The Iland – Surrealism contest winner.

A new hope – Actually it’s a new new hope.

Worst PPTs – Feel free to email them.

Unicorn Robocop – That’s what I call Art.

Rapide article sur Malte et Gozo, où j’ai passé 3 nuits. Beaucoup d’églises (je me demande encore comment ils font pour les remplir) et une histoire où la religion tient une part très importante. On peut retenir St Paul, qui christianisa l’ile avant d’aller à Rome, et les chevaliers de l’ordre de St Jean qui jouèrent un grand role lors des croisades.
Visiter l’ile à bicyclette n’est pas forcement facile. En effet, ayant une surface restreinte les habitants ont une fâcheuse tendance à tracer des routes toutes droites mais ce n’est pas du tout plat. Du coup on passe ses journées à monter et descendre des pentes à 10%. Ajouter à cela un trafic dense, un état des routes médiocres et le fait de devoir rouler à gauche.

Ich war 3 Nachte im Malta. Was mir überrascht hat, sind die Kirche: so viel und so groß, ich habe kein Ahnung, wie Sie jedes Sonntag ausfullen können (Hyphotesus:jedem soll wahrscheinlich 4 mal in verschienden Kirch gehen). Religion ist wichtig im Malta seit St Paul, der Katolismus auf dem Insel brachtt, und bis dem Malteserorden.
Besischtigen Malta mit einem Fahrrad ist nicht so einfach. Natürlich haben Sie nicht so viel Platz so sind die Straß (ohne vielen Baume) immer gerade aber es ist nicht flach dort! Und ich spreche nicht oder doch, dass Sie am links fahren, dass die Straß wie im Irland sind, dass es viel zu viel Auto gibt.

I spend 3 nights in Malta. I was really impress by the number of church in every small town (no idee how thy are fill them). Religion has been important since St Paul bring christianism and the knights of St John take an big part during and after the cruisades.
Otherway visiting the iland wiith a bike is maybe not the best to do. First they drive on wrong side,then the road are always going 10%up and down ( they don’t have place to make curves, I suppose) and it is probably the only country where the european founds don’t go directly in the pocket of roadbuilders so the road are not so good.

iLand is an animated multi-platform comedy concept developed by Bristol’s WONKY Films and Singapore’s Scrawl Studios, supported by the CAC2010 scheme. It has been designed to include a TV/online series (26 x 11min), flash games, mobile apps and an interactive site.

iLand has just been selected to participate at Cross Video Days in Paris, an international market for cross/transmedia innovative projects – one of only 23 selected from 280 entrants from across Europe. The market will enable WONKY to pitch iLand to European buyers and funders including Orange, Arte, Endemol, ZED, Mediaventura, Zodiak Active, BBC and YouTube in the Stade de France, 15-16 June.

Un petit momment qu’il n’y a pas eu d’article, pardon! Alors, en bref:

• Je suis maintenant a nouveau en Europe, en Sicile.
• Je me suis fait couper les cheuveux
• Mayac(mon velo) a eu sa premiere grosse intervention avec le changement de roulements au niveau du pedalier.
• On est passe a l’heure d’ete et ca c’est cool!
• Je dois maintenant mettre de la creme solaire pour ne pas cramer.
• Je me gave de glaces italiennes servies avec une brioche (ricotta, ameretto, stratticiela, …)

La Sicile est un chouette pays avec de nombreuses sources d’influences. Ca vous tente pas, (il y a des grand WE en Mai)? Si oui, je suis bientot dans le sud de l’Italie (Calabre, Pouille) puis Albanie, et Nord de la Grece sont au programme.

A maestro who take care of Mayac

Kein Artikel seit einer langen Zeit, Entschuldigung! Im kurz(liegt die Wurst):

• Ich bin jetzt wieder in Europa, in Sicilia.
• Ich habe mich Haar scheinen gelassen.
• Mayac(=mein Rad)hat ihren ersten grossen Eingriff mit neuen Kugellageren fuer die Tretkurbel bekommen.
• Winterzeit ist vorbei
• Ich brauche jetzt Sonnencreme, ausserdem brannte ich.
• Ich esse viele (zu?)viele italiennishen Eis.

Sicilia wie Andalucia ist echt schoen Land mit vielen verschieden Einflussen. Hast du immer kein Lust, kurz mit mir zu reisen? Es gibt lange Wochenende im May. Die naechsten Ziele sind Calabre, Pouille, Albania und NordGriechenland.

