The Hugo Awards – are we all sick to death of my posting about the Hugo Awards? Hell yes, you say? Well, can we can stand one more post on the subject? Okay, then! - are voted on in two stages. From the Hugo Award FAQ:
How are the results decided?
Voting for the Hugos is a two-stage process. In the first stage voters may nominate up to five entries in each category. All nominations carry equal weight. The five entries that get the most nominations in each category go forward to the final ballot. […]
Why do you have a two-stage system?
Hundreds and hundreds of science fiction and fantasy works are published each year. No one, not even the top reviewers in the field, can possibly read/see all of them. Other awards limit the field by restricting themselves to works of certain types (e.g. only fantasy), or by type of work (e.g. only books), or by where they are published, or by the nationality of the author. The Hugos attempt to cover the whole field. The voting system explicitly accepts that no one can have seen/read everything. It relies on the fact that many people participate to find the five works that are most popular (that is have been seen/read and enjoyed by most people), and then there is a run-off between them in the final ballot.
So the first stage of Hugo Award voting is a form of crowdsourcing, whittling down those “hundreds and hundreds” of stories to just five in each category.
For instance, in 2012 (before the puppies), 611 Hugo voters turned in ballots for short stories. The most popular short story, E. Lily Yu’s amazing The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees, was listed on only 72 of those 611 ballots (about 12%). At least 60% of those 611 ballots didn’t vote for any of the top five nominated stories.
And that’s fine. That’s how the Hugo nominations are designed to work. 611 Hugo voters, acting as individuals, each nominate whatever short stories they think are award-worthy. From that list of hundreds of short stories, the five most-nominated make it to the final ballot.
Unfortunately, it’s an easy system to game, as the Puppies have proven. If you can form a voting bloc of just 100 people who will nominate an agreed-upon list, instead of voting as individuals, that’s enough to completely overwhelm the much larger number of Hugo voters who are voting as individuals. 100 people voting for just 5 works will beat out 500 people voting from among hundreds of works.
In the case of the Sad Puppies, Brad Torgersen solicited suggestions on his blog, and then – either working by himself, or (as Larry Correia claimed) in consultation with Larry Correia, John Wright, Sarah Hoyt, and V*x D*y – chose five nominees.1
Next year’s Sad Puppies slate – although they’re not calling it a slate – will be run by Kate Paulk. On a podcast, she outlined some plans:
For starters the word slate is not going to appear anywhere. For second [Cross talk] I am not doing a slate, I am doing a list of the most popular works in all of the various categories as submitted by people who read on any of the various blogs that will have me. And I’m going to post ultimately the top ten of each, with links to the full list of everything that everybody wanted to see nominated, and I’m going to be saying “hey if you really want to see your favorite authors nominated your best bet is to pick something of theirs from the most popular in the list as opposed to the least popular.” That is going to be what it is. I don’t care who ends up on that list. I don’t care if David Gerrold ends up being the top of the list somewhere. That’s not the point, the point is that I want to see the voting numbers both for nomination and for actual voting go up above 5,000 up above 10,000, because the more people who are involved and who are voting the harder it is for any faction including puppies to manipulate the results.
Except this is manipulating the results. Because she’s telling the Puppies to vote strategically from a common list (“your best bet is to pick something of theirs from the most popular in the list”) instead of doing what they should, which is voting as individuals for whatever works they’ve personally read and consider the best.
This isn’t as blatant a slate as Torgersen’s was – but it’s still an attempt to consolidate the votes of the Sad Puppies, from hundreds of possible stories to just a handful of choices. By the time of the final Hugo vote, there appeared to be 400-500 Sad Puppies, about 100 of whom voted strict party line. If even half of those Sad Puppies strategically choose their votes from Paulk’s “top ten” list, while the thousands of non-Puppy voters, voting as individuals, split their votes among hundreds of stories, then bloc voters will once again be able to lock out the rest of us.
If Paulk sincerely wants to participate fairly, rather than running a slate, she should ask her readers to post their recommendations (like Scalzi and others do). And then – that’s it. Don’t consolidate, don’t list in order of popularity, don’t encourage strategic voting – just crowdsource a list of reader’s favorite choices, and tell readers to vote as individuals.
* * *
Many puppies are crowing that this year’s “Best Novel” winner – the excellent, if flawed, Three Body Problem – would not have won without a few hundred puppy voters joining with the majority of voters to beat out The Goblin Emperor (also excellent, also flawed).
