harem pants

Remembering past discussions with Rachel "Dolphindark" Bree about future fashion, cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk ("ww3 will be fought with sticks and stones" mad max / salute of the juggers aesthetic. At one time she connived her way into being the official 'project: tRust franchise visual artist / fashion designer' which gave her access to the company computer. Six months later she had invested heavily into roleplaying her character Velcro on SecondLife VR and not so much into the fashion design, although when we took her upon it she inarguably made a lot of sense (she usually does) and showed us some concepts which we would love to develop as a clothing range, if ever given the budget to go into commercial production. Her sketchbook is worth its weight in imagination although she paid it split lip service with her evil blog. Meanwhile here is the inspiration splashpage for project: tRust on pinterest.  

Today I finally had enough of uncomfortable chav tracksuit bottoms which I lounge around the house in and looked up some harem/yoga pants for men on the internet. They cost a fucking fortune for what they are. So: back to basics with an old sheet from a charity shop and determination, discovering that with 4 knots and the right folds you can make your own pirate style harem pants for two pounds fifty (two euro's / two dollars) approx. They are a perfect fit, feel great, sucks that they are cotton and polyester mix rather than 100% cotton though. No cutting and sewing necessary at all.

The whole point of fashion in tRust is that it expands on the use of cytex as a fabric for clothes. The stuff is plastic-pvc-rubber-tyre type material in a variety of densities and flexi-abilities. It is dissolvable which is why most tRust fashion is basically a skin-suit applied by spraying it onto your body, and removed by stepping through a decontamist (decontamination mist) portal, which is not too different from an x-ray machine at an air-port and doubles as a chemical-shower for killing off any unwanted bacteria you might happen to have picked up on your travels. Assuming fresh sprayon clothing is applied the same way in the next chamber.

Basically the purpose of having such a way of living is that it makes life much easier for everyone, the time and energy invested into the ergometric nightmare of putting on and taking off layers of clothes is liberated. So it stands to reason that for our culture where cytex is as yet univented and/or ridiculously expensive, far too much to make clothes from yet, we have to do the next best thing. Custom made harem/yoga pants tied at the hip and ankle from an old bedsheet is perfect. Except for the cheap synthetic mix and the colour not actually being black. Hey it's non-black it means disposable in case I had to chop into it with shears. 

Ten minutes of figuring out how to fold it and a whole minute of tying knots. Next time will be quicker. Contemplating cutting off the corners where there is a lot of waste fabric, and sewing a strip of thread down the outside of each leg - or an insert from another fabric. Or doing that without cutting off the excess for a flash of colur beneath raggedy looking flappy bits. These are highly comfortable. 

It is not everybodies aesthetic. As I was working a couple of neighbours happened to walk past and look in through the window through the holes one of the neighbours cats scragged in the netting when it got stuck in here and freaked out last week.*  They said "oh my god"  and "seen it all now" simply because I was wrapping a sheet around my waist with safety pins in my mouth. To these people my creative activities in pursuit of comfort is like an alien planet. They assume me to be gay and therefore to be laughed about and avoided. I repeat, I feel comfortable as fuck and this costume cost me less than half a litre of grog they are damaging their internal organs with in the local pub tonight.

Would I wear these outside the house? Not around here. The version 3 of these designs though, cut to specific shape and sewed properly on a machine, looking professional, black of course, dylon dyed from the remnants of thin canvas combat trousers I have in a bag ready to do something with, with pockets and buckles in all the right places, are going to be selling for a small fortune on etsy before fall. tRust official clothing line logo doubles the price you see, its all in that hand-made, designer logo and the fact I know what I'm doing - even without Dolphindarks help. She's still living it up off-grid somewhere in Europe. Neighbours can laugh as much as they like, it's not stopping me from cashing in on style which they can't afford. 

*Cat scragged netting soon to be converted into frilly knickers for bobafets illegitimate daughter.

Meanwhile here's some copyright promo art from the new 2017 re-release of Games Workshop Necromunda used without consent non-profit for educational purposes within international fair use policy. And something else anonymously cool I found on google.

Incidentally found this during a google search: cytex on soundscape (nothing to do with Ordo Octopia) This is music how we like music. 

