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daggerzine · 3 years

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The Simon Provencher interview (by Tom Murphy)

Simon Provencher is perhaps best known for his frenetic and creative guitar work for the post-punk band VICTIME out of Québec. But on March 26, 2021 the musician released his debut EP Mesures via Michel Records. It is six tracks of free jazz collages that bear favorable comparison to the avant-garde compositions of Anthony Braxton as Provencher makes creative and playful use of clarinet, electric guitar, percussion and processing to convey a strong sense of mood and place while making one very aware of aspects of the environment around us we often tune out. In pairing aspects of exploratory jazz and musique concrète, Provencher has given us an album that is both soothing and keeps us grounded in the present. The composer and musician recently answered some questions we presented to him via email about the nature of his music, its inspirations and methods of crafting its elegantly evocative passages.

Dagger Zine (Tom Murphy): Mesures will probably hit some people's ears as akin to a free jazz or spontaneous composition type of record. How did you approach putting together these songs and experimenting with sound compared with maybe how you do with VICTIME?

Simon Provencher: People wouldn’t be wrong in these assumptions at all. Mesures is a record that was written very quickly. I decided to trust my first instincts for much of the record. With VICTIME, our approach has always been more iterative. By that I mean that we’ll loop “embryonic” parts over and over again, slowly changing elements, morphing the composition until we found ourselves happy with how everything sounded together. I’m still very much into this way of writing, but Mesures was a much more immediate affair.

For me, inspiration almost always comes from timbre, usually through loads of guitar pedals. In this case though, I wanted to see what sounds and textures I could get out of the electric guitar without using any external effects or even amplification. Timbre was still my main concern, but in a more subtle way I guess. I slightly detuned the strings and experimented with resonances, chord shapes, finger placement, fingernails, etc. I also “prepared” the guitar: I jammed objects between the strings and tied sewing thread to the strings (if you pinch the thread with slightly wet fingers and slide them around, you get eerie, reverse-like effects).

Enough about me though, another big change was that this record was made remotely with two new collaborators, Elyze Venne-Deshaies (clarinet) and Olivier Fairfield (percussion). Both of them had “carte blanche” (pardon my french) to do whatever they wanted. I can’t speak much to their personal approach to improvisation, but both of them are seasoned veterans and delivered absolutely amazing performances.

D: Some people might think of any kind of music declared experimental is a barrier to its acceptance but your album seems to me very accessible as a form of pure expression. Do you have a sense of why your songs seem so open and, as one reviewer put it, welcoming?

S: I don’t quite know actually. I do agree that the songs have a certain softness to them that was certainly somewhat intentional. When I did the initial guitar parts, I did set out to make something conventionally “beautiful”, or at least “not harsh”. I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe what happened there, but the resonances, repetitions and patterns definitely implied a soft mood from the get go.

I guess this foundation inspired Elyze and Olivier to also play with softer tones, to approach the music with warmth and subtlety in mind. They really “got” the vibe of the music without me ever telling them anything about my intentions. A “shift” of some kind happened when the clarinet parts were added to the drums and guitars. I felt like the mood of the pieces almost completely changed (in a positive way, of course). I think there’s something to the linearity of Elyze and Olivier’s playing, in contrast with the repetitive, hypnotic guitars that gives the music a sense of wandering aimlessness which I really love.

On the audio engineering side, I did intentionally mix the songs with a certain softness in mind. We added some warm tape saturation to some of the sounds and carved out a lot of higher frequencies. On the songs with feedback and noise, Simon Labelle, who mastered the record, made it so that when the clarinets get louder, the high-frequency content ducks out of the way a little bit. This nifty little trick does help out a lot with making the noisy songs more warm and inviting too.

D: Listening through the album I found it resonated with the albums of Anthony Braxton and Ornette Coleman. The former of which never considered his music part of jazz though he is often associated with that form of music and the latter who expanded the range, dynamics and tonal choices of jazz. Were you inspired by in any way by those forms of abstract yet emotionally expressive music? How might you describe its impact on what you've done?

S: I totally was! I discovered Anthony Braxton through Québec jazz guitar great René Lussier. I’ve been a fan of Le Trésor de la Langue for a while and I got into his back catalog last year: his collaborations with Fred Frith, EAI stuff and more, some of which was released on “Les Disques Victo”. “Victo” stands for Victoriaville, a small city between Quebec and Montreal, where there’s a great contemporary music festival named FIMAV. Shamefully, I haven’t actually been to FIMAV yet, but I’ve loved finding recordings of some amazing concerts, a favourite being Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey’s 1987 Moment Précieux. I was amazed to find out about this rich local history of musical experimentation and improvisation. This record was very much inspired by the whole FIMAV sound.

Coleman is another great point of reference. His records and those of his collaborators, Don Cherry being another big one, all are major inspirations. As a guitar player, I especially got into James “Blood” Ulmer’s career. I really admire his approach to guitar and the immediacy and expressiveness of his music.

I’m probably paraphrasing it all wrong, but Don Cherry said of Ornette Coleman’s “harmolodic” approach that instead of improvising from chords, like in bebop, you’d start with melodies and improvise to create new forms, harmonies, rhythms to try and reach a certain “brilliance” as he calls it. You’d try to make the music transcend. In harmolodic theory, melody, rhythm and harmony are treated as equals, no solos, no lead and accompaniment dichotomy, no strict timing, scale or tonality.

This is both quite simple but also quite hard to actually grasp in a musical setting, and I’m far from mastering any of it, nor is it necessarily something I strive for, but it is an inspiring way to conceive improvised music for sure.

D: The first half of the album you make great use of what sounds like atonal melodies yet they perfectly convey the mood and lend a sense of texture. What informed employing those sounds in the songwriting?

S: I’ve always written music without much regard for tonality, key, etc. My musical background is still very much anchored in No Wave and noise music, where skronky chords and weird, unstable melodies are the norm rather than the exception. When playing, I really don’t think much about it, I follow what sounds good to me in the moment.

Looking back on the recorded music though, I feel like there is a lot of nuance to be found in atonality and imperfection. Detuned chords ringing out have such complex and interesting decaying resonances, you can almost hear the frequencies battling each other. These interactions between notes and lines that fall just short of resolving are part of the magic and intrigue of abstract music. In the case of Mesures, I think there’s something special with how some of the atonal, out of tune textures and weird synths clash beautifully with the in-tune clarinet parts, making either one “pop out” depending on where you focus your attention.

D: The second half or at least the second three songs on the album use processed drones and what some might call noise underneath or in the background, although very much a presence in the mix, of the clarinets? What do you feel this almost contrast in sounds conveyed that say a more conventional arrangement might not?

The second half of the record is basically a rearrangement of the first three songs. There’s four clarinet parts in there! On the first side, they fade in and out of focus, but on side B, everything is there all at once.

This is basically the result of me simply “soloing” the clarinet takes in my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation, the software used to arrange and mix the music). When I heard the four clarinets at once, I really fell in love with the sound.

So I knew I wanted this to be the focal point of the rearrangement, and I knew I wanted to add something. I just happened to be working with feedback that week, so it kind of fell in place. Feedback manipulation was a technical interest first, I had gotten a new guitar pedal called a Feedback Looper, which sends some of your output signal back into the input of a series of pedals. This creates self-oscillating and rich, detailed noises that are somewhat interactive and malleable. By turning some knobs and flicking some switches on ordinary guitar pedals, you end up with an infinite amount of possible glitches and shrieking high frequency tones.

I don’t know if my ears got accustomed to it or what, but I’ve come to really enjoy the sound of this process. I also really love the tactile aspect of it, it feels kind of like an unpredictable modular synthesizer. When I had recorded the feedback improvisation, which I did in one single take, I thought this sparse, harsh rearrangement was a nice contrast with the more warm, conventional first three songs. At that point, the record felt complete.

D: The final three songs also remind me of Philip Glass in his soundtrack work wherein he mixes the playful and flowing with the dissonant. How would you say these sounds complement each other in your own music?

S: Especially on this release, while there are a lot of sounds that are contrasting with each other, I also feel like there is a sense of shared directionality. The song Et quart is a good example of this. The high feedback notes start out in almost complete opposition to the meandering low clarinet lines, but, as the song progresses, the sounds somehow seem to merge with each other and they end up flowing in the same direction for the song’s climax.

D: What are some other artists operating now that you find interesting and/or inspirational and resonant with what you're doing?

There’s way too many to name them all, but I’ll try! I think there’s a very interesting local-ish scene around me. I admire the work of N NAO, either her solo releases or her collaborations with Joni Void. Sarah Pagé does mind-bending music with harp and effects; I’ve had the pleasure of catching her live in Ottawa just before the pandemic started last year. Kara-Lys Coverdale is also a major inspiration, so is Kee Avil, whose live show and guitar playing blew me away.

I also need to shout out my friend (and bandmate) Mathieu A. Seulement, whose end-year list allowed me to catch up on a lot of fantastic new music, including, but not limited to Ana Roxane’s Because of a Flower, Jasmine Guffond’s Microphone Permission, Caterina Barbieri’s Ecstatic Computation and, last but not least, Holly Herndon’s magnificent Proto.

**the three Simon photos were taken by Charlotte Savoie

www.simonprovencher.bandcamp.com

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duhragonball · 5 years

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Dragon Ball Z 260

Last time, Gotenks said he was out of ki to continue the fight with Majin Buu, so Piccolo did the only sensible thing and destroyed the door to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. This had been his backup plan from the beginning. By leading Buu into the Chamber to fight Gotenks, Piccolo knew he could blow up the door and trap them all inside forever.

One thing I find odd is that there’s a lot more wreckage left behind in this episode than in the last. Oh well, with all the artists working on this show, I’m surprised these continuity glitches don’t happen more often. Anyway, Gotenks is pretty upset about this, because he really did have more power to fight, and only pretended otherwise to make things more dramatic. He had no idea that Piccolo would be desperate enough to do this.

Buu, on the other hand, is still trying to sort out the ramifications of this, since he didn’t know the HTC was actually a separate dimension from Earth. Piccolo has to explain to him that he’s trapped here, and Buu’s first thought is that there’s no candy in this place.

So yeah, we’re only about a minute into this exile, and morale is already low.

Outside, in the temple of Kami’s Lookout, Mr. Popo reports that the door has been “closed off”, but they never actually show what it looks like from this side. Everyone here just notices a rumble coming from that general direction, and I guess Popo saw for himself, but this is never shown to the audience.

All we really get is this staircase, which I guess must lead to the entrance to the Time Chamber. That’s kind of a ripoff, if you asked me. What happened to the door on this side? I mean, it must be blown to bits, but what’s left where the doorway used to be? Does the wall just continue across, unbroken? Did the doorway sort of collapse in on itself, like a black hole?

While I’m on the subject, it’s weird how the doorway seems to be in a completely different place than it was in the Cell Saga. Then, the doorway seemed to be pretty close to the outside of the temple, but now, it looks like you gotta work your way pretty far into the building to get to it. That’s one of those things that’s probably a continuity error, but you can’t entirely rule out the possibility that it’s supposed to be that way. For all we know, the rooms and passages of the Lookout are constantly shifting and rearranging, like Hogwarts, only Mr. Popo isn’t a shithead, and he actually shows people where everything is instead of leaving them to fend for themselves.

Bulma’s upset to hear that the boys are trapped in the Time Chamber forever. The Dragon Balls can be used to wish them back out, but that doesn’t change the fact that it came to this. She blames all the men for standing back and letting children fight the monster for them. That’s pretty rich coming from Bulma, of all people. She’s been letting Goku and Gohan fight her battles for her for decades. And she should, because they were super-duper strong. She knows how this works. Ox King, Yamcha, Krillin, and Roshi are four of the strongest humans on the planet, but they can’t even touch Majin Buu, and Bulma knows that. Chewing them out doesn’t solve anything.

Inside the Chamber, Gotenks admits that he was fibbing when he said he was at his limit, which means Piccolo trapped them all here for nothing. Piccolo is furious. Why would Gotenks say something like that if it wasn’t true?! And Gotenks is angry with him as well. Why would he take such a drastic measure without warning anyone? Because you said you were out of power, you little shit! What’s amazing about Gotenks isn’t that he takes these situations so lightly; it’s that he’s constantly surprised that anyone else would take them seriously.

While they argue, Buu throws a fit because he can’t have any candy.

And somehow, his desperate cries open up a portal that leads back to the Lookout. I never thought about this before, but could this be how the doorway to the HTC was originally created? Some ancient Kami yelled really loud?

The whole thing seems a bit convenient to me, but now that I think about it, it’s not like this is any less ridiculous than the notion of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber being here in the first place. Maybe the boundary between dimensions is unusually permeable here, which made it possible to construct the permanent doorway in the first place. Buu has just accidentally exploited that.

Anyway, Buu jumps through and makes it to the other side before the hole closes, leaving Piccolo and Gotenks stuck inside.

The nice thing about all of this is that it does sew up an idea I had always toyed with after the Cell Saga, when the Time Chamber was first introduced. Instead of using it to train Goku to fight the androids and Cell, why not just lure the androids or Cell inside? Even if you don’t destroy the entrance, it’s supposed to vanish on its own if anyone spends more than 48 hours inside, so it always seemed more useful as a trap than as a training ground. Like the Phantom Zone from the Superman mythos.

So it was always satisfying to see that Piccolo had the same idea in this arc, and it’s also satisfying to see why it wouldn’t work. Given enough time and power, a bad guy could find a way to escape, just like Buu is doing here. Maybe Cell wasn’t strong enough to pull this trick off, but he’d have unlimited time to train, until eventually he would become strong enough. Maybe. The point is that if Buu could do it, it just isn’t worth the risk.

On the Supreme Kai Planet, Goku senses Buu’s ki immediately, and he wonders what’s going on, so the Elder Kai conjures up a crystal ball and tosses it over to him. I’m curious if this has some connection to Baba’s crystal ball, but it’s probably just a coincidence.

So Goku now has a front-row seat to watch Buu eat all of his friends.

Back inside the Chamber, Gotenks begins to despair, but Piccolo tells him to quit whimpering. Then he suggests that they yell really loud, just like Buu did. If it opened a portal for him, then it ought to work for them, too.

Honestly, this just might be one of the most Dragon Ball Z things ever. Not just the yelling, although that’s a big part of it. What I mean, though, is that these guys just saw a monster do something impossible, and they’re like “Well, if he can do it, then so can we!” I mean, that’s nuts. Buu can liquefy his entire body. Can Piccolo do that? Buu regenerated from smoke. Can Gotenks do that? But this is no time for such negative thinking. There’s screaming to be done.

Speaking of desperate measures, Krillin decides to attack Buu in a last-ditch effort to save his family. He whispers to 18 to hide inside the temple while he keeps Buu busy, but they all know he can’t possibly win.

In spite of the bad odds, Krillin seems confident that he’ll get wished back to life with the Dragon Balls. How? As far as he knows, there’s no one left to beat Buu. Who’s going to wish everyone back?

So Krillin charges in, and his attack is brilliant, but it’s just not enough. Buu evades him with ease, and zaps him with his Candy Beam.

And that’s it for Krillin. For those of you keeping score, this is his third death in Dragon Ball. If I’m not mistaken, only Chiaotzu manages to tie this record, but that’s still a ways off. And Krillin dies a fourth time in Dragon Ball GT, if you’re willing to count that.

The others flee inside the temple, which seems kind of pointless to me. Buu killed 20% of the population while standing still, so it would be ridiculously easy for him to find them inside the temple. But where else can they go? 18, Yamcha, Dende, and Videl are the only ones who can fly, and none of them could move fast enough to escape. The rest of them are trapped on the Lookout. Krillin probably knew that much when he tried to buy them time. He knew he would fail and he knew his efforts would be in vain even if he succeeded, but he had to do something.

Even so, the cruelest part of this massacre is that 18 and Marron are literally the very next ones to die after Krillin.

Somehow, Popo and Dende have already made it up to one of the higher levels of the temple, but they’re only safe for as long as it takes Buu to eat the others.

Then Buu gets sick of deciding which one to zap next so he just fires his Candy Beam in all directions, sort of like the Human Extinction Attack in miniature. This is one of the most horrific scenes in the series, because the weakest good guys are completely cornered by the main villain, and he has absolutely no mercy. Unlike Cell or Frieza, there’s no slowing this guy down, no reasoning with him, no chance of bargaining or stalling for time.

And from the Supreme Kai Planet, Goku can only watch the slaughter unfold. Gohan isn’t ready yet, Gotenks and Piccolo are apparently lost, and he’s stuck in the afterlife.

For my money, this is the moment when Goku is beginning to regret his plans for safeguarding the Earth. He bet everything on Gotenks, and now the world population has been reduced to a single-digit number. Would it have turned out differently if he had been wished back to life after the Cell Games, instead of staying dead for seven years? Maybe not, but I think he sorely wishes he could go back, moreso than ever before.

Back inside the chamber, screaming hasn’t gotten Gotenks and Piccolo anywhere, so Gotenks decides to use his full power, and Piccolo hits him, because he’s sick of this little turd holding back for no good reason.

So Gotenks obliges, and...

Hey, what’s good everybody? GOTENKS CAN TURN SUPER SAIYAN 3.

He doesn’t like the way it looks, though. Where did he get that mirror?

Piccolo has questions, but Gotenks says he can’t stay in this form for very long, so he finally gets down to business. He yells really loud...

... and makes an opening they can use to return to Earth.

When Gotenks finally emerges, Goku and the Supreme Kai get their first look at him, and Goku is amazed to see him as a Super Saiyan 3. Remember, it took him his entire life and seven years of being dead to reach that level. Gotenks figured it out in under a week.

But the scene on the Lookout isn’t pleasant. Piccolo wants to know what happened to everyone else, and Buu explains that he turned them all into chocolate and ate everybody.

Even Bulma?

