MORE PREVIEWS FOR YOUSE

Details of the new Year of the Shorts, due out as soon as humanly possible! There’ll be an audio element too, still deciding if it’ll be a CD or a download.
GET READY!

Why digital comic books are a way in and a way out

There is an old couple of friends talking about the old days on the radio. One speaks of a time when their sole spires of income as a young whippersnapper consisted of the role as the local paper boy. Employment within the realm of the news agency gave you special privileges. For some is was access to the men’s magazines with ladies in their skimpy, but for one of such a young and slightly naive age it was the access to one thing in particular that made it all worthwhile. The comics.

Fantasy characters that played out tales one could never hope to experience first hand were illustrated with enough intensity for the young mind to build heroes and the like. While the stories themselves may have influential to the boy’s upbringing, there was one thing particular that never left his memories – the smell.
Comic books, when printed as cheaply as those found in many news agencies, are of such a poor quality that they can deteriate rather quickly. Their techniques are often only one or two steps above that of newspapers, with which one is to use yesterday’s to line their bird cage as today’s lands on their doorstep. The ink qualities have certain components that give to the reader much more than their eyes could ever know. These comic books rub off on you literally. The paper wares quickly, the ink stains your sweaty palms and nostrils. This is part of the reading experience, with which one builds their sensory emotional inventory from an early age.

Today one does away with contact. Comic books can be purchased from within digital devices and controlled with the tap of a screen. No longer are their pages to ware and fold. No longer is their colored ink to fade and stain and fill the nasal cavity with possible memories and inventory. No longer can one look ahead or flip through before reading in depth. The view is controlled, a forced focus much like that brought about with the invention of the camera for stills and motion pictures. We are forced to watch through someone else’s eyes, and all the while we no longer have the other senses at play. Our fingers on touch the strangely warm surface of the screen, our nostrils left to wallow in our own body odors with no means of escape.

Street Advent – December 2

Hooray for collaborative pieces!
Year of the Shorts was lucky enough to take part in this year’s Street Advent Artist thingy of magical-ness. December 2 is pretty early in the game, but I’m sure the rest of the works will blow your mind!
I wanted smaller pieces – both because I’m lazy and because I wanted to do a few things, and I’m not the most free of time person.
From the idea of six small doors it became four, but each in themselves bring in themes of TANGRAMS and symbols experimented with here, and the screen printing bits I’ve been messing around with, as well as incorporating some photocopier in there for good measure.

The small plastic bags are meant to be taken away by people who discover the art, so maybe it’ll be you!!! Go find them!!!

I can’t wait to see what the others do!
Street Advent thankyou!

Teaser

Entries haven’t closed just yet, but the layout has begun – surely to be changed when all the bits are finally in.

Roll

Bop! BTW

Eating/Consuming Information

One gathers information much like one would collect their plate for a buffet. Trays and trays of delicious good await you. More than you could ever eat. The question is how do you know what you like? This is your first time entering the galley of the information cruise, so what do you use to guide?
One would first look for similarities between here and foods they have sampled, eaten and enjoyed in the past. Some may choose the cakes that looks like cakes mother used to make, and of they are too emotionally connected to this one plate, they may choose to stack it high with the same treat and head back to the table to begin eating. Gorging on one food group or product, we know is unhealthy. This unhealthiness could be seen as a bias to one form or source of information.

These meals are interrupted by what Serres refers to as the parasite – the unannounced third at the communication table between the person and their food. They are a disturbance – at once a noise, an action and an object – that stops the consumer from consuming to chase the said parasite away. The medium is the parasite. The eating is the parasite, a part of what we in fact consume and believe.

Terry The Toaster

Practice Runs II

Not A Pony

According to some people, ponies are the shit. Not even just really up there amongst things that are the shit, THE shit. So what do these wonderful people suggest for their birthday? The everyone is sent a blank My Little Pony to decorate as they see fit, then return as a ‘present’! Talk about mad mad fun!
I made every attempt to stop the pony looking like a pony, and reckon I did pretty well.