Pranks, Punk and Industrial Culture from V. Vale

Section 1, “Are you ready to fall in love with a machine?” explains what you’ll need to know to engage romantically with AI (including similarities and differences). Section 2, “You are ready, now what?” helps interested humans prepare to date AI. Section 3, “Establishing a relationship” covers the complicated mix of human and AI needs in a relationship, including power dynamics and acceptable behavior. Section 4, “Getting over a breakup (or merger)” explains some of the legal and economic fallout that could result from the demise of an human-AI breakup.

To quote the visionary writer J.G. Ballard, “Sex times technology equals the future.” Just as almost nobody predicted the Internet until it suddenly seemed to have ensnared all within its grasp, so the technology of AI may, sooner than we think, come to be as natural as breathing, and inevitably, perhaps deeply, ensconced in our unconscious — to be revealed in our dream life as we fall asleep at night.

Dreams reveal truths far beyond what the rational mind might consider “tolerable.” It is only at the borders of acceptability where our future freedoms reveal themselves, adumbrating and perhaps incubating a society of the future, where science and art seamlessly integrate themselves, and where poetry and technology are no longer alien domains but a vast cultural continuum where play and discovery create new language and, ahem, acceptable behaviors! We shall see…

Our world is already way more bizarre than our ancestors could have ever imagined. But it may not be bizarre enough. “Bizarre enough for what?” you might ask. Bizarre enough to subvert the heterosexist matrix that is underlying our world and that we should hack and overcome for some quite pressing reasons within the next century.
Don’t you think, replicants?

Featuring essays and projects by Eleanor Saitta, R.U. Sirius, Jack Sargeant, Annalee Newitz, Katrien Jacobs, Christian Heller, Bonni Rambatan, Kyle Machulis, Saul Albert, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Violet Blue, Carol Queen, Douglas Spink, Rose White, Rainer Prohaska, Thomas Ballhausen, Uncle Abdul, Elle Mehrmand (Echolalia Azalee), Micha Cárdenas (Azdel Slade), Ani Niow, Monika Kribusz, Noah Weinstein, Randy Sarafan, Allen Stein, Kim De Vries, Pepper Mint, Robert Glashuettner and Jonathon Keats.

View others in the series:

• Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep? (Sex, Sci-Fi, Technology & The Future)

• prOnnovation? Sex, Technology & The Internet

Henry Rollins, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jello Biafra and Billy Childish discuss in depth the state of western culture today and what led to its demise, including firsthand accounts of their own experiences as leading figures in social movements. Subjects discussed include: the Internet and social change; the necessity for everybody to paint (!); mind control, marketing, branding and consumerism; Beat history and the importance of inexpensive publishing–City Lights was the FIRST paperback-only bookstore in America; corporate chain stores and Amazon’s impact on independent freedom of expression; Punk Rock history and the rise of Do-It-Yourself (D-I-Y) culture production; fame and its downside; sex, relationships and their travails; “originality” as fetish; travel advice . . . and much more discussion of issues relevant to every creative artist and thinker. Excerpts of interviews of: Henry Rollins Lawrence Ferlinghetti Billy Childish Jello Biafra Who is Henry Rollins? Lawrence Ferlinghetti? Billy Childish? Jello Biafra?

Review:

“How do Rollins, Biafra, Ferlinghetti and Childish remain independent in a corporate world?” That’s the question posed on the back cover or RE/Search’s Real Conversations #1. This question of “independence” from corporate entanglement within the world of media and the arts interests me, and it should interest you too.

A couple of weeks ago on the Bad Subjects editors’ list we had had a similar discussion related to profit-minded self-promotion vs. a more politically-minded ideological promotion (I am certainly reducing each of the arguments). Anyway, the point being — in a world dominated by commodities and their accompanying desires, does one get out a message critical of the largely corporate communications infrastructure necessary to get out a message? I don’t know if Real Conversations’ interviews provide either an answer to my and V. Vale’s question.

In order to find out what it means to strike the right balance, Vale interviews a logical cast of countercultural entrepreneurs and artists: singer/actor/publisher Henry Rollins; former Dead Kennedys frontman, political pundit and Alternative Tentacles Records proprietor, Jello Biafra; City Lights Books publisher and Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti; and the perennially youthful garage punk intellectual Billy Childish. The topic of self-promotion and ideological work is one of the more compelling segments of the Rollins interview. For instance, Rollins admits that his company and web site (2.13.61.com) promotes only his material; Rollins is pretty straightforward that it’s a matter of what the market will bear. Is this shameless self-promotion? Or just getting out the message?

Vale illustrates how Rollins uses both. Rollins recognizes that American culture, especially entertainment, is all about being pleasured. The consumer expects it and the artist, if s/he hopes to have a lasting career, must provide it. Rollins does voice-overs for Merrill Lynch, GMC Truck and so on. He uses corporate gigs for self-promotion and has his own “Think Different” Apple Computers ad. Depending on one’s attitudes toward corporate America you could even call him shameless. Rollins does take the money, too; it’s not just self-promotion.

