The Animatrix

I can't believe I didn't see this earlier! As a Matrix fan (isn't everyone?), one always wants to squeeze more juice out of lemon. Sadly the lemon was squeezed a little too much and that was even before the trilogy had ended!

Then on Sunday night I remembered The Animatrix and felt like giving the Matrix lemon one last squeeze. The result was surprisingly sweeter than nectar itself.

The Animatrix is collectively a series of nine short films each with with their own unique style of animation apart from two that share the same style as one is a sequel to another. They all employ what seems to be a clever fusion of drawing, C.G.I and what looks like rotoskopting to create some mesmerizing results. For me the peak of visual madness is achieved in the above clip where I can safely say I have no idea what is going on!

I think the real selling point of this series of short films is that it addresses so many questions that one may have had whilst watching the films as it doesn't focus around the characters we are familiar with such as Neo, Trinity and Morpheus (although some do briefly emerge) but with characters most of which we haven't come across in the films who are merely associated with the Matrix tale. Each film gives the viewer a whole new angle on the saga we all know and love and in way breathes new life into it.

Facebook + Gaming = the ultimate yet beautiful time waster

The goon that thought of putting games on Facebook is an evil genius. There I was calmly facebooking, free from the addiction of console based games (i.e the ones we can easily avoid) when I all too casually decide to satisfy my small yet deceptively powerful curiosity to see what happens when I click on the link that says "play new games!"

The result was a beautiful yet unproductive evening. Kind of like sex....

unless of course somebody gets pregnant.

"Ragdoll Laser Dodge" uses a simple concept. Avoid the lasers (of varying speeds) with the option of power ups; score multiplier, slow-motion and shield, which makes your doll invincible for a brief period. The longer your doll stays intact the higher the score! One can afford to loose stray arms and legs, however a headshot is, as always, an instant kill.

I think that the game's moorishness is innate as above all else because it is on Facebook one's high scores are conveniently and instantly written up on a leader-board of one's cyber friends, thus adding the potential element of competition to the already addictive act of online social networking.

Heck, I mean there's nothing sweeter than broadcasting to cyberspace which of your beloved online chums you cained recently, no?

Either that or the music. I'm serious, the theme tune's ace!

Virtual Crack

I have never played a more addictive game than Max Payne 2. This game turned me into a junkie. Thankfully (unlike a real junkie) I got to the end of my addiction by feeding it, and it only took me three days. Since completing this game I no longer deem myself as "a gamer".

It's rather a nice paradox really that a game so good ended my love for games.

I believe what made this game so exhilarating and so addictive were two key features.

Firstly and as is the case with pretty much any game, most importantly the gameplay was outstanding. Yes one can't beat blasting every Tom, Dick and Harry with a vide variety of every firearm under then sun but that was in my eyes simply just a platform for the developers to make full use of something know as "bullet time'. Bullet time was simple. Once bullet time was engaged the action would slow, leaving the gamer time to fully line up the goones in their sights. It also looked very cool. Just like the slow-motion scenes in The Matrix.

The Max Payne series was released well after the first Matrix film so this game would've satisfied legions of gamers who wanted to "do all that cool slow-motion shooting like in The Matrix".

Secondly this game was one of the few games of its time that possessed a truly engaging story-line. With the whole series beginning with the death of Max's Family in mysterious circumstances resulting in the basis for the story-Max's quest for vengeance and answers- It felt like one was playing a film. The cut scenes that keep the story going are a series of graphic novel style drawings accompanied by a well scripted voice over. The whole affair feels like a modern film noir which funnily enough is the tag-line on the website!

http://www.rockstargames.com/maxpayne2/

Avatar Film Revue; Big Bad and Bright Blue Blockbuster (Beige Script)

Yes we are all perfectly aware of the records this film has and are set to smash. Yes, we all know that this is the definitive all singing all dancing feast for the eyes that will make cinema's "ooh" & "ahh" left right centre. And yes we all know that everyone will see this no matter what I say because, lets face it, watching this film in 3-D will be something to tell the grandchildren. Yes we all know these things. What we don't know however is anything about the (nicely surprisingly) mediocre script, not too cliched political allegory and the beautiful (and for me slightly shameful) moment where I nearly shod a tear! Well I guess that's what this revue's all about then.

