Hermenautic Circle blog

“For the video installation Immersion Farocki visited a workshop organised by the Institute for Creative Technologies, a research centre for virtual reality and computer-simulations. One of their projects concerns the development of a therapy for war-veterans suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Farocki is interested in the use of virtual realities and games in the recruting, training and now also therapy for soldiers. Farocki explores the connection between virtual reality and the military – how the fictional scenarios of computer games are used both in the training of U.S. troops prior to their deployment in combat zones, and in psychological care for troops suffering battlefield trauma upon their return.”

Immersion, via Steve F.

“Google’s street view blurred the faces of some of the mural people. South Seattle, WA.”, submitted by Troy.

Hilary Mantel on the art of making the dead speak.  I think she may go slightly too far in the direction of flattening the language and making it undistinctive: I loved Wolf Hall and am very eager to read the sequel, but language is the least interesting part of the fictional world she creates.

Sent off the piece I had due today about twenty minutes ago; have a couple of school things I really should do this afternoon, but they are going to have to wait till tomorrow!  Struck with a slight cold or sinus infection of some sort, alas; it is the inevitable consequence, I fear, of a spell of working too hard and the struggle to get out of town without leaving too many loose threads.

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Anonymous Analytics (AA), a mysterious group claiming to be a faction of the global hacktivist organization Anonymous, just released its second short-selling report, this time about the multi-billion dollar Chinese company Huabao International.

Entitled “Smoke and Mirrors,” it’s a comprehensive unraveling of fraud in China’s biggest flavor and fragrance provider. It accuses Huabao of lying about its suppliers and grossly overstating its profit margins to enrich the chairwoman and her proxies, to the detriment of shareholders. Since short-seller Muddy Waters released its first report in 2010, many firms have investigated fraud in public Chinese companies, making millions by publishing information that caused companies’ stock price to fall. But this is the first time a group as murky as AA has entered the fray.

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- Financial (Secret) Services - Interview by Isaac Stone Fish | Foreign Policy

Public service announcement

(from “Backflip,” by Nathan Bulmer, 2012)

(via Who Has the Right to Fly a Drone Above Your Head? Finally, There’s a List - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic)

image from The card catalogue: a practical manual for public and private libraries via Open Library

When people ask me what skills will be useful for the 21st Century Librarian one of the things I frequently mention is being able to work with giant datasets. This is true for many professions such as journalism but the past few years, even the past few months have really shown some exciting opportunities for people who work with libraries, and peopla who love metadata. Harvard’s release of 12 million bibliographic records was only the most recent giant dataset made available. Interested data manipulators also have metadata from the University of Mighigan, Cambridge University, the British Library, some records from the Library of Congress, University of North Carolina, Toronto Public Library and more smaller libraries and archives can be found via the Internet Archive. Exciting times to be sure.

“Since then, I’ve noticed similarly glossy-looking reports popping up on Newsnight and the like, so it may not be long until this is the norm. I’m guessing it’s a practical decision rather than an artistic one: this is how the new ultra-portable, ultra-useful digital cameras make things look: everything’s a teeny bit polished, a teeny bit Instagrammed. You see it everywhere: even Holby City looks like a movie these days. The news is just following suit.”

- What is the difference between The Hobbit and the news? Not as much as there should be | Charlie Brooker | Comment is free | The Guardian

The Internet, specifically social media, is often
perpetuated as being a new kind of ‘revolution celebrity’ and indeed to some
point its played a hefty distributive role in accelerating the 2011 Egyptian
Revolution, Occupy and even the SOPA protests to name but a recent few. Yet, it simultaneously
is this other exploitative entity, capitalizing on our movement through online
space and constantly collecting data with often vague, ill-defined
intentions.  Can social media’s two dynamic
roles—both as a constructive social platform for anti-government efforts and a data aggregating system—be
synthesized into a critical and valuable commons? Can personal user data
collection be used for more than advertising and increased commodification?

Techno-sociologist, Zeynep
Tufekci proposes that today, connection and friendship are moving from the
‘ascribed ties’ of inherited local relationships consisting of one’s neighborhood friends,
family, etc. to ‘achieved ties’ or relationships located based on the shared
affinities of people ‘with whom you interact using multiple means of
communication’.  What can such shifts reveal about territorial and even regional interaction? Of neighborhoods, boroughs
and its socio-economic behaviors? How can geography be re-defined?

The Livehood Research
Project from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University
is potentially one example of how data collection can be used in a
constructive, illuminating way, by demonstrating how place can be defined by
social activity (maybe rather than by jurisdiction).  Livehood uses the data of over 18 million foursquare
check-ins to map both geographic distance of frequented venues as well as
plotting its ‘social distance’, or ‘the degree of overlap in the people that
check-in to them’. Through accumulation of foursquare check-ins, Livehood algorithmically
condenses this data into neighborhoods allowing a user to view the pattern sets
of other people’s use of space.

