millsworks

My good friend Fred sends me links to stuff all the time and I do the same for (or to) him. Sometimes, because we surf the same end of the interwebs ocean of information, we end up racing to see who can get a link sent first. Fred won this time because I got up late and sat by the window enjoying my coffee and bacon.

This was posted on BoingBoing but it’s a film by Anthony Discenza, an SF based visual artist. This one is called Charlton Heston: The Future Has Already Been Written and it is a mind-warpingly run romp through 3 of Heston’s films – Planet Of The Apes – The Omega Man – and Soylent Green.

Discenza has taken these 3 classic Heston SF films and visually alternated between them every 1/10 of a second, while simultaneously layering the soundtracks. The quote: “It’s a madhouse!” from Planet Of The Apes springs to mind and a lot of the comments on the BoingBoing site show that a lot of people are having a hard time enjoying this.

I love it!

This reminds me of my ADHD youth when I would watch several shows at the same time – flipping back and forth between them – much to the consternation of my parents. This was before we had a remote so imagine a bubble headed buzzcut kid perched right in front of the screen rapidly cranking the dial back and forth. I must have been a very annoying child. Later I’d be accustomed to reading or doing my homework in front of the TV, still switching between shows but not as obsessively.

My son is not as much of a TV cheesehead as I was – although we consume films from my collection like popcorn. He has his Xbox and the online gaming community to rot his brain. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for him. My wife hates the first person shooter games but I know we gently weaned him into that sphere of current culture, protecting him when he was younger from undue commercial or violent influences, until we felt he was mature enough to deal with the grisly content of splattering zombie heads across the landscape. I’ve observed him and his friends in action – both whilst gaming and just sitting in conversation at the dinner table – and I know these young minds spin much faster and are capable of digesting a much more complex and richer informational stream than anyone my age will ever be able to achieve.

Watching mashups like this draws my attention to how kids (mostly boys) are being diagnosed as “learning disabled”, “autistic”, “attention deficient”, “asbergers” – and a myriad of other labels that are used as a means of coercing or medicating them to behave and comply with an established view of how human beings are supposed to be.

While I don’t doubt there are many cases where treatment is necessary I also think the educational and medical establishments need a similar course of treatment so they will be better able to understand more fully that we, as human beings, are very unique creatures and while we can be socialized to behave in unison, fitted into the cogs of a societal machine, or punished and medicated to comply with what is deemed “acceptable behaviour” – we are also very adaptable creatures. As our world changes around us, more and more rapidly, we are adapting to live within it – and our children are adapting faster than we are (or ever could). In time – a generation from now – we won’t recognize a lot of what passes for culture, language and societal norms. A film like Discenza’s could easily be part of the normal supply of entertainment consumed by the masses.

Who knows?

This also reminds me of a couple of earlier posts I did – one about a slit-scan mashup of Singin’ In The Rain and another about a great site called Yooouuutuuube! where videos posted on YouTube are deconstructed in real time to create a mosaic of movement.

I love this stuff!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll dig out my bong and watch some more.

Cheers.