Showing posts with label Progress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Progress. Show all posts
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Metropolis from The Human Drift - King Champ Gillette
Before perfecting his invention of the safety razor and founding what became a major American industrial and sales enterprise, King Camp Gillette (1855-1932) authored several books and pamphlets calling for radical changes in the country's economic and social system. The first of these polemical tracts, The Human Drift, called for the establishment of an ideal society to be created by The United Company "Organized for the purpose of Producing, Manufacturing, and Distributing the Necessities of Life." Except for agricultural and other rural pursuits, all activities and all the population would be concentrated in one gigantic urban complex that Gillette called "Metropolis."
Although Gillette's book has been regarded as part of the tradition of utopian romances like the better-known Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy, it can also be looked on as a serious, if misguided, proposal for organizing the urban world. Gillette was a tinkerer and inventor, and "Metropolis" represents his verbal working model of a new kind of city. One wonders how many later planners or urban theorists knew of his book and how he thought a modern city should be ordered. He anticipates by many years Le Corbusier's concept of widely-separated, lofty skyscrapers, although it seems unlikely this Swiss-French designer would have seen The Human Drift. Much closer in time and space is the proposed hexagonal city plan by Charles Rollinson Lamb in 1904. Lamb might have found inspiration for his own less drastic vision of the city of tomorrow in Gillette's writings. Or, perhaps Walter Burley Griffin, deeply interested in city planning and seeking whatever writing existed on this subject, came across Gillette's hexagonal system. This may either have confirmed his own ideas about the use of geometric forms or set him to considering how this might be done. Griffin's design incorporating hexagons and octagons that won first prize in the competition for the plan of Canberra, Australia in 1912 may thus have had partial origins in Lamb's or Gillette's hexagonal city designs.
Gilette writes: "For many reasons I have come to the conclusion that there is no spot on the American continent, or possibly in the world. that combines so many natural advantages as that section of our country lying in the vicinity of the Niagara Falls, extending east into New York State and west into Ontario. The possibility of utilizing the enormous natural power resulting from the fall, from the level of Lake Erie to the level of Lake Ontario, some 330 feet is no longer the dream of enthusiasts, but is a demonstrated fact. Here is a power, which, if brought under control, is capable of keeping in continuous operation even manufacturing industry for centuries to come, and, in addition supply all the lighting;, facilities, run all the elevators, and furnish the power necessary for the transportation system of the great central city....
The manufacturing industries of "Metropolis" would be located east and west of Niagara River in Ontario and New York. The residence portion of the city would commence about ten miles east of Niagara River and Buffalo; and from this point to its eastern extremity, which would include the present city of Rochester in its eastern border, the city would be sixty miles long east and west, and thirty miles in width north and south, lying parallel with Lake Ontario, and about five miles from it.".
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Technocracy Rhetoric
My unconstrained mirth for the literature ( . . . and recent! . . . ) of Technocracy knows yet no limits.It is as if to see the rhetorical excesses of Socialism--for one, but any of the large-scale, utopian schemes descended from the Enlightenment--in the funny mirror.
If eccentric, declamatory pamphlets positing to solve by superior reason the globe's most knotty, thorny, intractable problems are your thing, the official site has numerous, hilarious freebies.
More
Documents at Technocracy.ca.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and Antichrist
Nietzsche shares the position with Marx in being the most (subsequently) pervasive and persuasive of 19th Century agitators calling for a "New Man," with attendant prescriptions, programs and forecasts of upheaval. A theme which energizes the early twentieth century, and also likely fuels an intellectual and creative retreat by century end.The Antichrist
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Sunday, October 10, 2010
The Phantom Empire (1935)
Source.
"When the ancient continent of Mu sank beneath the ocean, some of its inhabitant survived in caverns beneath the sea. Cowboy singer Gene Autry stumbles upon the civilization, now buried beneath his own Radio Ranch. The Muranians have developed technology and weaponry such as television and ray guns. Their rich supply of radium draws unscrupulous speculators from the surface. The peaceful civilization of the Muranians is corrupted by the greed from above, and it becomes Autry's task to prevent all-out war, ideally without disrupting his regular radio show."
This 12-chapter Mascot serial offered singing cowboy Gene Autry his first starring role, in what has to be one of the most sublimely, surpassingly surrealistic serials ever made. Consider the following--5 or 6 miles underground below the dude ranch owned by Gene is the long-lost superscientific civilization of Murania. Gene has not one but two juvenile sidekicks (Frankie Darrow and Betsy King Ross). Further, Gene has not one but two comical sidekicks (Smiley Burnett and Bill Moore). Gene will lose the ranch unless he shows up every day to do a live radio broadcast of western songs -- so simply being locked in a closet by his enemies (and he has many, both above and below ground-level) will result in an agonizingly suspenseful chapter ending. But there are many exciting chapter endings, including the forever classic situation in which Gene, Betsy and Frankie are left literally hanging from a cliff by their fingertips!
