Jul
Isle of the Dead, the best known paintings by Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901). A nice illustration of our search for meaning, I thought.
I happened to be in and around the vicinity of a few online fringe writer’s groups and had the opportunity to see what was being written. I was appalled. Sturgeon’s Law of course applies (90% of everything is crap), but even bearing that in mind, I could not find that better 10% anywhere. I set about in amongst the work in progress section to find a piece I could offer feedback for. I wanted to find something good, something that I could genuinely praise. After going through everything everyone had ever posted, I gave up.
Some might say at this point that I don’t “get” contemporary art, but nothing could be further from the truth. The problem is I have a very good grasp of “modern” and “postmodern” art and influences. I’m very comfortable in and around the “avant-garde”. The problem is, especially in the world of writing, I can see the smoke, the mirrors, and the slight of hand.
I was particularly amused by something a good friend of mine wrote on the subject, especially since it’s so close to my own sentiments. Because I can’t link to it, easily, she has given her permission for me to quote the whole thing. And yes, I borrowed her title.
The Emperor’s New Prose
Jessica De’Eath
02/07/2009
There’s a fine line between being avant-garde, and being lazy. There’s a difference between being purposefully vague and con-artistry. Anyone can create a piece of contemporary art. There are nearly 7 billion people creating contemporary art every day of their lives. Humans are pattern recognition engines, we spot the patterns, sometimes we call it art. Indeed, human agency isn’t even required in the creation of art at all. Only at the viewing end. If I was to stack up a pile of wood on a beach, people would walk past it and give it no more thought. But do the same in an art gallery and people would start to try and understand its significance. This significance is of course contrived. Indeed, the avant-garde is about testing the limits of art, and the limits of humanity. That is fair enough.
But when the profound and the profane sit side by side, how do we tell them apart? Truth is the only way to tell them apart is to take a good long hard look at the creator.
If Umberto Eco, writer of the most beautiful and philosophical novels, was to one day produce something that fell into the category of the avant-garde, then would suspect that he might be onto something. He has already proven his skill as a writer, he is free to experiment, and he would be beyond criticism. I would be willing to guess, he was taking a damn good crack at profundity.
But the profane? This is where the con-artistry comes in. New writers who have no skill have discovered that they can hide behind the opaque walls of the avant-garde. When the onus of understanding and interpretation is on the reader, the writer is free from the need to have any skill at all. But I see your bluff, and I call you on it.
Her point absolutely spot on. Surely everyone is familiar with Picasso, but just in case, here is a link to one of his paintings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Picasso_Portrait_of_Daniel-Henry_Kahnweiler_1910.jpg
Back in the days of Picasso he naturally got a lot of stick because of the nature of his work. One of the criticisms thrown at modern artists, was that it didn’t take any skill to produce the “crap” they were making. But of course this is nonsense. Picasso was also a talented artist in his own right. Follow the link and check out “portrait of Sylvette”
http://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/PROD/1101
So it’s perfectly acceptable for someone who has demonstrable skill in a field to set about pushing at the boundaries of his or her ‘art’. They have won the right to do so. And the viewers, readers, critics, whoever at least have that guarentee they are not wasting their time completely.
But do not be fooled when talentless morons hide behind the boundaries of the avant-garde and postmodernism because they are too lazy to develop any real skill. It takes years of practice and hard work to become good in any discipline. There is no royal road to art.
Why should we go along with a bunch of fools who would like it to be the case? Anyone can pick up a keyboard and type out nonsens into a wordprocessor or onto a blog, into their my space page, out into the newsgroups. In fact the whole internet is full of the stuff. The problem is not finding content, but finding some content that isn’t vacuous.
Photo 'Orange Abstract' by Faeryboots. The abstract doesn't have to be contrived. Source 1.
