The Awe of Space
AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.
Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
The End.
That was Terry Prachet’s final message, delivered in a series of tweets.
Elon Musk’s response to the night sky is the desire to create slave colonies on Mars, where people can pay off their debts and where a bunch of people will probably die. Jeff Bezos plans to create sacrifice zones where he can launch Earth’s waste at will, and charge us for the pleasure. We can easily imagine that these are the opening scenarios for dystopian sci-fi novels that describe the end of humanity. I suppose I am grateful that all Richard Branson wants to do is Disney-fy space, so he can rent lunar hotel rooms to billionaire clients. He speaks about giving people access to space in the same way neoliberal politicians speak about giving people access to healthcare.
The aspirations of these mediocre men are not only dangerous to the rest of us, but profoundly banal. I suspect those two characteristics have a lot to do with one another as empathy requires a certain amount of imagination. As tainted with nationalism that the 20th century space race was, there was a sense that humanity had achieved something. In stark contrast, Musk, Bezos, and Branson only advance their own names and brands. What’s worse however, is the role the nation states have played in constructing the billionaire class to the detriment of their own citizens. Humanity hasn’t achieved anything here, and what these people did manage to carry out (with the help of huge government subsidies, despite this performance of rugged individualism) pales in comparison to what NASA and the Soviet Union were able to achieve 60 years ago, with a fraction of the computational power and knowledge.
As the media broadcasts these billionaire launches on all channels, while simultaneously singing their praises, I had to interrogate why I found those images so viscerally distasteful. I experienced just how I position the profane in relation to the sacred. Space—the night sky—exists as a sacred place to me. It is both external and internal to me.
I ascribe space a certain significance with regard to death. It’s as if I’ve buried loved ones there. I can’t touch these stars but can they now? And somehow I understand that everyone is always ever together, because I don’t feel the distance that their deaths would imply. They are in me, and we are all ever in space. I am not the only person to experience the night sky in this way. We’ve all looked up and felt that sense of awe.
We are capable of imagining better futures
Here are some small drawings I made by pushing graphite powder around in search of an image. I’m trying to capture something of what I admire in sci-fi in general, but of the works of Frank Herbert, Ridley Scott, Ursula Le Guin, and Ben Marcus specifically. I masked off their edges, and distressed areas of the page. I did this to give the impression that they might be photographs or daguerrotypes brought back from distant, unreachable, times and places–an activity that is perhaps indistinguishable from excavating images out of the imagination.
Saltine’s Book of Parables
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$15 + shipping
I am very proud to present to you Saltine’s Book of Parables. This hardcover art book is a collaboration between myself and Saltine–world renowned art historian, and former financial manager to the Ford administration. We also collaborated very closely with Cody Sullivan, who Saltine represents in all matters legal and managerial.
I consider this book of ours to be something of a children’s book for adults. Written in Saltine’s unique voice, these parables are witty, succinct, wise, and offer reflections on the wide breadth of human experience. Everything from navigating anal fissures in relationships, to eschewing desperation in bathhouses, and back through again to lessons about setting boundaries, bargains, and how our hair can get tangled up in it all.
CeReNeM Videos
This is a video I made about Wet Ink, where they discuss pieces they performed during the 2019 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf). It features pieces by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Bryn Harrison, Kristina Wolfe, as well as the ones composed by their own members, Eric Wubbels and Sam Pluta.
Zero Town
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$4 + shipping – physical floppy comic book
$1 – digital pdf
Zero Town is a neo-noir mystery of involuntary time travel, the supernatural, and mad science all set against the backdrop of South Florida’s biggest city right before its biggest disaster.
Written by Jason Chestnut, art by me, and we’ve just completed the first issue!
Jay and I were friends in Miami at the turn of the century.
Media for the FluCoMa project
November 2019:
The FluCoMa project put on an amazing performance at HCMF this year. The artists involved were: Olivier Pasquet, Owen Green, Lauren Sarah Hayes, Leafcutter John, and my long-time collaborator, Rodrigo Constanzo.
I made this video about them:
February 2019:
I’ve made the logo and video bumper for FluCoMa
What is FluCoMa?
The Fluid Corpus Manipulation project (FluCoMA) instigates new musical ways of exploiting ever-growing banks of sound and gestures within the digital composition process, by bringing breakthroughs of signal decomposition DSP and machine learning to the toolset of techno-fluent computer composers, creative coders and digital artists.
To create these I:
1) Used Affinity Designer – this was the first time I made something for someone else using vectors. I normally draw using traditional media (and I’ll occasionally color using Photoshop)
2) Created and filmed many different types of ink behavior, on paper and in water
3) Revisited my aviglitch library scripts from when I made Its Fleece Electrostatic, to create the glitch effects found in the video bumper
4) Used Final Cut to animate the different elements of the logo for the bumper
5) And of course just sketched a lot using pencil and paper to get initial ideas down, or to try to change the direction of the design.
Here are some key moments in the logo’s evolution (Though it wasn’t exactly as linear as this and I’ve left out some things.)
Continue reading »
Nothing Rhymes With Rats (Trade Paperback)
This 140 page, perfect bound book collects the comic strips that take our rats on a journey of self discovery–from the cage and nihilism to transcendent hope. Get it HERE.
Paradoxical Book 1
Reluctant, time-travelling, twins have to solve a paranormal murder mystery set in 1920s Miami. It was co-created with writer Jason Chestnut. We’ve included the first two issues in this 52 page comic book. Get it HERE.
Bastet’s Rats Nest
Our two rats are at it again. This time caught-up in a National Treasure type caper that takes them deeper and deeper into the occult. Co-created with Ramsey Janini, it’s a wild ride. Get the 52 page comic HERE.