That’s true, but it’s also true that Three Body Problem, which was not on either Puppy slate, would not have been nominated if Marko Kloos hadn’t honorably declined his slated nomination. In other words, it’s only because the Puppies screwed up that TBP was nominated at all.
Various leading Puppies have said that they would have nominated TBP if they had read it on time – but, as it happened, none of the handful of people (2? 5? Whatever) who made the decision had read TBP.
And that illustrates exactly what’s wrong with allowing slates to choose the Hugo nominees, rather than Hugo voters nominating as individuals. A crowd of hundreds of Hugo voters, voting as individuals, wouldn’t have left Three Body Problem off the list – but the Puppy slates did.
(Actually, Kloss wasn’t the only novelist to decline a Hugo nomination this year – Larry Correia, who founded the Puppies, made a big show of allowing himself to be nominated, and then declining the nomination. Ironically, if neither Kloss and Correia had declined their nominations, then this year’s Hugo best novel would have been Ancillary Sword, a novel the Puppies loathe.)
* * *
One more point. I’ve seen several Puppies argue that the “no award” vote was gaming the awards, equivalent to how Puppies gamed the nominations.
That’s nonsense.
“No Award” didn’t beat the Puppy nominees because a minority gamed the system and locked out the majority. It beat the Puppy nominees because that’s how the majority of Hugo voters voted. When the majority votes for an outcome, and that outcome wins, that’s not “gaming the system.” That is the system.
It appears that Torgersen et al pretty much ignored the reader selections they solicited: “of the 16 written fiction nominees on Torgerson’s slate, 11 – more than two-thirds – had not actually been nominated by anyone in the crowd-sourced discussion.”
SEATTLE — The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) attempts to confront the nuanced subtext of its vast collection of African masks in the ambitious and delightful exhibition Disguise: Masks and Global African Art. Recognizing that museums decontextualize ritual objects from their spiritual or narrative contexts, curator Pamela McClusky states in the press release: “While masks were exported in vast quantities to become a signature art form representing the African continent in the 20th century, masquerades were left behind.”
The curators thus engage with the notion of the mask as a catalyst, an object that takes on new meaning as it is worn and performed across history. The result is a survey of two dozen contemporary artists of African origin or descent whose practices engage in some way with the notion of self-presentation or disguise. Not all of the artists have a direct relationship with a masquerade tradition, and the show’s broad focus on the African diaspora allows for an eclectic and hybrid approach that opens as many doors as it closes.
While the resulting exhibition feels a bit diffuse, it’s compelling that SAM commissioned many new works and performances, and gave 10 artists entire galleries to themselves. Right off the bat, the viewer is confronted with Sondra R. Perry’s two videos framing the entrance. Entitled “Double Quadruple Etcetera Etcetera 1 and 11” (2013), the videos show Danny Giles and Joiri Minaya dancing like a maniac, their bodies removed in post-processing to be a shimmering refraction of the white gallery walls behind them. The work is paired with a large projection from Jakob Dwight’s The Autonomous Prism Mask project — a series of glitchy digital collages framed to match the silhouettes of masks from SAM’s collection.
The exhibition’s entrance prepares the viewer for Curator Erika Dalya Massaquoi’s inclination for new media. These contemporary takes on the exhibition’s themes suggest a certain necessity for disguise in the digital age, and that the masquerade might be a central characteristic of contemporary society at large.
This postmodern sense of schizophrenia is emphasized in the next room, which features more of Dwight’s flickering video loops, as well as a series of masks from varying African tribes with a range of ritual functions. Serving, in retrospect, as an early indication of the diverse cultures African masks are often purported to represent, the works fluidly navigate and embody identities as needed or desired.
Installation view of ‘Disguise: Masks and Global African Art’ (image courtesy the Seattle Museum of Art)
This combination of spirituality and tech-centered futurism is found scattered throughout Disguise, culminating halfway through the show in ChimaTEK Corporation’s beta launch. Guised as a tongue-in-cheek corporate venture, Saya Woolfalk’s installation of lavish, post-human Buddhist avatars promises to give “clients access to a chimeric virtual existence” through “trademarked human hybridization technologies.” Explained in a text panel and explanatory video, Woolfalk’s post-racial utopia seems inviting if we were in fact allowed to wear her characters’ vaguely Japanese, mandala-esque outfits. I was certainly captivated enough to linger, although the success of the ritual is owed in part to an entrancing segment of Emeka Ogboh’s “Egwutronica” soundtrack (2014–2015).
