RECENT AQUISITIONS
EXCERPT FROM WATCHMEN (1986-7, CHAPTER XI, P. 1) MOORE, ALLEN.
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OBSERVATION:
Multi-screen viewing is seemingly anticipated by Burrough’s cut-up technique. He suggested re-arranging words and images to evade rational analysis, allowing subliminal hints of the future to leak through… an impending world of exotica, glimpsed only peripherally.
Perceptually, this simultaneous input engages me like the kinetic equivalent of an abstract or impressionist painting… phosphor-dot swirls juxtapose; meanings coalesce from semiotic chaos before reverting to incoherence. Transient and elusive, these must be grasped quickly:
Computer animations imbue even breakfast cereals with an hallucinogenic futurity; music channels process information-blips, avoiding linear presentation, implying, limitless personal choice… these reference points established, an emergent worldview becomes gradually discernible amidst the media’s white noise.
This jigsaw-fragment model of tomorrow aligns itself piece by piece, specific areas necessarily obscured by indeterminacy. However, broad assumptions regarding this postulated future may be drawn. We can imagine its ambience. We can hypothesize its psychology.
In conjunction with massive forecasted technological acceleration approaching the millenium, this oblique and shifting cathode mosaic uncovers the blueprint for an era of new sensations and possibilities. An era of the conceivable made concrete… and of the casually miraculous.
As an afterthought, the method has an earlier precursor than Burroughs in the shamanistic tradition of divining randomly scattered goat innards…
CLICHÉ PICTURE SUBJECTS
1/ Woman weighing herself on scale and receiving fortune card.
2/ Dog and brandy cask.
3/ Man with cast in hospital bed.
4/ Two women wearing identical gowns.
5/ Safari.
6/ Asking a boss for a raise.
7/ Child wants drink of water in the middle of the night.
8/ Skater making figure eight.
9/ Clock watchers in office.
10/ Little walking toys.
11/ Man painting himself into the corner of a room.
12/ Housing development– houses look alike.
13/ Business charts in office.
14/ Fever charts in hospital.
15/ Avant-garde painting or sculpture.
16/ Flooded cellars.
17/ Neighbors borrowing garden tools.
18/ Women over-shopping.
19/ Computers.
20/ High cost of living.
21/ Tattoos on sailors.
22/ Gals coming out of large cake.
23/ Thirsty man crawling in desert.
24/ Scientists reading old scrolls– Egyptian hieroglyphics.
25/ Psychoanalyst and couch.
26/ Marriage counsellors.
27/ Expectant father– maternity ward.
28/ Auto driving schools.
29/ Men carrying billboards.
30/ Motorcycle cop hidden behind billboard.
31/ Prisoner talking to wife through wire screen.
32/ Dogs biting mailmen.
33/ Martians and flying saucers.
34/ Kid on Santa’s lap.
35/ Cavemen.
36/ Son borrowing father’s car.
37/ Second in fighter’s corner giving him instructions.
38/ Two-person combination of front and rear of horse at masquerade.
39/ Kids making a racket while father is trying to sleep.
40/ Department store complaint departments.
41/ Railroad station lost and found counters.
42/ Doctor testing reflexes with little hammer.
43/ Prisoner tunneling out of jail.
44/ Tot reaching for cookie jar.
45/ Two persons duelling.
46/ Wife trying to balance household budget.
47/ Shoveling snow.
48/ Outdoor grills.
49/ Elopers and ladders.
50/ Golfer trying to break 100.
51/ Sewers and “men at work.”
52/ Ladies’ long conversations on the telephone.
53/ Brush salesmen at the door.
54/ Kissing booth at charity affair.
55/ Tunnel of love.
Marlow, J. (1967). Jack Marlow’s Cartoonist’s and Gag Writer’s Handbook. Cincinatti, Ohio: Writer’s Digest.
NN DVD + NYUFF
About a month ago, our internet surfing crew celebrated a dvd release (thx rhizome) with a special screening of films at the New York Underground Film Festival. For anyone who missed the screening- there’s a dvd with all the goodz on it. So plz buy it!
A TOUR OF THE ZODIAC
scans from an old LIFE Magazine with great article on astrology (remaining images + text in comments)
GREENE-EULA. (1969, Sept 26). A Tour of the Zodiac. LIFE Magazine, 67(13), 60-68.