#the idea of soul society being built on a shared concept of the shape of the world and not Physics is actually very comforting to me

[miraluking-respectfully]

I wanted my next longpost about DNT to focus on what this book reveals wrt the process of Joining. Instead, I accidentally went on a rant in the Discord server about the Killiks as a people during this particular era of galactic history in-universe, and by extension, Raynar Thul.

Raynar Thul, aka UnuThul, is a Joiner of Unu of some significance who I've put off explaining because when I entered the book, I knew about him and I considered his presence abhorrent. I've since gotten over some of those feelings, but I'm better off copy-pasting my Discord Rant than to try and summarize here.

Spoilers for The Joiner King below, but don't worry about that too much, as I'm kind of reading this book so you don't have to.

Call me Bug Walker.

*bad rimshot*

Begin Copypaste

The trouble with this particular novel is that while it's EXTREMELY juicy with Bug Lore, half of what it reveals about Kind society/culture/biology are New Developments™️ that i'm having to untangle from what could feasibly have been present before, ie, within the SWTOR era. Basically the premise of this book is that the nest has been undergoing some Changes due to the influence of a highly Force-sensitive Joiner, who was then able to extend his will over the nest as a whole. So discovering which is the nasty yucky invasive anthropomorphism introduced into my bugs by this character and which is the acceptable seasoning of anthropomorphism inherent to the development of a fictional intelligent species is not always super cut and dry

Like, the care given to individual casualties is an explicitly new development (makes sense, there aren't a ton of eusocial hive insects IRL that perform triage), but is the spaceport they built? Is the trade they're performing with other species? Is the Colony involving multiple distinct nests sharing a unified hive mind as opposed to a bunch of them? I'm like, not sure

Which is kind of funny, because the idea that the Killiks were a static culture until this One Guy with the right levels of space magic crashed into their planet & exerted his will over them with his last burst of near-death strength Also Really Bothers Me(edited)

"Well, Mads, if you like an aspect of Killiks 2.0, you can just pretend it's always been present in Killiks 1.0!" I don't waaaannaaaa

I want the LEAST anthro version of my bugs!!! I want the version of them BEFORE Raynar Thul got his grubby little mind all over them!

Joiners as a concept are fuckin sick not only because of what the bugs can give to them but for what they can give to the bugs. Joiners aren't Oops! All Hive Mind, they are two minds. Your old personality and memories still exist, but your understanding of the world and your priorities are now one with the Hive. And because I <3 TLT and I'm really big on the permeability of the soul rn, that suggests to me that the character and personality of a hive would change, slowly and surely, depending on the types of Joiners incorporated into it. It would have to. If the hive mind pre-Raynar has no clear source, no clear singular will behind it (disclaimer: IDK if this is true, I have 2.75 more entire book to read), then it could only be shaped and influenced by all its participants, bug and otherwise.

Raynar's existence + influence over the Colony doesn't preclude this possibility, but like. He does raise a question,

that being, could any Forcie have done this under the right circumstances? if not Why not

Like the book hasn't stated it outright but the wiki seemed confident that this guy has been the only Forcie Joiner to get subsumed, and while I don't know if that's a wholly accurate statement bc fucking nobody has read these books, the fact that the books gave the wiki authors that impression BUGS ME (pun intended)

This is the first EU book I've ever read. IDK what kinds of fuckin galactic percentages of Forcies to non-Forcies it's assuming. Obviously the number would be low because this book takes place a point when the Jedi are bouncing back from a painful extinction, but that extinction was recent, it was artificial, and also as we all know well Jedi =/= all Force users and statistically it is buckwild crazy to me that the Killiks would exist for 20,000+ years (the migration Vector mentions was introduced here btw! These are the Kind that left Alderaan, that he was looking for!) and at no point would they have picked up a strong-willed Force-user before this one dude

Now, there IS a confounding factor here. Which is, I imagine any other Forcie Joiners pre-Raynar were not, um. Trying to influence the nest as hard as he was

For starters he's just super duper strong in the Force, but also, he Joined because he crashed into a planet and crawled out of his ship half-dead and super on fire after watching multiple of his friends die horribly, and the will he exerted over the Killiks was a last-ditch effort to get them to save his life as opposed to eating him

that is a SPECIFIC-ASS set of circumstances and maaaybe if such a thing happened again within a different and unrelated nest, the same thing could have happened. Maybe it wasn't the presence of Force abilities that caused this one guy's brain to redirect the flow of the collective mind, but the effort he was putting behind it, effort that previous Force-sensitive Joiners had not found a need to wield

And also, like, UnuThul is 100% a Joiner. He is no more the same guy he was going in than Vector is, this is made clear

Bright side: as I said, I have A TON of this book left to go. And there have been a bunch of really strange happenings within the nest that Raynar in his Dawn-Herald-On-Steroids role seems as baffled by as the rest of the Kind. So maybe the next Big Reveal is gonna blow my ass clean off, slash positive, and make this all sit right with me.

But nonetheless I am bovvered. I am bovvered that a hive mind could develop a person in the drivers' seat for any reason. It feels too easy and it feels too anthropomorphizing, and both of those make it reeeally boring

End Copypaste

[under-olympos-bodhi-tree]

On Xenia, Missionary Work, and Living in a Broken World

I'm still getting used to writing these blogs, but I had something nagging at me from earlier today, I hope this essay does it justice. Long post ahead!

A friend of mine, not a close friend but still a friend, works at a sit-down restaurant and has shared difficulties with life and the service industry with me. Earlier, they shared that a Christian group visited their restaurant, ordered notably expensive food including steaks, and were not generally the best customers, but they left a $100 tip to my friend at the end of their stay.

This bill, however, turned out to be fake. On closer examination, it was a concealed note made to look like a $100 bill advertising a local Christian group, informing them that "Jesus is worth more than this bill!" followed by an ad for their congregation. Setting aside that the bill was literally worthless, as it was not worth any money, this... upset me. But let's peel back a little.

A common theme among religions is that the gods show up in the poorest of society. The concept of Xenia in Hellenic Polytheist religious belief and Ancient Greek society is built around the idea that Zeus and any other deity could appear as a poor beggar asking to sleep under your roof in the rain, or at least that they might be watching.

For those who may not see things so literally, it is still fundamentally a religious matter that humans built the world and make it what it is, even if we all still dance to the invisible tune of the Theoi and the Fates, and that we have some kind of a responsibility to build a better world from those who walked before us.

All of that is pretty common among religions, with only the details changing. Buddha lived as an ascetic with his only shelter being a tree where he had his awakening, the ancient Israelis were penniless slaves who were led by Moses who was essentially an exiled refugee, Jesus was a peasant carpenter, etc. The idea that the divine comes to our without money at their lowest is not new.

There is, however, a very toxic mentality that I have mostly observed among preaching and missionary Christian groups. It is that, because Jesus lived without money, that he is the wealth that matters. The idea being that faith in Jesus is the only thing that matters, as someone without him is damned, and the more souls you save by making them realize his supposed trueness makes you a better person by making them realize this, and possibly earns you better brownies in Heaven.

This is, however, disregarding virtually every other cultural experience in exchange for having this world view. Well-adjusted, comfortable and safe communities who worship a different god must obviously be proselytized against in this view of the world, for even the happy and comfortable cannot truly be happy for they do not know the son of your sun god if you seek conversion rates above all else in the mortal world. We have all seen this in effect.

There is a grim cowardice to this entire world view. It is a fundamental unwillingness to see the perspectives of others, to have empathy, and move your mind out of your own head. In this world view, no one who isn't you can be happy and good, all must be bent to your shape to match the perfection that you were so obviously built in.

I was raised Mormon, and this cowardice has been weaponized to an enormous degree by building entire cultural cornerstones by preaching and conversion and proselytization. Those who do not surrender vast sums of money in order to travel to strange places without friends and family purely so they can bother other people with this 'truth' that they do not want... well, to not do it makes you less than a person to the Church, unworthy of the paradise they promise you.

I in no way wish to state that sharing religion is bad. Talking to people that you know, sharing your world view, talking about what you believe, telling them about the beauty of the divine that you have witnessed, all of these I feel are an innate good. But if you see the world narrower than a pinhole, if you believe that every humans who is born, toils and dies under our sun must believe in Jesus and God in order to have a shred of value and thus seek to force it on them by any means necessary, you have perverted the entire arrangement.

Dan Olson did a wonderful documentary on Flat Earth and qAnon in which he stated that to Flat Earthers, they are not simply in ignorance of geography, but that the simple denial of truth is a weapon, a tool, in which they seek to build the world in their image by denial of facts through a force of will to build a metaphorical flat earth in which they are right and their enemies are silent. When you do not seek to enlighten, to share, to learn, and instead seek to use your will, words and resources in order to hammer anyone you ever meet into a familiar shape, to build the good little Christian paradise on Earth that is so clearly strangling those who do not see it as a paradise, you have built a horror.

And it is into this environment that the final horrors take shape. The denial of refugee aid by powerful religious organizations without conversion, the refusal of helping others without getting something in return, the clawing tendrils of rigid enforcement of religion and culture that forces people into your group for fear of leaving it, the refugees and poorest people in my city who were forcefully converted by missionaries in return for food and shelter is the final result of such a narrow world view, in viewing every human as needing to conform to you and your way. This is homousian as the horrors that have ravaged the planet for centuries, that has devastated native cultures, killed generations of queer people, and built the worst of the world.

It is in all of this that the introduction to this essay began. A Hellenic Polytheist, working a thankless job, bringing fine steaks to those who taunted them with fake money while promising that their note had the only thing of value.

What if I told you that my friend was moving away from an abusive lover or parent and desperately needed money for shelter? If they were trying to scrounge together money to pay for insulin without insurance? What if I told you they were paying for an unexpected funeral and were facing the reality of being unable to bury a loved one? What if I told you they had cancer and needed every penny to get surgery and chemotherapy?

Thankfully, they do not have any of these things to my knowledge, and were simply annoyed. But to dangle a religious truth that they are not interested in, teasing them with the money that, to the knowledge of these Christians, may have saved their lives, while taunting them that your carpenter god would cure these things for fealty like a feudal lord, is a vile and small-minded idea. That this person was likely not the sole executor of this evil and likely was simply promised by higher-ups that they were doing good, that they meant well and genuinely thought they were helping, does not decrease the horror of the world and mindset that would create this circumstance. Because next time it will be someone with cancer you yank hope away from.

I hope, dear reader, that you can extract my meaning on the purpose of Xenia, and good deeds from this, and see a small piece of the dark horror that small minds and narrow eyes can build. When Zeus appears at your doorstep dressed as a ascetic beggar, the fact that this beggar may not be Hellenic does not matter. That he may not be your color, or that he may not be healthy, or that he may be different, is not an excuse not to be kind, to think outside of your own experience, and to embrace those who need us the most. Because your $5 and your kindness and understanding to your waiter or barista or your uber driver is far, far more valuable than a pamphlet and a condemnation.

I'd like to send you off with a small story I like about the Buddha. This story is neither historical nor truly about the Buddha, but it is an enlightening tale containing a deep religious truth told through fiction, not unlike our Greek mythology:

While the Buddha meditated beneath his Bodhi tree, searching for truth and enlightenment, he peered beyond the mortal realm and saw a thief in hell who had repented and begged forgiveness. The Buddha, seeing that the man wanted to change, to come back to Samsara and to fight to be a better man, lowered a spider's web into hell for him to climb.

The Thief graciously began climbing up towards the Buddha. However, the other denizens of hell began climbing up after him, and he feared that the delicate spider's web would break and take him back to hell, so he began kicking them off. The spider's web was stronger than the finest steel and could have taken all of them, but his kicking broke it like it was thread.

Be kind, love each other, and always seek a better world.

-Lady Nikki

[enahstudio]

misanthrope n. a person who dislikes humankind and avoids human society.

anthropocene n. period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to constitute a distinct geological change.

"I love humanity; it's people I can't stand." - Charles M. Schulz

This user is a Grimes enthusiast.

by Enah Lei Bohulano (12-Dewey)

CREATIVE NONFICTION (MASTERLIST)

The chaos within-

Knowing Thyself: A dreamer who lost its passion and how she found a spark of hope (an autobiography)

For once, I called myself a dreamer. A visionary. An idealist. An imaginative woman. It starts with a change of perception towards the world we're living in today. As someone who is fond of reading books, watching cartoons appropriate for my age, and observing the people around me, I know it is something that will shape me intro a different person rather than just being someone who yearns to finish education or enjoy simple things in life.

Read here.

++

Life's Miserable Encounters: A Ceaseless Journey Throughout the Breakdowns (a biography)

She was a mess in distress. Danica Pura was always torn between two things. Setting foot into the real world has never been so challenging for her after graduating college. She's the type to train her mind through a variety of opportunities ahead of her. But reality can be harsh sometimes. Especially when we're in the stage where we feel like the heaviest burdens in our lives is the cause why we can't move our feet to keep going on.

Read here.

++

Quaffed the Remaining Leisure: Life in a Vivid Dream (a personal narrative)

Has it ever occur to you? To be delving too much to the world unknown. To get yourself consumed by the darkest state of your mind. Because I've been there. This is how the other side of the universe opened its doors for me when I tried to run away from my quandaries.

Read here.

++

Frontier between Two Worlds: A Sweet Escape to Her Silent Sanctuary (a reaction to a personal narrative)

Skimming through Kimberly Cortesano's personal narrative, I already knew we share something that only the both of us could understand. We're definitely riding the same boat all this time. There's this special sympathy within as we go through each other's feelings.

Read here.

