Looking Around

From the Wellcome Collection. See their youtube page here.

The Thing with Two Heads

Computer Games

from the second season of Look Around You, still criminally unavailable on region 1 dvd.

Box of Gristle

Throbbing Gristle's next album will not be a CD or an MP3 download, but a buddha box with custom-recorded sounds. It'll contain twice as many samples as a normal buddha box and twice the frequency control range. Pre-order it HERE.

I think buddha machines are silly and clumsy-looking pieces of plastic. They're also redundant; it's more convenient to download the samples from the manufacturer's website here, put them on your ipod, and set it to "loop". Or you can buy the emulator app for $4 for the iphone/ipod touch here. If you're at a computer, the best option is to play with the wall of buddha machines HERE.

You Asked For It

See Gorgeous Joe, the Champ Chimp, make a Chump of the Human!
(skip ahead to 2:00 for the main event)



The lack of a studio audience makes this pretty anti-climatic, truth be told, so to add a little excitement I recommend playing this soundtrack along with it:

And Then It Happened

Holy smokes, 1972 was a terrible time to be a school bus driver. Dealing with smokers, porno magazines, knife fights, dogs and rats running loose, drug overdoses... all before the morning bell rings. Those kids had it coming.

This well-paced film with its trashy, authentic, early 70's "Last House on the Left"- style mise en scène is a nice compliment to the austerity of Ghost Rider, a previously posted bus safety video.

3D Stax o' Snaps

After many hours of toil, I've converted and uploaded all the acceptable 3D pictures I shot in Iceland and Scotland over the last 2.5 weeks. These are automated slideshows, so get your glasses on the very second you click these links:


For photos of the Saga Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland, go HERE.


For the London Natural History Museum, Head over HERE.


For the Wellcome Medical Collection in London, You'll want to direct yourself over HERE.


And for random photos I shot elsewhere, park your anaglyphic ass HERE.

The Plant People

A blog post over at Kindertrauma.com jolted my memory like a cranial hemorrhage; The Plant People was a late-70's page-turner I must have gotten from my school book club (or from my mom, who worked for a children's book publisher). I remember the story being very creepy and bleak, but most indelible are the photographs used as illustrations, looking like stills from a cheap-but-surreal exploitation movie:


More photos at Kindertrauma. Buy the used book through Amazon.

Stalked

More Revisionist 3D

The above anaglyphic image was actually painted in 3D; Salvador Dali experimented with stereogram paintings (which involved painting two side-by-side canvases simultaneously, and training oneself to separate the left and right eyes to combine them into a single 3D image) toward the end of his life. He passed away before this particular painting was finished.

Head over HERE for many more classic paintings which have been converted from boring old stupid 2D to amazing 3D. The images are small on the webpage, but are actually 300 dpi when viewed on their own. So make of that what you will.

Mechanical Pig

This fantastic sculpture by Paul McCarthy, first exhibited in 2005, may not have ever been displayed in the United States, at least to the best of my knowledge (likewise for his enormous "Caribbean Pirates" project, which took several years to complete). "Why — as is repeatedly the case — does one of America’s greatest artists have to travel to Europe to find a fittingly expansive platform?" asked Artforum magazine (although one exception was his very sophisticated chocolate factory installation in New York, from the 2007 Christmas season).



Anyway, I love the the subtlety of this piece, especially subtle if you consider the rest of McCarthy's oeuvre. Too understated for you? Try this one.

Do The Robot

Pirates of the Caribbean

Everyone's favorite, including mine, and worth a visit to Disneyland in itself. Here's a film that includes behind the scenes footage from the late 60's while the ride was in development. Walt himself was heavily involved, but he ended up dying a few months before it opened to the public:



And a full ride-through of what it looks like today, complete with the unfortunate "Captain Jack Sparrow" updates:



Here's a big fan site, and look, someone put together a web page about these fantastic MPC "zap-action" model kits from the 70's. I had three of these, which I found at yard sales, and always hoped to get the whole set.

