via rising tensions
Day: September 23, 2009
"The Frogs"
"The Frogs" [mp3 removed]
This was going to be "Analog_Sketch_a7b" (as in, more heavily filtered LFO pulsing) but then I added some electronic frogs and beats. Then it needed a middle section so I borrowed some bass and percussion from an earlier piece, "RMV Study No. 2." Then some pretty pads over the top that come in towards the end. Thus, "The Frogs."
Blade Runner in San Francisco
A smart, IMG MGMT style essay where the writer/curator uses existing social media to make an argument:
Blade Runner in San Francisco by dreamyshade (aka Britta Gustafson)
Other people's flickr photos of San Francisco landmarks provide the visuals for a discussion of the movie Blade Runner (which had Los Angeles locations) and the Philip K. Dick book on which it is based, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (set in San Francisco). The essay is "a mix of imaginary locations for the book and movie" and works in some trenchant commentary about the differences, e.g.:
In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Deckard and Rachael get it on at the St. Francis hotel.
Unlike the passive and scared Rachael in the movie, the book's Rachael tricks Deckard into thinking she cares about him as an attempt to defuse his pursuit of her fellow androids.
The text "defuse his pursuit of her fellow androids" links to a Google Books version of Androids (surprised that's online in full text) where Rachael and Rick have a post-conjugal discussion of Rick's future bounty hunting (he avows he won't do it anymore). The accompanying tourist-y photo of the St. Francis hotel is shot at night and all lit up like the Douglas Trumbull city exteriors in the movie. The rest of the essay makes similar, ingenious use of textual and geographic cross-cutting.
Update (forgot to write a conclusion): Using Dick's locations as a form of interrogation of the film's, Gustafson restores some of the moods and mores of the original text literally "lost to Hollywood."