Integrated throughout the exhibition, “Egwutronica” is a “nonintrusive but immersive sound installation” of synthesized beats and sampled African instruments that responds in part to the works on view. Shifting the silent sanctity of the museum to a different register, the soundscapes reinforce the notion of the masquerade as existing in a kind of “paraspace,” which is described on a text panel by Sondra Perry as a realm that exists parallel to or outside of ordinary life.
Jacolby Satterwhite, “Country Ball” (1989–2012), HD digital video with color 3-D animation and sound, 12:39 minutes (image courtesy Seattle Art Museum, Modern Art Acquisition Fund, 2013.3)
A personal favorite of the show, Jacolby Satterwhite’s video “Reifying Desire 3 – The Immaculate Conception of Doubting Thomas” (2013) combines 3D animation and video to create a polymorphous world jittering with frenetic energy and digitally rendered bodily fluids. Messy yet meticulous, Satterwhite pursues an unseen higher purpose, his deliberate movements conjuring the ritualistic, regardless of whether they follow any recognizable logic or pattern. Reminiscent of “Elenu Eiye” (2001), an archetypically foolish character’s mask and costume from earlier in the show whose title means “the owner of the mouth that’s in constant celebration,” Satterwhite’s video tests the limits of the absurd, who states in an accompanying text panel that in the digital age “the new glamour is being porous and parading your errors.”
Several artists in the show explore the masquerade tradition in a critical way. Wura-Natasha Ogunji exploits the anonymity provided by the masquerade to investigate the limits of an exclusively male tradition — for example, by parading costumed women through the streets of Lagos, Nigeria in broad daylight. Zina Saro-Wiwa conversely explores the identities of the men under the masks, taking poignant portraits that serve as “a document of [her] desire to penetrate this secretive world of men.”
Much of the works’ meaning, like Brendan Fernandes’s gallery-sized meta-critique of the appropriation of Africana by the West, however, begins to dull due to viewer oversaturation and a lack of curatorial focus. Nandipha Mntambo’s interspecies self-portraits as a bovine woman are gorgeous, yet feel somehow disconnected, and Walter Oltmann’s bristly bug costumes feel entirely out of place.
The final gallery, which is filled with various photographs and drawings of masked figures, feels necessary but tiring, and the closing work, Ebony G. Patterson’s admirable “72 Project” (2012), which acts as a solemn tribute to 72 Jamaican men killed in a drug raid by US and Jamaican forces, feels like a politically-charged afterthought.
Despite something of a curatorial overreach, all of the works in the show are quite compelling in their own right, and I imagine are only brought to a higher plane with SAM’s series of performances and programming, which saw some of the artists engage with their otherwise static work through dance. Like the Nick Cave Soundsuits that are mixed with the museum’s permanent installation of masks outside the exhibition, Disguise reintroduces a sense of wonder and urgency to a collection that’s gathered some dust.
Creepy robots were often at the heart of Philip K. Dick stories. The future is now: a company is building a realistic looking robot to haunt your dreams and it looks strikingly similar to the science fiction author. Electric Literature reports on the project from Hanson Robotics:
On their website, Hanson Robotics highlights their desire to “realize the dream of friendly machines who truly live and love, and co-invent the future of life.” Philip K. Dick’s robot, when questioned in a 2011 interview with PBS, engages in thoughtful conversation with his interviewer, and eventually provides a calm yet chilling answer to a question many of us have on our minds: Will robots take over the world, Terminator-style?
“Guild Game,” a game based on the Italian Renaissance painting guilds (courtesy Lucas Molina)
In a new monthly series, we’re highlighting a few games, apps, and interactive digital experiences recommended for the art crowd. For September, here’s a simulation of an Italian Renaissance painting guild, a Surrealist puzzler, a glitchy Pac-Man, and the most thought-provoking game on junk mail yet.
Painters Guild
For: Steam for Windows From: Lucas Molina
Painters Guildcleverly uses the guild system of art in the Italian Renaissance as a management sim, with you as the omniscient overlord tasked with encouraging Leonardo da Vinci to exceed his master Andrea del Verrocchio, and keeping patrons happy by delivering portraits and paintings on time.
“My goal is to portray how art was made during the Renaissance, including how multiple artists worked on a single painting and how most paintings were commissioned,” creator Lucas Molina told Hyperallergic. “As an art historian, this accuracy is important to me.”
Messages delivered to your guild announce pivotal moments like the death of Donatello (which benefits your Florence business in bringing over wealthy patrons like the Medici family), and sometimes the real troublesome personalities of the artists get in the way of your progress, like a rebellious Caravaggio. The game is much more focused on the business management than the actual visuals of the art, but isan enjoyable introduction into the 15th-century trials of managing artists.