++

Peculiar Minds: Sublimity of the Eccentric Mental Phenomena (a reflective essay)

I've reached the point where other people's opinions didn't matter to me anymore. In the eye of the storm, I am built poles apart from the others. But once I learned that it is what makes me odd and remarkable at the same time, I didn't let the negative insights of people affect the distinctiveness of my ideas.

Read here.

++

The Beauty Hypothesis: Nurturing the Natural Nature of Our Own Beings (a definition essay)

It's not just a word on its own. If we're going to delve into the whole concept of "beauty" it is more than just having a pretty face and the kindness of the soul. In fact, being pretty and being beautiful is completely different. As Margaret Wolfel Hungerford said, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." There are certain things in life that are bewitching in someone's eyes that I may not or can't perceive as one and vice versa.

Read here

++

Behind her Wonderful Facade: A Mother's Love and Sacrifice (a facial recognition)

We never truly know what lies in one's smile. People often show themselves as if life's doing it easy for them. Not until we get to know them more as we grow up. That's the time when we think that if we put ourselves in their shoes, you'd understand that people go through certain hardships they never told you every time they narrate the story of their lives.

Read here

++

The Fruit of Hard Work: Why hard working people are more successful than those who work smarter (a testimonio)

I came across this particular video as I was scrolling on TikTok to pass some time. Wherein one of its top recommendations is about "academic validation". It's funny how the app's algorithm can strongly influence and empower people. That's when this question popped in my mind, "Why hard working people are more successful than those who work smarter?"

Read here

++

The Cool Breeze of Tagaytay: Unforgettable Moments in Time (a travelogue)

There's this time we tag along with my father's workmates on a trip to Tagaytay. At first, the weather was kind of unsettling. I do not want to go out in a gloomy weather. The vehicle and the overall cost of the trip wasn't the problem. The question is, "Am I going to have fun?", "If I endured my carsickness, will it be worth it?". Not gonna lie. I love hanging out, especially when I'm with my family. But doing it with people I barely interact with won't be easy. Knowing how much of an introvert I am, I knew I wasn't gonna last long. I'd go running to my mom, begging her for us to go home already. But you never really know what's in store for the next few hours.

Read here

++

In One's Heartbeat: Recognizing the Importance of Someone's Life (a literary journalism)

Being the only daughter in the household, I always wondered what it feels like to have a sibling. We we're doing great as family of four including my mom, my dad, and me back then when we used to live under the same roof as my grandmother. Yet something feels missing and it keeps bugging me since we somehow look incomplete without it.

Read here

++

Somewhere in paradise, we'll meet again (a self-obituary)

This marks the day where the life vouchsafe upon me parted ways from my human body. I've come to the point where I accepted my fate. Heaven or hell. You can never step back from death. That's the concept of life. I guess I've fulfilled my duties in earth as a student, a daughter, a woman, and as a human being.

Read here

@enahstudio 2023. All Rights Reserved.

[recurring-polynya]

POLYNYA please tell me about the sea/your Soul Society sea(s)!!!!! (I also wanna talk about the sizes of things but I will save that for later, haha.)

My entire writing/worldbuilding self is just an agglomerate of about 10 different books/comics I read when I was 19, and one of those is Books of Magic. The major thing I took away from Books of Magic, a thing I think about every single time I read or watch something with a magic system, is the idea that humans have their own magic which is fundamentally different and in some ways more powerful than the magic of magical beings, and that they aren’t bound to a lot of rules and restrictions that magical beings are. A lot of media that features other worlds tends to split into the human world (which has no magic) and the magic world (which has magic). Sometimes the human world has technology and the magic world doesn't, I don't care, that is boring to me and I reject the idea that magic is technology you don’t understand. The thing about Books of Magic, which featured a lot of traffic between the human and the faerie realm, was that humans can do magic that faeries can't. Faerie magic is all illusion and glamour. It cannot affect real change. It is much harder for humans to do real magic, but their magic can actually transform things.

This is foundationally the way I approach worldbuilding in Soul Society. It seems like Soul Society is more powerful and magical than the World of the Living, but that’s only true for a limited set of circumstances, and much of Bleach takes place within those circumstances. Taken in a broader sense, though, Soul Society is not a complete world, it is a projected world, constructed of memories and ideas. Hueco Mundo is the same, but it's even less complete. My husband always gets really irritated by physically impossible moons, like this one:

but I actually think that's appropriate, because it's not the moon, it's the concept of the moon and this is a very romanticized concept of the moon. You cannot build a rocket in Soul Society or Hueco Mundo and get to the moon. The earth is not round in Soul Society. Its borders are limited.

What is Soul Society even for, anyway? I have been watching Hotel del Luna, a kdrama about a hotel where ghosts can stay for a little while and rest and work out some of their issues before they go to the afterlife. I feel like Soul Society is the next step after this. It is too big a shock to go from being a human to becoming a few motes of reishi, so you get another stage of retaining your human form and living a half-life where you don't need to eat or drink and your family has the idea of being a family without all the actual past-to-future connective tissue of a family. It's my impression that when you die in Soul Society, you don't get reincarnated as yourself. You become reishi, and that reishi gets mixed up with everyone else’s and new souls are created when new human children are born. Soul Society is also a sorting mechanism for separating out powerful sources of spiritual energy (that is, shinigami) and putting them to work as balancers, while letting the less volatile soulstuff flow through the reincarnation cycle without cavitating the impellers, so to speak.

That being said, seas are important. I have lived my entire life on the east coast of North America, never more than a few hours from the Atlantic Ocean. I think about moving inland sometimes and I think I would die. My husband grew up in the mountains and he feels a similar connection to the mountains, you can feel him becoming more powerful every time we drive north. I think it is necessary that Soul Society contain the geographic features that anchor people to the physical world, because ghosts need these things to feel as though they are still people and not vague amorphous spirits.

You need a sea. Also, as noted in the post that inspired this one, people in Soul Society eat a lot of fish and it’s gotta come from somewhere. So I think there is at least one sea in Soul Society (I like to put it in East Rukongai), but this is a sea built on human memories, it is not a sea based on the power of the sea, because that is not a thing that can exist in Soul Society. You can fish in the sea and you can swim in the sea, and an ocean god visiting from another realm might be able to pull a little power from this sea, but it is not a true sea. You need a different magical realm for that, a Sea Society, if you will. The Living World, in contrast, is a true world with true oceans, which draw their power from the Sea Society, just as there is death in the Living World because of its connections to Soul Society and other assorted afterlives. (it has been 2 sentences and I am already sorry I called it Sea Society).

Earlier, I mentioned that the borders of Soul Society are limited, and I think that it is surrounded by impassable no-man’s-lands on all sides that, if you could cross them, would lead you into a different dimension. This is not my original idea, it’s something I have picked up from numerous fanfics, but I think it’s a good one and I am adopting it. I think that, as a border between Soul Society and something else, each of these borderlands represents different kinds of death. I think I’ve figured they are a jungle, a desert, a mountain and, of course, an ocean. 

The power of the ocean encompasses both life and death, but this ocean or at least this part of this ocean is only death. It is cold and it is dark and it is full of things with horrible teeth. If you sail a boat into it, you will not come back. I do not think that dimensional borders are, well, two-dimensional, so to speak-- if you could somehow cross this ocean, you might end up in Sea Society, or you might end up in some other death realm, because a lot of afterlives are connected and you get to a lot of them via waterways. The Slavic afterlife, Nav, for example, is ringed with a river, and you cross the Styx to get to Hades. Come to think of it, both of these are sometimes portrayed as being full of unhappy spirits, so maybe the death ocean is an afterlife in and of itself.

This is a little off the topic of oceans, but it is on the topic of natural resources. For all we know, everything that everyone eats in the Seireitei is grown in reishi vats, like the chickienobs in Oryx and Crake. That actually makes more sense, honestly, than fishing and farming, but I have always assumed that many of the upper districts of Rukongai do, in fact, have Nice Things, which turns into jobs and commerce and an improved class of life. The quality and quantity of these resources thins out severely as you go outward. Why don't people in Inuzuri grow their own food, I asked myself? Well: poor soil. Unpredictable, violent weather, so if you can get anything to come up, it either bakes or drowns. A general miasma of low-grade toxins in the air that tend to stunt growth or prevent things from breeding true. Obviously, I think about South Rukongai more than I think of other directions, but I think it’s easy to imagine this process also working as you approached cold rocky mountains with cutting winds and rockslides, or dry, dusty desert where it never rains.

The canon concept of Soul Society is that everything in Rukongai sucks and everything in the Seireitei rules, but this honestly vexes me constantly. It must be ungodly expensive to own and maintain property in the Seireitei, which is why most of the shinigami seem to lead solidly middle class lifestyles and take advantage of on-base living arrangements even though they are allegedly the best of the best. If you're a noble, and especially not Great Family noble, I think it may make sense to maintain a large estate in a pretty part of Rukongai as opposed to a townhouse in the city-- I've mentioned the Kira family estate before, in North Rukongai, which, in my mind, is sort of overgrown and run-down, very Wuthering Heights. Alternatively, if you are super-rich, maybe you have a second property out somewhere nice, hence the Lake District. Did I just make these places up because I want to set a fanfic there someday? Probably yes. 

When I was writing Between Tides, the most basic, raw part of that story was just "Rukia and Renji get sent on a lonely mission near the sea" that was the thing I wanted to write. Back when it lived in my head, it originally took place in Soul Society, but I wanted it to have a melancholy, tourist-town-in-the-off-season vibe, and that didn’t feel like a place that would exist in Soul Society, so I moved it to the World of the Living. I guess I feel like if there’s beach tourism at the Soul Society Sea (I should name it but then I would be forced to write a story about it), it would be sort of Old Timey, and I’d don’t know much about what an Old Timey Trip to the Beach would look like in Japan, if that’s even a thing.

Anyway, sorry this was so rambling, this concludes my thoughts about THE SEA in Soul Society. I am happy to hear everyone else’s headcanons, please and thank you.

[redsamuraiii]

5 Japanese Philosophies Self Help Books You Could Read

Pic : Pinterest

In recent years, society has gathered pace, our stress levels have gone through the roof and we have become increasingly obsessed with money, job titles, appearances and the endless accumulation of stuffs that we don’t really need. There is a growing amount of discontent as we push ourselves harder to achieve the ideal image of perfection that we overwhelmed ourselves.

While social media is helpful in many ways, in enabling you to connect with people from the comfort of your homes and retrieving countless information, it furthers disconnect you from the real world, offline and we inevitably compare ourselves to our peers making ourselves feel miserable and wasting more time scrolling aimlessly on our phones going further into the abyss.

People have begun doing digital detox to get away from it all, to gather our own thoughts and yearn for a much simpler and meaningful life, where we could be liked and loved for who we are as a person. A life built around what really matters to us. I’ve tried reading several self-help books but none of them touched my soul as the five books I am about to recommend you to read.

The thing about most books I tried reading is that the authors boldly claimed how their books will change your life immediately. While these five books made no such claims but merely relates to the acceptance of the transience of all things, and the experiencing of life with all the senses, inspiring you to make tiny incremental steps that will eventually change your life in due time.

They are written by authors who are either living or working in Japan that they have learnt several aspects of Japanese cultural life that they believe could be adopted elsewhere, whether it’s changing a mindset, finding time for a cup of tea or a walk in nature, and other techniques that can be really useful to those who felt overworked, anxious, burnt out and emotionally exhausted.

1 | Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life

A well written book by Beth Kempton, which makes you feel as if you are going on a journey in Japan with her, starting in Kyoto, to discover the history and mysteries behind the Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi, which teaches you how to live with the rhythm of nature and see the beauty of imperfection, being gentler to ourselves and decelerating our lives. 

To put it simply, it’s a whole new way of looking at the world and your life, inspired by centuries-old Japanese wisdom. With roots in Zen and the way of tea, it is more relevant than ever for a modern life as we search for new ways to approach life’s challenges and seek a purposeful meaning beyond materialism.

2 | A Little Book of Japanese Contentments: Ikigai, Forest Bathing, Wabi-sabi, and More

An interesting book by Erin Niimi Longhurst that covers more than one philosophy, that aims at different aspects of your life, such as the first part which focuses on your heart and mind, finding contentment in your life and celebrating your hardships that shapes you into who you are today and letting go of your idea of perfection, because life itself isn’t a perfect.

The second part focuses on your body, how you engage with your surroundings and how to nourish it to stimulate your mind and the third part focuses on developing your habit slowly. And there are several beautiful photos of Japan on every page for you to pause and reflect on what you have just read on that page.

3| The Book of Ichigo Ichie: The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way

Today, we spend most of our time overthinking, either about the uncertainties of the future or being dragged down by the baggage of our past that we fail to live in the moment and spend our lives sleepwalking. This is where Garcia and Miralles, will guide you to relish everyday experiences and how to live in the moment. 

In an age of distraction, instant gratification, and superficial engagement, the Japanese concept of “ichigo ichie,��� which roughly translates as “one time, one meeting/opportunity,” can help us to treasure individual moments. Every moment in one’s life, they write, deserves full attention because this very moment will never happen again or in the exact same way again.

4 | L’art de la Simplicité: How to Live More with Less

Ever wonder why Marie Kondo and the minimalist movement are gaining momentum in this current age of commercialism and excessive spending? This book is great place to start to understand it’s underlying concept and how it’ll help you lead a simple life with just the minimum. You don’t have to sleep on the floor in an empty room but know well enough to get rid of things that you do not need because a clean home cleanses your mind and soul.

Dominuque Loreau takes you on a step-by-step journey to a clutter-free home, a calm mind and an energized body. Free yourself of possessions you don’t want or need; have more money to spend on life’s little luxuries; eat better and lose weight; and say goodbye to anxiety and negative relationships.

