venus is a teacher of the fine art of feeling good. A priestess of pleasure. Accept this invitation to embody the burgeoning beauty within. Venus wants to teach you all the ways in which you were born to experience the joy of life. Of body. Of bounty. February 15th’s eclipse wants to help you clean house so that you can make more room for you. It’s asking you to reinvent something about the way you live, within your present situation. With your past reality. With your ability to forgive yourself for what you didn’t know how to deal with. With your ability to do better now that you do. This eclipse highlights relationships between you and your family, or the family dynamics that were embedded in you long ago. Do what you can to understand where they come from. Why they exist. What they might teach you. Focus on what you can do to untangle the threads that constrict your life force rather than support it. Sometimes understanding comes after we have made a firm and final decision to be in support of the solutions that we need. As Mars heats up your 2nd house of finances and livelihood during February and the first half of March, you are in a good position to understand in greater depth your capacity to affect real change in and through your work. Remember that pleasure has a purpose in all your affairs this month. While there may be a little conflict to work through in regards to how you support yourself, the point is to find the most pleasing solution. Go with what is eloquent, simple, and helps you feel the most connected to future possibilities. Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising: Love awaits you in the still moments. In the depths of your time. In the reflections available in your inner sanctuaries. Keep a part of your heart apart from the chaos of the world this month. Reserve some space within you that is for no one but you. Build a home for yourself in the places that allow you to breathe. Grieve. Gift yourself what the moment calls for. With Venus moving through your 4th house of foundations from February 10th to March 6th, you are given the opportunity to enjoy yourself at home, with family, without worry of missing out. Venus is here to remind you that the greatest blessing you can receive is feeling at peace with yourself no matter what is trying to disrupt or interrupt you. Help yourself tap into these sources of support by supplying your home life with sweet affections. Sing to your plants. Serenade the deities that protect your inner sanctuaries. Give ample amounts of attention to the neglected corners of your castle. Because Mars is moving through your sign all of February and the first half of March, you might feel the need to serve and protect your personal space in ways that support you instead of fighting against something you can’t control. You are being infused with a warrior energy that wants to honor a progressive approach to your growth. With Mars in your sign, there’s also a great motivation to express yourself in energetically authentic ways. You were made to move at your own pace. Others might say you are too fast. Too rash. Too impulsive in your actions, and while that might be true from time to time, there is reason for your way of working. Only you will know when its time to act. Anyone else’s pace is too awkward for you to pursue so don’t waste your time wondering if your timing is off. Just be willing to constantly develop a deep connection to your intuition. Become a master at understanding how your inspiration works, how to trust it and how to follow its instinctual call. This will enable you to move as you need to, making intuitive connections that move you in quantum leaps forward. February’s eclipse wants you to clear your schedule. Take the first two weeks of the month to reorganize your days. What clutter can be removed from your life? What streamlining do you need to get done what you can? What projects have you running in circles getting nowhere? Figure out where you want to go and how you’d like to get there (Joyfully? Thoughtfully? Gratefully?) and then meditate on the ways in which you can do so via unconventional methods. and innovative ways in. Create a new normal. Capricorn & Capricorn Rising: If we want to discover what we are capable of, we have to love and trust ourselves enough to let go of what isn’t supporting our long-term prosperity. Sometimes life will ask us to love ourselves enough to be patient with our process. To love ourselves enough to choose our healing over ideas of worldly success. To remember that our longevity requires it. This month, some part of your work life has to give in order for something greater to have a chance. The new moon/solar eclipse on February 15th is presenting you with the option of reconsidering your relationship to your assets. To your notion of enough. To your understanding of your material potential. Are you giving it a chance to flourish? Are you depleting your resources? Are you doing too much for too little? Meditate on what will liberate your ability to work effectively, efficiently and joyfully. The world will tell you to work yourself weary. Be wary of such paradigms. Be more interested in what releases your pent up energy without exhausting your resources. Knowing how we work and what works best for us is a recipe for successful professional pursuits. Right now some of your energy needs to be working on a project or two that takes you behind the scenes. Mars is moving through your 12th house for all of February and the first half of March. This transit invites you to study something from the inside out. As your motivation shifts, your ability to move towards linear goals may also as well. Give yourself something to dig into. Something to study. Work on. Run with. Something that encourages a deep investigation of your motivations and the directions they lead you in. From February 10th to March 6th, Venus moves through your 3rd house of daily rituals, communications and close friendships. This signals a month of remembering the kind of love that keeps your days running smoothly. Meet up with your faves for a refill. Meet up with your bffs for breakfast. Meet up with the siblings that remind you how to replenish. Keep yourself connected to the many sources of sweetness in your life to counter any confusion about your worth, value or impact on the world. Aquarius & Aquarius Rising: This month helps you to love yourself for reasons you never knew you could. More of you is being revealed because less of you needs to pretend. More of you is being understood because less of you wants to misunderstand. More of you is uninterested in being in situations that are uninspiring because less of you lives in fear of being rejected. Accepting yourself, as radically as you can, is the greatest gift you can give. Both personally and interpersonally. Renounce what isn’t yours. The identities. The problems. The situations. So they can be set free to find their true home. So that you aren’t trying to solve people’s problems for them. So that you don’t confuse being ill-suited to something with being unskilled at it. You aren’t here to be everything to everyone. Find the playgrounds you can delight in. Part ways with the games that are only designed to drag you under. What former identity, desire, or need are you now able to get a little distance from? Which can you separate yourself out from entirely? Who are you done trying to please? Please yourself. Please your Creator. Please your muses and see what magic there is in letting go of what kept the pain at bay. Feel the pain, if it is there. Know that it will pass and you’ll be less afraid to experience your life. Whether it be joyful or sorrowful, one is heightened by the other. Understood by the other. Appreciated because of the other. These are the lessons of February’s new moon/solar eclipse in Aquarius. Because this is a south node eclipse, it is one that wants to help you clear out. Take the water-bearer’s libations as a blessing. As a regenerative and cleansing offering. As a way to realign with yourself. With Mars in your 11th house of social networks and the fortune that they can bring for all of February and the first half of March, you may be challenged to find time to be with the ones you enjoy. If there is a minor separation there, or conflicts that come up, try not to make too much out of it. It may just be part of what helps you to clarify your commitments, realigning yourself with what works better for all involved. With Venus in your 2nd house of resources and income from February 10th – March 6th, this month wants you to take pleasure in all that you are creating at work. Follow the joy. Track the pursuits that provide you a feeling of well-being. Notice what aspects of your work life help you to connect to others and what those connections are capable of creating. Pisces & Pisces Rising: Love yourself for all that you haven’t yet manifested. For all the experiences that have yet to claim you as their vehicle. For all the ways in which the empty spaces in your life are trying to teach you how to have compassion for yourself. Because that is what they are for. Fill the spaces in your life with kindness. With pleasure. With a million tiny joys. A billion subtle smiles. A trillion acts of forgiveness for yourself. What leaves you isn’t a punishment. What you don’t get isn’t a condemnation. What evades you is sometimes an incredible blessing that can only reveal itself over time. Give your grievances time. Give them space. Give them up to a power greater than you. The new moon/solar eclipse on February 15th advises you to do so. Happening in your 12th house of hidden life, this shadowy sun reveals the impacts of wounds inflicted long ago. The spaces they carved out. The messages they left behind. The healing that you are now ready to do. Forgive yourself for what you struggle with. Don’t compound it with shame, guilt or resentment. Release the burden of self-doubt when and where you can and witness an incredible unfolding within you. When we aren’t trying to prove, push, or force our way through the world, the difference in our drive is remarkable. With Mars in your 10th house of career for the next month and a half (all of February and the first half of March) you are bound to make a considerable mark on the world. Mars takes action. It takes initiative. It takes control of the situation and makes its way come high waters and impossible odds. Let your healing drive you forward. Seek out the professional pursuits that challenge you to trust yourself and your life. Go for what is dangerous because it is real. Cuts to the truth. Lives close to your heart. With Venus in Pisces from February 10th – March 6th, you are set up for sweet things. Able to attract many good graces and manifest much attention and connection, Venus in Pisces is known for its ability to love without expectation. It’s incredible fertility lends itself to you. With Mars in your 10th house of ambitious career strides and Venus in your 1st house of self, the end of February will feel much like the beginning of something great. Let the eclipse clear the way for these two to work their wonder.

