Steven Heller – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 768

The Mona Lisa as it looks run through the Random Pixelate setting in Glitch Lab.

• “We don’t have enough Dada in this world of too much data. Something is needed to break-through the over-curated simulacrum that is the online world in order to let in a bit of non-artificial light. One way to make a break is through the deliberate cultivation of the glitch.” Justin Patrick Moore on circuit-bending, glitch music and Surrealist composition.

• The seventh installment of Smoky Man’s exploration of The Bumper Book of Magic has been posted (in Italian) at (quasi). There’s an extract in English at Alan Moore World.

• New music: Remember The Clouds by Philippe Deschamp, and Requiem For The Ontario Science Centre by Tony Price.

• Michael Brooke offers suggestions for where to begin with Polish film director Wojciech Has

• At Printmag: A new book shares the artistic odyssey of Iranian designer Farshid Mesghali.

• The Letraset Graphic Materials Handbook for the year 1987.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Cubo.

• Yet more Polish film posters.

• A cat’s eye view of Japan.

• RIP Roy Ayers.

• Glitch (1993) by Moody Boyz | Glitch (1994) by Autechre | Glitch (2011) by Brian Eno And The Words Of Rick Holland

Mazes, a film by István Orosz

Until last week I didn’t know Hungarian artist István Orosz had been making short animated films since the 1970s. I’ve known about Orosz’s Escher-like drawings for some time but missed the mention of the films in this interview with Steven Heller. Útvesztök (Mazes) from 2008 is one of the few Orosz films that you can see on YouTube, a short piece that seems to be a self-portrait going by the drawing tools littering one of the shots.

The film is divided into nine sections, each one of which opens with a view of a maze where a hand (or pencil) traces a route matching the number of the section. The sequences that follow are all of the animated type wherein familiar things (animals, people, objects) mutate in some way, the mutations eventually revealing a face which ages slightly from one sequence to the next. I was hoping we might also see some of Orosz’s architectural illusions but if he has animated any of these they must be in his other films.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• False perspective

Weekend links 766

The Fantod Pack (1995): a Gorey take on the Tarot deck.

• A happy 100th birthday to Edward Gorey. I was hoping to link once again to Gorey’s appearance on the Dick Cavett Show from 1977 (a rare TV interview) but it’s one of those things that’s no longer available at YouTube. You can always browse Goreyana instead. Meanwhile, there’s this in Scotland: In Gorey Detail: Celebrating An American Friend At Custom House, Leith. A tribute exhibition which is running in Edinburgh for this week only.

• “A blisteringly frank and triple X-rated chat with Peter Berlin”. A blisteringly hyperbolic headline for a discussion between Ted Stansfield and Peter Berlin, the self-invented sex object of the 1970s.

• This week in the Bumper Book of Magic: Smoky Man posts my replies to his questions about the creation of the book’s Rainy Day and Kabbalah sections.

• Tricky’s Maxinquaye was released 30 years ago this month. David Bennun revisited the album five years ago.

• At Colossal: Felines evoke ‘A Floating World’ in Tùng Nâm’s whimsical illustrations.

• New music: Gloam by Emptyset, and The Mount Hibiki Tapes by Mount Shrine.

• Mix of the week: A mix for The Wire by Polonius.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Steam.

• Last Of The Steam Powered Trains (1968) by The Kinks | Steam Megawatt (1979) by Tod Dockstader | Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt (1996) by DJ Shadow

Weekend links 763

I Live in Shock (1955) by Mimi Parent.

• At Public Domain Review: “Ben Hecht’s Fantazius Mallare (1922) is at turns obtuse, grotesque, and moralizing—and sought to provoke the obscenity trial of the century. Only it didn’t, quietly vanishing instead. Colin Dickey rereads this failed satire, finding a transcendent rhythm pulsing beneath the novel’s indulgent prose.”

• “There are no surprises when a pallet of CDs arrives at my office, but when a pressing plant alerts me to a shipment of records headed my way I start to worry.” John Brien, head of Important Records, on the problems involved in the manufacture of vinyl albums.

• The sixth installment of Smoky Man’s exploration of The Bumper Book of Magic has been posted (in Italian) at (quasi).

They were building a vast alternative religion with a lack of dictates but no shortage of rituals and icons. They’d pass through the end of the world to get there first; the next album was based on a vision of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse slaughtering their animals and constructing a earth-gouging machine from their jawbones, demonstrating they weren’t quite intending to settle down yet. It would take them far from mainstream culture, and indeed mainstream gay culture given their repeated disdain for sanitised queerness, and into enigmatic territory. Having scared away most fans of synth pop and industrial with provocation, and the weak and tyrannical with ambiguity, they were unencumbered and “allowed to mature in the dark”, sustained by a cult following (you rarely encounter a tepid fan of Coil, most are acolytes).

Darran Anderson looking back at Coil’s debut album, Scatology

• At Smithsonian Magazine: See 15 winning images from the Close-Up Photographer of the Year Competition.

• At The Daily Heller: How did pink become a colour? Meanwhile, Steven Heller’s font of the month is Vibro.

• New music: Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds by Lawrence English.

• SciURLs: A science news aggregator.

• Shackleton’s favourite albums.

• RIP Marianne Faithfull.

• The Pink Panther Theme (1963) by Henry Mancini | The Pink Room (1988) by Seigen Ono | Pink (2005) by Boris

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Monstrum in animo (1955) by Yves Laloy.

• This week’s obligatory Bumper Book of Magic links: Alan Moore World has more of my ongoing comments about the creation of the book, while Séamas O’Reilly talked to Alan about the book itself and its connections with The Great When. The latter piece lowered my already low opinion of the late Genesis P-Orridge.

• At Timeless: A reprint of Bright Lights and Cats With no Mouths by John Balance. Still in print is The Cupboard Under the Stairs, a selection from JB’s notebooks.

• If you enjoy sleight-of hand magic—and I most certainly do—then Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants (1996) is 58 miraculous minutes by a master of the art.

• Mixes of the week: Winter Solstice 6 at Ambientblog; a mix for The Wire by Rafael Toral; and Reflection on 2024 at a Strangely Isolated Place.

• “Whatever the reason, there is something sorrowful about the disposal of art, whatever the perceived quality,” says Steven Heller.

• New music: The Path Of The Elder Ones by Nerthus.

• Bright Lights (1959?) by Wade Curtiss & The Rhythm Rockers | Bright Lights, Big City (1961) by Jimmy Reed | I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight (1974) by Richard & Linda Thompson