5 | Into the Forest: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness

We are increasingly becoming an indoor species that we spend 90% of our life indoors, staring at our screens, from work to leisure which is affecting our health without us realizing it. In this book, Immunologist and Forest Medicine expert, Dr Qing Li, examines the unprecedented benefits of forest therapy or Shinrin Yoku, exploring the scientific connection between nature and our wellbeing. 

How a mindful stroll in the park, through the forest or by the sea, listening to the sounds of nature and breathing in fresh air into your lungs could reduce blood pressure, stress level and improve energy levels and immune system as well, making you feel much healthier and happier. There are several beautiful photos of the parks and forests across Japan where his research was conducted for you to immerse yourself into, making you feel as if you are there, spending time in nature yourself.

These books that I have shared are a refreshing antidote to our fast paced consumption driven world, where we’re constantly being shoved by the idea of perfection from work to love life. They will encourage you to slow down, reconnect with nature and be gentler on yourself. It can help you simplify everything and concentrate on what really matters in life.

There’s nothing wrong in achieving what you set out to achieve but bear in mind that we’re only human, we have flaws, we have wounds, we make mistakes, we have our limits, we are not identical to everyone else, we go through different paths and life experiences that shape us into who we are. Hope they’ll help you to love yourself just as you are and face life with a smile.

[avatarofthebeholding]

Thoughts on the Vast’s “Great Beast”

Ok SO. MAG 174 gave an EXTREMELY thorough portrait of the Vast as an entity. Many of the themes/fears had been touched upon in earlier episodes, but one thing that hadn’t been that hit me like a ton of bricks was the “great beast” of the episode title being entirely made up of people.

This is going to be a LONG train of thought, and the first time I’ve used a readmore link, so just. Please bear with me; I promise there’s a point here.

The Vast, according to Jon, is “vertigo... the fear of falling.” (MAG 111)

Gerry’s additions to that are “agoraphobia, the dread of deep water,” and “[the fear] of our own insignificance before the universe.” He likens it to “losing yourself in too much space.” (MAG 111)

Antonia Hayley (MAG 51) and Jan Kilbride (MAG 106) both describe seeing parts of and/or feeling the presence of enormous creatures that made them realize the insignificance of their own lives. In their statements, the “great beast” is abstract - unknowable. 

Meanwhile, MAG 174′s great beast is revealed to be “an unending tapestry of suffering, contorted bodies,” people clinging desperately to each other and following impulses they do not fully comprehend the source of.

“Moving as one.”

Edward, the person from whom Jon pulls the part of MAG 174 involving the “tapestry of suffering, contorted” people who make up the great beast, says that “the shape that they create is a mystery to him.” He cannot comprehend or understand the whole he is part of.

That brings me to a conclusion I hadn’t thought about before: The Vast’s fear of insignificance isn’t only with respect to the universe. It can be with respect to the world - to the billions of other people each of us knows we share the planet with.

Think about it - can you really, truly comprehend the idea of everyone who coexists in the world right now? Of everyone who has ever existed, the skeletons beneath the ground in conjunction with the living?

Personally, I can’t. Comprehending the whole of humanity, truly comprehending it, seems just as impossible as comprehending the whole of the universe. Perhaps the scale is smaller, but it’s still larger than what the human brain is built to handle.

Why is the concept of “society” is so hard to reconcile with the flesh-and-blood people around you? It’s because the jump in scale from one person to a whole society of people “moving as one” is incomprehensible.

With a human context, the Vast gains even more depth than it had before:

The Vast is the fear that leads people to accept “the way things are” because they’re convinced that their voice is too insignificant to matter on it’s own. It’s the terror of feeling like if you fall - or are thrown out of - a system (be it a corporation, an organization, a school, or some other enormous entity that in the end is really just a bunch of people), you could keep falling forever, unable to do anything to change your surroundings.

In abandoning/being thrown free from the system - the great beast - you are free, but the dread of the insignificance of your individual existence begins to creep in.

The validation of other people who help uphold the establishment/status quo? Gone.

The feeling of being able to make an impact, being “part of something bigger”? Gone.

All you can do is fall, and it’s easy to lose yourself in the thought that what you think - what you feel - what you do - means nothing. That you are too small for any task you undertake to make an impact.

The Vast encompasses a fear of change rooted in the idea that there’s nothing an individual can do to change the ways of the world. Fear that has seeped so deeply into the fabric of people’s beings that it seems normal... “almost as routine as hunger” (MAG 2). A fear that encourages complacency, a human acceptance of twisting and turning into painful positions to make ourselves fit within harmful systems. An epidemic of numbness to the horrors inflicted upon people “on the ground” - the casualties - those the great beast tramples upon without even realizing.

In addition to the fear that the universe is too big to care about one soul, the Vast is the fear that society is too big to care about one soul.

It is the dread locked into this widespread idea: 

You must comply and fit the mold, because if you don’t, the world will stomp all over you.  You must be part of the great beast, no matter how much it hurts you and the toll it takes on other people, because the alternative is getting crushed underfoot.

This newly discovered aspect of the Vast is, to me, one of the most terrifying.

[utopianparadoxist]

Dialectic Identity? Thoughts on Fozzer, the Page of Heart:

OK this is gonna be shorter than Marvus obvs but Fozzer DID give me a good amount to think about, so here goes

Fozzer outright identifying as a dialectical materialist is exciting for a couple reasons. There’s a lot one could say about dialectics and Paradox Space in general (I’ve been trying to write that script for about a year) but here I want to focus on the Materialist half of that, because it immediately reminded me a lot of @arrghus’ idea of the notional/material divide between aspects.

Ever since the Extended Zodiac, we’ve been wondering if the way the Aspect wheel is laid out might suggest some relationships between Aspects, either original to Homestuck, mirroring the relationships the Signs share in the traditional Zodiac wheel, or some combination of both.

Arrghus’ essay series proposes a model for how those relationships might work, at least in part. I’d suggest checking it out for the full picture, but here I want to focus on the divide I find clearest and most compelling: That between the Ideal/Notional Aspects and the Material/Physical ones.

The gist is this: The top five Aspects (Mind, Hope, Breath, Life, and Light) are more closely aligned with the World of Ideas, and so those bound to them tend to be more concerned with the ideal, abstract, and imaginary. The bottom five (Void, Doom, Blood, Rage, and Heart) are more closely tied to the material, physical, and real.

If you’ve seen my prior writing on Homestuck, you might note that this dovetails easily with Gnosticism’s old cosmology of reality as divided between an imaginary world of Light and a physical world of Darkness. That said, this isn’t a hard binary--Blood obviously refers to some concepts as well as physical experience, and Breath obviously links to some things that happen in physicality, even if those elements are by definition elusive and insubstantial.

Space and Time are an even split, as much conceptual law to be deciphered as they are physical element of reality to be experienced. It could well be that this reflects most strongly in the perspectives those Bound to each Aspect are given to, as opposed to an underlying reality of the Aspects themselves, and in any case all twelve Aspects are necessary to describe a full picture of reality.

One of the most exciting possibilities this model raises for me is the idea of Aspect “Mirroring”, which is essentially a different kind of relationship Aspects can have. Aspects that are Mirror each other vertically, for example, might express the same ideas through the filter of the Ideal vs. the Material--reflecting the hermetic/magical principle of “As above, so below”.

Heart and Light are a pretty good way to express the relationship between vertically mirrored Aspects, as it turns out. Consider:

In Gnosticism, “Light” refers to directly to Information/Ideas, as the world of Light is the world of the imaginary. This is where “Platonic Ideals” live--the perfect imaginary version of any object, from which all physical manifestations of that object are derived.

Humanity gains the ability to access this world, the self-aware conciousness necessary to think, when the Goddess of Wisdom Sophia descends from that realm and imbues us with her Light--the light of curiosity, of wisdom, of the power to know. The light of the soul.

In this way, we can think of the Soul--the Heart--of living beings as their inner Light, expressed throughout their lives in the realm of physicality. And we can think of Light/Ideas as abstract concepts, that can only enter reality proper through the doorways created by the self-expression of individuals, as enabled by their soul.

There are a lot of ideas and concepts that Dirk’s soul seems consistently inclined to express onto reality. The shades, the concept of “being a Bro”, the idea of the Hard Anime Dude, Stoicism, the pervasive homoeroticism innate to the Greek ideals he’s generally shaped by, etc.

The clearest example of this might be his sword, which is itself a physical object seemingly ripped directly out of the “fake” (read: imaginary) world of anime. An idea, made physical, through the sheer expression of will manifested by Dirk’s soul.

This is what makes his katana so powerful:

It’s quite near to being a physical expression of our collective idea of the “Perfect Sword”, much like Bro sets an impossible ideal of “Perfect Manhood” that Dave wrestles with living up to. This might give you an idea of some of the more direct ways Heart’s conceptual toolbox could be exploited or weaponized.

The point here is that just expressing the idea of a “Bro” is extremely important to Dirk, and expressing the idea of “Cats” is similarly important to Nepeta and Meulin.

In the same way, Fozzer seems like an acutely intense expression of a political Persona. A philosophical idea, expressed in the physical world as an intense commitment to an associated identity. His shovel is an expression of that identity, much the same way Dirk’s katana or Nepeta’s claws are expressions of theirs.

But then again, Fozzer’s identity ain’t exactly stable, is it?

Before we talk about The Thing That Happens, we should note that as much as Fozzer seems to genuinely believe in his communist philosophy, he mostly seems interested in it as a means for self-expression, rather than an actual political movement with direct goals and results he’s looking to achieve.

And even though he’s very intense and earnest about it, Fozzer seems inclined to exploit his own identity in somewhat self-serving ways. Unintentionally or no, he more or less uses his ideological speechifying to conscript the Reader into doing work for him, therefore inviting the reader to Serve him through Heart, for Fozzer’s own benefit.

This, coupled with his strongly noted cowardice, leads me to consider him a Page. But my real point here is that even if a lot of us here on Tumblr find Fozzer’s ideology appealing, Fozzer seems less invested in ideology proper than with the identity it comes with--and even here, Fozzer isn’t exactly being portrayed as unambiguously Good and Correct.

Even if he’s preferable to the alternative. Sigh.

Let’s talk about the thing.

[WORLDBUILDING INTERMISSION]

So the biggest surprise of this friendsim was that we stumbled onto what’s basically a swell of Scratch energy just...hanging out under Absence Park, apparently?

Which is. A lot. This energy resets our conversation with Fozzer and changes his personality, which we’ll get into in a minute, but first I want to speculate: How the hell does this thing exist at all, and what does it even mean? There’s a couple of possibilities.

Since this is essentially Time-coded Scratch energy we’re dealing with, @blindrapture pointed out that it could have something to do with the Handmaid, which I’d expand to include Lord English--and though I doubt it’s directly linked to Scratch himself, since he’s not too associated with Time the way the former two are, he may be aware of or able to use this...”glitch” in reality.

It’s also possible this is a natural consequence of a Scratch, and pockets of leftover Scratch energy like these are present in some locations of Post-Scratch worlds. For that matter, it could be a consequence of John’s retcon powers, which act like the scratch in some ways and might have had consequences we don’t yet fully understand.

Finally, given the language, I suspect that the hole in Absence Park is actually just a hole into the Void, leading to the Furthest Ring, much like Roxy’s windows. This Scratch energy seems to have entered the Furthest Ring, and is presumably writhing there until circumstances allow it to vent out through this particular entrance to reality.

What are the implications? Who knows. If this is a hole into the Void, then this is another avenue through which Hiveswap’s cast might be able to exit Alternia and find a new world.

If the Scratch outbursts are recurring enough, then we have at least one way for our heroes to “Time Travel” and basically save scum to try and achieve optimal desires results, like saving a troll friend who gets killed by going back in time for example.

That’s probably the biggest takeaway to me, because having a way to time travel built into Hiveswap’s text already makes me that much more sure that no matter what kind of carnage and brutality our beloved troll friends get subjected to, we’re ultimately headed towards a happy ending where probably nobody dies-- I can reasonably see the possibility that even antagonistic figures like Ardata and even Trizza could be saved, under these circumstances.

Ok back to Fozzer.

So the thing about “Post-Scratch” Fozzer is that I feel he’s being dismissed somewhat due to his admittedly unsavory politics. This still strikes me as a very genuine and direct expression of Fozzer’s Classpect inclinations.

Fozzer is still taking a very materialist view of reality here, for example--he’s interested in the actual physical history of how this system evolved, and considers understanding that history necessary to understanding society.

And however he disagrees with you, his instinctual response is the same. He storms off after verbally thrashing the Reader, but its interesting that he does it the same way both times: By imposing identities onto the Reader. Hilariously, Fozzer is unwittingly owning alternate versions of himself, too, and unwittingly inviting self-owns is basically the core of the Knight/Page aesthetic.

So really, Fozzer’s core personality is much the same--what’s taken place is a binary flip in the persona he relates to the world with. In one reality, he conveys the ideas of the hopeful revolutionary underclass.

In the other, he projects the identity of a happy and willing member for the Empire’s war-machine--the joyful slave, the pain of his own exploitation cushioned by a strong sense of societal purpose and identity. Note how the shovel easily parses as a strong symbol of this identity, too--a triumphant tool with which to serve the empire, rather than an ironic symbol of oppression.

I don’t think we should be hasty in assuming one Fozzer is more real than the other, even if we’re inclined to like one of them more. Especially since Fozzer works in Absence Park and seems familiar with these lights, meaning these scratch shifts might have been happening to him for a while.

The two Fozzers give us a fascinating window into the nuances of Heart, and indeed we’ve been told this sort of splintering of self can be common to the Heartbound by Calliope. Their opposing ideologies present us with a self-contained dialectic, in fact.

