I can take or leave David Lynch a lot of the time, but one of my favourite things of his was his comic strip, The Angriest Dog in the World, which was published in the Los Angeles Reader and other journals from 1983 to 1992.
Every image is nominally the same (although, for the eagle-eyed reader, the cartoonist incorporated an increasing number of bones) with the central conceit being that the dog, tethered in a garden and listening to the conversations from the house, is so livid that it cannot move, bound up with rage.
Click on the title above for more strips.
(via julietjacques-deactivated201509)
Back in 1968, Norman Mailer compared wandering around the Kennedy Space Centre’s enormous Vehicle Assembly Building to being “in the back of the stage at an opera house”. Forty-five years later, Mailer’s strange vision was partially fulfilled when the similarly proportioned NFAC Wind Tunnel at Nasa’s Ames Research Centre, test bed for Apollo and the space shuttle alike, became the backdrop for a performance of Ground Control, an opera, by the International Space Orchestra.
There have been operas about space before – Haydn’s Il Mondo della Luna featured a trip to the moon in 1777 – but none that have been written and performed by real astronauts and space scientists, working alongside international writers and composers, from Gorrillaz to Maywa Denki. “Of course now that she’s done it it’s obvious,” says science fiction author Bruce Sterling, who contributed lyrics to one of the opera’s arias, of the notion of a space opera by genuine space workers. “Before she did it, it was even more far-out than the domesticated living-room volcano she invented.”
Read my full Wired article on the International Space Orchestra.
[photo: Neil Berrett]
TweetTweetRUTHERFORD CHANG – WE BUY WHITE ALBUMS
Rutherford has a unique vinyl collection. He only collects the Beatles first pressing of The White Album.
In this show Chang is creating a record store that stocks only White Albums. But rather than selling the albums, he buys more from anyone willing to part with an original pressing in any condition.
Read the article in Dust & Grooves here.
“From its opening scene, Michael Mann’s feature debut announces its concern with a new type of thief. No more the delicate application of stethoscope – an instrument whose early 19th-century invention signalled a burgeoning alliance between the medical profession and the new science of acoustics. Frank (played by James Caan) breaks safes and enters buildings with power tools and complex electronic equipment. If Frank’s criminal activity is newly hi-tech, so too its accompanying music, composed and performed by German synth rock pioneers Tangerine Dream.”
– My latest Reel Sounds column, on Michael Mann’s (1981) Thief, can be read here at Electric Sheep Magazine.
TweetThe Understudies performing “If I Come To You” at the Union Chapel, accompanied by A Little Orchestra on February 16th. The debut album by A Little Orchestra will be available in the spring.
TweetMargate’s Tom Thumb Theatre gets some love from Lyn Gardner in The Guardian today in a review of the Vagina Monologues:
“Dell'Olio turned up in what looked like her underwear and played shamelessly to the gallery. Or she would have, if the tiny 50-seater Tom Thumb – one of the smallest theatres in the world – had a gallery. It doesn’t. But it does have flock wallpaper and plush pink seats that are reputed to be haunted. It’s a gorgeous little chocolate box theatre.”
Suffice to say, I am looking forward to playing there in slightly less than a fortnight.
TweetTweet6 videos of the Siberian meteor, synchronised by the New York Times.
“Sousveillance now provides multi-perspective, steadicam-ed, high-definition coverage of unique events. The brilliant #dashcam #newnormal.” - Timo Arnall
From the archive: Why Dashcams are so prevalent in Russia.
We’re watching out for the crowd in crowdsourcing because nobody else seems to be. Almost half of the Mechanical Turk workers who wrote their Bill of Rights demanded protection from employers who take their work without paying. Turkopticon lets you REPORT and AVOID shady employers.
(Source: turkopticon.differenceengines.com)