No post since long, I am Sorry! In resume:

• I am back in Europe, in Sicily.
• I have cut my hair.
• First big operation on Mayac(=my bike) with new ball bearing for the chain transmission.
• It is now summertime!
• I need to use suncream.
• I eat a lot of italian icecream(ricotta, ameretto, tiramishu,…)

Sicily is a beatiful region with a lot of various influence a little like Andalucia. Do you still no envy to come bike a round with me? It is soon May and there are long WE. Next steps Calabre, Pouille, Albania and North Greece.

multiple influence in the Palatine chapel in Palermo from Byzantic-arabic-norman style

Yep, we are in Sicily

nice bridge, then nice tunel then... nothing

I like this car

always asphalt is not fun

One day over lunch they were introduced to the PowerEdge C6105 and were impressed with the product’s density and power efficiency.  One thing led to another and here is iland’s CTO Justin Giardina talking about why they are so interested int the PowerEdge C6105.

Some of the points Justin makes:

• The primary reasons iland wanted to talk to Dell about the 6105 were density and power draw.
• iland can stack 20 servers in one cabinet and since each 6105 has 4 servers in it by filling the cabinet with 6105s they can in affect get 80 servers (4X the compute power per cabinet).
• The system only pulls 3 amps from both power supplies.

Extra-credit reading

• PowerEdge C6105 overview: Welcome the uber-dense AMD-based Cloud/ HPC machine
• eWeek.com: Dell Targets Cloud, HPC with New Hardware
• The Register: Dell launches Opteron 4100s into Boxes-o-Cloud

Pau for now…

L’ex-president du Conseil de Sécurité Nationale israélien Jiora Iland considère que la suprématie certaine d’Israël réside dans sa capacite à détruire le Liban et ses infrastructures, cette destruction etant l’objectif principal de la guerre prochaine.

D’apres l’Agence de Presse libanaise, Iland avait proposé l’élaboration d’un plan diplomatique étatique qui condamne la légitimation du Hezbollah au Liban et sa participation de plus en plus importante au gouvernement et au parlement libanais. Cette condamnation devrait être soumise aux États qui soutiennent la paix et l’indépendance du Liban, sachant que le soutien du Hezbollah pourrait préparer la piste à une guerre ouverte sur le Liban. Les avertissements des dangers de la prochaine guerre rendent le gouvernement libanais responsable devant les citoyens qui vont subir les effets d’une guerre plus féroce que celle de Juillet 2006.

Iland a invité le gouvernement israélien à prendre certaines mesures adéquates en cas d’instabilité sur les frontières nord et l’a appelé à informer les gouvernements américains et français de la nécessité d’inciter le gouvernement libanais à modifier sa politique envers le Hezbollah.

Ces déclarations ont eu lieu à l’occasion de la troisième commémoration de la guerre de 2006 qui a fait subir à Israël des pertes extravagantes.

AboutThisLater: Just invented a new superhero: the Lampshader

He’s like a cross between Deadpool and the parodically thinly-conceived Midnighter from The Authority.

I’ve been reading a lot of TVTropes lately (thanks to Stubby43 for the link), so where before I already knew that Deadpool was a classic fourth-wall breaker, I now have the vocabulary to describe Midnighter as textbook Cursed-with-Awesome and an egregious and obvious tribute to Batman, which writer Warren Ellis made entertaining by comprehensibly lampshade-hanging the character with Meta Fanservice/Going to Bed With a Trope: hardcore haunted Crazy Prepared bully-boy Midnighter is gay, and in a loving, settled marriage with Apollo, his universe’s Superman.

From TVTropes:

This practice is also known as “hanging a clock on it”, “hanging a lantern on it”, or “spotlighting it”. We went with this title because it’s the one used in the Mutant Enemy bullpen… Lampshade Hanging is the writers’ trick of dealing with any element of the story that threatens the audience’s Willing Suspension Of Disbelief—whether a very implausible plot development, or a particularly egregious use of a trope—by calling attention to it… and then moving on.

(From Nobody Scores!. You just wait for an upcoming post where I stretch the bounds of critical taste with my theory that cannibalism is the most extreme form of various behaviours all similarly redefined by the internet: once viewed as a symptom of barbarism, people-eating is now tinged with an aura of terrifying, inpenetrable connoisseurship.)

And with that brilliant segue, on to the main event: a trailer for a film whose writers have clearly been studying the Buffy playbook for ideas, not just for do-nots. Sam Neill, Ethan Hawke, Willem Defoe and Placebo star in a vampire flick which will quite literally have to be 100% lampshade (ah ha ha), and which annoyingly has taken a title which I’ve been kicking around for some time.

I’m reserving “Nightfallers” for the sequel, though.

It looks like a cross between Gattaca, Equilibrium and Jack Frost, the only good thing in the Blade movies. Awesome. [edit: he's actually called Deacon Frost. False memory there. Thanks to @benfrenchman]

p

What have I been doing, you ask?