Back to Bed
“Back to Bed” gameplay (courtesy Bedtime Digital Games)
For: iOS, Android, Playstation 3, 4, and Vita From: Loot Interactive
While Painters Guild is about the business of art, Back to Bedis all aesthetic, although it’s a beautiful one. Initially started in 2011 as a student project at the Danish Academy for Digital Interactive Entertainment, the puzzle game is now out on Playstation in addition to iOS and Android. Developed by Bedtime Digital Games and published by Loot Interactive, it’s a pastiche of Surrealism influences, with some whale-shaped trains and tentacle shapes thrown in for good whimsical measure.
As “Subob,” a dog-ish protector of a sleepwalking human named Bob, you prevent your drowsy alter ego from tumbling down M. C. Escher’s staircases, blocking the way with Magritte’s apples, and dodging bizarre Dalí-esque figures like disembodied lips. It might not have quite the creativity of the topsy-turvy Escher staircases of fellow puzzle game Monument Valley, but exploring the checkered floors of the puzzle boards is avisually captivating dreamscape.
Pac-Man 256
Pac-Man 256 (screenshots by the author for Hyperallergic)
For: iOS and Android From: Hipster Whale and Bandai-Namco
If you ever somehow played Pac-Man to level 256, you probably reached some stage of mental disintegration where a glitchy invasion of chaotic numbers made total sense. This “kill screen” that made it impossible to progress in the game inspired the new Pac-Man 256.
Rather than one screen, this Pac-Man is endless, with the rising numbers and letters below, and swarms of ghosts above. Previously, creator Hipster Whale did a similar number on Frogger with the infinite Crossy Road. As a sort of visually insane version of the 1980s arcade game, there are sometimes ghosts in deathly quartets, and one power-up allows your spherical yellow protagonist to shoot the specters with lasers. The game is free, although $8 buys unlimited credits to avoid ads, so you can play into the pixelated delirium forever.
Unsolicited
Playing “Unsolicited” (screenshot by the author for Hyperallergic)
From: Lucas Pope For: Online
No one can make bureaucracy profound in gaming like Lucas Pope, who follows his Papers, Please on working an immigration checkpoint with Unsolicitedon the tedium of sending junk mail. Like Papers, Please, Unsolicited offers some sympathy for those who sign, seal, and send sweepstakes and charity requests to your door.
The gameplay is simple, just a matter of selecting the right forms and plugging in the appropriate information — something which might crush your soul slightly if you’ve ever worked on any sort of monotonous office paperwork. Pope created the game in 48 hours for the Ludum Dare 33 game jam with the theme “you are the monster,” and in your quest to reach the quotas, the seemingly innocuous timeshare offers progress into some intense bill collecting. And the gameplay compels you to go on, all for a few words that drip with managerial despair: “A striking performance. Others have noticed.”
Playing “Unsolicited” (screenshot by the author for Hyperallergic)
The front and back covers of ‘A Manual for Urban Projection’ (MUP) (all photos courtesy Ali Momeni)
As the technology for it improves and advances, light projection is becoming an increasingly affordable and accessible method for publicly telling stories or spreading messages to a large audience. In the past couple of years alone, many artists and organizations have harnessed projection in a variety of ways, from recreating lost treasures to raising awareness of extinction to protesting issues like fracking and government surveillance. For anyone interested in exploring the medium, the Center for Urban Intervention Research (CUIR) recently released its first printed book, A Manual for Urban Projection (MUP), to illustrate the potentials of projection, particularly in urban spaces, whether sanctioned or not.
Successfully funded on Kickstarter, MUP is co-authored by CUIR founder Ali Momeni and collaborator Stephanie Sherman, who draw on years of personal experience with urban projection. The 90-page book is divided into four sections: concepts that inform and motivate all types of projection actions, the human and mechanical tools involved, different designs to produce ideal projection scenarios, and a list of reading resources, both printed and online. It also includes diagrams and pages of image cutouts for brainstorming one’s own possible plans. More of an introductory guide to projection practices rather than a dense, comprehensive reference, MUP is meant to inspire newcomers and highly experienced projectionists alike to envision possible scenarios and collaborate on future happenings. The book is also pocket-sized, which makes it convenient for toting around for reference during projects.