The film focuses around Jake Sully a paraplegic marine who jumps at the chance to help the army look for a rather expensive mineral on the deathtrap of a planet known as "Pandora". This is all made possible for him and the marines thanks to a crafty bit of science whereby large blue creatures known as Avatars are grown so that their bodies can be inhabited by a corresponding soldier remotely controlling it. From the moment he sets foot on the planet one is not surprisingly hit with every kind jaw dropping sight a science fiction/fantasy/action film could possibly offer. We have brightly coloured aliens, threatening hybrid helicopter/planes, big guns, big robots, floating in mid air islands and even a typical grizzly veteran to oversee it all. This film ticks all the boxes. However if that isn't enough the film then goes and ticks a few more boxes just for good measure!

Before I saw it someone told me that in effect this film was just a fancy Pocahontas. So you can imagine my expectations of the script. Yeah o.k it's not exactly the greatest bunch of words on screen but it's also a few other things; it's not too corny, it's not too predictable and it's not too dumbed down for children or the masses. Put simply, it does the job. What really jumped out at me from nowhere though was its rather poignant and epic story. There I was expecting nothing but the height of eye candy, not really caring what happened when all of a sudden I felt a strange sense of empathy for these lovely blue creatures! Then one wakes up to the allegory that is at work here; a combination of man's exploiting of mother earth, conquering of far off lands, oppressing of its indigenous people and the Iraq war! Yes this film might actually make you hate your own people and enjoy it at the same time.

This film is good enough to watch with the sound off and especially with the 3-D glasses on. If you are the kind of person who wouldn't mind seeing lanky aliens strut their stuff or very large men in very large metal robot suits firing very large guns then really have no excuse to head on down to your local picture house. If you're not, then go anyway as I can safely say that there is something for everyone unless you're looking for clean fresh "in no way corny" dialogue.

People For Studying

As well as studying the activity, or rather inactivity, of trees I'm also going to be looking at human beings.

I present to you three of my friends; each a rather different character. I'm not sure which out the three of them would make the most suitable character for stalking and photographing so I think I'll ask them a few careful questions.

At what point of the day do you usually find your mood swinging the most?

How easily does your mood swing?

At which point of the day do you find yourself most relaxed?

How do you relax?

How aware are you of your uncontrollable thoughts?

CARLIE

1. In the morning when im tired.

1. Not too easily.

3. At night once ive done everything i need to.

4. Listen to music, hangout with friends.

5. I wouldn't say i have uncontrollable thoughts.

Jay
1. There's no obvious time really

2. I'm quite stoic.

3. In the early evening usually.

4. Computer games, a drink or two.

5. Not very!

Phil
1. In the morning always

2. It can swing a little too easily

3. Supper time!

4. Supper time!

5. I know my mind goes all over the place all too often but usually I just let my head get the better of me.

Tree Hunting

So in order to find a suitable tree to photograph I thought I'd go scouting and snapping.

As you can see I took a number of shots, as well as one or two of the same tree. These photos are my shortlist for potential specimens for studying.

For best results, seeing as I'm going to be highlighting their relative existence with humans I feel that it would be a good idea to choose a scene that is likely to involve the greatest amount of nearby visible human activity.

And so without an inch of doubt I felt the photo on the top left would be best suited. Not only is it a rather nice and slightly symmetrical piece involving a brilliant dose of symmetry, but also it exemplifies humans relationship with nature, a path right down the middle, neat privet hedges and allotments on one side.

Metal Gear Solid Stil Looks Good

I decided to revisit one of the best games I've ever played: Metal Gear Solid. For me this game introduced the idea of story over gameplay in games. This game in fact feels more like an "interactive film"! It starts just like a film and throughout the game the names of the voice actors pop up as credits as the characters are introduced. The game is so dam watchable that some kind soul has taken the trouble to record themselves playing the game and then uploaded it to You Tube.

