Volume at the V&A

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Part of the Playstation Season, “a partnership between PlayStation and 5 international public arts institutions renowned for an innovative approach to arts programming — BALTIC, the V&A, ENO, Sadler’s Wells and the BFI.”

A luminous interactive installation will transform the V&A’s John Madejski Garden this winter. Volume is a sculpture of light and sound, an array of light columns positioned dramatically in the centre of the garden.

Volume responds spectacularly to human movement, creating a series of audio-visual experiences. Step inside and see your actions at play with the energy fields throughout the space, triggering a brilliant display of light and sound.

The piece is a collaboration between lighting designers United Visual Artists (UVA) and Robert Del Naja (alias 3D) of Massive Attack and his long-term co-writer Neil Davidge (as part of their music production company, one point six).

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Looks like a cross between Jenny Holzer‘s vertical signs and the Edmond J Safra Fountain Court at Somerset House which I had the opportunity to photograph one gloomy evening back in May (below). And speaking of that square, it’s been turned into an ice rink again for the winter.

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World Aids Day

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Within the next 25 years, AIDS is set to join heart disease and stroke as the top three causes of death worldwide, according to a study published online Monday.

When global mortality projections were last calculated a decade ago, researchers had assumed the number of AIDS cases would be declining. Instead, it’s on the rise.

Full story here.

There is a hot wind blowing
It moves across the oceans and into every port.
A plague. A black plague. There’s danger everywhere
And you’ve been sailing.

And you’re all alone on an island now, tuning in.
Did you think this was the way
Your world would end?
Hombres. Sailors. Comrades.

There is no pure land now. No safe place.
And we stand here on the pier
Watching you drown.
Love among the sailors.
Love among the sailors.

There is a hot wind blowing.
Plague drifts across the oceans.
And if this is the work of an angry god
I want to look into his angry face.
There is no pure land now. No safe place.
Come with us into the mountains.
Hombres. Sailors. Comrades.

Laurie Anderson

Strange Attractor Journal Three

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The wonderful and essential Strange Attractor Journal will be with us again next month.
The previous number (now sold out, I think) included my essay about psychedelic artist Wilfried Sätty.

CONTENTS

Contra Genesis—Catherine Eisner
Unusual cases of extra-genital conception, extra-uterine
gestation, and other anomalous exits.

Burmese Daze—Erik Davis
In which the author submits to the pleasures of a transgender spirit possession festival.

Adventures in the Fourth Dimension—Mike Jay
A Victorian time machine and history’s first theme park ride.

Ego in Exotica Sum—Ken Hollings
In memoriam Martin Denny, crown prince of the exotica sound.

A Psychoactive Bestiary—Richard Rudgley
The joy of zootoxins, from the ant to the giraffe.

Liberté, Légalité, Éternité—David Luke
Some notes on psychonautic misadventures in time.

Kandinsky’s Thought Forms—Gary Lachman
The occult roots of modern art.

Magic Words—Steve Moore
Virgil the Necromancer in mediæval legend.

Abu’l-Qasim al-Iraqi—Robert Irwin
12th century Arab alchemists on the edge
of knowledge.

The Electrochemical Glass—Richard Brown
A slow-evolving artwork from a living alchemist.

The Man Behind the Screen—David Rothenberg
Hans Christian Andersen’s greatest and least-known work.

The Mole of Edge Hill—John Reppion
Joseph Williamson, Liverpool’s tunnelling philanthropist.

La Maison de Poupées—Robert Ansell
A photographic study of a magnificent compulsion.

The Dirty Thirties—Alexis Lykiard
From Arthur Koestler’s Encyclopædia of Sexual Knowledge.

Paint it Black—Stewart Home
Autohagiography of an artist.

Redonda and Her Kings—Roger Dobson
The island life of early science fiction author MP Shiel.

Magic in Paris—Phil Baker
Demons of the opium den in Thirties Paris.

The Dark Man’s Dreams—Doug Skinner
An introduction to Xavier Forneret, Surrealism’s lost poet.

Ghosts: A short Story
by Lady Vervaine.

Plus original artworks by Alison Gill, Josephine Harvatt, Betsy Heistand, Katie Owens, Arik Roper.

Editor: Mark Pilkington.
Print Design: Alison Hutchinson.

Strange Attractor celebrates unpopular culture. We declare war on mediocrity and a pox on the foot soldiers of stupidity. Join Us.

Strange Attractor Journal Three available now from Strange Attractor Shoppe and all good bookshops.

£14 inc p&p by mail order or £13.99 in UK shops.