System diagram for an urban projection intervention performed by Ali Momeni and The Maw in Minneapolis in 2010 (click to enlarge)
It’s encouraging to read about the seemingly endless possibilities such a medium offers, with far less equipment than one might expect. In addition to a projector, many setups require just a computer, a webcam, and software that’s available for free. As MUP explains, although assembly requires careful planning in advance and moving equipment around may be difficult, as with any endeavor, with practice comes ease. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of urban projection — for novices in particular — is learning how to actually work the technology, but the section devoted to projection tools is detailed, covering everything from picking the right projector and projection surface to integrating a live feed to reach an even larger audience.
Beyond the basic tools, every projection setup is different and faces its own specific challenges, especially if installed in a busy and unpredictable urban setting. MUP provides 10 illustrated scenarios that form a broad foundation for projectionists to model their own arrangements on; they include instructions for setting up theater-like scenes, live interviews, and even mobile carts fitted with hardware to “leave a site swiftly when necessary” — ideal for guerrilla protests, for example.
Light projections rarely fail to capture public attention, as they play on our love for spectacles and visual storytelling. Bright and usually large, they also easily disrupt the quotidian, which makes them fitting for bold displays of public art and protest messages. Actually launching and successfully installing such a project may seem daunting, but MUP is a helpful introductory aid for anyone trying to transform public thinking through the transformation of public space.
A key of symbols used to illustrate sample scenarios
“There never should have been any limitations on people of the same sex having contracts, but I do object to the state putting its imprimatur to the specialness of marriage on something that’s different from what most people have defined as marriage for most of history,” he explained. “So one way is just getting the state out completely and I think that’s what we’re headed towards, actually. Whether or not people who still work for the state can do it without the legislature changing it is something I’m going to leave up to the courts exactly how to do it.” Paul has previously said that he is “not a legal authority on that.”
Paul’s unrealistic plan to remove marriage from the laws has been part of a strategy on his part to avoid affirming marriage for same-sex couples without actively working against marriage equality. For example, back in 2013, he said that even if states continued issuing marriage contracts, if the debate on same-sex marriage continued for another couple decades, he hoped opponents might “still win back the hearts and minds of people.”
Paul’s support for Davis’ refusal to comply with the law seems consistent with his hope that supporters of marriage equality might still be convinced to change their minds. “I think people who do stand up and are making a stand to say that they believe in something,” he said, “is an important part of the American way.”
The idea that government should get out of marriage is unrealistic, but hardly irrational. The idea that selective enforcement of law based on whim somehow follows from this idea is just weird. It becomes less weird, I suppose, in context of Rand’s need to push past 1% in GOP Presidential primary polling.
“It takes brains to make millions,” according to the slogan of Donald Trump’s board game. “It takes Trump to make billions.” It appears that’s truer than Trump himself might like to admit. A new analysis suggests that Trump would’ve been a billionaire even if he’d never had a career in real estate, and had instead thrown his father’s inheritance into a index fund that tracked the market. His wealth, in other words, isn’t because of his brains. It’s because he’s a Trump.
In an outstanding piece for National Journal, reporter S.V. Dáte notes that in 1974, the real estate empire of Trump’s father, Fred, was worth about $200 million. Trump is one of five siblings, making his stake at that time worth about $40 million. If someone were to invest $40 million in a S&P 500 index in August 1974, reinvest all dividends, not cash out and have to pay capital gains, and pay nothing in investment fees, he’d wind up with about $3.4 billion come August 2015, according to Don’t Quit Your Day Job’s handy S&P calculator. If one factors in dividend taxes and a fee of 0.15 percent — which is triple Vanguard’s actual fee for an exchange-traded S&P 500 fund — the total only falls to $2.3 billion.
As AMERICAblog pointed out today, Donald Trump's knives-out anti-immigration attack ad against Jeb! is nothing short of a reboot of the infamous Willie Horton ad which Jeb!'s daddy used to blow Michael Dukakis out of way in 1988.
Donald Trump goes Willie Horton on Jeb Bush
8/31/15 1:24pm by Jon Green
With a 21st Century take on one of the most iconic moments of racism in political advertising, Donald Trump hit Jeb Bush today with a video, posted to Instagram, juxtaposing Bush’s “act of love” comments on immigration with pictures of immigrants who have committed crimes...
It's a hateful piece of fascist race-baiting, but it's also a work of minor evil genius. Because in case you haven't been paying attention to American politics for the last 30 years, from Poppy Bush slinging Lee Atwater slime with both hands while wrapped in an American flag --
...
In 1988, one of the central attacks revolved around the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Dukakis, as governor, had vetoed state legislation in 1977 that required teachers to lead their students in the pledge. He did so on the basis of an advisory opinion from the state court, which said the legislation was unconstitutional.