Though the project in its current stages is still extremely limited (restricted so
far to only three US cities, as well as accessible only to foursquare users) Livehood could develop into an extremely valuable tool for future governments
and its citizens, as both a social lubricant and political tool. It also could just as easily fulfill yet another advertiser’s dream.

Comsat Angels’ “It’s History” single came out April 30, 1982.

It’s a ubiquitous image now: in pictures from Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, anti-SOPA/PIPA demonstrations, you see figures in Guy Fawkes masks. Since first entering the American cultural field via the lulzy culture of Anonymous, the Guy Fawkes mask has become a potent symbolic force in political activism. In January of this year, members of the Polish parliament donned the mask in protest against their government’s support for ACTA, and images of the mask are often used in the media to illustrate stories on digital activism in general. Understanding the significance of symbols like the Guy Fawkes mask both for the groups and individuals using it, and for society and the state at large, can help us to understand how digital activism is evolving.

The Guy Fawkes mask is an old one, and its symbolic life has been complex. Guy Fawkes, the man, was one of the perpetrators of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an attempt by English Catholics to assassinate King James and blow up the House of Lords. November 5th has historically been known as Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night in Great Britain, and is celebrated with fireworks, bonfires, and the burning of Guy Fawkes in effigy. The Guy Fawkes mask has its roots in these celebrations.

The mask and, to some extent, the historical figure of Guy Fawkes received a bit of rehabilitation via the 1982-89 comic book series V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. The comic depicts a near-future Britain under the rule of a fascist dictatorship. The main character, an anarchic revolutionary known only as V, wears a stylized Guy Fawkes mask, and convinces another character, Evey, to join with him in an elaborate and violent plot to bring down the government and return political autonomy to the British people.

A film adaptation of the comic book was released in March of 2006, directed by James McTeigue and starring Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving. (Alan Moore refused to endorse the adaptation, saying the project dampened the anarchist leanings of the original work and ignored its anti-Thatcherite message.) The film was a financial and critical success, bringing in over $130 million in its box office run. As part of the commercial merchandising of the film, Halloween costume replicas of Hugo Weaving’s V costume and mask were sold starting in September 2006, with the mask available separately for $6.99.

The mask as an object began its migration into modern popular-political culture on the /b/ board of 4chan, the online image board that gave rise to the group Anonymous. A character known as Epic Fail Guy, a stick figure who failed at everything, became popular on /b/ in 2006. In a collaborative cartooning style popular on the boards, threads would be posted (with single frame images contributed by many people) showing Epic Fail Guy trying to achieve some action or status and failing again and again. In late September 2006, one such thread appeared wherein Epic Fail Guy discovered what appeared to be a V for Vendetta film-type Guy Fawkes in a garbage can. Subsequently, Epic Fail Guy was often depicted wearing the mask.

It’s unclear whether this association had anything to do with the historical story of Guy Fawkes (whose Gunpowder Plot was, in fact, an EPIC FAIL), or whether it was due simply to the marketing blitz for V for Vendetta. Either way, the initial popularity of the mask within the Anonymous community was directly due to its association with Epic Fail Guy, and only indirectly (if at all) to political sympathy with either the historical Guy Fawkes or V for Vendetta.

The mask crossed over into real-world political use with Operation Chanology, an anti-Scientology international protest organized in early 2008 by Anonymous; it was a notable moment in the politicization of Anonymous. Protesters appeared outside Churches of Scientology worldwide to protest what they saw as the Church’s censorious and abusive practices. The mask’s role in Operation Chanology was two-fold. Given Scientology’s vindictive reprisals against those who challenge the church publicly, many Anons wore the mask in order to conceal their identities at the IRL protests. The secondary motive was a play off of the mask’s meaning within the Anonymous community; the use of the mask called out what Anons saw as the EPIC FAILness of Scientology. This was just one of many many inside jokes and cultural memes (including references to lolcats and earlier Anonymous raids) that peppered the Operation Chanology protests.

As Anonymous’s political identity has developed, the symbolism of the mask has shifted away from Epic Fail Man. The population involved in Anonymous actions has expanded beyond those involved with 4chan and the notorious message board /b/ to encompass activists and those involved with more mainstream internet culture. The symbolism of the mask itself, adopted by anti-authoritarian protesters from OWS to the Arab Spring, seems to have reverted to more closely embody the meaning in the V for Vendetta comics and film. Rather than overtly mocking those targeted by the protesters, the mask (an anarchic folk hero with a smile and curved mustache) serves as a political identifier. The wearer is identified as anti-authoritarian, a member of an online generation that values the freedom of communication and assembly that the internet has so powerfully enabled.

Anonymous has another iconic signature that symbolizes the group’s leaderless nature: a headless black suit with its arms folded behind it. The suit calls to mind pop culture figures like Agent Smith in The Matrix and the powerful secret agents in Men in Black — figures which represent an unknown power structure operating outside the realm of normal comprehension. Outside of the Anonymous world, however, the Anonymous empty suit hasn’t gained as much traction as the Guy Fawkes mask. The public was primed (by a major Hollywood marketing campaign) to read the Guy Fawkes as a political symbol; the empty suit lacks this external social validation. Also, it’s more difficult to show up at a real world protest dressed as an empty suit than it is to don a mask.