[chelseawolfemusic]

Ben Chisholm, Chelsea Wolfe’s Secret Weapon // Decibel Magazine

Ben Chisholm has played on critically acclaimed albums, toured the world and played Roadburn festival. He’s visible in a music video which was uploaded to YouTube over a month ago and has been viewed almost two hundred thousand times. Still, many fans of his work don’t really know him. 

The multi-instrumentalist has been playing with Chelsea Wolfe since 2010. His instrumental contributions and sound collages count as indispensable parts of the band’s macabre atmosphere live and in studio. 

Read the full article HERE. 

Chisholm’s fourth album with Chelsea Wolfe, Hiss Spun, will be released this Friday, September 22 on Sargent House Records. Together with Chisholm, we unravel his history with the band, his contributions to Hiss Spun, and recount how he and Wolfe came to join Converge for their ‘Blood Moon’ shows in 2016. 

What’s the story of your pre-Wolfe work? 

Growing up, I played in various punk, grindcore and noise bands around Northern California. Then I started focusing on solo recording projects. There isn’t a lot of past music available. My project White Horse had a boxset released by Weyrd Son in Europe, and another solo project called Revelator has a split 7” released with Wear Your Wounds which is Jacob [Bannon]from Converge’s project. Other than that, my early output is buried on scratched CD-Rs. 

And how did you and Chelsea meet and begin collaborating? 

I was playing guitar in a different band which happened to play some shows around Los Angeles with Chelsea Wolfe and her band in 2009. I was really into what they were doing and happened to be hanging around the Sacramento area often, so I started playing and recording with them. 

To start, I think we ought to get some background details. You’ve been playing with Chelsea Wolfe for a good deal of time—the official Hiss Spun info sheet calls you a “longtime collaborator.” When exactly did your collaboration with Chelsea begin? 

I played piano on a song from The Grime and the Glow, but didn’t join the band until early 2010. Shortly after that, we began recording the songs that would become Ἀποκάλυψις. That was my first real collaboration with the band. 

In your own words, what exactly is your role in the band, as a composer but also in live performance? 

I try to remain fluid as a collaborator. I help flesh out Chelsea’s demos and contribute extra progressions and sketches here and there. We send song files back and forth, and chip away at them like that. While we’re in the studio, I play a little bit of whatever instrument is needed. For the live show, I usually play bass and keys, and manage any tape tracks or interludes that are being run. For this upcoming tour, I’ll be filling in on guitar for the first time in the band, as our guitarist Bryan takes paternity leave, and I played a lot of guitar on the new album as well. 

In Wolfe you perform synthesizers and bass, but you also used sound collages on this album and others. Do you think more in terms of theory and notes, or do you approach music from another angle? 

Most of my ideas come in bursts, usually while playing piano or acoustic guitar, and usually in a kind of stoned nighttime “flow state.” I process those ideas later and find the tones and textures that feel right for them. The sound collages and ‘cut-up’ production techniques all happen in that space too. Chelsea is a great editor, she’ll hear one small section, or one element of something I’m working on and find the perfect place for it in a larger piece. Theory kind of comes in after that, adding melody lines or modulating entire sections to fit in different songs. I have a basic education in music theory, but I don’t usually think in those terms while composing. 

What’s your approach for collecting sound samples? 

I always carry a handheld field recorder with me. I’ve recently started using a smaller version that just plugs right into my phone, and sometimes even a regular phone mic voice memo will do the trick. Chelsea also collects sound samples from out in the world and sends them to me. It’s similar to taking a picture, the quality isn’t always as important as the content. 

I know that you recorded a coyote howl in California and put that somewhere on the record. 

The coyote’s howl, and a passing motorcycle, is heard during the heavy synth and bass breakdown in “The Culling.” I captured that on my field recorder and ran it through various guitar pedals and cut up the pieces from there. 

What was the story behind working with Troy Van Leeuwen in the studio? I’m a big fan of his work in Queens of the Stone Age and Failure, and he did a very good job of integrating his own style into the Chelsea Wolfe sound. 

The songs with Troy were originally meant for a side project we were working on. Chelsea sent him demos of “Vex” and “Spun” in early 2015. He tracked his parts at his home studio, some of which ended up on the final mixes. The other parts he played were written and recorded on the spot over a weekend at GodCity Studio towards the end of the sessions. I learned a lot from just watching him play. He’s a cool motherfucker. 

You also helped on the Converge ‘Blood Moon’ shows. What was the story behind that collaboration, and what was the biggest challenge in making those album-only tracks come to life? 

I’ve been a Converge fan for almost two decades. I had released that split with Jacob a few years prior, and had introduced myself to the band over the years whenever our paths crossed. We hung out with Kurt around Boston and Salem on the first Abysstour and a couple of weeks later, he called to ask if I’d be interested in playing keyboard with them at Roadburn Festival the following spring. I jumped at the chance, and eventually the project grew to involve Chelsea on guitar and vocals as well. Building out that set was a pretty big undertaking. Kurt sent me some of the original stems from certain tracks so I could recreate those sounds, and organize the backing tracks for what couldn’t be played live. There are lots of hidden gems buried in the songs they chose. Those four shows were very special. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to bring ‘Blood Moon’ together again in the future. 

Hiss Spun is the most overtly hard rocking record in the Chelsea Wolfe discography. Most bands get more accessible as they age but your work seems to get angrier and more abrasive. How do you think the album compares with your previous work? 

Hiss Spun is heavier as a result of a couple things. One being that we worked on the songs as a band a lot with drummer Jess Gowrie, Chelsea and myself in a room together, playing way too loud. On prior albums, there was a lot more isolation involved in the creative process. The second reason this album is louder is, as I already brought up, some of these songs were intended for a side project, which was going in a pretty heavy direction. The songs from that project felt right in the context of the band, so we harvested a few. 

Is there a particular song on Hiss Spun that you’re proud of or feel is a great example of your work? 

I’m very pleased with Hiss Spun, I’ve never been as happy with one of our albums right out the gate. It was quite a task to get everything to sit together properly, especially when we came into the studio with upwards of 30 tracks of pre-production stems for some songs, but Kurt did a great job. The way he recorded the drums and guitars is pretty much exactly how I’d hoped he would. 

If I had to pick a favorite song from the album right now, it would be “Scrape.” This was the first song we collaborated on with Jess, and it’s built primarily from a sample of a tractor bucket scraping on a concrete floor. My friend Travis actually recorded the original sample on his phone, and sent it to me. I manipulated it from there and built chords, which sound like a fucked up brass section to me. All of this combined with Chelsea’s intense, frenetic vocal performance makes this song feel like a very different approach for us.

[sargenthouse]

Ben Chisholm, Chelsea Wolfe’s Secret Weapon // Decibel Mag

Ben Chisholm has played on critically acclaimed albums, toured the world and played Roadburn festival. He’s visible in a music video which was uploaded to YouTube over a month ago and has been viewed almost two hundred thousand times. Still, many fans of his work don’t really know him. 

The multi-instrumentalist has been playing with Chelsea Wolfe since 2010. His instrumental contributions and sound collages count as indispensable parts of the band’s macabre atmosphere live and in studio. 

Read the full article HERE. 

Chisholm’s fourth album with Chelsea Wolfe, Hiss Spun, will be released this Friday, September 22 on Sargent House Records. Together with Chisholm, we unravel his history with the band, his contributions to Hiss Spun, and recount how he and Wolfe came to join Converge for their ‘Blood Moon’ shows in 2016. 

What’s the story of your pre-Wolfe work? 