Mr. Dukakis, a Harvard lawyer surrounded by other Harvard lawyers, believed himself on very firm ground. But by August 1988, his Republican opponent, Vice President George H.W. Bush, was rousing huge crowds with a contemptuous question: “What is it about the Pledge of Allegiance that upsets him so much?”
Mr. Dukakis, Mr. Bush said, was “out in deep left field on these issues.” He was also “a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U.,” more concerned with giving furloughs to criminals — like Willie Horton — than upholding national values, the vice president asserted.
“I simply can’t understand the kind of thinking that lets first-degree murderers out of jail on a furlough and won’t deal with the Pledge of Allegiance,” Mr. Bush said.
...
-- to his halfwit, dry-drink son unleashing the full ratfucking fury of Atwater's protege, Karl Rove, on John McCain in 2000 --
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McCain’s closest aides were so stunned by the angle of the attack that at first they tried to shield him from it. “We expected one thing, and it was quite the opposite,” said Fletcher, who personally saw the “Negro child” flyers “all over every car” at the debate. “We figured they would go after him on some sort of philandering issue. McCain had pretty well knocked all that down [by admitting in his 1999 autobiography that, at some point after his five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison, he’d been unfaithful to his first wife], but I always figured that would sort of be the underground thing there. But, man, the child thing.… I’ve seen the worst form of racist sons of bitches in the world in David Duke, but this was unbelievable.”
Almost daily, the ugly buzz grew. Another prominent rumor was that Cindy was a drug addict. In 1994 she’d admitted that she had a prescription-painkiller problem and blamed it on two spinal surgeries and the stress of her husband’s role in the Keating Five scandal. (He was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for intervening with federal regulators on behalf of a disgraced financier.)
There were other whispers as well: McCain had slept with prostitutes and given his wife V.D.; he’d turned traitor in the “Hanoi Hilton,” or was mentally unstable from his captivity, or was a Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed to destroy the G.O.P. (There was then, and still is, a wacky Web site devoted to those last theories. The former Green Beret behind it, Ted Sampley, is back at it today with a savage “Stop Hanoi John Kerry” diatribe; he also supports the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Beyond Sampley, most anti-McCain vets in South Carolina opposed the senator on political and/or veterans’ issues—not for his war service. A top McCain aide told me he didn’t think the vets’ antagonism was nearly the factor that the more personal attacks were.) For just meeting with the gay Log Cabin Republicans, McCain was labeled the “Fag Army” candidate.
...
-- The Bush Crime family has always been more than willing to spelunk as deep as necessary into any available political sewer in order to win an election.
And for the most part, the Beltway media has been willing to let the Bushes job out their political wetwork to the scum of the Earth, dab the blood and viscera daintily from the corners of their mouths once the slaughter is done, and then go right back to pretending they're a tribe of genteel, well-mannered aristocrats without too many questions being asked. As the late Doctor Thompson wrote back in 2000:
...
There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would Never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying -- and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida. It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense. ... Anybody who believed Bush had lost Florida was a Fool. The Media, all of them, were Liars & Dunces or treacherous whores trying to sabotage his victory.
They were strong words and people said he was Bluffing. But I knew better. Of course Bush would win Florida. Losing was out of the question. Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting & sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV.
The old man was the real tip-off. The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep's fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore's. ... Everything since then has been political flotsam & Gibberish.
The whole Presidential election, in fact, was rigged and fixed from the start. It was a gigantic Media Event, scripted & staged for TV. It happens every four years, at an ever-increasing cost & 90 percent of the money always goes for TV commercials...
Over and over again Trump has whipped his opponents at their own game by simply lifting pages straight out of Roger Ailes' Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes and the Bush Family Grimoire and running the dark magic spells and incantations of the Conservative elite right back at them with twice the throw-weight.
As I said, the Trump campaign's latest ad is worst kind of hateporn for brownshirts. That said, if there are any Democratic campaign advisers out there who are not cribbing notes from the Trump campaign on the general subject of how to use the Right's own hexing powers against them, those advisers should be fired immediately.
One of the Ghana ThinkTank signs on the streets of New York. (all photos courtesy Ghana Think Tank)
A new set of “Black Lives Matter” street signs carrying some provocative messages will appear in New York City in October. Created by public art project Ghana ThinkTank, the notices will pop up on actual sign posts as part of this year’s Art in Odd Places (AiOP), which takes place in Alphabet City. Adopting the same stark look as actual street signs, they feature authoritative lines such as “WHITE GUILT IS COMPLACENCY,” “YOUR PRIVILEGE DOESN’T NEED CONSENT,” and “WARNING: When being racist please be sure to use the appropriate language.” Some are accompanied by graphics of surveillance cameras and upheld hands so that the orders are emphasized by codes that allude to stern policing systems.