A dialectic at its core is a search for truth carried out by contrasting and comparing two diametrically opposed ideas, which in Hegel’s dialetic at least are defined as the Thesis and Anti-Thesis, respectively.

In Hegel’s understanding of the term, we can only truly understand an individual idea (say: Fozzer) by examining the tensions and similarities between these two opposed perspectives.

And these tensions are usually resolved not by one winning out over the other, but by achieving a Synthesis that combines he best traits of both.

Maybe because of that, I find the fact that we can only “win” by embracing the “Happy Slave” Fozzer unnerving. It’s hard to say how Fozzer’s path will evolve going forward, but given how central the idea of conflicting opposites is to his expression of his Classpect, I highly doubt we’ve seen the last of “Comrade” Fozzer.

So, I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes?

[Closing disclaimer: I’m not entirely sure how different Marxism’s Dialectic Materialist approach is from Hegel’s Dialectics. For instance, I’m unsure if it also uses the “Thesis”, “Anti-Thesis”, “Synthesis” model Hegel describes, or if I’m accidentally mixing the two.

@gamblignant8 on the Perfectly Generic Podcast described Dialectic Materialism as being Hegel’s Dialectic applied with a focus on physical reality, mixed with an analysis of humanity’s historical evolution on the physical plain.

Cursory Wikipedia research seems to bear this out, with Marx even describing Dialectic Materialism as simply the opposite of Hegel’s more philosophical and idealistic take on the idea, which Marx regarded as full of “Mysticism”. As a Hopebound more comfortable with the ideal than the material myself, I suppose its no surprise I find Hegel’s dialectics more immediately approachable and comfortable, for now.

What I’m saying here is, take everything I’ve written about dialectic materialism here with a grain of salt: I’m trying to do my homework and make sure I have the facts straight, but it turns out philosophy can get hard to sum up, especially when you’re trying to reconcile it with a fantasy metaphysics system. Feel free to clarify if I’ve messed details up. ]

[schoolofmaaa]

Scott Kildall on Data, Water, Territory and What it Means to Be Human

Scott Kildall is a new media artist who has been working at the intersections of art, technology, and education for the past 15 years. He works with datasets related to the natural sciences, questioning how they interact with human civilisations. We are very excited to welcome Scott, who joins us from San Francisco, for our four-week intensive course Data & Society. It will take place 3-28 June, 2019, at our home-base in Berlin. In this interview we talk about data as a medium, water, and being a human in today’s time. 

Tell me a bit about what brought you to the work you’re currently doing. Did you always have an interest in working with data? 

My dad was a famous computer pioneer and one of the gifts he gave me was the DNA of a math-scientist combined with a distinct curiosity about life. I taught myself to code in my 20s and ran a small software company during the early dot-com years. It was here that I begin to comprehend the structures of hidden data.

In the 90s, I quickly discovered the role of an engineer: solving technical problems and building things for the specifications of others, to be uninspiring. Also, because I have deep concerns about the economic inequality of capitalism, I never felt at ease in a corporate landscape, which is where this kind of work usually takes place.

I left that world and slowly got trained as an artist, embraced new methodologies for thinking, and built my life around creating artwork that repurposes technology in various ways. However, from my early years, that peek into the underbelly of code, the way things are stored, archived and who owns them, has stuck with me ever since.

Data used as a medium, how did this begin for you? 

In 2012, I took a full-time job at the the Exploratorium, a world-famous museum of art, science, and curiosity in San Francisco and worked there for about 18 months as a New Media Exhibit Developer. I felt like I needed a break from the art world because I was bottoming out psychologically and this job was an opportunity to work with scientists and create exhibits in a forward-thinking institution.

Much of my work there involved co-developing interactive kiosks that involved data in some way or another, both on the screen and off for the Life Sciences Gallery. It was specifically the physical data visualization work I did that inspired me. For example, I worked on an artwork called Tidal Memory, which was a series of 10-foot high columns of water, 24 in total. I wrote code and developed electronics that scraped tide buoy data and pumped water into each column to match the current tide level. Essentially, it acted as a life-sized tide table, which changed each day.

When I left the Exploratorium at the beginning of 2014, I returned to making artwork and began generally to work with data in some form or another. Beginning with an art residency at Pier 9, Autodesk, I began working with code and digital fabrication, specifically 3D printing. I was amazed because I finally could easily combined the two practices: writing code and building physical objects into various forms.

I left that world and slowly got trained as an artist, embraced a new methodologies for thinking and built my life around creating artwork that repurposes technology in various ways.

New media art is constantly changing in relation to new technologies. As a technologist and artist, do you have a specific practice for consolidating your technical choices and artistic concepts? 

For me, technology is like a material. I’m a generalist with tech and am very good at a lot of things: electronics, 3D modeling, code, fabrication, etc. but an expert in none. It’s relatively easy for me to quickly master an emerging technology and because I am self-taught, I pick up tools in a chaotic, unorthodox way. So, the technology itself is less important than how the technology expresses itself in current culture.

For example, this year I’m doing some new work in VR now because the tools are accessible but the field of artistic expression is still wide open. And, more importantly, VR creates a simulated physical space that feels like reality but it’s entirely like an interior psychological space, and so is rich in so many ways.

All my work involves the tension between territory and technology.  As new technologies get introduced but before they are co-opted, territory — physical, economic, political and so on — reconfigures itself. It’s at this point that I try to leverage relevant technologies to make new work.

I’m just trying to do my little part, which involves bringing art to a wider audience. This teaches imagination and creative critique, which I believe helps with the political problems in a way that give people hope and helps shape an alternative future.

I see that fluidity is a major theme in your work. Using liquids as a medium in Cybernetic Spirits (2018), in Sonaqua (2017), sonifying water quality and in Water Works (2014) you investigate the water infrastructure of S.F. Is fluidity something you think about in your life and practice? 

I’m more excited about water than fluidity. Water is the basis for all life and ecosystems. We tend to forget that waterways are interconnected. It’s an easy (free) material to work with but also so difficult because it leaks everywhere. The political issues are huge: ownership, containment, pollution and more. The aspects of water are so multi-faceted. So, it’s something that I’ve been returning to recently.

The Cybernetic Spirits artwork uses a similar technology with an entirely different conceptual framework. This work separates fluids from the body — using things like blood and breast milk — but also puts fluids like gasoline and kombucha into the same electronic organism, so it’s more about machines and the physical expression of fluids we worship than water issues. 

Another major theme in your work, which you mention, is territory and technology. In one of your most recent works, Flagscape (2018), you use United Nations data to construct a virtual world of economic exchanges. There are no geographic borders, rather, a world defined by trade. How else are concepts of territory, boundaries and nations applied in your work? 

The overarching theme for my work is around the interplay between territory and technology. Data is one part of this larger conversation. With Flagscape, I’m doing more explicit investigations around borders and national identity and looking at transnational trade in VR. As you fly around different pieces of data related to a particular nation, you hear that country’s national anthem. All of these sounds similar: puffed up grand gestures that utterly fail when you fly in VR free from military parades and border checkpoints.

With territory and technology, the artwork ranges from geographical processes to absurd gestures. For example, Strewn Fields, depicts how meteorite impacts data as etchings into stone. Asteroids don’t care about national boundaries and what this work does is to capture a one-time kinetic event — a rock descending from space and impacting the earth — as a static object that will last for centuries.

Other work such as Moon v Earth (2011, reprised 2018), is not at all a data-related work, but rather depicts a narrative of a moon colony run by billionaires which asserts its independence and then wages a war on Earth. As viewers, we see only fragments of the results (in the form of an analog-augmented reality artwork). 

It's sometimes hard to imagine how we can use and apply data to communicate certain issues and ideas. Do any previous student works which come to mind, which you can share with us? 

I teach data-visualization in San Francisco to design students and there, we take a more traditional approach of starting with Tufte and introduce them to marks as symbols for expression of data. These students are completely new to visualization and are looking for careers in design, so it is professional-based with a practical inquiry into effective design techniques as well as talking about eye-tracking, bias and a host of other relevant issues.

My personal passion in bringing data-visualizations into physical space and the the most exciting project I’ve done thus far is working at an American Arts Incubator in Bangkok in 2017. There I taught a month-long workshop and produced an exhibition for 20 Thai students along the theme of river health and physical data sculptures.

Much of the process was around ideating and thinking through forms, doing experiments, and then finally producing the final exhibition. One effective project by the students was called “River Voices”, which was created in collaboration with members of the Ladprao community, who are affected by the health of the Chao Phraya River.

They conducted two interconnected workshops during the project development period. For the first one, they collected data through a t-shirt exchange where community members dipped their shirts into local canal water. They then printed a map with data collected from the t-shirts. For the second workshop, they worked with children from the community to draw their stories of river life and health. Finally, they designed “healthy ingredients” onto a “River Detox” logo, which they printed on new t-shirts and gifted to all community workshop participants. 

Can you tell me about Xenoform Labs? How did this come about? 

In August 2018, I left my part-time job at Autodesk, where I was running their electronics lab in their Pier 9 maker environment and was trying to figure out next steps. After some soul-searching, I decided to open up my home in San Francisco to artists from other parts of the world to experiment and shape new work, rather than to refine and show it.

I was inspired by the idea of doing something on a smaller scale and have ample space in my house for my own studio and hosting others. To make it simple, it’s an invitation-only art residency program for new media artists — people who work with art + technology with criticality — from outside of the Bay Area.

It provides free housing and a studio space for one month for one artist/couple. The studio includes digital media, virtual reality hardware, media production and light fabrication. I host events for the artists to connect with local thinkers, artists, and curators in the San Francisco Bay Area. The website is: xenoformlabs.com/.

I think there are two things that I’ve learned: first, take care of yourself and second, be open to all new possibilities.

Ok, let’s bring the questions back down to yourself as a human. What are some of the plans you have for the future? Projects, trips, some films you want to see! 

There’s always so much to do! I am passionate about mountain biking, so wherever I go, I’ll be looking for that. I hear Teufelsberg in Berlin is a nice spot. For future projects, I’m putting a lot of time into working on audio synthesis with plants sensors, amplifying their electrical activity and creating outdoor concerts and synthesis. I’ll be collaborating on some of this with Michael Ang, an artist and close friend from Berlin in the coming months, and am super-excited to work with him.

This year, I have plans to work in Slovenia, Panama, and Thailand for this project and am particularly excited around engaging with the local people and natural environment. 

You’ve traveled quite a bit! Can you share with us some of the things you’ve learned by working with peoples of different cultures, in different settings and with distinct ways of working? 

I think there are two things that I’ve learned: first, take care of yourself and second, be open to all new possibilities. The first means that you do things like meditation or centering or having a comfortable pillow or whatever else you need to calm your inner self. I pay a lot of attention to my internal energy and check-in all the time. Then, you can go out and be a superstar with others.

When I mean open to new possibilities, what I’m getting at is that the reality of your experience will be completely different than what others tell you.

When I traveled to Thailand for the AAI project, I was told many things about Thai people, for example that they were always happy and that the culture was extremely patriarchal. Both of these things were not the case.

My Thai students were very close to American students in so many ways. I did discover other aspects that were distinct about my workshop, for example that if someone was stuck, that the others in the group who were faster would stop and help that person out. So, I later translated this into my workshops and teaching styles in more Western countries where this may not be the case since it helps keep the class going and is more rewarding for the group. 

What is the change you want to see in the world? 

That’s a tough one. There is so much. Right now, we’re in a very troubling set of times, with the rise of anti-immigration fears, climate change, economic inequality and so much more. I’m just trying to do my little part, which involves bringing art to a wider audience. This teaches imagination and creative critique, which I believe helps with the political problems in a way that give people hope and helps shape an alternative future. 

For those of us who are interested in data, but are just starting to get our head around it, do you have any further readings, tips or projects to share? 

Here are a few resources that are from several different angles: 

I like the Data Stories Podcast.

There is a great wiki here on physical data visualizations

The book that I teach in my data-visualization classes is The Functional Art, by Albert Cairo. 

For reading about Data and Society, the Bruce Schneier book, Data and Goliath is a must-read.

Data & Society, an intensive four-week program will take place between 3-28 June 2019, in Berlin, Germany. You can find more information on the program here, or apply directly over here. 

[askmerriauthor]

Hey, I got to see Avengers: Infinity War on company time ‘cause my job was nice enough to buy the staff tickets.  This movie has given me... feelings.  Major spoilers ahead, so hit the jump below to read my thoughts on the matter.

Man, what a boring disappointment of a movie.

I’ve really been digging the last handful of Marvel films for their overall quality, especially where the characterization and banter are concerned.  Both Captain America movies?  Dug ‘em.  All the Thor movies?  Man, I could watch Hemsworth doing prat-falls getting hit by cars all day long and never tire of it.  First Guardians of the Galaxy was great, though number two had missteps.  Ant-Man was a fucking delight from start to finish.  Spider-Man: Homecoming was pitch perfect.  Black Panther has the best villain of the entire MCU thus far.  On the other hand, the Avengers movies were a bit clunky by comparison but were overall enjoyable with some great character moments.  They served to temper expectations about what big group-event films in the MCU are like.  So my gripes on Infinity War is not out of some kind of beef with Marvel/Disney, nor is it out of overblown hype.

With that in mind, Infinity War was incredibly dull as a film.  The bulk of the movie is divided into fight scene after fight scene (to the point that they actually cut away from one massive fight to peek in on another concurrent massive fight), introducing characters to one another (generally via fight scene), or Thanos getting “character building scenes” (immediately before or directly in the middle of a fight scene).

