K.A. Laity's Blog, page 152

BitchBuzz: Sarah Angliss/Spacedog

Looking forward to catching some of these performances in London: I find her work absolutely fascinating.

Sarah Angliss and "Spacedog"By K.A. Laity

Musician, engineer, writer Sarah Angliss has embarked on a round of performances under the aegis of Spacedog. Her unique combination of nerdy science knowledge, inspired music and automata brings together technology, history and the spirits of the dead, including the titular dog, Laika the canine cosmonaut.



I think I first came across her work while researching puppetry. Her essay on the "Uncanny Valley" led me to exploring the fascinating compositions and videos she has created. Angliss characterises her work as a heady mix of unexpected elements:

Trained in electroacoustics, music and robotics, I specialise in creating original sound installations, exhibits and live performances that mix cutting-edge technology with curious or vintage sound equipment and little known stories from the history of science. I'm particularly interested in creating sonic art that enables people to generate or manipulate sound using novel physical elements (e.g. robots; motion sensors). Whenever possible, I try to avoid compositions that generate music entirely through software – I find algorithmic music is richer and more delightful when it's coupled to the real world in some meaningful way...

Read the rest: http://culture.bitchbuzz.com/sarah-angliss-and-spacedog.html#ixzz1Mo7LSS3a



Today's film in the horror class: the original Night of the Living Dead, which means I need to explain the 60s -- mostly that it wasn't all hippies and the Grateful Dead which seems to be the association my students usually make with the time period.

Today's Film: The Haunting (1963)

Here's an interesting combination of trailer and music video (because yes, I can find a connection to The Fall who covered this song, too). I'm looking forward to seeing this fine film with a bunch of students who have never seen it. It's such an effectively spooky movie!

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Cat People

Simone Simon stars in the Tourneur/Lewton frightfest Cat People from 1942. I'm teaching this today along with a first toe-dipping into Freudian theory. Old Siggy had a lot of hang-ups from his time and misapprehensions about human nature (as opposed to its particular manifestation during his particular and odd time) but there were enough astute observations in his work to keep its currency high even now.



The Lewton/Tourneur film makes much of its atmosphere. The oddly iconoclast Simon portrays the Serbian woman Irena who piques the interest of architect Oliver Reed (?!) despite her odd obsession with the panther in the zoo and her faith in the effects of an old Serbian curse which dictated that -- should she show the least interest in sex -- she will immediately turn into a ravening beast herself. The gorgeous cinematography and effective moodiness of the film make this a real pleasure to watch and the deft nature of it will keep you guessing up until the end about whether Simon's fears are real or not.



The remake with Malcolm McDowall and Nastasia Kinski is also fun. For the round up of Tuesday's Overlooked A/V, see Todd's blog.

Ms. Russ & Horror

Lesson: this is what happens when you complain about something to generally nice people -- you get asked to share your opinion, too. I commented on Ms. Magazine 's initial post on Joanna Russ' passing by expressing my disappointment that the piece was so cursory and written by someone who said she didn't really read the genre (always distressing). So here's my piece:

When Joanna Russ Changed UsMay 15, 2011 by K. A. Laity · Leave a Comment

[image error]Michele Kort's vivid remembrance of Joanna Russ (who died April 29) based on a single encounter with Russ's short story "When it Changed" is a testament to just how far this woman's influence continues to spread. Few have come away from reading Russ without a strong opinion. Ideas she posed as many as 30 years ago—a world without men, kick-ass action heroines, feminist romance—continue to vex and inspire us.The Russ's unflaggingly popular novel The Female Man and its development of the world known as Whileaway—a place devoid of men for centuries—will long be part of her fame. This imagined future is an agrarian reverie filled with hard work but little advanced technology beyond the ability to merge ova to make babies. People tend to refer to Whileaway as "utopian" but I doubt that Russ would agree. Simple answers never suited her....



Read the rest at Ms.



Today I begin the summer intensive,  Three Weeks of Terror -- or a sort of abbreviated history of the horror film. It's always a bit of a breathless run which tantalises more than it teaches, I fear. As a boot camp in the genre, at the very least it usually introduces the students to films they've not seen and a way of looking at familiar films that makes them completely new. It also funds my travels in England for June, so whoo hoo! Doubtless I will have much to say about the class in the coming days.