IT ATE EVERYBODY!

So this sends Gotenks into a rage. You know, I’d have an easier time believing that if he hadn’t already lost two other parents to Majin Buu before this. Seriously, Buu killed Chi-Chi less than a week ago from Gotenks’ perspective, and he acted like a total goofball this whole time anyway. We’re supposed to think killing Bulma is going to light a fire under his ass now? Pull the other one, it glows in the dark.

Even so, I dig this final still of Gotenks flying towards Buu, looking like he’s Batman or something. Yeah, he’s a house of fire now, but give it about two minutes, and he’ll go right back to “Butthole Surfer Enziguri” and all that other nonsense he’s been doing.

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nadziejastar · 5 years

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—In KH BbS, Master Xehanort's goal behind opening Kingdom Hearts was to "create a new world." But in this game, he says it is to "reset the world." Why the difference?

Nomura: What was revealed in this game was another piece of the truth: his goal was "this world is no longer any good, and we have to recreate it from scratch."

—We are interested in why Xehanort would come to such a conclusion.

Nomura: At first, I did want to use a next game to dig down into how Xehanort went from that simple boy playing the chess-like game to an admirer of the darkness. But, if I do that, then the Dark Seeker Chronicle wouldn't have ended with KH3 after all (laughs.) Some ideas had solidified to a degree, but it's shelved for now.

Definitely. He was handled horribly. Even the interviewer didn’t know why Xehanort acted the way he did. You know your story is messed up when the main villain’s motivations are a big question mark at the end, lol. He desperately needed a fleshed out backstory, just like Lea, Isa, and so many other characters.

The basic concept of Xehanort seemed to be summed up by the above quote. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Nomura actually had that famous quote in mind while writing Xehanort’s character. It IS about darkness, after all. I feel kinda bad that Nomura gets bashed for how Xehanort was handled when that clearly was not his intention. People think he planned it that way. “Lol, silly Nomura”. But he said he wanted to explore Xehanort’s past.

— About the World of Darkness and such, you haven’t gone into detail. Could you possibly talk about some of these things? Does the beach at the beginning and end of KH II have some connection to the World of Darkness?

Presently there are 4 main untold stories to consider: “the period of the King’s absence”, “the period of Riku’s absence”, “Roxas’s time in Organization XIII” and “Xehanort’s past”. In this case, the story of “the period of the King’s absence” is set in the realm of darkness. I am examining a way to tell these 4 stories so I might be able to find a way to tell them soon. —Another Report KH2FM+

In fact, he had plans for this ever since KH2FM+. Now, he could have changed Xehanort’s final scenes to be more consistent with what the players actually saw: a relatively one-dimensional evil megalomaniac. But he chose to leave it the way it was---Xehanort was trying to bring about a world of light---because he considered it the “truth”, even if it made no sense to us players. He did that with the other Xehanorts, too.

To me, that speaks to his level of frustration over how the story was handled. I believe if Nomura had his way, he would have explored ALL the stuff from 0.5 in the next game, after KH3. But he wasn’t allowed to do that because the Dark Seeker Saga needed to be over with KH3. It was out of his hands. I’m glad he left it the way it was because it makes it easier to see his intentions for the story.

— Mr. Nomura, since you are the one that is writing the scenario this time, how is the progress coming along?

Since we are arriving near the conclusion of Xehanort in KINGDOM HEARTS III, the outline of the story has been solidified but not necessarily the direction where the KINGDOM HEARTS series is continuing to head. We are still trying to decide where to go from several choices.

— What is that specifically?

In the KINGDOM HEARTS series, I don’t think there has been an actual happy ending. KINGDOM HEARTS II is close to it. Since most of the titles have ended in cliffhangers, we’re worried about what we should include in KINGDOM HEARTS III. —Dengeki Playstation June 2015

When I would try to talk about some of this stuff on other forums people would get so defensive. Who was I to question Nomura’s vision, blah blah blah. But there’s so much evidence that KH3 did NOT actually follow Nomura’s vision. That is my biggest complaint. KH3 is a botched game with a troubled development history, that suffered from extensive executive meddling. Even as late as summer 2015, two years after the game was announced, they were unsure of the direction the series was headed. But Nomura wanted a true happy ending for the first time, without cliffhangers...

Can you tell us about the meaning of 0.2’s title, “Fragmentary Passage? As far as content goes, we can’t include a full volume of content to play with like the second chapter of KHBbS, so it’s just a “fragment,” and we left that part of the subtitle. 0.5 is one of the letters and numbers that appeared in the secret episode of KHBbS FM, and that meant full volume, so we decided on 0.2 this time, to indicate that there will be more content to come. However, the remaining passage will be told in KHIII, so we wanted to show that this production is closely related to KHIII. —Dengeki Playstation September 2015

And as late as September 2015, only a couple of months after saying that, Nomura said there were actual PLANS to incorporate the lost story of 0.5 into KH3, albeit in a condensed manner. Of course, we all know that didn’t happen. It appears there was a very last minute change of plans to just throw out all the unused concepts from 0.5 and rewrite the story to eliminate all connection to them.

That’s why the plot was switched to instead focus on sequel-baiting and Union X characters. Those things are mostly irrelevant to the Xehanort Saga, so it didn’t matter if KH0.5 was cancelled. But that wasn’t the original plan. This is why it is my sincere belief that Nomura was very upset with how the story of KH3 turned out. And I don’t blame him one bit.

“I actually don’t sympathize or empathize with Sora at all,” Nomura says. Instead, he relates to the game’s mysterious villains, Xehanort or likely Ansem, anyone who’s fallen prey to their dark natures. “I think I’m closer to those characters, so Sora is like my enemy,” he says.

I think Xehanort’s backstory was going to paint him in a very different light, otherwise he never would have gotten such a warm ending scene with Eraqus. Nomura said that he could relate more to a character like Xehanort than Sora, so I am led to believe he was going to be a character with many shades of gray. KH3 Sora was obnoxiously black-and-white, which is why I think Nomura disliked him so much. I also don’t think that was Nomura’s original vision.

Xehanort: So...you know the “Lost Masters”?

Eraqus: Who?

Xehanort: They’re the ones who started the Keyblade War.

Eraqus: Never heard of ‘em. Where’d you hear about that?

Xehanort: Or...they’re the ones for whom the war started.

Eraqus: I’m not following you.

Xehanort: You can drop the facade.

My opinion is that when Xehanort was young, he got involved with a secret society with access to knowledge that was kept from the general population. Stuff involving the Keyblade War, the Book of Prophecies, etc. Scala ad Caelum is very Freemason-y. The name Stairway to Heaven is a concept in Masonry. This was supposed to be an actual explorable world. There was a trailer shown off at a private event, that was never made public. But it actually showed Sora visiting this town. Of course, after the "alterations” made to KH3′s story, this town was eliminated and the trailer was never mentioned again. This town was tied to the Recusant’s Sigil and all the missing lore KH0.5 would have delved into, so I guess it wasn’t needed anymore.

Ansem: Take a look at this tiny place. To the heart seeking freedom this is a prison surrounded by water. And so this boy sought out to escape from his prison. He sought a way to cross over into other worlds. And he opened his heart to darkness.

Sora: Riku!

Ansem: Don’t bother. Your voice can no longer reach him where he is. His heart belongs again to darkness. All worlds begin in darkness, and all so end. The heart is no different.

After learning the hidden knowledge, he felt like he had to start the world anew. He became obsessed with darkness. We never even learned how Xehanort left Destiny Islands. My guess is that he had such a strong will and desire to leave the islands, he opened a dark corridor. He didn’t have anything to protect him. He just went into it and arrived at another world.

Our Master instructed us to don armor while traveling between worlds, so that we might shield ourselves from the darkness. But there, in the Lanes Between, I could feel the force of it—the power—and from then on, I forwent my armor's "protection." I had been told the darkness would devour me, but what terrors could it possibly hold, so long as I found the strength to control it?

The experience seems to have given him the confidence that he didn’t need protection from darkness.

At present, the lanes and corridors that run between the worlds may only be traversed by us Keyblade wielders, and those who have given themselves over to darkness. As the former, our duty is to cross the chasms between worlds and guard against the latter, whose darkness corrupts and contaminates, so that no world need ever be lost again. Few Keyblade wielders remain now; I have heard of but a handful of others outside my circle. But the World is vast, and more of our kind may be out there. Now, in addition to the realm of light in which we reside, there is also a realm of darkness, and the realm between which connects the two. The realm of darkness is most forbidden; I am told none who set foot there have ever returned.

He didn’t seem particularly evil as a kid or anything. Just very intelligent and cynical about the world. But he seemed charming and likable. Eraqus obviously had a great deal of affection for him, which blinded him from seeing his true motives until it was too late.

That’s where the whole story began…as did the glitches. And for good reason—because nothing ever happens by chance in our stories. Everything is connected. This is where someone else set off on a journey, too, long ago. Does this world feel small to you, Sora? Or does it feel large? Who will be the one to unravel the secrets of this world—of the Destiny Islands?

I’m sure he was possessed. We never even learned how Xehanort got golden eyes and pointy ears. Maybe Xehanort was simply the first vessel.

THE MAN’S BLACK CLOAK FLUTTERED BEHIND HIM as he marched forward.

The present, the past, the future.

Human, Heartless, Nobody.

Xehanort, Ansem, Xemnas.

His plans had already advanced past the point of no return.

With Demyx’s demise, the group calling itself Organization XIII had lost more than half of its members.

Vexen, Lexaeus, Zexion, Marluxia, Larxene, Demyx. And Roxas.

All the fallen ones—do they bear a grudge against me?

But they were Nobodies. They had no hearts with which to hold any ill will. They couldn’t even understand what the heart is.

Nomura said there was something like a beacon inside Xehanort, guiding him where to go and what to do, even if he wasn’t quite sure of it himself.

Somewhere in this cyclical history of bequeathings, a chosen one will appear and reenact the Keyblade War. When this scapegoat arrives and takes my Keyblade in hand, this will be the time to take the stage and finish my role. The Lost Masters will awaken.—Unknown

I don’t know if the Lost Masters were always meant to return. But I definitely think Xehanort was always meant to be just a pawn in somebody else’s game.

“Students do take after their teachers. Any apprentice of yours would be a fool,” Xemnas sneered, then raised his eyes to the light of Kingdom Hearts. “After all, none of this would have happened without you. It was you who brought the Heartless into being. Your research inspired me to go further than you ever dared.”

You saved me when I wandered without memories—or rather, saved Xehanort, Xemnas added to himself.

If you hadn’t found me that day and helped me… If you hadn’t been studying the mysteries of the heart… Things would never have come to this.

Does that mean it was all inevitable? Or is someone’s will at work? A will greater than ours…?

This was the plan for a long time, because even the novels allude to it. It annoys me when people try to say the novels can’t be taken seriously. They wrote about Xemnas’s regret over his fallen comrades YEARS in advance. They were obviously written with knowledge of the whole story in mind.

It almost sounded like Xemnas was angry with Ansem for being the catalyst that started him on his path. He said he was past the point of no return, as if he was only continuing on with his plan because he couldn’t turn back even if he wanted to.

“I admit, my recklessness brought chaos to more worlds than one. But what is it you were seeking?” Ansem demanded. He was asking the shell of his former apprentice, though he might ask the same question of himself. “You erased me from this world only to take my name and continue research better left forgotten… And is this the answer you’ve been after?”

“Indeed. I am carrying on what you began, creating a new world brick by brick—heart by heart.”

But even as Xemnas said it, he wondered. Really? Is it really what I sought?

The inexorable pull of Kingdom Hearts, so strong that even he no longer understood what he’d first been seeking, and the longing for the heart he had lost… But what was a heart?

What I lost when I became a Nobody…I don’t even know what it is.

He didn’t even know what it was he was after.

He concentrated his frustration back on Ansem. “Once I thought I’d earn your praise. But all you’ve ever done is hold me back. I understand—unlike me, you have a heart. And you are powerless to control it. Consumed by your jealousy of the student who surpassed his teacher.”

Ansem sadly shook his head.

That young scientist who had once shown so much promise in the town of Radiant Garden—where had he gone? Was this what it meant to lose one’s heart? Or…had he never had one to begin with?

It’s...sad.

“Hey, do you fellas think that maybe the journal is trying to tell us something?” Goofy wondered. What exactly was going on with this little book?

Whatever Xehanort was being used by, it was heavily connected to the Demon Tide.

“The world is aching?” What exactly did “the world” refer to? Maybe it meant the world they were seeing on the monitor now was in pain. “Not just ‘the’ world. ‘Our’ world…” Jiminy seemed to have the same questions.

We never actually learned what was meant by the world’s aching. Who’s world?

“…Can’t you hear the world’s screams?”

“Screams?”

Axel finally turned around, and looked up at Saïx standing on a stairway.

“The time when we should move will come soon.”

“I dunno, whatever.” Axel turned his back on Saïx, and opened a dark portal in front of him.

Saïx could actually hear the world’s screams, probably because Isa was one of those people who needed their hurting mended. I’ll bet that Xehanort was one of those people as well.

Ansem the Wise: That light of the heart that everyone had when they were a child - simple, honest thoughts - that is the strength of a pure heart, in which Sora believes and cannot doubt. If someone feels a heart there, a heart exists. Even if a heart is lost, maybe it can once again be connected. Up to this point, he has felt, accepted, and saved many hearts. And now the many hearts that sleep within Sora’s heart have fallen into darkness, been stolen by darkness, sleep in darkness. The hearts dissolved in Sora – to save them, you must act as Sora has up until now, move forward as a heart in order to succeed. His thoughts are the only way. Or to be precise, what is within them.

If I had to guess how I think Xehanort’s plot would have been handled that was consistent with the Dark Seeker Saga’s themes, it would be this: After Xehanort was defeated, his heart was lost in the darkness. Maybe he couldn’t handle the pain of his defeat. Or maybe it was because he was possessed all along.

Ansem: You see, darkness is the heart’s true essence.

Sora: That’s not true! The heart may be weak. And sometimes it may even give in. But I’ve learned that deep down, there’s a light that never goes out!

Sora, a person who possesses an extraordinary degree of love for other people, actually decided to use the power of waking on him rather than just snatch the X-Blade from him and call it a day. He genuinely wanted to save him. Sora was able to believe that deep down, there was a light that never went out, even in someone as immersed in darkness as Xehanort.

Those simple and honest thoughts enabled Sora to connect with Xehanort’s heart, reminding him of what it felt like to love and be loved, like when he was a child. He was able to reunite with his beloved friend Eraqus, and decided to give Sora the X-Blade of his own free will. Not because of Sora’s amazing ability at persuasion. But because Sora showed him love. That is what made Ansem choose Sora in the first place.

#kh3 #kh xehanort #kh xemnas #KH Eraqus #kh

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fubarexpo · 6 years

Text

/’fu:bar/ 2018

Select:

Exhibition

Performances

Lectures

Workshops

SAT Oct 6th

8pm – /’fu:bar/ 2018 EXPO & FESTIVAL OPENING @ Gallery Siva [AKC Medika, Pierottijeva 11, Zagreb]

8pm – Sabato Visconti [US] – #Glitchbooth [interactive installation @ Siva]

9pm – Lovely Insomnia [HU] – Live Set/DJ Set [performance @ Siva]

SUN Oct 7th

6pm-10pm – Exhibition @ Siva

7pm – Ramiro Polla [BE] – FFglitch [lecture @ Siva]

8pm-10pm – Mark Klink aka srcXor [US] – 3d glitching [teleworkshop @ hacklab01]

MON Oct 8th

6pm-10pm – Exhibition @ Siva

2pm-5pm – Holographic_thought_process [FR] – Video Dirty Mixer [workshop @ hacklab01]

6pm – Nikša Gligo [HR] – Can glitch music be music at all? [lecture @ Siva]

8pm – Magno Caliman [NL] – screenBashing [performance @ Siva]

TUE Oct 9th

6pm-10pm – Exhibition @ Siva

2pm – Random Pixel Order [FR] – The Archive [open studio @ Siva]

6pm – Ingeborg Fülepp [HR] – The history of artistic usage of errors in film, video and digital techniques [lecture @ Siva]

8pm – FRGMNT [DE] – SSB - Sequenced Noise Beauty [performance @ Siva]

WED Oct 10th

6pm-10pm – Exhibition @ Siva

2pm-5pm – FRGMNT [DE] – SNU noise machine [workshop @ hacklab01]

6pm – Magno Caliman [NL] – Error making and "not-knowing": some particularities of the relation between artists and programming languages [lecture @ Siva]

8pm – Paul Vivien [FR] – 99% [performance @ Siva]

THU Oct 11th

6pm-10pm – Exhibition @ Siva

6pm – ROUND TABLE @ Siva

8pm – Nada Hasan [EG] – Experimental Desires [safe passage] [performance @ Siva]

FRI Oct 12th

6pm-10pm – Exhibition @ Siva

6pm – GUIDED EXHIBITION TOUR @ Siva

8pm – Tabache & Lady oN [IT] – cHroma flux [performance @ Siva]

9pm – “Ondes noires” screening & FESTIVAL CLOSING @ Siva

Sabato Visconti [US] – #Glitchbooth SAT Oct 6th – 8pm [interactive installation @ Siva]

#Glitchbooth> is a live interactive video installation where participants have their best selves captured in 1-to-2 minute video portraits. The video portraits are glitched using a corrupted DivX encoder and processed for live screening so that participants can see their glitch selves. Modeled after the photo booths found in weddings and events, #Glitchbooth considers "Selfie Culture" as a social practice that is conditioned by the structures of digital technologies and distribution channels.