Today’s schedule: Up and into town for work for an upcoming feature on the Museum of Asian Art’s Triennale. Conducted an interview with a trio of artists from Japan, Korea and China, whose work involves inventing a tiny fictional country and its flag, laws, currency etc. They even held their own Olympic ceremony, in Beijing, to coincide with the “real” one. I’m amazed they survived. Interesting lads who communicate through sketches and very limited English but who’ve been collaborating for years. Blog post will go up tomorrow, hopefully.

Then wandering around in the sweltering rain trying to follow email instructions on my phone, before finally finding the headquarters of the local branch of the General [foreign] Worker’s Union. A very interesting, earnest presentation about changes in immigration law and its implications for workers. Was kicked out before their AGM started, but again they’re nice, self-sacrificing, smart lads. Again, post up tomorrow, if I can make head or tail of my notes on Japan’s tortuous health insurance law.

Then to Niko’s for cannonball-heavy but delicious lentil stew, and finally starting to lay out pages of iland. Really awesomely exciting, but it’s weird to be doing it with only about three weeks before I leave. I have a long way to go before I can be sure I’m speaking the same language he is when trying to skype-describe how I think a frame should be oriented and where characters’ gazes should be going.

Finally home on the last train full of Sunday night drunks, reading an introduction to political philosophy and writing notes on my wrist. Came up with two great philosophical comebacks/punchlines for iland, but I guess you’ll have to wait and see.

please allow me to introduce myself

p

“If the change is a result of a Face Heel Turn, see Superpowered Evil Side and Good Is Dumb. If it’s a result of a Heel Face Turn, then it’s a case of Evil Is Dumb. If the change is due to time travel, see Future Badass. If it is the result of finding a powerful object, see Amulet Of Concentrated Awesome.”

Jennifer Monson. Photo by Vicente de Paulo.

These CDF Salons are becoming quite the habit; the broad variety of folks that show up usually can’t wait to get their discussion on, trade theories and bounce ideas around. This Monday (May 18) should be no different, when Silverspace opens its doors to curator/performer/teacher/iLAND Artistic Director Jennifer Monson, who will share her studies of environmental systems and the choreographic processes they generate. Specifically attuned to “our interactions with the natural and built environments we inhabit,” Monson walks the interdisciplinary walk not just among humans, but the animal kingdom as well (her decade-long work underway BIRD BRAIN includes, among other things, series of events following the migratory paths of a variety of fauna).

Too lengthy to recount here, check out her bio for an absolutely mind-boggling list of fellowships and grants she’s been awarded and her myriad points of involvement with the global dance community. You’d be foolish to miss hearing what she has to say, so don’t. 7-9pm, free, BYOB, RSVP to silverspacedance (at) gmail (dot) com.

iLAND photo by Bob Brain

In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to share an excerpt from iLAND artistic director Jennifer Monson’s opening remarks at last month’s iLAND Symposium:

“Both art and science are fundamentally creative fields where there is a strong desire to investigate the unknown. Often the only way we can develop our understanding of something is by making a creative leap that dislodges our assumptions of it. This is part of the nature of experimentation and innovation – to put things together in an unexpected alchemy.”

A perfect example of the experimental, interdisciplinary approach that Monson encourages comes from movement artist Karl Cronin’s Dry Earth and Earth Tattoo initiatives.  You can join Cronin at Fort Greene Park on several upcoming Saturdays for a Dry Earth experiential walking tour.  Plus, he’ll be speaking tonight at Brooklyn’s Chez Bushwick about the role of artists in raising awareness of human environmental impact.  This free event starts at 7 PM.

I learned about iLAND in early February and was drawn to the organization’s cross-disciplinary approach, especially because of my own interest in the connections between dance and environmental issues. Based on the program lineup, it seems like the symposium will be an engaging, informative event.

iLAND Symposium
Connecting to the Urban Environment: Creating embodied and relational approaches to environmental awareness

Saturday, March 28, 2009
9:30 AM – 1 PM (no charge, registration opens at 9 AM)
Refreshments will be served

Hosted by the Eugene Lang College
The New School for Liberal Arts
6 East 16th Street, New York City
Room #D1009 (auditorium)

Connecting to the Urban Environment, iLAND’s first annual symposium, will address issues emanating from the creative collaborations of past iLAB residencies. iLAB alumni will be paired with representatives from environmental organizations who are actively designing new relationships to urban space. Presentations will share the results of grappling with the project of finding shared language and processes across the arts and sciences while centering dance and the body as the mediator and resource for experience, imagination and knowing. The symposium will include oral and media presentations, workshops, and small-group discussions.