Anyway, that wraps this series. If you're tired of my vacuous enthusiasm, and would prefer to read something with insight, I recommend a five-part series in Slate.com, found here. An excerpt:

Disney World teaches kids three things: 1) a meaningless, bubble-headed utopianism, 2) a grasping, whining consumerism, and 3) a preference for soulless facsimiles of culture and architecture instead of for the real thing.

As a counterpoint, an even handed defense of Disney's parks can be found here. An excerpt:

Like a novel or a film, Disneyland is the medium which inspires the participant to invest themselves in an imaginative flight of fancy. A fibreglass pirate ship suspended by wire from a rail, hovering over a blacklit miniature model of London is a convincing enough means for the guest to take the next leap in imagining that "this is what it must be like" to fly with the boy who never grew up. For those with a particularly acute sensitivity to visual-spatial awareness, it is even the ultimate form of media. Reading it is one thing, seeing it on film is another, doing it yourself, as closely as is possible in this world, is the best of all.

hope you got something out of it, and we'll return to regular programming shortly.

The Haunted Mansion

Originally opened in 1969, The Haunted Mansion is second only to "Pirates" in its impressiveness. A short two-part "making of" documentary:





Don't go to Disneyland between September and January; they deck out the mansion with a "NIghtmare before Christmas" theme. It's very depressing. My last two visits were during these times, which means I haven't seen the "real" haunted mansion since 1980.

See a 8mm film, which used to be sold to park visitors in the 70's, over here. And a self-published book with all the technical details you could hope to know can be found here.

Three Dark Rides

I'm a huge fan of dark rides (check out Laff in the Dark) and even though the ones in the Fantasyland section of Disneyland are cloying, and contain obnoxious soundtracks, and even though they photograph poorly due to low light and make for some confusing youtube videos, there are so few of these types of rides left in the world that they can't be ignored in this series of Disney-themed posts.

Without further delay, filmed in shaky Quease-O-Vision, my three favorites:

Pinocchio's Daring Journey
By Fantasyland standards this is a new one (it opened in 1983) and my favorite of the dark rides.



Mr. Toad's Wild Ride
Operational since Disneyland's opening day in 1955. The one is Florida was superior, but it's gone now. All the 2D cut-outs are pretty chintzy, but the frenetic pace and this final payoff (wherein you go to "Hell", a room that's been heated to at least 100 degrees) make it worthwhile. Visit Virtual Toad, a site with a (unfinished) VR re-creation and lots of history.



Peter Pan's Flight
Like Mr. Toad, this is an original ride to the park. The suspended track allows for some spectacular "London at night" fly-overs, and they're so dark that you can't see them in this video. But still, you get the idea.

Adventure Thru Inner Space

Opened in 1967 and closed in 1985, the Monsanto-sponsored Adventure thru (sic) Inner Space was the ride that impressed me the most as an 10-year old. Using buggies identical to the ones in the haunted mansion (which came later), you'd start by entering a gigantic microscope, then pass through a series of environments replicating the inside of a snowflake, with each room portraying you shrinking to a smaller size until you finally enter an atom.

This video shows some concept and mechanical drawings, set to the "miracles from molecules" polka tune that would play as you exited the attraction. At the 2:20 mark you see some film footage of the actual ride, along with original narration:



There's a fansite here with links to a computer-simulated ride-through and lots of other features.

The building that housed the attraction is now home to the inexplicably crappy, $32-million-dollar Star Tours ride.

The Submarine Voyage

The Submarine voyage opened in 1959 (one of the first rides that required the primo "E" ticket) and closed in 1998. In 2007 it re-opened as a "Finding Nemo" ride. Instead of models and dioramas, now you just get projections of animated characters onto underwater scrims. It's supposed to be super-sucky. I can imagine how the redevelopment meeting went down: "dioramas are so 50's. Modern kids like computer animation, right? Why not just show that, but underwater? No one's ever done that before!"