Stream and Symbol Waking Dream

Preface

The 3D art for tRust universe is built using grayscale because it is easy on the eye. One major influence into it is urban architecture, and the very greatest feature of urban architecture which summarizes twentieth century industry and urban decadence and inevitable decay is graffiti stained concrete. As we emerge out of the mechanical twentieth century world war technology and into twenty first century digital technology we are on the verge of touch sensitive holographic projections, although we have inherited a concrete infrastructure, now decaying and soaked with generations of carbon monoxide grime. Although tRust utilizes a theoretical technology of digital polymer, which looks and feels more like tyre material, with ability to project holograms from its pixelated sprayon surface; the origin of its concept in concrete is deeply etched and embedded into the core of its development process. As an artist I am working on multiple levels of creativity at once. The landscape, scarred and patched with generations of use, refers all at once to multiple levels of awareness. It is a dreamscape and the observer alone defines or is defined by it. The landscape of tRust is intentionally malleable; from sprayon and dissolvent conduits and chambers to computer-operated shape-shifting surfaces. The concrete reformations, reinterpretations and ressurrections of mayan glyphs, aegyptian stellae, cambodian buddhist temples, continues and permeates into the future in form of nano-particulate materials we can envisage but are only as yet on the brink of inventing. What I am influenced by and what is practical for me and others like me to develop as an artist is one plane; the imaginal environments and cultures dwelling within them for science fiction is another. These places combine and fuse in Dreamspace. The project is becoming real because I am going there in dream and meeting others who are co-creating it. Events sourced from dream are simultaneously making sense of the project and educating me with insight into the true nature of the reality construct, itself following laws of physics for which concrete and light become symbolism. Tattoos upon skin; concepts upon neural networks; graffiti upon walls; lazers upon cytex. 

Notes from the hour pre-dreaming

I studied carlos casteneda, yaqui way of knowledge. Humans only purpose is to observe. When we place a label onto a thing we see only that label. Therefore to observe we must do so without preconception. When the observer changes the observed, it is by projection of preconceptions onto it. To observe without projecting is a trained skill. It functions by detachment from mind. This discipline is constant. Only when we can detach from mind do we recognise mind for what it is. Mind is not self. It is a filter system that uses a trick to distract us from observing purely. It convinces us to use its filters, its method for this is to change the focal point of awareness every time we escape its grip. Distraction of Attention. That is the greatest enemy to attaining real practical knowledge about our experience of living. Everything else is confusion, what the buddhists call sansara. The conditioned mind, the confused mind. They teach to meditate as a method of escaping it, to focus only on breathing. The result is the same: if the mind is not the self, what is it? What could be achieved if the inner monologue is silenced, if the distractor is no longer an issue? Our notion of cause and effect dissolves and takes on a new meaning. Zen no-mind. And development; if the thoughts do not originate from self, then from where or from whom do they originate? The essenes teach that at this stage of awareness one no longer needs discern between embodied and disembodied consciousnesses, that there is a far greater difference between those in sansara and those who see purely, in satori, than there is between the physically living and dead. The language shifts its meaning to describe the observed more accurately, more relevantly. In buddhism the word prana means both instinct (intuition) and life flow. The pure observer simply is. Freedom from delusional associations. Language is delusional. There is one truth, it is knowable; sharing this we need not to talk, only to feel. It is an enhanced reality. Reason tells us this state is desirable and worth pursuing through the hard work of ego death and all the pain involved in losing everything we hold onto by projecting it. Reason also tells us the need to compromise it so as to survive in mainstream society. Integrity, an honor code based on ability to integrate. We cannot know it until we have lived without honor. The paradox of the world, the fundamentalism of righteousness, and the pure unspoken truth.

Distracted, I lost my focus, laughs

Notes from the hour post-dreaming

Part of the dream, the landscape, simply is my brain re-arranging the themes I have been working with a lot lately, which are syncronistic based around current lines of research and drawing those symbols towards my life.

