Sonic!

Heh! Ah Sonic. The good old days.

I thought this flipbook was really awesome when I saw this clip. Props to the creator. The old vintage style of motion pictures kinda brings back the feeling of naive belief of magic and wonder experienced when you're a kid (well, it does for me anyway) and everyone remembers Sonic the Hedgehog!

Loopy - loop

I thought a bit about my comment on House of Stairs II about the whole "repetitive loop" but that seems to be a reoccurring theme in most of Escher's works. Like in Reptiles, Ascending and Descending, Drawing Hands, Metamorphosis III...and so many more -but just to name a few of my favourites. I do however believe the loop works better in these works than in House of Stairs II. The 'story' shall I call it works better because it's on small scale. Whereas the grandeur in House of Stairs II was, in my opinion, too ambitious and destroys the delicacy of a simple concept of a continuous cycle. In saying so, I much prefer House of Stairs I than II. The continuous loop was presented in the play on perspectives in a nice 'bite size' for the viewer without the need for the additional over the top replica in scroll. Proves the point that sometimes less is better than more.

Reptiles, 1943, MC Escher, lithograph.

Ascending and Descending, 1960, MC Escher, lithograph.

Drawing Hands, 1948, MC Escher, lithograph.

House of Stairs II

I knew there was a House of Stairs but I didn't know there was a House of Stairs II!! MC Escher was just such an obsessive guy wasn't he?

This work would have been so much more amazing if it weren't a repetitive loop. Not that it isn't an insane lithograph. It's incredible! Look at it, he uses a single source of light for the multiple dimensional planes stitched together in one drawing. ...but still the repetitive loop.

House of Stairs II, 1951,  M.C. Escher, lithograph.

You know I actually thought the little critters were cute back in the twelfth grade but now...yugh. Still extraordinary though.

Wish fulfillment

Your wish is my command ...but too bad for you this ain't real buster!

Sigmund Freud theorized that some dreams that we had were in the form of wish fulfillment. Our subconscious - our personal genie - would resolve our internal conflicts by granting our deep desires, realising them while we were asleep. Some in crude form where the manifested content (what we saw in the dream) equated to the latent content (the meaning of the dream) without the encrypting process in between which he termed dream work causing the manifested content to be symbolic of the latent content but totally quirky and weird-ed-out. These dreams are mainly infantile but as we approach adulthood our subconscious develops a preferred taste for the cryptic.

Freud describes thirst at night being comforted by a dream of drinking just to get us to keep sleeping (gosh our subconscious is devious!). And dreaming about already being wake, too (are you sure are subconscious ain't evil, leading us on to an eternal sleep - it's the witch and we're Sleeping Beauty!). But the point is if you really and truly were hoping for something...

"An idea merely existing  in the region of possibility is replaced by a vision of accomplishment." (Freud, Dream Psychology)

Moving onto cryptic dreams the realisation of the wish is still there, just that our subconscious works in such a witty and fascinating way it is able to extraordinarily condense so many elements of our conscious and unconscious knowings into the production of our wish. Ergo the metaphors and similes and double sided meanings - the fun stuff of rhymes and riddles.

I want to come to the part of  'combined people,' though this is probably sliding on a tangent to the topic of granting wishes, but this is interesting and a bit grotesque.

"I can build up a person by borrowing one feature from one person and one from another..." 

So I'm thinking we can imagine up extraordinary mythological creates like griffins, Pegasus, centaurs... or we can start creating zombies! We are Frankenstein or some talented plastic surgeon.

Then we can start piecing together environments from what we know and go all Inception on things.

This is far as I want to go for now on dreams but I might continue on some other strings to it when I come to them. So for now I bid you adieu.  

 

Ahh Season Eight

I was never much of a comic reader but Buffy Season Eight has definitely still got me hooked even with the medium switch. I love the covers by Jo Chen! Some of them are absolutely captivating, so beautiful that I wished the entire issues where done by her (it wouldn't be in comic style anymore, but still!). I will be waiting for season nine. In the mean time I'm still slowly cruising through season two of Angel. Very slowly, in fact I'm halted due to my stupid midsessions, eck! But then, the plots have gotten a little dry so I'm not really in that much desperation to continue at the moment.

Some of the covers by Jo Chen. You can practically feel the energy and motion.

I'm procrastinating a lot, my excuse is "I'm trying to keep my stress levels down" which in truth is the truth if only to an extent, but still true! I've got a lot of loose ends lying about these days, some I can't control but many my own doing. A lot of unfinished tasks. 'Unfinished' ...springs to mind that himym episode of Ted lecturing about Gaudi's unfinished Sagrada Familia (..whose beard was also brown, pointy, weird and unfinished. Hee!). ...Like a ghost with "unfinished business," but not that extreme phew. Sorry, too many side thoughts.

My caffeine boost has worn off and I could go for another one but, no coffee in the house, =( bugger that.

44 days

Over the period of 44 days I finished the entire series of Buffy and I feel...swell ;) I feel strangely content where the television version left it 'cos usually I'd feel a somber hollowness. Maybe it's that itch to continue the ride in the comic series or that other inkling to check out the Angel side of things, or really I just want to follow Spike across. Ahh Spike. Spikey. Hee. Funny thing, last week or maybe a bit longer than that I realised that Angel's in Bones! Ahaha! The many times I've looked at the promo pic for that show all I really focus in on is the photoshop-ed skeletal hands, I never look at the faces of the leads, heck I don't watch that show not interested what so ever, only ever tried to watch it once and only got like five minutes into it... So for some bizarro reason I found myself looking at the faces one night and there he was! Lol!

...anyway this is weird me talking about TV. I really lack consistency.

Bump on the head and Happy CNY

I bump my head on the corner of my table yesterday as I bent down to pick up my mobile from the floor...

I'd spent the last three days doing a pretty program, at a pretty building, in a pretty decor-ed and air conditioned room, at a pretty corporation. My dream ahhh... It was a terrific three days overall. So many tips and discussions - great stuff! Determined to be the future leading partners lol ...not! More like we'll see.

So so so so so! It's Chinese new year tomorrow! An all asians know what that entails! ^^ Super grinning! XD Red-pocket-me-up! But of course there is more to that... A year has come a gone and now there is a new one approaching and that time is most cherished with none other than family and friends.