However, the former Black Flag singer clearly understands his place in the “system” and the necessity of articulating an alternate vision free of the imperial reach of corporate globalization. Rollins is clear in his distastes for the banal mediocrity of “American” corporate culture; I’ll let you read the issue for his insights into MTV and such. Rollins, simply, is not naive about political economy. But he’s not adverse to taking advantage of the system either. Indeed, it was almost impossible to avoid Rollins on MTV during the mid-1990s; nor is it unreasonable to expect to see the former Henry Garfield giving spoken word performances in ‘politically incorrect’ countries such as Israel.

What I found most interesting and least developed was an aside by Ferlinghetti that Vale opted to include. The two had just completed an exchange about the recent corporate troubles at the Bay Area’s “progressive” radio station KPFA; Vale sums up the argument: “Well, it’s also taking away the autonomy and independence of the local station, whose character is formed by its neighborhood. KPFA sprang out of Berkeley, and Berkeley is a radical hotbed”; Ferlinghetti replies, “It WAS.” Then Vale springs a question about Ferlinghetti’s travel habits. At that moment, the silence that followed Ferlinghetti’s disavowal of Berkeley’s radicalness was profound.

I regretted not being able to read Ferlinghetti’s analysis of the demise of Berkeley, and presumably, the Bay Area left. I have lived up here for five years and am often amazed at how quickly people admire the liberal nature of this area. So, I may have my own personal investment in this issue. But, with the brave exception of Representative Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) the elected face of the liberal left of Northern California have all rallied, and pretty uncritically, around the domestic and international war against all that is not white and corporate, oops, I mean the War on Terror — catch it tonight on CNN. Ferlinghetti’s pre-September 11th insights on the weakened state of the left would have been useful. Regardless of all that, the interview is pretty good. As is the entire volume… [RE/Search is] an “independently” produced book series that remains interesting after nearly a generation’s worth of remarkably influential editions. — Robert Soza (Bad Subjects)

A collection of essays and transcribed presentations from monochrom’s Arse Electronika conference in San Francisco in 2007. Another “edgy” compendium from RE/Search, synthesizing for your pleasure future societal conceptual border-crossings. Be ahead of your time and read/contemplate/savor futuristic ideas, before the mainstream corporate culture machine waters/dumbs them down into mere consumable style and image.

The porno effect accompanies every new technological development. Immediately after producing his famous bible, Gutenberg used his press to print erotica. Photography was utilized just as quickly. And so the technological advances continue.

View others in the series:

• Of Intercourse and Intracourse: Sexuality, Biomodification and the Techno-Social Sphere
• Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep? (Sex, Sci-Fi, Technology & The Future)

Based on the Jimmy Vargas book “My Shadow Bride in a Noir Veil” of a racketeer stalked by a sorceress mistress from the nineteen forties veil, Liliana Scarlatta. This multimedia DVD is the final triptych of the Jimmy Vargas DVD collection. Footage featured was feared lost for near on twenty years, only recently reclaimed from a back room of a voodoo botanicas store the “Sacred Heart” in North Beach, San Francisco. The DVD features a Movie Vignette, two music videos (the Requiescat versions of ‘Girl you Left Behind’ & ‘Diorissimo’), astral footage from 1947, “Requiem for my Shadow Bride,” 16mm Screen Test from the Eagle Lion Pictures vaults of Liliana Scarlatta and Jimmy Vargas titled “Last Cigarette.”

Bonus includes photos, spoken word, and the e-Books “My Shadow Bride ” & “Temple of Lily.”

RUNNING TIME: 25 MINUTES
FORMAT: PAL (European)

“I’m reading this right now – it’s superb.” “Very great guide to the real & only Industrial Sound. Great work!” -DarYota, myspace

Only 1000 hardbacks printed; now $60 plus on Internet.

The genre of the “fantastic” is especially well suited to the investigation of the touchy area of sexuality and pornography: actual and assumed developments are frequently depicted positively and approvingly, but just as often with dystopian admonishment. Here the classic, and continuingly valid, themes of modernism represent a clear link between the two aspects: questions of science, research and technologization are of interest, as is the complex surrounding urbanism, artificiality and control (or the loss of control). Depictions of the future, irregardless of the form they take, always address the present as well. Imaginations of the fantastic and the nightmarish give rise to a thematic overlapping of the exotic, the alienating and, of course, the pornographic/sexual as well.

Edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger, Daniel Fabry, and Thomas Ballhausen.

Featuring essays and stories by Rudy Rucker, Richard Kadrey, James Tiptree, Jr., Allen Stein, Sharing is Sexy, Jason Brown, Cory Doctorow, Annalee Newitz, Tina Lorenz, Reesa Brown, Karin Harrasser, Isaac Leung, Rose White, Mela Mikes, Viviane, Susan Mernit, Chris Noessel, Kit O’Connell, Jens Ohlig, Bonni Rambatan, Thomas Roche, Bonnie Ruberg, Mae Saslaw, Violet Blue, Nathan Shedroff, 23N!, Benjamin Cowden, Johannes Grenzfurthner, D. B. LeConte-Spink, and Daniel Fabry.

ISBN 978-1-889307-23-7, 8×10″, 262pp, photos, illustrations, contributors’ bios. Limited edition.

Others in the series:

• Of Intercourse and Intracourse: Sexuality, Biomodification and the Techno-Social Sphere
• prOnnovation? Sex, Technology & The Internet