Ectoplasmosis! @ectoplasmosis - Tumblr Blog

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whatever happened to the old ectomo site? is it all gone? this sure has the same vibe but I don't really want to scroll forever to sift through for stuff I can only vaguely remember....

unless internet archive caught any of it, it's all gone. there was some sort of crisis with our hosting provider at the time and we didn't have the labor to spare to get the content moved/backed up, or we lost the backups, or something. one of the bad parts about being an all-volunteer staff/ownership.

#asks

Steven Archer's STONEBURNER imagines dance music from Dune

Contact: [email protected]

June 27, 2014 — SONGS IN THE KEY OF ARRAKIS is the new album from STONEBURNER, a solo project by multifaceted musician, artist, and writer Steven Archer. Fusing traditional organic instruments and vocals from around the world with modern electronic dance music, Stoneburner offers Archer's musical interpretation of the aesthetics and philosophy of Frank Herbert's classic science-fiction novel Dune.

Four live Stoneburner shows are set for early July (see tour dates, below), and a fall tour is in the works.

Archer is best known as the cofounder of the electronic rock band Ego Likeness (Metropolis Records), which recently concluded its spring 2014 U.S. tour alongside fellow sci-fi-influenced musician Voltaire. He has also illustrated several genre books (Raw Dog Screaming Press), and contributed artwork to the Hugo Award-winning horror/science-fiction/fantasy magazine Weird Tales.

Stoneburner grew out of Archer's experiments with the fusion of tribal and industrial music, which then led him to wonder: What would a rave sound like on the planet Arrakis? "When I ask people that, they know exactly what it should sound like, even though they've never heard it," Archer says. "That's a lot to live up to—so I'm pleased to feel that I've gotten pretty close."

Dune has been a career-long inspiration for Archer, whose outer-space credentials got a rocket-fueled boost this year when NASA commissioned him to score a video for the upcoming OSIRIS-REx space mission.

"We are living in the future," he says. "How cool is that? The fact that I've composed two Stoneburner albums and an EP on my laptop, mixing vocals and instruments from around the world—that is science fiction! There's no way I could have the career I have without being able to take advantage of the technology imagined and foretold by visionaries like Frank Herbert."

The Stoneburner live show is intense and fluid, incorporating multimedia video projections and, often, tribal fusion belly dance troupes. Scheduled dates include:

July 2: The Barbary, Philadelphia, PA

July 3: Main Street Annex, Charlottesville, VA

July 4: Night Shift at Empire: Secret Agent Soiree, Springfield, VA (with Tom Shear DJ Set, Noir, The Rain Within and more)

July 5: Shadowland, Lancaster PA

More info: stoneburnerband.com

Music and videos can be found here http://www.stoneburnerband.com/?page_id=6

#fiction #noise du jour #music #music videos #artists #submission

#ectoplasmosis hasnt update in about 8 months #and we get this ask today #amazing

ghostbongweedofthesamurai-deact

the further adventures of

my docs cover the synth-tatami with a fine spoor of undercity dust. “tadaima,” i grumble as i hang my fedora interface on the hook by the door and undo my sash, allowing my monodachi to clump heavily to the floor. “okaerinasai!” chirps AVINA, smoothly thrumming from standby into her waifu subroutines. Anime Vocaloid with Independent Neural Architecture— smart, beautiful, and illegal under nexus-govt anti-anime digilaws. i had cyber-heisted her software from a yamahacorp mainframe, and she had been living in my apartment’s datanet ever since. originally meaning to sell her off to the highest bidder, i had instead kept her around for company. she was less complicated than real females. “onii-san…” she begins in a saccharine voice, calling me by the name i’d instructed her to use. “not now,” i interrupt using my gruff voice, which is my normal voice. “i’ve important business to attend to.” speaking of damnable females. i’d encountered a particularly choice one on the maglev ride home from the undercity, and was merely partaking in the capture of a few images for later perusal using my g-shades when she’d had the temerity to get upset about it. like i’d really wanted to look at her anyway. i jacked the shades into my cyberdeck and began upload. the female on the train had been wearing g-shades of her own (as if she knew how to use them, i had thought) and had responded to my compliments by activating the device’s built-in optical datalight. it’s normally used for wireless transmission of files and programs between g-shades, but apparently this vapid was trying to use its bright light to blind my camera. not likely, sweetie. i suppressed a heh and continued uploading the photos to neo-reddit. suddenly, the house AI gives a startled yelp and alarm klaxons blare from my cyberdeck. a virus has somehow gotten through my firewalls and is chewing through my data nodes faster than any countermeasures i can deploy. i shriek and pound the desk, scattering figmas and empty cans of jolt. years of collection and archival work melts before my eyes. how could this have happened? how could a virus like this have gotten past my security measures? i tear my hair and rend my prized vintage haruhi shirt, undone. it dawns on me, creeping slowly like a legitimate photographer through the dormitory bushes. i try frantically to warn neo-reddit not to open the photos, but it’s too late. the virus has propagated wildly and the sub-neo-reddit is already baying for blood. my blood. i dive heavily under my desk and grab my bug-out bag, hoping that i can escape in time before ten thousand angry candid photo aficionados break down my door. pounding out in the hallway. muffled sounds of heavy breathing. my heart drops like a discarded hard drive. “onii-san!” chirps AVINA. “you have visitors!”

suckadick2014-deactivated201403

João Pimenta Fall 2012

koboldandthebeautiful-deactivat

“One of the most fascinating archeological finds in Russia has been the discovery of hundreds of “birchbark documents” (messages written on the bark of birch trees with a sharp stylus) that were created from the 11th to the 15th century.