A moment of silence for the passing of Disney's greatest "pre-pirates" ride. Here's an old video of the whole thing:

House of the Future

The Design for Dreaming-ish promo seen below is for the House of the Future, sponsored by Monsanto. It resided in Tomorrowland from 1957 to 1967. When it no longer looked future-y enough, they tried to demolish it. But the house was so solidly constructed, the wrecking ball kept bouncing off. So it had to be hacked apart piece by piece with hand saws over the course of two weeks.

The landscaping and outdoor water features of the house were retained; they added some mermaid sculptures and jumping fountains, and it's just on the main street side of the iconic castle.



See part 2 here.

Mission to Mars

Originally called "Rocket to the Moon" when the park opened in 1955, the attraction was updated to "Mission to Mars" in 1975. It opens with a preliminary briefing given by an audio-animatronic flight director to a room of fellow robot NASA employees. This was certainly more technically impressive than what was to follow, when you'd board the circular theater which had screens on the floor and ceiling. They would project film footage of takeoff and a Mars landing while the seats rumbled a bit. I saw this in Florida when I was six, and even at that age I was unimpressed.

This low-tech exhibit was doomed to close eventually, and it did in 1992. A pizza restaurant now stands in its place. The best document I could find is this fuzzy home video, but it's the entire presentation so it might be of interest to some of you:

The Jungle Cruise

The Jungle Cruise is still a big draw at Disneyland, and pretty much the same as when it opened in 1955. From wikipedia:

When plans began to develop, Bill Evans, the Imagineer responsible for landscaping Disneyland, faced the daunting task of foresting an entire jungle on a limited budget. Aside from importing many actual tropical plants, he made wide use of “character plants” which while not necessarily exotic could give the appearance of exoticism in context. In a particularly well-known trick, he uprooted local orange trees and "replanted" them upside-down, growing vines on the exposed roots. The clean water was dyed brown to prevent visitors from seeing the bottom of the “river”, which varies between three and eight feet deep.

While the current version makes use of a comedic spiel, filled with bad puns and malaprops, the original intent of the ride was to provide a realistic, believable voyage through the world's jungles. The original spiel had no jokes and sounded much like the narration of a nature documentary.

As you'll see here, the comedic commentary almost ruins the experience, and it's an example of how the current Disneyland is often much worse than it needs to be. Just play it straight, or better yet, don't say anything. Makes it easier to enjoy the craftsmanship of your ancestors. Show a little respect, Disney.

The Carousel of Progress

The Carousel of Progress, like the Magic Skyway, was first built for the 1964 World's Fair then brought over to Disneyland. I haven't had a chance to witness it myself, but photos and videos show it to be a marvel of retro-futurism.

As it was initially sponsored by General Electric, the Carousel is all about the history of electricity in the home. A revolving stage with animatronic actors portrayed 1900, 1920, 1940, and the present day (intially, the 60's) focusing on how electricity has shaped their lives.

Incredibly, the Carousel is still operating, but you have to go to that hellhole called "Florida" to see it; the attraction moved there in 1975. Perhaps the only reason it's stuck around this long is because it was Walt Disney's personal favorite, and he specifically said it should never close down. This has required periodic updates to the fourth act of the show to include HD television, virtual reality, and voice-activated devices.




You can see a very well-shot video of the entire carousel presentation here.

The Enchanted Tiki Room

Disneyland's first animatronic attraction opened in 1963, when Tiki culture was at its apex in the United States. Originally planned to be a restaurant (the idea was ditched in favor of a 20-minute show, to accommodate more visitors), more than 150 birds, flowers and tikis sing original songs composed for the room, along with the standard "Hawaiian War Chant" as a finale.

According to wikipedia, Tiki Room's Audio-Animatronics are "synchronized to a musical score entirely by electromechanical means. The "cast" of the musical revue uses tones recorded on tape to vibrate a metal reed that closes a circuit to trigger a relay, which sends a pulse of electricity to a mechanism that causes a pneumatic valve to move a part of the figure's body...the movements of the attraction's birds, flowers, and tiki idols are triggered by sound, hence the audio prefix. Figures' movements have a neutral "natural resting position" that the limb/part returns to when there is no electric pulse. Other than this, the animation is a digital system, with only on/off moves, such as an open or closed eye."