One thing I love most about the Marvel movies is the character interaction.  It’s why these cinematic versions are so beloved by the fandom, why there’s so much creativity spawned around them - they have chemistry and interesting relationships with each other.  A:IW has precious little of that at all.  The lion’s share of character interaction goes to Vision/Wanda and Thanos/The Scenery, and not in a good way.  Each of these two relationship elements are only present to build up a false sense of drama that falls flat in the end.  Though there is one particular scene between Rocket Racoon and Thor (yeah, who saw that one coming?) where the two have a heartfelt conversation that Hemsworth just knocks out of the park.  That moment of Thor recounting just how much he’s lost and it being clear how much agony it’s causing him behind a cocky grin is the kind of characterization I adore in these movies.  Vision and Wanda being melodramatic about a plot point that is clearly never going to go anywhere in the film is not appealing at all.  Their entire story thread from start to finish across the film is Vision wanting Wanda to destroy the Mind Gem (and thus kill him) to prevent Thanos from getting it, and the emotional roller coaster that entails since the two are now in love.  Except that entire concept is a total non-starter, doesn’t go anywhere, and ultimately amounts to nothing at all.  It’s just a waste of time that eats up writing and screen time that could have been put to better use elsewhere.

Onto the villain: I could not give two flying flips about Thanos.  I will fully admit that a part of this is that I personally loathe the cliche “nature is out of balance, I must purge life to restore it” villain trope.  That does play a big part in my dislike here.  But setting that aside, he’s just a terribly dull character with feeble motivations and justifications for his actions.  There’s a major dissonance between what he does and how it’s presented to the audience.  While the movie does give a one-line bit of lip service to him being insane and misguided, it’s never fully addressed as a defining aspect of his character throughout the movie.  The comics put a major emphasis on the fact that Thanos, for all his scheming and intelligence, is coo-coo bananas.  He’s called the “Mad Titan” for a reason.  The movie fails to put a light on that fact and it makes Thanos feel like a flat character since all we really get is him just blankly marching toward his end goal the entire film.  He has no arc or development and is wholly unsympathetic no matter how many times the movie takes us aside with him in solitary, artsy moments and yells “LOOK AT ALL THIS PATHOS” in our faces.

Thanos’ entire villain scheme is that he wants to destroy 50% of all intelligent life forms in existence in order to bring a balance to the universe.  He directly states that the universe’ resources are finite and that life allowed to grow unchecked will snuff itself out by over-consuming these precious few resources.  So his solution - which he has been practicing on a planet-to-planet basis for decades by the point the movie takes place - is to divide a world’s population in half.  50% is murdered on the spot while the other 50% lives, purely based on whoever happens to be standing on the left or right.  It is explicitly described by Thanos as being totally random who lives and who dies so as to be “fair”.  His win-scenario is that the species of whatever world he 50% Genocides thrives in the wake of the purge because they now have a more controllable population size - nothing else beyond that.

So... I mean, right out the gate, that’s the stupidest damn thing possible.  It’s not like he’s going to each of these worlds and carefully examining the state of conditions, then deciding they need to be culled because of their abuse of their resources.  He’s just doing it willy nilly without any justification as to whether such a culling is actually necessary or whether it would even be beneficial to the world in question.  I mean, hey, how can openly slaughtering 50% of a world’s population at random possibly be a bad thing?  Surely that won’t throw their entire society and culture into a death spiral, right?  It’s how he picked up his adopted children - Gamora in particular.  While he was busy murdering 50% of her world, he just sort of kidnaps her because... uh... because he wants to, I guess.  He literally just walks up to her in the middle of wrecking her world and decides he arbitrarily wants to take this one tiny green girl with him for no apparent reason whatsoever.  So, hey, way to undercut your own practice there, Thanos.  50% of the population dies with it being completely random and fair... unless I happen to fancy taking a souvenir, apparently.

The movie beats us over the head with the idea that Thanos is in turmoil because of his mission to balance the universe.  That it is a massive strain on his soul, that only he has the willpower to endure what he sees as a necessary culling.  Not a “necessary evil”, mind you - he never views his actions as being morally wrong.  Just difficult.  But, y’know... it’s kind of hard for me to sympathize with a character introduced to us as being an omnicidal maniac who has built a fanatical cult of personality around himself and callously murders literally trillions of people.  Especially so since, as cannot be overlooked: HE’S DOING IT ALL BY HIS OWN CHOICE.  The whole universal culling this is entirely his idea and pet project, so he is completely responsible for whatever so-called internal suffering the movie is trying to make us feel for him.

This whole affair becomes especially annoying when Thanos acquires the Soul Gem.  There’s a little test he has to perform to get it - he must sacrifice the one thing he loves most.  It turns out this is Gamora, aforementioned adopted/kidnapped daughter.  He has a moment of realization, cries stoic tears, and murders her by throwing her off a several-hundred foot tall cliff to that he can get the gem.  He then spends the rest of the film with the fact that his choice is emotionally wrecking him inside, that he’s grieving and saddened, that his quest has taken everything from him and--

Y’KNOW, YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO THROW HER OFF THE DAMN CLIFF, RIGHT?  NOBODY WAS FORCING YOU TO DO THAT.

Gah, this entire character angle just pisses me off because of how inane it is.  “You must give up the thing you love”.  Thanos, you smug bitch, you kidnapped a girl at random while in the process of murdering everyone she knows and loves, then spent the next 20 years putting her through an endless array of physical, mental, and emotional abuse to try and shape her into one of your fanatical Thanos-worshipping minions.  IN THIS VERY SAME MOVIE you tricked Gamora into thinking she brutally killed you just to see if she’d feel bad about it afterward, then literally dismembered her sister before her eyes to force information out of her.  Then, y’know, you murdered Gamora herself.

YOU DON’T FUCKIN’ LOVE HER.  THAT IS NOT LOVE.  I don’t care how many melodramatic “single tear down the cheek” moments you have - there is absolutely nothing about this character or his established, presented backstory that gives even the slightest hint he cared about Gamora beyond her ability to serve him as a tool.  If the Soul Gem was really supposed to be using this “sacrifice your love” test as a measure of who gets to take it, then Thanos should have just failed flat-out.  Even if one tries to argue something like “Oh, well, it was genuine love in Thanos’ twisted perspective”, that doesn’t matter.  The Infinity Gems - especially the Soul Gem - are presented as being semi-aware and capable of making decisions as to who they want to serve.  So it’s not Thanos’ call as to whether or not Gamora is the thing he loves, but the Soul Gem’s.  But it works because we need to get to the next fight scene but quick, so off we go!

The final climax point of the movie is right after Thanos finally gets all the gems and snaps his fingers.  He wins.  In that instant, 50% of all intelligent beings in the universe just sort of go away.  They don’t really die, per say, but rather just poof out existence.  Effectively dead but maybe not specifically so?  It isn’t explained.  So we get this lengthy montage of main characters going poof into particle-effect clouds one by one, with how abrupt or extended the disintegration is depending on whether or not the writers wanted to give them a dramatic final speech.  Oh, how sad.  How very sad.  Boo hoo.  My eye-rolling on this point isn’t because of the meta-awareness of me knowing Marvel isn’t going to purge its main character roster because money.  Rather, it’s because the movie itself takes a moment to pull us aside and assure us that literally NONE OF THIS MATTERS AT ALL.

During an earlier point in the film. Dr. Strange takes a moment of meditation and uses the Time Gem to peer into the future.  He looks at millions of potential futures and says that they only beat Thanos and win the day in one of those probabilities.  It’s done in a way that seems to impress upon the audience just how hopeless this whole effort seems, but it’s a blatant Chekhov’s Gun moment since Dr. Strange acts extremely out of character with his decisions from that point on.  He surrenders to Thanos and, right before dying himself, looks at Tony (and almost directly into the camera) to assure everyone that “this is the only way”.  Whiiiiiiich very blatantly means that his out of character decisions were actually intentionally made to set up the one lone “we somehow manage to win” future he saw.  Because HE SAW HOW TO DO IT BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE TIME GEM DOES so literally NOTHING that happens beyond that midway point in the film matters because it’s all predetermined to end up well for the heroes.  Which, right along with the “kill everyone to restore balance” trope, is another of my hated cliches because IT’S SO DAMN LAZY.

That’s really what this boils down to for me.  A:IW is lazy.  It’s all flash and fluff without anything really satisfying under all the sparkly varnish.  There’s no genuine substance to it.  Just a few faux plot concepts that are dressed up to look like they’ve got weight, but just end up being hollow.

Also... Thanos?  Buddy?  If your whole bit is that the universe has finite resources and there’s too many mouths to feed, why not just use your newly-acquired phenomenal cosmic powers to make more resources?  I mean, if you can literally snap your fingers and cause an unimaginable volume of matter (ie, people across the universe) to just spontaneously stop existing, why not just make the universe bigger and fuller for everyone’s benefit?  That maybe might go over better with the crowds, y’know?

[thesoulpatch-blog1]

Intro to Spirituality

Spirituality is a complex word. It means many different things at once and is a concept that all of humanity must bear. We will never understand what it means in our lifetime, and likely not even in death. To me, spirituality is what makes one human. The fact that every man and woman has a spiritual experience in their time on Earth is what lets me know that we are equals. We’re one big school of fish. We’ll never escape the depths we dragged our spirits into in the world we created. We see massive amounts of violence, poverty, and hatred everywhere we look. Those things bear weight on our souls each and every day. But our souls can be uplifted just as easily through love and compassion from our neighbors. We cannot forget what love can do. We cannot forget to continue doing the uplifting things we do every day. But our world is ultimately attempting to kill spirituality, and thus kill every human to someday walk on this sacred ground. I think the time has come to focus on thwarting that plan.

Even some of the axioms of our culture have hateful implications. We assume pink is a girl’s color and boys can’t play with dolls. We tend to be confused when women have short hair. For some reason, a cop playing basketball with black children is worthy of going viral, met with sounds of praise for a cop who just wasn’t racist. Oh, look! A cop who likes black kids! See, now it’s okay that Tamir Rice died, because this other cop isn’t a racist. The problem isn’t racist cops, the problem is a racist assumption being made in the first place. For example, the assumption that a 12 year old black boy out late in the city must be committing crimes and so you pull a gun on him. I once lived with a black man from the Bay area who referred to being stopped by the police as “getting a WWB (Walking While Black).” He had been stopped and accused of crimes he did not commit multiple times while just walking down the street, and multiple more when behind the wheel. If you deny the reality of police bias, you are contributing to the racism ingrained in our society and thus our brains. We have willingly accepted these hateful assumptions as truth, and it has ruined us in so many ways. Our spirits are starting from square one at this point in history, but we can better things for the future. It begins with forgetting everything we know. We have lived in a world geared toward killing the spirit and we have believed in it. It’s time to begin being skeptical of the things we know. We can and must begin believing in something new. Whether it be Christ, Allah, or anything else, we’re all talking about the same thing. It’s love and compassion, and we can’t make any progress if we don’t believe in that.

Whether we like it or not, one of the world’s most drastic changes is coming. It is a very dark place we will enter. Perhaps the darkest of dark ages. There is a pool of ignorance that our nation is drowning in deeper than we can fathom. We are fooled constantly by those who have benefited and profited from our lack of awareness of the world around us. Americans have no say in many of the things they claim to be passionate about. We are so entitled that we take that entitlement as inherent. Entitlement has bred nationalism of a spectacular degree. Even those on the rational side of the aisle are there for the wrong reasons. So where do we go from here?

Firstly, we go spiraling downward into the abyss we have dug ourselves. Only when we reach the bottom can we search for materials to build our way out. When we each hit rock bottom after spending so much time in the clouds, the time of enlightenment will be upon us. It’s easy in a time like this to place blame elsewhere. Establishment, billionaire class, immigrants, Republicans, Democrats, terrorists, poor people, and most importantly, anyone but one’s self. But the (hopefully) temporary struggle of humanity is the fault of humanity itself, and no one person is absolved of blame. This chapter of our world’s timeline is the result of the entirety of that timeline so far. I don’t have to tell you the specific actions necessary to save yourself, because if you’re a positive contribution to the world that will rise from the ashes, you’ll simply know the right actions when they are upon you.

Preventing this disaster truly was as simple as doing the right thing, but rarely does the right thing feel good. In order to rebuild a world that we can all share peacefully, we all must do the right thing time and time again. That means hardship beyond the hardship. It means that when you go from having everything to having nothing to having a little, you must share what little you have with those who still have nothing, whether they had anything to begin with or not. Your personal window of opportunity may open long before many others, but you can’t go through it until it is big enough for everyone to come with you. There are some that will not understand this. They will try to climb the ladder out of the abyss before we have built a sturdy one. And they will likely fall to their death. We cannot create a world anything like this one if we hope for it to flourish. A world like our current one can only lead to the same demise we’re about to experience.

In this time of hardship, we only have each other. Those who wish to be saved will join a community of love and compassion for your fellow human and your planet, knowing that is the only true security where we’re heading. Those who are left behind will choose another path, and it is with great sorrow that we must condemn them. The rapture is coming, but it’s not as simple as the godly people disappearing to heaven one day. Heaven is earned, and heaven is achievable only in our hearts. Those who do not strive for a heavenly life for all are those who will be cast into eternal damnation. The simplest advice I can offer to save oneself is to begin to live with unconditional honesty, integrity, and to ask yourself at every turn: “What would Jesus do?” The answer is not as simple as we’d like to believe. But if we can apply that question to every aspect of the world around us and answer it honestly, then we will prosper as a species. The kingdom of heaven is upon us. We must come to truly know our souls to achieve it. But you won’t do that thumping a bible.

