via Wikimedia Commons

I will be spending most of the month of July in China: in Beijing, and possibly also Shanghai and Qingdao.

The back-story is, that my partner M is going there as part of her Master’s work in folklore (more details on that when it’s link-able), and I, as generally-worldly-writer-and-layabout will be tagging along.

This means, that while my lovely spouse is occupied with her labor, I will be loose on the streets, ready to work for YOU, my small but loyal audience. Therefore, I am taking suggestions on things to research. Want something written about? Photographed? Visited, and documented? Found, and publicized? Well, I’m your POSZU. Send me a note, either in the comments, via email, or through Twitter (@interdome). Because how often do you have a research assistant/writer/jerk in Beijing, ready to work for you?

Note: I am also looking for PAID WRITING GIGS while I’m there. Email me and let’s talk. But while not making my fortune blogging, I’m happy to contribute to the majesty of the Commons. For the good of us all, and the gain of no one.

Here are things that are ON THE LIST:

Architecture
Public Transit
Consumer Electronics
Dumplings
Internet Cafes
Sustainability Projects
Graffiti
Hutongs
Forbidden City

And what else? No topic or project too small. Want a free CC-licensed picture of a particular building? I won’t photograph every single block in the city, but if you can present a compelling reason, I can probably make a day of it.

Well, in the category of “more strange stuff we expose children to”, here is the clip.

Released in 1941.

You can read an interesting analysis of this segment here.

Explains a bit about my subconscious, I suppose.

I have an idea for an entertaining essay about Hitchcock films, so I’m compiling a list. I’ve seen a few of them in my life, but I’m by no means an expert. Perhaps you’d like to help?

I’m particularly looking for films in which part of the suspense is related to whether or not the murder has/will actually occur(red). The existential quality of a murder, in other words. When do suspicions graduate into an actual crime?

Films I have so far are:

Rear Window
North by Northwest
Rope

I know there are more. Got a suggestion? Leave it in the comments!

Thanks.

Here’s him taking a photo of Radio Raheem.

Here’s him taking a pic of Malcolm X.

Oh wait, here’s him taking a pic of Malcolm X.

Here’s him taking a photo of another president.

And here he is photographing the Haymarket Riots.

Rosie Perez in Do the Right Thing

avec

Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” video.

The times, they are a-temporal. History sits and spins.

First: M.I.A.’s video for Jimmy.

Second: the Bollywood video for the song “Jimmy Adja”, which that song was based on.

Third: the song “T’es OK” by Canadian disco group Ottawan, which the Bollywood song was based on.

Full circle. Maybe?

Many things to notice here, in addition to the straight awesomeness of what is embedded. Something about the cinematographic separation of white and black. Put next to this:

There is something in paint, and what we expect it to do, and why we use it, and what we think about what it might mean. Something about white suits, about dark skin. About black skull-art work, and about white bone. I don’t know what it is, or if I would get any closer to it by thinking about it in words.

Maybe what I should do is make a music video that is visually not-altogether-not-alike to another video by what might at one time been a diametric opposite artist, but do so by covering a song that might as well have been another diametric opposite in another dimension but is now an inspiration, and do so in a way that completely represents an entirely different culture and place, in symbols that are apparent to nearly anyone anywhere in the world with the technology to view the video in the way the video is presented. I would have to make a video, because just listing these characteristics and proposing the idea is not nearly the same as doing it, especially when someone has already done it. But I couldn’t do it, and not just because someone has already done it.

Something about opposites, in the way they are like echoes.

This was done for Warren Ellis’ Remodel thread. I always like those, but I don’t draw very well. I do, however, make posters. This will probably be the only Steampunk thing ever to be found on POSZU. And, frankly, it’s not even a very good poster. But I wanted to play along, and so here it is.

I do like the mask though. In my vision, the Steampunk Batman franchise would use the mask as it’s Bat-logo.

PDF, for those who can’t seem to find free Steampunk ephemera ANYWHERE, is here.

Well, I thought long and hard about whether or not I should post this one. But here we are.

For starters, Cyborg Month is officially over. But more pressing than that, was the issue of whether or not I really wanted to admit that I’m that much of a geek that I not only conceptualized a poster to commemorate Cyborg Month, but then spent more than several hours bringing it into existence. This is probably bordering on the fan art territory, to be quite honest. And that is a slippery fucking slope.

But then I was looking at these awesome Czechoslovakian Book Covers, and I was thinking how it is a shape that book covers, especially for academic titles, are so serious with their design, and don’t venture into art quite so much anymore. I was also thinking of the ubiquitous conference poster, that anyone who has spent time in academia will have seen slathering the walls and bulletin boards of their department hallways. What an excellent opportunity for art! Here are posters that are going to be printed, regardless of whether they have anything on them. Why not use that as a space for artists?

So here is my contribution of a poster for the 50 cyborgs not-really-a-conference-not-a-book-either. Advertising something that is already over, without really advertising it, and mostly just contributing to general Internet over-exuberance. The scheme was actually something I came up with for a customer, that I can tell they will not like, but I liked it, so I wanted to actually use it. Looks like a vintage set of Uno cards, kind of. The draw 4 card especially, which I can’t find an image of on the Internet (only the current version). Oh, and the circuit diagram is actually a working circuit for a voltage amplifier. Yikes. Went there.

So here we are. I’m a geek; cyborgs are awesome; and I spend a lot of time rotating and re-sizing vector art on the computer to amuse myself. If you are a cyborg geek as well, you are welcome to a full-sized PDF of the poster, available here. Everything on POSZU is Creative Commons Non-com, Attribute, Share-alike, by the way.