Sabato Visconti — a Brazilian-born photographer and new media artist based in Western Massachusetts. He was born in São Paulo, grew up in Miami, and studied Political Science at Amherst College. Sabato’s work seeks to reconfigure traditional understandings of photography for the post-internet era, where photographic and cinematic practices become absorbed by digital processes, hybridized media, online networks, and machine intelligence. His work captures the subject in the face of ecological turbulence driven by the dysfunctions of vast impersonal systems. Sabato began experimenting with glitch processes in 2011 with the help of a defective memory card that randomly wrote zeroes on JPEG files. Since then, his work with glitch and digital media has been awarded the ArtSlant Prize IX and has been shown in places like Tate Britain, ICA Boston, SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York City, LACDA, the FILE Festival in São Paulo, as well as galleries throughout the world. His work has also been published in TIME Magazine, WIRED, The New York Times, AI-AP’s "Latin American Fotografia 4" Anthology, and in Photographer’s Forum annual "Best of Photography" books for eight straight years. sabatobox.com

Lovely Insomnia [HU] SAT Oct 6th – 9pm – Live Set/DJ Set [performance @ Siva]

Gábor Hufnágel — a Hungarian electronic music composer/producer. He’s currently studying electronic music and digital arts at University of Pécs. He describes his music as a fusion of polyrhythms, rich textures and field-recordings. His process often involves algorithmic techniques and aleatoric elements.

During his studies he was influenced by the works of the 20th century electroacoustic composers but he always felt the contemporary experimental music scene closer to him. His upcoming debut album (from which he will play a live set at /’fu:bar/) would like to explore the relation of these two and contribute to abolish the boundaries, elitism and controversy which still surrounds these topics. His works are also heavily emotion-centered, dynamic in terms of tempo as he also tries to unfold the possibilities of contrasts in music.

Ramiro Polla [BE] – FFglitch SUN Oct 7th – 7pm – [lecture @ Siva]

FFglitch is a precision multimedia editing tool based on FFmpeg. When you glitch a file using a hex editor, it's like getting a tattoo with a radioactive axe. You might get some cool results, but you have very high chances of dying from blunt trauma or some cancerous genetic mutation. FFglitch, on the other hand, is more like genetic engineering. You manipulate your genes to naturally grow your tattoo. FFglitch produces valid bitstream, so Facebook or YouTube won't choke on your files. It is so precise it can barely be considered glitching at all...

Ramiro Polla — likes hacking things. He was an FFmpeg developer for 5 years, but now he got better... ffglitch.org

Mark Klink aka srcXor [US] – 3d glitching SUN Oct 7th – 8pm-10pm – [teleworkshop @ hacklab01]

Demonstrating methods for glitching .obj files, using text editors and spreadsheets. Mark will also discuss the standard triangle and edgeloop patterns that are used to form most 3d models and then demonstrate remeshing techniques which can ultimately produce more interesting glitches. If time is available, we’ll discuss other 3d file formats and ways they might be glitched.

Mark Klink — has been and done many things: swept floors, worked in a factory, been an athlete, a minor government official, a lifeguard, a computer programmer, and a traditional print maker. For twenty years he taught children and other educators how to use computers. But the thing he likes best (beside family) is making curious pictures. srcxor.org

Holographic_thought_process [FR] – Video Dirty Mixer MON Oct 8th – 2pm-5pm – [workshop @ hacklab01]

Building of a video dirty mixer, which "mixes" two analog video sources the bad way, resulting in a glitched output. A good case study to talk about composite sync signal and how messing with it can yield wonderful results.

Bastien Lavaud — imagines and creates electronics devices for arts. Audio, video and DIY enthusiast, he shares his creations on his website by providing information on how to build them, and makes demonstration of it in the realisation of video clips/VJing under the alias Holographic Thought Process. syntonie.fr

Nikša Gligo [HR] – Can glitch music be music at all? MON Oct 8th – 6pm – [lecture @ Siva]

The answer to this question depends on what we consider music. Looking back in history we find the expressions like musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis. But the meaning of musica there is equal to harmonia, i.e. accord and has nothing to do with the narrower meaning of harmony in the tonal theories. My aim here is to point out that glitch music belongs to all these kinds of music which do not imply traditional, constant determinants of music as art. Glitch music belongs to the same group as "furniture music" (Erik Satie), "paper music" (Josef A. Riedl), "noise music" (Italian futurists), "prose music"/"music to read" (Dieter Schnebel), "eye music" (Luciano Berio), "son organisé" (Edgard Varèse), "organization of sounds" (John Cage), "sound art"... If we want to avoid "sound art" as something that doesn’t belong to music in the most general sense, then we are obliged to think about music in plural ("musics"). Glitch music would then be just one of them with its own theory, aesthetics and meaning.

Nikša Gligo — born in Split in 1946. Croatian musicologist. He graduated in English and comparative literature from Zagreb University (1969) and in musicology from Ljubljana University (1973). He later studied with Koraljka Kos at Zagreb University (MA 1981) and with Andrej Rijavec at Ljubljana University, gaining the PhD in 1984 with a dissertation on problems of new music. He was awarded scholarships to study at the universities of Cologne, Berlin (with Carl Dahlhaus and Rudolf Stephan) and Freiburg (with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht). He has taught at the Zagreb Academy of Music since 1986. He is the ordinary member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences and of Academia Europaea in London. Gligo is concerned with the aesthetics, semiotics and terminology of 20th-century music and the use of computers in musicology. His project on the standardization of 20th-century Croatian music terminology resulted in his book Pojmovni vodič kroz glazbu 20. stoljeća, which is relevant to both musicology and linguistics, and for which he received the Croatian National Award in the Humanities.

Magno Caliman [NL] – screenBashing MON Oct 8th – 8pm – [performance @ Siva]

screenBashing is a live coding piece, where audio and visual materials are programmed in real time during its performance. It utilises SuperCollider (a sound oriented programming language) for it's sound components, and C (a general purpose programming language) for it's visual elements. By using the very basic functionality, present in pretty much all programming languages, of printing characters on the screen back to the user, the visuals are created by printing characters such as backslashes and underlines in rapid succession, and at the same time freezing the whole system several times per second, creating the illusion of animated motion; something neither C nor the printing function were originally intended to do. (...) After a certain threshold, the system becomes erratic, up to a point where it is no longer possible neither to gain control, nor to foresee the end of the performance, which happens at the onset of the machine processor capability, when it indubitably fails and crashes, or there is no alternative but to force shut both the visual and audio generators. The current version of the performance, to be played at fu:bar, adds a new layer of error, with the use of a laptop not connected to a power outlet. The amount of charge left in the battery at the beginning of the performance is chosen in order to determine the duration of the piece, which ends with the involuntary shut down of the machine.

Magno Caliman — originally trained as a classical composer at the conservatory, but with a background as a hardcore / death metal guitarist, now present himself as a sound artist and multimedia performer, with a focus on the intersection between art and technology. In particular, two specific practices have guided almost entirely the processes in his works for the last few years: the construction, modification and manipulation of electronic circuits; and the embracing of programming languages as places for poetical speculation. vimeo.com/magnocaliman

Random Pixel Order [FR] – The Archive TUE Oct 9th. – 2pm – [open studio @ Siva]

Random Pixel Order is a project started in 2015 by Clara R/ and Guillaume Cartis - a crossover collective between IT and micro-edition. The project aims to bring the two closer and comprehend how they can mutually develop. Torn between glitch / dev / analog hacking on the one hand and illustrations / graphic novel / zine on the other, the collective choses to do both. The Archive is a digital art zine collection, every publication with its little background story, a particular technique used (sometimes multiple). The collection is open to digital art in general and holds a multitude of techniques - glitch (sonification, 3D glitches, pixel sorting,...), creative coding, web found images, bitmap and MS Paint drawings, scanner movement, digital collage... Different print techniques are also used - some are fully digital prints, some are screenprint or riso, others mix printing techniques. The entire collection of 50 zines will be presented at /’fu:bar/ 2018. Anyone involved with the festival is invited to participate to author a new zine on the spot.

Clara R/ — founded RandomPixelOrder in 2015 with Guillaume Cartis while she was an undergraduate student in mathematics and computer science in Bordeaux, France. Seeing that much code everyday and being fascinated by mathematical functions, she couldn't keep herself from trying to apply those new knowledges to something visual and fun. She experimented on different techniques along the time, going from classic 2D glitch and datamoshing at the very beginning to generative coding and 3D glitch. During this few years, Clara has been implicated on creating projects that build the bridge between zines and computer. Today, as the collective is exploring new physical supports, Clara is opening herself to more interactive techniques as Arduino and video game making. Now she continues her master degree in graphic computer science, robotic and video game while making posters and fanzines. Guillaume Cartis — after a few self-published zines, founded RandomPixelOrder in 2015 with Clara Rigaud aiming to create a bridge between digital and zine making. Exploring different glitch art techniques, he introduced himself to 3D, video editing and film making. In 2016 he joined Disparate, an associative zine store, where he works on Bordeaux Zinefest organisation and workshops. During those years he started to get into risography, screen printing, scenography and awkward electronic music. facebook.com/randompixelorder/

Ingeborg Fülepp [HR] – The history of artistic usage of errors in film, video and digital techniques TUE Oct 9th – 6pm – [lecture @ Siva]

The twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first can be labeled as a century of media art. Not only filmmakers, but also painters, sculptors, graphic artists, architects, stage designers and many others have been experimenting with media technologies since its very beginning. This lecture will present a brief historical review of the use of media technology imperfections as an artistic expression. By using the example of Media in Motion Berlin-Zagreb GbR (Ingeborg Fülepp and Heiko Daxl, 1990 to 2012) video production, the lecture will present a multiplicity of artistic image editing approaches, which were realized by a symbiosis of analogue film, video and digital errors in specific video works. At the end of the lecture, visitors will be able to see a selection of the best works of Media in Motion art production.

Ingeborg Fülepp — Born in Zagreb, lives and works in Rijeka, Zagreb and Berlin. Studied film editing (at the Academy for Theatre, Film and Television in Zagreb; today Academy of Dramatic Art - ADU) and post graduate studies, film, video and interactive media at Harvard University (Ed.M) and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Media Lab. Taught film editing at the Academy of Dramatic Art (ADU), Zagreb in 1978 - 1993. Lectures in USA, Great Britain, Netherlands, Austria and Germany since 1983, as well as at the New Media Department at the Academy of Applied Arts (APURI, Rijeka) since 2013, where she founded, and leads the Center for Innovative Media CIM since 2017. She’s an active participant of many international scientific gatherings, exhibitions and festivals, and participates in several EU projects as an associate or a jury member. Worked as a film and video editor on many productions. Received a multitude of scholarships and awards as an independent artist. Own artistic practice involves film, interactive multimedia projects, video art and video installations, of which some were shown in the New National Gallery in Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU) in Zagreb, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMSU) in Rijeka, as well as in many private and national galleries around the world. As a curator, an art director and a media art event organizer - she has ran a non-profit Media in Motion GbR, Berlin-Zagreb with Heiko Daxl, and has organized numerous international exhibitions and gatherings. fuelepp.com

FRGMNT [DE] – SSB - Sequenced Noise Beauty TUE Oct 9th – 8pm – [performance @ Siva]

The performance is a ~30 minutes live improvisation with advanced self made electronics. This involves the SNU (Special Noise Unit, FM-synth), sequencers, ring modulators and unique ultrasonic instruments (transmitters & "bat ears"). The main Units (SNU & sequencer I put under open license & distribute docu after the concert).

Jo FRGMNT Grys — born 1963 in Essen/Germany. Studied chemistry, philosophy, mineralogy etc @ the Justus-Liebig-University of Gießen then more & more turned towards arts using scientifically influenced thinking to investigate formation of structure from noise & order, from error & law and feedback as his main artistic themes. Grys is working with video-snow, electronics, computers, body & brain. Performed with noisiV (self-made electronics and video manipulations), TOB (transmitters and self-made electronics) as FRGMNT (structured noise & DIY ultrasonics) since 2010 and 2VM (VJ team) since 2002. Grys also makes electronic installations & gives workshops since 2004. Among other festivals he has taken part in V2´s DEAF NL, Piksel NO, Pixelache FI, Art Trail IE, Dorkbot CH, CTM DE. Works as an artist & inventor of machines. In recent years he also presents his computer graphics work to the public. frgmnt.org

FRGMNT [DE] – SNU noise machine WED Oct 10th – 2pm-5pm – [workshop @ hacklab01]

In this workshop, participants will be shown how to build the SNU (Special Noise Unit), an experimental sound circuit which uses illegal states falling between 1 and 0, and drives the digital chip it uses into an in-between world of uncertainty, resulting in complexity and uncontrollable behaviour, but also a playable instrument. Bio:

Magno Caliman [NL] – Error making and "not-knowing": some particularities of the relation between artists and programming languages WED Oct 10th – 6pm – [lecture @ Siva]

Computer programmers working in non-artistic applications and artists using programming languages to support an artistic practice might seem, at first, to be making use of the same tools (computational devices), and therefore can be thought of having similar practices. In this lecture we will draw parallels between the modes of operation of this two use cases. Specifically, we will comment on how artists are in a position not conceivable to the professional programmer: one where error making, trial-and-error, and "not knowing" some of the underling technical aspects of the practice are not only expected, but sometimes necessary in both the day-to-day experimental practice, as well as in the learning of those computational tools.

Magno Caliman — originally trained as a classical composer at the conservatory, but with a background as a hardcore / death metal guitarist, I now present myself as a sound artist and multimedia performer, with a focus on the intersection between art and technology. In particular, two specific practices have guided almost entirely the processes in my works for a few years now: the construction, modification and manipulation of electronic circuits; and the embracing of programming languages as places for poetical speculation. vimeo.com/magnocaliman/

Paul Vivien [FR] – 99% WED Oct 10th – 8pm – [performance @ Siva]

Loading… Loading… a transfer, a life, a movie, everything needs a time to prepare itself before it’s ready, before it becomes perceptible and pleasant. And when it’s ready, hurray! We can consume it. Why do we need it to be ready? Why don’t we prefer the things which are still in progress? A premature baby, an immature fruit or the current moment of my life with the evolving cells of my body? The last percent is missing, just enough to make you feel uncomfortable about this loading which will never end, with this file and my life you will never successfully download.

Paul Vivien — a new media artist who creates installations and performances. Experimenting with lights, generative custom software, video and sound, each project is an opportunity to discover a new expression way. Thanks to new technologies, he tries to make the virtual boundaries tangible, to augment the experience we could have of the real, accompanied by technology as invisible as possible. The artistic universe of Paul Vivien is hosted by a research about digital forms of life, a theme merging the notions of singularity, artificial intelligence, science fiction and nature. Based in Paris, Paul does talks and workshops at ENSAAMA, ECV and EPSAA art schools. In parallel of his solo projects, he participates to OYÉ visual art label production support, kaleidos studio art and design researches, exhibitions curation, and Omicron Persei 8 live AV. paulvivien.fr

ROUND TABLE THU Oct 11th – 6pm @ Gallery Siva

— on the current state of reinterpretative new media, its (role)models, changes, its influences, in regard to its artistic and technical ethos and praxis. The talk aims to discuss and contextualize diverse glitch-based critical new media (& appropriation) practices, in the company of /’fu:bar/ 2018 guest artists.

Nada Hasan [EG] – Experimental Desires [safe passage] THU Oct 11th – 8pm – [performance @ Siva]

A performance of reading texts and verbatim poems, installations of glitched video and live audio-visuals; an onsite experiment of a woman and her alter egos as she seeks to become the super human. The piece involves the ambivalent contradictions of female/male, weak/strong and white/black as they reside within a single body navigating hostile geographies. The project will explore the emotional, mental and physical aspects of becoming the perfect human through a mind trip and a process of being exposed to an archive of the most tangible realities and feelings, desires and traumas.

Nada Hasan — a Cairo based multidisciplinary artist from Southern Egypt. Her special focus is in video and media arts but her artistic practices vary between illustration, graphic design, performance, theater and storytelling. BA degree holder from faculty of Languages, Russian language and literature department and studied filmmaking at the Cairo Jesuit Cinema School by the year 2010. Since then she developed her skills in film and video art work by self teaching, exploring and experimenting new and various forms of creating moving image. Her work focuses on the emotional package of a body as a commodified being; making the struggles of bodies visible, emotions resistant to modern society persecution, while emphasizing the experience of oppression and our survival performances in functioning within privilege imbalances in connection to the quadrilogy of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Power. Her video and media art practice is curious to transcend the limitations of classical filmmaking and explore contemporary new media practices and its broad possibilities to create an alternative relation between the artist and spectator while constructing unconventional visual, image and motion driven narratives.  vimeo.com/user5161708

GUIDED EXHIBITION TOUR FRI Oct 12th – 6pm @ Gallery Siva

(hrvatski ~45’ | english~45’) Inquiries contact: [email protected]

Tabache & Lady oN [IT] – cHroma flux FRI Oct 12th – 8pm – [performance @ Siva]

"cHroma flux" explores a process of metamorphosis in which cells of colour and sound expand in order to create new forms. Thanks to technological devices, colour pixels and acoustic music mutate and distribute themselves throughout space giving life to a "technological landscape". The visuals are generated by live manipulation of paintings that have been transferred onto acetate. The resulting prints are positioned onto TV screens by means of feedback generated by webcams and this process triggers a series of transformations of the coloured pixels. The visual flow of colour is managed and produced thanks to an analogue video mixer. The result is a technological animation of colour as if under a microscope. It becomes a kind of digital mantra that responds to itself, reproducing and moving outwards to take over a new space. The audio has been developed from synth sources and classical music sampling. The acoustic samples have been literally deformed by digital and analogical technology, so that they reach the listener as naked sound that has been completely transformed from its original grammatical, cerebral and human nature as musical language. In "cHroma flux", sound and image influence each other in a synaesthetic vision that has been achieved not by machinery but by the physical gesture of a performance coordinated by the performer’s reciprocal listening and looking.

