Project Level-D

I think I have read most of the JG Ballard obituaries, tributes, essays and reviews since yesterday. Thanks to Simon Sellars´ brilliant Ballardian-Twitter service and the Guardian collection, it was easy to almost overdose on the theme. Reading all this made me hyper-aware of the ballardian reality that surrounds us and the following is as ballardian as it gets.


For some time I am intrigued by the dubious, ever increasing interest in female dolls and figurines that cater to grown-up, mostly Japanese men. But the new, ultra-realistic silicon sex dolls that enjoy growing popularity are beyond creepy.


Generations away from your typical, cheap, blow-up-doll from yesterday, the creations from the Superior Structure Artistic Silicon Doll Team, or shorter: Project Level-D are looking amazingly real. Horribly real.

Look at the facial expressions and the suggestive, pseudo innocent poses in which the various models are presented. They either appear sad, melancholic or as if they just died, still inviting you to do whatever you like to their multi-joined latex bodies.


Meet the proud owner of a harem of Level-D models. This young man, who decided that he just could not get along with real women, paid ca. $6.000,- for every one of his "girls".

Will it be long before the next generation of "animated" models will invade the living- and bedrooms of these men?

Commercial and Nasty

"Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time."
Quote by JG Ballard

Tone Matrix

Andre Michelle, the genius programmer who is also responsible for the fantastic Hobnox Audio Tool (I wrote about it frequently last year), has come up with a new, nifty audio-game: The Tone Matrix!



Tone Matrix is a simple flash-based sinewave synthesizer triggered by an ordinary 16step sequencer. You have a square filled with more squares which you can activate and de-activate by clicking them. This way you can easily create "gamelan-esque" sequences or minimal rhythms that you can vary constantly. The pattern can be totally hypnotising and playing with this thing is seriously addictive.

After coming up with a bunch of geometric patterns I soon began to write words into the grid just to see how text patterns might sound.


This simple idea is apparently based on the fantastic Tenori-On by Yamaha. Thanks Andre for providing these amazing toys for free!

Directed by StellaVista

I have become a director yesterday! Thanks to this funky Text-To-Movie Program that lets you easily direct a scene with up to two characters. I was amazed at how easy and intuitive the process is. You can chose different settings, characters and languages (which in return allow you to let your characters speak with strong accents). Camera angles, expressions, movements and sounds can be easily selected and you can drag and drop them everywhere into your script.
In a relatively short while I came up with three short "music"-clips.

My first attempt has a Kevin Spacey look-a-like performing an excerpt of The Talking Heads´ "Once in a lifetime".



Next I went to Düsseldorf where tourists ask you the way to the "Kling Klang Studio" instead of the central station. Here I had lots of fun to teach the computer to speak with a German and French accent. "Ja tvoi sluga! Ja tvoi Rabotnik!"



I then managed to sneak into the Pet Shop Boy Mansion, where some fundamental questions were being discussed. "Love, etc?" is my most ambitious project today. But will the audience love me?



If you sign in for a free account you can also "remix" every film as you wish. George Lucas must have had his hands in this.

It´s great fun to play around with. You can call me Alan Smithee now.

Killing Cameras

In 1960 "Peeping Tom" caused a scandal that eventually ended the career of director Michael Powell. In this twisted thriller Karl Heinz Böhm (who successfully got rid of his "Sissi"-image with this) plays a psychotic camera-man who kills women with the tripod of his camera while filming their death. He collects his films and watches them over and over again and at one point even attempts to screen it to a woman he feels attracted to.


Something about this idea must have hit too close to home for critics and audiences at the time. "Peeping Tom" was throwing the voyeurism of an anonymous audience back in their faces. It one-upped Hitchcock´s "Rear Window" from six years earlier. Whereas Hitchcock made the audience watch through the eyes of the lovable, handicapped voyeur, Powell forces us to witness the action through the eyes of the killer AND through the camera lens.
In a way "Peeping Tom" anticipated the video-age by more than twenty years and one might get the impression that the audience somehow knew it.



Why am I writing this? Well, I just found an interesting toy commercial from 1964 that tried to sell a "killing camera" to teenage James Bond-fans. The Mattel Agent Zero M Movie Shot provides this young trenchcoat wearing styler with a camera that turns into a machine-gun. It even shoots through the campy bag that can be bought separately!


