#like that's unabomber shit with a much bigger budget

[cantsayidont]

The TL;DR of this story (18 September 2024) is that the Taiwanese company says the booby-trapped pagers used in the 17 September attack in Lebanon were made under license by a mysterious Hungarian company called BAC Consulting.

Three years ago, Hsu [Ching-kuang] says he was approached by a Taiwanese woman Hsu says he only knew as “Teresa” who claimed to be a local representative for a Hungarian company named BAC Consulting. After more than two months of negotiation with Teresa, Hsu agreed to sign a contract to sell Gold Apollo’s pagers to BAC and additionally, to let BAC use Gold Apollo’s trademark on his [sic] own products. “She had already flown several times to Europe to contact [her colleagues],” says Hsu. He says he was also told BAC also had interests in East Africa: “From beginning to end, they never mentioned Lebanon.”

And:

About a year after BAC signed a contract with Gold Apollo, Hsu says they came back to him with an unusual request: they wanted to design their own products but put his company’s trademark on them. “They said they wanted to cultivate a cohort of engineers,” Hsu says he remembers BAC telling him. “I told them, the stuff you make is neither easy to use nor is it aesthetically-pleasing. Why not just use my products?” Hsu also noticed their payment transfers were “strange.” While BAC is located in the capital of Hungary, Hsu said the company paid Gold Apollo from a Middle Eastern bank account that was blocked at least once by their bank in Taiwan.

This sounds to me like a front for an intelligence agency, probably either Mossad or some Mossad contractor.

[joshuacollinsma]

Week Twelve

Monday - I was doing my essay to the best of my ability and am confused whether it is okay to include a song and poem as some of my referencing, also I got an email about not being able to pay my creative cloud which will run out in 28 days if I don't sort it out, turns out I have no money in my account whatsoever so that's fucking shit cause I can’t pay for my train ticket home, adobe creative cloud or phone bill till I get paid which is the 20th December. 

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon Englands mountains green:

And was the holy Lamb of God,

On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In Englands green & pleasant Land.

William Blake, Jerusalem. 

Tuesday began with me organising my shoot with peers and asking them to model. Looking back at my mood boards what I had in mind was a Mad Max-esque style shoot and the vision was good. However the ideas in my head did not connect with the imagery I was producing, the objects were unclear and the sense of dystopian-neo-luddism did not correlate. This really fucked me off as I completed the edits straight away. I was happy with the editing style and was aware that the images if within a different project, might work a lot better. The way I was feeling at the time was sparked a reaction, not as severe as the Unabomber that tried to start a revolution and injured people along the way.

Hand in hand with the essay I wrote my preface which gave the project more personality and would allow me to visualise the project better. 

Preface

The year is 2037 the world has progressed and the risk of AI (artificial intelligence) singularity is looking more and more probable. AI has already replaced day to day jobs and automated technology is everywhere ‘to make our lives easier’ and give us more freedom to explore education, science and art.

As time progressed from the 2020’s to the 30’s world governments began to work together to share information, initially for the use of security as civil unrest is foreseen, requiring households to be under surveillance and a revealed truth that technology does listen and governments are searching for better ways to control the population.

AI’s via Amazon’s; Google’s; Apple's; home helpers, CCTV and everything else the government can get a chip into, the rest of technology is being built by The Automated so everything can listen and watch your every move. Because of this increase in technology, the hyper-sensitivity towards it is rife with the military being called to action against human revolt, plus the increased risk of an AI takeover.

Neo-Luddites are living in fear of the AI’s and governments which are enforcing the use of AI as they say it’s making life easier, yet ignoring the impacts on climate change and the populations health.

Neo-Luddites refuse technology in all forms, subverting current AI tech is central to their ethos.

I found the photographs to suit the visual aesthetic compositionally and within the colours theme I was going for, however, the shoot needed to be art directed better with a bigger budget than I was working with. Ideally, models would be wearing rags and have much more of a pungent look rather than having very current outfits.

Following this, I looked to my peers to mitigate the use of the photographs and the ideas of collaging and paying homage to my previous projects arose while simultaneously making the artefacts better as I did not find the pictures appealing and they did not stand out enough. The collages I made did spike a reaction in a way that I can be as messy as I like and fit it well within the project - it was also a good venting exercise because I was able to go mad on photoshop rather than at someone. I feel the collages allowed me to how far I would be able to go with the actual artefacts once adding to the pre-existing ‘air purifier, electromagnetic-wave blocker, and can phone’. The collages would become part of my Design Boards as a visual aid to the project for titles and filler images, but in speculation of an exhibition would be hung as prints alongside the artefacts and final outcome photographs. 

After I had complete collages I went back to my essay, finalised the conclusion and also finished my design boards. 

After using the objects in the photographs, I realised the need to be much more dystopian and taboo-like to make it seem much more industrial and handmade. I progressed by adding more wires, string, holes to each object making them more probable in a dystopia, and a lot more interesting to look at. The final objects, for instance in an exhibition, would be placed by the side of the prints, collages and essay giving everything full context.  

The final pictures I used were from my initial shoot, I feel with all the contextuality within the collages, essay and newly improved artefacts the stand-alone images would work well with a caption/title and subtle post-production drawings from the collages onto the images. I feel the images now communicate my idea of ‘2037′,  because of the editing style and newly found context taken from collages and photographed artefacts.