This meant, for the 150 figures and multiple parts to be triggered on each of them, hundreds of audio tracks were recorded onto magnetic tape and played back for each performance. An enormous room was built below the Tiki Room to hold all the multi-track tape players (since its 2005 makeover, they switched over to computer-controlled animatronics). All of the animatronics of the Tiki Room are purely pneumatic. For larger figures, like in the Haunted Mansion or the Abraham Lincoln show, they had to step up to hydraulics.

Here in the video you see a robo-bird that acts as a "barker" to bring people into the show. But this was soon removed, because people had never seen an animatronic before, and it was causing too much crowding.



Fascinating, but the frito-bandito narration makes it a challenge to watch. And why do the birds have mexican, irish, french and german accents for a pacific island-themed show?

Anyway, due to a special contract with its sponsor, Dole Pineapple, the attraction has remained unchanged since 1963. and you can still visit it today in the "Adventureland" section of the park. Like all things tiki, time has been very kind to it. The place is a hallucinatory wonder.

See a video of the whole show (along with the wonderful mechanical tiki's of the outdoor pre-show, which influenced one of my own sculptures) here.

The Magic Skyway

The New York World's Fair of 1964 had the Disney "imagineers" working in overdrive. They premiered the robotic Abraham Lincoln, The Carousel of Progress, and the dreaded, horrible "It's A Small World" ride. All of these attractions were dismantled and moved to the Disneyland park after the fair ended.

Best of all was the Magic Skyway, sponsored by Ford Motors:



Errors in the diorama, according to wikipedia:

• As with many of the dinosaur-based items in the world, it depicts dinosaurs from all different time periods and places in the same habitat.
• Many of the dinosaurs are out of proportion to their actual size.
• The Tyrannosaurus near the end has a number of faults: the head is the wrong shape, there are three claws on the hand; Tyrannosaurus had two, it is standing upright, which has been determined wrong, and its tail is dragging on the ground
• The brontosaurs (apatosaurs) are seen chewing plants like cows. This is known to be incorrect, as they swallowed their food whole and it was broken down by gizzard stones(gastroliths).
• Dimetrodon was a reptile that went extinct before the dinosaurs existed.

You can still see this exhibit, minus the cavemen, at Disneyland today. Now called Primeval World, catch it by getting on the Disneyland Railroad and riding between Tomorrowland and Main Street.

Heroes at the Mall

I've just discovered Plaidstallions.com, an impressively exhaustive compendium of 70's pop culture. One of the many highlights is a gallery of reader-submitted photos of marvel superheroes doing promotional appearances. View it HERE.


Also, this cover of the 1980 Remco toy catalog cracked me up:

The Fabulous World of Jules Verne

Karel Zeman's gorgeous 1958 fantasy is unavailable commercially on dvd, but you can see the whole feature on youtube starting here.

A decent write-up on the film is here.

(also, I'll be traveling abroad for the next 2.5 weeks, so I'm switching Futurechimp.com over to autopilot. New posts will magically appear almost every day, but I probably won't have the opportunity to respond to comments or emails.)

Music for Monkeys

Italicized text has been excerpted from npr.org:

Music has great power to alter our emotions — making us happy or sad, agitated or calm. Psychologists have tried in vain to figure out why that happens. Now, a composer says he's has a clue. And he got it by writing music not for humans, but for monkeys.

David Teie plays cello with the National Symphony Orchestra, and has been developing a theory to explain why music plays on human emotions. His theory is that music relates to the most primitive sounds we make and respond to, like laughter, heartbeats, or a mother's cooing. "When I thought I had all the pieces put into place, I figured any good theory is testable, so one of the ways to test it would be to see if I could write music that would be affective for species other than human," he says.

