Warren Ellis's Blog, page 55

June 8, 2012

Bookmarks for 2012-06-08

U B U W E B – Film & Video: Erkki Kurenniemi – Electronics in the World of Tomorrow (1968)
@ubuweb: Erkki Kurenniemi's "Electronics in the World of Tomorrow" (1964) Techno-fetishist film of diagrams, chips, machines: http://t.co/lxZ0w42I http://twitter.com/ubuweb/status/2111...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )
5 To Try | Joe Hill Fiction
@joe_hill: 5 things I've never done as a writer that I'd like to try. Over on the blog: http://t.co/aJZFHl6c http://twitter.com/joe_hill/status/21...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )
European elites can’t stop themselves crashing their own project | Chatham House: Independent thinking on international affairs
@paulmasonnews: Why #Europe's elites are failing just like they did in 1914 http://t.co/v2HS87u6 – piece by me for #ChathamHouse http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/stat...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )
Eliza Gauger: Collected Works | Deep Map Pilots 1: Marenka digital 2012 MARENKA…
@3liza: I am proud to announce the launch of Deep Map Pilots, a microfiction collaboration with @warrenellis http://t.co/h7w3axc5 http://twitter.com/3liza/status/21105...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )

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Published on June 08, 2012 12:00

DEEP MAP PILOTS 1: by Eliza Gauger & Warren Ellis

MARENKA flies the sailplane service that skims the Neptune atmosphere on a loop that brings it back to the thaw station on Triton. All the many photos taped to the walls of Marenka’s cockpit flutter like dead leaves in a cold breeze when she bounces out of the atmosphere, and when the harsh thermal exchange beats the boat about on its descent to Triton. Triton is a moon of frozen lakes and a hot core. The sailplane delivers scooped helium-3 to the fusion engines that are re-routing core heat to the surface. Soon, Triton will be a subtropical worldlet on the edge of the solar system. That’s when Marenka will leave. She has a cockpit full of photos of all the things she never wants to be near again, and soon Triton won’t be a cold enough place for her.

[larger image] [original size image]

DEEP MAP PILOTS: A Series Of Five Pictures From Words
MARENKA – REHANI – CAMEO – JINJING – ASCENCION

[process: I wrote five flash fictions for Eliza Gauger to produce a piece of accompanying art for each. The idea was to produce five little portraits of women in space, in art and words.]

Art © Eliza Gauger 2012. Words © Warren Ellis 2012

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Published on June 08, 2012 03:59

June 7, 2012

Bookmarks for 2012-06-07

Superflux Summer Film Club | superflux
@Superflux: Afrofuturism! Gothic quantified tomatoes! A handcrafted particle accelerator! It's the @Superflux Summer Film Club: http://t.co/lD5t1rG0 http://twitter.com/Superflux/status/2...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )
Evan Caminiti – A Memory or a Mirage on Vimeo
Evan Caminiti – A Memory or a Mirage "A Memory or a Mirage" is from the Evan Caminiti album "Night Dust" out now on Immune immunerecordings.net/catalog/night-dust/ Video by Evan Caminiti All footage was sourced from YouTube Immune Recordings
(tags:ifttt vimeo video )
Rhizome | On the Natural History of Surveillance

(tags:drones surveillance sf )

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Published on June 07, 2012 12:00

June 6, 2012

DEAD SUN limited print by Ben Templesmith

Ben Templesmith

via Flickr -

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Published on June 06, 2012 16:17

Bookmarks for 2012-06-06

Commercial Moon explorer takes next giant leap (Wired UK)
@juhavantzelfde: Commercial Moon explorer takes next giant leap (Wired UK) http://t.co/cdhp8ck5 #occupymoon #newspacerace http://twitter.com/juhavantzelfde/sta...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )
500 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns & More | Open Culture
"Where to watch free movies online? Let’s get you started. We have listed here 500+ quality films that you can watch online. The collection is divided into the following categories: Comedy & Drama; Film Noir, Horror & Hitchcock; Westerns & John Wayne; Silent Films; Documentaries, and Animation."
(tags:video film )
Future Cities: Combined Advanced Technologies and Flexible Urban Infrastructures
@livingarchitect: Future Cities: Combined Advanced Technologies and Flexible Urban Infrastructures: http://t.co/n3o0TG8s http://twitter.com/livingarchitect/st...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )

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Published on June 06, 2012 12:00

David Malone’s DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE

One of the very interesting people I met at How The Light Gets In was the writer and filmmaker David Malone. In conversation with him and (it was a very weird weekend, okay?) Michael Nyman and the head of cultural affairs at the Mexican embassy to the UK, he’d mentioned that some of his work had been uploaded by other people to the net. Also, that his preferred form, the lyric televisual essay, had gone out of fashion. As I’ve noted here more than once, proper rhetorical television isn’t really made any more.

So I went looking, when I got home. And I found his DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE:

In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians – Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing – whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.

I don’t think David will mind if I show it to you here. It’s beautiful.

David also writes a blog, and can be contacted there.

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Published on June 06, 2012 11:52

Under Tomorrow’s Sky, Eindhoven, June 16/17

UNDER TOMORROWS SKY is a project by Liam Young of Tomorrows Thoughts Today opening in August at MU art space, Eindhoven. Liam has assembled a think tank of mad scientists, literary astronauts, digital poets, speculative gamers, mavericks, visionaries and luminaries to collectively author a proposal for a future city- an imaginary urbanism, the landscapes that surround it and the stories it contains.

On Saturday June 16 and Sunday June 17 the think tank will be coming together in physical space at MU but also in virtual space for a weekend of public presentations, discussions and workshops. Come behind the scenes as we open up the design process of the speculative city and expose the deliberations of the Under Tomorrows Sky think tank. See the work in progress and join us to debate the social, cultural, ethical and environmental consequences of emerging technologies.

At 8 pm on Saturday June 16th the members of the think tank will introduce themselves and present a series of wondrous visions of the future based on their own research or projects. On the following Sunday June 17 from 11am the group will get together for an open day of discussions, design workshops and live sketching as they begin to give shape to their city Under Tomorrows Sky.

Taken from this link here, which is where further details live. The cast includes Bruce Sterling, synthetic biologist Rachel Armstrong, and, um, me.

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Published on June 06, 2012 06:56

RARE EARTH by Paul Mason

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I read this book in two sittings – half on the train ride out to Hay, half on the train ride back. Paul Mason is the economics editor for BBC Newsnight. You might expect a novel by that person to be as sober and measured as that programme. It’s really, really not. A pissed hack in the last extremis of anything that can be called “reporting” in commercial broadcasting, trying and failing to add heft to a doomed shoot in China, trips over the worst thing he could possibly encounter: an actual story. And that’s when things get weird.

What I really liked about this book is its refusal to do anything easy. Even what seems like the looming obligatory “creepy vicarious sex scene” sex scene turns into a hilarious nightmare that sees said pissed hack kicked half to death for his uselessness.

At the heart of it all is an attempt to understand China: or, at least an attempt to define the reasons why the West so consistently fails to understand China.

It does that by embracing the surreality of life there – teasing out the strangenesses until the real things present as so goddamn weird that the inventions appear grounded by comparison. And every element, and more or less every character, reveals its true nature by stages.

I don’t want to rattle on – these are supposed to be quick notes – but I had a lot of fun with this odd, clever little book. I think that if you in general like my stuff, you’d find a lot to enjoy in RARE EARTH.

You can read a preview chunk of the book at the publisher’s website. You can find Paul on Twitter @paulmasonnews.

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Published on June 06, 2012 06:00