-
on February 2
R.U. Sirius
Posted project update #18Bangin' It Out/Rakin' 'Em In
Post CommentHi folks,
Been so busy with the project I haven't wanted to interrupt myself to edit a snippet... since I'm dealing at this moment in bulk. Lots of interviews; lots of me telling my story verbally for transcription.
The cool thing is that I've been able to integrate my day job at Acceler8or.com to some degree with my Mondo History work. Plus, much of a piece recently for Boing Boing will work it's way into the narrative.
Here then, in case you haven't been seeing this stuff...
Remote Control: The Interactivity Myth (Managing Editor Andrew Hultkrans on YouTube representing) http://www.acceler8or.com/2012/01/remote-control-the-interactivity-myth/
Pariahs Made Me Do It: The Leary-Wilson-Warhol-Dali Influence http://www.acceler8or.com/2012/01/pariahs-made-me-do-it-the-leary-wilson-warhol-dali-influence-mondo-2000-history-project-entry-3/
Robert Anton Wilson Talks To Reality Hackers Forum (1988) http://www.acceler8or.com/2012/01/robert-anton-wilson-recordings/
"Hello, Fellow Tripper" http://boingboing.net/2012/01/13/raw-week-hello-fellow-trip.html
In other news, does anybody from the SF Bay Area want to "volunteer" to help digitize print, audio and a little bit of video. Since I'll be using some of the material for Acceler8or, I can offer a (very) nominal fee.
I'll be back sooner!
thanx
R.U.
-
on December 17
R.U. Sirius
Posted project update #17Ho Ho Ho! That's 3 Hos... & A Mutator
For backers only
Post Comment
If you’re a backer of this project, please
log in
to read this post.
-
on December 5
R.U. Sirius
Posted project update #16Awesome Interview with High Frontiers Designer Marc Franklin
Post CommentHey all. I'll be back in about a week for an update on all the great work that's been getting done over the last month or so... but in the meantime, I wanted to let you know about this interview with Marc Franklin aka Lord Nose, who designed the spectacular Big Pink edition of High Frontiers. Part of it is material done for this here project and part of the interview is about his photo exhibit in L.A.
Marc Franklin: I remember driving down to Manhattan Beach to meet Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw. There was a heavy, low fog. Looking up, one could see the arcs running between the insulator and the wires as we passed Los Angeles Power and Light’s generation plant. Just like in Blade Runner. It looked like we were entering Hell. Arriving in their neighborhood, in the street, there was Sandy screaming into a two-way radio… announcing our arrival. Apparently she’s deaf.
RU: Wasn’t she dressed in…
MF: Black leather.
RU: I remember they were in army fatigues… camouflage. Sandy screams into a walkie-talkie: “They’re here!”
Psychedelic Transpersonal Photography, High Frontiers & MONDO 2000: an Interview with Marc Franklin
-
-
on November 3
R.U. Sirius
Posted project update #15Ooh La La: Big Shapely Content Dump
For backers only
Post Comment
If you’re a backer of this project, please
log in
to read this post.
-
on October 29
R.U. Sirius
commented on a project"At the end of the process, estimated to take approximately two years..." We're about 16 months in so I'm not sure what's ridiculous. I have been a bit lax on the reports -- it's been a rough year or so -- and I apologize for that, but yes... there's lots of progress. I was planning the next report for next week and I guess now I will have some thoughts for anyone who is getting impatient or is otherwise unsatisfied
-
on September 14
R.U. Sirius
commented on a project updateThanks Brian. Were you one of the people who was going to be a fictitious voice in the project? thanks for your comments and interest. Not sure why people can get at this if they're not supporters, but I'm not going to worry about it too much. R.U.
-
on September 5
R.U. Sirius
Posted project update #14Year 2. Now It Gets Sirius
For backers only
If you’re a backer of this project, please
log in
to read this post.
Post Comment -
on September 2
R.U. Sirius
commented on a project updateactually preparing some rich media for you all as we speak... along with a report. going to post tuesday after labor day weekend... R>
-
on August 10
R.U. Sirius
backed a project
Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary by Joanna Harcourt-Smith
Publish my story of the systematic suppression of the 60s Revolution & my Mata Hari days with Timothy Leary, the Harvard legend of LSD.
Funding Unsuccessful (09/17/2011) -
on June 3, 2011
R.U. Sirius
backed a project
Plazm Magazine's 20th Anniversary: print with us! by New Oregon Arts & Letters / PLAZM
Print's not dead! Innovative magazine of art, design, & culture, with David Lynch, Bruce Sterling, Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney, more
-
107% funded $8,030 pledged
- 102 backers
- Funded Jun 13, 2011
-
R.U. Sirius
R.U. Sirius joined Kickstarter on March 09, 2010
Step 2) A certain fictitious persona has expressed a desire to hear from Brian Willoughby, so here you go:
During the period of time that Mondo 2000 ruled the newsstands, it's probably most accurate to say that Brian Willoughby was a pure consumer, at least in historical terms of everything that led up to the magazine. I had a friend who ran a newsstand and happened to be very familiar with the lineage starting with High Frontiers and continuing with Reality Hackers. Personally, I wasn't lucky enough to pick up my first issue until Mondo #3, but I was certainly hooked from then on. My friend had already gotten me hooked on back country skiing in the Cascades as well as paragliding around the world. I'm sure he was well into the designer drugs featured in all three incarnations, but there was no lure there for me other than as a reality check against Gibson's transdermal accelerant patches in Neuromancer. The magazine clearly appealed to a wider group than its ancestors.
