Seth Worley made this very fun and amusing tour through plot and genre as a sort of advertisement for Red Giant which provides filters used in video editing. A struggling video maker happens upon a ‘plot device’ and all sorts of trouble begins. Each segment has its own unique and appropriate look achieved through the use of Magic Bullet filters.
NASA Begins its End
The final landing of a NASA space shuttle yesterday, though hailed as the final act of a great technical achievement over the past 30 years, actually represents a complete failure on the part of the United States to build upon the work of scientists and technicians from the 1960s and 70s. It should shock most of the world that the leading superpower, with the world’s most advanced space exploration systems, could not figure out a way to even build a second version of the space shuttle. I’ve never seen a product of technology that stays with version 1.0 for thirty years. There is no viable plan in existence for launching human beings off the earth by the United States. There’s a lot of vaporware and talk. There are models of crew capsules that will maybe one day launch people toward an asteroid or even to Mars. Maybe. None of it works. None of it even has a working toilet. There are no rockets being designed that could even launch the miraculous capsule into orbit. And that crew capsule? If you’ve seen it you then realize that NASA is simply building the Apollo system all over again with extra bunks for three more astronauts. But they can’t build the thing. It doesn’t exist.
There are no longer any means available to the United States for getting people to the International Space Station. There are no means available for getting any equipment up there. The U.S. must rely on rides hitched aboard Russian spacecraft for an indefinite period of time that many NASA experts are now saying could extend to 10 years.
Russia has a more advanced and reliable space exploration system than the United States.
In the mid 1990s I went to a boring Hollywood party and wandered around with a drink in my hand for about half an hour before running into an older couple sitting alone. They seemed uncomfortable and out of place. So I said hello and sat down next to them. The man turned out to be a retired engineer who worked on the design for the Lunar Landing Module during the Apollo years. I asked him why NASA had been unable to return to the moon. His answer was: ‘Because they can’t.’
He explained that NASA had been been decimated by enormous loss of technical knowledge due to retirement. He said that the agency had not properly stored its accumulation of knowledge. He said that if engineers wanted to build a rocket, command module and lander to get back to the moon, they would be completely unable to do so and would be forced to relearn almost everything that had been learned during Apollo. He then said that this would become very clear to the nation sometime within the next 15 to 20 years as existing technology wore out and could not be replaced. I told him that he seemed very depressed about it. He nodded and said the situation was much worse than he could explain. He said that technical notes from engineers hadn’t even been saved. The knowledge was just totally lost.
I think that guy was right. I don’t think NASA could build a new shuttle even if it tried.
NASA’s insistence on transferring launch responsibilities over to private space companies would perhaps make some sense if we had seen it being phased in alongside the existing shuttle technology. But to shut down our only means of space transport and hope for the best with future private launches is simply begging for disaster. How tested will this new private space launch technology be? Why would an astronaut climb into a rocket built by some company run by PayPal’s founder? It’s insane and stupid. What if the first private launch vehicle with astronauts explodes on liftoff? What happens then? Is there even a backup plan?
The Grand Master: Wong Kar Wai Film Trailer
The magnificent Hong Kong film director, Wong Kar Wai, is nearing completion of a new film called ‘The Grand Master.’ It’s a kung fu flick! The film was rumored to have been in a production halt, but now it looks as if things are coming together. It’s hard to find accurate information about this director’s work so I’ll just leave you with this very wet trailer.
Photo: Got My Eye On You
Pier Paolo Pasolini – The Form of the City
Here’s a 1973 film with Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini talking about the need to protect the basic form of a city because it is an expression of anonymous popular history. Pasolini believed that modern consumerism was destroying Italy in the early seventies more successfully than fascism.
BOMB: A Manifesto of Art Terrorism
Artist and filmmaker Raymond Salvatore Harmon has written an inspiring and thought-provoking book that insists on changing the way art is perceived and approached by artists, viewers and the ever-problematic gallery world. Harmon presents several stories of his own brushes with law enforcement that are both funny and rather harrowing. He consistently recommends behaving as if you have every business being exactly where you are even if you have no permission to paint the front of a building. Confidence and apparent command of a situation will often get a clever artist out of a jam. Harmon is a very likeable guy and I can’t imagine there would be too many police all that interested in arresting this particular artist whose work always seems to have good intentions behind it.
Here’s an important quote from the book:
Ultimately, corporations play the biggest part in designing our modern world. Corporations sell goods, make cars, pump oil and make medicines. They design city planning and develop urban neighborhoods in order to make profit. They create ghettos to house those people that they pay so little they are unable to afford to live anywhere else. Making them exist at the most nominal part of financial need, particularly outside of the white picket fences of the 1st world nations.
Yet, in the darkness of the city night there are those that go out and change the urban landscape without planning permission of a performance license. These people vary in intent and talent but they collectively do what they do against society and against the law.
I like this book. I find it generally inspiring and agitating in the best possible way. However, I do have arguments with it. In general, I tend to prefer looking at street art that does not actually destroy or harm property. Artists who violate laws by gluing things on walls should I think be treated rather lightly. However, I can certainly imagine scenarios in which a business – even a corporate one – could be seriously harmed by the placement of street art on its walls. Not all corporations are British Petroleum. I don’t see any logical link between artistic statement and one’s attitude about a public or corporate wall. If art should in fact be more focused on the act of creation and viewing by the public without concern for how quickly the art is removed, as Harmon’s book suggests, then street artists should be content with painting their work on paper or cloth and hanging it from those corporate walls. Why is there a link between the making of an image and the destruction of a blank corporate wall? Why not make the art and preserve the blank wall?
Harmon has some harsh words for the art world that links itself inextricably with the art schools, identifying artists it likes, feeding them into a network of wealthy friends and collectors, creating an insular world of wealthy back slappers and promoters. You can see this world in operation all over New York and even in Los Angeles. However, I would point out that crony networks are notoriously good at finding and publicizing actual brilliance.
Elsewhere in the book, famed artist/street prankster Banksy is quoted as saying:
Remember, crime against property is not real crime.
Banksy is of course not someone I would want to be taking very seriously since it is more than likely that he is little more than an employee or creative group working at Urban Outfitters. Thankfully, one of Harmon’s stories about copyright leads right into an episode that reveals Mr. Urban… sorry… Banksy, to be just as copyright-obsessed as any corporation. Banksy is apparently working hard on a piece in model Kate Moss’s bathroom… you kind of get the picture?
You’d do much better reading this marvelous and good-natured jab-in-the-ribs art manifesto than paying attention to Banksy, that’s for sure.
Elsewhere in the book is a thoroughly amusing account of an assault on a major art world event that involves video cameras, dark suits and some very CIA-type stuff going on. Read it and enjoy.
Here is the entire book: