Bosch as background for scenes taken from Mayan codices and transformed into modern counterparts

filthy light thief — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:41:39 -0800

"Look at the surrealist moustache on the Mona Lisa. Just a silly joke? Consider where this joke can lead. I had been working with Malcolm Mc Neill for five years on an illustrated book entitled Ah Pook Is Here, and we used the same idea: Hieronymous Bosch as the background for scenes and characters taken from the Mayan codices and transformed into modern counterparts. That face in the Mayan Dresden Codex will be the barmaid in this scene, and we can use the Vulture God over here. Bosch, Michelangelo, Renoir, Monet, Picasso — steal anything in sight. You want a certain light on your scene? Lift it from Monet. You want a 1930s backdrop? Use Hopper." -- William S. Burroughs, Les Voleurs Malcolm Mc Neill had used Burroughs' words to create The Unspeakable Mr. Hart comic series, which ran in a British publication called Cyclops, starting in during my last semester of art school in 1970. Burroughs' contacted Mc Neill because Burroughs was impressed with how much the artwork for Mr. Hart resembled himself, though Mc Neill had never met Burroughs and didn't know much of the man. The two artists met, and began working on Ah Puch. Mc Neill was 23, Burroughs was 56, and their collaboration would extend 7 years. Burroughs produced about 60 pages of text, and Mc Neill had created more than a hundred pages of artwork. But due to the unique nature of the collaboration and the high costs of full color printing, no publisher was able or willing to print the work as intended. In 1979 Burroughs finally decided to publish the text by itself as Ah Pook Is Here And Other Texts, combined with the previously released The Book of Breeething and Electronic Revolution. William S. Burroughs read parts of the story live, which was made publicly available on a 4CD set in 1998. Burroughs also recorded some of his spoken word in studio, which was then edited and music backing provided by various artists on the Dead City Radio album in 1990. Philip Hunt, of STUDIOaka, used selections of Dead City Radio to create the short video A Pook Is Here in 1994, for which he won two awards. Malcom Mc Neill had a gallery show of The Lost Art of Ah Pook (previously), first at the Salomon Art Gallery in New York, from November 14, 2008 to January 17, 2009, then April 4 through May 2, 2009 at Track 16 in Santa Monica, CA. Mc Neill recently completed Observed While Falling, providing insight into the work behind Ah Pook Is Here and other collaborations with Burroughs.

Dark Flow

homunculus — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:28:16 -0800

Mysterious New 'Dark Flow' Discovered in Space. "As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered. Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon 'dark flow.' The stuff that's pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude." Here's the paper (subscription required): A Measurement of Large-Scale Peculiar Velocities of Clusters of Galaxies: Results and Cosmological Implications. NASA has preprints you can download: results and implications and technical details (PDFs).

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Bosch as background for scenes taken from Mayan codices and transformed into modern counterparts

Dark Flow