I have no idea how parents reacted to this toy and I would have been great if it really was a camera. I would certainly have wanted one. Check also the unbelievable "Agent M Sonic Blaster" which was a gigantic bazooka that fired compressed air!

Ballard Beat Box

No, this is not the new Pet Shop Boys sleeve!

It´s taken from a funny and technically amazing viral ad-gimmick that turns you into a human beat-box. You can chose between four templates, upload your (or any) portrait and within a minute your avatar will perform some wicked things to your face.

Since we here at StellaVista Towers have no great entertainment value with a pot warmer on our heads, I tried to upload pictures of some iconic friends.
Both, Liberace and Warhol didn´t work that well. Once morphed by the progeam they looked like Thunderbird puppets. It´s amazing how exchangeable they look when their hair/wig is hidden by a hat.


Anyway, it was much more fun to use a J.G. Ballard picture and it worked surprisingly well. Click here to see and hear JG Ballard aka MC Crashbox putting a donk on it!

MC Crashbox

Well, it´s in b/w but the morphing program is very picky and it was impossible to find a usable colour portrait of the man.

Andy MC


Then I had the smashing idea to use a (fake) image of the Damien-Hirst-Diamond-Skull. But again, the program wouldn´t accept the picture. I tried to modify it several times, but it didn´t work. Too bad, it would have been such a great contribution to this great Hirst-bashing project. Thanks to Jocko for bringing this great Jimmy Cauty project to my attention.

Last try was a screenshot of Kraftwerk´s "Musique Non Stop", since I wanted to see how an early, literally beatboxing CGI would look make the transition.
Boing Boom Tshack

Below you can try your own thing. It´s mostly in German but I think that it is possible to navigate the site anyway. Enter your birthday and location and it will play the Kraftwerk-video. If you want to start your own creation, click on the bottom left "werde Beatologist".

Slutty Teen-Pimp Spying-School

"Listen in on telephone conversations in your home with this build it your self telephone bug. Its compact size (about the size of a dime) allows it to fit into most telephone handsets. Easy to install and fun to build. No battery are required. Complete with training course."





















"The woman traveler stops by the security checkpoint. After placing her luggage on the screening machine, the airport employee checks her baggage. The traveler hands her spare change and watch to the security guard and proceeds through the metal detector. With no time to spare, she picks up her luggage and hurries to board her flight!"



















Playmobil Rescue Police Station with Jail Cell: "Bars on cell window are removable"


Lego World City/Metropolis Surveillance Truck: "Pros: Nice vehicles, tons of gadgets and undercover items, very nice design.

Cons: Only comes with two figures, small barricades.

























The Bottom Line: Want to protect your town from criminals? Mobsters moving in on the scene? Show some muscle with the Metropolis Surveillance Track.

WITH HAT only HERE U DA WILD MAN! - COLOR CHOICES - Mac Daddy Costume Suit with Hat (slightly different than pictured) - Reduced Price!

























Big Daddy's Girl Hooker Prostitute Sexy Luxurious Crushed Velvet with Leopard Trim Costume Adult Teen Fits Size 2-8

All descriptions from the manufacturer or amazon.

I don´t know if all the negative, sarcastic Amazon-comments, probably made by concerned parents, are actually justified.
I mean, I was extensively playing doctor-games and I never even thought about studying medicine!

I think the much bigger corruption of childrens minds comes from the Disney-Corporation who are now using fingerprint-scanners at the entrances of their parks to prevent "ticket fraud" and...oh yes, keep those terrorists from riding "It´s a small world".

Playing around with these toys might broaden your horizon. After all you can still let your playmobil crooks beat up the police and smash up the x-ray machine.
Disney - on the other hand - tells you that its fun to have your fingerprints taken to enter the "happiest place on earth".

The Stephen Hawking Lego Singularity

via Gizmodo

Flickr

Recent multiple sightings of Stephen Hawking Lego figurines leave many questions unanswered.

Nine Oh Nine

Programmer Andre Michelle has some great Flash-programs on his site aM laboratory. His latest creation is a simulation of the Roland TR-909, one of the classic house drum machines.
It´s absolutely fantastic!

You can easily create six different four-bar patterns with all the classic 909-sounds and play around with them. You can even tinker with tune, tempo, attack, decay and shuffle.
Its more fun than last.fm!