Growing up, I played in various punk, grindcore and noise bands around Northern California. Then I started focusing on solo recording projects. There isn’t a lot of past music available. My project White Horse had a boxset released by Weyrd Son in Europe, and another solo project called Revelator has a split 7” released with Wear Your Wounds which is Jacob [Bannon]from Converge’s project. Other than that, my early output is buried on scratched CD-Rs. 

And how did you and Chelsea meet and begin collaborating? 

I was playing guitar in a different band which happened to play some shows around Los Angeles with Chelsea Wolfe and her band in 2009. I was really into what they were doing and happened to be hanging around the Sacramento area often, so I started playing and recording with them. 

To start, I think we ought to get some background details. You’ve been playing with Chelsea Wolfe for a good deal of time—the official Hiss Spun info sheet calls you a “longtime collaborator.” When exactly did your collaboration with Chelsea begin? 

I played piano on a song from The Grime and the Glow, but didn’t join the band until early 2010. Shortly after that, we began recording the songs that would become Ἀποκάλυψις. That was my first real collaboration with the band. 

In your own words, what exactly is your role in the band, as a composer but also in live performance? 

I try to remain fluid as a collaborator. I help flesh out Chelsea’s demos and contribute extra progressions and sketches here and there. We send song files back and forth, and chip away at them like that. While we’re in the studio, I play a little bit of whatever instrument is needed. For the live show, I usually play bass and keys, and manage any tape tracks or interludes that are being run. For this upcoming tour, I’ll be filling in on guitar for the first time in the band, as our guitarist Bryan takes paternity leave, and I played a lot of guitar on the new album as well. 

In Wolfe you perform synthesizers and bass, but you also used sound collages on this album and others. Do you think more in terms of theory and notes, or do you approach music from another angle? 

Most of my ideas come in bursts, usually while playing piano or acoustic guitar, and usually in a kind of stoned nighttime “flow state.” I process those ideas later and find the tones and textures that feel right for them. The sound collages and ‘cut-up’ production techniques all happen in that space too. Chelsea is a great editor, she’ll hear one small section, or one element of something I’m working on and find the perfect place for it in a larger piece. Theory kind of comes in after that, adding melody lines or modulating entire sections to fit in different songs. I have a basic education in music theory, but I don’t usually think in those terms while composing. 

What’s your approach for collecting sound samples? 

I always carry a handheld field recorder with me. I’ve recently started using a smaller version that just plugs right into my phone, and sometimes even a regular phone mic voice memo will do the trick. Chelsea also collects sound samples from out in the world and sends them to me. It’s similar to taking a picture, the quality isn’t always as important as the content. 

I know that you recorded a coyote howl in California and put that somewhere on the record. 

The coyote’s howl, and a passing motorcycle, is heard during the heavy synth and bass breakdown in “The Culling.” I captured that on my field recorder and ran it through various guitar pedals and cut up the pieces from there. 

What was the story behind working with Troy Van Leeuwen in the studio? I’m a big fan of his work in Queens of the Stone Age and Failure, and he did a very good job of integrating his own style into the Chelsea Wolfe sound. 

The songs with Troy were originally meant for a side project we were working on. Chelsea sent him demos of “Vex” and “Spun” in early 2015. He tracked his parts at his home studio, some of which ended up on the final mixes. The other parts he played were written and recorded on the spot over a weekend at GodCity Studio towards the end of the sessions. I learned a lot from just watching him play. He’s a cool motherfucker. 

You also helped on the Converge ‘Blood Moon’ shows. What was the story behind that collaboration, and what was the biggest challenge in making those album-only tracks come to life? 

I’ve been a Converge fan for almost two decades. I had released that split with Jacob a few years prior, and had introduced myself to the band over the years whenever our paths crossed. We hung out with Kurt around Boston and Salem on the first Abysstour and a couple of weeks later, he called to ask if I’d be interested in playing keyboard with them at Roadburn Festival the following spring. I jumped at the chance, and eventually the project grew to involve Chelsea on guitar and vocals as well. Building out that set was a pretty big undertaking. Kurt sent me some of the original stems from certain tracks so I could recreate those sounds, and organize the backing tracks for what couldn’t be played live. There are lots of hidden gems buried in the songs they chose. Those four shows were very special. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to bring ‘Blood Moon’ together again in the future. 

Hiss Spun is the most overtly hard rocking record in the Chelsea Wolfe discography. Most bands get more accessible as they age but your work seems to get angrier and more abrasive. How do you think the album compares with your previous work? 

Hiss Spun is heavier as a result of a couple things. One being that we worked on the songs as a band a lot with drummer Jess Gowrie, Chelsea and myself in a room together, playing way too loud. On prior albums, there was a lot more isolation involved in the creative process. The second reason this album is louder is, as I already brought up, some of these songs were intended for a side project, which was going in a pretty heavy direction. The songs from that project felt right in the context of the band, so we harvested a few. 

Is there a particular song on Hiss Spun that you’re proud of or feel is a great example of your work? 

I’m very pleased with Hiss Spun, I’ve never been as happy with one of our albums right out the gate. It was quite a task to get everything to sit together properly, especially when we came into the studio with upwards of 30 tracks of pre-production stems for some songs, but Kurt did a great job. The way he recorded the drums and guitars is pretty much exactly how I’d hoped he would. 

If I had to pick a favorite song from the album right now, it would be “Scrape.” This was the first song we collaborated on with Jess, and it’s built primarily from a sample of a tractor bucket scraping on a concrete floor. My friend Travis actually recorded the original sample on his phone, and sent it to me. I manipulated it from there and built chords, which sound like a fucked up brass section to me. All of this combined with Chelsea’s intense, frenetic vocal performance makes this song feel like a very different approach for us.

[intrepidsourcing]

The Secret to Finding Your Clothing Sample Manufacturer

The manufacturer tasked to create your clothing samples does not have to be the one who will do the mass production of your items. There are factories who specialize in creating clothing samples but aren’t built for big quantity production. This situation can be very tricky since most of the time, clothing lines settle with their sample manufacturer as their final clothing manufacturer. It is generally very important that you make custom clothing samples before ordering larger quantities. It gives you the option to test your idea and sizing. Sizing is very important, too. Larger brands often only use very small sizes for sampling and catwalk. However, you should make sure it works for all body types you want to target. Let us keep in mind there is a different set of qualifications for sample manufacturers and wholesale manufacturers even though they are both related to each other. Your clothing sample maker should understand your product vision, pays attention to details and will charge accordingly for sampling. The product manufacturers are focused on the production line and their efficiency since they are producing large batches. Clothing sample manufacturers are more detail-oriented which is crucial when sampling.

How to Assess Clothing Sample Makers?

The best way to assess clothing sample manufacturers is to first determine their strength/s. For example, if they are good at pleating then note it down or if they are excellent at braiding and shades, then list them down as part of their pros. The next step is to find out their flaws and weaknesses. You do not have to include aspects wherein they are average at but simply list down things in which they are bad at. The clothing manufacturing companies that do mass production might also be an option if you don't want to iterate too many samples and don't want to try different sizing options. Last but not the least, list down their respective fees for creating clothing samples. You don’t have to choose the clothing sample maker which charges the cheapest because you have to weigh all of the pros and cons along with their service fee to come up with your choice. You also have to think of the clothing style you are creating a sample for and assess whether your potential clothing sample maker is suitable for the job.

