June 18th, 2010 by Sydney

Here’s the final cut of my untitled video piece, which was featured in the show Fantasy IRL at the Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery last month.  Enjoy!

“In this piece, I explore the anxiety a person can feel as they come to realize that their fantasies can never be real. The literal breaking-down, peeling back, and deconstructing of the fantasy (in this case, the desire to be a cyborg) is done in a way that is physically painful and stressful, which mirrors the emotional pain and stress one endures as they come to realize their fantasies are unattainable.”

Check out a previous cut here.

December 10th, 2009 by Senna

Kate Bush is one of my favorite outlandish musicians.  Almost as much as Bjork. Wouldn’t it be awesome if she was actually an alien from a theatrical, campy planet? Maybe she’s from the same galaxy as Lady Gaga…FantasyIRL to form intergalactic alliance of aliens turned pop stars!

(directed by Chris Cunningham, who I very much enjoy)

October 30th, 2009 by Sydney

Check out this awesome Vulcan Salute shaped USB-drive.  You can buy it here.

Suggested by mactonnies of Posthuman Blues, Link via nerdcore

October 17th, 2009 by Sydney

This is a series of photographs that I took this last spring.  The project was called Future-Speak, which is also the name of my other blog.  For this project, I conducted a number of shot interviews in the form of questionnaires that asked what people thought the future was going to be like.  From their answers, I gathered a general sense their kind of collective future and produced these seven photographs illustrating what I thought that future looked like.  To accompany the photographs, I made a sound piece which I thought further created a sort of futuristic environment in which the photos could be viewed.  Eventually these photos will be up on my personal website (the one that I never have time to make) as apart of my portfolio.

Listen to the sound here.

September 20th, 2009 by Senna

Extropy, a short film by Johnathan Sanden, is about a geneticist who has found the key formula to stop the aging process so that we can live forever.  Sound remotely familiar to anything coming up?  Uhhh, Mohinder Suresh finding the key formula to give humans supernatural abilities ring a bell?  The season premiere of Heroes is tomorrow night and I am stoked and so grateful that fellow blogger Sydney got me into this show.  We <3 Sylar! Lol jk…

Check out the preview for Entropy.

Extropy – Trailer from Imagine Science Films on Vimeo.

Thanks to i09 for their reviews on films screened at the Imagine Film Festival in NYC.  Read the whole post here.

September 3rd, 2009 by Amanda

Basically, the coolest thing ever.

Steampunk Home says:

I don’t know what it is, but media rooms and submarines seem to go together. Here’s one from New Zealand, sent by Paul and featured in stuff.co.nz.

In the rusting interior of the submarine, which appears to have beached on a deserted island, Eyre has all the creature comforts reclining chairs, a three-metre big-screen TV and a top-notch surround-sound system.

Customwood has been sprayed with concrete and painted to resemble rusting steel beams, while plastic sheets have been melted to give the impression of bent steel ripped apart when the submarine hit an island. Speakers emit sonar and ocean sounds throughout the 12-metre by 5.5m room.”

There’s also a video tour!

August 31st, 2009 by Amanda

Lego playsets that never were, but should have been.

Now presenting: Dune.

Thank you MAKE Magazine.

August 9th, 2009 by Amanda

If this doesn’t embody fantasy in real life, I don’t know what does.

io9 says:

“If Star Wars Was Real retells the history of the 20th century with some added players, offering up a Photoshopped-fantasia of nerditry and “What If”s. Click through to see more.”

Read More »

July 31st, 2009 by Amanda

We were fortunate enough to take some footage of Flynn’s arcade and Tron Light Cycle at Comic-Con this past weekend. Can I just say, I am so excited that Daft Punk is doing the soundtrack for Tron Legacy.

Here is the perimeter of the arcade:

Here is the Tron Light Cycle. I could have stared at it for hours:

And this one…I have no words:

July 29th, 2009 by Amanda

Shared Worlds says:

“At Shared Worlds students create fantasy and science fiction worlds to fuel their writing, art, and game development. But even the strangest made-up place can have some real-world spark. Our own planet is often surreal, alien, and beautifully strange–and cities tend to focus our fascination with these qualities. Sometimes the exoticness comes from finding the unexpected where we live, and sometimes it comes from visiting a place that’s foreign to us. Everyone also has a different idea of what “fantasy” or “science fiction” looks like in real places.

So we decided to ask five top SF-fantasy authors – Elizabeth Hand, Nalo Hopkinson, Ursula K. LeGuin, China Miéville, and Michael Moorcock –the following question: “What’s your pick for the top real-life fantasy or science fiction city?” “

#1 – Elizabeth Hand – Reykavik, Iceland

#2 – Nalo Hopkinson – Kingston, Jamaica

#3 – Ursula K. LeGuin – Venice, Italy

#4 – China Miéville – London, England

#5 – Michael Moorcock – Marrakesh, Morocco

Quite frankly, I’m surprised that not one person said Tokyo. Hmm…too cliche? Click here to see in detail what each author had to say about each city.

June 26th, 2009 by Sydney

io9‘s Annalee Newitz says:

“Among the many things about Jackson that caught the public’s imagination in the 1990s was the way he turned his body into a kind of science fiction story. He became an enhanced human, using plastic surgery and pharmaceuticals to change his face and seemingly his race as well. He became whiter than most white people, and his pale bandaged skin became his trademark.

Jackson was a post-human celebrity, and nowhere was this more obvious than in his video “Black or White” (directed by John Landis). Once again, Jackson turned to one of the greatest minds in science fiction to help with the video. He used the morphing software used by James Cameron for The Abyss and Terminator 2 to create a memorable and oft-copied scene where dozens of people’s faces morph into each other, streaming through different racial identities, ages, and genders with an uncanny ease.”

Michael Jackson was living, breathing proof that if you’re driven enough (and you have the resources), you can really be anyone, or thing, you want to be.  From his body transformations to his fantastical music videos and his deep love for the kind of dreams most abandon after childhood, he was a man that truly sought to create and live out fantasy irl.

Michael Jackson’s Science Fictional Life

June 15th, 2009 by Sydney

Over at GEEK DAD, Curtis Silver recently posted a list of tips on how to raise kids to be trekkies.  My personal favorite? Tip #2: After dinner every night have a family discussion concerning the positives and negatives of the Prime Directive. God, I wish my parents raised me this way! Read the full article here.

(Photo from Star Trek: The Original Seires, Season 3, Episode 4, “And the Children Will Lead.” Watch it here.)

June 6th, 2009 by Senna

Hello again!  Senna here reporting for duty!

A couple months ago, I became really into investigating the feminine, or rather erasure of femininity in cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic Anime and manga.  I wrote a research essay about it, and its up on Blogspot.  If you are interested, check it out!

“The Animated Neo Feminine”

Also, a great book to check out that informed many of my thoughts is Susan Napier’s “Anime From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle.”  It’ll give you a cultural perspective on the social relevance of  Anime today.  Sydney and I both own it. It’s a great resource.  Enjoy!

♥