We intend to link the political and social aspects of our world to the concept of spirituality. Humanity is hurting because humanity stopped believing in itself. But the world that caused that phenomenon is about to be killed by the spirit. The spirit is complex. It holds immense power. The spirit is truly the greatest creation of the known universe. Whatever the spirit is, it is the answer to our existence. It is why we’re here. You cannot keep it at bay forever, and the time is coming for it to break its chains. These are not chains that have bounded us, but chains we have submitted to. We accepted hateful assumptions to be inherently true and allowed them to shape how society treats its members. The oppressed will not stay that way. Those who believe in the spirit will rise against those who beg for the chains; those are the people who believe we are evil creatures. But the spirit is good and only good. If you want to live life, actually live it, you will embrace the spirit. You will condemn the words of anyone who claims we need controlled to be good. Control and false truths have raped us. We have collectively lost what’s made us human.

I believe that all major events can be connected to the battle between the spirit and our current society. I think this point in time has identified three important players: The Spirit, The People, and The Enemy. The Spirit is what I've rambled about this whole time, and I hope I have conveyed what I believe it can be. The Enemy is any energy, idea, or life force that beats down the spirit and discourages its existence. The People are simply the prize to be won. Our physical being. We can be taken by The Spirit and allow real freedom for ourselves and our descendants, or we can watch The Enemy prevail and essentially, or literally, enslave the human population. Be honest with yourself and others, spread love everywhere you go, and learn everything you can. Times are changing, and we can only fix this place by doing the right thing every chance we get.

[asplashofblarn]

Preface

I was born in 1997 and my given name is Justin Taylor English, one and all will address me by what is mine. With you all and here soon enough to be a lucky student of the internet as the 2000's age rounded the corner, but shot far too soon to be given equal rights and liberty; as promised to a child growing up in this modern country that is grounded in the North American continent and known as the United States of America. A country where we are protected under one flag that is held by our one true God; the same phrase we use to those who we so diligently give our money to. Since Gods, Kings and the reinforced Queens all fall under me, one may assume that it would only be right for one such as he who bares the name that I have since been given and laid claim unto as mine, brings forth the initiation to claim the land in which he is promised. Just before the rug is pulled and we all fall under the cataclysm that is pulling energy from the children of the world to feed the egos of those who wish to live but not to partake in the world that they have chosen to siphon life from. How was I to know as a child looking forward to what my planet was offering that I was entering a gated education system that will only give to those who are willing to pay and hand over their future earnings to promote the same system? This system, which is used to build people in order to survive during life, is also one that is built to collect just enough information on them to relax tendency and help set the table to lay the other lambs on the table alongside some cabbage. Without pressing the point of consciousness or the reason as to why I have to be monitored in order to display something that would be far too easy to understand if only one gave up the appeal of living forever and came to address the point that the gifts we have been given are ours to take and not receive. What a person does with their things is of a personal matter you would say if another would try to touch the things that you play with, because you are in the right. That works until you’re wrong and what’s yours now falls under the control of another who will instruct you on what is right and wrong. My time spent here isn’t to introduce me, Justin Taylor English, to life or for you to learn about myself in terms of who I am, who I want to be or how I see myself when I awake, because we all awaken to our true face, until we peer into a mirror and see a reflection that may require surgery or even worse bring ridicule and give to a displeasing experience of life unto us; you wouldn’t care. It’s so you can come to terms with the information that yours will soon be ending and as you look around, these are the people who helped shape it. Honor them. The children of the future relayed unto me; Improve my quality of life, fore I am born with the concept.

“And the peaches and the mangos you could sell for me.”  - Frank Ocean

When the flame dawned upon man I’m certain there was a brightly set confusion all around the table that still has the spark to reach to us today. With that spark brings a perpetual assimilation of what I predict is the conversation they had with each other in the language they spoke at the time, probably relayed something like “What the hell is going on?” Bursts of confusion are exciting and scary and amazing, they are what lead to many new ideas and have brought forth the room you are sitting in today; a bunch of confused, amazing collection of cells learning to live, create, love and eventually die together. A beautiful display, that we have silently reveled in for a very long time and all of our children know, or should know; that feeling of the flame that each person and animal carries inside of them. Yet the mystery of the moment is as to why we can’t feel the heat of our consciousness; even as the two lay pressed together the only sustained flow is one of another and never true adaptation of the reflected soul. This can lead to many things, the most important of which is called power. Power to change the way people see and behave just by appealing or pushing them away from things with what may be ill intentions or one’s that only the shepherd can decide for the herd; at least the wolves are at bay for now. A flock of birds rests upon the beach and the waves dare not disturb their beautiful rest for they are not moved. Watching such sights can bring emotional value to some of us and other may never see it, that doesn’t matter; the point is that it happens. With such sights a plenty we can only wonder as to why the stars that light our sky, or the sun whom gives us heat just aren’t enough for some and these people desire more. There is a need of all living things to stay alive, it is a prime directive and one that is not lost no matter how complex a system may grow to the point of the fact that nothing really ever dies, it’s actually killed; every time. Now that we have escaped our revolution around the cycle that requires us to consume, grow, and pass. We can finally begin to form a place that has been dreamed of since the first collection of texts was read. Yet the desire to do so is met the with the present reality that the heat and water that supplies your castle and that land at the park your kids play on is paid for by the gods who sit at home after a long day’s work and watch the television, rather than giving those kids running amuck an actual chance to a future that doesn’t involve store bought beer.

Me, myself, I’m still a child as I’ve been called to those who chose to look down on me past the fear of their guarded territory, just as their parents and their government has done to them. It hurts to see these kids, your children who would call for you when they were young, laughed at by society and by the ones who brought them into this place we call life or better yet to the dirt of our Earth that we share together. Nobody wants to lose, but one day that light will go out and we need to do something about it, so why are you a concern still? Where do unions stand in a capitalist society? From the way that I hear it, here in the year 2020, they make others such as African Americans and homosexuals sound more like a business then anything that has to put up with the stones they are thrown forever. Many people will live a life, but to all those who stand in line I would like it to be known that no tears should fall from your eyes; as for the reason? You didn’t try. Giving up is not a solution or excuse, it’s just something I hope more people do, that way progress can be made rather than an attempt to halt someone from doing their jobs. Is it the police or the government you are angry about or your own parents in an anger that will be pushed further down to create a solid ground for those who wish to walk this land. Since I’m sure you have no concern over what those children think about when out running amuck without guidance or purpose allow me to explain it to you. It’s a collection of the same ideas that pass through your mind every time you begin to think. Some people in our world will grow up and become strong and productive members of society, some of us aren’t allowed to because others still need to bleed in order to reinforce the bank account of a man who your only mission is to please, that way you can be reminded every time you hear a tune on the radio or watch a movie that this is your life. The one we made together, discomfort is normal as that hand is pressed upon yours, but you’ll leave soon so I wouldn’t be concerned if I was you. Understand that the people of our world would like to hear from me, but refuse, I, Justin Taylor English, a proper education that is needed to form new ideas rather than paddle like a dog that still enjoys the swamp water because the rich blue has been denied from you. Please don’t feel sorry for anyone but yourself as I have too taken those tax dollars from you to promote a healthy realization of the education that has given you the power to rest instead of being a parent or a guiding member of the community, which we share. Forgive me so that once more us both can feel the comforting solace that comes with night, until the sun rises.

Anger can be bought, yet jealousy is earned. Would you like to be dazzled by the display of our universe or the hands of the creators that have helped to shape the society in which we live in? So would I. And the reason as to why that opportunity to open my mind, an ability that we haven’t learned to do ourselves and is still the lords blessing of virginity hasn’t been reached by men because we refuse to work hard and instead like to contest every change that happens to bring the reality that we can stay put and live in fear. As the cancer eats away at our bodies we can only explain to those children, who will soon be killed, that God has a different plan for them; only for the reality that it is your genetics that committed the murder with a smile upon your face as you allowed a train to depart with no tracks laid just a mile forward. The desire for those who are alive now to take life away from others bewilders me; the dead are food not predators. You on the other hand are an alien and can fire when ready. May the saints of the falling stripes bless the bed that you lay upon so that you can continue to monitor your mundane life as it appears you have no plans of stepping outside of your comfort zone and choose to instead bring others down into a somber place where you can lay them to rest. There are evils in this world and things that need to change, suicide, a route in which I wish more people who fit this description hope to take and maybe next time we will be ready for them as long as you leave a sticker by the door telling us what your life was and we should be ready for you. The willing force of people to fain sorrow or understanding, but with the statement of life at their teeth is not a pleasing one to see in people that grown old with it intertwined. A creature who has been blinded for an entire life, only leads to the relief that death will carry for it as I can see vividly even as a child who does not understand that there isn’t much for you to learn from here or that you may ever learn in our world. Maybe you just need to take a look at the other things that live, breathe and think just like you and are beside you and on your plate to understand how much you don’t matter. It is you, the sin, in which my life was forsaken for; please die.

Love,

Justin Taylor English

[jeremystrele]

NGV’s Remarkable New Exhibition Celebrating Australian Interior Design

NGV’s Remarkable New Exhibition Celebrating Australian Interior Design

Exhibition

by Elle Murrell

The Rigg Design Prize 2018 Exhibition opens at NGV Australia tomorrow. Installation view of Inner-Terior, 2018 Danielle Brustman design studio Australia est. 2012 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

In the first major presentation of contemporary interior design in the NGV’s history, the Rigg Design Prize 2018 exhibition brings together 10 leading Australian interior designers and decorators, who have each created a purpose-built room within the gallery.

The designers involved and shortlisted for the $30,000 prize include Amber Road, Arent & Pyke, Danielle Brustman, David Flack, David Hicks, Hecker Guthrie, Martyn Thompson Studio, Richards Stanisich, Scott Weston Architecture Design, and The Society Inc by Sibella Court. Check back to find out who the winning firm is, at 6:45pm tonight!

So glad we’re not choosing, because they’ve all created some seriously exceptional spaces in response to the 2018 theme: Domestic Living. ‘The Rigg Design Prize 2018 recognises the central role that interior design plays in our lives and reflects the NGV’s commitment to elevating the cultural value of contemporary design in Australia,’ tells NGV’s Director Tony Ellwood. ‘The participants’ concepts are thoughtful reflections of interior spaces and their ability to shift perceptions and tell personal stories of place and identity.’

Taking place every three years, the Rigg Design Prize was established in 1994 and is the generous legacy of the late Colin Rigg, a former Secretary of the NGV’s Felton Bequests’ Committee. Formerly known as the Cicely and Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award, it previously focussed on Victoria, but went Australia-wide in 2015. Past winners include Neville Assad (1994), Robert Baines (1997), Louise Weaver (2003), Sally Marsland (2006), Simone LeAmon (2009), Marian Hosking (2012) and Adam Goodrum (2015).

Rigg Design Prize 2018 Exhibition October 12th to February 29th, 2019 Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia Level 3, Contemporary Art & Design Federation Square, Victoria Free entry

Talks Designing Interiors Saturday, October 13th, 2pm Rethinking Design and Interiors: Shashi Caan Saturday, October 13th, 5pm

Take it outside, 2018 Amber Road design studio Australia est. 2013 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Installation view of Take it outside, 2018 Amber Road design studio Australia est. 2013 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Installation view of Take it outside, 2018 Amber Road design studio Australia est. 2013 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Amber Road

Amber Road Design’s Take It Outside explores the transitional space between indoors and outdoors, present in many cultures, including our own.

It reads like a list of iconic Australian-ness: a musk stick pink screen, star-studded indigo sky, a blistering sunset, rammed earth, lycra, terry towelling, a pair of thongs, an Akubra hat, mozzie coils, and the hum of cicadas!

Installation view of Home: feast, bathe, rest by Arent&Pyke. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Home: feast, bathe, rest, 2018 Arent&Pyke design studio Australia est 2007 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Installation view of Home: feast, bathe, rest, 2018 Arent&Pyke design studio Australia est 2007 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Arent & Pyke

Juliette Arent and Sarah Jane Pyke have created ‘Feast, Bathe, Rest’, in response to our increasing search for restorative spaces to call home, as populations increase and cities engineer themselves upwards and outwards.

They’ve expressed the domestic interior ‘as the ultimate manifestation of soulful wellbeing’ creating zones that are essential to replenish (feast); restore (bathe); retreat (rest). Each area features a contemporary Australian artwork and a bespoke furniture piece in reference to these three ideas.

Installation view of Inner-Terior, 2018 Danielle Brustman design studio Australia est. 2012 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Installation view of Inner-Terior, 2018 Danielle Brustman design studio Australia est. 2012 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Designer Danielle Brustman in front of Inner- Terior, 2018 inside the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Eugene Hyland.

Danielle Brustman

In her ‘Inner-terior’ Danielle Brustman asks if the home can be a more fantastical place! Still a place of comfort, rest and refuge, her space is part conversation pit, part lounge room and part stage.

The room takes its design cues from the 1980 cult classic film Xanadu, American Art Deco bandshells of the 1920s, 1960s European futuristic design as well as shapes and materials that recall roller skating rinks and amusement rides of the 1980s.

Installation view of Panic room, 2018 David Hicks design studio Australia est 2000 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

David Hicks

Renowned for his distinctly bold, high-gloss, high-end interiors, David Hicks‘ design for Rigg is a satire on the all-pervasive nature of social media and its impact on our home lives.

‘My design for ‘Panic Room’ ultimately asks the audience to reflect on how a relentless exposure to social and traditional media has infiltrated our personal live,’ explains David. ‘Panic Room appears as a rigid fortress, where people can lock themselves away from the unrelenting public eye. Ironically, as the audience views the room, they have unwillingly inserted themselves in the private life of the homeowner who is seeking seclusion.’

Designer David Flack in front of We’ve boundless plains to share, 2018 inside the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Eugene Hyland.

