28 Days of Christmas later …

Carnaby Street

Originally uploaded by

IanVisits

London abandoned. A Flickr set taken on Christmas morning (via William Gibson’s blog) by blogger Ian Visits. London looks almost totally abandoned, devoid of both traffic and people, although the lights are still on and the traffic lights are working. Spooky and beautiful.

From William Gibson’s blog:

“Christmas, particularly in the early morning, has always seemed so much more liminal to me than New Year’s eve. Spectral, deeply in-between.”

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Incidentally, while on the subject of abandoned places: check out the sound stage of HBO’s masterful television epic The Wire. Foolishly I had thought that much of it was filmed on location. But the offices of the Baltimore Sun and the city’s homicide division turn out to be incredibly convincing simulations.

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The Agrippa Files : William Gibson’s poem reflects on the fleeting nature of memory

William Gibson in San Francisco

Originally uploaded by
FredArmitage

In 1992, William Gibson wrote a 300-line poem and published it on a magnetic disk which was programmed to erase itself upon exposure to air.

Collaborating with the Dennis Ashbaugh and award-winning journalist Kevin Begos, Jr they put it in a handmade book and filled it with disappearing ink.

It was “performed” at the Americas Society in New York and transmitted across “the wilds of the internet” later that year, but has since been lost to time.

Now the Universities of Maryland and Santa Barbara have recovered the original file from one of the discs and published it as the Agrippa Files.

A deep and complex website, the Agrippa Files contains “emulations” of the poem, a facsimile of the book and exhaustive documentation

(via Me-Fi)

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Has science made science fiction obsolete?

William Gibson, the ‘cyberpunk’ father

Originally uploaded by FredArmitage

I enjoyed New Scientist’s discussion on the “death” of science fiction. It argues that “science – and its handmaiden, technology – are changing so fast that it is impossible for science fiction to keep up.”

In a nice, well-rounded series of articles, including a great inverview with William Gibson (above), it argues that, while the genre’s golden age of prediction might be getting slightly rusty, it’s role of satirical mirror to society’s anxieties is less tarnished.

“As well as a mere storytelling device, science fiction often articulates our present-day concerns and anxieties – paradoxically, it is often about the here and now rather than the future.”

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TR2N (Tron 2) might be doomed to failure, but we still want the test footage

Disney’s Tron is like the Dorian Gray of science fiction: it just never seems to get any older. It’s beautiful, neon-lit vector graphics have left a long legacy on contemporary design (Motorola’s RAZR / the architecture of Liverpool Steet’s Broadgate / even the fashion for Nu-Rave). It also imagined what virtual reality might look like, a full two years before William Gibson’s Neuromancer

Next year sees the release of Tron 2, with Jeff Bridges reprising his lead role. Last week test footage of the sequel was screened at Comic Con in San Diego and leaked onto the web by someone in the audience. It’s amazing how, even though the footage is both blurred and unsteady (its apparently taken on a mobile phone) I feel compelled to watch it.

As William Wiles has pointed out in Icon Magazine, the sequel’s failure is probably inevitable. As hew says, “no remake could match the enormous and lasting importance and influence of the original.

“Tron was a technological milestone and a cultural breakthrough that cannot be replicated.”

Why a science fiction short threatens to take online film out into theatres

My recent post on the Guardian Film Blog tells the story of Nuru Rimington-Mkali (above left), a young 21-year-old filmmaker from Peckham in South London. His film And I Refuse to Forget has just won the grand prize in the inaugural Filmaka Competition which is co-founded by Deepak Nayar (the producer of Bend it Like Beckham). The prize will fund Rimington-Mkali’s first full-length film to the tune of $5 and will be produced by Nayar

The young filmmaker, who used to be a technician at Southwark City Learning Centre and be an usher in his local cinema, won the approval of a judging panel containing the likes of Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, John Madden, Colin Firth and Paul Schrader. Neil LaBute, one of America’s most excellent storytellers, said the film was a “wonderfully impressive paranoid thriller told with great economy and vivid imagery.” Indeed it is. And I Refuse to Forget is a short burst of science fiction, reminiscent of Willam Gibson and Philip K Dick. It’s also, despite its three minutes, a tender love story. Which is probably why it won.