Anonymous’s conception of identity is at base a pluralistic one. The power and attraction of Anonymous is built out of the concept of the hoard, the mass, the unstoppable wave. “We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us,” is the unofficial motto of Anonymous. It appears in videos, image macros, and all manner of viral media produced by and around Anonymous. The phrase “We are legion” comes from the Gospel of Mark, from the story where Jesus exorcises a demon from a possessed man. When asked for its name, the demon replies, “αὐτῷ Λεγιὼν ὄνομά μοι, ὅτι πολλοί ἐσμεν:” meaning, “I am [called] legion, for we are many.” The original phrase, perhaps better than the Anonymous adaptation, captures the peculiar nature of the Anonymous identity meme, wherein many different identities are drawn up and into a single identity. One central source is made more powerful by the participation of many individuals. But those individual identities move in and out of different states of participation. Individuals join in under the banner of Anonymous, temporarily subsuming their personalities under the larger, meta-personality of the Anonymous hoard. The mask is a signifier of that shift.

A technological parallel for this subsumation is the “Hive Mind” mode built into a version of the LOIC DDOS tool, which was popular during the Operation Payback DDOS attacks that began in September 2010. Named for a weapon used in the Command and Conquer videogame series, the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) is an open source network stress-testing application that can perform a denial-of-service (DoS; or when used by multiple individuals, DDoS) attack on a target site. When running in Hive Mind mode (or Fucking Hive Mind mode, depending on the version you were running), rather than independently targeting and deploying the tool, you could instead place your computer under the control of a central IRC server. By joining this voluntary botnet, you were able to add your individual digital voice to the stream of other voices being controlled by an overarching persona: “I am legion, for we are many.”

In addition to its identity value, the Guy Fawkes mask also embodies a narrative value. This narrative is an aggregate one, which incorporates the various ideologies and social myths associated with the mask and Guy Fawkes himself over four centuries. Even though Anonymous may not have intended to reference Guy-Fawkes the Catholic would-be-regicide during Operation Chanology, that narrative was still present. Today, as the political use of the mask spreads beyond Anonymous to movements like Occupy Wall Street and more mainstream Internet activism, it retains its narrative associations not only with Guy Fawkes but with Operation Chanology, Operation Payback, and the Anonymous collective persona.

As the mask becomes more popular in the general population, it’s helpful to recall the communalist aspects of online communities and protest environments. A core value of Anonymous, one that grew out of the default architecture of the 4chan imageboard, is the anonymity — and thus the radical equality — of its participants. When worn by members of the Occupy movement, the mask symbolizes that movement’s message of equality and communalism. The mask also emphasizes the need for anonymity in our political system, both rhetorically and actually. As with the original protests in Operation Chanology, many participants in the Occupy movement felt that open participation could put them in danger of losing their job or suffering other social and economic consequences. Just as the ubiquitous presence of cheap cameras in the hands of civilians empowers them against the casual brutality of the police, the mask empowers the public against the so-called panopticon — the cameras of the state, or the cameras co-opted by the state. In an age in which we are dogged by social media, it is vital that there be moments when we can choose to have an anonymous voice (in the voting booth, among other places). Masked protest is in part a statement in support of anonymity, privacy.

It is perhaps tempting to view Anonymous as the Legion in the Gospel of Mark story, i.e., a corrupting — even demonic — presence within a larger structure. However, although the Anonymous identity meme does operate as a sort of possessive, incorporating force, absorbing individuals temporarily and acting as a meta-identity structure, it is by no means simply malignant. Anonymous is one face of a broad anti-authoritarian, pro-freedom sentiment; its iconic mask symbolizes both that movement’s ends, its means (individuals collected as a single entity), and the right to anonymous public political participation. The use of the Guy Fawkes mask suggests a movement with an infinitely reproducible identity, a fractal movement via which individuals or small cells can operate and act — for better or worse, hopefully the former — with the power of the whole.

Fun Boy Three’s “The Telephone Always Rings” single came out April 30, 1982. Here’s the original promo video.

** Originally published at World Now: MEXICO CITY -- The campaign for the front-runner in Mexico's presidential election is producing reality TV-style documentary videos that show him kissing and flirting with his wife, eating ice cream and returning home after a day on the campaign trail to hug his daughters. The videos constitute a new level in the blurring of lines between politics and pop media in Mexico, and appear to be energizing support among voters. Enrique Peña Nieto, galloping toward the July 1 vote with a double-digit lead over his two main rivals, would be the first president from...

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The Bow Quarter complex of more than 700 apartments is the first of a handful of housing developments close to the Olympic Park chosen by military planners to host high velocity rockets aimed at preventing an airborne terrorist attack on this summer’s Games.

Ministry of Defence officials will this week inform a number of other residents within firing distance of the main stadiums that their homes have been selected to become part of London’s military lockdown. The missile units will be installed and armed with dummy rockets in time for a national Olympic security exercise starting on Wednesday. The test of the government’s £1bn security plans will run either side of the forthcoming bank holiday weekend and will see RAF Typhoon fast jets and military helicopters operating above London and the home counties.

