I have been waiting quite a while for this one; the 800 pound gorilla in the movie theaters this weekend will be Clash of the Titans. A remake of the original 1981 Ray Harryhausen classic, the changes in technology between then and now promises good things for the movie going experience. I do have to say though that watching the Owl in the original on the big screen brought the kind of sense of wonder that is rare (and it also helped solidify an already strong life long addiction to robotics that I still haven’t outgrown).
In more limited release (NY and LA the first weekend, expanding out over the following several weeks) is the epic period piece The Warlords, in the tradition of Hero and the House of Flying Daggers. Staring Jet Li, it will be available on VOD (Video On Demand), Amazon, and X-Box Live on the 4th, so everyone will have access.
I love Steampunk, but mostly it seems to be a European kind of thing, although the US had a major hand to play in it between Edison and Tesla. But did you know Japan had its own real-life Steampunk roots, just like the western cultures? I am not referring to the modern Steampunk instances, like the many Animes (Fullmetal Alchemist, Last Exile, and Steamboy being my personal favorite examples). But the roots of Steampunk, the technology that Could Have Been, had things gone a bit different (and yes, that is Paratime again). The best examples of true Japanese Steampunk I have found so far are in the realm of Karakuri; 16th through 18th century Japanese robots.
For a basic introduction to the topic I can think of no better example than I, Karakuri, a wonderful short explanation of both the concept (dolls that would surprise/trick observers by preforming human actions, such as serving tea, while hiding the mechanical bits that allowed them to do so; the humans would suspect an animating spirit, rather than a device, back in those days) and the history of the technology (watches imported by the Portuguese in the 1500’s, reverse engineered and by the early 1600’s the Edo period craftspeople had developed them into mechanical wonders to rival any cuckoo clock Switzerland ever dreamed up). These were developed completely independently of the similar proto-robots in Europe, and had a different style and sensibility even if the mechanical functionality was the same.
The Japan Foundation and MIT Singapore have both done live presentations on Karakuri in the last few years. KaraKuri Info is another great source of information on the background and history of this unique robot lineage, which is enjoying a renewed interest by modern robot inventors in Japan.
If you want to build your own, you don’t have to start from scratch. You can pick up a kit for the Karakuri Gakken tea serving doll from Maker Shed or other similar outlets, and the detailed instructions at Make Zine can guide you through the steps needed to create one of your own. There are kits for a few of the others, of which the most amazing (and expensive) may be the Bow Shooting Boy doll, but they may no longer be available.
While these are dolls, in the sense of being something made out of wood or plastic that looks like a person, they are also actual robots. Hard to believe because there are no computer chips in the device? True, but the logic is built in at the mechanical level, allowing them If/Then/Else choices even without the silicon chips. That means they can be programmed just like any other robots to follow out a sequence of instructions, with any given action only taken when the preset conditions are met (such as turning around and heading back to the tea pot when the weight of an empty tea cup is placed on its tray). The main difference comes when you want to reprogram it; instead of typing or uploading a new sequence of instructions, the gears, shafts, and spindles have to be changed for a set that processes the new logic and decision tree. Brutal but true: reprogramming means rebuilding!
If you have a hard time imagining how that works, the simplest example to explain the process comes from Europe of the same era; the music box. In 1600 Geneva or Paris, if you wanted your portable music player to play a different song, you put a different metal cylinder into it and wound the spring. As the spring unwound the bumps sticking out of the cylinder pushed and released against the differently tuned metal tongues, playing a pre-programed sequence of tones. While the music box did not have mechanical logic circuits built in (at least not until you got up to the ones installed in church towers), it did go through a prerecorded sequence of instructions to create a desired result without needing human supervision. Thus Automation was born.
There are also some inexpensive paper variations available, if you are trying to interest your young child in moving mechanicals, like the Karakuri Teeter Totter Robot or the Smoking Robot. These are not actual robots, and have no logic built in, but they are entertaining psudo-automatons that move when you crank the handle and demonstrate some basic principles of mechanical animation.
Just for comparison, some European Robots from the same time frame
The Berlin International Film Festival comes around for the 60th time from February 11th to the 21st. This monster festival is broken into 7 sections, each with its own director. There are a ton of movies, I thought I should mention a few that sound interesting to me.
One Life, Maybe Two is another paratemporal story, in which a single event goes both ways, and the fork between worldlines explores each outcome. The premise matches up with Sliding Doors in that regard, but the kind of events explored are quite different. While I suspect no one is referencing the Spanish Inquisition in this one, I am looking forward to seeing it some day.
Another film worth noting is Shutter Island, a rather surreal film about a disappearing mass murderess who may have escaped from a psychiatric prison. The talent involved with this film includes names like Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, and Max von Sydow, and the trailer looks great. This one is not just for the film festivals; it goes into public release on the weekend of the 18th/19th of February.
There are a few other films you might want to check out. Howl has been making the festival circuits, a DocuDrama about the Ginsburg obscenity trial in 1957. That was the birthplace of the American Counterculture movement, and everything that it evolved into over the following 50 plus years. This film includes a presentation of the poem itself, which more than anything else puts into perspective just how far we have come since then.
And Ginsburg begat Dury; so how appropriate this festival also includes Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll, a film format reconstruction of Ian Dury’s biography, showing how he became key to the development of Punk and New Wave music, and the culture they spawned. He influenced The Clash, The Pretenders and the Sex Pistols to name just a few. He toured the US with Elvis Costello and Lou Reed back in the seventies. As the title of the film (it is also the title of his smash hit song) might make you suspect, he really was on the direct line of decent from Ginsburg, and was a major influence on the development of his segment of the Counterculture.
And Ginsberg begat Warhol and Waters; also in the 70s, No Wave film making was born in New York City, mostly in the low-income parts of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The movie Blank City does a good job of presenting just how intense this Counterculture cauldron became, and what kind of film movements it spawned.
Wish I could be in Berlin for this fest, but I guess I will just have to cheer them on from here.
With one of the longest titles of any film this month, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief looks to be very entertaining. The cast includes Pierce Brosnan and Uma Thurman, and the style looks very Harry Potterish. No real surprise there, as the movie is based on the first book in a series for YA Demi-Gods by Rick Riordan; I am sure they are hoping to tap the same youth market as the Potter films.
Also out this Friday, The Wolfman is a powerful remake of the original Universal movie, staring Anthony Hopkins and Benicio Del Toro. While it doesn’t look as Steampunk as either of the recent Sherlock Holmes releases, it does seem to lean in that direction.
Weather is moving in, so I may not get to see Avatar in my local theater on opening day. But since William Gibson inspired me to post some music yesterday, I thought it might to be fun to post a bit more today, this time recommended by Wil Wheaton from his Radio Free Burrito podcast. The band Monsters from Mars may not be posting many new tracks these days, but I sure like the old ones.
Speaking of old audio tracks, anyone remember Lord Buckley? With his classic poems from Hipsters, Flipsters, and Finger Poppin Daddies, knock me your lobes, to The Naz, to Gods Own Drunk, and many more, he was the precursor that ushered in everyone from William Burroughs to Lenny Bruce around 1950 or so (Buckley started recording about 1940). In the process, he singlehandedly invented the language of the Beat Generation, and introduced Jack Kerouac to stream of consciousness poetry, Allen Ginsberg to free-form rhyme, and cheered on Neal Cassady as he also created a unique variation on what it was to be an American Beat. Neal never wrote anything, as near as I can remember; he was just the quiet center around which everyone else kept writing, and doing, and evolving, using him for their inspiration.
