Negativland’s No Other Possibility (1989) is a prophetic video mash-up that visualizes a future (and the future is now) in which the mis-information highway, the Universal Media Netweb, is a traffic jam of useless artifacts of consumer culture, propaganda, mind numbing sensory overload and wasted time. Two decades before the term “meme” had become ubiquitous, Negativland was poking at the contagions in the petri dish of pop culture.

Life is a sales pitch and everybody’s buying.

 
Dirk Bogarde was cool. He had style. I knew that as soon as I saw him in one B&W ‘50’s movie, loafing around a beach, chatting to his bikini-clad co-star, wearing white trousers, white shirt, white socks and plimsolls. Who else could carry that off? Okay, Cary Grant could, but Grant would have added a cravat, and topped it off with a checked linen jacket.

It’s telling that Bogarde wore such clothes in a beach scene - surrounded by naked flesh cooking under a studio sun - he maintained a distance, an image, a decorum, an untouchability. He was actually hiding who he was, hiding behind his clothes; and that distance, rightly or wrongly, made him seem cool.

Bogarde started off in theater before making his impact as the cowardly killer of P.C. Dixon (Jack Warner) in The Blue Lamp.  Warner went on to become a stalwart of TV with Dixon of Dock Green, while Bogarde became the Rank Organization’s prime beefcake, the biggest British star of the 1950s, with a string of audience-pleasing movies. While these films brought fame and fortune, they sold short his very real talents as an actor.

This was to change, when in 1961, Bogarde made Victim, the highly controversial film that moved his career in a different, more intelligent, more worthy direction.

Victim dealt with the then-taboo subject of homosexuality, telling the story of a man who falls prey to a blackmail gang. It was the first film to use the word “homosexual” and caused considerable outrage amongst those angry letter writers of Tunbridge Wells, but it did help change opinions, and was a step in the right direction to Britain decriminalizing homosexuality in 1967.

Worried that Bogarde (who was himself gay) might lose some of his mass of adoring female admirers, Rank roped him into this promotional interview for Victim, where the actor talked about his career, his ambitions and hopes for the future. It’s a fairly candid interview for a man who, in his later years, fictionalized most of his life.

Dirk Bogarde would have been 90 this week, and for me, he’s still cool as fuck.
 

 
Like the History Channel, the British are obsessed with Adolf Hitler and the Second World War. So bad is this obsession that even houses in remotest Wales can remind some people of the former German Führer, as the Daily Mail reports:

The Hitler house: Semi in Swansea looks eerily like Nazi dictator (complete with naff side parting)

This unassuming house in a sleepy part of Swansea is set to become a global internet sensation… for bearing a passing resemblance to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Its neat brown door brings to mind the fascist dictator’s trademark toothbrush moustache.

And the slanting tiled roof falls at a similar angle to the leader’s greased down, parted hairstyle.

Eagle-eyed tweeter Charli Dickenson spotted the curious similarity and posted the photos on her Twitter page where they have become a big hit.
Comedian Jimmy Carr re-Tweeted the image later as interest gathered on the micro-blog site.

Carr wrote: ‘Morning, here’s a house that looks like Hitler.’

It was sent on by hundreds of his followers and became a trending topic on Twitter.

Adolf Hitler’s actual family home, an unassuming house in the Austrian town of Braunau, was put on the market in 2009 priced at around £2million.

By comparison the two-bedroomed Swansea look-a-like would likely go on the market at around the £70,000 mark.

 

 
With thanks to Suzanne Moore
 

 
Photographer Jeffery Martin has created the “world’s largest indoor photograph: a 40-gigapixel, 360-degree image of the hall that weighs in at 283 GB.”

But that’s not all, for the photograph is of Prague’s Philosophical Hall, a rarely seen, Baroque reading room in the city’s 868-year-old Strahov monastery library.

As reported in Wired Martin has taken nearly 3,000 pictures to create the one giant panoramic view of the Strahov library, which is released today on Martin’s website. The finished image is a

...a zoomable, high-resolution peek inside one of Prague’s most beautiful halls, a repository of rare books that is usually off-limits to tourists (a few of whom can be seen standing behind the velvet rope at the room’s normal viewing station).
Martin’s panorama lets you examine the spines of the works in the Philosophical Hall’s 42,000 volumes, part of the monastery’s stunning collection of just about every important book available in central Europe at the end of the 18th century — more or less the sum total of human knowledge at the time.

Martin got special permission from the library to pursue the project. He didn’t, however, get permission to wear his street shoes indoors. He’s complemented his fingerless gloves and down vest — it’s cold in here — with a pair of oversize, felt-soled slippers for the sake of the polished parquet floor.

