"God's Black Space"

"One really cool thing about having a presence on the Web: I tend to get neat things in the mail. Today I got free copies of Zakas' long-awaited new album, "Illegitimus Non Carborundum"; I supplied background "lyrics" for the song "God's Black Space," about cosmic coverups and ruins on Mars."

- Mac Tonnies, PHB post 9/26/03

(Cover Art: R.S. Connett)

***

Zakas should be a familiar name to readers of Posthuman Blues. In 2003 he and Mac collaborated on a Mars-related musical venture entitled "God's Black Space" for which Mac wrote the background narrative. Mac also reviewed the album, Illegitimus Non Carborundum, upon which it appeared and his review can be found - along with some mention of his book, "After the Martian Apocalypse" - on this page. The lyrics of "God's Black Space" can be found here. And, lest I forget, there is also "The Alien Surgeon's" special Macbot page.

Below is the video of "God's Black Space"! Enjoy!

Average Joe?

"Looks like I might have a cameo on the NBC "reality" show "Average Joe." I was reading in the coffeeshop and in walks the show's star with a quick-talking girlfriend (manager?) and a cameraman. I was the only customer at the time. The camera dude swung his machine at me and the friend asked me if I recognized the star, a blonde named Melana. I gave her a thoughtful stare and admitted ignorance.

(I didn't even know there was a show called "Average Joe." I just now Googled it to know what, exactly, I'm dealing with.)

While the group was getting ready to leave, I apologized to Melana: "Don't feel embarrassed that I don't know you. I don't watch TV."

She patted my arm and laughed it off."

- Mac Tonnies, PHB post 11/25/03

(Photo: Mac Tonnies, 2000)

***

Judging by Mac's "I don't watch TV" comment, my guess is that this footage wound up on the cutting room floor. I never even heard of "Average Joe", but judging by the bulk of this variety of TV "reality" trash, I think we can all concede that this is more than just as well!

Video Projection Mapping

What you're seeing is an example of "video projection mapping" - that is, videographic images projected upon a 3-dimensional object - in this case, an actual building - to produce some amazing multi-dimensional effects. This one was created by Apparati Effimeri. (Their Vimeo page can be found here.)

Boingboing recently featured a video projection mapping project from Prague, "600 Years" - by The Macula group. (Their Vimeo page can be found here) You are seriously missing something if you haven't watched it!

For more info and examples, try the Video Mapping Blog.

(Hat-Tip to Boingboing's Xeni Jardin.)

"Macbot Singularity"

DIGITAL SINGULARITY IN THE PARK

____________________________________

(Forth Media) - An all-digital portrait entitled

"MacBot Singularity" will have its first public

viewing this weekend, November 22 & 23, 2003 at

Santana Row in San Jose, California. The artist

is participating in an outdoor arts & entertainment

program, where, in addition to seeing a sample of

this limited edition print, Silicon Valley

residents can purchase one of The Electric Warrior's

"wearable artwork" T-Shirts.

"eWarrior's digitally manipulated portrait, "MacBot Singularity," has gone to hardcopy. This mildly freaky Warholian posthuman visage is actually tacked to someone's wall. I'm quite pleased. As eWarrior writes in his blog, there's something uniquely satisfying about midwifing a digital work into the analogue "meatspace" world. Analogue is inherently messier that digital, but singularly rewarding. (Would you rather read an "e-book" on your palmtop than crack the cover of a paperback? Neither would I.)"

- Mac Tonnies, PHB post 10/3/03

"What do John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Madonna and Mac Tonnies have in common?

We can all be found adorning the walls of a certain Starbucks (!) in California. Artist eWarrior informs me my portrait is located next to the entrance;

if that's not appropriate, I don't know what is."

- Mac Tonnies, PHB post 3/10/08

***

You may recognize Electric Warrior's portrait of Mac as that which graces the back cover of "After the Martian Apocalypse". Another one of eWarrior's Mac-graphics can be found here.

As an added footnote, when Mac was in San Francisco filming for "The Supernatural Investigator"* in 2008, he was presented with a canvas of Macbot Singularity by the artist, which now resides with Robert and Dana Tonnies. (Thanks, Dana)

*More about the Canadian paranormal program is discussed by Mac on PHB posts found here and here. I don't believe the shows were ever re-released for American consumption or even on DVD... however, Mac features a short clip here.

The Cydonian Imperative Blog

"Welcome!

I've decided to "upgrade" the Cydonian Imperative by posting new content on a Blogger template instead of "manually" creating pages for posts. The Cydonian Imperative has always been a blog, in essence if not in name, and it will continue to be one -- only a bit more user-friendly (for myself as well as for readers).