Questions to Ask Your Potential Clothing Sample Maker

1. Ask for a sample of their past work. This is a direct evidence of their work quality and will help you assess their sampling service if they are as good as they claim to be. If they ever collaborated with other clothing sample makers for the product, then you deserve to know of the collaborators as well. 2. Who are their current and past clients? Their client roster is also a good way to distinguish their level of reputation in the clothing industry. Big named clients should be someone to watch out for in their client list. 3. What are the materials they use? Cotton clothing should be a given with clothing sample manufacturers but are they skilled in dealing with materials like wool or silk? You should be aware of the different materials they are skilled working with. 4. Ask for an estimated quote for your request. This will help you check if they are additional charges aside from their professional fee. There are clothing prototype makers who attract customers based on their low service fee but have numerous additional charges which catches clients off-guard. 5. What are their payment terms? Do they allow installment payments wherein you pay half of the amount upon order then pay the other half upon completion? There are different payment terms with clothing prototype makers, make sure the manufacturer you choose have terms which works for you. 6. What is the average sampling lead time? You need sampling lead time information for you to know how fast they work and how long it takes for them to finish your fashion sample. The sampling lead time would also be critical for your choice to go with them as your clothing sample manufacturer.

Other Sampling Info You Need to Know About

Sampling costs vary depending on the type of clothing you want to get sampled. Coats and jackets are obviously more expensive compared to a regular shirt or dress. The materials needed for the clothing samples will also have a direct effect on the quote. You need to be considerate of these factors once you see the initial quote of your potential clothing prototype maker. Consider that you choose as representative size for your clothing sample. You should also remember the sampling process is not a one-time thing. You may get lucky if the clothing sample manufacturer gets the job done in their first try. Usually, it takes two or even three sampling attempts before they achieve the desired sample. Revisions are part of the process. They are neither a setback nor disadvantage but it would be helpful if your clothing sample manufacturer gets the job done in a try or two. The location of the clothing sample manufacturer’s company is also a factor to their pricing. If they are located in the city proper, you can expect them to charge at a higher rate compared to clothing sample manufacturers located in the rural areas. This is pretty understandable given their rental fees and other costing components which are factors to their service fee. Let’s take China as an example. Most clothing lines ask sampling from clothing sample makers located in Guangdong instead of Beijing because of the huge disparity in terms of prices due to specialisation. Always ask for the clothing sample pattern your clothing prototype maker used for the clothing samples. You will need the same exact clothing sample pattern for mass production later on. You don’t have to pay anything extra for this request as it is considered to be part of their service as your clothing sample maker. Asking for the clothing sample pattern will make the transition from sampling on to production easier most especially if you work with different clothing manufacturers for each process.

Clothing Sample vs. Final Product

Once you find your clothing sample manufacturer, it would be a big dilemma whether you hire them for mass production of your clothing products. Are they capable of producing the same quality when it comes to large quantities? A lot of clothing sample manufacturers assume they are right away given the production project after tasking them to do fashion samples for you. However, it would still be your choice to assess whether they are qualified to your standards or not. Read the full article

[flauntpage]

If Every Wu-Tang Clan Member was a Philadelphia Athlete

The Wu-Tang Clan comes to Philly next Thursday and Friday. I didn’t buy tickets because they’re going for around $100 right now, but maybe I’ll end up splurging.

I was sitting here thinking, “how can I work Wu-Tang Clan into the website?” They don’t have anything to do with Philly sports, though I remember Ghostface Killah said the following at the Roots’ Picnic in 2010, shortly after his Yankees beat the Phils in the World Series.

Paraphrasing:

“That cat Chase Utley is pretty good. I’m from New York, but if I wasn’t from New York I wouldn’t mind being from Philly.”

That’s not a bad compliment at all. I’ll take it.

Now that we’re done with the lede, here’s every Wu-Tang member and their Philadelphia sports counterpart:

The RZA = Darren Daulton

The leader of the 1993 Phillies, Dutch (RIP) was universally loved by pretty much everybody in town. Similarly, the RZA is Wu-Tang’s spiritual leader, the man who made the beats, produced the records, and essentially fronted the group. He was the Clan’s founder and de-facto point person, the guy who steered the ship and put the group on the map. If Mitch Williams and Old Dirty Bastard were throwing pitches into the dirt, Daulton and the RZA were putting their body in front of the ball.

choice lyric:

“hey yo, camouflage chameleon, ninjas scalin’ your buildin’ No time to grab the gun they already got your wife and children A hit was sent, from the President, to rage your residence Because you had secret evidence, and documents”

The GZA = Malcolm Jenkins

GZA the Genius, Wu-Tang’s oldest member, the savvy veteran. Wise, thoughtful, and laid back, just like the Eagles’ Pro Bowl safety and team captain.

choice lyric:

“My preliminary attack keep cemetaries packed Of ****** who think it ain’t like that MC’s are gunned down like being run down with mad trucks Them God-struck, religious ****** call it bad luck”

Old Dirty Bastard = Lenny Dykstra

A couple of unique characters.

Lenny Dykstra and the ODB were both clever and full of talent, a couple of fan-favorites back in the day. When these guys were actually lucid, they were among the best in their respective roles, but injuries and disappearances and all sorts of other shit led to inconsistent and rocky careers. Then came the legal issues, substance abuse, and getting arrested at a Gray’s Ferry McDonalds, which happens to the best of us.

choice lyric: 

Inspectah Deck = John LeClair

Maybe the Clan’s most underrated member, perhaps because he didn’t have a flashy solo career or dabble in movies or other media. He was just consistent and steady in every Wu-Tang track, a guy who sort of flew under the radar but deserves a lot of plaudits for the group’s success.

Similarly, John LeClair was steady and reliable. He didn’t receive the headlines and attention that Eric Lindros did, but you always knew what you were going to get from him. Great things happened when he was on the ice, and consistent quality year-in and year-out is why Inspectah Deck is John LeClair.

choice lyric:

“I bomb atomically, Socrates philosophies And hypotheses can’t define how I be droppin’ these Mockeries, lyrically perform armed robbery Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me”

Raekwon the Chef = Reggie White

If Raekwon was the sack leader on 36 Chambers, then Only Built 4 Cuban Linx got him his Super Bowl ring.

Another consistent Clan MC, Raekwon delivered on pretty much every verse he appeared on. His partnership with Ghostface and Method Man on the trio’s various solo albums probably made up the strongest portion of the post-36 Chambers Wu catalogue. You might say his career paralleled White’s as a standout performer both with the Eagles/Clan and Packers/solo.

choice lyric:

“Thug-related style attract millions, fans They understand my plan, who’s the kid up in the green Land? Me and the RZA connect, blow a fuse, you lose Half-ass crews get demolished and bruised”

U-God = Freddie Mitchell

He didn’t contribute as much as other members because he was incarcerated during most of the recording of 36 Chambers. That’s probably the main reason why he’s often referenced as the least important of the nine, a fringe guy surrounded by more well-known rappers.

But U-God had some really important verses for the Wu. His opening verse in “Da Mystery of Chessboxing” is just as much a part of the Shaolin fabric as Freddie Mitchell’s 4th and 26 reception against the Packers back in 2004. U-God is a member of the team, but he’s more like a WR3 instead of Terrell Owens.

choice lyric:

“Raw I’ma give it to ya, with no trivia Raw like cocaine straight from Bolivia My hip-hop will rock and shock the nation Like the Emancipation Proclamation Weak MC’s approach with slang that’s dead You might as run into the wall and bang your head”

Ghostface Killah = Charles Barkley

I’d argue that Ghostface is similar to Sir Charles because they both probably found more success outside of their starting points. Ghost had strong verses on the Wu albums, but most people would probably tell you that his lines on Cuban Linx, Iron Man, and Supreme Clientele probably stand out a bit more.

It’s the same thing for Charles, who started his career in Philly and then went on to win his MVP award in Phoenix. He was one hell of a player for the Sixers but was equally successful, if not more successful, in pretty much everything else that came later, which he was able to parlay into a thriving broadcasting career.

On another note, Ghostface has a rapping style that mimics Barkley’s delivery. It’s a stream of consciousness, a blend of words that sometimes doesn’t seem to make sense, but for some reason you feel like you understand exactly what he’s trying to say.

choice lyric:

“Scientific, my hand kissed it Robotic, let’s think optimistic You probably missed it, watch me Dolly Dick it Scotty Wotty copped it to me, big microphone hippie Hit Poughkeepsie, crispy chicken, verbs, throw up a stone, Richie Chop the O, sprinkle a little snow inside a Optimo Swing the John McEnroe”

Method Man = Joel Embiid

Universally recognized? Check.

