The Uncanny

Sorry to disappoint but I have not actually died, just spending a helluva fun time with my favourite German buddies, Siggy Freud and Hans Bellmer who are officially freaking me out. Just a peek at what I'm writing about and because I think I need to share my pain with the world:

Hans Bellmer, Le Jeux de Poupée, 1949

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh why oh why I love this class but I hate myself now

Smoke and Mirrors

2 weeks to Christmas Break!!!!

Excited about:
1. Snow - even just a powder layer would make me happy
2. All the homies in the UK/EU centralizing in London
3. Christmas dinner
4. My London to-eat list
5. Bro-time in Spain
6. Daytime drinking
7. Finally seeing Gerhard Richter at the Tate Modern

21 Incredible Years

Best day ever:

0. Fabric & good times

1. Waking up to a ceiling of balloons

2. Burgers for lunch

3. Steaks for dinner!!! (Hawksmoor's mind-blowing Chateaubriand)

4. Stupidly good times with buddies
5. Cake!!!

Mad love for my awesome friends they are the best people in the world, they keep me going and they fill my heart with so much LOVE. I must always remember how stupidly lucky I am and be grateful for the wonderful life I have known.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

- Percy B. Shelley

I love this poem so much.

Being unwell has forced new awareness of my self-determination - getting out of bed in time for class feels like a small miracle considering what an absolutely shite state my body is in. It's enough to make me ditch all (chocolates, cold drinks, cigarettes etc) so that I'll be good and ready to eat my heart out this weekend - burgers(Lucky Chip/Meat Liquor), bloody steaks and beef drippings chips. MEAT.

Uncanny Valley

Mori's original hypothesis states that as the appearance of a robot is made more human, a human observer's emotional response to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong revulsion. However, as the robot's appearance continues to become less distinguishable from that of a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.

This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely human" and "fully human" entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that an almost human-looking robot will seem overly "strange" to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathic response required for productive human-robot interaction.


Wikipedia

HIGH MAINTENANCE LIFE

Today marks a new wave of productivity that will last me until Christmas break!! Although I am such a lazy bum I managed to get a few things done this weekend:

1. Picked up photographs
2. Hung out with my almost-gay BFF + other cool people in Manchester
3. Discovered the trashiest nightclub in London
4. Broke in 2 new dresses ~
5. Doubled my wardrobe space (my room is always a work in progress)
6. Killed a small forest somewhere by printing 300 sheets of readings for the next 3 weeks
7. Read some studies on self-knowledge
8. Cooked something more complicated than truffled grilled cheese sandwiches for the first time in a looong time (baby steps back to functionality)
9. Watched the Science of Sleep which is so so so amazing Michel Gondry is beyond brilliant

This week I really need to get my body clock back on track with the real world God Help Me

 

  Mars (Jack Beats Mix) by thinkingofme

BTW Jack Beats!!! is playing Fabriclive this Friday. Sick. I can only think of one person who would be excited but too bad you're not in London.

NYC #5: Wonder Walls

Love is just a dream you wake up from eventually

“No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.”

- Sigmund Freud 

What does it mean to dream, anyway? Sometimes I wish I had a brain scanner so that I could look my dreams over without the distortion of lucid remembering. Winter hibernation drives all my mental energy into my sleeping self and I've been dreaming about the strangest situations and people and things. The most alarming fact is that when I wake up I know that the experience has changed my beliefs in a way that feels almost involuntary, which I can't decipher for myself.

I Wanna Be Your Man

The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met.
-- Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

NEVER SETTLE FOR LESS AND YOU'LL ALWAYS HAVE THE BEST

Bodily Awareness

 

  The Knux - She's So Up (Rebecca & Fiona remix) by Rebecca & Fiona

This week for the purposes of seeking gainful employment I am going to be a GOD and after that I will face all my mortal emotions and sink into hell/depression/hibernation.