Of course this still had far to go before it could rival anything of true cinematic merit. The cutscenes whilst being the basis of the game can be tedious at times, especially thanks to the cheesy voice acting and labored anti war messages. Its also full of rather out of place humour that for me doesn't sit well with the "serious" story. Some of the comments made by the bosses whilst you're fighting them turn everything into a bit of a parody. When revolver Ocelot declares that "there's nothing like sliding a long silver bullet into well greased chamber" one doesn't take the whole situation at all seriously.

Zoo Machinima

My friend couldn't have sent me a link to this at a better time. During a monday morning session at college, just after our tutor had explained to us what a game engine was I checked my Facebook - in the lunch break of course - and there slap bang on my wall was a perfect example of Machinima.

If he'd posted the video a little earlier I would've sat there saying to myself;

"wow how clever! Not only have they cleverly edited the cut-scenes from San Andreas to make an animation, but they must've only used only hidden cut scenes that are shown through completing extra portions of the game!"

As an animation it is certainly reasonably entertaining for the simple novelty factor. However on second glance I can't say I'm all that entertained. The voiceovers are dull and unconvincing and the clunky, chunky graphics of 2004 don't make for pretty animation. None the less, for me it's still an interesting introduction into the world of Machinima thanks to its use of a familiar game's engine.

Aesop Rock Rocks, So Do His Videos!

I'm not massive rap fan. Too much of it is unmusical rubbish associated with highly insalubrious subjects such as "crack" and "shanking".

The three below videos from the rapper Aesop Rock are far from one's typical nonsense. His lyrics are abstract and his vocabulary is wide. This is probably what some may call "intellectual rap".

And such music will always need a good video to do it justice. The three below are no exception and on top of that all completely different!

Concept (And Art)

This post I actually made on the 21st Jan, despite coming up with the concept a wile before. These little sketches illustrate how I plan on presenting my final images.

In order to illustrate the effect of time on the activities and consciousness of living things I intend on taking multiple photos of vegetation and one of my friends and maybe - if I can find a creature that will oblige - of an animal. The photos will be taken at larger intervals the lower the level of the conscious the being in question is. I.e a tree will be photographed every hour or so, while my friend no less than every minute. I then plan on blending the images of the same object in photoshop to create two or hopefully three final images. The main message of the outcome will be illustrated by the fact that in comparison to the tree my friend will be far more ruled by time through their emotions. This will best be demonstrated if I manage to catch them at their most emotionally variant where the situation they are in has a greater sense of time than usual; say, when they are in a rush to get somewhere.

This may sound a little confusing, hopfully the below pictures will help.

Trees and Their Power (of Now)

One thing that really spoke to me from Mr Tolle's book was the way in which he spoke of how nature is timeless, it only exists in the now. He mentions how if one were to ask a tree the time the tree wouldn't understand. The tree would only be able to declare the time to be now. This is of course because trees simply exist, they just "are" as opposed to being the comparatively emotionally complicated creatures, gripped by desire for sensory pleasure. Now yes, I know trees are blessed by not having the beautifully complex brain that's found within the humans of today that makes us such irrational, suffering creatures however Tolle and many Zen masters claim to have learnt from the existence of such beings.

This Zen quote is a good example;

"Just think of the trees: they let the birds perch and fly with no intention to call them when they come and no longing for their return when they fly away. It people's hearts can be like the trees, they will not be off the way."

Thanks to this quote I all of a sudden have a rather clearer idea of depicting the effect the concept of time has on human consciousness; I can investigate time in relation to unconscious beings and compare the results with that of human consciousness.

Yes I know the above may not seem clear....

Bare with me, all will be revealed in the next post.

For now I feel a little help from some good tree photos would be handy and for that I've picked out a nice little book called...

wait for it....

"Trees".

It's part of the magnum photos series and contains a number of different photographers' works. Below are some of my favourites.