Fan-favorites? Check.

Sharp wit? Check.

Larger than life characters? Check.

I’m not sure I’ve heard any hip hop fan ever say a negative thing about Method Man, who probably went on to have the most successful overall career. He dropped solo albums and singles, appeared in movies, collaborated with Redman and Mary J. Blige and still does a lot of guest appearances.

Likewise, Joel Embiid probably has the highest ceiling and biggest potential among current Philly athletes.

choice lyric:

“You could never capture the Method Man’s stature For rhyme and for rapture, got ***** resigning, now master My style? Never! I put the fucking buck in the wild kid, I’m terror Razor sharp, I sever The head from the shoulders, I’m better, than my competta You mean competitor, whatever, let’s get together”

Masta Killa = Nick Foles

Masta Killa was the last member to join the Clan. He was young at the time and a hip-hop late bloomer compared to the rest of the group. Somewhat quiet, sure, but he would always show up with a great verse and in recent years he’s taken a more prominent leadership role with the Clan while releasing one of the best post-2000 albums in No Said Date.

He’s Nick Foles. He isn’t your starting quarterback of the future, but you can’t overlook his contributions. Masta Killa is always there, ready to get the job done when called upon.

choice lyric:

“Be on the lookout for this mass murderous suspect That fills more body bags than apartments in projects And as far as the coroners know The autopsy show it was a Shaolin blow Put on by my family brought to the academy Of the Wu and learnt how to Fuck up your anatomy steadily, calm and deadly”

Cappadonna = A.J. Feeley

Cappadonna was not an original Wu Tang member but appeared on the group’s solo albums as early as 1995 and basically just assumed the ODB’s role after he died.

Therefore, Cappadonna is A.J. Feeley, or even Jeff Garcia or any other non-Foles backup QB who came in, did a decent job, and carved out a piece of Philly lore for himself.

choice lyric:

“I twist darts from the heart, tried and true Loop my voice on the LP Martini on the slang rocks, certified chatterbox Vocabulary ‘Donna talking, tell your story walking Take cover kid, what? Run for your brother, kid”

The post If Every Wu-Tang Clan Member was a Philadelphia Athlete appeared first on Crossing Broad.

If Every Wu-Tang Clan Member was a Philadelphia Athlete published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[telavivcity-blog]

Episode 4 of LuckyPDF TV: Auto Italia Live

https://telavivcity.co.il/?p=5733&utm_source=SocialAutoPoster&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Tumblr The City that never sleeps Episode 4 of LuckyPDF TV: Auto Italia Live https://telavivcity.co.il/?p=5733&utm_source=SocialAutoPoster&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Tumblr Saturday 6 November 2010 Set design and Presentation by Leslie Kulesh This week Leslie Kulesh will embody the American female talk show host. At once feminine, current, relatable and warm, universally looked to for everything from make-up tips to politics - and at times as powerful as any politician. Leslie's set will depart from a classic 2-D background to focus on the volume of space the actors occupy. A carefully curated selection of props become activated throughout the show providing anonymity for the BTFA readings, keeping Chas in supply of both paint and drink, and of course setting the mood for this week's presenter. Leslie Kulesh is an American artist whose sculpture and installation employs craft materials in large-scale productions. Her work attempts to liberate the notions of material whilst questioning spatial ownership and experience. Leslie currently lives and works in London. Selected exhibitions include 'How About Now' Sabina Lee, LA (2010); 'Lonelycat15' Spanien19c, Aarhus, Denmark, 'CSSC' 179Canal, NYC, (2009); 'Neu Art' Live With Animals, NYC (2008) Whoop Dee Doo, an interview with Megan Mantia Whoop Dee Doo, hosted by your awesome friends, Jaimie and Matt, is a kid-friendly faux public access television show featuring pre-planned performances accompanied by live audience participation (kind of like a radical talent show!!). One of the show's facilitators, Megan Mantia will be in conversation with Leslie Kulesh featuring highlights from previous episodes. The show is based in Kansas City, Missouri, but has travelled and worked with many amazing arts organisations all over the country!! Some of the awesome places they have worked with include the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, Deitch Projects in New York, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago and more! BTFA Anonymous interviewers meet with BTFA, an anonymous collected body of bodies who produce and distribute queer cruising notes and images in the form of a zine. Interviewed for the first time about the project, BTFA's two editors will be known throughout the exchange only by their "designations", DCCT (in the studio) and EBCE (on a satellite link up from a secret location). Discussions of the political possibilities and limitations offered by the position of anonymity, to author and editor, will be harshly considered. And together they will try to seek out their impersonal alignments without identifying with each other. The discussion will be broken up by readings from the zine by anonymous persons. Sarah Rara, On Moire Interference can be defined as the imposition of two waves forming a new wave or a message disrupted as it travels from the source to the receiver. Moire patterns are generated by interference between two visual fields; they result from an attempt to occupy the same space - collapsing separate points of view if only for a wavering instant. Composed for four hands, Moire uses two simple pattern layers to isolate the point at which two messages can alternately merge or disrupt each other. Moire embodies the sincere attempt to map a social space not reliant on constant convergence or agreement, but rather the acknowledgement of interference, difference, friction, and disruption as a potential model for producing a social space that is characterised by the inclusion of multiple perspectives into a shared view. Moire was created as a test shot for a scene from a larger video work currently in progress that examines interference, filtering, and parallax in terms of social engagement, subjectivity, and power sharing. Sarah Rara is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. Working primarily in video and performance, Rara is also part of the musical collective Lucky Dragons and a founding member of Sumi Ink Club, a public group that meets regularly to generate collaborative drawings. Charlie Woolley, Painting With Chas CHOICE: Saturday 23rd October 6pm In the grand tradition of Bob Ross, Rolf Harris and Tony Hart, artist Charlie Woolley will take on the role of 'Chas', a "Television Artist" who joins us live in the studio this week. 'Chas' will lead us through the perils and pitfalls of contemporary painting - unoriginality, earnestness, and abstract expressionism. He'll also offer us tips and tricks on how to succeed in the art world; with touches of decorative irony, and daubs of critical theory all along the way! Essential viewing for all ages, from seasoned professionals to Sunday dabblers. Charlie Woolley is a London based artist working in a variety of mediums, from large scale photo-montage to flags and furnishings. His work focuses on the mediation and manipulation of political and cultural concepts and images. He has recently finished a seven week performance of his Radio Show, a far reaching collaborative project transforming gallery spaces into radio stations. Charlie has lectured at London Metropolitan University, Kingston University and The Royal College of Art. Exhibitions include: Mysterious Cults, SPACE Studios (2010), Spasticus Artisticus, Ceri Hand Gallery Liverpool (2010) FLYERSHEEPFLAGSELF, Seventeen Gallery (2009) I Built My House On Sand, David Risley Gallery, London (2008). Charlotte Turton, Sublime Time 'Sublime Time' is a video work that postulates the future powers of television today. The televisual revolution is over; we understand the complexities and motives of mediated communication all too well. We know when we are being sold an idea or product, pandered to or persuaded, corralled into action or acquiesce, entertained or comatosed. So what can it tell us about the future, where do we go from here? Charlotte Turton is a London based artist, engaged in producing sound and moving image work using digital technologies and text. Uniting ideology and poetics, her practice is focused on the politics of language as a device for postulating futuristic possibilities. Dis Magazine, Hooper Place The all-new documentary soap opera from DIS MAGAZINE, strictly for adults. DIS is a dissection of fashion, art and commerce which seeks to dissolve conventions, distort realities, disturb ideologies and disrupt the dismal dissemination of fashion discourse. All is open to discussion. There is no final word. Cibelle, Sonja Khalecallon: Products for a better life At the "Las Venus Resort Palace Hotel" everyone is welcome. Amongst the visitors that pass by are the bricklayer looking for a morning shot, clubbers in the midst of their previous night out, the fat burlesque dancer, an intellectual prostitute and tourists wearing sandals looking for an exotic drink. The narrator is Sonja Khalecallon; host, maid, masseuse, gift shop attendant, bartender, dancer, spiritual advisor and crooner at the cabaret inside the Las Venus Resort Palace Hotel. Cibelle is a multi-media performance artist, singer-songwriter and music producer. She has recently been working more with visual arts and performance, taking part in the Abravanista movement with Rick Castro, also a part of Assume Vivid Astro Focus and collaborating as a part of collective and artzine FUR.uk.com Titles and Visuals by Gili Tal with Michael Lomon and Johnny Scarr Titles this week come from Gili Tal with Michael Lomon on animation and Johnny Scarr on sound. The titles are Gili's collages gone overboard and mixed with a bit of QVC graphic styling. Mike has delved in to his love of dissolve effects without holding back, as Nadia Comaneci, Kathy Acker, nicely-dressed office folk and lots of palm trees fall away to allow big, bright and shiny Sesame Street-style letters to do their thing. Gili Tal was born in 1983 in Tel Aviv and lives and works in London. She works mainly with images such as those found in magazines and junk mail. She is interested in the bathos inherent in mass produced images, particularly in regards to extremes of emotion, and the tensions and conversations that can be produced across them when they are imposed beside each other. Gili has participated in group shows at 10/2/10, Berlin (2010), Auto Italia South East, London (2008) and The Jerwood Space, London (2008). She will have a solo show at (And/Or), London in 2011. Michael Lomon is an illustrator and animator currently residing in London. He has illustrated for clients such as The British Dental Journal, LeftLion and Murky Depths magazine. He enjoys working with ink and watercolour, but will on occasion get his hands dirty with some digital shenanigans. He also draws comics and has produced a range of independent animated shorts including 'Cuckoo' for director Hewson Maxwell, and others which have great titles like 'rind & pulp.' Johnny Scarr predominantly works with sound in an improvised context. He is perhaps best known as a member of Spoils & Relics, and occasionally Fossils. Likes: 4 Viewed: 1843 source #4 #Auto #Episode #Italia #live #LuckyPDF #telavivbeach #telavivmap #telavivmuseum #telavivweather #tel-aviv #TV TEL AVIV - THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS #BESTTelAvivhotelaccommodation #museum #Uncategorized