But some of the dream content is from Otherwhere. The revelations about howbit connects together is one layer. The actual story, scant though the relationship between incidents is, also several layers. To use one level of awareness to program the other is a part if the job. I was sent in to do a specific mission due to my innate nature, the result being something I would figure out only afterward. We all emit a signiture tone and these tones sharpened into focus by our attention, are waves, they change the perceptions and decisions of those untrained. This was my second trip to the same scene and the memory linger of my original entry was fresh, a concern to my handler. Dream is frail and especially in a new world. None of the souls there are fully yet aware of what the new place is all about, a few creatives and the inevitable security agents of nothing, necessary antagonists seeking to prevent our growth simply to sharpen our focus by being a grindstone. I had to witness an amazing event and remain emotionally unnaffected by it so I could send out a mental wave that nothing was happening. The observer affects the observed is a rule of dream physics. Our projected expectations become the hardwired physical environment, the weak willed zombies act upon such decisions. The swat team pulled out and the space opened up, the runners had mental freedom to explore the anomoly, a gate which would enhance this world, develop and strengthen it, our way, my way, the coalition of souls who are unaware in our waking mundane lives that we have tasks to grow the multiverse during dream. Creativity is opening a world here. I met the injured soul of this world, a blue dragonfly lady with an airhorse daemon. Her type exist! Co-creators from elsewhere in dreaming, with power and ability but with frailty, the fae folk. She lets her heart play in unformed new domains, this concrete maze city waiting to awaken. There is much mystery here, sleepers in their lives, fearful of the control state and fearful of it ceasing because without it, like the madmax style explorers at the portal, we are on our own in a realm where myth is breaking through, the responsibility that self hate and doubt affect and twist the manifesting world so potently. Only pure souls can access here at this time and we want to protect it, nurture its development, so as not to turn it into yet another hell world. There is so much hope here. A place where hope is hardened and matures into confident ability. We are new here and only learning of its nature, its personality. Our belief about it takes hold and strengthens it, affects the lives of its denizens as yet unborn. The militia has left the portal. Unwatched it may open freely to its true potential, not to corrupted comprimise to serve their purpose of limitation. I was not the one to open the portal this time, merely protect those who needed to establish contact through it. My presence alone did this. If they succeed, if the portal opens and is safe, it brings life to this place. The feeling of trapped, scrutinised, chased, persecuted, is lessened here so the creatives can develop and grow. From gray concrete to blue dragonfly, art nouveau machines. Breathing fully of fresh clean air. Get the machines up and running. The sounds of this world are beautiful. 

Servitors, angels, Re the winged women, quetzalcoatl as ishtar, access higher consciousness, maintain simplicity to comprehend complexity is what gives rise to servitor as slaver, gridding the sleek to merovingian block construxt experiences, it takes generations of time to overcome by developing workarounds and progress, new types of servitor emerge or the old ones learn new tricks or move to places better for them. 

Voicenotes from the hour post dreaming

blue concrete 1



blue concrete 2


Notes from Google+ same timeframe 16.8.14

Boredom leads to escapism leads to obsessive focus leads to breakthrough and development. I am polymath and that is necessary to achieve the level. What I am working on is pretty big. It will take me a few more days to collate the data crunch of the last few. Expressing it, sharing it, by telling it as it is is one thing, doing something artful with that is another. Creating mythos from where a lot of the revelation is sourced, it entwines. I provaricate here due to need for re-focus. Breathing space.
A woman bought me a meal tonight. I am useless with women, is she simply a kind heart looking for friendship and I am being sleazy or was being comfortable to relax and feel horny in her presence a mutual and natural shared feeling? I probably should have been natural and hugged her. Too used to being aloof and not wanting to pressure her and scare away a fledgling friendship.
Its a beautiful distraction from the project.
The project. Celtic otherworld meets post-cyberpunk. I dreamed last night and met with others in the levels of dream who know what is going on more than do I, and I now know what is going on more than most of the people in terran consumerism. There is insufficient cultural reference for me to use to explain it without recoursing to old traditions which nobody has publically discussed for several centuries. This is illuminatii knowledge from secret societies. For me it is a major breakthrough with my research and I am grateful to my handler for her role in my development. Explaining it lucidly to people who are culturally and conceptually unprepared for shamanic revelation seems both necessary and disconcerting. It has to be done right, information has to be released through the right channels, people need preparing to accept insights such as this. Its nothing new because we all know the truth of it. Yet its exciting to access that insight into reality. Dare I release my voicenotes and writing on the subject for public consumption? Back to preparing blogs that are windows as much as teaching tools into the streams which, where they cross at just such a point, offer a gate. In simplest terms, follow instinct over mind if you want to evolve.

< Stream and Symbol Red Wave                           Stream and Symbol Blue Wave >

Jade Cat ヒスイ 子猫

Disclaimer:

This blog contains photoshop montages using bits of illustrations made by other people as well as my own scans from nature. Wherever possible the original artist has been accredited. In no way do I intend copyright infringement. There is a tradition within Japanese print  whereby multiple artists may work on a piece and add to it their mark, sometimes a generation after the original artist had set it aside. All art is progressive.

As a forest is worth more than the sum of all its trees, so the whole contains greater than its component parts. Refer to issue of Monsanto Corporation statement on public record; “in future if you want to eat you will have to buy our products”; patenting genes as major contemporary ethical debate. Monsanto products are banned throughout Europe because they contaminate organic food crops with their patented genetically modified genome that kills rats in independent lab tests and probably does the same to you if you eat it too.

There are several elements to this blog. They interrelate.