Tabache — starts his journey in 2004 with "Problems with my Mind", an electro experimental punk band with influences from bands like Suicide and subsequently flow into House, Techno, IDM. Publishing two records, "Album" (2005) and "Stato di Tensione"(2007). After moving to Bologna, he started his first solo project, Tabache, specifically devoted to a live and sensorial experience, with strong influences from Techno and Ambient. His new life injected him a new flow of creativity, which brought Francesco to publish in 2015 his first solo record ‘Searching a total state’, and to found his own record label with Alberto Randi and Giovanni Ricchi, "Timeless Records". In the same year he curated the performance and sound design for the performative theatre shows directed by Ennio Ruffolo. His natural interest in clubbing leaded him to open a new channel for the electronic music in Bologna and surroundings, with a serie of electronic events, such as "Sunday Calling" (2012 - 2014), "Futuro Dancefloor" (2015 - 2017), "Bologna Elettrica" (Electronic experimental Festival in XM24 social center, 2017, 2018) , and the new art collective "Einheit" (2017). soundcloud.com/tabache Lady_oN — operates as a videomaker and a visual artist on the national and international scene, realizing dreamlike live visuals sets, wraparound and imaginative visual scenographies invading the spaces of DJ sets, live music, installations and theatrical performances. In a constant state of research and experimentation, Lady_on’s visuals create hypnotic space-time fabrics in a cut up of images, video synthesis, found footage and feedback, contaminating the many pre-existing visuals with the possible infinites of live shooting and sonic incursions. Simultaneously, she is working on the Mediamorphose project, researching a multiplicity of visual expressions via music clips and video documenting reality.instagram.com/mediamorphose/

"Ondes noires" screening & FESTIVAL CLOSING FRI Oct 12th – 9pm @ Gallery Siva

"Ondes noires" / "Dark Waves", Documentary (21’14’’) In an ultraconnected society where waves have almost invaded every space, three electromagnetic intolerant people bear witness of survival in a world that seems more and more inacessible to them. The staging explores the idea of a deceleration in time. A necessary condition for the perception of a reality that extends beyond the visible. Written & Directed by Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis; Cinematography by Nikos Appelquist Dalton; Production : Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains.

// Screens and Prints Aaron Juarez Adrian Cain Affar Oppip Allison Tanenhaus Bartek Pilarczyk Creation by Destruction Cyberart By Justin Digital Ruins Earnest Raw elle thorkveld Ivana Miljkovic Ivana Miolin Barić John Bumstead jrdsctt Magdalena maja kalogera Mark Klink Mila Gvardiol Mirna Udovčić Neal Peterson Riitta Oittinen Robert Hruska Sabato Visconti satej soman Sebastian Gatz sepo Skinny Bunny tajny_projekt Tchidu Twin Pixel vivid windowzine Yuri Zalevski // Interactive Dario Zubovic Jim Andrews jonCates Kolmogorov Toolbox Magdalena Zoledz x Robert Kowalski Sabato Visconti Timo Kahlen // Narrative Gelido Jessica Evans Random Pixel Order // Time-based Baron Lanteigne + Derek Piotr Christoph Kerschner DAJAJDE Daniela Olejnykov (a.k.a paranthre, velvet_bites_) Daniela Takeva, Nikolina Nedialkova, Felix Ermacora Demet Karapinar DF0:BAD Digital Ruins Dom Barra _ AlteredData elle thorkveld Gochevas Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis Kacper Mutke Lívia Zafanelli Lou Morlier Marija Lučić Meena Khalili Nickk Outernet Explorer Paloma Schnitzer & Pablo Denegri Paul Beaudoin Petra Drevenšek Philippe Girardet Qin Tan [sic][redacted] | alan page Timothy Nohe vivid // Lectures And Workshops Holographic_thought_process Ingeborg Fülepp Jo FRGMNT Grys Magno Caliman Mark Klink aka srcXor Nikša Gligo Ramiro Polla Random Pixel Order // Performances Jo FRGMNT Grys Lovely Insomnia Magno Caliman Nada Hasan Paul Vivien Tabache & Lady oN

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theshapeshifter100 · 7 years

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A Magician’s Fight Part 8 (ASC12)

The part before this does serve as a functional ending. If you want to end it there, that’s fine with me. That being said, this is the second to last installment of this story, with the epilogue being next. I also forgot that this part does partially explain things that I ended up explaining in the Author’s Notes in the last part, so, sorry about that.

Story Summary: Everyone around Jackieboy Man had gone missing, taken by Anti. Except Marvin. But, he’s a magician, not a hero, what was he going to do about all this? Run, that’s what he was going to do.

Word Count: 2,727

Chapter warnings: Pain, allusions to trauma and PTSD

Sam watched in horror, growing weaker and weaker as Anti stole all of their essence to power this particular piece of magic.

The glitch demon was trying to get to another world, and at this rate, appeared to be succeeding. A tear was opening up around him, while his body had actually managed to stop glitching, but was glowing his signature sickly green. It was easy to see why this was working, this site was a weak spot between dimensions, and Anti had a lot of power to draw from.

There was something else as well, something that Sam was struggling to put their tail on, especially as the draining of their own energy was affecting their memory. There was another part to this spell, this wasn’t just a world jump, there was a reason that Anti had gathered these particular people, but Sam could not think for the life of them what it was.

Finally, the last of them collapsed, Marvin, shattering the field of magic holding Sam in place, not that they could do anything. They lay exhausted on the floor, watching as the tear grew wider and wider until it fully encompassed Anti.

There was a flash of green and white, then Anti was gone.

Sam lay there for an unknown period of time, slowly waiting for their energy to return.

The room didn’t have a window, but they could tell the passage to time from the hole they had left in the wall. It took two cycles of darkness for the humans to wake up.

Well, wake up wasn’t exactly accurate. They were conscious, to an extent, but they weren’t there.

Their eyes were glazed over and they just lay there, staring wherever their eyes fell.

The lights were on, but no one was home.

With one exception.

The physically largest of the group let out a groan and sat up, rubbing his head. Sam sensed that not as much had been drained from him, although they didn’t know why.

Angus looked around the room, trying to remember what the hell happened. He had been in a cave with Chase... Why had he been in a cave with Chase?

His brother had needed him, why?

Speaking of his brother...

“Chase!” Angus scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his, everywhere. His voice croaked hoarsely as his throat told him that he hadn’t anything to drink in a while. He stumbled drunkenly over to his brother, feet not quite wanting to respond to him.

He eventually made it over to his youngest brother, scuffing the massive chalk drawing that hurt his eyes when he looked at it, and fell to his knees next to Chase, shaking his shoulder.

“Chase? Chase snap outta it!” worry built in Angus’s belly as Chase refused to response, staring glassily at the ceiling instead.

Angus sat back on his heels at looked at the rest of the room, swallowing bile. Jay, heroic Jay was in exactly the same position, and, wasn’t that Jay’s doctor friend?

Angus got a proper look around, clocking a guy with a cat mask, another man in a bowler hat and someone else who’s skin was so grey he looked a little like a corpse. They all looked oddly familiar to him.

Finally his eyes landed on Sam, and he jerked back in shock, before curiosity compelled him to investigate.

He approached warily, clocking the disembodied eye’s movements as distressed. He knew that when approaching an animal in that sort of state, you move slowly, and give them plenty of time to flee if possible.

He crouched down next to the eye, before his aching limbs decided that that wasn’t happening, and he sat down heavily with a wince.

When the eye made no move to escape, Angus gingerly scooped them up in his cupped hands, and examined them. Something about this eye was familiar, it stirred something in his mind.

His gaze trailed from the eye to his thumb, where an ugly, raw, scar lingered at the base. That hadn’t been there before.

Angus carefully moved the eye to one hand, and he poked the scar with his free hand. It was still sore, but it had clearly healed. Looking harder, the scar went all around his thumb, like it had been hacked off, but it was still there...

Angus grunted as his headache increased in pitch and he rested his head in his free hand, wincing. Why did his head hurt so much? What happened?

Pain flared up ever further and Angus cried out in pain, dropping Sam and gripping his head with both hands. His fingers curled, gripping his hair to the point of some of it being ripped out, but it was nothing compared to the pain inside his skull.

His breath rattled in his ears as memories flew past his eyes at a rapid fire pace. Green eyes, Chase’s eyes. Chase torturing him, no, not Chase, something else, something controlling Chase...

He remembers gunshots, laughter, cruel laughter and a biting pain in his thumb, the memory of which nearly makes him scream.

Finally, finally, it’s over, and Angus is back in the cabin, breathing heavily and trembling.

Taking deep, gulping breaths, he removes his hands from his head and looks around the cabin with new eyes. That, spell, ritual, whatever the hell that, thing, had performed, had knocked everyone out for the count, except him.

His finger unconsciously traced the scar at the base of his thumb as he thought. The demon had said that he wasn’t important. Important to what? This? Was that why he was the only one not comatose?

His body reminded him then that he needed food and water, which he estimated that he’d gone several days without. Food, wasn’t so much of a problem, water was imperative.

Ignoring the distressed eyeball, Angus groaned to his feet and staggered deeper into the cabin, hoping to find a water source.

Like Marvin before him, Angus was relieved to find that this cabin inexplicably had functioning plumbing, and drank as much as he dared before coming back into the room he’d woken up in.

He sat down heavily next to Sam, and looked at the disembodied eyeball.

“Can ya fix this?”

Sam managed to float a few inches off the floor and wearily nodded.

“Do ya need to eat anythin’ first?”

Sam shook their head, and would have laughed if they could. They were a disembodied eyeball, not a mouth. Eating physical food was not something that they could do.

“Alright, do ya need anythin’ at all?”

Sam lay down in an exaggerated manner. They needed rest.

“Okay,” Angus scanned the room before standing up again. The rest of them weren’t going to last long without water, and the eyeball had no way of telling him how long they needed to rest. So, they needed him if they were going to make it long enough to wake up. There was the option of hospital, but he had no idea where they were or how long an ambulance would take.

So, while Sam recovered, Angus spent his time propping up the comatose folk so he could drip water down their throats. Painfully slowly so that they didn’t choke.

It must have taken another day for Sam to be floating off the ground again and Angus was exhausted, having not had any sleep in his attempt to make sure everyone else didn’t die of dehydration.

He leaned against the wall as Sam bobbed in his face, tail tapping at the guy wearing the cat mask.

“Why ‘im?” Angus groaned, rubbing his eyes. “Does it matter?”

Sam nodded, yes, yes it does matter.

“Fine, what do we do with ‘im?”

Sam floated over to Marvin, then flew to the middle of the circle. While Angus had been checking on everyone Sam had slowly been re-arranging the circle to a less harsh spell. Angus sighed and slapped his hands on his thighs to stand up.

He went over to Marvin and hooked the man’s arm over his shoulder, half dragging, half carrying him to the centre of the circle.

Sam scowled and rushed to fill in the scuffs the two had made, chalk gripped in their tail. When Angus deposited Marvin the magician flopped down on his side, not aware enough to sit up.

“Finally got a word fer this lot,” Angus muttered to himself as he extracted himself from the circle. “Vegetables.”

Sam ignored him as he sat down, and they began to charge themselves up. Marvin still had residual magic after all of that, it just needed to be activated.

Sam pressed their tail against his gut and concentrated, letting their body glow softly as they looked for magical traces.

No one had any track real track of time, so no one knew how long they’d sat there, waiting, until Sam came across something. It was small, but it was there.

Sam latched onto the magic and pulled, bringing it to the forefront and feeding it with some of their own.

Marvin groaned and blinked. Slowly he sat back up and looked down at Sam, recognising them, but confused.

“Sam, what...?” Marvin suddenly grunted in pain, his throat dry and head pounding.

“Finally mate!”

Marvin looked over at Angus, who was holding a glass of water out towards him.

“I didn’t think ya were gonna come to,” he added as Marvin took the water and gulped it down greedily.

“What the hell happened?” he asked, gripping his head with his free hand.

“Give it time, it’ll come back,” Angus said dryly. “‘Ow about ya figure it out and I’ll get to these guys.”

Marvin watched as Angus grabbed another glass of water and a spoon, and began slowly spooning water down everyone else’s throats. Why were they out like that? What they all doing here? He could barely remember what happened after he and Sam went looking for Anti.

Anti...

Marvin’s head exploded with pain and it all came flooding back. Once the episode was over he looked at Sam, who smiled back weakly.

“I can’t rely on my magic to bring them back,” Marvin voiced his concern, and Sam poked him in the gut. He was just going to have to try.

Groaning and grunting, Marvin stood up, stiff from lack of movement, but not in any great pain. He went over to Henrik and with Angus’s help got him into the circle. The magician then sat on the outside and concentrated.

Sam smirked to themselves when they saw that Marvin had unconsciously summoned a pack of cards to help him concentrate. He shuffled the deck without thinking about the movements, just focusing on what he wanted. He wanted Henrik to wake up.

Angus was just getting frustrated with all this sitting around when the circle itself began to glow, first white, then blue, then red, then black. All colours that Marvin was wearing.

The light pulsed and changed with Marvin’s breathing, who continued to focus on what he wanted. Sam floated over and sat on Marvin’s shoulder, adding their energy to the mix.

Schneep began to cough and splutter and curse.

“Vhere ze hell am I? Vhy does my throat hurt?” the good doctor complained, and Marvin couldn’t help but laugh, lights fading.

“Welcome back doc.”

It took several days to bring them all back, Marvin having to take breaks to get his energy back. Angus went out to find food while Schneep took care of everyone who needed it.

Chase and Jay were the next ones to be brought up to speed, and Chase was badly affected. Once he was awake and his memory had caught up, he disappeared and locked himself in one of the other rooms in the cabin. Jay sat outside the room to try and talk to him, with little effect.

Robbie was the second to last, and it was on his and Jay’s insistence that they revive the only stranger in the room. The bowler hat guy, or JJ, as Anti had called him.

In truth, Jay was suspicious, but it was clear this guy had also been Anti’s puppet, just like the rest of them.

When Jameson came to, there was no transition period, he already remembered everything.

His immediately went to his throat, swallowing rapidly as he tried to speak, but nothing came out. Unlike Angus and Schneep, his voice box hadn’t come back with the time resets. Anti had cut it out one too many times.

Like Chase, he also ran off, but unlike him, Jameson left the cabin entirely.

“Wait!” Jay called after him, but Jameson gave no sign of hearing him.

Already knowing what his brother was going to ask, Angus sighed. “I’ll watch Chase.”

Jay shot him a thankful grin, grabbed and pen and paper from Schneep and ran out into the forest after Jameson.

He burst out into the forest, and blinked rapidly in the evening light before casting around, turning on his x-ray vision.

He heard a sudden twig crack and turned towards it, seeing a human. He then went charging off in that direction.

It took him a little while, but Jay appeared to be in better shape the man he was chasing, as he came across Jameson with his hands on his knees, bent over double while trying to catch his breath.

“Hey,” Jay said gently, but it still startled Jameson. He jumped so much his bowler hat nearly fell off his head and he backed away so fast he tripped over his own feet. He landed hard on the forest floor but still tried to scramble away, hitting a tree trunk with his back.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jay tried to assure, but Jameson curled up into a ball and started shaking.

“Alright, alright,” Jay sat down a little ways away from Jameson, but was still close enough to try and comfort him. “It’s all over, yer safe now. That thing is gone.”

Jay sat with Jameson as the sun went down. As it started to get dark Jameson stood up, looking around nervously.

“It’s alright,” Jay stood up with him. “Jameson, wasn’t it?” he asked, remembering the written conversation they’d had, less than a month ago? It felt so much longer.

Jameson nodded, calming down a little. He opened his mouth to say something but only a little breath of air came out. He slowly closed his mouth and shrank in on himself.

Cautiously, so not to spook him, Jay put his arm around Jameson’s shoulders.

“Let’s head back to cabin, Angus got some food fer everyone, and I bet yer hungry. I know I am.”

Jameson nodded to himself, and let Jay guide him back to the cabin, using his x-ray vision to see where people where moving about.

Robbie made what Marvin and Schneep assured were happy grunts when the two arrived back, and Jay and Schneep quickly got to getting food and water down the mute man.

“Hold still for a moment,” Schneep instructed, giving Jameson a once over. He was constantly rubbing at his eye, as if checking that it was still there, even though he clearly seeing through it. “Did you have a functioning larynx before, you know,” even Schneep was unwilling to call Anti by name.

Jameson nodded, and Schneep visibly swallowed. “I-I see. Vell, other zan zat you are in ze same state as ze rest of us. Mostly healthy with mild malnourishment und dehydration.”

Jameson nodded solemnly and wandered off.

There wasn’t much space in the cabin, so Robbie quickly found him. Jameson stared at the zombie, trying to work out why he looked so familiar.

“Ch-ch,” Robbie was trying to speak, and having an easier time now that his lungs were attached to his voice box. “J, J.”

Jameson’s eyes widened. Two people in his life called him that. One had done it mockingly, the other...

Rob? Jameson mouthed, and it took a little bit for Robbie to recognise the syllable on Jameson’s lips and to remember the nickname, but it finally clicked. He grinned and let out a thumbs up.

Jameson took a deep breath and tried to grin at him, but felt tears building up instead.

The others walked in to see Jameson silently sobbing while Robbie was trying to comfort him by patting him on the back.

A/N I think I’ve mentioned before that I have a headcannon that Robbie and JJ knew/know each other and you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Not much else to say other than THANK GOODNESS, NO MORE ZALGO!

I’m exaggerating, a little.