[deniscollins]

Why the Google Walkout Was a Watershed Moment in Tech

In just a week, Google employees used the company’s collaborative tools and open company culture to organize a protest where 20,000 employees walked out to protest the company’s long history of protecting executives accused of sexual harassment. The organizers may address other grievances. If you were a Google executive, how would you address this faction: (1) Encourage them to organize and provide them a position on key committees, such as HR, international expansion, etc., or (2) Discourage organizing and recommend they file their grievances through ongoing company channels, (3) something else (if so, what?)? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

For a few hours last Thursday, just about everything at Google ground to a halt. At 11 a.m. local time in a movement that rolled like an angry and jubilant tide around the globe, more than 20,000 employees walked out to protest the company’s long history of protecting executives accused of sexual harassment.

Then the walkout was done, and the media’s bright glare returned to the midterm elections. A Google spokesman told me that its executives were now pondering workers’ demands, which include specific changes to hiring and management policies, but the company had no comment beyond that.

However Google responds, little at the internet search giant — and, perhaps, little in Silicon Valley — will be the same again.

For two years, regulators, lawmakers, academics and the media have pushed Silicon Valley to alter its world-swallowing ways. But outsiders have few points of leverage in tech; there are few laws governing the industry’s practices, and lawmakers have struggled to get up to speed on tech’s implications for society. Protests by workers are an important new avenue for pressure; the very people who make these companies work can change what they do in the world.

Their effectiveness at pushing the industry to address issues is already clear. In the summer, a worker-led movement at Google contributed to its decision to abandon Project Maven, a plan to work with the Pentagon on software for targeting drone strikes. Workers at Amazon and Microsoft are also calling on their companies to shift how they work with law enforcement.

But the Google walkout suggests something bigger could be afoot.

In just a week, the organizers used Google’s own collaborative tools, and leveraged its open company culture, to create a wide-ranging movement. Their demands reflect the comments and suggestions of more than 1,000 people who participated in internal conversations about the walkout. They include points of view of that have long been marginalized in tech — of minority workers, for instance, and of contractors, the industry’s second-class citizens.

The walkout’s organizers told me that they were aiming to keep that movement alive — to ask the most important questions about how their company operates in the world, and to inspire those in other parts of the tech industry to take up similar arms.

“Something we’ve discussed as a group, something we’ve locked arms over, is that we’re assembled now,” said Claire Stapleton, a marketing manager at Google-owned YouTube who created the internal discussion forum in which organizers planned the walkout.

“We have an incredibly engaged group of people, and we aren’t going to stop escalating this,” she continued. “The group isn’t really going to back down from this or a host of other things. The walkout was not like a blowing-off-steam exercise.”

The walkout was sparked by a specific grievance: a report in The New York Times that Google gave a $90 million exit payment to Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, after he was accused of coercing a woman to perform oral sex in a hotel room (a charge that he denies but that the company found credible).

The organizers said their aims were far larger, though, than sexual harassment and abuse.

“Our discussions expanded very quickly,” Ms. Stapleton said. “What is it that we want the company to be, and what should we do with the power that we very quickly see we are harnessing? Is Google for good? Do we think that technology is toxic? Are we navigating through a host of complex issues online in a positive way?”

Speaking to Ms. Stapleton and several of her fellow organizers, I was struck by their intoxicating optimism. They brimmed with confidence about their capacity to push for a new moral, ethical and social framework in tech. And because Google’s culture is a model for the industry and much of corporate America, they saw the idea of changing the company as part of a larger social and political struggle to make a dent in the universe.

“I think what we did was disprove the myth that it’s too hard to take collective action,” said Celie O’Neil-Hart, who works in YouTube’s marketing department. She described the meticulous way that she and other organizers of the walkout distilled the thousands of discussions flowing through their group into a list of demands. Their secret? Google’s own technology.

“I was getting hundreds of pieces of feedback on these demands, but ironically thanks to Google’s products, like Google Groups and Docs and comments, I was able to get this constant stream of real-time feedback from a collective group of hundreds of Googlers, all while doing my day job,” Ms. O’Neil-Hart said. She noted, too, that many Googlers had been hired for their work-endless-hours drive; now that drive was marshaled in the service of a movement.

Stephanie Parker, a policy specialist at YouTube, described organizing the protest as something like designing and releasing a new Google product, only with a group that was more passionate and personally invested.

“It was really fun to see my fellow employees flex the skills that a lot of them had developed at Google — their program management skills, their marketing skills, their P.R. skills, but in the service of this movement,” she said.

A lot about the walkout was particular to Google’s culture, which has always encouraged a more open form of debate than many tech peers. Companies more consumed with secrecy — Facebook, for instance, or Amazon or Apple — may be less tolerant of a large number of employees who use their tech skills to go rogue.

But such a prospect is not out of the question. Tech workers have endless options when it comes to employment; the tight labor market gives them greater leeway in voicing their concerns, and the promise that their voices are valued gives them an expectation that they can effect change.

“I didn’t think this would happen, but it’s amazing to see,” said Ellen Pao, a venture capitalist who sued her former firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, for sexual harassment and now works at the nonprofit group Project Include.

“It’s another point of pressure — maybe the most powerful one yet,” she said. “And until recently, there really hasn’t been much pressure at all.”

[hodldrgn-blog]

New Post has been published on https://cryptomoonity.com/announcing-the-7th-stellar-build-challenge/

Announcing the 7th Stellar Build Challenge

Jed said in the first build challenge announcement:

“The build challenge is simple by design: it’s an experiment to find ways to develop services that are fair, affordable, and community-driven, and at the same time drive uptake of the Stellar network to maximize efficiency and reach.”

