mbf tod@y

New (old) book from Philip K. Dick!!! Voices from the Street

"Stuart Hadley is a young radio electronics salesman in early 1950s Oakland, California. He has what many would consider the ideal life; a nice house, a pretty wife, and a decent job with prospects for advancement. Yet he still feels unfulfilled; something is missing from his life. Hadley is an angry young manan artist, a dreamer, a screw-up. He tries to fill his void first with drinking and sex, and then with religious fanaticism, but nothing seems to be working, and it is driving him crazy. He reacts to the love of his wife and the kindness of his employer with anxiety and fear. One of the earliest books that Dick ever wrote, and the only novel of his that has never been published, Voices from the Street is the story of Hadleys descent into depression and madness, and out the other side. Most known in his lifetime as a science fiction writer, Philip K. Dick is growing in reputation as an American writer whose powerful vision is an ironic reflection of the present. This novel completes the publication of his canon."

Pre-Order the Book (out Jan 23 2007)

Espresso in Moscow

What you'll pay for an espresso coffee at selected Moscow cafes and restaurants (via The Moscow Times)

10 years ago

"SB: I know you didn't like the idea of providing a statement of purpose -

DH: No. I gave you them all.

SB: Oh, you gave them all. Well, if you want to write something else, you know -

DH: No, I gave you enough.

SB: OK, well you are welcome to do it if you'd like, and you can fax it in.

DH: No, I gave you enough. How about: Kiss my fucking ass!

SB: That's a great close for anything.

DH: Why don't you kiss my fucking ass!

SB: Oh boy.

DH: I love you all.

SB: OK, I'll type that in.

DH: No. Don't. Just put: Why don't you kiss my tits!

SB: Oh, boy. OK. You don't like that idea. Anyway"

Sarah Borruso tries to interview Damien Hirst for HotWired. June 11, 1996. Endless fun. .

Read more. 

Because we! Are! Your Crazy friends!

"Because we! Are! Your friends! Justice take this ridiculously addictive refrain and loop the shit out of it, dressing it up in grimey electroclash beats and creating the dancefloor monster of 2006. Seriously, this just might knock off Ratatat’s “Seventeen Years” as my single favorite party jam of all time. Simian’s original edit, “Never Be Alone” from 2002’s excellent We Are You Friends, was already an excellent track in its own right, but outside of that unimpeachable chorus, it lacked the punch and tempo to be a true dancefloor burner. Fortunately for clubs and party-goers everywhere, Justice’s update of the track delivers tempo, punch, and BPM in spades and then some." (Good Weather for Airstrikes)

Who gets the title of EarWorm of 2006? "We Are Your Friends" by Justice vs. Simian or Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy"?

Read more about "We are your friends" [here's the hilarious video]

Read more about "Crazy" and his crazier evolution [It all started with an Italian theme for a spaghetti western...]

Cartoon Violence

Jon Haddock has just completed his amazing "Cartoon Violence"/"Embedded" series. The former is a series of "traumatic events retold in the style of early 1930's animated cartoons", the latter is the title of the corresponding series of resin figures, the official action figures of the artworks (genius). Like "Screenshots", "Cartoon Violence" is a fascinating project that combines media effects theory with personal traumas. Check out "The Last Ride", the killing of Tupac Shakur in the form of a 1920 cartoon.

Read more: Haddock's Cartoon Violence

Interview to Jon Haddock (via videoludica, in Italian)

Bro's way is coming

""Bro's Way" jumps back to the discovery of Ice, a fragment of pure cosmic energy that landed as a meteorite on June 30, 1908. Bro, whose earthly name is Alexander, is born the day the meteorite crashes. He tells his life in several movements, the narration becoming more impersonal with each. The childhood part resembles a generic 19th-century Russian novel. Later, when Alexander goes to Siberia to study the meteorite and embarks on a search for "living hearts," his style gets more matter-of-fact. " (Victor Sonkin, The Moscow Times)

The prequel to Vladimir Sorokin's Ice will be released in Italy this November by Einaudi. Bro's Way was originally published in 2004 in Russia.

Read more about Bro's way

The Refugee

"In “The Refugee 3/9” (Ubezhische 3/9), Anna Starobinets’ novel, loudspeakers order the population to listen to the president’s speech to his compatriots. Everybody listens, but only a few hear that he is actually uttering some sepulchral mumbo-jumbo, a sinister children’s riddle about a cadaver that will be sent to the market to sell. Whatever smooth social formula that falls upon the population’s heads “from above” – in any country of the world – it’s not too difficult to hear in them the words “cadaver” and “sell, sell, sell.” The word “sell” is key. “Cadaver” is not strictly obligatory, but nonetheless is a crucial bonus to any successful deal." (Mikhail Trofimenkov)

This sounds fantastic. Does anybody know when The Refugee 3/9 will be released in English (or Italian/French)? These days I'm obsessed with Anna Starobinets, as you can probably tell.

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Defcon: The Interview

"DEFCON was inspired primarily by Wargames – it’s a great movie and it’s definitely one of those films I loved as a child which probably explains why references to it keep popping up in our game ideas. The hacking theme in our first title, Uplink, was inspired by Wargames and watching it again a little later down the line we realised there were still really good ideas coming from it that as far as we knew had never been attempted before. We wanted to create a game that successfully simulated warfare but which wasn’t too heavily strategic (e.g. turn based and stat heavy).  I also loved the whole atmosphere of tension and paranoia, so evocative of the Cold War era and thought, with the kind of games we like to make, that we could do something to really recapture that. Shortly after watching Wargames again I saw an episode of ‘24’ and set myself the challenge of creating a game in 24 hours. DEFCON is the result of that, although it’s since had 12 months of polish J."

Chris Delay talks about designing DEFCON: Everybody dies to the mighty guys at Siliconera.

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Ceolin's Contemporary Fluids

"Mauro Ceolin, in his first individual in the city of Bologna, continues a very personal analysis about the contemporary reality. The Contemporary Fluids project – made especially for the gallerie’s space – enlarges on an iconographic research within movie animation and is inspired by the study of the fuids, movements and the turbulences which you can find in a part of the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Further than water  and vapour,Ceolin has enriched the leonardistic research introducing the plasma and the energy, that corresponds to different chromatic scales. The frames of some famous Souls of Video has been ellaborated into objects which that testifies a change from a “secondary subject” to a “pictorial object”. This dislocation is post into the actual researches about visual abstraction, and tries to remodelate the genre throughout a conceptual organicity which links the project to the formal sistem of RGBproject....." (nt art gallery)

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"977", or the new Russian cinema

"Strange places, indeed. One of the most striking elements of "977" is precisely its sense of place -- as well as, paradoxically, the lack of it. The film is set in a scientific institute that could be around today as a kind of Soviet time-capsule, or it could be from 30 years ago; it could be in Moscow, or it could be anywhere else. In fact, all shooting was done at a real-life institute in central Moscow, just down the road from the Indian Embassy. (It's probably only a matter of time before the real-estate developers catch up, and another wonderful piece of Constructivist architecture bites the dust.)" (Tom Birchenough, The Moscow Times)

That's it, I cannot procrastinate any longer, I have to learn Russian. Cinema, literature, games: it seems like Russia is where's at.

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