When, as Jessica says, the onus of interpretation is on the reader, would the reader not be better served looking for meaning elsewhere? Once you reach a certain level of random noise, then the message is left in the writer’s head and all that is visible is a pattern that the onlooker’s mind must interpret. If all the reader is getting out of something is what meaning they themselves derive, then that same meaning could be derived elsewhere anyway. By conceling meaning, the writer has removed him/herself from being necessary. There are plenty patterns in the world to interpret, why waste your time interpreting an artificial one?
Photo 'Lake Manyara' by Cessna206. Taken from the air, it reveals nature to be a great modernist. Source 2.
I know given two random patterns, one contrived by an ass-hole and the other contrived by a series of unique events, I would be much more inclined to spend my time on the second. For a start its inception is more interesting. What geological forces created it? What chance happenings led to a poetic death? What strange phenomea led to the apparent face of the Virgin Mary appearing in someone’s toated cheese? What could convince someone to pay 20,000 on ebay for said toasted cheese with bite out it. However in the case of some fool, simply brain-dumping garbage onto the internet, I am not inclined to wonder, because the culpret had the opportunity to tell us, and said nothing. He/she had the opportunity to say something, and remained silent. Someone might suggest, “well they did ’say’ something”. True. They wrote, and did the great injustice of filling up a page that said no more than if the page had been left blank.
I’m sure we’ve all heard the story of the Emperor’s new clothes. The emperor hires two tailors (con-men) who promise him the finest suit of clothes. They promise him it will be made from the finest cloth. Indeed, they tell him, this special cloth is invisible to anyone who was either stupid or unfit for his position. When the emperor finally gets his suit, he is horrified to discover that he cannot see the (non-existent) cloth. So he pretends that he can for fear of appearing stupid. Indeed, none of his ministers speak up because they are afraid of letting it be known that they can’t see the clothes. Everyone goes along with it because everyone acts as if they can see the clothes, and those who cannot are left wondering if they are the only ones. The tailors dress the Emperor in mime. Then he goes naked on a procession through the capital to show off his new clothes. In the middle of the procession, a small child speaks up, “But he has nothing on!” The crowd realize the truth of the child’s words. The Emperor, carries on.
Like the story of the Emperor’s new clothes, we must beware of the same fallacy in art, and in writing especially.
…
Image Sources
Source1 http://www.flickr.com/photos/faeryboots/3625535506/
Source2 http://www.flickr.com/photos/7519597@N05/3055946034/
An apple with a bite out it...
On June 11, 1997, technologist Philippe Kahn shared the first pictures from a camera phone when he sent images from the maternity ward where his daughter Sophie was born. That moment hearalded the of instant visual communication. At the same time, in Japan, Sharp and Koyocera were also working on cell phones with integrated cameras. The Sharp project focused on sharing images, but more interestingly the Kyocera system was designed as a peer-to-peer video phone. Soon after the infrastructure followed, and the rest is history.
The new iPhone has arrived and it finally has video capability! Yes, finally! Hearalded as the next great technological advancement, described by apple as “a revolutionary mobile phone”, it is indeed a ground breaking, but only if Apple have a time machine to hand. If they had released it way back in 98 it would have been ground breaking… if they had released it in 2003 they would still have had a shout. But Apple is 11 years late for the videophone revolution. It’s tech that’s been out for over a decade, but it’s revolutionary! Or if you zip up the back, and are prepared to pay marked up prices for old hat technology.
The only thing revolutionary about Apple is their ability to charge the earth for something that’s old, pre-used, pre-chewed. Enjoy your apple… someone’s already taken a bite out it.
Yahoo! Messenger's insipidly vile title bar colours come in a variety of shades. All expertly picked to dodge and side-swerve stylishness.