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alcordraws · 7 years

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Surprise!! It's that Host fanfic I promised I'd do. Also the reason I've been trying to figure out read more, this ended up far longer than I meant it to be. I wanted to post it sooner, but between my mental health taking a dive and my need to keep rewriting, I'm surprised I got it finished at all. So yeah, it's sort of a gift for all you who've encouraged, inspired, drawn, or written for me or left me a nice message. Thank you. (Some special shout outs to @markired @kenmarlenn @dreamsmistakesandbubblegum-blog @rynnwolfe @lowat-golden-tower @galaxy-starheart @fleecal @dxckstabber and @mint-bees for being amazing and to @kyuubikaiju for helping figure out how to do read more)

“Who are you?”, asks Bim, eyes bright with curiosity.

His hands clench at the material of his coat, lips pressing together. There are several more eyes turned in his direction, intent on burning his every feature into their minds. It shouldn’t be so hard, reintroducing himself to a group he’d never considered particularly relevant, a group he’d hardly interacted with before, but somehow it feels like the hardest thing he’s ever done. He's sure nobody recognizes him, he looks too different from the last time they’d seen him so long ago.

However, one pair of eyes look to him with something akin to recognition, a memory faded and changed with passage of time. He’s reminded of the first time he’d been introduced, when he’d truly been fresh and new and he’d seemed to have the world at his fingertips. There’d been only one person that mattered to him then too.

The many faces that swivel around to face him when he glides into the room does nothing to faze him, too confident in his abilities to feel threatened. Wilford shoots him a cheerful smile when he passes by and he returns it with one of his own. It slides off as soon as he turns away and he throws the other occupants an unimpressed look. He doubts he’ll continue to attend these meetings, only came to this one because Wilford told him he’d need to introduce himself.

He catches the ego at the other end of the table staring at him, mouth hidden behind his glitching, silvery hands and his eyes displaying an odd sort of interest. He stares him down and neither of them turn away.

“Who are you?” asks one of the other egos in a nervous attempt to break the tension.

His blank expression morphs into a dangerous smile, sharp as glass at the edges. He’d brought his bat with him as a precaution of sorts and taps it lightly against his hand.

“I am the Author”, he answers.

He’d been… arrogant then, too sure in his powers, too sure of his own intelligence. He remembers hearing Dark’s voice in his ear, a soft and beguiling “join me” and his own resounding “no”. He has yet to forget the surprise verging on terror the first time he’d seen Dark’s shell crack. It was a formative experience.

The hand latched onto his shoulder squeezes and he startles out of his thoughts, the intense curiosity filling the room catching him the moment his guard slips. He hates how vulnerable he is to the emotions of others after having been isolated for so long.

“You were asked a question, it would be rude not to answer it”, Dark hums, his grip verging on uncomfortable.

The Host swallows, strengthens his resolve and ignores the sharp prickle of Wilford’s gaze.

“I am the Host.”

There is no slick smile, no rebellious blaze in his eye. Wilford isn’t grinning at him (he looks shaken, actually) and Dark is beside him this time, a chain he’d sworn he’d never wear. The Host takes his seat after carefully extricating himself from Dark’s grip, crossing his arms tightly over the table. The chatter thankfully picks up again, though he can feel Wilford’s attention on him still. The events of the day itch at his rising anxiety, Dark pushing him to attend a meeting after being gone for so long, the cacophony of sights and sounds rushing at him, the accusing eyes of his once dear friend.

The Host narrates, softly as he can, opens himself up to See into just the immediate future. It makes him feel just a little more in control, helps in relieving some of the built up stress. The meeting goes by in a blur, catalogued in his head as something to probably forget later. It isn’t his job to record these things. He hasn’t really absorbed anything despite narrating it, mind too buzzed with filling in the changes in his environment.

He stands, but freezes when Wilford’s voice cuts through prattle.

“Have we met before?” he asks, his slur almost noticeably thicker. The Host wants to say no, to say that it would be impossible for them to have met before. He wants to look him in the eye, smile, and say that he’s never seen him before in his life. That’s impossible for numerous reasons. Dark shifts behind him, an impatient shadow that nudges him in warning.

“Yes”, the Host says, soft and inflectionless. He wonders if it’s possible to leave without breaking Wilford’s heart, uses his Sight for any alternate routes, and finds none. The thought of lying leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

There’s an emotion glimmering in Wilford’s eye, and the Host winces at it, knows he’s one of the few if not the only one who picks up on it.

“You are the Author.” Wilford’s tone is firm, though strangely soft. One wouldn’t need the Host’s powers to trace the grief on his face or his voice. It swirls around him almost like an aura, thick and cloying. If they were standing closer, the Host could swear he’d choke on it. Instead he suffocates on the tension, the other egos watching the exchange with a morbid sort of rapture. None of them had ever seen Wilford so serious.

The Host sighs, deep and just the slightest bit shaky.

“The Author is dead.” He doesn’t stay for Wilford’s response, strides out of the room as fast as his narration will allow him (still manages to bump into the table and curses himself for not memorizing the room better). Dark appears beside him, though the Host hadn’t heard his steps. His hand finds his shoulder once more, brushes against his neck and he shudders at the hint of a cold burn.

…

He finds the library at the headquarters as underwhelming as always so he brings in his own collection, glad that they exist in a place where the the laws of the normal world have no bearing. No one seems to have noticed that there’s more shelves piled high with books, which is fine, hardly anyone goes there anyway. That’s a good thing, he thinks, less people to bother him or ask questions. Dark doesn’t go into the library often either.

Writing isn’t as convenient as it once was, and while he knows his handwriting is as elegant as ever, it takes twice the concentration. It hurts a little that he can’t see it, the familiar curves and smooth lines and describing it mentally isn’t enough. His pen slips onto the table and he grits his teeth, hating the dissonance of the wood when the paper had been so smooth. The Host sets his pen down. He leans back in his chair and rubs his hands against his face, carefully of the damp bandage over his eyes. He still ends up with blood on his hands.

The Host wipes his hands off on the handkerchief in his pocket, already stained a delightful rust. He tries instead to read, finds the same problem, and shuts the book in frustration. He sits up when he senses a presence other than his own, someone with a humming inner core, limbs that wir as they move. There’s mess dark hair, intelligent eyes that gleam behind black-framed glasses. His blue shirt is neat and the large G in the center glows in the dim lighting of the back shelves.

Oh. It’s Google.

The Host only vaguely remembers anything from their few meetings, and his head refuses to conjure up anything more than a fleeting dislike and frustration. He wishes he knew why he feels that way about him, wishes he could have more than intangible impressions about people who he knows (knew) even if not very well. He wonders if he might have had better recollections of them if he’d actually spent time with them. (It might explain how he remembers Wilford so clearly when everything else is a blur).

The Host doesn’t blame his past self for preferring solitude, but he does wish he might have been the tiniest bit more social. It might have helped the tenuous hold he has on who he was.

He stiffens when Google’s soft footsteps approach him, his arms laden with a collection of fantasy novels (strange, the Host pegged him for more of a sci-fi type). They don’t speak for a while, neither exactly comfortable with each other’s presence but refusing to interrupt the quiet of the library. The Host goes back to writing, adding the scratching of his pen to the hum of Google's core. He pauses when Google finally speaks.

“I could translate them to braille, if you wish”, says Google, his voice pleasant if not particularly emotional.

The Host dismisses the idea almost immediately, bristling at the idea of needing to turn his precious books to braille to be able to enjoy them. Google shuffles beside him, and he can sense an unusual flash of hurt and offense in the air.

“I thought you hated fulfilling tasks for others”, he points out, remembering the fury Google had exuded when one of the other egos had asked him to wash the dishes. He’d broken three before Wilford intervened.

“It’s different when I am the one who offers to do a task. I consider it… an act of acceptance.” Google looks straight at him, something none of the other egos seem to be able to do and the Host can’t help but feel warmed by the offer. It’s not an offer influenced by Dark, not something he’ll have to repay with blood.

“I suppose”, he trails off, examines the emotions whirling in the air (and Google seems genuine enough, though he wishes he had to courage to touch him, to take his thoughts into account).

“I suppose it would make reading easier”, he answers and is (delightedly) surprised by the honest smile that curls on Google’s lips.

And the Host might not remember, but Google does, has their previous encounters recorded in his databanks. It wasn’t quite kindness that the Author treated him with, but with a certain lack of condescension that even Dark did not afford him.

They’re in the library, Google eyeing the disorganized pile of books scattered on the table and surrounding an older ego. His eyes are glued on the journal in front of him, muttering softly under his breath, hand scrambling to keep up with his mouth. Google tries to go back to his book, a pleasant story about a bored genius of child who kidnaps a fairy officer for money, but finds himself listening to the Author’s incessant rambling instead. The Author’s speech is quiet, but Google’s hearing is heightened and precise.

It’s a story, falling quick as a waterfall and spilling onto the Author’s pages, rapturous and fascinating. He doesn’t know how long he just spends listening, but finds himself disappointed when the Author abruptly cuts himself off. Google frowns, watching as the Author scratches a word out, writes another, growls, and scratches that one out as well.

Google eyes the page and offers a word for him to use.

“Fuck off”, the Author retorts, not looking at him but using the word anyways. He goes back to writing, occasionally scanning one of the books around him.

He’d been louder back then. He’d more energetic, more animated in his writing. The Host is very much the opposite of what he’d been then, quiet, still, and cautiously polite. Google isn’t sure if he likes this version better. He’d been amused by the crude language of the Author if only because it contrasted so wildly with his elegant script, but the Host holds a certain charm.

It doesn’t matter he concludes. As Dark is fond of saying, dwelling on the past is of no use.

…

The Host isn’t quite sure what to make Yandere when he first meets him. There’s a familiar aura that flickers around him, something thick that clogs in his throat, something cold and distasteful. But for all that he reads like Dark (ominous, cunning, a viper hidden in a meadow), he isn't anything like him.

He's never trusted any of Dark's smiles, always felt them like a blade against his throat. He knows Yandere is violent and has about as much trouble killing as Wilford, but none of the grins directed towards him have been anything but kind. If the Host weren't so averse to touch, he might have reached out, cupped his face and absorbed whatever positivity flickered through his thoughts to keep the darkness away.

For whatever reason, Yan has made it his mission to be his friend.

Even with his patchwork memory, he knows Yan hadn’t existed before he became the Host. He’s a very young Ego, definitely the youngest in mentality at sixteen and made a point to wear only feminine clothing. Yan had asked for a story, something to help him sleep so the Host weaves a tale tailored just for him, a fantasy about a princess and her dragon on an adventure to save her prince.

Yan’s eyes are wide as he listens, completely engrossed in the drama and looking nowhere near sleep.

“You have the best storyteller voice”, he says when the Host takes a pause for breath, eyes sparkling in awe.

The Host smiles at him, little more than a lift at the corner of his lips, but a true one that seems to brighten his face. If he had eyes, they surely would have softened with it. The total number of people who enjoy his presence has come up to a whopping total of two (which is far more than he’d thought he’d be able to accomplish to be honest).

He doesn’t count Dark. His last friend had been a murderous journalist and since he refuses to talk to him (or look at him) he can settle for the murderous robot and teenager. Both at least seem to love his stories. The Host continues his tale, and watches as the late hour begins to use its charm on the tired student sitting on the couch next to him. For all his excitement, he’s still a teen drowning under the stress of school and the Host knows he needs sleep. The Host himself doesn’t sleep much (has never needed or even desired much sleep). Yan’s eyes grow heavy, his head drooping to rest on his chest and then snapping back up again, blinking owlishly to try to keep away the exhaustion calling him to bed.

The Host purposefully softens his voice, gentles it so that it wraps around the younger ego like a warm blanket. It’s a strong combination, too strong for Yan to resist and he falls asleep rather quickly, slumping onto the Host’s shoulder. He freezes, knowing it was coming and still not prepared for the weight of his body toppling onto him. It’s, oddly enough, not comforting. Google’s so far respecter his need for a bubble of personal space and the other egos naturally gravitate away from him. The only one who consistently touches him is Dark.

He remembers how just that morning, Dark had leaned against him, the weight of his body like an anchor, words whispered into his ear like a dose of poison. The resemblance of Yan and Dark’s aura’s suddenly feels like too much. He slips away from Yan as carefully as he can and bolts the second he knows he’s properly asleep. He needs the solitude of the library to calm his racing heart.

Yan wakes the next day cold and disappointed, loneliness sinking in like an old friend. He wonders why he thought he’d wake to something different.

…

The break room, the Host thinks, is a fascinating place.

It shouldn’t surprise him, considering it’s located in Wilford’s studio, but he’s had a bit of a surprising day. The Host didn’t think he’d get his own radio show in one of the studio’s branches and he didn’t think Wilford would smile on him today. Sure it was one of his plastic, would-rather-be-doing-anything-other-than-this smiles, the type he’d use when dealing with Dark, but he’d looked at him (or just slightly to the left of him) and he’d shown an emotion other than betrayal. So. The Host counts it as a win.

He’d even been lucky enough to get a bland “welcome to the studio”. The Host hadn't been sure if it was possible for Wilford’s voice to sound anything but cheerful and now he knows he can do sarcasm and mocking.

He sighs and tries bury himself in the cushions of the tiny break room couch. It’s incredible how tiring it can get, trying to navigate around an incredibly busy studio with so many sets being built and people being directed. The output of it all gives him a migraine, leaves his head feeling wooly and he hopes it’ll subside by the time he needs to leave for his second segment. There’s rocky road in the fridge at least, a small, half-finished pint that he does his best to savor.

The Host is on his third spoonful when the door opens and he’s slammed with a tidal wave of anxiety. He recognizes Bim, and frowns at the labored breathing that fills the room as he closes the door. Bim’s breath hitches when he catches sight of him and the nauseating feeling of anxiety thickens. The Host shushes him very gently, but doesn’t approach him, sure that if he does, he’ll spook him away.

He doesn’t know if it’s much better when Bim starts to cry, sliding down the door to curl up into as small a ball as possible, shoulders heaving with sobs, a position that makes the Host uncomfortable it its familiarity. He takes a breath, hoping Bim won’t reject his attempt at comfort.

His steps are quiet and he makes it the short distance to the door in seconds. He squats down to be level with Bim, taking in his rumpled suit, the way his usually sleek hair pokes out in different directions.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, voice pitched low and gentle. Bim peeks at him from behind his hands, eyes very red and very sad. The Host waits patiently, Bim would tell when he’s ready.

“I screwed up, I screwed up so badly, Wilford's going to hate me, oh my god”, he whimpers and the Host winces at the mention of Wilford. He’s quick to shake it off, and very, very carefully sets his hands on Bim’s shoulders, repressing a shiver at the way the his emotions intensify at the contact.

He pitches his voice lower, a soothing, satin register that seems to always calm others down (though, to be honest, he’d only ever used it on Yandere).

“You’re fine, Wilford doesn’t hate you and nothing you do could make him. You’re okay”, he says gently. It works and Bim’s shoulders loosen and to the Host’s shock he finds himself with a pile of messy, sobbing reality warper wrapping his arms around him, burying his face in his chest. The Host buffers.

He has no idea how to react, has to take a moment to remember where he is and that Bim isn’t a threat to him, isn’t hurting him. The Host has to remind himself that Bim is only seeking comfort and that in throwing his arms around him, he means no harm. It doesn’t stop his heart from picking up pace or his breathing from becoming shallow.

Bim probably picks up his discomfort and detaches himself, eyes wide and apologetic. The air is almost cloyingly thick with anxiety and fear and the Host curses himself for freezing.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t-didn’t, I-please”, he stutters, and cuts himself off with another choked sob before burying his face back in his hands.

“I can’t do anything right.” His voice is muffled but self hatred is clear in his tone.

The Host tries his best to stop his heart from beating its way out of his chest and get his breathing back in order. It doesn’t quite work as well as he’d like, but he’s calmer than Bim, at least.

“No, it’s fine, I’m just not… very used to contact. You’ve done nothing wrong”, the Host assures him, twisting his lips in what he hopes is a convincing smile. It resembles a grimace more than anything.

Bim peaks at him from between his fingers. “Are you sure?”

His eyes land on on the wet patches on the Host’s coat.

“Oh, sorry…” He chews on his bottom lip, unsure of what to do.

“It’s okay”, the Host assures him and wonders why, for all his prowess with words, that’s all he seems to be able to say. He berates himself for his ungainly approach, mentally shakes himself, and tries again.

“What happened?” He keeps his tone benign, tries to salvage his cool facade.

Bim looks away, shame-faced and looking very much like he’d like to be anywhere else. He wrings his hands, eyes flickering away in uncertainty. The Host tries to make himself look more affable and sincere, though in the back of his head he questions why does he even care?

(Some tiny voice, also residing in the back of his mind, whispers that he’s desperate for affection that won’t end in violence or that doesn’t have a price attached to it. It hisses at him that he misses the easy, tactile companionship he had with Wilford before becoming Dark’s miserable little prophet. He violently shoves that voice back into it’s tiny pocket of void to never be looked at again).

“Wilford let me have his time-slot since he was sick. It’s a bigger audience than I’m used to, but I thought I could handle it! Wilford said I’d be great and I don’t know what happened, if it was my anxiety or just the fact that I’m terrible but I choked, I fucked up really bad, I-I”, he hiccups and doesn’t continue, gestures helplessly instead.

The Host laughs.

The look Bim shoots him is nothing if not indignant and more than a little confused, but the Host gives him a gentle pat to his shoulder

“He’d never hate you for causing a chaos”, he assures, “Wilford’s always been a fan of messy endings.”

“How would you know?” Bim asks petulantly, though he looks cautiously hopeful. The Host manages a rueful grin, glad that at least now his eyes can’t give away his sadness.

“We used to be very close friends”, he answers, subdued.

“And you aren’t now?”

“Things change.”

They sit in silence for a moment. Bim uncurls and the Host’s shoulders loosen, the previous tension dispersing. Bim no longer feels like a spring coiled too tight and on the verge of breaking. The Host stands and goes back to the couch and frowns at what used to be a pint of rocky road, now a pint of half-melted sludge, a water stain of the couch where the Host had left it. Bim seems to hear him narrating about the melted ice-cream under his breath because he perks up, eyes significantly brighter.

