What´s Wrong With This Picture

Poppers Pig

The (not) poppers pig over at out.com

We Are The Muzak Makers

And We Are The Dreamers Of Your Dreams!





A StellaVista re-branding for the troubled Muzak-Corporation. Unfortunately they went for the Sarah Palin-lookalike instead.

lost in here forever

i had the most ballardian experience on a lay-over in hong kong: trapped in a shopping mall!

i was excited to be back in hong kong after 18 years. we hopped on the airport-express which took us to kowloon in 15 minutes. i had planned to walk around the area, go to the star-ferry and transfer to hong kong island. after exiting at kowloon station at 8am we found ourselves in the middle of the still closed “elements shopping mall” (which, according to wikipedia, caters to the upper middle class). finding any exit from this huge, multilevelled labyrinth of closed gucci-stores became a real nightmare experience, soundtracked by an endless stream of x-mas-muzak.


After 20 minutes we arrived at the main entrance, but were told by a guardian that we could not use this exit as the place was still closed. we had to go back to find another way. finally emerging to the earth surface we found ourselves inside immaculate gardens, surrounded by massive residential high-rise blocks that formed a circle around us. all attempts to pass these buildings towards the waterfront were blocked by fences or guards.

i knew where i wanted to go but it was impossible to reach. combine this with jet-lag after an 11 hour flight and the strange memory of a place that has changed tremendously during the past 2 decades and you feel like walking through an unpleasant dream.

We finally decided to find the train-station again and went straight to the island to get our dose of hong kong insanity.

In Every Dream Home...

Found this pic this morning on my tumblr and couldn´t stop looking at it! I have no idea where it came from and why it is there. It originally linked to 4chan but it must have been removed. You have to see it bigger that´s why I put it up in my header.

Maybe it´s just me but I find this picture incredibly amazing and disturbing. It´s the closest thing that seems to have fallen straight out of a nightmare. The colours, the perspective, the man looking into the camera: everything seems to be related to that...thing in the background.

It´s either that or it´s Grace Jones taking a family snap-shot

Coneycopia

coneycopia.

Beautiful time-lapse video of New York and Coney Island by Graham Elliott.

wink wink inudge inudge

Play with me!


inudge

Let There Be Music

Prefab Sprout will indeed release a new album in early september! "Let´s change the world with music" (not more not less) will be the first PS-album in eight years.


From what I gather the album was actually planned to be the follow-up to "Jordan: The Comeback" from 1990, titled "Earth: The story so far". Apparently the record company was bored by the spiritual tone of the material and shelved it.

Listening to the album opener "Let there be music" it appears that the whole record could have been put into the vaults, waiting for it´s release 20 years later. "Let there be music" is bonafide Prefab Sprout radio-pop (where it will never be played, of course). I am listening to it on endless repeat right now.
So are these actually only demos recorded roughly 20 years ago? It doesn´t really matter! It´s Prefab Sprout, it´s timeless (regardless of a gated snare and Paddy´s Vadder Abraham-beard).



I think the heroes of back in the day should do remixes for this: Frankie Knuckles, Mashall Jefferson, Justin Robertson... oh, I forgot: they were actually giving remix jobs to the Future Sound of London back then.

Timelapse Kingdom

Walt Disney, was wise enough to film the building of Disneyland from various angles over its whole construction period, in colour! From specially built towers time-lapse cameras would capture the transformation of a boring orange grove into the mythological black hole of 20th century fantasies.

It´s fascinating to watch and the commentary is very informative.

Observing the naked land, building of the entrance and main street.


world of tomorrow: from zero to three days before opening. Building of cinderella´s fibreglass and plywood castle.


Other parts: creation of Frontierland. The next part covers the making of the Jungle Cruise in Adeventure Land. This is especially interesting as it shows the whole building process without time-lapse in gorgeous colour.
The last part shows the testing of the finished Jungle-ride and an aerial view of the park on opening day.

Peace Monsters

Artist Moritz Reichelt created a new series of works titled "Peace Monsters" for the "Embedded Art"-Exhibition.

EMBEDDED ART was an interdisciplinary exhibition focussing on the societal shifts caused by the universal desire for security. Showing only works realised on location or against a background of research into future security.

Reichelt´s five paintings portrait real people, esoteric developers of futuristic weapons, army strategies, psi and psychotronic warfare.



Victor Selivanov. Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm.
Visionary theorist of so-called "non-lethal-weapons", including chemicals like Fentanyl-Gas. This gas was used to "free" the hostages of the Moscow musical-theater, but in the process 170 people have been killed by the substance.
Selivanov writes theoretical-strategic essays on psychological warfare. In one of his lectures on psychotronic weapons (weapons that influence the brain), he refers an experiment of well-known mathematician Buridan (Buridan´s ass): a donkey is offered two bales of hay, identical in size and placed exactly in the same distance from the animal. The donkey is unable to decide and starves to death.



Colonel John B. Alexander. Acryicl on canvas, 150 x 150 cm.
He is the godfather of the esoteric think-tank-scene of the US-military. Supposedly retired. He was commanding an army department that experimented with psi-phenomena, like "walking through walls" or "killing with thoughts". He is consulting the German government about new technology and weapons. He is regarded as the "pope" of "non-lethal-weapons" and he promotes them since the early 1990s. Back then he was located in the Los Alamos Institutes, where -among other things- the atomic bomb was conceived.



James "Jim" Channon. Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm.
He is an esoteric military-guru and army-networker who lives in Hawaii. Channon invented the "1st Earth Battallion", a utpian peace-army that is supposed to establish a new world order by means of tricky psychological interventions. He likes to be seen as a shaman. He furthermore gives scientology-esque lectures, which should teach the participants to become perfect, universe-centered warriors. He is currently planning to establish an outlet of his consulting business in the game "Second Life".



Janet Morris. Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm.
Ex-hipie, science-fiction author, weapon producer and horse-breeder.
As leader of the development dept. of CIA-linked "Global Security Council" she propagates so called "non-leathal-weapons". She writes strategic papers for the US-Army. Her favourite citation is: "Stop killing your customers". As chairman of weapon company "M2" (they offer nano-technological weapons) she breeds an old horse breed that is preferably used as police-horses. She is also a busy author of slightly rassist novels in which she likes to orchestrate the "eternal war between good and evil." Her books are mostly published as companion pieces to foreign assignments of the US military.



John "Jack" Cover. Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm.
He is the inventor of the taser-gun, an electronic close combat weapon. The Taser is manufactured by Taser Inc. who refer to it as a "electronic human control device". The Taser is increasingly used by polics and security companies to arrest people.
Cover was inspired by the pulp nover "Electric Rifle" by Thomas A. Swift. Covers patented his weapon in 1970 on an older patent by a German gunsmith H.G. Cordes who had invented an electric wale-harpoon.