The Week Ending 032610

Well, see there. The trouble with writing weeknotes at the beginning of the week following when I was supposed to write them is that I don’t easily recall what happened in the week in which the week’s notes refer. Damnit.

Let’s see: there was a small accumulation of more suggested films from the week during SXSW. Nathan Moody of stimulant.io has had a history in film production and vfx and the films he suggested came in, but were not viewed mostly because there’s quite a rucous about and a moment to watch a movie closely was ne’er to be found. I also got Kill Bill vol. 1 legitimate mostly because of some curious horseplay with intra and extra diegetic production games — music moving in and out from the score into the dialogue and back out again and such all. I’m in an accumulation phase as pertains my explorations of genre conventions in film that move props, prototypes, dialogue, sound in and out and beyond the 4th wall and so forth. This all a way to activate some of the ideas that David A. Kirby writes about in his work on the *diegetic prototype in science fiction film. (Kirby will be visiting the studio a week from today to talk about these sorts of things..and I want to be as literate as possible.)

I also got this somewhat deceptively named add-on to the wonderfully middling and important science fiction film *Surrogates, which I will have to write more about at some point. The add-on was a book that turns out to just be a more fancy edition of graphic novel called The Surrogates Operator’s Manual. I wanted something closer to the Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual..but for these surrogate cyborgs. There is some curious design fiction going on in there — some product brochures and adverts from the near future. But, no operator’s manual in the more technical sense — like a service manual or warranty card or something. That would’ve been lovely. These technical manuals for things that don’t exist are another of the genre conventions that help kick speculation and provocation into high gear. Definitely another kind of prototyping — write your service manual to define the thing itself.

Speaking of Surrogates by *completely pre-ordained coincidence Mark Meadows and the lovely Amelie *happened to amble by the Friday evening with two six packs so, well — we got going on a wonderful discussion about material in Mark’s new book as well as the epic adventures on the boat, the Baja Bash and what happens when the head goes out. It was a perfect week’s end conversation and a chance to back fill on a few months of near radio silence. Mark was kind enough to drop off a draft of his book for me to poke and prod at — we’re tacking a similar course, clearly, at least as pertains the intermingling between science fiction and science fact, he with the more proto-cyborg material in particular and I think, as usual, my interest lies in the meta topic as to how fact and fiction swap properties in more general terms.

I wonder how much of Hiroshi Ishiguro’s participation in that film (he appears at the least in the opening credits, but I’ve heard word that he was a consultant on the film) would count as a science consultant in the same vein as Jack Horner in Jurassic Park and John Underkoffler in Minority Report. Perhaps Mark’s book will reveal some insights on this point.

I think that’s it for now.