The first element is a batch of photos selected from an afternoons walk on one of the few sunny days we get in Wales.

A Taoist medicine journey, following the Way; instinct, which took me to and through a patch of common land overgrown by a mixture of indigenous and invasive plant species.

 

虎杖, イタドリ                itadori

The second element is a particular invasive plant species, its pro’s and cons. The plant is Fallopia Japonica, Japanese Knotweed. 

"The kanji expression is from the Chinese Hǔzhàng 虎杖  meaning "tiger staff", but as to the Japanese appellation, one straightforward interpretation is that it comes from "remove pain" (alluding to its painkilling use)."

First introduced into the UK in the early 19th century for the Royal Botanical Gardens exhibition, it has since spread all over the country.

"It is listed by the World Conservation Union as one of the world's 100 worst invasive species. The invasive root system and strong growth can damage concrete foundations, buildings, flood defences, roads, paving, retaining walls and architectural sites. It can also reduce the capacity of channels in flood defences to carry water."

"In the UK, it is an offence under section 14(2) of the  Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to "plant or otherwise cause to grow in the wild" any plant listed in Schedule nine, Part II to the Act, which includes Japanese knotweed. By 2010 over £150m was spent annually on Japanese knotweed control, and a decision was taken on 9 March 2010 in the UK to release into the wild a Japanese psyllid insect, Aphalara itadori."

block quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_knotweed

Several years ago I began my own study with japanese knotweed.

The plant has a strong spirit, a powerful presence that is easy to attune to.

Sitting amidst a patch of it meditating is one of the most chilled out experiences available in UK. There is a quality in the green, vitality.

Reading it shamanically, symbolically; arrow-heart shaped leafs suggest it to be tonic for the blood system. I removed non-propogating elements from the plant (leaf and stem) and boiled them like rhubarb before ingesting. It tastes mildly bitter and had no apparent effect on me.

My internet research revealed that 'tiger staff' soaks up radiation. I assume this to mean both electronic radiation and nuclear contamination. I don't know if eating it makes you immune or increases the amount of radiation in your system. A year after Fukishima, the worlds worst nuclear accident so far, this is all beginning to connect up and make sense; nature is holistic and there is a reason this plant is here. For several decades Wales has the worlds highest number of cancer incidents, presumably due to fallout from American nuclear testing crossing the Atlantic on the top-winds.

The third element of this blog is information from Nexus magazine Vol20 no4 June-July 2013, which arrived the very same day, and relates.   

I had been working hard for several days without a break.I needed to get out of the house and detach my brain from computer and associated electromagnetic smog.

Feeling fried from too much disruption by unwanted attention of neighbours and radiation from machines, I desperately needed to recharge.

A lesson to be applied as the fourth element of this blog, the project at hand, namely art and music for forthcoming storyteller game entitled tRust for Ordo Octopia Ltd, see their website for more information at www.globalcreole.co.uk


I assembled the following experimental montage illustrations as focus-prep for what the jungle ravines amidst fragmented urban layers of tEra, the world of tRust, might look like. On tEra there is a phrase intended to work on several levels of meaning;

“life in the cracks”

The landscape of tEra is a giant orgonite honeycomb hive where miles high of expanding-foam sprayon orgonite; resin walls containing crystalline particles that operate as a computer matrix, a web of light-refractive touch-op holocom, operates as solar panel and global communications database; has fractured due to the unexpected event of the world swelling up in a series of earthquakes lasting several weeks.

Organic plant life exists in the jungle canyons formed by the fragmentation of the hive. Long slender green columns amidst a cyber darkness of the urban wilderness reminds me of a sword called Jade Dragon in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It requires a master to wield this blade. In today's modern world it hangs in a museum.

manga from: A Dream In Garden by Xia Da   www.summerzoo.com

print from: charity shop, lucky find, signature illegible.
lettering from: googletranslate ("dream now garden butterfly change").

upper manga comic strip (extract) from: Cat's Paw by Damian Slater

http://www.thekatsudon.deviantart.com

manga sword from: CrouchingTiger HiddenDragon 4 by Wang Du Lu and Andy Seto

http://www.d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/1029847.jpg

lower manga comic strip (extract) from: Last Shadows Cast by Casper Wijngaard

http://www.animeimports.co.uk/casper-wijngaard-10-c.asp

sword colour adapted screenshot from: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon movie

http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon.html

art for tRust: chalk graffiti glyphs on weathered cytex walls

introducing Selene

While contemplating an appropriate name for this blog I made an interesting discovery thanks to google translate;  

ヒスイ

Japanese spelling for Jade looks like  English spelling for CAT !

tRust rpg (forthcoming)

promo banner by Postworldgames Jim Pinto

                the title says it all...