Installation view of We’ve boundless plains to share, 2018 Flack Studio design studio Australia est. 2014 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Flack Studio

Flack Studio’s room, ‘We’ve Boundless Plains To Share’, highlights that Australia is living in a ‘golden age’ where many have the wealth to create custom interiors and architecture, AND that this is a rare luxury when parts of the world are in crisis.

Multilayered, the interior honours Indigenous history, and celebrates the diverse cultures that have made Australia – ‘a culture of shared identity’. Drawing on verses in the Australian national anthem it asks Australians to question the modern meaning of ‘We’ve boundless plains to share’.

Installation view of The table is the base, 2018 Hecker Guthrie design studio Australia est. 2008 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Installation view of The table is the base, 2018 Hecker Guthrie design studio Australia est. 2008 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Installation view of The table is the base, 2018 Hecker Guthrie design studio Australia est. 2008 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Installation view of The table is the base, 2018 Hecker Guthrie design studio Australia est. 2008 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Hecker Guthrie

For Hecker Guthrie ‘The Table Is The Base’! Their room celebrates the table as a modest and unassuming object, but one that has ‘an invisible gravitational pull that brings people together and binds them in space’.

The installation invites you to feel an emotional, and possibly nostalgic, connection to the table as an object, with its controlled, minimal palette allows the many interpretations of the table form to become visible.

Installation view of Atelier, 2018 Martyn Thompson Studio design studio United States of America est. 2013 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Installation view of Atelier, 2018 Martyn Thompson Studio design studio United States of America est. 2013. On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Designer Martyn Thompson in front of Atelier, 2018 inside the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Eugene Hyland.

Martyn Thompson

Martyn Thompson Studio’s room explores the notion of the ‘Atelier’ and how there are blurred line between home and work life in our contemporary society.

Being a photographer by profession, Martyn’s starting point is the light, which, complemented with a play of texture and colour, creates an ambience of calming creativity.

Installation view of Our natural needs in a digital world, 2018 Richards Stanisich design studio Australia est. 2018 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Installation view of Our natural needs in a digital world, 2018 Richards Stanisich design studio Australia est. 2018 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Richards Stanisich

Digital devices and the ‘Internet of Things’ have evolved to be integrated and camouflaged into our lives, yet their presence is pervasive and changing our sensory responses to the physical and emotional spaces we dwell in,’ explains design duo Jonathan Richards and Kirsten Stanisich.

Their room ‘Our Natural Needs In a Digital World’ considers how impacts (like exposure to blue light from screens, the isolation of sound by headphones and continued exposure to new imagery ) have changed the way we interact with objects, and our rituals and relationships.

The outer layer is wrapped in black gloss tiles edged with blue light, while the kitchen, living and sleeping zones are handmade, tactile and textural. The contrast of these realms represents the convergence and tension between two fundamental aspects of our domestic lives and question whether ‘ the digital age is in turn leading us to yearn for uncomplicated natural simplicity in our physical spaces’.

Installation view of Wunderkammer, 2018 Scott Weston Architecture Design design studio Australia est. 1997. On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Designer Scott Weston in front of Wunderkammer, 2018 inside the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Eugene Hyland.

Installation view of Wunderkammer, 2018 Scott Weston Architecture Design design studio Australia est. 1997 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Scott Weston

Not one room, but a sequence of six is what Scott Weston Architecture Design has delivered! ‘Wunderkammerare’ is ‘repository of wondrous, exotic ornaments, materials and finishes’.

An an abstract representation of Villa Carmelina setup as monochromatic dioramas with coloured highlights, it featured wallpaper vignettes of artwork, sculptures, objects and has gathered by Scott throughout his lifetime. There is also a display of prized ‘jewels’ created in miniature form by six artists inspired by the domestic living environment that he admires most!

Installation view of Imaginarium, 2018 The Society Inc by Sibella Court design studio Australia est. 2009 On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Designer Sibella Court in front of Imaginarium, 2018 inside the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Eugene Hyland.

Installation view of Imaginarium, 2018 The Society Inc by Sibella Court design studio Australia est. 2009. On display in the Rigg Design Prize 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo – Shannon McGrath.

Sibella Court

Sharing its name of her latest book, Sibella Court’s Imaginarium room is steeped in history, inspired by sixteenth-century ‘cabinets of curiosity’, and manages to distil an entire home into one space.

‘Inhabited’ by a family, a souvenirs library is displayed on a large feature wall, offering glimpses into the family’s lifestyle and activities – the steel-framed curved-glass wall of an alchemy workshop, a whimsical crow’s nest from a ship, a bar, a playful dress-up cupboard, a pot-belly stove, a custom dining table that doubles as a research station, and a transitional bed and lounge.‘Every object – whether found, new or fantastical – is a catalyst to memory and imagination,’ tells Sibella.

[alamyrr-blog]

School Shootings

About a month ago, i woke up to one of my most destructively memorable days. The news of Florida school shooting was everywhere. It is not that school shootings have never happened ever before, but this was so amplified and I couldn’t escape it even if I switched off my phone. My conscience and head couldn’t move away. It felt like the blood of the children and teachers who died was spilling in the very room i was sitting in. At first, I couldn’t understand why this specific shooting felt this different but this raised questions and eyebrows throughout the world, so I believed it was pretty common and everybody was feeling that way. People were asking the same question that they have asked for years with no benefit or answer to it; the question “why?” and so was i. I decided to dive a little deep into it and today I want to share what I found with all of you.

I had kind of forgotten what emotionally determinant things such as this used to feel like to me. For those of you unfamiliar with my backstory, I was born with an extremely heightened sense of the emotions of those around me. I was empathetic to the degree that if i walked in a room in which was somebody who had their mother die, i would feel that pain as if my mother had passed away. For this, i decided to always keep myself in a box away from stories such as this so as to feel safe and to protect myself from feeling that intrinsic pain. Another factor why I stopped reading or looking into the news about events such as Florida shooting was because while on one side i was feeling the pain of those who were the victims, i could also look, understand and empathize with the feelings of the abuser.

This put me on the red-flag list for all the people who aren’t ready to talk about the motivations behind violence. The root that motivates a nineteen-year old to become a murderer. They aren’t ready because it makes them feel insecure that others actions, from the perspective they committed it, are actually justified. They can’t stand talk of it because they have attached themselves with the idea of being the victim and hence they can’t stand the fact that the other side may also be in the way a victim. 

I was on the fence being pushed and pulled by this event. This was a return of my childhood trauma. I had no idea how to react to this. While i was feeling the pain of those children who lost their friends, their teachers, their beloved; i couldn’t stop myself from empathizing with the abuser. I am guilty here, and saying things such as this are often what put people in scrutiny in the spiritual field. But I’m going to step up and talk about this because i know that nobody else will; thinking that people will label them off as trying to “justify” the killer’s actions. Hence, I am going to put the word to this: Why what happened in Florida became so big of an impact was because it was the inherent human condition inside (almost) all of us magnified in the form of one child.

It is imperative that we stop seeing the debate of the motivations and the roots behind such events as “no-go area” and that we begin to deliberately talk about what leads to this. We can ban guns and I’m definitely all in for it, but we cannot ban bigotry, hate, hurt, racism etc. and by virtue of that situation we are helpless to change the fact that more events like this will follow no matter what legislation or law we enforce. Maybe we can stop one or two people, but we cannot stop those people who are willing to risk their lives for it. They will find ways to kill, slaughter, and torture, and bully; this situation will continue to prevail - till we deal with what causes it.

And what has been happening today triggered the same response in me when i saw the #marchforourlives tag spread across all internet like forest fire. It brought me back memories of when, because of the threats of my own abusers, i had to live through the constant fear that tomorrow i will find myself and all the people i care about dead. But my biggest struggle was that i couldn’t move my head in either affirmation or negation to this. I was stuck in denial. That is part of why this “march” is making me uneasy. Even though it looks like the wave of people marching is creating a movement, the very consciousness of human collective is stuck where it was. We have not moved an inch from there. We might hide behind popular opinions, but internally we hold the same values which is why things such as this manifest over and over again.  The other reason why what has been happening today doesn’t make me feel good is that the march is coming from the space of the same consciousness from which came that which the movement opposes. It is not a search for solution, but that of victory.

I feel estranged when people say “come on, it is 2018″ as if it was 3017. Because it is the means people escape reality. Speaking it is 2018 as if it was 3017 is a stupid thing and it is absolutely the opposite of reality. The reality is even though physically we have progressed, we are still, at a level of consciousness, stuck in the medieval age; we are energetically still in the age of wars, conquests, victories, sex slaves and discrimination. We still seek domination by power, and feel otherwise bad if we don’t gain that status.

The human consciousness hasn’t grown since the medieval. Why? Because of how they dealt with children in the medieval age. Children, in those ages, were seen as the vices of Satan and so it was seen important that they be invalidated, rejected, denied, beaten, tortured and drained of their childishness. They pushed the “human” part of the human to deepest of the deep in his subconscious to turn him into a societal cog; a loyal servant to the liege of the time. The growth of consciousness depends on the inner child and when he is blocked out, so does the blossoming of consciousness. This is what happened in those ages, and the result is what we are seeing today. Though that consciousness changed shapes throughout history, it is still stuck at where it was. As an experiment, you can walk down a casual road in a suburb of any country, you will see the same dynamics still being applied. The media and what it chooses to represent has definitely changed the image of humanity and what it looks like, but in reality - it is the same.

The root of this consciousness was separation, the same root that fosters terrorism. Separation means to see others as different and separate from oneself, which means (for the human mind) to feel better about myself I have to be above other people in some way. The human collective is stuck in that paradigm. The “exclusivity” paradigm. The belief that I and you are distanced in existence. This creates the air of competition.

We have built our entire society around this concept of domination. Governments, nuclear weapons, educational systems, pharma; in every industry almost every company operates yearning to become the top and this is what will decide which direction the company goes and what decisions it will make. Shootings are the product of the same consciousness. That of a child’s desire to feel victorious and hence on top of the world; to become dominant. And so is bullying, and bigotry, and racism, and bombing, and abuse and every other destructive activity. It is the desire to dominate, and it has come to be because every child is brought up to see himself as different and separate from the world around him. If you see the world as different from you, it is definite you will want to top it. Our children are constantly fed the idea that they have to get to the top. That they have to win the race. That they have to dominate, control and conquer in order to be valuable or as they call it “successful.”  This is amplified by parents, teachers, life coaches, motivational speakers, politicians; almost all those in power preach for it. What children are not taught is to see their life in other’s lives and that to allow his soul to be entranced and touched.

We don’t need guns for protection, but to instead cultivate a consciousness in the people that others don’t need to be protected from. We need to show people how they are not in fact different but the very same, how one life is actually also the other life, how everything is basically one. That the abuser and the victim are in essence the same. Same Earth, same breath, same life. It is time we walk out of the box of exclusiveness, and entered the universe of inclusiveness. It is time we stopped looking at people as black people, or white, or brown, or gay, or straight, or any other way, in fact it is time we stopped looking at them as people at all and that we started to look at them as part of ourselves. Once that consciousness rises inside people, we will see that the guns will go by themselves; because people will feel connected with all that is, and not threatened by it. This is how gun control will come, and not through enforcement. 

I am not against Gun Control. But I see it as only a short-term fixture; in the long-term it will turn out same as the ban on every other thing that has ever been banned - it will be ignored, thrashed and abused by those who would be still stuck in the desperation to feel better through dominance. The only permanent and long-term solution is an evolution of the way we look at others towards a point where we don’t see them as others but as extensions of our own being.  

It is not a one-day process, but it can start now. It starts with the first reader who realizes this and decides to integrate oneness in him/herself. And then instead of trying to fight this age-old consciousness out of himself, waters it and gets enough sunshine and allows it so that it can grow and blossom into something beautiful.

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: Creative Spotlight: Kunihiko Ikuhara [Part 3]

Creative spotlights are easily digestible overviews of a director or animator’s body of work, style, and vision. My goal for these articles is to highlight some of the exceptional and possibly lesser-known creative voices in anime. I’m hoping these write-ups encourage people to explore more of what anime has to offer.

    The spotlight for the next few weeks will be on Kunihiko Ikuhara, the mastermind behind Shoujo Kakumei Utena, Pengiundrum, and Yuri Kuma Arashi. This article is the third of four parts looking at Ikuhara’s career, and will be focused on Penguindrum.

  Part 1: Ikuhara and Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon

Part 2: Shoujo Kakumei Utena 

  After the roaring success of Shoujo Kakumei Utena, one would assume that Kunihiko Ikuhara’s anime career was set. However, the entirety of the 2000s were an especially quiet time for the director. During this decade, Ikuhara vanished from the industry almost entirely, with his only credits being the opening storyboards for Aoi Hana and Nodame Cantabile. While we’ll never know for sure what Ikuhara was up to during this time, he was most likely developing the ideas for his next great anime.

  In 2011, Ikuhara finally came out of hiding to show the world what he had been planning for the past 15 years, an anime called Penguindrum. Working with the animation studio Brain’s Base, Ikuhara gave his audiences another work straight from his heart. Skirting the lines between screwball comedy and urban fantasy, Penguindrum is an anime directly addressing the social aftermath of the 1995 Subway Sarin Incident in Tokyo. Under the guise of its cute penguins and ridiculous catchphrases like “FABULOUS MAX”, Penguindrum is the anime Ikuhara wanted to make to speak to the alienated youth of his country.  

