<\/p>\n
Air Quotes in Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n First off, though, let me pull a 180 and announce something downright literally Utopian: to wit, the Utopia International Film Festival<\/a> next month in Tel Aviv. You can be forgiven for thinking the title is intended ironically, but I assure you they came up with it long before the current missile volleys (and as I understand it Tel Aviv is out of the hot zone anyway). Anyway, I’ve been invited\u2014there are workshops and panels in addition to the screenings\u2014 and I fully expect to be there with the BUG even though it starts in a couple of weeks and we haven’t got our flights yet.<\/p>\n Even better, a friend of mine recently returned from Gaza, so we’ll be able to hang out at Stormcrow Manor<\/a> and compare notes afterward.<\/p>\n That should be fun.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A Canticle for Sarasti<\/strong><\/p>\n I’ve been honored to hear my work inspire various bits of music over the years, and surprised how much of that music I actually liked. I have not been surprised by the fact that most of those tunes have been electronic, or ambient, or thrashy electrometal (I don’t know if “thrashy electrometal” is actually a thing, mind you\u2014I just made it up now\u2014 but you get the idea.) What else<\/em> would they be?<\/p>\n Well, since I asked: minimalist classical.<\/p>\n Last year, as I understand it, Christian Valencia of Chapman University got together with this ensemble called Loadbang<\/a>, and together they produced this nifty little 5-minute\u2014well, Christian describes it as an “art song”, but it doesn’t have lyrics, per s\u00e9. Just a sung excerpt from Blindsight<\/em>, from the POV of the probe that first intercepts the Burns-Caulfield transmission. The tag on SoundCloud is “Contemporary Classical”.<\/p>\n Personally, I like to think of it as an unearthed fragment of a lost opera. That fits nicely with both the non-rhyming prose-vocals and the orchestration (bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone and baritone singer). Plus the whole “unearthed fragment” bit explains why it’s only five minutes long.<\/p>\n Maybe, long after society collapses, some studious monk sifting through the wreckage will find a thumb drive containing this file. Perhaps he will diligently bring it back to the monastery for preservation and decoding, and then\u2014 realizing that this message from The Before Time is but a fragment\u2014 he will spend the remainder of his stupid diligent life looking for the rest. Maybe that small cruel irony will give some degree of meaning to our fallen empire.<\/p>\n Anyway, here’s the link<\/a>. Check it out. Personally I quite liked it, once I came to terms with the concept of a singing space probe.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n F\/Art (or, The Search For Better Acronyms)<\/strong><\/p>\n You’ll have noticed the artwork. It’s been piling up for a while now, and I’ve just added a fair bit to the galleries. The bulk of the new material can be found over in the Blindopraxia<\/a> wing, and hails from just two artists, both Russian: \u0410\u043b\u0435\u043a\u0441 \u0422\u0440\u0435\u0439\u0441 and Dmitry Skolzki. Both have produced so many pieces that I ended up giving them their own subheadings. But there are also a couple of gorgeous new book covers (for Starfish<\/em><\/a> and FFR<\/em><\/a>) , a cool bit of fan art<\/a> that could be a page ripped from a Starfish <\/em>graphic novel, and a CGI rendition<\/a> of \u03b2ehemoth’s source code. All in all, 26 new pieces of annotated art for your delectation, only a sampling of which is shown here.<\/p>\n Go have a look. After all, you can’t spend all your time on this one measly blog page. It just makes me feel stupid for spending all that time working on the others.<\/td>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Szpindel_Dmitry-Skolzki-300x300.jpg\")
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