He wrote to Chuck Snowdon, a psychology professor who managed a colony of monkeys called cotton-top tamarins at the University of Wisconsin. Snowdon was happy to cooperate and sent Teie recordings he'd made in the lab. One recording was of a monkey that felt threatened by a veterinarian. "He's very upset," Snowdon explains. "He's coming out to the front of the cage to attack or to show aggressiveness." He also sent a screechy sound that, believe it or not, monkeys make when they're feeling mellow.

With those samples and a few others as a starting point, Teie composed music for monkeys. "Basically I took those elements and patterned them the way we do normally with music," he says. "You repeat them, take them up a [musical] third — you know, using the same kind of compositional techniques we use in human music."

He played the compositions on his cello and then electronically boosted them up three octaves, to a pitch that matched the monkeys' voices. Monkeys don't respond at all to music written for humans, but they did respond when they heard this composition.



Snowdon says people may not be calmed by this relatively fast tempo of one of the pieces, but the monkeys in his lab certainly were. "This is a rhythm that approaches the resting heart rate of a tamarin and had this calming effect on them even though the pum-pum-pum in the background was maybe a bit faster than we would expect as humans for this music."

Compare that with the music Teie wrote to try and agitate the monkeys:



"Monkeys reacted to this by increasing their movement," Snowdon says. "They moved faster through their environment. And they also showed increase in a whole variety of behaviors we have associated with anxiety."

Being that there are very few commercial opportunites for monkey music, and possibly taking a cue from Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Baby and all those 70's Music for Plants records, Teie has already started a website and company that makes music for cats. Listen to samples HERE.

Chimp Rampage in Griffith Park

From the Associated Press:
Two chimpanzees that were evacuated from an animal sanctuary threatened by wildfire have been recaptured after they escaped from their crates while being unloaded at the Los Angeles Zoo.

Zoo spokesman Jason Jacobs says the female chimps fled Tuesday afternoon, prompting zoo visitors to evacuate. One chimp made her way to the small primates and bird exhibit before being tranquilized about 20 minutes later.

The other climbed over the fence and into Griffith Park. She was spotted about an hour later and was led into the back of a truck by her trainer.

They were among 400 animals, including lions and tigers, that were evacuated from the Wildlife Waystation as a giant wildfire burns in the Angeles National Forest.

How big is this fire? The equivalent of Seattle and Madison combined have already burned, and it may be two more weeks before it can be fully extinguished. The Los Angeles Crest looks like the final apocalypse scene from The Black Hole. We've been keeping all the windows of our home (which borders Griffith Park) shut, and my car is covered in ash every morning. And check out this photo from space.

Broken Heart

Sad news from my hometown of Chicago: The Museum of Science and Industry's 14-foot tall walk-through human heart, which dates back to the early 50's and was my favorite exhibit as a kid (and the inspiration for a sculpture of my own) has been demolished to make way for a video projection. From the Chicago Tribune:

Built of plaster around a building-support pillar, (the giant heart) could not be dismantled intact. It had to be broken into pieces. Several families of workers who built the old heart got pieces as mementos.

"It was very popular for many decades," said said Patricia Ward, the museum's director of science and technology, "but it was static, and we have so many new technologies now to make something like that come alive... we are aware of the nostalgia [for] the old heart, and we hope that will help people connect with this new exhibit."

The new heart's primary designer, Tom Hennes, president of the New York design firm Thinc, said the pulsing heart will be the core of the larger exhibit and should be noticeable from the main floor as it throbs in full color.

"We hope that people on the main floor will look up and see this great, beating heart and think, 'Wow, I have to get up there and see that thing up close,' " he said.

Eight feet wide, the new heart is sculpted from steel plate that projects from the wall, appearing to be a living organ with full-color animations projected onto its surface from seven projectors.


Does it have a physical presence? No. Can you walk through it? Certainly not. It's a video projection. That exhibit design firm sold you down the river, Chicago; they convinced you to smash up a perfectly functional and educational exhibit (which is also an amazing work of art) and replace it with "new technologies". And you paid two million dollars for it. Nice going.

Video here.