POST-MAC BLUES: Urban Decay

Friday, December 10, 2010

Urban Decay

Yahoo News has just published an editorial about urban decay featuring a marvelous gallery of photographic evidence. So, if you're a "ruins junky" like Mac Tonnies was a ruins junky and can appreciate the beauty of dissolution and desolation, prepare yourself for some exquisite eye-candy.

The example above is a photograph of the Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania snapped by photographer, Eric Holubow .

2 comments:

BG DodsonDecember 11, 2010 at 8:13 AM
The link contains incredible HDR photographs -- all depicting an essence of the surreal, while contained completely within this dimension -- an incredible feat of seeing and technique.

Thank you for the link.
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Dia Sobin (Araqinta)December 11, 2010 at 10:01 AM
You're welcome, Bob!

Mankind puts it up, Nature takes it down - there's something perversely satisfying about the resulting architecture.

"Rust never sleeps"!

D
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LINKS TO MAC'S SITES

Website:

Mac Tonnies.com

(Mac's original website archived by Mark Plattner)

Blogs:

Posthuman Blues.com

(Mac's original Posthuman Blues blog archived by Mark Plattner)

PseudoSaucers

Extracranial

Cydonian Imperative

twitter:

http://twitter.com/mactonnies

twitpics:

http://twitpic.com/photos/mactonnies

Blip.fm:

Macbot

Flickr:

Mac Tonnies' Photostream

Tumblr:

Mac Tonnies' Tumblr

YouTube:

Mac Tonnies'-related videos*

(Note: his former playlist was removed)

* Be forewarned. Many of the videos presently appearing on YouTube's "Mac Tonnies" pages are authentically related, but, many are not; and would never have been authorized or endorsed by Mac Tonnies.

LINKS TO MAC'S INTERVIEWS & APPEARANCES (Mixed Media)

TELEVISION

From Redstar Films:

Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Cases (2006)

(Mac's "rough-cut" clip)

Supernatural Investigator episode:

Life on Other Planets" (2008)

(also found here)

VIDEOS

Blogging the Singularity - 9/6/07

(YouTube)

(On PMB)

Redstar Films w/ Paul Kimball - 5/06

Mac Tonnies... the Crytpoterrestrials

VIDEO SHORTS BY MAC

Hotel-bound

(from 2008)

... on Posthuman Blues

... on PMB

In a Coffee-shop

(from 2009 w/ David Peeples)

... on Posthuman Blues

... 0n PMB

PODCASTS & RADIO SHOWS

Beyond Strange and Mysterious - 9/2004

(Obscure radio show (WSNR-620) Mac mentions here.

The only real info found.)

Culture of Contact - 01/16/2008

Miggety Mack Tonnies Shows Us The Study, Y'all

(download only)

Coast to Coast w/ George Noory - 9/28/09

Alien Hypothesis

(for subscribers only - for others, try Mac's YouTube videolink, or Mike Clelland's podbean )

Radio Misterioso 7/27/09

The Cryptoterrestrials

Radio Misterioso 6/5/06 - Parts 1 & 2

Can Ufology be saved?

(w/ Paul Kimball)

Eerie Radio 9/10/07

The Cryptoterrestrial theory vs. the ETH

(Note: Long Introduction)

Eerie Radio 1/20/09

Mac Tonnies and Artificial Intelligence

The X-Zone w/ Rob McConnell - 1/11/2007

Mac on extraterrestrial artifacts

(link takes you to the X-Zone archive; podcast not yet available)

Binnall of America - 3/17/07

Mac Tonnies (Part 1)

Mac Tonnies (Part 2)

The Book of Thoth - 2006

Interview with Mac Tonnies

Virtually Strange - 10/7/06

# 413, New Frontiers Symposium

(Mac's in the second hour; also Greg Bishop)

Speaking of Strange - 6/3/06

Mac on Mars

(link no longer available)

The Paracast Interviews

w/ Gene Steinberg and David Biedny:

The Paracast - 11/25/06

Mac on Mars

(Mac is the 2nd guest)

The Paracast 12/31/06

Kevin Randle & Mac Tonnies, UFOs

The Paracast - 5/6/2007

More Crypto-chat with Gene and Dave

The Paracast - 12/3/2007

Mac's Cryptoterrestrial Proposal

The Paracast - 12/16/07

Regarding the reformation of Ufology, w/ Jeff Ritzman

The Paracast - 10/26/08

On Mars, Aliens, UFO's... and Sarah Palin

The Paracast - 2/1/2009

Mac on Terraforming Mars w/ Robert Zubrin

MEMORIAL PODCASTS

The Paracast - 11/1/2009

A Mac memorial by the remaining members of "The Cabal"

The Paracast - 04/10/2010

Kimball, Redfern & Bishop: the release of "The Cryptoterrestrials..."

