skonen_blades

And it’s the teeth that fold back into a karate punch of hot asses in black jeans making their way to war. Falling stars in silk dresses and broken fingers wear khaki post-apocalyptic riding pants to finish lines made of unforgiving fire.

Each satellite that cracks the earth open thinks it’s a dancer improvising a future like an oracle predicting circuitboard murder diagrams through the clenched chest of the world. Waking child eyes inside the navigation computer pull arrows back and let them go while glowing tattoos on Asian ghosts stare down from long-dead airplane crashes.

The zombies and the greek gods are taking it all back. They come up from under the snow and dive in front of subway trains only to get their blood on the cameras. This is Tron in a cornfield playing demolition abortion math near red-haired spring break chainsaw children, one sword swing away from knowing if fairies bruise.

Unseen dream hands and white-eyed possessed girls stand under skies with too many moons, too many suns. Huge creatures from massive, fragile buildings unravel helixes of DNA in an effort to understand armies and the concept of victory. Flaming chunks of rock pirate their way through a cloned army of Dark Knight Jokers wielding JK-47s. It’s all about the martial arts and force of will. Just ask Neo.

Cities bend, curling up and dying like robot stunt doubles punching comic futures through flimsy walls and candy glass. Little-kid dimension beasts snarl and leap when cornered but after that they’re gymnasts sliding under birdcages, making bullets bend trajectories past assassins dressed like medusa-prostitute-guitar-god forest witches.

The big finale drips off of the brim of a Kruger hat as the hot women drive shotgun heels and katanas through drooling Nazi faces. Splashing water up onto the computers, making lust and moisture and synchronized dancing destroy clocks, bunkers, and then it’s all x-ray broken bones and gyrating hips in red leather.

Your robot double can’t break out of the train. Your body will not be saved from the aliens. But your 18th century self will be just fine. Rely on that.




tags

Kind of odd that a few coat hangers and a mocap studio made the wheelchair optional.

I wanted to make puppets that could walk around, that’s all. I was an animator. I knew that aside from the root of an object centered between the hips, it's center of gravity if you will, everything else could be expressed in degrees of rotation. I figured that if a radio-controlled system of pulleys were attached to an extremely lightweight form that stayed on a predictable, level surface for locomotion, I could play back the motion capture in real life instead of on a computer screen.

It took one weekend. That’s it.

I cut up and spot welded about two dozen coat hangers to make a roughly human-sized stick-man skeleton, used a few gears at each joint with some rubbers bands and some guitar wire stretching down each of the appendages like a set of tendons.

The heaviest part was the little motor I clipped between the hips that responded to the jerry-rigged radio control from my kid’s remote control car. It actually added some ballast so it turned out to be good thing.

A few trial and error runs and I had the thing take ten steps, turn and walk back the other way. By mirroring and flipping the instruction, I had it pacing back and forth in an endless loop.

Well, theoretically endless. After about six times back and forth it scrabbled just a little on the hard floor and went down.

I took my toy to work to show my buddies. I have to say that I honestly thought it was merely a curiousity, a nice little bit of brilliance with no real-world applications. Put the boss's face on it and have it march around.

That was before one nobel prize, seventy-five million dollars, and an almost saint-like adoration from grateful people around the world.

I had sixteen patents on that thing!

One of my co-workers had a friend that was studying to be a cyberneticist with a minor in nanotech theory. He recognized what all animators knew, that with a huge library of small recorded motions to draw from, minor chapters of motion could be strung together into complex movement much like language strings together the alphabet to make words.

All he needed was a material strong enough to cage human limbs comfortably but light enough to be worn without feeling like a suit of armour.

He found it. It’s the one patent that isn’t mine but the company it's from had the resources to manufacture and market The Brace first to the medical conglomerates and then to the public.

Much like Stephen Hawking could build speech from choosing words with his index finger, paralyzed people could build a typical day of short motions before they got up. They could be tongue controlled, finger-twitch controlled, or even blink-controlled.

It didn’t bring back the feeling in their limbs but it sure made them feel more independent and, this was their words, ‘included’ again.

The Brace back then in those first years was thick and obvious but over the years it has become thinner and less awkward. These days it’s less noticeable than seams on clothes.

The Brace is still not good with unpredictability on the walking surface but the interface is getting better all the time. There are those that still prefer the analog wheelchair and we don’t go for the hard sell with them.

We have prototypes in the works that are subdermal for those with facial paralysis. We have prototypes in the works that dance.

The metal skeletons hold the paralyzed people among us as a mother holds a child. There are leaps ahead every day in neural fields that will one day make this brace seem obsolete and I hope it happens soon but for now, I’m one of the planet's gods for a few million folks that can enjoy the simple perfection of going for a stroll.



tags

The main problem that the art of dance faces through the ages is its lack of notation. We still know what a Brahms concerto sounds like because it’s as easy as reading a sheet of music. Choreography has never had an agreed-upon universal language that can be written down.

I’ve been working on something.

The thing about robots is that they don’t know how to move like a human. The thing about motion capture is that it’s only used for video games and film.

I’m putting the two together.

There is a robot in the corner that looks like it’s made of coat hangers, basic hinges, guitar strings, and ping pong balls. It’s absurdly light but I’ve managed to construct it with a proportional human weight. It has a light processor wrapped around the neck in a light donut of a collar that all the guitar strings thread into.

The main processor is on the desk beside me transmitting instructions to the collar.

We had a motion capture session this morning with two ballet dancers, one modern dance enthusiast and a stripper.

My robot is dancing in front of me. It’s like a dream.




tags

This morning on the way to work I was treated to some dance. A mother was walking her daughter to dance lessons in front of me. She was fourteenish and very recently stretched out. She had striped stockings, a pink tutu, a white T shirt and bright red converse shoes. For an entire block while I walked a ways behind them, the girl did ballet beside her mother while walking. Skittering awkward pavement pirouettes. It was awesome.

This morning on the way to work I saw a homeless gentleman wearing a shirt that said "take me to bed or lose me forever."

I encroach upon her borders. I look down upon her landing strip. She looks up at me from that pale and sparse patch of land. A speck with folded arms looking up, jaw set and defiant, hair being tugged and tossed in the wind. I circle and circle and circle.
I wait until I see someone else land and then I’m off. I’m not even interested in the result.
This is the dream I keep having ever since you died.
Your eyes trapped an intense intelligence and focused it into twin beams that stabbed out and drank what was in front of them. To be looked at by you was to be held, weighed, defined, absorbed, and drained.
“It’s not enough to be regal,” you once said to me, “You have to be god like. People respect what they’re afraid of. Fools do not and must be made an example of. We have to set up our own microcosm here and the life forms under my rule have to learn that I am Fire. I am Lighting. I am Earthquake. I possess the same lack of mercy. However, I am conscious and if my laws are followed, my people will survive. I need to earn their trust but their respect is more quickly gained by making examples of the ones who dare to speak out against me. I will run a harsh but fair regime”
These are the words that haunt me still. Echoes of platitudes you told me years ago. Where is your empire now? I walk through the ruins of what used to be your city and remember your face, so different from the crow-pecked meat that dresses the skeleton hanging in the courtyard I’m walking through.
You wanted to be nature. Well, nature had something to say about that, didn’t she? You couldn’t save them from the plague so they hung you during the chaos. Then they too succumbed. I left far before that.
I remember your power. I ache at its absence. I watch what remains of you twist in the wind on the makeshift gallows. The grey sky cries a little. It cries half heartedly like a child that only needs his attention diverted to forget what he was upset about.
I back away and turn to start the long journey back home.



tags