Despite my then and continuing belief that practically zero books or magazines are worth the lives of the trees they're printed on, I found Mondo 2000 to be a publishing revolution. Some people were surely bothered by the unpredictable publication schedule, but I immediately saw the value in waiting for a work of art to be completed in its own time frame without a business school focus on deadlines. The presumably joking tag line "Guaranteed Read Proof!" was actually a promise that was delivered upon, and was actually more important to me than getting a thinner issue, sooner.
What really struck me about Mondo 2000 was not so much that it broke from the norm, but that it did so in many ways which were significant improvements upon the norm. Most magazines cram all of the color photos into the first half, where each article starts but is given only a few pages to run before being interrupted and sent to the boring black and white trailing section along with the low-class ads. Reading an entire issue of most magazines is an exercise in frustration, flipping from front to back to middle to back to ... oops, I lost my place again. If the world took anything at all from Mondo 2000, it should be their sensible arrangement of articles such that they are completely contiguous.
The second interesting feature of Mondo 2000 was that articles on a similar topic were organized together. This made several technically separate articles read as if there were part of an overarching piece.
The third interesting feature of Mondo 2000 was the sheer number of topics: music, computers, designer drugs, "designer" fashion, and various breaking scenes technological that were possible related and possibly not. The pattern-breaking features mentioned above combined to make such jammed content a pleasure to read - more so in fact than a typical magazine that attempted to cover fewer topics. I joked at the time that the Mondo staff tried to make each issue "read proof" but they thwarted their own attempts by making a magazine that was so much more accessible.
In many respects, Mondo 2000 read like several independently worthwhile magazines bundled together. Organizing similar articles together made this work even better.
I suppose I may have undersold myself a bit by alluding to a pure consumer. In actuality, I wrote motion computer video software before MPEG2 and VCD or DVD were invented, I wrote stereo vision 3D goggle software when Doom was actually still a "new" computer video game; I briefly crossed paths with Negativland because Mark Hosler lived in the area (which nicely tied into the Mondo articles) and won't speak of the laws we considered breaking; and I worked with a fair amount of digital music technology in the local industrial-goth scene. That said, I've gone on to experience far more interesting pieces of life since Mondo 2000 published their last issue, and I just don't seem to remember anything terribly exciting that I did while the magazine was being published.
I will say one thing: Burning Man is described as an experience that promises to "change your life," and while I have attended a number of times and thoroughly enjoyed the experiences, I must say that it was too late - Mondo 2000 had already changed my life before Burning Man had the chance. In retrospect, it's interesting to consider that Burning Man was evolving without my knowledge while I was injesting Mondo 2000, only for me to discover it long afterwards. Since Mondo 2000 closed their doors, I've gone on to become involved in many technomadic community experiments that probably would make interesting Mondo-esque stories, but chronologically they have nothing in common so I will refrain from sharing them. Let's just say that I've continued to carry the Mondo 2000 torch, at least for my share of the relay.
Rewinding the clock, though, I want to say a few words about the massive disappointment that was Wired. So many people were incredibly excited when Wired hit the stands, and yet I could find nothing but an empty shell. Where Mondo 2000 broke from the norm with ingenuity and true improvements to the medium, Wired broke from the norm purely for the sake of being different. The Wired staff didn't seem to have a single interesting idea from my perspective - they just caught the world at a magical time when most people could be easily impressed. Wired maintained the status quo of typical magazines by butchering articles and tossing the cuttings into the butt of the pages. Their "Electronic Word" section with its middle fifth of the page height filled with text that stretched over several pages was one of the worst examples of unreadable layout I've ever seen. Where Mondo 2000 promised "Guaranteed Read Proof!" and pulled it off by jamming in too much quality, well-organized content into each issue, Wired managed to pull of the same ruse utilizing inscrutable layouts. I also caught Wired taking articles that had been on the 'net for years and publishing them as "new" articles (at least they gave credit to the authors). Perhaps that's common practice in the typical magazine industry, but I gave them no credit in the midst of all the hyper hype.
Rather than close on that negative observation, I'll just add that I usually wrote a short letter to Mondo 2000 every year accompaning a check for my renewed subscription. I tried to express my support for the whole publishing-without-a-schedule zeitgeist, and basically tried to convey that the staff had earned my subscription whether they met deadlines or not. I've only subscribed to one other magazine since then.
Thanks Brian. Were you one of the people who was going to be a fictitious voice in the project?
thanks for your comments and interest. Not sure why people can get at this if they're not supporters, but I'm not going to worry about it too much.
R.U.
No, thanks, on the "fictitious" voice aspect.
It seems there was some confusion since many benefits were lumped together at each pledge level. My missive above is purely non-fictional, and merely for the purpose of documenting a consumer point of view of Mondo 2000 at the time it was published. I signed up here under a non-fictional name, since that seemed to be the Kickstarter way, and thus the fictitious character aspect sort of becomes thwarted. All the same, I didn't want to ignore a direct invitation to be heard!