The Star Streak missiles that are likely to be installed on top of a water tower inside the Bow Quarter complex travel at more than three times the speed of sound, have a range of 5km and use a system of three dart-like projectiles to allow multiple hits on a target. Ten soldiers will be on duty at all times to guard and operate the missiles if needed to bring down a fast-moving jet or helicopter attack.

”

- ‘It’s rather surreal’ … residents react to plan for roof rockets during Olympics | Sport | The Guardian

Nick Lowe’s “My Heart Hurts” single came out April 30, 1982.

publicdomainthing:

Wimmer’s Anything Softdrink

State Library of Queensland Australia

Squeeze’s “Sweets from a Stranger” album came out April 30, 1982. Here’s a live performance of “Tears of a Clown” from that era—I don’t think they ever recorded it for real, but it suggests where they got some of their ideas…

In many ways this can be the companion book to Boris Vian's version of Paris,  Manual of Saint-Germain des Prés.  Writer, photographer and media TV host Daniel Farson takes us on a tour of Soho London circ. 1950's where a great deal of time was spent at local caffs (the British diner), bars, and restaurants.  it was pretty much the world of its most famous citizens the painter Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.  But the real star of the scene was photographer John Deakin, an outlandish personality at the time, who struck disgust, annoyance and in a funny way friendship among the local citizens of Soho.

Farson has a talent in capturing the boozy bohemia of those times, and sees Soho as the ultimate destination against boredom and restrictions.  More eccentric characters per block then perhaps anywhere else in the world, Soho is rich in music culture as well as literature.  I have already started a good size collection of books on Soho - and the reason I like it is because of the conservative nature of the world at the time, and the tension that these loons bring to their culture.  The edition I have was published in 1987, and its fully illustrated with photos by Farson, who had the talent or charm to capture these vibrant personalities doing what they do best - socializing and drinking.   Essential!

the only book devoted to John Deakin's work.  Essential find.

Culture Club’s first single, “White Boy,” came out April 30, 1982.

Remote Control

Essays

• Photoshopped Sherman 
• The Impermanent Book
• Art on the Beautiful Island

 

Photoshopped Sherman

Interviews

• A Conversation with Jonathan Lethem 
• Post-Trolling: A Conversation with Art404

 

Artist Profiles

• Ed Fornieles
• Sami Ben Larbi
• Hannah Sawtell
• Jordan Tate 
• Laure Provost 
• Antoine Catala

 

The Impermanent Book

Reviews

• Remote Control 
• Jodi: Street Digital

 

Wordworks

• Robot Literature by Angelo Plessas 
• Poems by Steve Roggenbuck

 

More

• Rhizome Seven on Seven: The Live Blog
• Rhizome Seven on Seven on Vimeo
• The Scanner at Saamlung 
• Rebecca Allen’s 3D Graphics for Kraftwerk
• New Full Length Documentary on the Demoscene
• RECOMMENDED READING: An Essay on the New Aesthetic

 

 

 

“Courtesy of Google”, a series of paintings by Keighty Alexander

A series of 26 posts featuring excerpts from Joshua Glenn’s The Idler’s Glossary (Biblioasis, 2008) and The Wage Slave’s Glossary (Biblioasis, 2011). Both books were coauthored by Mark Kingwell, who contributed entertaining philosophical-critical essays on the subjects of idling and wage slavery; and both were wittily illustrated and designed by the cartoonist Seth.

MICAWBERISH

Is anyone’s heart so hard that it doesn’t go out to Micawber, the secret hero of
David Copperfield. Micawber — portrayed brilliantly by W.C. Fields in the 1935 movie adaptation of the Dickens novel — lives in optimistic expectation of better fortune, but won’t lift a finger to make it come any sooner.

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ALSO: Alienation | Big Rock Candy Mountains | Corporation | Dawdle | Employee of the Month | Flazy | Greybearding | Hobo | Inemuri | Jack of All Trades | Knock Off Work | Lazy | Nobbing It | Onboarding | Pink Slip | Quitter | Robot | Stakhanovite | Time and Motion Study | Unemployment | Volupté | Wage Slavery | Xerox Subsidy | Yakuza | Zero Drag

“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.” [Jonathan Franzen]

[Franzen’s] speech raised heated discussions in newspaper columns and on the internet. The focus was mainly on defending technology and e-books as a viable and improved evolution, and on how he was being retrograde.  What was missing from the discourse was the fact that technology has also violently altered printed books in a way from which there is no return. We are so disconnected from the means of production that nobody seems to be aware that books are produced very differently then they were 100 years ago. Digital files are exchanged between writers, publishers and printers all over the world.

In the context of the Piracy Project, which we initiated in London in 2010, we discovered cases, which not only took control over the object, but over the content. Inspired by Daniel Alarcon’s article in Granta magazine, “Life Among Pirates”, we traveled to Peru and discovered, for instance, a pirated version of Jaime Bayly’s novel No se lo digas a nadie with two extra chapters added. This physical object may look obviously pirated to a trained eye but could easily pass as the original if you were not looking for differences. The extra chapters are good, good enough to pass undetected by readers. 