To capture the images, the German-made GigaPanBot sends the camera on a pattern that starts at the very top of the library, going back and forth in rows, working its way downward over five days of shooting.

“I started from the ceiling, and by the time they kicked me out at 5 p.m. the first day, I had done maybe 20 percent of the hall,” Martin says. “So I hit pause and left everything right where it was until the next morning. That’s one advantage of shooting in an 18th-century library — my camera is the least valuable thing in the room.”

The next step: turning 2,947 individual shots into a single picture. It’ll take a day of mostly automated post-processing to correct colors and exposures from RAW image files.

“That dark corner and the bright ceiling are shot at the same exposure,” Martin says. “My goal is to get something that doesn’t have dark spots and bright spots — and also something that looks natural.”

During assembly of the massive panorama, Martin’s program will take more than 111 hours to stitch everything together.

“When you give it 10 pictures, it fits them together no problem,” Martin says. “But when you give it 3,000 images, there’s bound to be some issues.” After the initial layout, Martin will spend another 20 hours fixing a misaligned bookshelf, a few holes in the floor and other errors.

From inside the library, you can see why historians, scholars and travelers would flock here. A giant, four-volume set marked Musée Français, contained in a standalone, statue-topped wooden case, is believed to be one of only four extant copies. It’s a gift from Marie Louise, the second wife of Emperor Napoleon. (The French emperor is said to have had the rest of the print run destroyed because it contained evidence that certain Louvre treasures had been plundered from Italy.)

The room’s walnut paneling, gilt laurels and Escher-like inlaid marquetry make quite an impression. Beyond the rare tomes, guests who look carefully at the bookshelves might spot two hidden doors, masked with fake book spines, that lead to secret stairways — something you probably won’t catch in Martin’s panorama.

In other regards, viewing Martin’s web-based panorama might actually be better than an actual visit, especially when it comes to exploring the fresco high above the books. Completed in 1794, Franz Anton Maulbertsch’s trompe l’oeil ceiling depicts dozens of historical and religious figures, ranging from Noah and Moses to the French encyclopedists.

In real life, from 45 feet down, you might wish you could hit Shift to zoom.

Click here to see Jeffrey’s giant photograph.

The full article from Wired with photos can be found here.

A selection of Jeffrey’s 360-panoramic QuickTimes can be found on his site.
 

 

 
With thanks to Tara McGinley
 

 
When stock market advice websites like MarketWatch are running articles with tiltes like “Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution” I think it’s safe to assume that it’s probably time to tax the super rich now or, you guessed it, face a revolution. It’s been a long time coming and it’s going to be quite sweet, I think, as a result. Western civilization is on the cusp of something new and I, for one, can’t wait for it to get here.

Just the other day, I saw a young guy with a tee-shirt with Donald Trump’s severed head on the end of a lance.It’s in the air.

Yes, tax the Super Rich. Tax them now. Before the other 99% rise up, trigger a new American Revolution, a meltdown and the Great Depression 2

Start preparing for the third meltdown of the 21st Century, and depression

Denial and lies. Remember, 93% of what you hear about markets, finance and the economy are guesses, wishful thinking and lies intended to manipulate you into making decisions that suck money from your pockets into Wall Street. They get rich telling lies about securities. They hate any SEC fiduciary rules forcing them to tell the truth.

But the fact is, on an inflation-adjusted basis, Wall Street lost 20% of your retirement money in the decade from 2000 to 2010, over $10 trillion. And “Irrational Exuberance’s” Robert Shiller warns of a third meltdown coming. You better start preparing now.

Before you start betting any more at Wall Street’s rigged casinos, think long and hard about these six megatoxins lurking in America’s Super-Rich Delusion, a mind-altering pandemic infecting our nation’s leadership in Washington, Corporate America and Wall Street … but also “trickling down,” infecting many Americans. Listen:

1. Warning: Super Rich want tax cuts, creating youth unemployment

Bloomberg warns: “The Kids Are Not Alright.” Worldwide, youth unemployment is fueling the revolution. In a New York Times column, Matthew Klein, a 24-year-old Council on Foreign Relations researcher, draws a parallel between the 25% unemployment among Egypt’s young revolutionaries and the 21% for young American workers: “The young will bear the brunt of the pain” as governments rebalance budgets. Taxes on workers will be raised and spending on education will be cut while mortgage subsidies and entitlements for the elderly are untouchable,” as will tax cuts for the rich. Opportunities lost. “How much longer until the rest of the rich world” explodes like Egypt?