The title is the lyrics from a very old pop song, but seemed appropriate. For a few months now I’ve been using Yahoo Messenger. The thing that struck me every time it popped open was just how ugly the gawd damn thing was! Normally I detest Yahoo, (or any portal website for that matter), and anything the company spawns. So I avoided that particular messenger for years anyway, thank god. Now, however, I have a contact who is mainly a Yahoo user that I need to keep in touch with. So for me Yahoo just became a neccessary evil. Naturally the skinz, or skins, or themes or whatever they’re called were driving me daft. Finally I decided enough was enough and went in search of more themes. There I discovered that Yahoo 8 had a Vista version that looked 10 fold better than yahoo 9, but now the Vista version has been discontinued to focus on the one (f-ugly) version for all windows flavors. Now that discovery made me angry. It’s bad enough that something looks ugly, but it’s even worse when it’s willfully ugly when something that looked a million times better than it got killed off in favour of it.
This gorgeous looking interface for Yahoo was available for version 8 then scrapped. They are mad!
If Yahoo had anyone there who was in the slightest bit competent they would have integrated the Vista theme in with Messenger 9 and given Vista users the option of turning it on. It looks a million times better. But no, that would have been too liberating. That would have been too democratic. And we know how big corporations like to stamp on their users so they know their place. Instead they wanted to push their idea of what a good skin should look like, and they sure as hell weren’t going to let simple things like style and class get in the way of a good eye-poke. Indeed my eyes are all blood shot from many months of exposure to this hideous abomonation. I would much rather scrub my eyeballs with a wire brush than look at Yahoo! Messenger. I can think of many pleasant hours worth of fun involving my back, a giant bad guy, a whip, and myself tied to a stake in the ground while a bunch of evil henchment stand watching - that would be far more appealing than sitting in front of Y!9. I did try to find the old Vista version of Yahoo 8 but I didn’t have much luck. Clearly Yahoo made extra sure, no one could find it, because something that stylish just doesn’t belong in the hands of the proletariate scum does it? I bet all the big execs at Y! all use the vista themed version for themselves. If anyone who reads this happens to know where I could find one, I’d love to hear from you.
Behold Yahoo 9 in all it's ugly glory. If you think it looks ugly there, just you wait till it's in amongst aero skinned apps where it sticks out like a horned, red man, in Sunday service.
So we ended up with what could only be described as ‘a bit of a disaster’. A bit of a day-glow-colour-bomb disaster. This is primary colour terrorism. This is train-wreck-technicolour-disaster-blaster-hostage-holding. Style, if ever we see her again will be spotted in a you tube vid with the Y! execs standing behind her demanding 1 million US dollars for her safe return. How sad. It looks like the designer was trying to capture the beauty of a toxic waste spill. Indeed when you look at the gut wrenchingly garish colours that are available, you begin to think something along the lines of; mad, scientist, lab, chemicals, BOOM. Did I mention mad? Lots of mad… It would surely cheer up a 6 year old though, but not very helpful as 6 year olds shouldn’t be allowed near the damn thing anyway. So we are left scratching our heads, and staring at it with tears in our eyes, while the search for a nice theme turns up nothing. Definitely nothing at the messenger official site, and nothing at third party websites. Really I was beginning to think that I would be stuck with it for ever more, when I had an idea. I went to http://www.oldversion.com/Yahoo-Messenger.html and downloaded version 8, uninstalled 9, then installed version 8 and set it not to automatically update. It was my intention to install a better looking theme, because there seemed to be plenty of them available for version 8. It was when was trying a couple of themes out I found that it was possible to use the OS default theme. Which was an even better result than I anticipated because it got Aero to work with it. Thank god for that!
Ta-da! And the final result, no hideous primary colours in sight, just Aero in all its shiny beauty. And yes, I gaussian blurred my contacts for their privacy.
Jun
For the Video Trailer for 'A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack The Ripper'
YAY! I’ve picked up an award!