There have been six challenges since then, and many of the winning projects have become cornerstones of the Stellar ecosystem. The SBC is now a essential part of Stellar’s developer community, and here for this seventh edition, we’re going to return to its roots, by focusing especially on the “community-driven” part of Jed’s initial vision.

SBC #7 Goals

This SBC has two routes to an award, each of which embodies the ideal of collaboration in a different way:

1) make open-source contributions to ongoing projects:

We will reward new contributions to meaningful Stellar-related open-source projects. We’re looking for developers who:

 contribute new features and enhancements

 work on ‘help wanted’ issues

 expand project functionality

 improve the user experience

 even create or improve the documentation

In short, we want people to make a difference in an existing open-source project

Below is a list of suggested open-source projects to contribute towards.

function showThing2() if (document.getElementById('div1').style.display=='none') document.getElementById('div1').style.display='block'; return false; else document.getElementById('div1').style.display='none' return false;

Open source projects for Stellar:

div#div1 width: 600px; margin-bottom:20px;

SDK’s (pick your favorite language) iOS (Swift) – https://github.com/Soneso/stellar-ios-mac-sdk Python (Stellar Py Base) – https://github.com/StellarCN/py-stellar-base Gt/C++ – https://github.com/bnogalm/StellarQtSDK .Net –  https://github.com/elucidsoft/dotnet-stellar-sdk PHP – https://github.com/zulucrypto/stellar-api Unity – https://github.com/Kirbyrawr/stellar-unity Scala – https://github.com/synesso/scala-stellar-sdk Erlang – https://github.com/Viddi/erlang-stellar-sdk Clojure �� https://github.com/xlm-sg/clj-stellar-sdk

Wallets/Exchanges StellarTerm – https://github.com/stellarterm/stellarterm Stargazer – https://github.com/future-tense/stargazer Foxlet – https://github.com/stellarchat/desktop-client

Ledger Explorers Stellar Explorer (steexp) – https://github.com/chatch/stellarexplorer

Other Stellar Kit – client web (Stellar Laboratory Alternative) – https://github.com/StellarKit/stellarkit-client-web BB-8 (CLI Tool) – https://github.com/tolitius/bb8 Twitch bot – Novabot – https://github.com/michael-luo/novabot Stellar Checkout – https://github.com/brewaa/stellar-checkout

2) develop one of these four new ‘cornerstone’ project ideas:

This is your chance to “collaborate” directly with SDF. We’ve written up the following four specs; this is what we most want to see built for Stellar. Take one of the specs and make something awesome. function showThing3() if (document.getElementById('div2').style.display=='none') document.getElementById('div2').style.display='block'; return false; else document.getElementById('div2').style.display='none' return false;

SDF’s Project List

div#div2 width: 600px; margin-bottom:20px;

A Better Quorum Explorer There are a couple Stellar quorum explorers already. But they are not collecting or presenting the info in a way that makes them as useful as they could be. Ideally you would contribute to one or more of the following improvements to those projects.

show a graph of the all the qsets of validators in the network

show which are up and show the dependencies between them

use real names for validators where possible

To get the data you probably need to modify stellar-core to write out to a DB all the qsets and externalized messages it sees.

A Trade Bot Maker Build an easy way for anyone to make a trading bot. It should be usable by non-programmers. I am imagining a web interface with a suite of different algorithms to choose from. Allow the users to tweak the parameters in many different ways to tune the bot right.

Provide various data feeds the bot can listen to. Prices on other exchanges etc.

It should be like Stellarterm, where everything is run in a browser client-side.

The server can save people’s bot setup but not their secret key

Consider allowing other programmers to add algorithms or other extensions. Maybe this is just by PR at first.

 Later versions could incorporate social aspects:

For example, people can name their bots and there could be a leaderboard of bot performance.

You could also allow people to run their bot for others for a fee or something similar

Social trading This is a way to make trading more social and fun. The idea is similar to what eToro does (note to eToro: you guys should just point your interface at the stellar network and save someone the trouble of rebuilding all this )

Build a trading app or site:

the users give it a name and a public key.

the site then tracks your trading performance.

It should show a leaderboard of returns over various time periods

you should be able to see the holdings of anyone on the leaderboard

you should be allowed to follow another trader

following means that the you will watch what trades they are making and mirror the same trades in proportion to your balance.

make portfolios that follow a mix of traders

this is probably implemented as a separate account for each trader you are following in the portfolio.

Peer-to-peer wallet

This one is the biggest and most ambitious of the suggestions. This wallet would facilitate peer-to-peer payments without the need for anchors. It could be used to make small payments all over the world.

Before Bitcoin, Ryan Fugger created a site called ripplenet. It allowed people to set borrowing limits for any of their friends or acquaintances. Say A wants to send €10 to C but didn’t know D. But A knows B and B knows C and C knows D. What happens is that A gives B a €10 IOU then B gives C a €10 IOU then C gives D a €10 IOU. Now A owes B €10 and D is owed €10. B and C are owed €10 but also each owe €10 more so their net position after the payment hasn’t changed. The final state from this chain of IOUs is equivalent to A sending €10 to D.

As these debts are settled with real fiat, the balances inside Stellar can be reset. Because Stellar is multi-asset you can of course also support cross-currency payments. What is happening under the hood is that for each of your friends you are making A) a trustline and B) an order buying their asset and selling your asset.

Now, a normal Stellar path payment can route your asset to anyone else that is connected through this friend graph. The app should also allow people to set a price they are willing to go into and out of lumens for. This would do two things, A ) allow people to settle their debts in lumens which will make that process simpler. B ) make it possible for lumens to be the bridge currency in some of these payments reducing the number of hops need to send money. This has all the benefits that it does with anchors but is probably more important here due to the much larger amount of assets.

Setting the lumen price is a little tricky because of the volatility but maybe you can just set it to some standard price feed so it gets updated often. These orders can also only be taken by people that either have your asset or are willing to hold your asset so it is much less risky than putting orders up on a highly traded pair.

Additional incentive to collaborate:

In case it’s not already clear, we want to make sure all participants feel like they are part of the Stellar community. Instead of coding inside of a black hole until the winners are announced, it’s important to discuss projects with each other. There are many people in the community that consistently provide solid direction to projects but don’t have the time to develop their own.

We’ve noticed and will be rewarding users that give great feedback on GalacticTalk and GitHub, this round.

Going forward, Previous SBC Winners Will Be Supported Outside SBC

If you’ve won in past build challenges, congratulations! Thank you for being a part of getting Stellar to where it is today. You helped pave the way — allowing new developers to be inspired by the work you’ve done.

We’ve always encouraged winners to continue improving their projects. That will never change. However, we’ve realized the Stellar Build Challenge isn’t the best framework for ongoing support. If your project is a previous winner or you are a member of the partnership program, do not submit to the SBC. We will reach out to you directly with further details on how SDF plans to support your ongoing success.

With this change, we hope to accomplish several things:

to recognize and financially support established high-quality work in a targeted and tailored way

to give a clear, goal-oriented, and customized set of guidelines to past winning projects

to create more space for truly new projects in the Build Challenge

to create more opportunities for new use cases to be explored and worked into Stellar’s network

Previous winners should review the support program guidelines as they arrive, and existing partners should discuss with their contacts whether the SBC is the right place to submit their project/platforms. For example, a complete rewrite of functionality, utilizing new libraries, for a refined use-case could be considered a ‘new’ project, regardless of whether it keeps the name of the old one. On the other hand, changing the name, but just doing a few UI tweaks would not be a ‘new’ project.

Submissions, Judging, and Awards

Participants can submit their projects for consideration, starting June 1st.  You should announce your project on GalacticTalk.org and submit your project through the typeform.  Form submissions will open on June 1st and end on August 15th at 10:00PM PST. You can start posting announcements on GalacticTalk today. Winners will be announced by August 30th.