The serial's real focus is on the city of Murania, represented by a surprisingly detailed miniature, and by some great, huge-looking futuristic sets. You can count on the fingers of one hand all the super-scientific future cities we ever got a glimpse of in the early 1950s, either on film or TV, and Murania is at the top of the list. As presided over by the regal Queen Tika (icy blonde Dorothy Christy, who also portrays Stan Laurel's terrifying wife in SONS OF THE DESERT), Murania is a hotbed of cardboard robots, scheming noblemen, mad scientists, and labs full of giant levers, spinning dynamos, gigantic pistons, spheres emitting large sparks, bubbling chemical retorts, flickering gauges, giant rayguns, huge TV screens, welding torches that emit 6-foot flames, and other high-tech wonders. Almost every detail of Murania is surpassingly strange. One aspect that delighted me and my brother when we saw it in the early 1950s is that whenever a recently-dead corpse is returned to life, by the marvelous medical technology of Murania, he speaks incomprehensible words --"The language of the dead," as the chief scientist helpfully explains! (doctors in Murania wear black instead of white surgical outfits!)
For reasons unknown, Murania has an armored cavalry, the "Thunder Riders," who every once in a while take the miles-long elevator trip to the surface and ride around Gene's ranch. And as a wonderful example of how this serial always piles it on, Frankie and Betsy are leaders of a gang of kids who call themselves the "Junior Thunder Riders," and ride around Gene's ranch too, with water-pails on their heads in imitation of knight's helmets! Frankie even has a workshop/lab just as many kids dreamed of having in 1950, where he dabbles with radio and a chemistry set. Above ground, some gangsters plot to seize Murania for its mineral wealth, while in Murania itself, revolutionaries plot the overthrow of Queen Tika, and the last chapters feature a Muranian civil war with large numbers of exotically-costumed extras! This is truly a serial that touches all the bases, each more than once.
In the leading role, Gene Autry is extremely likable and unassuming. The audience cares deeply what happens to him, despite the often absurd goings-on that surround him. For him, it was the auspicious beginning of a long, richly successful movie, radio, TV and recording career. Note too the very subtle chemistry between Gene's character, and Queen Tika. In Gene's later singing westerns, he would win over even the most feisty females just by singing them a little song; probably the serial's only lapse is that he never gets to sing for the Queen!
"When the ancient continent of Mu sank beneath the ocean, some of its inhabitant survived in caverns beneath the sea. Cowboy singer Gene Autry stumbles upon the civilization, now buried beneath his own Radio Ranch. The Muranians have developed technology and weaponry such as television and ray guns. Their rich supply of radium draws unscrupulous speculators from the surface. The peaceful civilization of the Muranians is corrupted by the greed from above, and it becomes Autry's task to prevent all-out war, ideally without disrupting his regular radio show."This 12-chapter Mascot serial offered singing cowboy Gene Autry his first starring role, in what has to be one of the most sublimely, surpassingly surrealistic serials ever made. Consider the following--5 or 6 miles underground below the dude ranch owned by Gene is the long-lost superscientific civilization of Murania. Gene has not one but two juvenile sidekicks (Frankie Darrow and Betsy King Ross). Further, Gene has not one but two comical sidekicks (Smiley Burnett and Bill Moore). Gene will lose the ranch unless he shows up every day to do a live radio broadcast of western songs -- so simply being locked in a closet by his enemies (and he has many, both above and below ground-level) will result in an agonizingly suspenseful chapter ending. But there are many exciting chapter endings, including the forever classic situation in which Gene, Betsy and Frankie are left literally hanging from a cliff by their fingertips!
The serial's real focus is on the city of Murania, represented by a surprisingly detailed miniature, and by some great, huge-looking futuristic sets. You can count on the fingers of one hand all the super-scientific future cities we ever got a glimpse of in the early 1950s, either on film or TV, and Murania is at the top of the list. As presided over by the regal Queen Tika (icy blonde Dorothy Christy, who also portrays Stan Laurel's terrifying wife in SONS OF THE DESERT), Murania is a hotbed of cardboard robots, scheming noblemen, mad scientists, and labs full of giant levers, spinning dynamos, gigantic pistons, spheres emitting large sparks, bubbling chemical retorts, flickering gauges, giant rayguns, huge TV screens, welding torches that emit 6-foot flames, and other high-tech wonders. Almost every detail of Murania is surpassingly strange. One aspect that delighted me and my brother when we saw it in the early 1950s is that whenever a recently-dead corpse is returned to life, by the marvelous medical technology of Murania, he speaks incomprehensible words --"The language of the dead," as the chief scientist helpfully explains! (doctors in Murania wear black instead of white surgical outfits!)
For reasons unknown, Murania has an armored cavalry, the "Thunder Riders," who every once in a while take the miles-long elevator trip to the surface and ride around Gene's ranch. And as a wonderful example of how this serial always piles it on, Frankie and Betsy are leaders of a gang of kids who call themselves the "Junior Thunder Riders," and ride around Gene's ranch too, with water-pails on their heads in imitation of knight's helmets! Frankie even has a workshop/lab just as many kids dreamed of having in 1950, where he dabbles with radio and a chemistry set. Above ground, some gangsters plot to seize Murania for its mineral wealth, while in Murania itself, revolutionaries plot the overthrow of Queen Tika, and the last chapters feature a Muranian civil war with large numbers of exotically-costumed extras! This is truly a serial that touches all the bases, each more than once.