“They are holding people accountable for the many different ways we are a part of the racist systems in our country and asking people to consider what roles we can play in the Black Lives Matter movement, whatever our background or race,” Ghana ThinkTank co-founder Christopher Robbins told Hyperallergic through email.
Another sign (click to enlarge)
The language of the signs, as fellow artist Carmen Montoya explained, emerged from street conversations in which individuals were asked what they themselves fail to notice in the discourse around systematic abuses of power.
The Black Lives Matter series, which initially appeared in May during the New Museum’s Ideas Festival, is just one example of a number of signs Ghana ThinkTank has made. It has also established “Legal Waiting Zones” in Queens four years ago to address police harassment of immigrants; for last year’s Art in Odd Places, the group brought “Street Sign Actions” to Manhattan’s Union Square, which announced a number of unofficial rules declaring individual rights.
These projects harness the wide visibility of street signs and their publicly understood roles as official forms of regulation. Ghana ThinkTank’s latest iteration of guerrilla signs focuses particularly on the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Although displayed in public and meant for all to abide by, the rules on actual street signs are not actually evenly applied to all, at times particularly on the basis of an individual’s physical appearance, Robbins said. The Black Lives Matter series highlights this unequal implementation of the language of regulation while also asking viewers to “consider the ways they may be complicit” in such discrimination.
“A street sign signifies the official voice of the system around you,” Robbins said. “By colliding that symbol with language that states things we may not like to admit to/about ourselves, we hope to point out the differences between official truths and actual, and between personal and systemic.”
A warning sign for racist language.
The signs, like those from last year’s AiOP festival, will blend in nearly seamlessly with their surroundings, sharing real estate with official road signs. They may be easy to glance over, but the camouflaged method of display reflects any disregard people may have of the law’s disparate treatment towards different communities.
“Our own action and inaction is part of the cumulative process that helps extend these unfair systems,” Robbins said, “and I hope the ‘officialness’ of the signs points to that often overlooked connection.” Installed for an indefinite and undetermined amount of time, a new road sign eventually blends into the everyday landscape; other messages should not as easily be forgotten.
“One thing that I think is very important about the signs is the private conversations that they provoke,” Montoya said. “This invisible groundswell of ideas is the stuff of change.”
Pablo López Luz, “Cancun I” (2013), Quintana Roo (all photos courtesy the artist and Toluca Éditions)
In his monograph Pyramid, published by Toluca Éditions, photographer Pablo López Luz explores the pre-Columbian influence on modernist architecture in Mexico.
Cover of ‘Pyramid’ by Pablo López Luz
“It is difficult to draw a precise conclusion about the meaning of these shapes in contemporary Mexican architecture, particularly when citing the concept of identity,” Luz told Hyperallergic. “Mexico is a country haunted by its hybrid circumstance, so, finding these references to antique shapes or pre-Columbian motives scattered around different cities makes you wonder if that historical past still finds a place in contemporary identity, or if it surfaces only as a decorative motif. I choose to believe that it does play a role in today’s identity.”
The Mexico City-born artist previously explored unexpected collisions of influence in the built environment through his Terrazoseries. Through aerial photographs, he examined the edges of the sprawling city, with its dense concrete slums, and surprising natural landscapes. Pyramid includes 65 images that highlight the details rather than the density of Mexico City, with the creative book design by the Paris-based Toluca Éditions featuringsmall colorful booklets in Spanish and English that precede two photography sections:“Grids” and “Pyramids.”
‘Pyramid’ by Pablo López Luz (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
‘Pyramid’ by Pablo López Luz (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
‘Pyramid’ by Pablo López Luz (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
Mexican historian, critic, and curator Alonso Morales states in his introduction that this mid-20th century design “announced Mexico’s transformation into a modern country” and “employed among its resources the reinterpretation/updating of pre-Hispanic architecture.”
“Grids” covers the geometric patterns found in neighborhoods formerly on the edge of Mexico City and that resemble those on pre-Columbian ruins, while Pyramids focuses on the step shapes reminiscent of Mesoamerican structures. A smaller insert in the book concentrates on even subtlersuggestions of this history, like a bright green triangle painted on the sidewalk, or a pyramid shape emerging from a brick wall.