He also stands, straightens his suit and tie and attempts to quickly fix his hair back into place. His shoes make a quiet click against the tiles of the break room floor and while he’s still timid, he seems to have something he wants to prove.

“You like rocky road?” he asks, trying to sound more confident and succeeding for the most part if not for the slight tremor in his voice.

“Yes, but it seems to have melted.”

Bim gives him a tumultuous grin, still wary but willing to believe the Host isn’t quite as horrible as Dark. At the very least, for all that his company makes him suspicious, he hasn’t asked for anything in return.

“I can fix that.” He concentrates very carefully on his powers of manipulation, putting his hands on the carton until it goes from luke-warm to properly cold.

His eyes gleam with excitement when he sees that he’s converted the ice-cream back to its icy glory without altering anything else in the process. He’s actually a little surprised that he hadn’t altered anything through his whole emotional breakdown, though he suspects the Host might have had something to do with it. Bim hadn’t been able to catch everything he muttered as he tried to navigate his way through their interaction.

They’re rather content to sit on couch and share the ice-cream. They still don’t have a good handle on each other (Bim still finds the Host to be just a bit frightening and the Host finds Bim a little too much of a devotee), but they don’t hate each other.

It’s a start, and eventually, with the help of a violin and a few succulent plants, their acquaintanceship becomes a friendship.

…

After all the strange injuries Dr. Iplier’s seen over the years of being the ego medic, a few bruises shouldn’t particularly bother him.

It starts, of course, with the damn bandage. Their eyes seem to gravitate towards it and as soon as they’re met with a crusty, bloody off-white cloth instead of the usual brown eyes of nearly any other ego, they’re compelled to look away. Dr. Iplier, like everyone else, wants to know what happened, wants to know the horror beneath it. And, to his surprise, he does. Just not in the way he’d thought.

Granted, he’d never thought he’d ever get to know either way.

He enters what he thinks is an empty room in an effort to look for a quiet space to breath, knowing that if he stays in his office, someone will inevitably show up to complain over something minor. It’s not quite as empty as he thought it was. Dr. Iplier’s astonished to find the Host in the room already, spouting a waterfall of hardly audible curses and, most surprising of all, not wearing his bandage.

In the place of his eyes are dark, empty voids, though there doesn’t seem to be any scarring that points out whether they were burned or scratched out. There’s more blood smeared on his cheeks than usual, beyond the teardrop patterns and looking more like someone had tried to scrub them away and failed, spreading it out more. The Host’s hands are spattered with drying red-brown stains and there's a mess of scattered bandages around him, all reddened to some degree. There’s a roll next to him that looks like it’s been thrown in frustration and his lips are pulled back in an irritated snarl.

Dr. Iplier clears his throat, surprised that he hasn’t been spotted yet (or read or whatever it is the Host does to interact with his environment. The Host jumps, startled, and growls as he thumps into the table, disturbing the badges on it. He whips around, face twisted in a defensive hiss, but deflates when he seems to sense him at the door. The Host shrinks in on himself, quickly gathering his things into his arms and doing his damndest not to let Dr. Iplier see his face.

“I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have to see this, I’ll go, I’m so sorry”, he rambles, stumbling around the table and chairs, leaving a trail of bandages in his wake and narrating sloppily to get out of the room as fast as possible.

He nearly trips, but Dr. Iplier catches him, not missing the way he flinches nor the way he trembles under his fingertips. the Host struggles almost wildly to escape his grip so he tightens his hold on his biceps to the Host’s terror.

“Please, I’m sorry, let me leave, please, I didn’t mean to”, he nearly croaks, flailing, not even trying to narrate his way out though Dr. Iplier knows he has the power to tear him apart.

“Hey, calm down, I’m not gonna hurt you”, he soothes, concern coiling in his gut, his hold gentling, but still firm. He doesn’t know why, but the abject horror that shines clear on the Host’s face makes his insides churn.

“Let me help you”, he pleads, carefully pushing the host back into a chair. There’s more blood than before, wet and bright red streaks smeared on white coat.

He takes the wet wipes from the table and runs them against the Host’s cheeks, against his hands. He keeps as composed as possible and tries not let his apprehension leak. The Host keeps his mouth clamped shut and Dr. Iplier wonders if, from what he’s heard from Bim, this is the host’s way to keep himself truly blinded.

Dr. Iplier sets the wipes side and reaches for a clean roll of bandages. He wraps them with care around the host’s head, keeping them firm and neat, but not uncomfortable. it's always bothered him how messy his bandages were (among other things). He finishes up and wipes his hands on his already stained coat, not minding the mess.

“See? Not too bad”, he huffs with a wan smile, hoping to find some sort of levity.

The Host is quiet for a moment, lips pursed and hands clenched tightly into the material of his coat.

“Thank you”, he say faintly, looking oddly pallid.

“It’s no problem.” Dr. Iplier deliberates for a moment and continues.

“Actually… would it be okay if I change your bandages regularly from now on? It would probably make life easier for you. And hey! If you’re nervous about the whole no eyes thing, it’s not a problem. I’m a doctor, trust me when i say I’ve seen worse.”

The Host is quiet and Dr. Iplier thinks that maybe he’s overstepped his boundaries on someone he hardly knows when the Host stands, walks up to him, and carefully brushes his fingertips against his hand. Dr. Iplier keeps still, aware that the Host is still one of the stronger egos. His face tightens for a second before he steps back, a strange look of determination on his face.

“Yes, thank you, doctor. I accept you offer.” The fear from earlier melts away to a crisp composer. Dr. lplier didn’t expect him to take the offer, but he’s relieved he did.

Except now it’s a few weeks later and the bruises that ring around the Host’s wrists niggle at his mind like thought consuming parasites. He’d only caught sight of them by accident, had spotted them out o the corner of his eye and hadn't even registered them as bruises until the Host had hastily pulled his sleeve down, almost immediately shutting down.

He holds the Host’s forearm, his knotting insides making an unwanted encore as he examines the dark markings. Dr. Iplier is pretty sure bruises shouldn’t look that painful, nor should they last as long as they do. The Host doesn’t answer his questions about them and the one time Dr. Iplier had mentioned Dark, the Host nearly had a panic attack.

It infuriates him everytime he look at them, and hates that he can do little more than rub cream on them. He can’t talk to the Host about them and he can’t confront Dark about them because he knows he wouldn’t stand a chance.

What’s worse is that the longer he spends around the Host, the more he’s exposed to Dark’s torture (his taunting words, his burning skin, and his terribly hypnotising eyes). Not for the first time, Dr. Iplier wishes he could see more than the worst things happening in the lives of others.

But at the very least, the Host allows him to touch him. Dr. Iplier’s learned that the Host isn’t welcoming of touch, isn’t entirely comfortable with it. Yan fusses about it sometimes, but otherwise understands that the Host prefers his space.

He’s different with Dr. Iplier. At first, he’d hated it, jerked away every time Dr. Iplier went for his bandage, snatched his hand away if their skin brushed and generally hated being handled in anyway. Now, Dr. Iplier can rub soothing cream into his skin and the host won’t so much as tremble, almost as relaxed as when he wrote.

And he smiles more, wider, a hint of playfulness at the edges and Dr. Iplier feels something in his heart warm.

…

It's at the end of his broadcast that the Host feels the icy finger of a vision, a bad one, sliding up his spine. He gasps, feels himself begin to tremble and scans around wildly for the nearest empty room. There's a janitor’s closet nearby, to his relief, and he scrambles toward it with fervor, not bothering to narrate himself around possible obstacles. He almost trips over a decorative plant in his haste.

The Host collapses into the small space, just barely managing to close the door. There's a broom digging into his back but it's nothing to the pain crackling in his skull, threatening to rip it apart. His breathing is harsh and his heartbeat feels off tempo, like a child new to marching band and unable to keep sight of the drum major.

He clutches at his chest, blunt fingernails digging into his skin through his thin shirt. The world around him shifts, moving from the usual darkness of his blindness to something that seems to have a presence of its own, a darkness that presses down on him like shrinking walls. There's hands around his neck, a furious voice hissing in his ear, both warning and threat.

He hears sobbing that's not his own, feels his heart squeeze when he recognizes Bim’s agonized pleads to please stop. Blood drips to the floor and Bim holds his hands to his ears the way the Host had held his to his eyes after his transformation. His skin feels like it's burning and he wants out out out but the vision is relentless, assaulting him with sights and sounds he can't make sense of.

The smell of burnt plants, acrid and terrible violates his nose, soft whimpers almost too faint for his ears to pick up echo in the distance, the feeling of being trapped with no way out snares his heart which beats like that of a cornered rabbit’s. He's never been able to get used to the intensity, worse than the migraines, worse than the bullet, the closest he's gotten to reliving the pain of the Transformation.

Finally, finally it fades and he's left choking in an attempt to draw air back into his lungs. He's curled into as tight a ball as he can manage, mutters furiously to try to get a hold of his surroundings in between gasps for air.

It takes him a moment to realize he's torn his bandages off and that his eyes are bleeding freely. It takes him another to notice the door’s open and someone's standing there watching him.

It's Wilford.

He rips his hands away from where they're tangled in his hair and covers his eyes, unwilling to let Wilford see him the damage beneath the bandages.

“Don't- don't look at me”, he rasps, shrinking away, legs still too weak to try to make an escape.

“Author?” Wilford whispers and the Host jerks back, feeling as if he'd been slapped.

“He's dead”, spits the Host, drawn so taut he looks like he'll snap at the slightest touch.

“Then who are you?” Wilford's voice is filled with a quiet desperation that twists like a knife in the Host's chest. He's still breathing heavily and exhaustion clings to his eyelids like anchors.

“What happened to the Author?” He's getting closer, but the Host doesn't have the energy or space to move away.

“He was shot. Dark thought it'd be better to get rid of him altogether because he was too weak. He wouldn't be the same. Dark was right; the Host is not the same.”

“Do you still like the violin?”

He's kneeling in front of him, radiating a mix of emotions the Host is too tired to identify.

“Of course.”

“Do you still tell a helluva story?”

The Host manages a quirk of his lips, as close to a smile as he can get.

“Only the best.”

It's cramped in the closet, but Wilford doesn't care, carefully cradles the Host to his chest, unbothered by the blood, letting him bury his face into his shirt.

“I'm so, so sorry, my friend”, he whispers into his hair, eyes trained on the curious streak of gold in the Host's black curls. The Host sighs, for the first time relaxed in the embrace of another. Wilford's hugs had always felt like home.

“It's. It's not your fault. I've never blamed you.”

The Host has never seen Wilford cry. He can't say he has, even as teardrops drip into his hair.

#Kat writes #hope yall enjoy #markiplier #markiplier tv #the host #the author #darkiplier #googleplier #yanderiplier #bim trimmer #dr iplier #wilford warfstache

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spamzineglasgow · 5 years

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(REVIEW) Pain Journal Issue 3

In this review, Maria Sledmere draws out the material poetics of intimacy, glimmer, memory and salt in issue 3 of Pain Journal, from Partus Press, asking what kinds of dream-writing and ecopoetics we might find among the tangle, the camaraderie, the trace.

> Pain is an immaculate journal of new poetry and short, creative essays, edited by Vala Thorodds and Luke Allan, published by Partus Press and designed by Studio Lamont. Folding out the cover of issue 3, you’ll find an epigraph from Robert Creeley’s ‘The Flower’: ‘Pain is a flower like that one, / like this one, / like that one, / like this one’. Pain is a making, a sap, a sort of seedling and fruiting of where we are in the years. It likens itself to more than we’d tend to acknowledge. A blood, a fur of skin, a flower. It’s such a luxury to hold issue 3 in its peachy, matte dust jacket, admiring the beautiful type and the list of contributors. There’s an air of the covetable to Pain: maybe it’s the print quality, maybe it’s the poetry, maybe it’s the curation. I think it’s also something to do with the cover, dominated by the sans serif title PAIN: when I read this walking in the street, I make some kind of statement. It feels charged with the ambiguity of some high fashion statement, and yet what lucky readers are we that something of the contents may tell the pain — we don’t just wear it.

> Where to start! These are lush poems of communication, intimacy, sensation. Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir’s ‘Gleam & delicacies’ is a surreal and elliptical lyric of superstitious glimmer. Poetry as ‘a trap for the superstitions’. I find myself googling what a ‘glowfruit’ is and find some reddit discussions around the appearance of ‘glowfruit trees’ in Sims games. There’s this line, ‘I still have wild glowfruit trees. Do you?’, which feels like a summons, a challenge. Enter into this logic with me, where the one-time event of the glowfruit’s arrival has seeded the game’s eternal time. Someone comments, ‘They seem kind of random to me’. I had forgotten the magic of games and their luxurious richness and dream logic of glitches and hacks and splintered paths of narrative. Perhaps my childhood adoration of Sega and Nintendo was my way into poetry. The opening veils of an overlain world. Sigurðardóttir’s poetics have that quality of drifting between rooms and scenes, or falling between bodies and scales by one gesture of a linebreak, the slide of a button control, ‘I give birth to suns / for the morning hoax / slippery planets’. It reminds me of David O’Reilly’s video game, Everything, where you can move between a roving shrub, a celestial body and an oil rig in the space of ten minutes. What is meant by a ‘nighthaired waiter’? There is a dream-hand that extends to our proprioceptive venturing, that offers casual refusal (‘I didn’t come here to toothbrush the wolf’) by way of assembling the real and its purpose. The real which feels more like a ‘silhouette’.

> Significant, perhaps, that this poem of mirror-tricks and shimmers stands opposite Ruby Silk’s ‘Re:’, a poem that takes the banal conceit of email and pulling on tights in the swimming pool changing room to figure something of desire and its thirst. ‘we communicate drily’, the poem begins, ending with a slide on the nature of being quenched, on the question. Both poems forego punctuation, and more or less carry themselves on the turns of language: objects form a multiple syntax of moving between. Their cleanness on the page is perhaps what makes them gleam, they seem to hold their own. The gleam is present elsewhere in the issue, with Eloise Hendy’s ‘scrubland’ beginning, in the manner of Marianne Moore moving into Plath territory, ‘i too have a gleaming future. / a future like a fish scale, the eye / of a small bird’. Trauma or remembered pain is a matter of scale(s) and perception, of the body and its existential whittling, whitening. The speaker asks about whiteness, light, memory and dream: ‘all that spilt milk. all that gleaming’. You could say the gleam is metonymy for shame, the beaming cheeks, the sense of glowing or almost burning there in the situation. No capitals, a whittling. The idea of ‘nonsense’ itself, whittling down to the first gleam, its tender origin: ‘as a girl i was very soft’. The way the lines and stanzas slip, enjambed between, the idea of a passing through. The speaker offers her hurts: her fish eye, her pale appetite, her starved future, her dreams of fish bones and choking. ‘be gentle with me’, she implores. I think of this line from the film Lady Bird (2018), after Lady Bird loses her virginity under a pretence of shared experience and the boy Kyle is like ‘Do you have any awareness about how many civilians we’ve killed since invasion in Iraq started?’ and she replies, ‘SHUT UP. SHUT UP. Different things can be sad. It’s not all war’. ‘as an adult i am softer still’, Hendy writes, as though softening herself into the palest ghost and somehow becoming defiant, ‘my hand / is an arrowhead. a future / like a fish eye’.

> It’s no surprise that Pain is tinged with other existential tremors, those of the body and the world, of ecology and domesticity, of sex and dust. Helen Charman’s ‘In the pocket of Big Pig’ wears high theory cool on its sleeve as it sweeps into the muck and dirt of where we are. The movement of ‘manmade’ materials into the ‘natural’ is an aesthetic act: ‘Plastic / can holders entwine themselves around the / sea kelp — to tame and smooth frizz’. In that em-dash I feel the lines reaching out, the kelp and the twine and the human arms, the bristles. Does poetry do more than brush back the mess of the world, or tease it back into static? What are the ethics of pain’s poetic entanglement?

ecopoets try again and again to convince us of the whiteness of the snow drift. I like muddy ducklings dirty reedbeds

(Charman, ‘In the pocket of Big Pig’)

If ‘muddy ducklings’ has that childlike assonance of storybook rhyme, ‘dirty reedbeds’ feels adult, insistent, dark. The place where you tangle and possibly drown. Turning away from the pristine ‘snow drift’ that pulls us into the picturesque, an ecopoetics that continues the aesthetic throwback of nature poetry before it, this is an anthropocene poetics of living in a fraught, affectively entangled now: ‘I think we’re nostalgic for more than VHS when we / fuck in front of the Blue Planet poster misty-eyed as if / we’ll ever get to show the oceans to our own kids’. Sex is ambivalently yoked to procreation in the ‘misty-eyed’ act of fucking to get back to something primal, deep and planetary. The world as it once supposedly was and exists now mostly as mediation: scenes on tv, posters for Blue Planet. And the word ‘fuck’ for sex that feels iterative rather than tender, two bodies trying to make something of what they have, an intensified point in time and space, a mediation or trace of each other.

> A similar kind of iterative sweetness and friction occurs in Jack Underwood’s ‘Behind the Face of Great White Shark’, where some new entry to the ecosystem upsets the home, ‘Since we brought you home from the hospital / I have begged these hours to a stub’. Enter the metaphoric playground of sharks and dogs, worms, rats, beans and bananas. Something of this new love, the baby perhaps, the shark or the tender thirsty thing at dawn, is a hurt: ‘I admit I have been sick / since we met, pursuing this love-wound / like a moon beyond the windscreen’. A love you’d drive to all through the night, to arrive back where you started, chaste in your own ‘dawn kitchen’ with a moony look in your eye. I think of Dorothea Lasky’s ‘wild lyric I’, the one she discusses in her new book Animal: this playful and manipulative ‘metaphysical I’ that ‘can harness all fragmented senses of self and use them whenever it needs to’. Underwood’s I thrashes like a shark on the sick shores of a new love, a birthing tide, dark and light. An I that threatens violence, desire from all angles and limbs ‘fucking ambidextrously’; an I that ‘can keep you safe inland’, that pulls you into its glow, for this is just ‘the lesser work of living’.