The Gamekeeper & Transcendental Dolphindark of

Ordo Octopia Ltd

asked me to do some concept art for a;

cyber-noir, kung-fu, horror storyteller game

set in a dystopic future world where...

a lot has happened.

"facing difficulty 

being succinct"

We all became over-experienced.

So now what we got to say;

has value.

To summarize;

wOrds aRe nOw sPelled wIth a cApitalised sUffix, nOt tHe iNitial lEtter. tHis iS sO yOu kNow wHere tHey aRe cOming fRom.

But there's more;

we have to swap every letter 'c' and 's' and 'sh' with an 'X' to do it properly.

Then it turns into Chinese.

Yeah. Sure. 

Now my kids going to be speaking gobbldigook. 

I overcame cynicism, put it to the test and it does seem to actually work now I have given it a go. But are the players likely to be doing this or is it all for atmospheric and dramatic effect? It's a narrative device to easily get an idea across; to suggest the game is set in a future time after things have moved on. The language has mutated; that's how far into the future it is. 

Welcome to Easternization process.

At once I recognized an emo culture game. There has been a  lot ofcomparison between emo and goth, since goth most certainly is a strong root of this late 20th / 21st century transitional youth culture, and there is an overlap.
Emo is stripes and purple added to goth black bat style to make it chavvy with bling. Emo is emotional blackmail. Emo is punk attitude and TIM BURTON CARTOONS YAY! Emo was generated as a consumer culture by the Black Coconut™ chainstore to sell stuff to bisexual and confused kids who hadn't heard of suicide girls. All this to give them a better outlet than ritual scarification and sacrifice to the blood god, cutting their arms for attention energy because its a sexual release and they aren't getting laid. This was britains mainstream alternate teen culture during the late 1990s and 2000s.

So; I am doing what I can to keep tRust proper and avoid unnecessary cheesiness.
After all, it has an 18 rate due to adult themes. tRust oozes BDSM.

tRust is a scarred world. It is planet Earth in the future, after it has been renamed tEra, from the old latin word for it; Terra. A global monocultural society has adapted to survive by become a feudal shoganate. It is modeled loosely on medieval Japan. What it is surviving from, is a space-virus; a biowarfare agent that caused a pandemic genetic mutation plague that turns people into;

half squid, half scorpion

no two are the same

This was not helped by loss of corporate governmental control of the global community thanks to the teleportal revolution. tRust is post-industrial, mainly due to the result of industrial technologies making things so much easier for techno-goths to take over the world.

Everything in the world of tRust is made of a material that is applied by spray canister like graffiti art. It swells up like wall cavity insulation into a foam, and then sets. It is plastic-rubber-latex and contains nano-p[articles which bond together during the drying/hardening process to turn into a computer. This stuff is dissolved by a chemical applied from another can, although the dissolvant has gotten into the water supply and is slowly corroding everything. The City is known by the Aztec word Itza, meaning 'urban' and 'ways of the people'; is several km high, covers the entire planet with home-made tunnels and caves that project holographic computer blah from the walls.

tHe cRacks aRe wHere tHe lIfe iS

Except most of it was broken when the planet unexpectedly swelled up, its diameter becoming significantly fatter. This has resulted in many deep canyons where the rubber has stretched to breaking point and snapped. Within these fracture crevasses are jungles providing a permanent layer of mist. and haven for the remaining of the planets wildlife. The jungles are inhabited by non-tech wild tribes who do voodoo magick, summon demons and ancestor spirits and probably have a better time than the surviving city folk.

Up above are the towers of the Arkatex, who know how to operate the fragmented computer well enough to discover what has happened and what is going on, and who trade with offworlders; the rest of the planet is under quarantine because of the hydra virus. Down below are mysterious ferrymen; boat people who look like Charon from Greek mythology. They operate a taxi service on the sunken sea and canal routes, the safest method of travel given that the surface world is owned by flying nightmares.

"mind is a virus"

There is a lot more to this game that has yet to be unveiled. It is originally intended to counsel abuse victims, to explore psionics and magick through quantum wave mechanics, and to analyze societies based around psychic vampirism. It is all based around an easy symbolism; the monsters who used to be your pervert friends are multi-tentacled leeches armed with scorpion claws chitin and sting.
You can see why I like it.

The designers at Ordo Octopia Ltd have released the key concepts but asked me to remain quiet about the rest of it. This blog is by way of excitement that my art and musical skills are being put to good use; an ambient soundtrack is expected to be released as part of the game.