LA FLORIDIANA Florida's Witch Town? by Will Moriaty | |||
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE REVIEW "The Legend of Zorro" by Mike Smith | |||
COUCH POTATO CONFESSIONS Post Industrial Carnival....Mobile Performance Group....Cob: More Than Just Something With Corn On It by Vinnie Blesi | |||
THE AUDIO PHILES Frank Zappa by Terence Nuzum | |||
THE DROW The Sandman, AKA, One of the Best Graphic Novels Ever Written! by Dylan Jones | |||
CREATURE'S CORNER ScreamFest '05 by John Lewis | |||
MATT'S RAIL Happy Halloween....The Birthday Boy....Masters of Horror Invite by Matt Drinnenberg | |||
MIKE'S RANT The Best of Times....This Week's Issue....Happy Birthday....Another Top 10 Challenge....2,000 Americans Killed In Iraq....Like Rap Music....No Wonder I Can't Sit Down....Put It On The Board--Yes!...Passing On....You Never Give Me Your Money....We're Number Three....Jaws: The Story, Part 39 by Mike Smith | |||
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Post Industrial Carnival     While it is generally recognized that the post industrial age is one in which our economy switches from a manufacturing one to a service one (the Information Age), as outlined in Alvin Toffler’s “Third Wave”, I am taking the meaning literally to mean after industry. Industry is still very much a part of our lives; it has only been outsourced to poorer countries. In the after industry age, there is a shortage of products and resources.
“The Post Industrial Carnival” is an ambitious and creative exhibit and one worth seeing, but it is heavy on multi-media and interactivity, making it more of an Information Age Carnival. I am going to concentrate on two of the events that spoke of a post-industrial age, where brownouts and shortages of basic resources are a reality.
Mobile Performance Group     Students and their professor from Stetson University in Deland, Fl. comprise this small entourage of experimental artists and musicians who look like they could fit in with any coffee shop or video gaming crowd. However what they are doing is far more creative and innovative than blasting monsters in a spaceship corridor.
In the Post Industrial world where all music, other than state sanctioned tunes, is illegal, I see bands of rogue artists pulling up to public places and creating their own music and art. Have generator will create art.
Performers for the “Parking Spaces” performance were: LAURA OXENDINE, CHESTER UDELL, MATT ROBERTS, NATHAN WOLEK, ESTHER KELTY.
Watch video of them here (courtesy of tampabaymuse.com): Cob, More Than Just Something With Corn On It:     “What is Cob? By Michael Smith and Ianto Evans (excerpt): It’s a traditional building technique using earth mixed with water, straw, and often sand. It dries to a hardness similar to lean concrete. This ancient technology doesn’t contribute to deforestation, pollution or mining, nor depend on manufactured materials or power tools.”
This is want I expect to see in an after Industry exhibit. It does not rely on manufactured materials, the first requirement for a Post Industrial exhibit. Plus it relies on the community working together to construct housing, much like the Amish tradition of barn raising. In our after industry world it will become important for humans to work together in some communal form to survive and prosper.
The four individuals who initiated the cob oven project are Amber Cobb, Jeanine Minge, Nikki Pike, and Jason.
Watch video of them here (courtesy of tampabaymuse.com):
It was a hot muggy Friday night in Florida; a hurricane swirling to the south and a cold front on its way from the north. In the old baggage building behind the restored Amtrak station in downtown Tampa it was also “The Post Industrial Carnival” exhibit presented by the local artist’s collective Experimental Skeleton, and Flight 19 Gallery.
www.mobileperformancegroup.com: While I was still in the parking lot, I was intrigued by a small group of people with laptops in hand, huddled behind a car, all busily manipulating joysticks, keyboard controllers and mice. On the underside of the Expressway that ran overhead, a dazzling video display of seemingly random images was displayed while electronic music played in accompaniment.
Two members of the group are manipulating original sound waves in real time using joysticks while professor, Matt Roberts, scans images of trash collected from the parking lot and converts them into stop motion movies. Using a wireless network he then sends the images to Laura who manipulates them in real time and projects the video.
Performance artist Rachel Hoffman's Lady Lazarus
Windows Media 5mb, http://www.tampabaymuse.com/video/mobilevideo.wmv
Quicktime 1.5mb, http://www.tampabaymuse.com/video/mobilegroup1.mov
At first I thought it was shades of “Encounters of the Third Kind” when I see the two young women and one young man building this domed object. Grayish in color the dome shaped object has straw jutting out of its sides as the Cob team all work in unison on its shaping. I later find out it is the beginnings of the Cob oven they will be making during this exhibit (see the final oven at the exhibit closing reception Saturday Oct. 29th).
Windows Media 4mb http://www.tampabaymuse.com/video/Cob.wmv
Quicktime 1.4mb http://www.tampabaymuse.com/video/cob3.mov
"Couch Potato Confessions" is ©2005 by Vinnie Blesi. Couch Potato main graphic by Vin Blesi and Nolan Canova. Webpage design and all graphics herein (except where otherwise noted) are creations of Nolan B. Canova. All contents of Nolan's Pop Culture Review are ©2005 by Nolan B. Canova.