In my exuberance, this had never even occurred to me. Always consult others before making big decisions folks, if only to help cover your blind spots! After a bit more careful reading of the materials I was sent it turned out to be a student short. Well, bless them krazy kids but taking a big leap like I'd have to simply isn't worth it if I'm going to land in a small puddle (and break my legs, to complete the metaphor). I gave them by best wishes and turned them down. Still though, damn, maybe I should be giving unpaid work with actual production companies a more serious look again. I'd pretty much rubbed them out as a possibility, feeling I couldn't afford it. but given how quickly I've been able to find temp data entry work (and some of the pay figures I was being offered just before taking this publishing job in Hammersmith)...well, I think I'll be looking back at it again.
Komix
Meanwhile, I've been looking over what I'm getting down for the comic and I like it but once again there shall be no update! This is because I'm fast realizing that I cannot escape the siren call of continuity and if I am to be having a story that develops then I need to maybe not just be making it up as I go along - as I've been doing thus far! Theoretically I could post the couple of comics I've got done and catch up today, but then it would only take one more violently loud house party or whatever to push me back into a cycle of catch-ups. I've found this painful enough to read, so I think I'm going to take advantage of the sunny side of not having a big audience and abide from updating though NOT working on the comic until I have a good buffer. Then I shall pseudo re-launch with gusto, a safety barrier and less pressure to crank it out which will - as my stupid habits seem to dictate - result in more being cranked out. That being said, I may have a fun drawing of yours truly up later today.
After the things I'm NOT doing, here is something I did/saw
So yes, I went to the ICA and caught that Extreme Environmental Guerrillas exhibit. It was much more of a fanciful, artistic endeavor than a matter of hard science but that's okay!
That's okay.
It should come as little surprise to those who know me that in my more frustrated moments I've often wondered if the only way we're going to avoid the "turn it around in less than ten years or we literally become a dying planet" thing is for some kind of literal eco-fascist regime or regimes to spring up. The guerrillas exhibit contained elements of just that. Take a gander at the manifesto of this fictional group.
Now it's important to remember that this is not a serious proposal but an art project by a very talented looking lady named Michiko Nitta (whose nicely designed portfolio site can be seen here, with the Guerrillas project at the top of the right-hand side bar). Communication, food and death were the main subsections of the project/installation/what-have-you. Regardless of how plausible it is, I rather like the idea of hi-jacking the digital information tags to be found on thousands of animals around the world for a rudimentary communication relay network which would tie into the different species migratory patterns in an attempt to avoid the CO2 heavy traditional postal service (for letters, anyways) and the terrifying, ultra-disposable bullshit of mobile phones.The art was also certainly ahead of the science when it came to the matter of food. The general idea being that we need to breed small, tasty animals which can be reared in our (in this case, the English) immediate neighborhood. This would not only get rid of the large carbon footprint of shipping in food from the countryside (and other countries) but would be using herds of animals which don't have as heavy an impact on their location as, say, cows. The pigeon/quail hybrid was a oddly amusing.
And the inevitable rat hybrid (the Rattit - part rabbit).
Now, as might be expected, the most extreme portion of the project comes under the final sub-section of death. I didn't get the best photo due to someone being in the way, but here is a shot of the Logan's Run style earring which is the centerpiece of the death section.
In a nutshell, the proper EEG member would be fitted with one of these earrings at age twenty. Inside are a set of rings which prevent a needle containing one part muscle relaxant and one part lethal drug from injecting into the wearer. The inner ring rotates slowly and eventually, at age forty, the needle is allowed through to kill the wearer. Simply put, the less days we spend on this Earth, the less we consume of it. Remember, this is an art installation and not really a serious proposal. My first thought was of how the bloody things would probably go through some Beta problems and wind up offing a bunch of people in twenty minutes instead of twenty years. But it does set up the attention grabbing tagline "What would you do if you knew you only had forty years?".After this there was a very enjoyable film titled "The Great Flood of London" (by Ellen Page) whose potential yo warn was somewhat undercut by the fanciful aesthetics (note the return of Zeppelins).
Another part of the installation, by a different person all together, featured a functional rainwater capacitor system made entirely from recycled water bottles. It's aimed at the suburban garden in an attempt to help make the currently unsustainable suburbs something we might be able to keep past the next fifty years without making terrible sacrifices. Sadly the designer, Elliot Frazer Payne, doesn't seem to have a website.
Finally we come to something that I rather liked, a serious attempt at blending solar power and fashion. The website (and pdf) explains it much better than I can so I'll simply say that if I saw them for sale in a store, I would certainly pick some up (maybe holding out for a more masculine equivalent).
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3 comments:
Small edible animals that can be reared in our own neighbourhoods? If only they already existed!
What, pray tell, would be the point of killing people off when they turn 40? You'd just kill them off at their peak of consumption. Consumption doesn't stay stable as you get older- you begin to eat less, drive less, usually downsize the house and energy consumption now that the kids are out...
Not to mention that that plan doesn't address pre-death consumption, really. The average person in Bangladesh consumes less in a lifetime than the average North American does in the first 15 years of their life- will this "40-years" plan be implemented across the board or tied to actual consumption?
Oh yeah, there are plot holes a mile wide in the Eco-Guerrillas bit. One thing I wish I'd taken a photo of were the four mini-bibles/manuals to being an Eco-Guerrilla.
They were done up to look like 1970's era British textbooks and it was from that first aesthetic touch that I could tell the person behind the project either was just putting together a stylistic stimulating thing or maybe to caught up in style to ponder substance.
Ho hum!
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