> It is tricky to identify highlights from a journal where, as with amberflora (whose sensibilities resonate here), the selections are impeccable: focused, resonant, but also lovely alone. Nina Mingya Powles’ ‘The Harbour’ has something of Clarice Lispector’s radiance, pressed into a teeming poetics of its own. Its section titles add an epistolary quality, italicised as they are, ‘Dear whales,’, ‘Dear dreamer,’. Post-Arika, with all talk of Moby Dick and the mathematics of the whale, it seems these cetaceans are having a real moment. Powles’ address to the whale is elegiac, ‘I can pinpoint all the places you have died, / where I’ve buried you’. She’s putting pressure on the work of metaphor, the whale as so much more than whale, the whale as what cannot be contained, the whale that cannot contain itself. Her whale is more of a comrade, a friend:

When I looked out of the train and saw your deep blue body and you saw mine you stayed close to me, swimming alongside. We were both travelling home.

What if ecopoetics, or anthropocene poetics, were something more like this surprising camaraderie? Does it matter whether the encounter was imagined or actually happened? Running through Pain is this suffering silk with its shadows and texture of echo and gleam, ‘the dream is wet skin against her hands / the fact is echolocation’ (Powles). I’ve been thinking about what the tensile ethics of this fugitive touch are: the touch of the image, the whale and the speaker on the train, the relative distance of speed and time between them, the hospitality she extends to the animal she is also. ‘I’ll show you my mother’s potted orchids’, in a world where to cross one human threshold is to know that later the sea will be deep enough for you once more. Pain asks how much of each other we need to hold. There’s this passage from Hélène Cixous’ novel Hyperdream (2006) that speaks to this:

I hear it, I hear a murmur your skin speaks, a blood thinks, I hear your thought running under the skin I hear your life thinking under the neat eternal spotless silk. I read with my life. I am torn. At the same time I am healed and glued back together again. During this time the world suffers and dies [...]

What is the murmur of our speaking skins, our thinking blood? The body that dreams? One pain can open the next, there’s a gesture of infinity, the way that Anne Boyer identifies in her ‘meditation on modern illness’, The Undying (2019): ‘My new calamity meant it was possible to feel every cell at once and, in these, every mitochondrion, and that it was possible, too, to have a millionfold shitshow of sensations in locations newly realised’. To have your body illumined, intensified, surged to the end of each nerve and cell with this searing consciousness. When I had shingles, I felt real dreams; they seemed to extend to a million tips, concentrated in clusters on the skin of my belly. Real dreams/real hurt. Is a body in pain the body that dreams the most, from her almost-paralysis in sensory excess? I think poems like Powles are asking these questions, declaring, spacing, opening up, leaving us on the brink of a blank that is its own quiet sublime, ‘everything is so !’. And if ‘the fact is letting go’, what of the fact have we been holding all along? Is this like Creeley, gesturing towards this or that flower, as a way of describing, to insist on it. Something we ask as children: does a flower or a plant feel pain? Pain, pain. There it is in the world, it just is, like a flower, or something more tiny and abrasive, salt after salt. A period.

> Rowland Bagnall’s essay ‘The Metal We Call Salt’ closes the journal with a meditation on the poetry of Philip Levine and Elizabeth Bishop, writers who ‘[address] the delicate failure of poetry to say the things which can’t be said’. This is Creeley, surely, with the flowers which stand for the shapeless pain. I’m reminded of a line from Rachael Allen’s ‘Kingdomland’: ‘the glass and salt my crooked pathway; impassable glass and salt’. The glittering remainders which excoriate the entry and exit of threshold, painful debris of the sea. This is the ‘tantalising’ poetics that Bagnall writes of, words that ‘say that they are lost for words’, words that gift and withhold by their material gesture: words that carry traces of what they may be. Salt-tanged and gleaming as glass. ‘What got revealed when the layers of leaves / Were blown backwards?’ Ralf Webb asks, in his ‘Three Sonnets’. What is it to walk over the crunching ‘pathway’ of such poems for pain, ana-cathartic as they move into, above, through, around and from the wound and its ferric sting? The essay also looks at the paintings of John Salt and photographs of Mark Ruwedel, considering how as a preservative and purifier, salt as both an archival and corrosive mineral: art as what consumes and reveals, what glints with the not yet spoken. Salt in the wound for pain will sting, but it will clear. These poems are such interfusions, sweetness and dreams, the ‘torn’: healed and suffering of a life and a world, coming over. And, for just a while, Pain will hold you together, soft in its peachy embrace.

Pain issue 3 is out now and available to purchase here.

Text: Maria Sledmere

Published: 5/1/20

#review #poetry review #PAIN #PAIN Journal #Maria Sledmere #Partus Press

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spicynbachili1 · 6 years

Text

Half-Life is 20! Happy Birthday! We are all old!

Goodness me, completely happy birthday Half-Life! 20 years outdated at present. However are you continue to as contemporary because the day you have been born? I’ve been re-playing the sport for the primary time in a few years to search out out. And crikey, it’s a bit good.

Again in 2015, when Half-Life 2 had simply turned a mere 10 years outdated, I went again to replay it and located myself enormously shocked by how a lot I’d forgotten. It wasn’t fairly the magnificent recreation I’d remembered, buried in pacing points, but nonetheless very good.

I forgive myself just a little extra simply when discovering simply how a lot I’ve forgotten concerning the unique Half-Life, what with the extra decade. However I’d assumed it could have aged to the purpose the place it had change into a little bit of an anachronism within the 21st century. You recognize what? It actually hasn’t. Whereas it has its points, it’s nonetheless a very fantastic recreation to play. So I’m going to diverge off right into a “what I’d forgotten” in a bit, however first I need to discuss what I’d remembered.

What I bear in mind most clearly of all was the anticipation. 1998 was an unbelievable yr for video games, and even higher for being enthusiastic about forthcoming video games. And I bear in mind studying these first previews, these first unique screenshots, in PC Gamer on the time. And the factor that almost all blew me away, had me scrubbing at my eyes cartoon type, was that it seemed like a recreation set in the true world!

I bear in mind seeing the photographs of places of work, with tables, espresso mugs, drinks machines and microwaves. And I’d by no means seen something prefer it. Video games, particularly FPS video games, have been set in area! Or in hell! Or someplace totally dissimilar. Right here I used to be taking a look at correct real-life locations, mundanity crammed with pleasure, and it appeared so impossibly thrilling.

Getting my arms on it, Half-Life instantly rewarded this pleasure with what would change into a infamous and genre-redefining opening sequence. Not solely was there the monorail credit sequence, wherein you noticed glimpses of this underground office, glimpses of potential glitches and a probably unhealthy working surroundings, however then when that was over… you simply went to work!

It’s a piece that feels virtually trivial to play it now, with video games having realized a lot from Valve’s starting. Whereas nonetheless someway so many don’t study the lesson that the extraordinary is a lot extra thrilling once you’ve had a dose of the atypical, it’s commonplace to have video games offer you just a little peek at what the world may need been like earlier than the baddies confirmed up. But it nonetheless does it in addition to wherever else. You mill about in corridors, watch folks by means of home windows, ultimately comply with directions and choose up your particular go well with. You continue to strive a number of lockers, blow up the meals within the microwave, after which once you’re prepared, head into the lab the place you’re assigned. After which, after all, all of it goes unsuitable. There’s a resonance cascade (nonetheless no thought what a type of is), and the office is exploding, scientists are dying, and there are terrifying aliens in all places.

What follows is an unbelievable collection of more and more elaborate set items, as Gordon Freeman unintentionally stumbles his manner from researcher to governmental enemy, just because he refuses to die. Crowbar in hand, to play it at present is to expertise every little thing nice concerning the FPS, in some ways higher than the style has provided for years. There’s simply a lot happening, so many surprises, challenges, dramatic modifications in surroundings and circumstance, tiny and detailed corridors, or huge open outside areas battling helicopters and hulking alien brutes.

And it nonetheless appears unbelievable! Sure, blocky and dated and crude, however with such improbable type. It probably helps that gaming is in such a pixelly retro place simply now, to see the inventive type at its perfect. However actually, like a 1920s cartoon nonetheless appears superb within the period of CGI motion pictures, Half-Life stays an aesthetic delight within the gaming way forward for RTX 2070s. The textures are unpleasantly blurry in locations, however past this, it nonetheless efficiently delivers senses of vertigo, horror, gore and scale as a lot because it ever did. Half-Life at 20 is, with some caveats laid out beneath, nonetheless a surprising videogame, and I’m very shocked to search out myself arguing, holds up higher in 2018 than Half-Life 2.

So let’s do not forget that which was forgotten:

All the things I’d Forgotten About Half-Life

Working round on 2% well being

Clearly FPS video games are experimenting with well being once more of late, having spent too a few years with solely “crouch to heal” as an possibility. Now, I like me some crouch to heal, however what it takes away is the daft pleasure of how a lot your expertise of any stage or sequence can change once you’ve minimal well being left. Half-Life presents well being very generously, however it additionally has prolonged areas the place it’s more durable to search out, with such good timing. Getting right into a scrape, and simply making it by means of with 2% well being left, can completely be addressed with a quickload and one other strive. But it surely’s so extremely rewarding to simply hold going, and scramble.

It so considerably modifications my method, having me desperately dashing between obstacles, intentionally not preventing one thing so as to simply scrabble my method to the closest door, frantically smashing crates within the hope of discovering a number of extra p.c to maintain going. After which I’ll arrive on the wall models, and simply drink that magical well being elixir to my fill, and rush out emboldened and preventing as soon as extra. Cor, that’s good gaming.

A number of routes

Over the past decade we’ve had the good pleasure of seeing FPS video games get higher at hiding their corridors. And certainly we’ve seen the style transfer into ‘open worlds’, the place the corridors are gone solely. However Half-Life did it the olden manner. You didn’t must do every little thing only one manner. You would discover the raise and get upstairs that manner, or you could possibly uncover a passage by means of an airvent and climb bins. It doesn’t do it a lot, it wasn’t attempting to be extra, however it’s simply sufficient that you just really feel a better sense of freedom.

Or for those who’re me, you simply really feel nervousness that you just didn’t choose one of the simplest ways, and reload or circle round to see what would have occurred the opposite, and spoil the magic for your self since you’re a large twit.

Moments of pathos

I feel after we bear in mind Half-Life, we bear in mind jokes about Freeman’s mute methods, about how there have been solely three or 4 scientist skins and simply the one Barney (who wasn’t even known as Barney), about foolish barks and enjoyable gags. So once I got here out of the opening explosion to discover a scientist on his knees, trying CPR on a dying Barney, it actually shook me. This felt actually, actually actual.

When did you even see CPR in a recreation? Apart from in a cutscene exhibiting the hateful film model the place the particular person wakes up, coughs a bit, after which carries on working. Correct hopeless CPR the place you’re simply desperately attempting to maintain somebody not-dead lengthy sufficient for a medic to have the ability to assist? That’s what you see in Half-Life, and it actually struck me exhausting. It’s fairly the factor.

The horrible leaping

I’m unsure how I’d forgotten this, however I’d fully erased from my thoughts how terrible the leaping is. It’s a colossal mess. Glitchy, fiddly, susceptible to not working simply once you want it most, and all rendered much more terrible by Gordon Freeman’s apparently travelling all over the place on rollerskates. You roll to a cease, which is ace when ‘skidding’ right into a struggle, however simply garbage once you’re attempting to precariously stability on tiny platforms to succeed in a gap in a wall. Oh the cursing.

It will get even stupider with the mantling. Bear in mind mantling? You needed to crouch, then bounce, and kind of be doing each and neither or one thing to have the ability to attain a platform. It by no means feels proper, or at the least it by no means appears like you’re doing it proper. It’s so, so odd that it was such an enormous a part of the sport, when it was so hopelessly coded. And simply think about leaping off a ladder…

It feels terrible killing Vortigaunts

Actually terrible! In case you’ve performed Half-Life 2 and past, you’ll know Vortigaunts are Gordon’s associates! They’re light aliens, on his aspect, ever-helpful and type. Right here they’re simply attempting to zap you and also you’ve no selection however to kill them. And it by no means feels good!

My child’s obtained a toy stuffed Vortigaunt in his room! That is terrible!

Black Mesa should order from Amazon

That the plant puzzle was nice, not horrible

I bear in mind hating it! I bear in mind everybody hating it! This huge round chamber, on a number of flooring, with a three-headed monstrous plant pecking its mighty plant-beaks on the platforms as you tried to run round. One hit killed you. It was brutal, and annoying, and other than Xen, the bit everybody complained about.

Besides no! Now, I’ve no thought how a lot was 21 yr outdated me simply not getting it for too lengthy, however the entire part is marvellous. It’s a multi-part puzzle, with enormous branching sections to finish in your personal order, to allow a button that kills the bugger for you. All you could do is keep quiet. And yeah, it’s silly that you just couldn’t get onto a ladder from crouch, and that for some motive this made noise, however it additionally meant you had these glorious heart-skippy moments of attempting to scramble away because the mighty beaks started their terrifying pecking the place you simply have been.

Then its eventual destruction is sort of so satisfying! It’s one in every of my favorite bits within the recreation!

The complete prepare part

Much less so the trains. A lot as once I replayed HL2 I found simply how ridiculously lengthy the hovercraft part goes on, lengthy, lengthy after anybody desires it to be there, gosh Half-Life lets the trainlines overstay their welcome. Tracks lie in prolonged gray corridors, on which you journey an automatic wood platform, whereas avoiding obstacles, stopping to filter out areas, journey between flooring, explode bombs, and so forth. And hurrah! Besides you do it sooooo a lot. Again and again. Gosh I used to be sick of the prepare part by the point it was lastly over.

Watching the fights

Now, I hadn’t actually forgotten that Half-Life had the troopers and the aliens struggle one another. That was simply probably the most astonishing factor in 1998, to see your enemies turning on one another, letting you maintain again and have them skinny their very own numbers earlier than you stepped in. However I’d forgotten how good it’s!

The AI is, actually, higher than most you see at present. Troopers run away after they’re practically useless! Gosh, which latest recreation final considered that? They transfer round as a substitute of simply coming up and down behind a wall! How can this be?! And it means the fight they’ve between themselves is fascinating to observe. You are feeling prefer it may go both manner, altering what you’ll must be ready for once you have interaction.

How lengthy it’s

I’d deliberate for this last entry to be a pithy touch upon Xen, maybe confirming it’s as unhealthy as all of us bear in mind, or archly observing that it’s fairly good. I’ve no thought. As a result of regardless of taking part in it over the weekend, and all day at present, I’m nonetheless not there! This recreation is big! FPS video games was once enormous!

However I’m having such a very good time with it. That is large, and for those who’re one of many many individuals who both forgot to be born till too not too long ago, or simply by no means did again then, that is one in every of only a few video games that basically genuinely deserves being performed past its historic significance. It’s a hell of a whole lot of enjoyable to play, and that’s and not using a assortment of “although”s and “for its time”s. It simply is, proper now, an excellent recreation.

from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/half-life-is-20-happy-birthday-we-are-all-old/

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jeredu · 8 years

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Destiny Star Zero

(This, while very different from the present iteration of the AU, is the original version of Destiny Star. This scenario is that of the dream that inspired the thing that became the Destiny Star AU. There is no Leon or Stahn present- nobody, in fact, but Chaltier and Dymlos. Chal is still an android, and Dymlos is still a self-aware ship/AI. The two of them have been sent on some lonely, distant, but vital task/mission that lasts YEARS and takes them far, far away from friendly/known systems. Unfortunately, and by some unknown cause, Chaltier is slowly becoming corrupted- his software, his core, is beginning to malfunction.)

It starts small- a memory he is suddenly unable to retrieve. Here, a subroutine failing; there, an error in his sensory readout. As it grew more serious, with time, there was no longer any hiding it. Even his hardware was beginning to fail in small ways- not responding smoothly or properly to his input, because his virtual neurons were garbling the message - the code that converted his 'brain' signals into a physical action of his body. It was all Harold's brilliant work, capitalizing on the fact that his consciousness and earliest memories had come from a man named Pierre, mapped digitally and somehow still remembering how it felt to be human.

So, even as Chaltier knew from his glitching diagnostics that the code translating his background ('subconscious' was no longer quite right) commands into movements had begun to malfunction, that his body was a complex piece of hardware responding to faulty signals from a corrupt program... The human part of him, emotionally, recognized it as something else: He was dying. His body and mind were beginning to fail.

Chaltier also knows that a tech specialist capable enough to assess and repair Harold's complex handiwork was far too valuable, and could not be spared out here on the fringe. He wasn't even sure such an engineer existed. His hardware could be opened up and reverse engineered, but Harold was the only one who truly understood how their cores worked. Black boxes though they seemed, Harold Belserius had been their author.

Dymlos demanded that Chaltier let him run a diagnostic. Like hell is Chaltier going to make a hard connection to Dymlos and risk corrupting him, too. While he had yet to discover any virus that might be the root cause, that didn't mean one wasn't there. The possibility of losing even one Swordian relic was to be avoided at all costs. Chaltier would not risk doubling that number.

He also knew that Dymlos needed him- needed his skills, in order to complete this mission. Needed Chaltier's vital functions. Chaltier needed to find a way to leave those with Dymlos, to give Dymlos access once Chaltier was incapacitated [dead, whispered a voice that had no place in a synthetic mind].