Rhizome | The Impermanent Book

Born in South Carolina, Blues and Gospel singer and guitarist REVEREND GARY DAVIS (1896-1972) combines mumbling, preaching, singing, and exclaiming in a jumble of rhythmic sounds. Blind since he was an infant, Davis grew up in poverty and started out as a street musician. It is his unique word choice combined with his insight into the nature of sight and his talent in expressing that musically that sometimes provides a sound track for my thoughts. On being blind, Davis has said:

Since I was a man that come up that didn’t see, that perhaps if I had been a man that could see like the others… I might have seen more than I cared to look upon. Now what I am trying to get you to see: a lot of people, you know, looks on a many things, and his eyes caused them to lose their lives. And many times where many people have been strung up on limbs in the low countries and lynched just by looking. Sometimes a man’s eyes never done nothing but just look. See? I often think of that. Well, a body’s eyes were made to look right enough, but sometimes it pays a man to keep his eyes closed.

Davis moved more solidly into recording gospel music after becoming a Christian and an ordained Baptist minister. His entire oral history has been recorded by Elizabeth Lyttleton Harold. Below, he performs “Hesitation Blues.”

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On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: Willie Nelson and Alice B. Toklas.

READ MORE about members of the Hardboiled (1894-1903) Generation.

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In the middle of 2011, Mardenborough had entered an online competition on Gran Turismo 5 that offered one final shot at the real thing. Out of 90,000 other virtual racers, he made it into the top eight in Europe and won the chance to test himself against other gamers in a real car at Brands Hatch. That he had kept it to himself for so long was entirely in character for a boy who did not like to make a fuss. “At that point we had no idea what it was,” admits Steve.

Seven months later, in January this year, Mardenborough, who’d never set foot in a racing car, was at the wheel of a serious piece of kit in the Dubai 24 Hour race – and at the beginning of what appears to be a very exciting career.

”

- From gamer to racing driver | Sport | The Observer

A curious piece of pop music history with Ray Davies starring in this British tele-play.

The Associates’ “Club Country” single came out April 29, 1982. Here’s a TV performance from that era, preceded by a countdown…

Thirteenth in an ongoing series by John Hilgart. HiLobrow yields to no one in our admiration for his spelunkery into the mysterious and gorgeous depths of comics that we grew up reading without ever noticing what he’s shown us. Check out the manifesto and FAQ of Hilgart’s 4CP project.

Legions

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CREDITS: Where Monsters Dwell 37, September 1975, Marvel. Art: Steve Ditko.

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SIMILAR HILOBROW SERIES: SUBSUPERMEN — Golden Age heroes who didn’t make the grade | MEET THE L.I.S. — John Hilgart discovers “implicit superheroes” concealed within comic-book mastheads | 4CP FRIDAY — themed comic-book detail galleries, curated by admirers of John Hilgart’s 4CP project | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM — 25 writers on 25 Jack Kirby panels | ANNOTATED GIF — Kerry Callen brings comic book covers to life | CHESS MATCH — a gallery of pulp fiction chess games | COMICALLY VINTAGE — that’s-what-she-said vintage comic panels | DC — THE NEW 52 — an 11-year-old reviews DC’s new lineup | FILE X — a one-of-a-kind gallery of “X” pulp paperback covers | SECRET PANEL — Silver Age comics’ double entendres | SKRULLICISM — they lurk among us

CLICK HERE for more comics and cartoon-related posts on HiLobrow.

Science-fiction’s so-called Golden Age (1934-63) was spearheaded by writers who remain well-known (e.g., Heinlein, Asimov, Van Vogt), writers who’ve fallen into obscurity (Fredric Brown, C.L. Moore, Eando Binder), and by betwixt-and-between figures like JACK WILLIAMSON (1908-2006), who was important enough to be named the Dean of Science Fiction — but only after Heinlein died. Williamson, whose first story (“The Metal Man”) appeared in a 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, helped introduce to the Golden Age canon certain memes first developed during sf’s Radium Age (1904-33). These include everything from terraforming (1942′s “Collision Orbit”) to antimatter (1949′s Seetee Shock), to genetic engineering (1951′s Dragon’s Island). Williamson also introduced readers, via Darker Than You Think (1940), to the persuasive notion that werewolves invented rational skepticism in order to make humankind stop believing in werewolves; if this meme never caught on, blame the werewolves’ ongoing cultural hegemony. Williamson’s most important contribution may be to science fiction’s space opera subgenre: His Legion of Space series, which stars warriors Jay Kala and Hal Samdu, the Purple Hall Empire renegade John Ulnar, and super-lockpicker Giles “The Ghost” Habibula, is a key link in the chain connecting the space opera of, for example, E.E. “Doc” Smith to that of, say, Iain M. Banks.

***

On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: Maya Deren.