In the leading role, Gene Autry is extremely likable and unassuming. The audience cares deeply what happens to him, despite the often absurd goings-on that surround him. For him, it was the auspicious beginning of a long, richly successful movie, radio, TV and recording career. Note too the very subtle chemistry between Gene's character, and Queen Tika. In Gene's later singing westerns, he would win over even the most feisty females just by singing them a little song; probably the serial's only lapse is that he never gets to sing for the Queen!- Phantom Empire - Chapter 1: Singing Cowboy
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 2: Thunder Riders
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 3: Lightning Chamber
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 4: Phantom Broadcast
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 5: Beneath the Sky
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 6: Disaster From the Sky
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 7: From Death to Life
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 8: Jaws of Jeopardy
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 9: Prisoners of the Ray
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 10: Rebellion
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 11: Queen in Chains
- Phantom Empire - Chapter 12: End of Murania
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Masdar City: A Desert Utopia
Source.
Abu Dhabi's Masdar City is intended to support 40,000 residents and 50,000 commuters. It will be car free relying on an individualized sort of public transportation, comparable to riding your private metro car.
Abu Dhabi's Masdar City is intended to support 40,000 residents and 50,000 commuters. It will be car free relying on an individualized sort of public transportation, comparable to riding your private metro car.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Henry Darger, The Vivian Girls and The Realms of the Unreal
At the folk art museum.Hidden in Henry's Room: The Secret Life of a Janitor
Google Images.
"At the heart of Darger’s work is the massive tale, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. Begun around 1910, In the Realms of the Unreal took Darger over twenty years to complete and provided the foundation for his art for the rest of his life. The story follows the misadventures of his seven heroines—the Vivian sisters, aged five to eight—as they fight countless battles in a war of good against evil.
Through tracing, carbon copying, and collage, Darger appropriated elements of popular culture to create the mural-sized collages and drawings that illustrated the fantastical scenes of In the Realms of the Unreal . He lifted settings, figures, flora, and fauna from children’s books, comics, newspapers, and magazines. Breathing life info the figures, he added personalized touches that divorced them from their original contexts: little girls gained penises or were given bird or butterfly wings and ram horns to form “Blengiglomeanean Spirits,” creatures who aided the Vivian girls in battle.
Darger was a fervent collector, and his one bedroom apartment was filled with his writings, art, and source materials. His complex drawings, which were stitched together to form compositions up to nine and a half feet in length, were so large that they could not be opened in the small apartment. Instead, they were stored in a stack on the artist’s bed; Darger himself slept in a chair. Yet there was an underlying order to this seemingly chaotic environment. Darger’s attention to detail can be seen in the way he handled his supplies. He attached individual labels to small paint pots to identify the colors inside. He gave whittled down pencils extending devices so that every last stub could be used. He transformed coloring books or even city phonebooks into receptacles for his collected imagery, filling every page with clippings and bundling the scrapbooks in stacks bound by twine." Source.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Beyond the Cloud
Grainy, moving drawings of hyper-modern life in which film cells are like snapshots with back-lighting torqued to maximize presentation of the lyrical in everyday life. The halting, poetic dialogue. The generous silences. Exaggeration of sublime aspects of the present (tall buildings, military globalism, ideological division) to suggest the future. The elision of science and technological progress (treated thematically, not literally--i.e. this is not hard sci fi) with dreams. Those threshold times in life (high school, young love, summer break) echoed in epic, large scale: War, Progress. The focus on the small and intimate within this, often with a natural detailing: a butterfly on the hand of a character, the rustling of the grass.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Goethe's Faust - Part 1
Introductory Note
Dedication
Prologue for the Theatre
Prologue in Heaven
Part I. Night
Auerbach's Cellar in Leipzig
The Neighbour's House
Night. Street Before Margaret's Door
Walpurgis-Night
Walpurgis-Night's Dream
A Gloomy Day. A Plain
Night. Open Country
Dungeon
Other Faust Folklore, Literature and Materials
Dedication
Prologue for the Theatre
Prologue in Heaven
Part I. Night
Auerbach's Cellar in Leipzig
The Neighbour's House
Night. Street Before Margaret's Door
Walpurgis-Night
Walpurgis-Night's Dream
A Gloomy Day. A Plain
Night. Open Country
Dungeon
Other Faust Folklore, Literature and Materials
- THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS from The Quarto of 1604 by Christoper Marlowe
- Faust Legends at Folk Text
- The Devil's Charter (1607) - Among its sources, Marlow's Faust, this is Barnabe Barnes take on Pope Alexander VI reign, the papal reign described as a pact with the devil for worldly gain.
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