The birchbark documents of Novgorod are a major source for information about life in Medieval Novgorod because they are not the writings of church theologians or political leaders, but rather, personal messages, IOUs, love letters, shopping lists, and so on. One of the most fascinating items, in my mind, is a collection of children’s drawings that have been unearthed.

Children’s drawings in the Middle Ages?! Even if such things were created in period, how could they have survived to the present day? After all, finger paints, magic markers, and crayons were not yet in use, paper was far too valuable of a commodity to waste on children, and refrigerator doors were unavailable for the display of Junior’s artistic genius. Most of the products of childhood inspiration probably were expressed on the ephemeral canvas of dirt or sand.

But birchbark was a different story. The bark was widely available (although there are indications that excessive use of the medium caused a decline in the local birch population) and easily cultivated. Anyone could use it. When one was finished with the message, it was simply thrown into the mud, where the presence of water and clay created an unusually bacteria-free environment which preserved the documents. So, we have the ideal medium: cheap, easy to come by, and (thanks to unique geology) preserved for hundreds of years.

The drawings from Novgorod that we have found appear to all come from a Russian boy named Onfim, who lived at the end of the twelfth century or beginning of the thirteenth century in the city of Novgorod. By the estimate of the archaeologists who unearthed his works, he was around seven years old at the time that he made these drawings.

Onfim was being taught to write, but he was obviously restless with his lessons and when he could get away with it, he intermixed his assignments with doodlings. In this first example, he started to write out the first eleven letters of the alphabet in the upper right corner, but got bored and drew a picture of himself as a grown-up warrior impaling an enemy with his spear. To remove any doubt about the identity of the warrior, he even labeled the person on the horse as “Onfim.”

Fantasies of becoming a mighty warrior were not the only things that Onfim thought up though. In another example, he took the piece of bark that he was practicing on (left), turned it over (right), and drew a picture of himself disguised as a wild beast (which he identified by writing “I am a wild beast” [Ia zver’] over it). The beast, with its long tongue (or fiery breath), is apparently still a friendly beast as it is carrying a sign that reads “Greetings from Onfim to Danilo” [Poklon ot Onfima ko Danile]. Danilo (i.e., Daniel) was probably a friend, perhaps even a schoolmate sitting next to Onfim.

Onfim liked to draw people and while his artistic aptitude may have been lacking, he was prolific.”

source: http://www.goldschp.net/SIG/onfim/onfim.html

ensemblestudiotheatrela-blog

Lost In Space

ohnoproblems

YOUR LIFE WITH ＯＲＢ

cowards-sorcery

my fucking god this was amazing

ghostbongweedofthesamurai-deact

I believe anything is possible with technology now. I was reading how old dumped computers are rich pickings for thieves. I knew that any online transaction or banking details would be available on the hard drive, but I didn’t realise that it is stored somehow on laptop screens. So even wiping a hard drive is not enough to stop anyone wanting your financial details.

i found a forum thread full of old people talking about the girl with the dragon tattoo and getting upset about hackers (via ghostbongweedofthesamurai)

cheese24k

ghostbongweedofthesamurai-deact

The Cadaver Synod (also called the Cadaver Trial or, in Latin, the Synodus Horrenda) is the name commonly given to the posthumous ecclesiastical trial of Catholic Pope Formosus, held in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome during January of 897 The trial was conducted by Formosus’s successor, Pope Stephen (VI) VII. Stephen accused Formosus of perjury and of having acceded to the papacy illegally. At the end of the trial, Formosus was pronounced guilty and his papacy retroactively declared null.

notxam

itsvondell-deactivated20180104

(a video of jehovah witnesses telling deaf people to stop masturbating, with 50 cent’s “in da club” dubbed over it)

#asl #50 cent

spacequesthistorian

Hacking the Universe

When I was a kid, I used to get bored and sit around hacking game files. Now, before you get any ideas, I’m not a programmer by any stretch of the definition, so when I say “hacking,” it mostly amounted to opening game files in hex editors to see if I could replace the in-game text with my own perversions. Usually, it just made the game corrupt and refuse to start.

But occasionally, I’d get lucky. And I don’t know if it was me trying to express myself creatively or destructively, but few times have I experienced more personal glee than the times when I could bend a game to my will and make it behave the way I wanted it to. Even if it just meant forcing the game to play the wrong opening movie or replacing the protagonist’s name with something sophomoric, often of a phallic nature.

And then, every once in a while, you’d get a surprise of your own as you were trawling around garbage characters looking for something resembling English language text.

One such surprise was the little-known British adventure game Universe, which my brother had picked up on a whim, played the first couple of screens of, and quickly resigned to the shelf in his room where mistaken purchases went to collect dust.

Seriously. What is that?

Universe was one of those spectacularly flawed games where the controls were so broken you’d often get stuck on a clipping sprite and the puzzles were so fantastically obtuse that getting anywhere quickly became a frustrating exercise in trial and error.

The spinning asteroid in the first part of the game comes hauntingly to mind. The game had no opening cinematic or anything; it just spat you onto an asteroid in outer space and sat back, waiting for you to collect a dizzying array of meaningless objects that had been left on the surface and somehow figure out that you were supposed to jump onto a passing asteroid — using inhuman timing, thanks to the bewilderingly complicated interface — and jump off onto a bridge suspended in space leading to some sort of space city.

Once you got that far, everything started running on a timer punishable by insta-death and I quickly gave up in exasperation, never getting any further than the next couple of screens.

So, naturally, a gaming experience of that caliber deserves some tinkering with. Imagine my surprise when I opened up the game’s .exe file and found this little gem hiding in the code:

Click to read full size

Seems I wasn’t the only one disgruntled by working with Universe.

I have no idea who wrote the above message, but he deserves my everlasting thanks for leaving that piece of commiseration behind for future generations to find.