All of the "old" CI material will remain intact at www.mactonnies.com/cydonia.html. CI readers may also enjoy some of the Mars-related commentary archived at Posthuman Blues, my all-purpose daily blog. (Henceforth, Mars news items that would have appeared at Posthuman Blues will appear here.)

Thanks for your continued readership!"

- Mac Tonnies, Cydonian Imperative post 7/16/04

***

I've just added a new link to the sidebar under the Mac's "blogs" heading (and re-arranged the sidebar at the same time), one that I discovered only yesterday... Apparently, from July, 2004 to October, 2005, Mac had a blog exclusively devoted to Mars, also named Cydonian Imperative. Who knew? Do visit... it's kind of like a trip to Mars.

As the clock runs down on this blog, it seems I am being prompted to discover increasingly more Mac items that I was unaware of previously, so, in the coming days expect a few more interesting bytes found in my inexplicable, random forages across cyber-space.

As of October 31 this blog will be one year old. When I began it, I had no idea what I was doing or, really, why I was doing it or how long it would last. As we draw closer to to the anniversary of Mac's passing, however, and the one year anniversary of this blog, it occurs to me that, in a sense, this blog serves as a sort of a Mac Tonnies Time Capsule, and though I've attempted to let it go "archival" a few times, the true time to set it free is now, at the one-year mark. So, at some point in the next few weeks, Post Mac Blues will join the rest of Mac's online endeavors, more as a footnote than a homage... a guide to his endeavors, so they will never be lost.

PHB Back Pages #4

(Photo - Mac Tonnies, 2000)

"Looking down from a sufficient distance, human habitation recedes to the merest glimmer. As night devours the continents, our seeming dominion vanishes, replaced by scattered constellations, the haughty gleam of our cities suddenly as substantial as a skein of campfires. As the dark deepens, we realize with mounting unease just how tenuous our presence is; the mountains, prairies and lakes, denuded of daylight, taunt us with their enormity.

Then there are the oceans, almost entirely vacant of man-made lights. Our seas, so often taken for granted, are like vast tombs from which even the most unseemly phantasms might emerge; we ply their waters at our own peril, distantly aware that we might find ourselves in the company of others.

The Earth is ancient, its biosphere only slightly less so. For four-billion years our world has has secreted life. The advent of homo sapiens is alarmingly recent in comparison. We're like foundlings washed upon some alien shore, stifling our fears by pretending to a feeble omnipotence. Having launched spacecraft to the outer planets and inspected the crater-pocked wastes of Mars through the unblinking eyes of rovers, it's easy to entertain the idea that we're the first, evolution's sole successful stab at the phenomenon we casually term "intelligence."

Yet as we watch night erode the familiar highways and stadiums and ever-encroaching suburbs, our confidence falters. Already, technological forecasters envision a near-future populated by our artificially intelligent offspring. Perhaps as our most cherished certainties crumble in the glow of a new century -- full of danger, portent and enigma -- it's become relatively easy to contemplate the presence of the Other: not an other new to our planet, but one predating our own genetic regime. Something unspoken and ancient yet nevertheless amenable to science . . . an intelligence with an almost-human face, until recently content to abide by the shadows of our complacency."

- Mac Tonnies via this 11/22/07 PHB post.

More Dreams

"Since you've got me on the subject, there was an even neater dream (?) involving a small helmeted figure in the woods. I quizzed my mom about this several years ago. She's convinced it was a dream because she doesn't know when it could have taken place; I would have had to be left alone in the woods -- but *what* woods? I have no choice but to think this was a dream that got 'misfiled.'"

***

"It's not so much strong as lingering. I'm betting it was a dream. Still, it's neat that I was dreaming about "little people" at a young age. (And I'm pretty sure the person in my dream - who never spoke - could levitate.)

Ha! Actually, he *did* sort of look like that. If a dream, he could very well have been modeled after Marvin!

...I've had dreams of archaeological sites appearing locally - specifically, Martian formations suddenly transplanted to Earth - in one case, my backyard!

(The latest was only a few nights ago; I meant to write about it on my blog. I'll put that on my 'to do' list.)"

- Mac Tonnies, 6/26/06

For a more recent dream, Mac posted on PHB, try here.

Cartoons on a Saturday Morning

Just found another Bugs Bunny cartoon featuring Marvin the Martian on YouTube. A bit fuzzy... but what's Saturday without a vintage view of that notorious wabbit?

(BTW, don't know what that weird "poewer point" (?) balloon is in the upper right-hand corner, but I can't seem to nix it... it wasn't there initially...)