Chaltier could not risk a link, so he must accomplish this the old fashioned way- with his fingers, and a keyboard. He begins writing a program, a rudimentary AI that can manage the vital tasks that he performs. Aside from the lifeless program, he crafts a design for a shell to hold it (and his user information, access to the same databases, and so many other things. He can't stop to think about the fact that he's not so much writing a will as he is creating a soulless replacement for himself.)

He creates one other thing for Dymlos. Within the sanctuary of a processor connected to nothing, not even Dymlos himself, he creates an encrypted file. His digital vault, his final gift. Within it, he pours his secrets. While a great deal of classified information was known and shared among their five, each of them had also been endowed with knowledge that they were oath-bound to keep in silence, alone, even from each other, as a measure of safety. A puzzle with its pieces divided between five boxes, and none of them knew the shape of the whole.

So now, Chaltier pours his secrets, his solemn burden, his tasks, his doom, into aether. Coordinates. A string of symbols which in combination became a key. A passage from an ancient codex, long destroyed before the war centuries past. The same codex referenced, he knew, by an oracle. He had asked, once, about the nature of these things. Not for their content, but out of human curiosity and despair. Igtenos, knowing such discussion was forbidden, acquiesced to the lost tone in Chal's synthesized voice, finding it hard to deny such a plea from a close friend.

Names, he told Chaltier. Places, Chaltier had responded.

I am the Guide, Chaltier added simply when he reached the end.

...But I am also flawed and human, he continued, after a lengthy internal debate.

So I leave you with the secrets of my core. If we have souls, Dymlos, I cannot preserve mine here. So instead, I leave you also with the secrets of my heart, that they may be known and preserved. None other to whom they are privy remain alive, so I entrust their memory to you.

Chaltier does not know how many hours it took, the task of recording his hopes, his dreams. His ambitions, his regrets. His desires. And finally, a short sentence of four words, followed by two names.

Perhaps it was selfish, hoping to preserve some piece of himself this way, not knowing what awaited. Perhaps not.

He returned to the task of finishing his replacement, so that Dymlos could finish the mission.

Dymlos was angry.

"You are infuriating. You do what you want, just like always. Let me HELP you!"

Chal just gave a sad little laugh. "I'm not worth it. What if this happens to YOU? Then the entire mission is compromised, because you got sentimental? Let it go, Dymlos. Please. You're distracting me."

"I will not! If I had fists, I would punch you, I'll have you know."

That earned a decidedly more merry chuckle from Chaltier. "Well. I'm rather glad you don't have fists, then, all things being equal."

Dymlos goes quiet for many days after that, though it doesn't last.

"So... that's it? You're just going to give up?"

"I am not giving up," Chal replies evenly. "I am mitigating the damage to the extent and utmost of my ability. Forgive me if that extent isn't quite as impressive as yours. I'm just a diplomacy android who was re-purposed into a weapon.”

"Don't you dare. You were always more than 'just' anything. That's why Harold was special."

"Harold was brilliant," Chal agrees calmly, still typing at mach speed. "That's why I'm not going to risk you. She's probably the only person in the galaxy brilliant enough to fix us that far down, and she's gone."

"You won't know if you don't try. That's also essentially the definition of giving up, I might add. Refusing to try."

"If you say so," Chal murmurs. "I always thought it had more to do with letting go of whatever desire or ambition you had to start with. In that sense, I have never given up, nor do I intend to. Even if I won't be here to witness the results."

Dymlos has trouble refuting that.

"Well. Point taken, I suppose." Chal tries not to feel smug over the concession.

"...How long?" Dymlos finally asks.

Chal doesn't need to ask for clarification.

"...Not much," Chal admits, his hands finally stilling on the keyboard after what had likely been days. He stands stiffly, his hydraulics and servos not responding smoothly anymore. He walks over to the fabricator, to the parts he's just printed, and starts to assemble a small machine.

It is rudimentary at best, but it has articulated joints and manipulators, in case of a catastrophic failure of some kind. Such a scenario would necessitate physically throwing emergency switches or performing physical repairs in areas of Dymlos that Dymlos himself cannot access.

"It's ugly, but it will have to do," Chal sighs.

"Ugly? The only ugly thing about it is why it is needed in the first place," Dymlos mutters.

"There's... one more thing," Chal whispers, and when he stands this time, a simple motion that requires a frightening amount of effort, Dymlos realizes it might be the last.

Even Chal's voice synthesizer is malfunctioning, now.

"Dymlos. The vault. Please," he breathes, the sound crackling like an antique radio.

Without a word, a series of thick steel shields are withdrawn from a panel in the center of the bridge floor. Stiffly, Chal disconnects his secondary core and sets it within the recess now revealed.

"Wishful thinking, maybe. M- Memory backup."

Dymlos grunts in sudden understanding.

"If we find someone brilliant enough, we might be able to restore you."

Chal doesn't answer. Instead, he lowers himself jerkily- not into the pilot's seat, but the one next to it.

"Pre.... emptively," Chal rasps, "I think I...." (static) "-will b.. ...be... retiring... while..."

"While there's still something left of you," Dymlos finishes quietly.

Chal can't nod, so he closes his eyes in acknowledgement. After a moment, he reopens them with some effort. Dymlos has activated the hologram projector on the bridge and is sitting beside him (an utterly pointless action for a hologram), just for the sake of keeping him company.

"It's been a long road," Dymlos murmurs.

"Very," Chal agrees.

"Sleep, Chaltier," Dymlos murmurs. "I hope to see you at the end of it, nonetheless."

#au: destiny star #tales of destiny #dymlos timber #pierre de chaltier #tales of #jeredu writes #au: destiny star zero #it is open ended #whether chaltier ever wakes again #I think i can blame my subconscious for the dream #probs still absorbing the point of Graces where we reach Fodra #no the dialog in the dream was not this specific #i don't recall the words in the conversations of the dream #only what the conversations were ABOUT and the general tone of them

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studioproject1n9669345 · 6 years

Video

youtube

Video and photograph documentation of Interruption

Interruption (2018) is a 5 channel video work set up on 5 monitors on 5 plinths of varied sizes. Each monster plays a 7 minute and 30 second long video which explore imagery related to navigating the internet, clickbait and malware ads and youtube conspiracy theory videos on the mysterious hum. The name interruption refers to how clickbait ads and the urban legend of the hum are intrusions into the domestic everyday life and violate our sense of privacy and security with a threat of the unknown. Another aspect of this work is relating it to mythology, wanting to combine the myth of the siren - a beautiful bird-women who lures men to their death with her voice- with the concept of a sentient internet entity. This was to create a contemporary reimagining of this myth, who lures men with the clickbait ads which promise beautiful women and knowledge. The siren is reflected in the work through the women’s faces and through the text which references passages from Homer’s Odyssey in both English and the original greek.The hum is an ominous unexplained phenomena which in this work represents the siren’s voice, as well as being its own unseen ominous entity. This interest in conspiracy and myth and the culture tabloid aesthetic in the clickbait/ low quality conspiracy videos are combined to reflect on how our our understanding of myths and urban legends has changed based on contemporary society and technological development. The platform we use to tell these stories on has changed and with it, the forms monsters/gods/ entities take has also changed. Furthermore, this work also functions as a reflection of how human anxieties and fears have evolved as reflective of new technological threats.

From a formal perspective, this work reflects the architecture and frameworks that define the internet and computer interface, with use of the window and rectangles and squares chosen to reflect this. The different heights and positions of the monitors were chosen to reference the heights of various desks and chairs, and to reference multiple people all accessing the internet from different places. The dark room , and the ghost girl like ‘jumpscare’ like sequence when the face from the “Like Asian women?” Ad is influenced by the cheap horror movie tactics, e.g.: The Ring or internet creepypastas and thus can be read as something threatening and disruptive.

Reflection:

Overall, I think this work is good and reflects the research, conceptual ideas and development of practical video editing skills I have worked on this semester. For the Grad show installation, I plan to change and improve a few parts however. Main considerations will be potentially getting some brightsign video looping players to allow the videos to sync up more perfectly and prevent the loading sequence in-between each loop. While the work does work without being synchronized, for maximum effectiveness I would like all screens to start glitching and flashing at the same time when the siren entity appears on screen.

Other consideration include using more audio channels and using headphones on some works for a more intimate viewing experience. The types of monitors I also plan to change for more varied types and sizes. Other changes will include slight video editing for quality and making sure every video is exactly 7:30.

Possible flaws in this work include my reference to the siren being very abstract and only a small connection with few references. However, this work is such that I want the meaning to be hidden and for the audience to spend a lot of time viewing each screen to get clues and ideas, so that they can form their own ideas about what clickbait ads and mysterious hums. The link to the siren is only a small part of the work, and one theme of many.

#week12

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sowiseup-blog · 7 years

Text

Best Beginner Metal Detectors Tips And Tricks

New Post has been published on https://sowiseup.com/beginner-metal-detectors-tips/

Best Beginner Metal Detectors Tips And Tricks

Here are some tips and tricks that will be useful to beginners in metal detectors.

Contents & Navigation

Prospecting of picnic tunes:

A gardener’s tip to avoid infection of small wounds when handling soil:

Always have in your trunk/bag:

A method to obtain an image of a very worn (therefore flat) part:

A caching method that was reported to me:

One trick (not tested) to avoid mosquito problems:

A little trick to avoid all this:

The work is long and tiring

Something that happened to me once:

Detectors – A tip that makes sense:

Prospecting of picnic tunes:

When you are prospecting for a picnic area, take a look at the big, isolated trees in the middle of nowhere. Apart from shading, these trees provide a good shelter for those who want to isolate themselves from the crowd, the screams of children and the mother-in-law’s laughter. These trees are very often full of good things to offer and are waiting for your passage!

Read also >> What Is Best Beach Metal Detector?

A gardener’s tip to avoid infection of small wounds when handling soil:

always carry a bottle of disinfectant spray (like Derma-Spray) and a clean cloth (to clean the wound). Be up to date on your anti-tetanus vaccinations!

Always take great care when digging and exhuming an object. If it is a coin, you will retain its value (a damaged coin may have its side divided by 10, 20, 50, or more) and if it is a non-fired bullet or fortiori an unexploded shell, you will stay healthy!

As a general rule, avoid digging where you know there were modern battles or accidental shells falling apart, except if you are fond of militaria, but that’s your problem and it’s totally forbidden!

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "sowiseup-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = " "; amzn_assoc_linkid = "865a143d02142da7caa30074949804c4"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B00KBNWPJ0,B06X9Q16R7,B01BP1E2WE,B00TADH9HA";

Be careful that the fixing screw of your head is made of plastic. If it is not the case, change it (except for C-Scope detectors), you will gain in performance.

The use of old maps (staff, etc.) will give you an idea of where old houses or farms are now being demolished. In place of these ancient places frequented sometimes only a field, a meadow or a vacant lot. It is interesting to prospect such places!

Read also >> 10 Best Kids Metal Detector – On A Shoestring Budget

We often find small objects that were the daily life of our grandparents (thimbles, parts, hitch, etc. Attention, however: these places are often very polluted with scrap metal, nails, etc.).

A well-equipped first aid kit can save a good day of prospecting in case of small glitches.

Always have in your trunk/bag:

A few bottles of water (at least one in your bag)

A rainproof Pancho in case of rain A cap for the sunny days

Optional batteries

An insect spray (very important !!!)

A syringe venom

A shovel rescue (What to do at 100 km from the house when we broke his shovel?)

A knife

flashlight (you never know, a small cavity in a wall, under a stump …)

What to eat Available aspirin A saw A roller plumbing adhesive (a stick that loosens, it’s always annoying!)

One or two strips Velpeau

A tube of ointment for sprains

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I know, the list is long and cumbersome! I tried to rank it in order of importance: I would describe the first 7 elements as vital.

A method to obtain an image of a very worn (therefore flat) part:

If the patterns in your room are very worn and very shallow, a smear will not work properly. Burn a match and put the coin in the smoke. It is covered with soot.

Gently place a piece of transparent tape on the piece and erase it. When you remove the piece of tape, you will get a very detailed negative of your piece. Place the piece of scotch on a white sheet. You are ready to authenticate your piece!

Prospect old stables, stables, henhouses, etc. Farm animals are very good alarm systems against intruders and it is not unusual that a farmer took advantage of this to make a cache under alarm!

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A caching method that was reported to me:

It is well known that big trees have always been good tracks to follow. Some people planted a curved nail or ring under a large branch just above their hiding place, to be able to find it effortlessly by suspending a digger lead. The lead was pointing right where it was necessary to dig.

The only drawback of the story is that the cache is usually deeper than usual (out of reach of many current detectors). Plants growing by their ends, there is a good chance that the nail has moved very little since the date of burial.

Warning! Do not hurt the trees by damaging their roots! Respect nature!

If in winters you must at all costs prospect a small portion of frozen ground, place a black plastic tarpaulin on the area to be covered.

The action of the sun on this black surface will warm the ground and should make it less hard. Remember to wrap the cable around your head around the handle. You will gain in performance and stability.

One trick (not tested) to avoid mosquito problems:

Take a 250 mg Vitamin E pill daily during the prospecting period (starting 1 or 2 days before). It is not effective against flies, but it works very well on mosquitoes, it seems.

Are you a fisherman? You must probably have the good old full pocket jacket that any fly fisherman worthy of the name wears! I wear mine when I detect.

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I use the left pockets for garbage and the right pockets for interesting items. Small pockets with velcro closure are very well suited for storing coins, jewelry, etc …

You can have a pocket type of object and put a fragile object in a separate pocket. You can also move in all directions, lean, without risk of losing something! These jackets have the advantage of being lightweight, so portable even in summer, but you will protect wonderfully during the windy days.

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A mobile phone can be a source of interference. If you have to leave it on at all costs, make sure it is in your backpack rather than your belt (as far as possible from the detectors).

When you prospect on a new site, the essentials can escape you. Taking pictures of the site may allow you to spot some clues later. For example, differences in vegetation (greener grass or more yellow depending on conditions) may indicate the presence of the foundations of a house now demolished.

The presence of some trees can tell you if there was a house in the front corner (fruit trees, roses, etc …). In this case, your chances are increased of being able to find something.

If you leave with spare 9V batteries in your pockets (and that must be the case), be careful not to put any finds with them. You risk a short circuit which, if prolonged, can seriously damage your battery, even cause an explosion or fire!

A little trick to avoid all this:

place a piece of electrician tape on the contacts of the battery!

If you go out in wet weather, do not forget to let the detectors electronics box dry when you come back (do not leave it locked in your bag)! Be careful not to put it too close to a heat source (risk of condensation).

When you prospect a hyper-polluted place (house recently demolished, etc …), but you know to be the high potential, I advise you to take the time to clear the ground! For that, there are not 50 solutions:

you will have to detect in all metals and dig all the signals! Too many prospectors push discrimination in this kind of place and end up coming back empty-handed …

The work is long and tiring

but you will soon be rewarded for your efforts!

A good way to find good places to explore is to talk to old people in the area. They will probably be able to point you to places where parties and gatherings were held and which are no longer used today. Older people love to talk about the past and often have a lot more memory than we would like to believe!

Get out prospecting after the rain. Moist soil improves the performance of detectors. Check the condition of your batteries before going out (especially on Sunday !!!). Always have spare batteries on you!

Determining the size of a buried target can be very useful in determining whether or not you will dig. A typical example: on a beach, whether you are on a soda can or a good old room … If you are in possession of detectors “special currencies” with a depth indicator, you can do the following:

place the detection head 10cm above the ground. If the indicator gives you a much lower value (close to 0) then it is likely that your target is not a coin.

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But be careful, that does not mean that it is a can! This technique can only give you an indication of the size of the object, make the decision to dig according to the place and what you are looking for.

If you have the time, explore your land by going in and out, diagonals, right angles, etc … You may be surprised by the number of things found when going back to a place from a different angle!

Something that happened to me once:

I was on a sharp target, with a good signal … I dig perfectly vertically (5-10 cm behind the point, as usual), then nothing! Nothing in the bottom of the hole, nothing in the clod! Soaring! I take a look at my shovel to see if there was not a little ground stick (which can contain the target), nothing! I stay there for several minutes, trying to find this damn target!

To go crazy! I leave disgusted, is about to dig another hole 2-3 minutes later, and there my eyes are attracted by a singular spot on the iron of my shovel: a piece (a liard if my memory is good) was literally glued to my shovel by a tiny layer of earth (less than a millimeter). So: vigilance and caution!

If you have multiple detectors and want to “dry out” an area, use your different devices in that area. Depending on the nature of the targets, a detector can walk where another will remain silent and vice versa.

In the same spirit, if you have a big and a small head, use both! The big one will allow you to go deeper (in most cases) and go faster, but will see less well a target masked by a ferrous next door! The little head will be less sensitive to this problem!

On lightly polluted terrain, explore all metals and use discrimination only to help identify a target.

Detectors are only able to identify targets at a limited depth (when they are intended to be able to identify targets). Good targets below this limit are incorrectly identified and may be mistaken for “shit”. If you have any doubt (and this is true for all detectors and prospectors): dig!

Explore the sandboxes and children’s wood games in all-metal mode, to find little jewels and toys lost by children. These places are generally very little polluted.

If you detect in “silent” mode, do like me: wear shoes with non-ferrous metal parts (lace rings for me). Occasionally pass your detector on your shoes while you detect.

This will let you know if your detector is still working (in my “youth”, I once prospected for 20 minutes without any signal, before worrying and realize that the jack of my headphones was no longer in the plug adapter!).

Detectors – A tip that makes sense:

explore without a watch or rings! I assure you that a ring is really annoying when you put a clod under the detectors;

If you are running in a park with cows (especially heifers), be careful not to leave anything behind them. Recently, I had a strange surprise:

I had left my bag half open, hanging on one of the stakes of the meadow. When I returned, the emergency helmet that was inside was only a vague memory! The dirty beasts had chewed on it, cutting off the cord and leaving an abundant layer of drool on the bag!

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