2. Warning: rich get richer on commodity prices, poor get angrier

USA Today’s John Waggoner warns: “Soaring food prices send millions into poverty, hunger: Corn up 52% in 12 months. Sugar 60%. Soybeans 41%. Wheat 24%. For 44 million the “rise in food prices means a descent into extreme poverty and hunger, warns the World Bank.” Many causes: Speculators. Soaring oil prices. Trade policies. Population explosion. But altogether they expose “the underlying inequalities and issues related to the standard of living that boil beneath the surface,” says a Pimco manager.

3. Warning: Global poor ticking time bomb targeting Super Rich

A Time special report, “Poor vs. Rich: A New Global Conflict” warned that a “conflict between two worlds — one rich, one poor — is developing, and the battlefield is the globe itself.” Just 25 developed nations of 750 million citizens consume most of the world’s resources, produce most of its manufactured goods and enjoy history’s highest standard of living.” But they’re now facing 100 underdeveloped poor nations with 2 billion people with hundreds of millions living in poverty all demanding “an ever larger share of that wealth.” Think Egypt. British leader calls this a “time bomb for the human race.”

4. Warning: Next revolution coming across ‘Third World America’

We are ripe for one: In “Third World America” Arianna Huffington warns: “Washington rushed to the rescue of Wall Street but forgot about Main Street … One in five Americans unemployed or underemployed. One in nine families unable to make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans on food stamps. Upward mobility has always been at the center of the American Dream … that promise has been broken… The American Dream is becoming a nightmare.” Soon it will implode. a meltdown, revolution, depression.

5. Warning: Super Rich must be detoxed of their greed addiction

In “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill),” David Cay Johnston, warns that the rich are like addicts, and to “the addicted, money is like cocaine, too much is never enough.” A few years ago an elite 300,000 Americans in “the top tenth of 1% of income had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the economic lower half of our population.” The Super Rich Delusion is an addiction that requires a painful detox.

6. Warning: Politicians infected by Super-Rich Delusion, revolution

In “Washington’s Suicide Pact,” Newsweek’s Ezra Klein warns: “Congress is careening toward the worst of all worlds: massive job losses and an exploding deficit.” How bad? As many as 700,000 more jobs lost, says Moody’s chief economist, Mark Zandi. What a twist: Remember vice president Dick Cheney said “deficits don’t matter.” Today the GOP is so blinded by its obsession to destroy Obama’s presidency, deficits are now the only thing they say matters.

Wake up folks. The Super-Rich Delusion is destroying the American Dream for the rest of us. The Super Rich don’t care about you. They’re already stockpiling for the economic time bomb dead ahead. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Time for you to plan ahead for the coming revolution, for another depression.

Read more of Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution (MarketWatch)

 
Jim Henson’s test pilot of Johnny Hart’s Wizard of Id strip from 1969. If this was pitched again in 2011, the “class war” humor would be more in tune with the times, eh?
 

 
Via Classic Television Showbiz

 
Via Dangerous Minds pal Glen E. Friedman’s blog:

In May 1975 Die Electric Eels recorded two slabs of what have to be some of the greatest proto punk ever. Agitated (listen in the player below) has all the punk elements: short song, sloppy instrumentation, raw production and a lousy solo.

In 1978, Rough Trade released the Agitated 45 (RT 8). Guitarist John Morton illustrated the cover and wrote the titles in a faux German style, which was taken at face value by many who initially bought it, exactly the sort of confusion and ambiguity to which the Eels aspired. Between the sounds, still extreme by 1978 standards, and the gradual realization that “Die Electric Eels” were actually a crazy band from Cleveland that had broken up three years earlier made it that much more impressive.

Nick Knox who later became the drummer for the Cramps was also in this band.

A bit reminicent of early Black Flag recordings with Keith Morris, and if you can imagine, even more raw.

 

 
Hunter Jonakin created this wild 80s-style arcade cabinet that allows you to virtually destroy work by the artist, Jeff Koons. It costs twenty-five cents to play. Could this be a giant FU to Koons because he thinks he owns all likenesses of balloon dogs?

 
(via Today and Tomorrow )

 
Well here’s one creative way to recycle your vinyl: Turn them into melted 3D face sculptures. The work entitled “Through The Barricades” is by artists Angelo Bramanti and Giuseppe Siracusa AKA L017. I wonder if the face is of the actual artist who made the record?

L017 prefers the use of waste materials and recycled objects.

L017 uses any type of media without any discrimination between the various methods of expression:painting, sculpture, installation, graphic work that live togheter and often get in touch, mingle together

.

 
(via Mister Honk)

 
Nicely. 

(via Arbroath)