Con-Eire: Now Available as an Ebook

Con-Eire: a comedy for voices



Download: $1.83



"RADIO PLAY" SCRIPT is ideal for live performances at cons!



It's three days before the start of CON-EIRE, the best Irish-themed science fiction and fantasy con in the tri-state area, when a phone call sets the entire Convention Committee into panic mode. Is Big Name Writer going to pull out at the last minute? What does Very Famous Artist have to do with that decision? And what do the Fairies have to say about all this? Follow the hilarious mishaps as the committee members work desperately to salvage months of planning and hard work, all of which are about to be undone by a well-known prima donna.



You can also "like" the page to share with friends on Facebook or pass it along on Twitter, Reddit, Digg or even (gasp!) MySpace. It's great for reading impromptu at cons: we had so much fun doing it at Trinoc*coN! Yes, just another plank in my plan for World Domination.

Blogger Has Been Down

Hence the lack of posting: more soon.

It's Official

My department has approved my release for Galway: college approval on its way. A million and one things to do (like grading, revising, planning, teaching next week, and more) but a moment to celebrate properly with a little Vic.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Spirit of the Beehive

A film of incredible beauty, sadness and love for the monster: Victor Erice's magical 1973 film, Spirit of the Beehive . Think of this as the prelude to Guillermo del Toro's films, especially The Devil's Backbone. How the unimaginable horror of war seems to the unfathoming innocence of a child. There aren't enough movies that awe on a visual level that aren't simply candy-colored assaultive spectacles. This understated tale of a young girl's fascinating with Karloff's iconic creature will amaze you.







As always, drop by Todd's blog for a round-up of all the overlooked A/V.

Hectic

Paperwork for the Fulbright to prepare; details to work out; pictures for the work permit; appointments to schedule; belongings to jettison; prep for the reading of "Lumottu"; revisions of essays to finish; grading grading grading. So, um -- here's something from the Fall!

The Galway Project

Yes, I've dug out my Learning Irish book and tapes (yes, tapes O_o) and will endeavour to master what I can.



I probably should have thought of it before, but thanks to Karen Hayes for asking on Facebook if I would share a description of the project I'll be working on in Galway (assuming all the massive paperwork and permissions and whatnot go through :-). Here's a little snippet, but if you want to read the whole thing, it's on Google Docs. The proposal begins with the pitch for the undergrad seminar for the fall:



Writers in Motion: Romanticism and Reality in Lives of 21st Century Writers



The "Writers in Motion" project aims to bring together popular portrayals of writers on film with the realities of being a writer in the 21st century. Films offer us a romantic view of writers' lives. Forget hard graft: according to movies, writers live, love and drink to excess, then occasionally transcribe their adventures in a brief montage. Success, naturally, ensues. We will spend some of our time interrogating romanticized representations of writers in a variety of modern films, while contrasting those portrayals with the realities of writers' lives both in the past and in the present. We will explore the benefits inherent in the complicated gap between reality and representation: why is Hollywood selling us this vision of the writer? Just as historians seek to recover past writers in the context of the social conditions of their time, de-mystifying the distorted perceptions fostered by Hollywood's commoditization of a romanticized past that obscures social realities, we will try to glimpse the realities beneath the representations modern writers confront.



Technology is changing the writer's life with the new surge in publication of ebooks and the instant access to writers and books provided by the internet. Writing was once a solitary profession, but now writers can collaborate and communicate with each other and with their readers. How are instantaneous communication and elastic textual formats changing the ways we write and read? What does it mean to be a writer in the 21st century? Will the traditional print hierarchy and genre structure dissolve or will new categories develop? Are traditional publishers still necessary? The recent end-run around publishers by the Wylie Agency, when super agent Andrew Wylie sold his clients' ebook rights directly to Amazon's Kindle store, has inflamed already tense relations between traditional print publishers and ebook sellers—not to mention authors, agents and readers.



What new categories are emerging that may supersede the traditional forms of publishing? How should writers approach these new opportunities? With greater access afforded to publication by the web, does this model, made possible by new and revolutionary technologies, lead to more democratic forms of producing and disseminating ideas and knowledge? Or does it reinforce and exacerbate existing hierarchies among writers and the value of what they produce? Does equal access to publication in digital media enhance the range of alternative ideas and democratize knowledge by expanding access to readers hitherto excluded? Or does it further reduce its value by flooding cyberspace with reams of otherwise unpublishable dreck? [continued...]