The Paracast - 5/25/2010

Exploring the mystery of Earth-based UFOs

w/ Mike Clelland & others

The Gralien Report - 10/18/2011

Micah Hanks remembers Mac

Radio Misteriosa - 10/23/2011

Mac Tonnies - 2 years gone

Group effort hosted by Greg Bishop

(link currently takes you to the announcement only)

The Other Side/Jim Harold - 2/7/2013

Paul Kimball remembers Mac and talks about publishing PHB

TEXT

Universe Today

If ET Calls, Would We be Told?

Room 101 w/ Richard Thomas 12/26/08

An Interview with a Transhumanist

FutureBlogger - 2/29/08

Fearless Futurist Mac Tonnies Goes Off on Mars

FutureBlogger - 1/10/08

Interview with Mac Tonnies

Upsidedownbackwards - 5/8/08

Little Boy Blue and the Man on the Moon

Ballardian - 7/3/07

Mac Tonnies' Strange Blue World

The Book of Thoth - 2006

Interview with Mac Tonnies

Alterati with Joseph Matheny - 3/7/07

They Came From Earth...?

Never-used Email Interview- 9/15/2005

Mac Interviews Mac

"Thank you for taking the time to compile this wonderful tribute to Mac. He connected with so many people in a very direct and meaningful way regardless of whether one had the opportunity to meet him in the physical world. I enjoy visiting this site now and especially when I'm reminded of something that Mac might have tweeted about or blogged about. Your tribute here is a perfect digital gathering spot to take a moment and reflect on the vision and talent and timelessness of Mac Tonnies."

- Joshua Fouts, 12/10/09

"Mac Tonnies, he got sonnetized a bit

While dwelling on our plane. He was a great 

Good natured subject while among us.

He was among those who first told me "Kate, 

You know that there's a book here, right?" Since then,

Well, I just miss him often, in iambs

As in the rest of life. It's truly been 

A strange and wondrous way to kick the jams 

And share ideas. Thanks, Dia, for the bump. 

I'm thrilled to be included here, you know

(And yes seeing this here did put a lump

In my poor throat, but that's how these things go).

And folks, you know that you can do this, too. 

Pick up a pen and scribble one or two!"

Kate Sherrod, via a comment on this post

Kate's Audio Boom message for Mac...

"Flocks of teenagers materializing like thought-forms borne on the cool night air. An edge of autumn -- brisk but not cold. The Cancer Survivors' Park like an apocalyptic oracle, its touch-activated television screen locked against the encroaching chill, its statues frozen copper silhouettes.

A couple making out in the passenger side of a new Porsche; I glide by clutching my coffee, libido twitching sullenly somewhere in my skull. I find myself rediscovering a close-knit labyrinth of fountains and staircases and charming apartment buildings named after long-dead writers. The lights of Saturday traffic and gaudy horse-drawn carriages are mercifully eclipsed. The world is all shadowed architecture, suddenly shattered as I reenter the realm of the living, coffee cooling steadily. The usual anonymous hordes and casual lovers refracted through caffeinated synapses.

I buy a smoothie at a coffeeshop (Depeche Mode playing in the background) and gradually lose myself in John Brunner's "The Shockwave Rider." The immaculate sidewalks, sparkling as if pregnant with diamond, steer me home, past hotels, across the dark scabrous flow of Brush Creek. My apartment building has a new entry keypad, sans telephone handset. Made of reinforced stainless steel, it has the worrying appearance of something designed to survive an imminent nuclear attack.

Through the abandoned lobby with its fading pink carpet and neatly arranged couches.

Into the elevator.

I punch 9."

- Mac Tonnies, PHB post 10/5/03

As an artist, my "nom de plume" seems to change as time goes by, and I suspect it always will.. I previously signed my earlier graphic images as "Dia" with the year the image was completed, that is, when Mac was still alive, and I was contributing images to his blog, Posthuman Blues. At the same time, I referred to my digital "workshop" as Araqinta... after a fictional planet I invented for an unfinished sci-fi novel of mine: A Matter of Increments. (The image above was an attempt at "branding"...) My online name during this period was "Zindra", also harkening back to a fictional planet I invented for yet another sci-fi story... also unfinished. (Do we see a pattern here?)

That being said, Mac Tonnies was a real inspiration to me in those days - a type of muse, if you will... and many of the images I created from 2006-2009 probably wouldn't have existed without his influence. Needless to say, many of them wound up on PHB... some of which appear in the body of this blog, and on the sidebar, linked to the PHB pages on which they can be found.

I was an artist for many years before approaching the digital medium; I don't know if I would have ever really fully taken that plunge without Mac's encouragement. And, in some strange sense - and I know I'm not alone in this - Mac continues to be the presiding spirit over much of my work. So, this blog was created for Mac and in his memory, but it also serves as a monument to our friendship - that magical series of synchronistic events that enables two individual psyches to cross the barriers of time, space, and sociological conditioning, and inevitably create a unique bond... a safe haven unaltered by any circumstance, including the illusion of death.