PHB Back Pages #3

"Here's a groovin' video that plots technological progress into coming decades. On the surface, it would seem to have everything I like -- intelligent machines, a thoroughly dissolved barrier between living and nonliving systems, and Mars colonization.

But as infectious as it seems, this jaunt through the next hundred years leaves me cold. Not because I find the technologies it depicts dehumanizing or unattainable, but because the timeline is naively optimistic, plotted under the unspoken assumption that our planet will continue to behave itself and accommodate our ambitions.

I can't help but fear the real future will be decidedly less user-friendly. If futurology is to succeed, we must jettison our haughty certainly in the "Singularity" and face the abyss squarely. In all likelihood, we will continue to make strides in nanotechnology and computer processing power. But at the same time it's a fair bet that we'll be at the mercy of an unrelenting greenhouse-charged climate, flooded with displaced populations (and accompanying diseases) and forced to grapple with a world in which nearly everyone has The Bomb.

The future is not a PowerPoint graph. It doesn't abide by Moore's Law. The future is a thicket of variables, many with the capacity to change us in ways we choose not to think about for fear of shattering the edifice that transhumanism has become."

- Mac Tonnies. PHB post 2/20/2007

(Photo - Mac Tonnies, 2000)

***

On a semi-related note, the latest ecological disaster hails from Hungary... with what, essentially, is now The Red Danube.

PHB Back Pages #2

"Last night I half-watched "Veronica Mars" while Web-surfing, then promptly collapsed into bed. I experienced a fleeting episode of sleep paralysis in which an "alien" seemed to lift my fingers to its mouth and lingeringly kiss them. (We swapped some sort of garbled telepathic dialogue which, at the time, I thought was marginally interesting and perhaps blog-worthy, but now I can't remember what was "said.")

The "alien" left quickly, and I tried to turn my head to watch it depart through my bedroom door. I honestly don't know if I "saw" anything or not, but my impression was that the being was pale -- possibly luminous -- and taller than the gray, drone-like beings that feature in so many accounts.

Rest assured this "encounter" was pure hynopompic cinema, not an actual visitation. I more or less knew this when it was happening, and it's abundantly clear now. So here I am playing "debunker" again, describing an event that I insist never really happened except on a semi-conscious level. Yet -- and this is critical -- I'm not about to claim that all reported alien visitations are neurochemical anomalies. For all I know, some are all-too-real.

In a bittersweet sense, I wish last night's episode had been the real thing; the idea of an (evidently) friendly alien darting into my room to give me a quick display of affection, unencumbered by forbidding probes and weird lights, isn't entirely unpleasant."

- Mac Tonnies, PHB post 5/3/2006

(Photo - Mac Tonnies, 2009)

***

Note: I recently found another Paracast (from 2007) featuring Mac and have added it to the sidebar. This one regards the reformation of Ufology (i.e., to ultimately incorporate all aspects of the "paranormal"). Daniel Brenton and Jeff Ritzmann are also featured. To listen to it now, click here.

Note 2: After perusing the Paracast archival page, I have found a few other Paracasts with Mac (and/or relevant to him) and have restructured the "Mac's Interviews" area on the sidebar.

(I wasn't even able to listen to mp3's till 2009, - my ancient Imac was a true dinosaur - so, these may not be new to you but some are to me!)

Margaret Atwood

"In "The Handmaid's Tale," Margaret Atwood conceives an oppressive near-future every bit as frightening as Orwell's "1984." An unflinching tale of gender politics, Atwood's first-person novel tells the story of Offred, a "handmaid" whose role is to reproduce in an effort to counter widespread sterility. "The Handmaid's Tale" is not so much a work of speculative feminism as a document of humanity at its sordid, desperate worst. Already a classic, Atwood's cautionary and deeply moving novel proceeds with a malignant believability."

- Mac Tonnies, mactonnies.com, Book Reviews

Big Think is currently featuring an in-depth interview with Margaret Atwood, a fascinating woman. This equally as fascinating interview can found here.

(The photograph above is of a scene from the English National Opera's production of "The Handmaid's Tale". Credit:Tristram Kenton)

PHB Back Pages

"Yesterday I walked across my neighborhood and watched snow eddies skitter and fade across the pavement. Seeing an eddy up close produces a curious form of kinship, as if in the presence of something animate. It's somehow sacred and thrilling to have an eddy spin its fragile life away in your midst; the wind suddenly becomes an entity, distinct and defined, its machinations made visible like an organ saturated with dye and viewed on a medical scanner.

I wonder how it would feel to be on Mars and see a dust devil whirling my way, a blossom of sparks surfing an ocean of red."

- Mac Tonnies, PHB post 12/7/2005

Photo: Mac Tonnies, 2009