Mat Gaser Concept Art

I find that all too often concept art is a little brutal and samey. Time and again it simply looks like another cover of a fantasy novel. More dragonesque creatures, more large swords, more jagged mountains. Yes indeed, it may look breathtaking but it doesn't feel very inviting. You can't imagine hanging it in your living room!

Enter Mat Gaser.

I find his art a lot softer and more inviting. His fantasy landscapes feel more peacefully dreamlike rather than unsettlingly nightmarish, even his darker works have such qualities.

http://www.mattgaser.com/

Shpongletastic

Here's some footage from a Shpongle gig. These guys make a hybrid sort of music that most people can only really describe as "psychedelic". What really attracts me the most to this is the manner in which in manages to incorporate such a wide variety of sounds into something that is actually pleasing. We have everything from cellos to synths to evan a bit of mongolian throat singing! This all encompassing "multi coloured" approach to music making is in a broad sense how I plan on creating my own moving image sequences; through the use of a wide variety of images coming together to end up being rather bizarrely yet none the less beautifully juxtaposed.

Kind of a random post I know, I just felt that this type of music illustrated perfectly how I like most art forms to feel; full of drastic, just about compatible variety.

The Power of Now

Baring in mind the last post, this post will address a rather different angle on the concept of time....

A large element of my investigation into the concept of no time comes from the spiritual philosopher Eckhart Tolle.

His book "The Power of Now", which is at world best seller, addresses the idea that human suffering is rooted in man's inability to stay focused on the present moment and not break free from "mind identification". All that may well seem like a load of mumbo jumbo and without a lot of explanation it can be hard to grasp or even after that, fully believe! However having read the book I've come to understand in detail the ideas that he is stabbing at and that could be incorporated within the thinking behind my final investigative piece.

Eckhart Tolle starts his book by giving a very explanation about how he came to be where he is today. He tells of how for most of his life he was overcome by fear and periods of suicidal depression until one evening, when he awoke suddenly in the middle of the night, he felt his usual combination of intense feelings but this time more intensely than ever. He wondered why there was any point in carrying on with this continuous struggle and felt that he couldn't live with the person he was any more. Then it struck him; if he couldn't live with himself then there must be two of him? How could that be? Maybe only one of those two were real. He claims at that point to have experienced a state of clear mind without thought.

From that point on he was a different person. He claims to have spent a few years after that in a state of constant bliss as a tramp, however he was still unaware of what had taken place that evening. It was only after a few years of training with spiritual teachers that he began to gain a degree of comprehensible knowledge on what had happened to him. He learnt that through his intense suffering his mind had withdrawn from the unhappy and fearful self, this self being the involuntary thinking mind which he declares as nothing but an illusion. He says that what was left was his true nature, free from the duality of mind identification.

Now all the above may well sound like a pile of hippy nonsense and I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it were exaggerated for the purposes of his book. That doesn't matter though as the ideas that he conveys are quite enlightening.

He begins his theory by stating that "you are not your mind". By this he is implying that the thinking mind that governs us pretty much all our lives, mostly without our control, is not who we truly are and that this involuntary thinking is in fact cutting us off from "the joy of being". He is suggesting that a state of constant peace is achievable if we learn to disconnect from the constant inner dialogue or as he likes to call it "mental noise" which is produced by the egoic mind. He declares that one's bare attention on the present moment is all we need as the mental noise is nothing more than contemplating the past and future which is where our minds pretty much always are. I'd imagine that even as you are reading this text you have a number of nebulous thoughts flying round your head, preventing you from connecting with what is right before you.

Eckhart Tolle advises that we "honour" the present moment deeply, for it is all we have. And here I really do see eye to eye with his thinking. Events only happen in the present moment, never in the future or the past. Past and future only exist so that we can reference other present moments. If we fully honour the present moment, he believes that pain and suffering are transmuted; dwelling on past pain or worrying about future pain is completely unnecessary and in fact ultimately painless when the present moment is honoured.

