19 05/08
21:05

Neuromancer (W. Gibson)

neuromancer

What a daring and challenging novel!. It is one of my SF favourite books, I read it years after playing Shadowrun and watching The Matrix and Ghost in the shell, and anyhow still caused a strong impression on me.

I was aware of the term Cyberpunk through other stories, but never went direct to the source. Though that term appeared slightly for first time in Burning Chrome, it was in Neuromancer were Gibson gave birth to a new topic in SF literature.

As excerpt, I would like to share just its beginning, it is in my opinion one of the most hallucinating sentences I ever read in SF, coming from a TV culture and 8-bit video games consoles:

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Neuromancer was the first novel to win the three most important prizes in SF – Hugo in 1985 , Nebula in 1984 and Philip K. Dick awards in 1984- It just burst into the field opening new narratives and styles. Neuromancer has a techno-poetic prose not easy to read and to follow, fragmented and plenty of not finished sentences that remember the tv-zapping or surfing in a global see of information; most likely one of the most influential SF novel during the last times, that has encouraged several discussions about our relation with technology.

Here it can be read in an on-line version.

Here an interesting analysis I recomend.

Finally: a movie based on Neuromacer is coming soon.

11 05/08
13:16

The last question (I. Asimov)

Tags: , , | Categories: science fiction

last question

I’ve been a big fan of Asimov since I can remember, he was probable one of the first authors in science-fiction I read and always his stories lured and excited my mind. In fact I managed to convince my good friend Javier, around the 98, to do our Design thesis based on one of his Books, I should add here that we succeeded in doing an astonishing work.

I want to introduce one of his favourites short stories: The last question published in 1956. As in many other of his tales, we find a super-intelligent-computer: Multivac, which purposes are to answer any question stated by a human being and to help mankind to solve its more complex problems, in this case the questions is about the end of the universe or better: Can entropy ever be reversed?, at the same time the all-mighty Multivac finds out new ways to provide energy to mankind, in that way are described different stages of human civilizations based on the Kardashev scale. Definitely a worth-reading story.

Here at the multivax website, can be read an on-line version.

06 05/08
19:19

Sproutbau movie online

Tags: , , | Categories: video studies

Sproutbau online

HI,

I want to thank to everybody for all support, comments and critics on my first documentary, all of them were and are welcome. (¡muchas gracias!, vielen Dank!)
If you could not be with me during the première and still want to watch the film, I publish here a link to its on-line version, it is the same but in a medium-resolution for a good streaming. The largest file is about 23MB and the smallest around 8MB. I hope you do enjoy it, and I’ll be looking forward to reading your opinions about it.

Watch Sproutbau documentary

Recently I was invited to show my recent work on the: “Muestra Monográfica de Media Art” in the Festival Internacional de la Imagen, I’m proud to say that Sproutbau documentary was selected for the show an it was screened in the Modern Art Museum of Medellín. As well, it was selected to be screened in a event called “Curaduría en nuevos medios”, an international seminar organised by: Espacio Fundación Telefónica de Buenos Aires Argentina, this event is going to happen in Buenos Aires. Here a complete list of all selected works in Colombia.

04 05/08
14:00

The Nine Billion Names of God (Arthur C.Clarke)

| Categories: science fiction

ninenames

I want to inaugurate a new section on my blog. This idea come up since A. Clarke passed away, as a manner to share with everyone interested on, one of my little passions: Science fiction.

As starting point I chose one short story written by Clarke: The nine billion names of God written in 1953, which in 1954 won the Hugo award in the category of Best Short story, this story is about a company that sells a computer to a group of Tibetan monks, they use this machine to speed up their holy task: compiling and listing all the possible names of God and by doing so fulfil the cosmic fate of mankind.

The story begins when Dr. Wagner is refining the details of a computer’s sale to a lama from the monastery, then the story moves to the Tibet shortly before the machine finishes its task: to print out all nine billion names of God.

Here an excerpt:

“Call it ritual, if you like, but it’s a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the Supreme Being — God, Jehovah, Allah, and so on — they are only man-made labels. There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all the possible combinations of letters, which can occur, are what one may call the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all.”

With an exciting and typical Clarke’s end is a highly recommend short story, an on-line version can be read here.



Archives