Judges will consist of members of the Stellar Development Foundation team with final determinations by Jed McCaleb.

Projects will be awarded based on their merit. We imagine there will be a comparable pool to previous build challenges, but we don’t want to discourage submissions and effort. High quality projects will receive higher awards. If they’re better than average, they will receive more. If they are low-quality, low-effort – they will receive less. While we won’t automatically discount new projects, we highly recommend that submissions are related to the two categories shared above.

Be sure to spend some time reading over the guidelines and fine print before you submit.

Future Opportunities

There are some obvious changes to the format of Stellar Build Challenge 7. We want to keep-in-touch with our developers and offer more ways for the community to engage with each other. Hackathons, live streams, and hosted events should begin to appear more regularly. Our team is also working on a new developer-focused communication channel to highlight exciting indie projects being built on the Stellar network. Details will be announced via our Twitter and monthly newsletter in the near future.

We can’t wait to see what you bring to the table and look forward to watching the community come together to build something awesome.

The post Announcing the 7th Stellar Build Challenge appeared first on Stellar.

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[stephmolliex]

'Creative Selection' Offers a Behind-the-Scenes Look Into Some Key Moments in Apple's Design History

Former Apple software engineer Ken Kocienda is releasing a new book entitled Creative Selection today, presenting a look inside Apple's design process through his involvement with a few key features across a variety of platforms and devices. I've had an opportunity to read through the book ahead of its debut, and it offers an interesting perspective on how Apple develops and refines features through an iterative process Kocienda terms "creative selection." Kocienda, who joined Apple in 2001 and spent 15 years with the company, identifies seven "elements" he deems essential to Apple's success in software development, including inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy. He delves a bit into how each of these elements contributes toward Apple's relentless pursuit of innovative ideas and solutions that end up being intuitive and useful to Apple's customers. The process of creative selection is the overarching strategy for Apple's engineers, with small teams highly focused on rapid-fire demos of their work that allow the engineers to quickly iterate on their ideas and designs, saving the best elements of each iteration to rapidly reach levels of refinement required for Apple's final product releases. Back in 2001, Kocienda was part of a team from former Apple engineer Andy Hertzfeld's software company Eazel that went defunct. Following Eazel's shutdown, Kocienda and Don Melton were hired on at Apple to develop Safari for Mac, and a number of other Eazel engineers ultimately joined them on the project. But in the first days of Apple's web browser project, it was Kocienda and Melton who got the ball rolling by trying to figure out how to port Mozilla to Mac OS X. In Creative Selection, Kocienda spends several chapters walking through those difficult first steps, the inspiration of Richard Williamson to build Safari based on the lean and nimble Konqueror browser rather than Mozilla, and the Safari team's relentless effort toward building out a working web browser with an obsessive focus on speed.As we introduced new features like clicking the back button to return you to your previously viewed web page, we found we couldn't perform the bookkeeping to manage the previous page at quick readiness without impeding the load of all pages. The PLT [Page Load Test] showed the slowdown. When we deemed such features too important to skip but couldn't figure out how to add them without causing such slowdowns, we instituted a trading scheme, where we found speedups in unrelated parts of our existing source code to "pay for" the performance cost of the new features. [...] None of this optimization was easy, and it wasn't always fun, but Don [Melton] always held the line. And in the year following the Black Slab Encounter [the first time the browser was able to load a real "web page" from Yahoo.com], we succeeded in making our code faster and faster.Once Safari launched, Kocienda shifted to a project to bring WebKit-based rich email editing to Apple's Mail app, and he details the lengths he went to in order to make insertion point cursor placement behave properly, a feature that's more complicated than one might think. Following a brief stint as a manager of Apple's Sync Services team for cloud data synchronization in which he found the job wasn't for him, Kocienda in mid-2005 boldly threatened to quit and perhaps move to Google if he couldn't be switched to a new role on the "new super-secret project" that was rumored within the company. He soon found himself interviewing with Scott Forstall, who invited him to join Project Purple, the effort to build the iPhone. Kocienda's key contribution to Project Purple was the development of the autocorrect keyboard, and he walks through Apple's early efforts to figure out how a keyboard could work on the small screen of the iPhone. As the keyboard quickly became a roadblock for the iPhone's software design, the entire fifteen-person team was tasked with developing concepts. In demos for Forstall, Kocienda's early idea of large keys preserving the QWERTY layout but with multiple letters per key and a dictionary used to predict which word the user was trying to type won out and he was placed in charge of keyboard development. That was of course just the start of the keyboard project for Kocienda, and he walks through the evolution of the design, the trials and tribulations of building a comprehensive dictionary to drive the autocorrect functionality, and the decision to ultimately go back to single-letter keys with algorithms for key prediction and autocorrect. Through all of this, Kocienda had never seen the design of the actual iPhone, as hardware design was completely separate from software and his team had been using "Wallaby" prototype devices tethered to Macs as their software development and testing platforms. It wasn't until late 2006 that Kocienda got his first look at the actual iPhone Steve Jobs would show off just a few weeks later at Macworld Expo.When Kim [Vorrath] passed the prototype to me, she asked me to handle it gingerly. I took it from her. The glass display was striking—far brighter and sharper than the Wallaby screen we'd been staring at for more than a year. I turned the device over in my hand. It felt solid, like it was filled to the brim with the latest technology, and it was. In fact, at that moment, it was overflowing a bit. I paced back and forth a few times to feel the freedom of movement that came with untethering from a Mac. The Wallaby experience had been about feeling tied down to a computer on a desk with cabling spidering out everywhere. Now, for the first time, as I put the phone in my pocket, I got an idea of what it would be like to use a Purple phone. Naturally, I was most interested in the keyboard. I typed out a few words in the Notes app. The keyboard worked without a hitch. My autocorrection code stepped in to fix all the mistakes I made. I could have spent all day with the device, trying out everything I could think of, but other people were waiting for their turn. As I handed the device over, I had no question in mind. I wanted one.Kocienda never had the opportunity to demo any of his iPhone work directly to Steve Jobs, but he did get that chance several times during his subsequent work on the iPad's software keyboard. Kocienda shares the experience of that demo in the very first chapter of his book, describing how he was initially planning to offer users the ability to choose between a Mac-like keyboard layout with smaller keys and a scaled-up iPhone-like keyboard with larger keys more similar in size to physical keys.He turned to look straight at me. "We only need one of these, right?" Not what I was expecting. I think I may have swallowed hard. Steve was still looking at me, and so, with a half shrug, I said, "Yeah . . . uh . . . I guess so." Steve sized me up a little and then asked, "Which one do you think we should use?" A simple question, clearly directed at me and only me. Steve didn't shift in his chair or motion toward anyone else in the room. It was my demo, and he wanted me to answer. And then something happened. Standing there, with Steve Jobs staring at me, waiting for me to respond to his question, I realized that I knew what to say, that I had an opinion. "Well, I've been using these demos for the past few days, and I've started to like the keyboard layout with the bigger keys. I think I could learn to touch type on it, and I think other people could too. Autocorrection has been a big help." Steve continued looking at me as he thought about my answer. He never moved his eyes to anyone or anything else. He was completely present. There he was, seriously considering my idea about the next big Apple product. It was thrilling. He thought for a few seconds about what I had just said and what he had seen on the iPad. Then he announced the demo verdict. "OK. We'll go with the bigger keys."Overall, Creative Selection is a worthy read, focusing on a few detailed anecdotes that provide a terrific inside look at Apple's design process. Given Apple's size and the way the company compartmentalizes its projects, Kocienda doesn't necessarily have a high-level view of things, but he does a good job drawing on his experiences to discuss his individual philosophy and that of the teams he worked with, extrapolating that to the unspoken criteria used across the company to drive the creative selection process that has yielded the products and features we've all come to know. Creative Selection is available now from Amazon, the iBooks Store, and other retailers. Tags: Creative Selection, Ken Kocienda Discuss this article in our forums https://goo.gl/psBD4u