What else is there to say really? It seems the video Brian, Mario and I did for his book, ‘A Study in Red: The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper’, and the upcoming film, has picked up last months New Covey Trailer Award for Most Intriguing Trailer. (Yay!). And for those of you who have never seen the trailer to a study in red, it is included below… enjoy…
If you liked what you saw then ‘A Study in Red’ can be purchased from our own store, just folow the link and click on ‘Non-Mythica Book Store’ from the menu on the left. Click here to go to the Mythica Book Store.
Jun
When designing anything, consistency is one of the most important rules. It can apply to something as simple as text, or as complex as the graphics. A simple example of consistency is the simple rule to use as few fonts as possible when designing, in as few sizes as possible, with as few colours as possible. If this rule is followed, the whole document/design has a consistent look to it. Compare it to a 25 font monster, and you can see how consistency instantly improves the look of an amaturish document. It is of course not limited to text. Consistency might mean having the same look across all the pages on a website, or including similar graphical elements as section boxes in a magazine. It could mean using a particular rule, and sticking to it throughout the design process as you design a graphic. Internal consistency is important to any document, graphic, or series of designs. Remember that.
Advert in a field that appeared near an airport giving everyone a lovely first impression of Britain.
It was predicted by Philip K. Dick. He saw a future in which everything was advertising and garbage. Cheap disposable products, plastics, consumer culture, buy-all-you-can! culture… Yeh, he saw it coming.
Not that I have anything against buying things. I drop more money on expensive gadgets than really I ought to, but my point is we are now at the stage where advertizing is reaching peaks of obnoxiousness never before reached. See the picture on the left for one example.
The thing that sparked this post might at first appearances seem simple, my wireless broadband from 3 Mobile updated itself. After it updated itself it began to open up the 3 Mobile website every 10-20 minutes or so. Now I have nothing against it opening up it’s website once, each time it connects. But when it is constantly opening up the website it gets annoying, and eats into the bandwidth that I’m paying for. With the damn thing was popping up so frequently I ended up with several tabs worth of the 3 Mobile website open while I worked on something online. I had to actually call their technical support to find out how to switch it off - so I can only imagine there are folks who have no idea how to switch it off, and are still putting up with it.
Such an inconvenience to the end user is justified as being a ’service’. They want to ‘help’ the user ‘find’ the 3 website, so they can enjoy the ‘customer service’ (be sold to). It’s stealth advertising at its very worst. And 3 Mobile should be ashamed of themselves for pulling it on customers like myself. If you get stealthy advertising through a medium you pay for, you must complain, otherwise soon we’ll be overrun with adverts everywhere. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Another instance is the lengthy adverts at the beginning of some DVD movies. WTF? Followed for a big long advert about why piracy is crime. Piracy crime? Yeh? Well the people who are watching the pirated videos aren’t having to skip through a dozen adverts only to be made to watch an advert about piracy. The pirates take that shit out, and I think they have the right idea. If I pay for a DVD I don’t expect adverts on the damn thing. Fair enough on rental DVDs but DVDs I’ve bought? No way! That’s like the BBC charging TV license money and then displaying adverts, that’s like selling me a desk that has an advert for IKEA carved into the top of it, or selling me vodka that I can only open after I’ve listened to the bottlecap spew forth a litany on the evils of moonshine.
Yeh… it’s time the subjects of overzealous advertising rose up and told these companies where to stick their quest to convert every last inch of everything into an opportunity to market to us.
The Voice of Anton Bouchard
Mythica Publishing’s first print title is out now! Get it at Amazon.com and help support indie publishers.
The Voice of Anton Bouchard and Other Stories is Mythica Publishing’s first print title and already our best selling book. Brian L. Porter has gifted readers with a delightful collection of thrilling short stories to go along with the title novella. Every story in this book is guaranteed entertain and delight the reader. Those who have read it agree that it is a surefire page turner - but of course we expect nothing less from Mr. Porter.
From deep beneath the sea to beyond the stars, from space to deep within the human psyche; Porter jorneys through stories that are both different and vivid, taking the reader with him.
The Voice of Anton Bouchard includes the following short stories:
‘Red Sky in the Morning’, ‘Breathing to Death’, ‘Megalith’, ‘The Sound of Silence’, ‘An Alien Abduction’, and ‘Bodies in the Cellar’.
Also included as a bonus is a 4 chapter preview of Porter’s next gripping book, ‘Under Mexican Skies’.
Click here to look inside at Amazon
Click here to visit Mythica Publishing
May
Tiger
Writing is both art and science. It is the act of capturing a tiger by the tail and getting to stand still long enough to get a photo of it before it turns around and eats you. The secret to successful writing is to write as fast and as hard as you can, because if you stop, your Tiger will eat you. Speed is key; do not over think about what you are writing, just hammer it out and move onto the next one. Feedback from those who read it can then provide an invaluable tool to help you get better. But remember, never let go of the Tiger’s tail; that means to say write every day, even if it’s just a blog or something, the act of putting something on paper forms a habit that will help keep you away from the business end of your Tiger. Creativity is a thing that bites. You do not want to discover just how powerful its jaws nor how sharp its claws. Sitting in front of a blank screen wondering where your muse is could be likened to writer’s purgatory.
Tip #1 - Write hard & fast, and never stop
May
Angels & Demons
Angels & Demons… what can I say about the recent movie? If you’ve not read the book then no doubt this could be worthwhile since you have no idea what there is to be dissapointed with. If however you have read Angels and Demons then there are some infuriatingly ill-advised changes to the plot that turn the film into something of an annoyance. Please don’t read further if you don’t want to know about the film
WARNING SPOILERS > READ FURTHER AT YOUR OWN RISK
The film started off on a dissapointing note, having got shot of the Aurora plane that takes him to CERN, he instead goes directly to the Vatican in a poxxy little helecopter. The Aurora was one of the coolest bits in the book, but it’s absence sets the tone for the rest of the film. Once he arrives in the Vatican he starts to unravel the mystery by following the clues around town. However, every time Robert Langdon of the book actually gets to do something useful other than decifering symbols, it was clearly deemed too unlikely in the film.
Robert becomes a tourist within his own story. He is taxied about a lot, and stands gawping at events unfolding a lot, but never gets the opportunity to do anything about anything other than cracking the next puzzle. He doesn’t even get to go up in the helecopter at the end, and I was sitting in the cinema watching horrified as he missed his helecopter ride, wanting to shout at the screen “Langdon you fool, you’ve missed your bloody chopper ride!”
So the film was a big dissapointment. I came out of Star Trek (and I’m not a big star trek fan) thinking “wow!” and came out of Angels & Demons thinking “ppffffft” which says it all really. I can see where the one stars are coming from. Personally I would give it two stars and a pat on the head for trying its best to be a good little film. But I think too much was watered down in an attempt to appease the church, and as a result some of the best elements were lost. The raging battle between Science and Church became a raging storm in a teacup for the film.
If you’ve not yet seen Star Trek then I would suggest you drop the money on a Star Trek ticket and go enjoy a masterful reboot: prepare to be blown away by action, plot, drama, and a meaningful storyline that makes the characters work for their money and gives each of them a chance to make a difference.
May
Fiery Myth
Red flames burn in the darkness, and gradually die down. From the ashes of my old website rises a new one.
A reboot, as it were. I do have backups of the old website, of course, but a lot has changed in my life. I’ve left a lot of things behind, why not one more? That one more makes all the difference. It seemed better to write off the old website and start from scratch. There were too many reminders of how things were supposed to go, too many prompts that would get me thinking back to how things were; hot tropical days spent nurturing something that someone else tried to kill. Believing in me proved too hard, too risky, and I was expected to flush my dreams and go in the direction they wanted for me. But I’m a stubborn git. I left to walk my own path. From the ashes of my dream rose a creature of mythology (see Mythica). From the ashes of my old website, rose this one.