The remainder of the book is in effect more sides of the same coin. It goes into different scenarios where one should remain in the present moment and how to do it, one of those ways being the unintentional detachment from the thinking mind that he experienced all those years ago through intense suffering. The message is still the same though; the present moment is all we have and is also the answer to all our problems.

This way of thinking is pretty much the antithesis of the Long Now concept!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Now

The Clock of the Long Now

In order to investigate the theory of time further, I paid a visit to the science museum where they had a prototype of a mechanism entitled "The Clock of the Long Now".

Stewart Brand; championed sustainable living the 60s and is president of the long now foundation.

"Civilisation has revved itself into a pathologically short attention span.... And some sort of balancing corrective to short sightedness is needed - some mechanism which encourages the long view." With this statement Stewart Brand reveals the thinking behind a project to build a clock which will keep time for 10,000 years - a period the artist & musician Brian Eno called "the long now".

The prototype was designed by Danny Hills and has been built by the Long Now foundation to explore the mechanism for a clock intoned to keep time for 10,000 years. The final version of the clock would be an enormously large version of the prototype - a vast mechanism of architectural scale, big enough for visitors to walk through. It is intended that this will be installed near a National Park in eastern Nevada in a chamber hollowed out of a limestone cliff. To reduce wear the clock uses a torsional pendulum which rotates slowly and the clock ticks only once every 30 seconds. This clock is driven by falling weights that are rewound regularly. The full-size example would be powered by the energy from the footsteps of visitors or by changes in temperature. Any drift in the clocks rate will be corrected by a mechanism sensing the sun passing overhead @ noon. The stock of disks in the lower part of the clock is a train of adding wheels - a binary mechanical computer that counts the hours, the calendar & solar years, the centuries & phases of the moon & the Zodiac. This also drives the display on the face of the clock which shows the changing pattern of the night sky continuously throughout the life of the clock. Each hour the clock performs a visible calculation to update the dial display.

This clock is designed to draw attention to the virtues of firstly measuring time and more importantly being more aware of long periods of time, i.e beyond our lifespan.

In this day and age of instant pleasure and satisfaction where we regularly fail to see past the next deadline Stewart Brand believes that man has become dangerously unaware of the future and that it is our obligation to think in terms of the long now. I take his point and certainly feel that his ideas are altruistic towards future generations but I none the less regard this "long now" concept as rather pointless. Wile I'm sure the world could benefit from a little long term thinking and as much as this clock is pretty cool I feel that time and money is being wasted on something of which the benefits we'll never see. When one considers the effort put in and the money spent on it and then imagines how that could be spent on problems that affect us here and now one fails to see the virtue of such a mechanism. In many ways this contraption is unlike a clock as although it may keep time, to a future viewer it will be nothing but a collection of arbitrary figures that "apparently" have something to do with the distant past and future outside any human life expectancy. So for time to be relevant or rather for time to even exist, it has to be linked with events experienced directly.

My Three Moodboards

As you can see I haven't done any posts in quite a while! What can say? It was one hell of a Christmas break! I actually did these over a month ago.

Here is are the three sets of rather nebulous ideas regarding my lens based media investigation.

I alighted on the concept of time for my investigation and came up with three themes, however one stuck out firmly as being the most interesting.

But first, ill talk about the other two.

The board on the top left is addressing the idea of how one's age affects one over the years and especially how one's innocence is lost with age.

The board on the bottom right is slightly more mundane. It's simply about the study of how time affects the earth and specifically rocks. In a broader sense, one could say that it is a study of the effect very long periods of time have on objects; rocks being the only objects possible of withstanding such time periods.

Finally we have the moodboard in the top right hand corner. This board addresses the concept of how time is in fact just a man made creation for reference purposes; it is only relative. The dandelion represents how nature is timeless and is constantly living the present moment, above him is the spiritual philosopher Eckhart Tolle who's books have addressed the issue of living the present, free from unnecessary thought. Beneath is a clock with a human brain placed above it. This represents how time is only a creation of the human mind. In between the two circles is a faint image of einstein. This is the bridge between the human world of time and the "spiritual" or some may say real world of no time.