How To Destroy Angels

I don't know how Trent Reznor does it. Honestly. HOW DOES HE EXHUME SUCH AWESOMENESS WITHOUT MERCY?????

The above video is from Trent Reznor's new project HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS, with his new wife Marqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. The song is "The Space in Between."

Scraper Bikes

Scrapertown from California is a place. on Vimeo.

You Are The Bug

THE BUG from Yongsub Song on Vimeo.

Incredible computer animation video by Yongsub Song. 16-bit video game throwback art, brilliant animation, clever story-telling.

Thou Shalt Read PREACHER

Once again, I'm proving just how behind the times I am...

I just finished reading the entire comic series PREACHER, written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Steve Dillon. There were 66 issues in all that ended July 2000. Behind Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN series and Alan Moore's WATCHMEN, it might be the greatest example of story-telling in comics I have read so far.

PREACHER is the story of Reverend Jesse Custer and his search for God. Literally. With his girlfriend Tulip and vampire buddy Cassidy, the good Reverend sets out to find God and make Him answer for the awful world he's created. And, of course, along the way they make all kinds of enemies and friends while horrible and hilarious things happen in their wake.

There are moments of horror (like seeing the one you love get her brains blown out in front of you).

There are moments of excitement (like a gunfight in a Louisiana graveyard with aspiring vampires).

There are moments of blasphemy (like telling God to go fuck himself).

There are moments of human insight (like a conversation about how all decent people enjoy Laurel and Hardy).

And, of course, there are moments of hilarious depravity (like a lovable character named Arseface, as pictured below).

This comic very intentionally tries to do every awful thing parents fear comics can do (I'm talking gore, sexual perversion, toilet humor, the whole shebang), but still tell a passionate, meaningful, exciting story. And that is awesome.

Read the first issue.

Pixels: Retro Gamers Terrorize New York

By French director Patrick Jean. The cleverest piece of gamer throwback art I've ever seen. Much better than all those stupid t-shirts at Hot Topic.

The Origin of Man

(photo courtesy of Guardian News & Media)

I have a theory about humankind. Not based on any scientific research, mind you. Rather, I just have a sneaking suspicion about the origins of human communication and story-telling. I believe that language was created just to tell the very first story, which might have gone something like this:

"Dude! You'll never guess what just happened! I threw a rock at an ostrich, then it got super pissed and kicked me in the face! It was awesome!"

Okay, I'm being facetious, but I think there is a fundamental truth in there. After all, this sort of communication is an inherent part of being human, it is the first practical level of narrative that emerges from casual one-on-one dialog: You weren't there, so I'll tell you what happened.

The act of narration is higher-level cognitive process. When learning your first language or learning a new language this is an extremely difficult skill to develop, and yet it is perhaps the most exciting to attempt or accomplish. I've always noticed that children who are just beginning to grasp speaking in complete thoughts and sentences love to tell you about what they saw that you didn't. I remember while learning Spanish the task of providing a coherent narrative was always where I struggled most, though it was my ultimate goal. My ESL student, who is a natural gossiper of sorts, lights up when she tells me a story about her week, and becomes so inexplicably distraught when she struggles to find the words she needs.

The act of narrative is complex like this because first you have to cognitively remember what happened, then choose sufficient language to explain what you remembered, and then verbalize that language. Then the listener has to aurally receive that language, interpret it, and reconstruct that language into a visualized concept of what happened in their own minds. The more I think about it the more I realize it is a truly incredible multi-step process.

These observations, and yes perhaps my obsession with story-telling, leads me to wonder if we created language simply to accomplish such higher-level communication goals. After all, if you're always in the presence of someone else in which all communication is in the present, then non-verbal communication gets the job done most of the time.

Years ago when I had a summer job as a busboy I used to interact quite a lot with the dishwasher who spoke as much English as I spoke of Spanish. Language barrier aside, we still communicated with each other all the time, but always through non-verbal cues and expressions and gestures. I think we said two words to each other the entire two months we worked together! But if I he and I wanted to have more complex conversations, if I wanted to tell him about the time I hit a customer with a broom, we would've needed a more complex language connection.

Once again, these are my facetious thoughts that might just feed and rationalize my own obsessions. BUT, I still think there's something there, and I want to test it.

As it turns out, narrative studies and scientific studies are doing some mingling. Patricia Cohen from the New York Times wrote an article--"The Next Big Thing In English: Knowing They Know That You Know"--about recent psychological studies of narrative communication. In other words, they had people read stories in an MRI machine to see which parts of their brains lit up. Awesome.

These studies specifically study how the brain interprets and digests different levels of narrative. The article writes that the human mind can comfortably understand up to three "mental states" at a time, for example: "Peter said that Paul believed that Mary liked chocolate." Going beyond that, up to four or five "mental states," is much more difficult for the human mind to interpret. This means that the "Rule of Threes" design principal has psychological bearing, which may or may not relate to our evolutionary development.

This is incredible. The power of magnets has allowed us to see that well-established narrative principles work for reasons much deeper than the fact it just looks cool. And I think we could use this same technology to prove that language was created just to tell stupid anecdotes.

Can I get a research grant now?

Horizonless Maps

Here's a very fun and disorienting way to look at maps (and reality), from London-based BERG:

"Here & There is a project by BERG exploring speculative projections of dense cities. These maps of Manhattan look uptown from 3rd and 7th, and downtown from 3rd and 35th. They're intended to be seen at those same places, putting the viewer simultaneously above the city and in it where she stands, both looking down and looking forward."

Reminds me of a brief snapshot from the upcoming Christopher Nolan movie, Inception:

(images courtesy of BERG and Geektyrant)