Join iLAND on Facebook.

iLAND participants at Dead Horse Bay, Brooklyn

What is important to note, is that iland is the only company publicly discussing the virtues of a hybrid solution; one that leverages existing infrastructure and technology investments already in place while maximizing the investment by deploying ‘virtual’ back-ups, disaster recovery facilities, and additional expandable virtual footprints.  These solutions enable companies to migrate carefully and efficiently into the virtual realm.

P to V – The Tools Necessary to differentiate your business

Physical to Virtual is their motto and they can support companies looking to jump right into it or simply feel it out.  Their customized solutions are an ideal fit for partners since they remain vendor agnostic, network neutral and can manage and integrate a variety of different platforms to suit the end user’s specific requirements.  Partners have the opportunity to use their own infrastructure, service provider relationships and leverage their hardware vendors to work with iland to deploy and effectively manage a solution that in the end, only makes their Partners look good.

For more information about the program and how you too could become a Partner, please contact Dante Orsini at dante.orsini@iland.com

For more information about iland Internet Solutions, please visit www.iland.com

For media inquiries, please contact Jaymie Scotto & Associates, Ilissa Miller at ilissa@jaymiescotto.com

ILAND INTERNET SOLUTIONS UNVEILS ITS NEW AND HIGHLY-COMPETITIVE PARTNER PROGRAM FEATURING THE COMPANY’S CUTTING-EDGE VIRTUALIZATION AND CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES

Houston, TX (MARCH 2, 2009) – iland Internet Solutions, a leading global provider of Virtualization and Cloud Hosting Services featuring Hosted VMware VI Enterprise solutions, Managed Colocation and High Speed IP Bandwidth announces today at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo the company’s first partner program, featuring its cutting-edge virtualization and cloud services over high-availability VMware.  Additional iland services that are included in the partner program are colocation across global markets; cost-effective, high-speed IP connectivity; managed network and security services; cost-effective disaster recovery solutions; mission-critical dedicated services and SAN storage.  

“Iland’s wide array of services allows new partners to leverage the latest in technology while maximizing business sales and real value in the marketplace. Our certified VMware team can assist in creating customized solutions to allow Agents and Resellers to target their specific target market including VOIP, SaaS, SMB and other segments,” says Dante Orsini, iland Channel Director.

Iland’s partner program allows Agents and Resellers to meet their client’s financial and technical needs.  Mindful of today’s economy, iland has crafted cost-effective IT solutions that allow end-users to capitalize on the latest technology without having to build extensive network infrastructure or lay out capital expenditures.  This new partner program enables iland to extend their reach to provide real and viable options that solve a wide-variety of IT issues faced by companies across many sectors. With iland’s Cloud Services (iCS), you can deliver private cloud solutions designed for businesses that demand secure, best-in-class technology. Offering a full range of virtualization solutions will help Agents and Resellers retain customers and keep their edge over the competition.  iland’s certified VMware team can show this segment how to leverage ‘the cloud’ – providing better technology that is finally affordable for any sized client.

Additionally, iland’s partner program allows agents and resellers to increase their own revenue with a partner reward/discount structure.  The flexible options and service bundling offers partners the opportunity to create customized and true value-add solutions, guaranteed to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction. Lastly, the new wave of virtualization and cloud computing, as well as additional iland products, will attract new clients and new target markets, further increasing partners’ competitive advantage.

“We are excited to open our doors to new partners and resellers,” states Brian Ussher, President of iland Internet Solutions. “After extensive research, our team has created a robust partner support system that includes a partner portal, a simple and competitive pricing structure, contract generation, marketing resources, customer event assistance and lead generation activities.  Iland is committed to the success of its flexible partner options, which includes an agent program, reseller program and a referral program, and we are available for constant training and pre and post sales and technical support, to insure a positive, cost-effective experience for partners and end users.”  For more information on the iland partner program, please visit www.iland.com or email info@iland.com.

# # # #

About iland Internet Solutions Corporation

iland Internet Solutions Corporation is a global provider of iland Cloud Services (iCS) with High Availability VMware Solutions, Managed Colocation and High Speed IP Network and Data services. iland provides fully redundant, geographically distributed solutions, including cost-effective disaster recovery options, to bandwidth-intensive companies.  Our clients include companies in the SaaS, Hosting, VAR and IT Consulting and VOIP verticals, as well as a wide array of enterprise business customers in the energy, manufacturing, biotech, media, software, education, web 2.0, communications, healthcare, and civil engineering industries. Since founded in1995, iland has been helping organizations transform their expensive, traditional IT environments into cost-effective, fully optimized, IT solutions. iland is headquartered in Houston, Texas. For more information about iland, please visit www.iland.com.