READ MORE about members of the Partisan Generation (1904-13).

Well.


So, um, at first I thought this was going to be a 25,000 word story. Ha ha ha. I think I'm going to be lucky to get done at 50,000 words. It may be getting way longer than that. At this point, we haven't even made it to Minas Tirith yet. Heck, we haven't even made it to Henneth Annûn yet. We're still wandering around in the forests of Ithilien getting to know each other. Unless I can have more days like today—today I edited 5,000 words and wrote an additional 2,000 or so—I am going to be really screwing up my writing schedule. I need to get done with this fanfic so I can write some original stuff!

That said, it's really breaking my brain to write something that's intended to be primarily entertaining. I can feel the synapses popping.

I was serious when I asked, before, whether anybody knew where to post LotR fic. I also wonder whether anybody is actually going to read this thing. I mean, I'm going to probably post it on the Ao3, FF.N and maybe Henneth Annûn. Many LotR sites don't accept slash (there's a Legolas/Gimli subplot here) or only accept slash (the Legolas/Gimli is only a subplot) or don't accept 'modern person in Middle Earth' stories (which always makes me wonder whether they've read the Lost Tales, but anyway).


comments

animalstalkinginallcaps:

YOU SHOULD PROBABLY JUST STAY IN THE CAR. THEY FOUND OUT THE STITCHES THEY USE WEREN’T FAIR-TRADE OR CONTAIN MODIFIED SOY OR SOMETHING SO THE ENTIRE STAFF WENT OUT LOOKING FOR NEW ONES.

WELL, EXCEPT FOR THE THREE THAT WENT TO MAKE PATCHES AND STICKERS ABOUT IT.

A COUPLE OF THEM WANTED COFFEE TOO, SO IT COULD BE A WHILE.

ATAIC captions one of Lisa’s photos!

APB’s “Palace Filled With Love” single came out April 28, 1982.

Subhumans’ “Big City” single came out April 28, 1982.

B.E.F. and Tina Turner’s single of “Ball of Confusion” came out April 28, 1982.

Twelfth in an ongoing series by John Hilgart. HiLobrow yields to no one in our admiration for his spelunkery into the mysterious and gorgeous depths of comics that we grew up reading without ever noticing what he’s shown us. Check out the manifesto and FAQ of Hilgart’s 4CP project.

Fortress of Solitude

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CREDITS: House of Secrets 131, May 1975, DC. Art: Alex Nino.

***

SIMILAR HILOBROW SERIES: SUBSUPERMEN — Golden Age heroes who didn’t make the grade | MEET THE L.I.S. — John Hilgart discovers “implicit superheroes” concealed within comic-book mastheads | 4CP FRIDAY — themed comic-book detail galleries, curated by admirers of John Hilgart’s 4CP project | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM — 25 writers on 25 Jack Kirby panels | ANNOTATED GIF — Kerry Callen brings comic book covers to life | CHESS MATCH — a gallery of pulp fiction chess games | COMICALLY VINTAGE — that’s-what-she-said vintage comic panels | DC — THE NEW 52 — an 11-year-old reviews DC’s new lineup | FILE X — a one-of-a-kind gallery of “X” pulp paperback covers | SECRET PANEL — Silver Age comics’ double entendres | SKRULLICISM — they lurk among us

CLICK HERE for more comics and cartoon-related posts on HiLobrow.

Portrait of Kraus by Kokoschka

As German’s fin de siècle language maven KARL KRAUS (1874-1936) didn’t chide about broken rules: Journalists and politicians knew how to write and speak correctly, yet they slackened the rules in order to say and do how they wished. As violent, European timpani rolled, Kraus presaged barbarity by pointing out linguistic abuses. German had begun that great rehearsal for a vulgar, stricken, and base play with words.

To watch an abuse of language go by and do nothing is to watch another go by. Language is a seismograph. And Kraus was not playing at analogies. For in language is our divinity. To butcher it breeches ethics. When a poet of any medium arrives at that poetry something rings true; torture expression and the opposite is true. Language is the tuning fork, the square. Yelling and noise work for a while, but a kind of level harmony eventually returns. We come to our senses, to a synonym for meaning.

To believe language is just a vehicle for agendas is the purview of thinkers who rationalize, abstract, and twist & turn language to suit. Plenty of sloppy talk or text is benign, and the egghead on our backs about it borders on antisocial. Language, however, is a music. Harmony is built in. The act of playing and reproducing it will soon show whether the author is on track. We can all ask that our neighbors respect our ears. Laziness about language is a willingness to be lazy about our thoughts and thus our behavior. Everything we’ve done or will do is somewhere in the dictionary. Language is light and darkness and all the play we long for is lexical and combinatory. Sometimes truth can be liberating, sometimes it can be difficult. But in the end it comes out.

Kraus published a Viennese journal called The Torch from 1912 until his death in 1936. He was a bold and authoritative satirist. In the face of the darkness that was already starting to blanket Europe again, he pointed to enlightened language as a way out. It’s what we all take part in. His enemies were foremost the writers and journalists who played along as folks demolished language and, as he warned, one another.

