A short Story created by Random Word Generators and AI

In a fearless Setting, garrulous Basics smiled. Not a little bit, but very happily. "Well, you have, on one of your teeth, been taped a part of a CD label for one of those putrid dreck known as Cool Vibrations Records. Right?" "This is it!" A blossom of excitement in his voice. "Not these nasty slip - the - card - in - and - snicker - snicker ones, this is the real deal. Cool Vibrations. The world is full of crap, but they put out the good stuff." Well, she didn't even bother to reply to that. She was too busy staring at the small squares of paper stuck to her tooth. "Do I really look like that kind of person, all green and forlorn?" And indeed, her features had lost their earlier cheer, and were worn, drawn and bored. "Just follow me," he said, standing up and heading for the door. "Be at the meeting place in five minutes." Somehow, he was already there when she got there. She was struck, as she ran into him, by the fact that she was wearing sneakers and he was not. A few minutes later, he reappeared with two other people, one of whom she recognized as someone she had come across before, in a sort of "scrapper" situation, and whose name was Ripley. In the other she was only vaguely aware of: Dr. Blits.

[the chemical Dr Blitz appraised the separate Ripley, who was endangering an Orangutan. "There's a tiger," Blitz muttered as he took one, and I met Trask, who appeared at the far end of the room, looking pained. He held a cage of huge, slavering beasts. "Ripley, don't-" "I have to help this poor girl." Dr. Blitz's mouth twisted wryly as he turned to Blitz and his new captives. "We must quarantine her." "What about you?" the old man asked. "You're safe in there." "I... I'd like to see what you have to do." I glanced at Trask. He nodded slightly. "What do you need?" he asked. "And don't try to get out before you do what you're going to do." "Don't you want to see it?" I asked the doctor. "I'm sure she'd be... willing." "No, please. If I do see it, I'll be here till the end of time. Don't spoil my rest, please. I'd rather go out of my mind in a sane way than go mad screaming." Dr. Blitz took off his coat and secured it around Ripley's throat.] As she started talking to them, they drifted off to one side, and she began to hear distant noises. Almost directly behind her, under the basket where her head was resting, she could feel a vibration begin to grow, and she realized that it was going to get worse, much worse. As the sound got louder, she knew that, somewhere, a mechanical alarm was going off. And soon... "There!" he shouted, pointing to the figures ahead of them, ahead of them at a fast walk. At a casual glance, it might have been a married couple, walking down the sidewalk. But she knew better. In the window above their heads were two number plates, each bearing a single letter. The [letters were S & C] "Congratulations," the elderly, white - haired man said, his blue eyes sparkling. "You have succeeded in the Great Quest. Now, you must make the final and most vital decision before you can enjoy the rest of your blessed life." I must be dreaming, she thought. I must be really tired, because it sure doesn't seem that way at all. She didn't care about anything. She didn't even seem to have to choose a name. With those words, the young woman vanished. But she did stay in that room long enough to laugh so hard that her head shook like a rag doll, which was saying a lot, she knew. She He nodded, and then he got back to work. He made one last name - less choice: he called his ship X8 - 225 and told it to "Go and look for her." Almost as an afterthought, he pressed the button to "Ready the probes." Al's [Done for Now!]

//The opening Sentence and the middle interlude were created by combining words from these 3 sites:

https://www.randomlists.com/random-adjectives?dup=false&qty=2

http://thewisepath.org/verb/

http://www.desiquintans.com/articles/noungenerator.php

https://app.inferkit.com/generate created the story text//

Inspiration & Synchronicity

OK so I haven't written here in OMG 3 years.  I feel like I've meandered off the path I was off chasing rabbits, undergoing some major changes of camouflage & seeking others like myself*...

Re-immersing myself in my hunt for technological solutions to our growing social unease; the cause of my re-immersion?  [Strange how this is still apt even though It's from, yup, 3 years ago!]

I guess COVID-19 is the cause of my latest attempts to kick myself up the butt.  Like many, I have been feeling afraid for my life, and that of those around me (I hastily add to appear less narcissistic).  Like many I have been thinking deeply about what my place is in the world, and like many, I have been in isolation, digging out old hobbies and developing new skills.

So, what drives me?  What am I looking to achieve? What or who inspires me?

Well, I guess I've always felt like an outsider, for one.  That has made me long for a sense of community.  And that is something that the internet, gaming and IT have been held up as exemplars of.

Yet for me the those worlds are still lonely places - perhaps it's me, my self-imposed alienation, perhaps my ADHD mentality, yet I find the existing online community communications methods patchy and fleeting, without warmth and empathy. I am frightened of really expressing myself, because I don't always think in a PC way, and I want to challenge the status quo, but perhaps I'm not stable enough or positively assertive enough to withstand the backlash.

And don't get me started on OL gaming.  OK, I don't actually do any, but this is mostly because I am soo put off by the paradigm that  don't even feel it's worth investigating.  The thing that really upsets me is either  VIOLENCE or VACUOUSNESS - most games which involve group play seem to fall into these two camps - Fortnite or Animal Crossings! Is there nothing deeper out there?