For iland media inquiries, please contact:     

Jaymie Scotto & Associates 

+1.866.695.3629

pr@jaymiescotto.com

iLAND dancers, photo by Bob Braine

Several years ago, I was seeking a meaningful way to integrate my interests in dance and environmental issues.  Both took up most of my free time, rarely intersecting and always competing for my attention.  Friends and family would joke that I could do interpretative dances about trees in order to convey my love for the environment.  As entertaining and humorous as that sounds, I knew I needed something else to satisfy my craving for environmental activism.  I accepted an offer from a non-profit environmental organization and adjusted to the fact that dance was going to take a back seat in my life.  For the first time in years, I didn’t have time to take a daily dance class.  I was disappointed that the treehugger in me beat the bunhead.

iLAND dancers, photo by Anja Hitzenberger

I recently learned about iLAND, the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance, and had an “a-ha!” moment. This dance research organization, founded by artistic director, choreographer, and performer Jennifer Monson, cultivates cross-disciplinary research among artists, environmentalists, scientists, urban designers and others in order “to illuminate our kinetic understanding of the world”. iLAND seems like a solid answer to my ongoing struggle to fuse my interests. One of iLAND’s past projects was BIRDBRAIN: A Navigational Dance Project, which followed the migratory pathways of birds and other animals while exploring their biophysical and metaphorical relationship to humans as world travelers and navigators. The project consisted of free, site-specific outdoor performances, workshops for students and the public, panel discussions on migration, navigation, and conservation, and a website that tracked the migrating birds and dancers participating in the project. Some other projects include Ridgewood Reservoir/iMAP, which investigates the landscape of the reservoir, and Urban Migrations, a seasonal project that activates urban landscapes through movement.

This past Saturday, Jennifer Monson presented Informance as part of Philadelphia Dance Projects 2009. The Dance Journal’s Kathleen Glynn wrote at length about the performance, stating, “[Monson's] work is something meant to be shared and exposed in order to involve so many more in environmental issues.”

iLAND is currently accepting applications for their 2009 residency program, one of their many initiatives. And this March, they will be holding a symposium in New York City about connecting to the urban environment. Now that iLAND is on my radar, I’ll be posting more about them in the future, and am looking forward to following their fascinating work.

iLAND dancers, photo by Bob Braine

Today was the first day of our new cycle of lectures, which are so relaxed compared to last term’s schedule that they almost seems to be standing still. I know this is my opportunity to get a lot of Japanese studying done in my own time and according to my own interests, which is the chance I’ve been waiting for, but to do so I’m going to need

a) better time management and b) to not spend all the time that I feel useful or productive working on the script, which will be hard.

We are doing a long term research project with a presentation in Japanese at the end, and I’m going to do Nihon no Eiga (Japanese Cinema), which is going to be awesome. Kaiju movies and the barely-concealed spectre of the Bomb, anyone? I don’t actually know what the Japanese for the atom bomb is: I picked up Masuji Ibuse’s Black Rain in a tiny second-hand bookshop in Bangalore, so I guess I can read that and call it ‘research’, along with Barefoot Gen.

Right now I’m reading Italo Calvino’s The Literature Machine, which has yielded some interesting epigraphs for the script already:

And so the author vanishes -that spolied child of ignorance- to give place to a more thoughtful person, a person who will know the author is a machine, and will know how this machine works. -Cybernetics and Ghosts, 1967

Sometimes I wonder how fortunate this kind of reading is: I was reading Aristophanes’ Nephelae before I even heard the pitch for the book (hard to believe that was ten days ago), and immediately there was a passage I wanted to use. I wonder if, unlike the pure story-building logic of Calvino’s hypothetical author-matics, I just grab at everything that catches my eye and warp the story to follow it, or if I shoehorn everything within reach into the story regardless of meaning, and make it unreadably patchwork. My first play was about the Crimea because I had been drinking and there had been Wikipedia, and the main character was obsessed with Marlowe’s Tamburlaine because I had been reading it for my course.

Maybe it’s because my reading is pretty unsystematic that I rely on serendipity too much: even here my bookshelf is helplessly scattergun, and i don’t really find time for it. I also rely on an instinct for syncretisme, in the sense used by Diderot when he tried to redefine the Biblical sin as a kind of eclecticism and fusion in L’Encyclopedie. In any case, I often find that I’ll experiment with an idea or detail to solve a narrative problem, work on it for a while, then find I’ve become adamant on that solution even when others are clearly better.

Not doctored, but tidied up some I'll admit

In any case. I got the draft with notes back from Nick this evening, and realised going through it that at some stage yesterday Id started saving it ina  different place, and had sent him the wrong doc at the end of the day. He was still excited, bless him, but I was really pissed off at myself when I realised that the whole day’s work had been a few tinkering changes to one scene, none of the amendments we’d talked about on Saturday night and and none of the big rewrites I’d been talking up. Yesterday had enough long stretches of unproductivity without my failling to save the better half of the days’ work.

Fortunately I hadn’t lost the doc, just saved somewhere else, but it took a long time to cross-reference the changes across all three docs and make a current one. Shame, because I was hoping to finally start plotting new stuff rather than just staying comfortably tinkering with scenes I’ve already worked out. There’s still time I suppose, but if I don’t do some Japanese this evening I’ll go mad. Rote learning will be almost relaxing for a while.

[a very little while]

we as a people decide if Shady’s as bad as he says he is

p

Update: another Tom McHenry comic, about two cartoonists in a cell at the end of the world about to fight in an alien gladiatorial arena. I feel like this sometimes.

I’ve been reading a lot of journal comics lately, a medium I used to hate, and it’s intermittently comforting and depressing that hourlies and journals are mostly about procrastination and missed opportunities. See especiallyKate Beaton’s gut-wrenchingly great Conversations With A Younger Self

‘Hell begins the day that God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do.’ — Goethe

2nd Update: Of course, Calvino invites us to inspect his deeper motives for believing in the comforting automation of literature,and our own motives for rejecting it. I suppose when I’m arguing for a serendipitous or epiphenomenal alignment of chance bookshop purchases and mental chemistry in the writing process, I’m trying to preserve the Romantic idea of the ineffable element in the Writer’s work. But the ineffable is scary, not to mention boring.

Apologies are well and truly due. I completely failed to mention that I would be incommunicate for about three weeks while in India over Christmas and New Year.  Woops. Mea Culpa. Also Mea still untanned and sickly. Only I could go to India and return as milk-white and snotty as when I left.

India pictures over at If it has a name.

I did get some kanji work done (mostly while lying on the beach, to my immense pride). I got off the plane back in Japan time, into the snow, dragged my three-times-as-heavy suitcase all the way back to the dorm, and found out that the big test which I’d been dreading all holiday has been more or less abandoned. The language course is a bit shambolic at the moment, and from the start of next week we’re in a completely different timetable with an emphasis on conversation rather than the blind trundling ‘progress’ of working through daily tests regardless of practice.

So this is good. For me and a small-but-growing group of compatriots who work in some connection with the magazine, the next month is a chance to get some real momentum going on a couple of projects we’ve been pushing. Social Networking/ the forum and the podcast are first among these: we had a slightly disjointed but very pleasant planning meeting over dinner and talked extensively about the benefits of Flickr, Facebook and a regular Blog platform for our increasingly aged publication.

p

Those projects aside, other things have suddenly appeared on the horizon. The other night I went for a drink with a very talented illustrator mate, because I’d told him I had a pitch for him. After the first time we met, we’d gone from one of us casually admitting a fondness for comics, to discussing the merits (or otherwise) of the Watchmen trailer, to talking about making a book together, in the course of two conversations.

I was going to pitch the idea for Manifest, the Vampire/Political analogy piece I wrote about earlier, but I realised as I was eulogizing and arm-waving about it that it really wasn’t in any way ready for public view. The overall concept is difficult to explain at best, and I have only the vaguest idea about characters and a general arc. I’m by no means giving up on the idea, but it will need some actual work, rather than just time spent sat on the beach thinking of cool snapshots and epigraphs and images I’d like to run with.

But if I thought I had too many ideas when I went to meet him, when I finally left the bar to catch the last train I could barely fill up the pages of my notebook fast enough. He had a pitch to make as well, and within a few minutes of him introducing it we were talking almost completely in movie references and character notes, as if we’d already signed and sealed. I went home and started typing up, really enjoying working with someone else’s material.

I realised as I was pitching my own project that the excitement of collaborative comickry is this: no matter how I planned it out my work would turn into something I could never have expected. In the past I’ve always written from first concept to final draft, and sometimes to performance, in an almost complete independence. That takes a thoroughgoing confidence which I wouldn’t exactly call ‘unwarranted’, but which definitely would have benefited from seriously collaborative editing. Work alongside someone else, with similar ideas but different plans. And this friend definitely has those: best of all, he already knew, before he met me and without my having to convince him, that Porco Rosso was by far the best Ghibli film.

The ideas he threw around are clearly ones which he’s been working on for some time, and which aren’t exactly coming from nowhere. It’s a coming-of-age story really, a strong story seen in the weird diluted light of adolescence; and the fact that it’s going to be in a retrofuturist skeuomorphic ex-Atlantis won’t detract from that. Nor will the fact that I’m writing it in the only way I apparently know how: heavy with literary reference. At the moment the epigraph is from Aristophanes’ The Clouds, and I’m retraining myself from putting more reference in.

But the fun of the work for me so far is in taking characters who he sketches in skeleton (though not literally: I’ve refused to see any sketches till I work some more) and then working them out in dialogue. No matter how ‘biographical’ or otherwise the story is, these characters aren’t leaping fully-formed from his forehead, or mine. They’re coming from the needs of the story and how we both want  to make them. They’re not descending from the Clouds.

“Indeed not. These are the clouds of heaven, great goddesses for the lazy; to them we owe all: thoughts, speeches, trickery, roguery, boasting, lies, wisdom.”

-Socrates the Sophist, Aristophanes’ Nephelae [The Clouds]

Not that any story or character ever does just appear from on high. My first instinct when writing the first notes for Manifest was to ‘list’ the mood of the book in terms of references: From Hell, Red Dawn, the poetry of Christina Rossetti, de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, Apollinaire…

In that case, the reference documents of the project what we’re currently calling Iland will be Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, Porco Rosso, Last Exile, The Aggressive Adventures of Fearless Griggs, Johnny Crossbones…

It’s not exactly steampunk: ‘Retrofuturist’ is a useful term here. Though I suppose I could add to the above list one of my favourite pieces of “young adult” fiction ever, Phillip Reeve’s dieselpunk fairytale Mortal Engines.

Johnny Crossbones is another useful example here: in many ways it has a younger feel that its most obvious influence Tintin: it has teen protagonists, rather than the age-uncertain, perpetually boy-scout author insertion brat Tintin; it hasn’t got the clear political pugilism, nor the obsession with technology. But it does have “attitude”, and a cool, smart, surprisingly hot female lead, as compared to the bizarre adventure theme-park of Tintin’s world, utterly devoid of women or sex (other than the monstrous Bianca Castafiore).

Similarly Mortal Engines: give me the mutilated, revenge-crazed anti-princess Hester over any bun-faced Lyra, any day.

There are elements of Iland that will put it on the “Young Adults” shelf. It is to be a comic, but it isn’t going to be ‘raced’ into prominence since, like Kari in Amruta Patil’s masterful Kari, it doesn’t have a Politic. It was always going to be the brilliant and issue-driven work of Joe Sacco, or Persepolis or ultimately Maus that made it onto the coveted New Release tables, rather than the uncertain fantasy of V for Vendetta or, say, Blankets.

But there’s plenty of room for a whiff of sex in this one, believe you me. I guess I should add Black Hole to the above list, as well: a sexy, cross-over comic and a coming-of-age story that made it big nonetheless (albeit with the dubious honour of having hardback editions that looked rather disguised as regular fiction, and were often shelved as such. I found one in my local library, and picked it up having seen it many times and believed it to be a novel).

I’m certainly not worried about being taken off the shelves for including a bit of teen sexuality (of any persuasion- thanks, K). In that sense I’m very happy to have my work considered ‘Young Adult’, in the vein of Les Grandes Meaulnes or Bonjour Tristesse. Or, dare, I presume, Cider with Rosie.

Or look at the 1973 Disney Robin Hood, which I rewatched recently to discover that I knew every word from repeated childhood viewings.Yet in all those infant hours spent sat on the carpet rewatching the film, I somehow failed to notice that it’s not only basically about Emancipation and the Blues Route in the American South, but it’s also somehow a camp masterpiece. And it combines the two in a way I’ve never seen outside Betty Boop or Hellzapoppin.

Camp is a funny word in this connection. It would be a mistake to equate the Camp appeal of, say, The Wizard of Oz with the film’s complete absence of sexuality: Tintin is adventurous and sexless, but couldn’t seriously be called Camp without distending an already too-flexible term. Or maybe with a new term: Steamcamp. Hmm.

[Speaking of The Wizard of Oz, I loved Australia and don't care who says otherwise. Though I will concede that if Baz had called the film anything else it wouldn't have been panned. No doubt Mr. Luhrman has made his own peace with being regarded as presumptuous.]

I suppose I should stop complaining or pre-emptively defending my actions. No-one can seriously describe comics as ‘marginalised’ anymore: it’s just an anachronistic defense mechanism for the more fringe stuff of which the medium’s still capable. A year ago I wouldn’t have expected that I’d be seriously considering a writing or part-writing a comic as my ‘first book’, but we’ve got an exciting idea and it’s ready to go, and so am I.

After all, I’ve always wanted to work with comics and retrofutur/steam and with Atlantean Anachrotech, and here’s my chance. A moment’s research uncovers an unbelievable amount of stuff being made in the Steampunk/creative anachronism community: Have a look at Airship Pirate band Abney Park or Neverwas Haul, or Silloff’s ‘Steam Wars’ remodelling of Star Wars figures into Pinstripe/industrial aesthetic.

I’m never happy, I’m coming to realise, without a project. And apparently learning Japanese isn’t quite enough anymore. As if I didn’t have enough to be thinking about. This weekend is going to have to be a foray into job applications, in the vain hope of having a position to come home to within a media industry which seems to be eating itself. Wish me luck.

shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

you are after all quite short

“En tjugondel av alla människor som någonsin har levt på jorden är fortfarande vid liv” Det är en kunskap jag inte hade innan jag började lyssna på honom.

När han talar så lyssnar man. Han sprider kunskap och inspirerar folk runt om i världen. Han blev årets talare 2006/2007. Han har även släppt några böcker.

“I mötet mellan olika kulturer utvecklas jag.” Det säger Fredrik Härén som reste till Kina för att utbilda kineser i kreativitet. Men där fann han att det var han själv som delvis satt fast i gårdagen.

Kolla på dessa klipp från kunskapens dag. Man blir helt trollbunden. Har man en gång börjat lyssna på honom kan man inte sluta. Han berättar saker som man aldrig tänkt på förut och dessa klipp kommer garanterat få dig att se saker från en annan synvinkel.

Be inspired…

ILAND INTERNET SOLUTIONS PROVIDES NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE SAVINGS DURING TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES

 Houston, TX (November 10, 2008) –iland Internet Solutions (www.iland.com), a leading global provider of Hosted VMware VI Enterprise solutions, Managed Colocation and High Speed IP Bandwidth, introduces their iland Cloud Services (iCS) for companies looking to defray infrastructure costs and to stabilize monthly IT budgets. 

Through iCS, iland can create a snapshot of a customer’s physical environment and then encapsulate these systems and applications into virtual machines to enable consolidation of workloads from underutilized servers and replicate them on to high availability VMware Server Clusters, to achieve higher utilization.  This allows customers to decrease equipment costs by using fewer devices, easing power and space requirements within their network data center(s). 

Customers can also quickly add capacity on-demand and distribute multiple and diverse applications across iland’s High Availability Data Center Hubs. iland is uniquely positioned in the market by offering hybrid hosting solutions including virtual servers, colocation, managed storage, and high speed IP using its existing geographically dispersed data center footprint.

Additionally, iCS clients who host applications on iland’s fault tolerant platform save on IT expenditures.  The fault tolerant platform is redundant at every level; from redundant 10GigE IP connections, dual power supplies and generators to redundant SANs providing SAN to SAN replication across multiple data centers. iland customers no longer have to pay to build out their own high end/high quality platform, iland’s offering allows their clients to utilize the latest in new technology with brand new equipment and resources.

With this fault tolerant platform, iland technicians can provision new servers within hours, versus weeks or months as in traditional IT environments. 

Unlike other cloud hosting providers, iland supports a variety of enterprise applications running on Linux,,Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, Oracle and SAP, and offers the ability to lease operating systems, further reducing capital expenditures to free up cash flow for company’s to invest money elsewhere.  Additionally, iland Engineers are available to help determine the best architecture for the client’s organization, thereby reducing the downtime risk and the need for additional, on-site IT staff thus providing quick returns on IT investments.

“As the cost of data center space, support and power continue to rise relative to the total cost of ownership, the ability to migrate underutilized physical server capacity to virtual server clouds translates into significant savings,” states Scott Sparvero, CEO of iland Internet Solutions.  “And with less physical servers and storage, our customers save on fewer data center racks, less heating and cooling costs, and enjoy ease of overall management.  In these competitive times, these reduced costs can translate into more available CAPEX for our customers’ businesses. We have seen our customers reduce their physical data center requirements over ten fold.”

These savings can become significant dollars. According to IDC, the premier global market intelligence firm, IT spends fifty cents on power and cooling for every dollar spent on servers. This amounts to $29 billion in power and cooling, industry-wide.  Companies trying to grow typically spend $8 in maintenance for every $1 spent on new infrastructure.  By utilizing iland’s virtualization services, companies can free their networks’ physical and geographical limitations and spend the available dollars growing their business. For more information, please visit www.iland.com.

To read the full article you must be a subscriber to the Tier 1 Research Newsletter – please contact Tier 1 Research at:  http://www.tier1research.com/contact/contact.php?t1rsk=5d43372a1fce0e2dc010f13f2bd92152  For more information about iland Internet Solutions please contact Jaymie Scotto & Associates at pr@jaymiescotto.com or visit www.ilandinternet.com

]]>