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Good interview with Chris Cunningham over at res.com. He could be the closest approximation to the Garage Kubrick of which Gibson speaks. Looks like the much-anticipated Cunningham-directed movie of Neuromancer is still on the back burner. Arse. But excitingly, the interview reveals that Cunningham is working on a music and video DVD for Warp Records, in collaboration with Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. Excellent!
For those of you waiting impatiently, like me, for the next William Gibson novel – Pattern Recognition – to be published (February 2003), you can download a sample chapter here. The book is set in present-day London, Russia and Tokyo, one year after the 9/11 attacks, and features a young woman, Cayce, who works for an ultra-hip London advertising/branding agency and suffers a particular sensitivity to logotypes, and who becomes obsessed with information-dense footage of a film which is uploaded to the web by an anonymous ‘Garage Kubrick’ – an idea first mooted by Gibson in a Wired article on digital moviemaking: William Gibson’s Filmless Festival.
Having read the sample chapter, which is pretty darn good, I am very keen to get my hands of the book, not least to luxuriate in Gibson’s vision of London.
If you are really impatient, you could try bidding on a proof copy at eBay – currently going for £15 and no bids so far. (You might like to read Mr Gibson’s paean to eBay, another Wired article: My Obsession)
Woo-hoo! Amazon.ca lists it as being published on January 01, 2003, so I am hoping I will be able to pick up a copy while in Vancouver, which as we all know is home to Mr. Gibson (himself being originally from Kentucky) and also to Mr Coupland. Maybe I can arrange to go for a coffee with the both of them while we are there, heh! That would make for an interesting conversation, apart from myself.
Being a huge Gibson fan (can you tell?) I am also very keen to get hold of the DVD documentary No Maps For These Territories, reviewed by Salon here.
Meanwhile, i am re-reading Virtual Light.
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That’s right, Mr. Coldplay Man, we do indeed. I visited the V & A and the Natural History Museum yesterday, but I didn’t make it inside the latter as I was transfixed by the free exhibition of Earth From The Air photographs outside. I found myself deeply moved by the sublime beauty of this planet, and equally distressed by what we are doing to it. The exhibition makes a very strong case for the importance of developing an ecological mindset before it is too late.
If you live in London and haven’t seen it yet, you should check it out. Wrap up warm, though, or you will freeze yer bleedin’ arse off.
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Going to Vancouver for three weeks on Friday, for our Christmas holiday, so the weblog might be a bit quiet until the new year. Mind you, I will be taking my laptop, and Adrienne’s parents do have broadband, and there is a somewhat circumscribed list of activities in glorious Port Alberni (which is now mildly famous for standing in as the bleak Alaskan town in which Al Pacino has a nasty bout of Insomnia), so I might blog more than usual. Heh.
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Second Story Interactive have redesigned their site, which now features a complete list of the projects, which are invariably beautifully executed pieces of interactive storytelling. A new project is Yu Yin Tang: A Chinese House, an exploration of a late Qing dynasty merchant’s house – now rebuilt at the Peabody Essex Museum – replete with quicktime clips and 3-D fly-throughs galore. These guys are using Flash in a very interesting and compelling way. It is enough to make me want to learn ActionScript properly.
Just as soon as I have mastered After Effects, with the help of Chris and Trish Meyer’s excellent Creating Motion Graphics 2nd Edition, updated for AE 5.5.
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Every now and then I remember, or am reminded of the existence of the brilliant homestarrunner.com. Then I go there and laugh my ass off for about an hour, and vow to try to make some more cartoons, gosh darn it. Probably the funniest cartoon on the web.
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Recently, some friends of mine went snowboarding at the X-Scape Snowdome in the beautiful, scenic, alpine paradise of Milton Keynes. Apparently it was great fun, and ‘only’ cost £38 for two hours. Woo!
Adrienne and I are going to spend Christmas in Vancouver (yay!), so I thought I would look into how much snowboarding in Whistler would cost for the day, given that neither of us have any kit. So I checked out the Whistler-Blackcomb website and found that snowboard, boot and clothing hire, plus lift tickets comes to a grand total of $96CAN, which works out – due to the splendid exhange rate – to £34!
Obviously, if I could afford it I would love one day to be able to carve the pristine slopes of Milton Keynes (or ‘MK’, as the TV ads would have it, heh…) one day, but for the time being Whistler will just have to do.
Hee hee hee! Ha! Bwah-hah! Eat my powder! Erm, I do hope it snows there soon…
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Stern are the last surviving Pinball Machine manufacturers in the world, which is a crying shame. Presumably the pinball industry has been decimated by cheaper, more reliable video games. In an ironic twist, Stern’s latest table is RollerCoaster Tycoon, based on the videogame.
My favourite pinball machine is probably Attack From Mars, in case you were wondering. In a seamless segue, may I invite to share with me your feelings on the demise of pinball, via the magic of a newly implemented commenting system, courtesy of the lovely HaloScan?
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Road signage in London is about the worst I have ever encountered. We drove last night from Muswell Hill to Hackney, becoming increasingly amused, bemused and then irritated by the tiny size, poor placement and frequent obstruction of such signs as there were. Who in their right mind puts a road sign 25 feet up on a wall? Particularly if it is small and grimy. I suppose Londoners just eventually form a mental map…I didn’t notice anyone else frequently slowing to a crawl at junctions while frantically consulting their A-to-Z.
Ah, I love being a hayseed yokel hick.
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Still, we managed to navigate our way to Hackney in the end, where we had a very enjoyable dinner party, met many interesting people, ate pasta in a walnut, chocolate and cognac sauce (num!) and topped off the evening by playing a very, very silly German game involving trying to eat a chocolate bar (initially swaddling in many layers of newspaper) with a knife and fork, while wearing a hat, sunglasses, a scarf and mittens, which items must be relinquished as soon as anyone else at the table manages to throw a six on the dice which is passed around the dinner table.
Needless to say, some people got rather overexcited, and neglected to use their culinary implements, stuffing the chocolate into their faces with their bare hands, at which the Germans present would shriek, as one, ‘Not with zee hands!’ Big fun.
Launchbar is a truly amazing little OS X utility which allows you to do all manner of things, from opening applications and web pages to toggling between apps and accessing files, all using keyboard abbreviations. Almost magically cool. I don’t think I have ever decided to pay a shareware fee more quickly. Thanks to Dean [now know as 'tx'] for bringing my attention to it.
In addition to redesigning the site yet again, I have finally gotten around to doing a books section worthy of the name. It is of course massively incomplete and subject to revision, but I was somewhat hindered by my entire library currently being packed up in boxes. I hope you might find it useful and/or mildly interesting.
Tantek has a blog. This is a good thing. I have already made my blog even yet still more semantically meaningful by implementing his suggestions for beefing up anorexic anchors.
At long last I am now a resident of London. How very exciting! In a minute we are going to travel on a train that runs through tunnels underground! To a place called Kensington, where I will purchase some öliblocks from urban outfitters, then perhaps visit the Rewind exhibition at the V&A museum.
Later in the week I may go ice-skating at Somerset House. Gosh, I wonder if the novelty of living in London will ever wear off?