    Penguindrum tells the tragedy of the three Takakura siblings who are bound by fate: Kanba and Shouma, the brothers, and Himari, the sister. The siblings peacefully live alone, quietly spending their days together until Himari abruptly falls ill and passes away. Devastated by the death of their beloved sister, Kanba and Shouma begin to fight, when suddenly Himari springs back to life wearing a bizarre penguin hat. The two brothers are then told by the sadistic alter-ego of Himari to collect a mysterious object called the “penguindrum” in exchange for keeping Himari alive.

  Initially, Kanba and Shouma set out together to find the penguindrum for Himari’s sake. However, fragments of their pasts and repressed memories come back to haunt them as they cross paths with familiar faces. Ikuhara was already playing around with the notion of memories being unreliable in Shoujo Kakumei Utena, but he takes it further in Penguindrum where the anime’s narrative is built upon layers of fragmented memories. It’s not uncommon to see a flashback sequence from one character and minutes later the same sequence replayed from another character’s viewpoint. The emotional reality of each character in Penguindrum often explains their personality and more complex actions; how a character remembers an event is usually more pertinent information than the event itself.

  The number 95 references the year of the Subway Sarin Incident in Tokyo

  Throughout Penguindrum, Kanba and Shouma begin to relive their traumatic childhoods and end up walking down different paths to help Himari. In Kanba’s case, he resorts to drastic measures and becomes involved with the remnants of his deceased parents’ terrorist cult. Kanba ultimately wants to save Himari, but believes he is alone in his fight once his concept of family is shattered. Accepting his fate as the child of a terrorist, Kanba loses his place in society and takes extreme actions to save the girl he loves. Kanba is an outwardly happy-go-lucky soul, but his facade only hides his broken and lonely existence that is bound to his parents’ horrible actions.

  Penguindrum deals with issues of isolation and loss of identity by framing them in a fictitious retelling of the aftermath of the 1995 Subway Sarin Incident. Ikuhara was heavily inspired by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. Murakami’s book was a collection of interviews with the victims of the sarin gas attacks, as well as some of the members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, who were responsible for the act of terrorism.

  Murakami wrote Underground largely in response to the Japanese media’s failure to explore the perspectives of its own citizens. Murakami believed that the media was too wrapped up in the profiles of the criminals and the atrocity of the event that they excluded the human aspect of the tragedy. To understand why someone would harm his or her own countrymen may prevent an incident of this scale from happening again. In many respects, Ikuhara’s Penguindrum continues Murakami’s inquisition by examining the social factors that would cause an individual like Kanba to turn toward terrorism to achieve his goals. By examining Kanba’s childhood, his relationship with his family, and his place in society, we gain a clearer picture of his state of mind and consequently the rationale behind his extreme actions.  

    Like all of Ikuhara’s anime, Penguindrum is not shy about using visual metaphors to express its themes. One of the anime’s most poetic, yet deeply haunting metaphors is the child broiler. In Himari and Shouma’s flashbacks, we see the child broiler as a concentration camp where children abandoned by their parents or society are held. The children are loaded onto a conveyer belt and sent through a shredder until they turn into pristine shards of glass. This remodels the abandoned child into society’s ideal; an ordinary person who will grow up and study, graduate and then get a job. The abandoned child’s existence is made “invisible” as a result.

  The child broiler is a heavily dramatized metaphor for how Japanese society mechanically shapes children with no purpose in life into upstanding citizens (at the cost of their individuality). In a series of shared flashbacks that explains how Shouma and Himari became family, a child Himari is sent to the child broiler but rescued at the last minute by Shouma. Shouma extends his arm out to Himari and hands her an apple, asking her to share the fruit of fate with him. Shouma saves Himari from the clutches of the child broiler by accepting her into his family, thereby binding the two by the sins of Shouma’s parents. The two siblings weren’t related by blood, yet bound together by a stronger, inescapable force. This is the bittersweet tragedy of Ikuhara’s Penguindrum. 

    Stay tuned next week for Part 4 of the Kunihiko Ikuhara spotlight, which will cover Yuri Kuma Arashi! Let us know your thoughts on Ikuhara in the comments below! 

----

Brandon is a Brand Features Writer for Crunchyroll and also writes anime-related editorials on his blog, Moe-Alternative. Hit him up for a chat on his Twitter at @Don_Don_Kun!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[photomattjames]

<strong><span style="color: #f79646;">Aarhus: European capital for culture 2017</span></strong>

Words: Joe Miller, Photos: Matt Marsh

Every year, two European cities receive the prestigious title of ‘European capital of culture’ and in 2017, we welcome Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus, as the holder of one of these two titles.

Over the next year, fascinated hearts will beat in unison to a fusion of art, music and performance to celebrate a history of intellect and discovery, and catapult us to a future of modernisation and creativity. We celebrate a city of food with all it’s culinary splendours, appetising the mouths of many a traveller and revel in the passion the city presents to us through its film and animation community.

With an economic change the world has seen for many centuries, the city brings forward the ideas of sustainability, diversity and democracy to carry forward through the 21st century. We will be challenged to rethink the way we live and how making a change today will see future generations come to live with purpose and belief in a world where there are no limits to discovery and change. The city and the people itself will examine and display these common values throughout the coming months in order to broaden our minds and ask how we can maintain these morals of which Denmark has incorporated into everyday society throughout its existence.

Over the next year many concepts will be explored such as gender relations, equality for all, rethinking agricultural history, religion and identity.

The European capital of culture title is not designed to give a city the opportunity to just simply make money from tourism and sit back and watch the money roll in, but instead give the city and region the opportunity to educate visitors through interaction and visual art, through performance, through creativity and through our hearts. Get ready for a year of transformation and with open arms, let's embrace the culture and see what we can discover about our new friend… Aarhus.

Aarhus

Situated on the east coast of the Jutland peninsula, Aarhus becomes the second city in Denmark (Copenhagen 1996 being the first) to receive such a prestigious title. It has a history of being culturally diverse in many ways. From the city’s early days as a fortified Viking settlement to today as the cultural and economic core of its region, Aarhus has grown to be one of Europe’s most desirable destinations for people of all levels of intellect and creativity.

With the largest university in Scandinavia, we see a constant flow of highly educated and imaginative people being inspired by the city’s surroundings and wealth of discovery the city has to offer. Arts and crafts thrive in the city and visitors are welcomed to a region built upon the wool trade, glass production and handicraft.

Built along the bay of Aarhus, the city breeds from the openness of space it looks upon, stretching long into the Baltic sea and reeling in lines of hope and prosperity. A city that boasts a young generation of ideas based upon an historic sense of community and togetherness.

Home to the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus school of Architecture and Jutland Art Academy, the city boasts some of the country’s top academic schools and with a large selection of museums, galleries, restaurants and theatres at hand, it’s easy to see why Aarhus has been appointed ‘European capital for culture’ this coming year. We look ahead to what will be happening in and around the city this year.

Arts

Home to the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Moesgaard Museum and Den Gamle By – The Old Town Museum, the city boasts some of Denmark’s finest art galleries and museums. Throughout the exciting months ahead, Aarhus will passionately deliver a whole host of events centred around the arts community through a series of performance, exhibitions and projects.

Having visited the Munch Museum in Oslo, I am drawn immediately to the ‘Jorn and Munch’ exhibition at Museum Jorn, Silkeborg. A dazzling array of colours are sure to illuminate you during this exhibition and although both artists derive from generations unfamiliar to one another, they share the same common value of human conditions in modern society. Their work often highlights the themes of life-death, fear and dreams and such a collaboration is destined to present new ideas towards modernisation. (The exhibit runs from 11th February – 28th May)

For fans of animation comes four amazing, animated documentary films by international directors in September/November. Presented by The VIA University College, contemporary themes will be explored through the language of animation and in a completely experimental way and we will be challenged to observe the undertakings of the documentary film making world in a new dimension.

I look forward to many of the other events on offer to us in the coming months and am particularly interested to see ‘The Keeper Of Small Things’, presented by Emma Sullivan, Berit Madsen and Line Caught Films. A collection of items Tove Tendal-Hansen sees the value in, that perhaps most other people would discard or simply not be concerned with. It makes for an interesting spectacle of sustainability and an insight into the forgotten Denmark with stories and objects of which would be lost or cease to exist if not for Toves’ collection. (venue: ‘O’ Space, Aarhus)

Music

Aarhus makes a loud noise this year, but none of the city’s neighbours will be beating on the wall to ask for the music to be turned down. That’s because many of the artists and entertainers from the region will be playing and performing to the same beat of the city, to demonstrate through sound the history of the many musical genres Aarhus is distinguished upon. Music has been developed here by the young jazz scene population of the 1950’s right through to now in becoming the heart of Denmark’s rock and pop movement.

In this exciting year ahead, we are introduced to some thought provoking performances, with reference to sound and ambience, never before heard or seen. ‘The beginning and the end of the universe’ is presented to us by The Origins2017 ensemble: Aarhus symphony orchestra, Århus sinfonietta, Aarhus sommeropera, Aarhus Jazz Orchestra and Aarhus 2017. Held throughout April, varying concerts will be performed to expose the questions of morality, meaning of life and existence through the medium of sound, visualisation and storytelling.

This year will continue its fine tradition of hosting some of Europe’s most thrilling festivals and capture the hearts of many a music connoisseur. With previous artists such as Radiohead, Lana Del Rey and Arcade Fire, Northside festival (9th-11th June) welcomes over 35,000 people each year and this year will be no exception. Centred around a conscious awareness to sustainability through its environmental approach to organic food and beverage at the festival, Northside sets the standards in regards to focusing on these values, with aspirations of becoming the first garbage free and completely organic festival in Europe.

In another highlight that I came across, School Students will be transformed into local music archaeologists in late June/early July to perform to visitors of the city during the ‘Rethink Folk Music Festival’. A young generation of interested musicians are being awakened to the musical heritage the region has grown accustomed to through its European roots and this collaboration of music from varying European countries, presented by Kultureskolen Skanderborg, is sure to make us open our eyes to new ideas of folk music based on the history of sound that shaped them.

Food

With Aarhus becoming the European region of gastronomy, there is plenty of mouth-watering reasons to visit the city over the next year. A city known for its Nordic cuisine and defined by its use of delicious, fresh and localised products, we will be gracefully spoon fed a concoction of exceptional methods of cooking within many of the cities vibrant trend setting destinations, familiar to natives of the region but now on show for the rest of the world to salivate over…. and enjoy!

The city will present many events this year to excite the taste buds and boast of the culinary delights the region is known for. We are presented with the Aarhus food festival (September 1st-3rd) with its annual event along the magnificent Aarhus bay, inspiring a new generation of food lovers with its gastronomic knowledge of Nordic food cultures.

At the same time of the year and to coincide with the Aarhus food festival, the biggest dinner party in the history of Denmark descends on the city. ‘The people’s feast’ will entertain food lovers of all generations and fill the streets with passionate conversations about the food they have just digested and how they are inspired to recreate these meals in their own kitchen.

In late April (28thth – 30thth), the opportunity to feast on the nature of the region will be presented in the form of the ‘Wild Flavour Festival’. With a world of natural resources at the end of our fork, we will devour food that has been picked from the wilderness, surrounding beaches and parks of the city. The hope is that we can step away from the fast food blanket we have been wrapped in for convenience and discover a new way of thinking with regards to obesity, diet and general health, all of which will have an impact on us for sustainability within the food industry in years to come. If you find yourself licking your lips in anticipation right now, then make sure you find your way to one of these events and many more throughout the year.

History and Belief

Aarhus will do its very best this year in tantalising the expectations of the many visitors it will receive over the next 12 months. With so many imaginative creations to digest, we are left to examine the history and beliefs that make this deserving city a place to leave a lasting legacy on the region, country and in our souls. An incredible programme of events will give you an insight into the history of the city through workshops, performances and events every week of the year.

Get ready to rethink the Seven Deadly Sins in relation to today’s society through a series of public programme events and large-scale exhibitions presented by Danish and international contemporary artists throughout 2017. With no relation to religion, we will be challenged to rethink the values of western society and with displays being held at seven of the cities museums, it offers an exciting opportunity for tourists and spectators to visit the finest homes for art that Aarhus has to offer (Exhibitions run throughout the whole of 2017 across various venues).

Are you amazed by time travel? If so, from 12th April and throughout the year, ‘The Aarhus Story’, set in the stunning location of Den Gamle By: Aarhus, allows the audience to travel through time to discover the history of the city. The story of the Aarhus Viking past right through to its contemporary feel of today, will keep visitors intrigued through the medium of sound, film and photography and allow people of all generations to be actively involved in understanding the history of Aarhus.

I scour the long list of themes and the programme for the year ahead and instinctively pull out of the pack a localised story that interests me. The beautifully presented ‘When Threads are Tied’ runs between 25th March – 17th December at the Museum Midtjylland. Based on an exhibition at Herningsholm about the Imperial Count, the story tells of Christian Rantzau, a sheep farmer from North East Sunds that developed the production of quality wool in the area. What is seen as the foundation of the early textile industry in the region, visitors will be exposed to the journey of wool through the production stage right through to hosiery techniques used to produce textile products such as gloves and knitted socks… items of which I have become accustomed to since my time in Scandinavia and, perhaps, could not live without.

With so many performances, exhibitions and events relating to ‘History and Belief’ throughout the year, my advice would be to make a visit to one of the city’s magnificent museums and to the surrounding area of the city to really embrace the culture and history that has helped shape the land for centuries gone by.

It’s difficult to choose some of the events on offer this year as I find there are too many for me to narrow down as my favourite, without feeling aggrieved to have left so many out. However, this just suggests to me that that with so much on offer this coming year in Aarhus, you will be spoilt for choice and there is something for everybody. My advice would be to embrace the culture, take in the sights, taste the region and discover for yourself, why making Aarhus the ‘European capital for culture’ in 2017 is the perfect choice for all generations, past and present.