“I was looking for visual references to pre-Columbian shapes, be it in the shape of pyramids, staircases, or geometric patterns referencing the primary patterns of this architecture, and I was also searching for direct re-interpretations of sculptural idols —serpents, deities — or specific architectural motives,” Luz explained.
Now many of these midcentury buildings are crumbling like the pre-Columbian sites they reinterpreted, the modern ruins another layer to the narrative of identity in Mexican architecture.
Pablo López Luz, “Picacho II,” Mexico City
Pablo López Luz, “Teatro Independencia I” (2012), Mexico City
Pablo López Luz, “Bosque de las Lomas I” (2011), Mexico City
Pablo López Luz, “Camino a Teotihuacan” (2013), Mexico
Pablo López Luz, “Espacio Escultórico I” (2012), Mexico
“Heirloom” by Shin Yu Pai in Piper’s Orchard, Carkeek Park, Seattle (photo by Katy Tuttle, all images courtesy the artist)
The apples in Seattle’s Piper’s Orchard will ripen this summer and fall with words from a 26-section poem printed on their skin. The “Heirloom” project by poet Shin Yu Pai is a simple idea — using vinyl stickers to imprint letters on fruit — that invites visitors to have a more complex experience in the Carkeek Park orchard through a constantly changing literary narrative.
“The language written throughout the trees alludes to different aspects of the orchard’s trees and history, and is meant to be experienced as a self-guided tour,” Pai told Hyperallergic. Remotely, the poem and an ambient audio component involving sound from different seasons at the orchard are available online.
Shin Yu Pai placing vinyl letters on an apple (photo by Katy Tuttle)
“Heirloom” and “Keepsake” apples (photo by Katy Tuttle)
“Heirloom” is part of the 12-artist exhibition Propagation: Heaven and Earth VIIin Carkeek Park,co-curated by David Francis and Thendara Kida-Gee. “Just as there are hundreds of varieties of antique and heirloom apples, I wanted to explore uncommon textures of language that could enliven the environment of the orchard,” Pai explained.
The poem takes an abecedarian structure, with a section for each letter of the alphabet. For example “A” is for “Antique,” as in the heritage heirloom apples that grow in the orchard; “E,” for “Eye, apple of my”; “G” for “Graftage,” that is “propagating a vanishing line”; and “M” for “Minna,” for Wilhemina Piper who tended to the orchard. Her husband Andrew’s sweet shop in downtown Seattle burned to the ground in the Great Fire of 1889, which brought the family to relocate to North Seattle where they homesteaded on the land that’s now part of Carkeek Park. Throughout is a love for the wordplay of heirloom apple names that readily lend themselves to the rhythm of Pai’s poem, like Northern spy, wolf river, Spokane beauty, hidden rose, Ozark gold, and pixie crunch.
Shin Yu Pai creating “Heirloom” in Piper’s Orchard (photo by Katy Tuttle)
“Index” apple (photo by Katy Tuttle)
Pai added that the poem was influenced by her two-year-old son Tomo. “Tomo is in the time of acquiring language and words and I thought about children’s literature and structures,” she said. “I didn’t want to write a long piece that was explicitly for children, but there was something about the spirit of a children’s verse form that appealed deeply to me.”
With her living tree collaborators, every experience at the orchard is different, as fruits ripen and are embossed with sunlight-burned letters, as apples fall or rot, and as trees experience infestations or severe weather. Pai has mostly worked with printed poetry, although she’s also an experienced photographer, and her unconventional collaborations include Hedwig Dances performing her poem “Recipe for Paper” at the Chicago Cultural Center in the early 2000s, and her friend and composer Gao Ping creating music from one of her poems. She’s now the poet laureate for Redmond, Washington, and plans to work on outdoor installations in the city’s public trail system involving text.
“I do love written and page-based poems,” she said. “I’m also excited about what happens when readers and viewers encounter text in unexpected environments and how language in public places can make poetry more visible and accessible.”
Shin Yu Pai in Piper’s Orchard (photo by Katy Tuttle)
Fallen apples, including “Keepsake” (photo by Katy Tuttle)
And that’s fine. That’s how the Hugo nominations are designed to work. 611 Hugo voters, acting as individuals, each nominate whatever short stories they think are award-worthy. From that list of hundreds of short stories, the five most-nominated make it to the final ballot.
Many puppies are crowing that this year’s “Best Novel” winner – the excellent, if flawed, Three Body Problem – would not have won without a few hundred puppy voters joining with the majority of voters to beat out The Goblin Emperor (also excellent, also flawed).
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