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On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: Kim Gordon and Kurt Gödel.

READ MORE about men and women born on the cusp between the Anarcho-Symbolist (1864-73) and Psychonaut (1874-83) Generations.

Here are some sequences of vector spaces.  In each case, the sequence is indexed by n, and all other variables are understood to be constant.  So suppose V_n is the space

• H^i(Conf^n M, Q) for M a connected oriented manifold of dimension at least 2.
• The (j_1, .. j_r)-multidegree piece of the diagonal coinvariant algebra on r sets of n variables.
• H^i(M_{g,n},Q), the cohomology of the moduli space of curves of genus g with n marked points.
• The tautological subring of the above.
• The space of degree-d polynomials on the rank variety parametrizing nxn matrices of rank at most r.

By a character polynomial we mean a polynomial with integral coefficients in variables X_1, X_2, X_3, … .  We interpret these symbols (and thus character polynomials) as class functions on the symmetric group by S_n by taking

X_i(s) = number of i-cycles in s

for each permutation s.

Then we show that, in each of the examples above, there’s a character polynomial P such that the character of the action of S_n on V_n is given by P, for all sufficiently large n.  This is one way in which one can say that a sequence of representations of larger and larger symmetric groups are “all the same.”  In particular, by plugging in the identity we find that dim V_n is a polynomial in n, for n large enough.

For many of these examples, almost nothing is known about dimensions of individual spaces!  So a strong regularity theorem like this is perhaps surprising.  Even more surprising (to us at any rate) is that theorems like this require only very meager input from whatever context generate the vector spaces.  You get this stability (and many others) almost for free.

More about how it all works tomorrow!

Tom Church, Benson Farb and I have just posted a new paper, “FI-modules:  a new approach to representation stability,” on the arXiv.  This paper has occupied a big chunk of our attention for about a year, so I’m very pleased to be able to release it!

Here is the gist.  Sometimes life hands you a sequence of vector spaces.  Sometimes these vector spaces even come with maps from one to the next.  And when you are very lucky, those maps become isomorphisms far enough along in the sequence; because at that point you can describe the entire picture with a finite amount of information, all the vector spaces after a certain point being canonically the same.  In this case we typically say we have found a stability result for the sequence.

But sometimes life is not so nice.  Say for instance we study the cohomology groups of configuration spaces of points of n distinct ordered points on some nice manifold M.  As one does.  In fact, let’s fix an index i and a coefficient field k and let V_n be the vector space H^i(Conf^n M, k.)

(In the imaginary world where there are people who memorize every word posted on this blog, those people would remember that I also sometimes use Conf^n M to refer to the space parametrizing unordered n-tuples of distinct points.  But now we are ordered.  This is important.)

For instance, you can let M be the complex plane, in which case we’re just computing the cohomology of the pure braid group.  Or, to put it another way, the cohomology of the hyperplane complement you get by deleting the hyperplanes (x_i-x_j) from C^n.

This cohomology was worked out in full by my emeritus colleagues Peter Orlik and Louis Solomon.  But let’s stick to something much easier; what about the H^1?  That’s just generated by the classes of the hyperplanes we cut out, which form a basis for the cohomology group.  And now you see a problem.  If V_n is H^1(Conf^n C, k), then the sequence {V_n} can’t be stable, because the dimensions of the spaces grow with n; to be precise,

dim V_n = (1/2)n(n-1).

But all isn’t lost.  As Tom and Benson explained last year in their much-discussed 2010 paper, “Representation stability and homological stability,” the right way to proceed is to think of V_n not as a mere vector space but as a representation of the symmetric group on n letters, which acts on Conf^n by permuting the n points.  And as representations, the V_n are in a very real sense all the same!  Each one is

“the representation of the symmetric group given by the action on unordered pairs of distinct letters.”

Of course one has to make precise what one means when one says “V_m and V_n are the same symmetric group representation”, when they are after all representations of different groups.  Church and Farb do exactly this, and show that in many examples (including the pure braid group) some naturally occuring sequences do satisfy their condition, which they call “representation stability.”

So what’s in the new paper?  In a sense, we start from the beginning, defining representation stability in a new way (or rather, defining a new thing and showing that it agrees with the Church-Farb definition in cases of interest.)  And this new definition makes everything much cleaner and dramatically expands the range of examples where we can prove stability.  This post is already a little long, so I think I’ll start a new one with a list of examples at the top.

Christopher Turner on a new exhibit at the Wellcome. 

Closing tabs:

Pankaj Mishra is unforthcoming at the FT on Susan Sontag (site registration required), to an extent that caused me to look up his earlier review and find it also somewhat withholding.  I must confess that I am vaguely negative on Sontag; her abuse of her personal charisma (or at any rate the way that it distorted her ongoing intellectual development) is unattractive to me, and the only book of hers I can say really had a deep influence on me was Illness as Metaphor, which I read when I was quite young (14, 15?) and which along with Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, which I read around the same time, opened up to me a vision of the sort of book I might want to write.

Maud Newton interviews Alison Bechdel about Are You My Mother?, which I must acquire as soon as possible.  Here's the bit that most interested me (more details in Judith Thurman's New Yorker piece, unfortunately not available online - and I left my copy in the seat pocket on the plane, so I can't retype the relevant bit):

I do write first, but my writing is very drawing-based. I actually write in a drawing application, in Adobe Illustrator. So I'm not just writing in a word processing program, I'm creating these panels on the page and I create little text boxes for the narration or dialogue and I'm able to move that stuff all around. I'm thinking about the page as a two-dimensional field as I write, which feels to me like a kind of drawing even though I'm not drawing with a pencil or not drawing much. I will do occasional sketches. So that takes a really, really long time and that's how I get the whole story mapped out. If you saw the pages at that point, it would be just blank boxes with the text and the dialogue, with the narration and the dialogue and maybe a few images dragged in here and there.

Super-librarian Dave Lull already left this link in the comments, but the opening chapter of Edward St. Aubyn's latest is a must-read.

Miscellaneous light reading around the extremely frayed edges:

Sherwood Smith's Banner of the Damned, which I found appealing but also frustrating (Smith is one of the most hugely talented fantasy novelists of her or indeed any other generation, and yet she writes books so idiosyncratically that it hugely limits enjoyment and readership - in many respects this is much better than George R. R. Martin, only I thoroughly see why his books have reached a much wider audience and hers have internal constraints that will prevent them from doing so).  Cannot imagine that I or, really, anyone else will ever teach such a class, but it would make a very interesting student assignment in a novel-writing class oriented towards epic storytelling and fantasy: it is such an unusual mix of the remarkable and the perverse in terms of storytelling virtues and vices.

Anthony Neil Smith's depressing and mesmerizing All the Young Warriors, which I highly recommend (it will thoroughly depend on your own reading preferences whether you will read either Smith or perhaps neither).

And now I am going to go and consume brain candy in the form of the second half of Robert Crais's Taken....

Site registration definitely worthwhile: a history of the Lunch with the FT feature!  (It must be said that on my very short list of things that would make me feel like I had 'arrived' in the world, being asked to lunch with the FT would be pretty high up: though I truly love this feature most for its stylistic range and variety, along the lines of Toni Schlesinger's brilliant variations on a theme in Five Flights Up.)

We would like to take a brief moment to thank this month’s sponsors. These are the organizations and companies that keep us publishing, so be sure to check them out!

• ArtPrize – Part art competition, part social experiment that awards $560,000 total in prizes; registration through May 24.
• Pulse Art Fair – Pulse New York runs May 3–6, 2012, at The Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, New York.
• BAMart Silent Auction – Auction featuring over 100 artworks, with proceeds to benefit the Brooklyn Academy of Music and its programs
• Saatchi Online – Online gallery that connects artists and art lovers directly: discover art, get discovered.
• Dumbo Arts Festival - Brooklyn’s biggest arts event takes over Brooklyn’s waterfront with visual arts, music, and literature on 9/28-30.
• Norte Maar – Community-building nonprofit organization with an emphasis on collaborative projects
• UncommonGoods – Cool and unusual gifts for any occasion.
• Adam Lindemann – Follow what the New York Observer columnist is seeing and reading at his site.
• Storefront Bushwick – Bushwick gallery currently featuring artists Carol Salmanson and Stephen Traux
• Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical! – An experimental, legally questionable restaging of an orphan-themed Broadway musical, at EFA Project Space
• Pernod Art & Absinthe Guide – A handy mobile app that lists galleries, events and bars serving Pernod in Brooklyn
• Artspan – Contemporary art destination and service providing totally customizable artist websites
• FIT Art Market MA Program – The group exhibition “No Other Medicine” is now on view at NY Studio Gallery through May 19
• “Oh hey. What’s going on?” – a project by artist Jesus Benavente
• Art Systems – Professional art gallery, antiques and collections management software
• Tyler Summer Painting & Sculpture Intensives – 7-week immersion program for artists interested in developing their work in a challenging and supportive environment
• 950 Hart Gallery – The Lowbrow Society Smut! Show, a public celebration of private affairs, May 4–5.
• Claremont Graduate University MFA – A highly focused graduate-only studio-art program

If you are interested in advertising on Rhizome, please get in touch with Nectar Ads, the Art Ad Network.

 

It is sent.  That is a relief.  I do have this little piece to write for Monday, but it's not a proper review, just minor thoughts in the form of an essay, so I think it should be easier and more enjoyable than usual to write (hope those are not famous last words).  I am weary! 

Very happy at the prospect of taking the next few evenings off from work, also at having a good deal of time to exercise over the coming week.

It’s likely that neither of these will make the field, but here is a jaunty cabinet photo with signature of Charles Dana (one time editor of the Brook Farm newspaper The Harbinger among other endeavors) and a really stellar example… continue reading »

 

Gastraea

Arbol

 

Basimycetes

 

Anthropogenie

 

Ernst Haeckel & von Miclucho-Maclay / Canary Islands / 1866