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If you don't think Bush is planning to start a war with Iran, you don't know Junior. According to a Time cover story, which is greasing the skids for another subscription boostin' war, duking it out with the Iranians "is no longer unthinkable." With breathless excitement, the lapdogs tell us that minesweepers have been put on ready to be sent to the Straits of Hormuz. Folks, before you even have a chance to punish Bush's party in November, the little man is about to let fly. The eagle is about to soar again. So, in the spirit of angry punk impotence which was the only possible political posture in the nightmare Reagan years, I offer this video of Lance Blisters on MIDI guitar, with visuals by Ilan Katin, re-performing John Ashcroft's version of that ridiculous "eagle" song: [15 MB Quicktime .mov]
Below are Quicktime .movs depicting the slicing of four-dimensional stellated polytopes, created by Russell Towle. These are hypnotic, complex patterns, strangely organic for being so hard-edged and geometric. Towle explains: "These may be the first animations ever made of the solid sections of four-dimensional star polytopes. [...] Briefly, plane polygons are two-dimensional polytopes, and polyhedra, three-dimensional polytopes. Where polygons are bounded by line segments, and polyhedra by polygons, a 4-polytope is bounded by polyhedra. Just as we may have any number of planes in three dimensions, in 4-space we may have any number of 3-spaces. Two 3-spaces might be a millionth of an inch apart and yet have no common point (thus the popular idea of parallel universes). It follows that, given a fixed direction in the 4-space, we can take solid sections of objects in the 4-space, perpendicular to that direction. [...] In these animations, a 3-space is passed from one vertex of each star polytope, to the opposite vertex, and sections taken at small intervals. The star polytopes were constructed, and the sections found, using Mathematica 4.0. The sections were rendered in POV-Ray (a freeware ray-tracer)." The screenshot above is from the last .mov, "{5/2,3,5}."
[.mov files removed -- they no longer work in current (2017) browsers -- thanks, Apple!]
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Films and/or vids projected against a Williamsburg building exterior at Secret Project Robot. The one-day-only Monster Island Arts & Music Festival, on Sept. 16, was not notable for its sub-slacker gallery art but the moving images outside really popped.
Update: I found this email from Nick Hallett that explains a bit more about the projections: "NEXT SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16th: as part of the MONSTER ISLAND ARTS & MUSIC FESTIVAL, HARKNESS A/V is hosting its one year anniversary. MIGHTY ROBOT, BRADLEY EROS, SETH KIRBY, and TOM DEXTER will join visual forces atop the fortress of Monster Island (in Williamsburg at Metropolitan and Kent), throwing their images onto the giant gas tanks directly across the street. More info to come." Still waiting for that info, but the work looked great.
Update 2: In a subsequent email Hallett added "visiting guest artist: BORIS (from the MODUL8 team)" to the roster.