As for IT in general, I feel sad for my father^'s hopes of an online utopia; it feels like technology, our constant reliance on handsets and kindles and laptops and smart fridges, is separating us more and more from the real world, from nature, and from each other.

So that's the moaning part over; what drives me is looking for a solution to these problems - trust, empathy, psychological stability, self-reflectivity, non-violent communication, alienation, separation.  Can we turn the existing paradigm on it's head and create a vision for a more humane, intuitive and hopeful future?

I've just been talking about all this with a housemate: the lack of vision and narrative behind modern politics and political movements, neolithic/bronze age age monument building as team building exercise, how removing a statue doesn't create a sense of achievement, 1960s: the age of optimism including Yippie movement, what are  our technocrats doing with their  money?  I also talked about thee Netflix doocumentary "john was trying to contact aliens", and  the strange absence of signals from other planets, and how the less is out there, the more we  should care for what's here. hopefully I'll expand on these theses later.

I must remind myself also to write about trying to affect subconscious bias with computer games (and the inefficiency of the Implicit Association Test) , and Annalee Newitz' article about fluffiness and Netizenship in this week's 29th August 2020 New Scientist.

*My Chinese birth-year is Tiger, so perhaps you'll get what I mean by that analogy more now ;)

Bientôt l'été

Here's a strange poetic meditation inspired by a opaque french adventure game

Not sure if this is tongue in cheek or not, but it's weirdly beautiful and make we want to play the game too!

Audigraft at OVADA

I'm standing in OVADA's empty warehouse space, buffeted between two sonic installations. Upstairs, snippets of speech, laughter, jingles and electronic twitterings are emitted from an array of tiny, tinny speakers. I'm reminded of 90s samplists like Meat Beat Manifesto (who's use of commercials and public service announcements has been influential) and Scanner (who appropriated private conversation using a CB radio). The artist here, Ben Gwilliam, studies at Oxford Brooke's. It's apocalyptic, deranged and unnerving; the sound of civilisation breaking down. 

The other, constant, rumbling, thunderous noise  comes from an imposing circular tower of cardboard boxes. Walking inside through an opening, the sound is less organic, more fractal; the appearance of thousands of ping pong balls on wires attached to motors create a link to the rumble machines of futurist Luigi Russolo.  Another visitor compared it to a giant hive, invisible workers beavering meaninglessly away, producing nothing but sound.  It's empty, hollow, sinister. Its creator, Zimoun, is from Bern, Switzerland, and is interested in that tension between the natural and mechanical in modern life.

The most inventive and complex of the sound installations is a Lego Technics construction which constantly churns out acid techno. 

The device, built by Alex Allmont, resembles the set of a Sci fi film, rows of gears and moving parts made out of colourful Lego blocks. The hundreds of cogs and mess of wires and chips are plugged into an M303 which was used for tracks like Josh Winks Higher State of Consciousness and Chime by Orbital. Here it creates languidly evolving soundscapes thanks to the mechanisms slowly, almost imperceptibly, twisting its banks of knobs.  It's a clever, whimsical piece, and the sounds it makes are as hypnotic as the colourful, intricate machinery that produces them.

Also in this collection of sound generating devices is a recording of Christina Kubisch's magnetic sound recordings, made with specially doctored magnetic headphones which pick up the constant fluctuation of electromagnetic waves in our environment. Hear you can hear recordings from a bank, "public transport" and a sinister of a security system. Her work can be further explored over the next week by visiting Oxford Brookes  university.

These pieces are part of audiograft, an annual celebration of sonic sculpture and experimental music.

The brothers

I keep meaning to plug "2 brothers", a really sweet and innovative indie game from Denmark (I think!)

It's mythological,y influenced story features two young boys who've lost a mum and fear losing their dad to sickness. They go looking for a cure and along the way have to outwit trolls, ride goats and solve puzzles. The great twist is that the brothers must cooperate in this platform environment, and each brother must be controlled by a user, making it a truly collaborative game.

Whilst mostly free of overt violence it did have some grizzly scenes, however these reflected its Norse storytelling origins. It also had sympathetic female characters who actually had personality and intelligence! Just a shame they didn't allow for two sisters too.

Highly recommended with beautiful scenery, jaw dropping set pieces and some genuinely tense, sad and scary moments.

The city song

Just 'played' the city song on ipad. Designed by endless loops and cfc media labs it's an interactive music video using tweets and a simple game to unlock pictures of an ordinary family. Made me think of my own love, Martine, who's moved back to Oslo. It was a nice break from nutty animal blaring noise and anime graphics. Sent a tweet, so who knows, maybe it'll end up in the game...

are messages in gaming harmful?

"The inherent interactivity of videogames, I believe, makes moral messages more effective, because it’s unto the player in the end to initiate it. Reading a book or interpreting a movie doesn’t quite compare to enacting something yourself, even if it is in a virtual manner."

Read more: http://dispatches.cheatcc.com/597#ixzz2nOYjgX9v 
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives"