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Archives for May 2012

Readymade Nomenclature: Gaslight / Gaslighting

No this is not an Ed Ruscha painting. This magnificent opening film title still comes to us courtesy of Christian Annyas’ The Movie Stills Collecting Corporation. The 1944 mystery-thriller was Directed by George Cukor, produced by Arthur Hornblow Jr., screenplay by John Van Druten, Walter Reisch and John L. Balderston. The movie featured Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Dame May Whitty, and an 18-year-old Angela “Murder She Wrote” Lansbury in her screen debut. I was of course drawn to this by the visual, but stumbled into an incredible etymology in the process of researching the film. It turns out the the term “gaslight” as been co-opted by clinical and research psychologists to describe “efforts to manipulate someone’s sense of reality.”

Here is an excerpt of the origins of the term from Wikipedia:

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.

The term “gaslighting” comes from the play Gas Light and its film adaptations. In those works a character uses a variety of tricks to convince his spouse that she is crazy, so that she won’t be believed when she reports strange things that are genuinely occurring, including the dimming of the gas lamps in the house (which happens when her husband turns on the normally unused gas lamps in the attic to conduct clandestine activities there). Since then, it has become a colloquial expression that is now also used in clinical and research literature.

The term derives from the 1938 stage play Gas Light (originally known as Angel Street in the United States), and the 1940 and 1944 film adaptations. The plot concerns a husband who attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of their environment, and insisting that she is mistaken or misremembering when she points out these changes. The title stems from the husband’s subtle dimming of the house’s gas lights, which she accurately notices and which the husband insists she’s imagining.

First benefit of privatizing space: better names!

An article by Clara Moskowitz on MSNBC’s website (Dragon, Merlin: At SpaceX, ‘the rule is, names must be cool’) discusses the great leap forward in naming that has occurred now that SpaceX is going where NASA cannot: space, and the land of cool names.

A fire-breathing “Dragon” flew atop a “Falcon” that was granted its powers by “Merlin.” Though the scene could be out of a fantasy novel, it is also literally true.

On Friday, a robotic spacecraft called Dragon docked at the International Space Station three days after launching on a Falcon 9 rocket driven by nine Merlin engines. The mission is a test flight for commercial company SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.), which became the first company ever to send a private spaceship to the space station.

Though many pieces of SpaceX  hardware have fantastical monikers, company spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham said they weren’t all planned to fit a theme.

“They are named independently, the rule is, names must be cool,” Grantham told Space.com.

SpaceX’s billionaire founder and chief designer Elon Musk has said that he named his spacecraft Dragon after the fictional creature “Puff the Magic Dragon” in the song by Peter, Paul and Mary. According to Musk, he chose the name because at the time he started the company in 2002, some critics considered his space goals fantastical.

Falcon 9 and its smaller sibling booster Falcon 1 are named in honor of the Millennium Falcon spacecraft flown by Han Solo in the sci-fi classic film “Star Wars,” Musk has said.

The rocket’s Merlin engines may be allusions to the wizard Merlin of Arthurian legend.

Here is a list of SpaceX’s equipment names:

  • Falcon (rocket)
  • Merlin (rocket engines)
  • Dragon (capsule)
  • DragonEye (a navigation sensor)
  • Draco (rocket thrusters — after the constellation for Dragon, and the Harry Potter antagonist Draco Malfoy)
  • CUCU (pronounced “cuckoo”– stands for “COTS Ultra High Frequency Communication Unit”)
  • Kestrel (upper stage rocket engine, a name of several species of birds in the falcon genus)
  • Red Dragon (Mars lander concept)
  • Grasshopper (reusable launch vehicle (RLV) — under development)

Compare those names to some of NASA’s generic naming efforts:

  • International Space Station
  • Space Shuttle
  • Skylab
  • Space Launch System (SLS) (a new rocket under development)
  • Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) (a new capsule under development)

To be fair, NASA has had some good names in the past, though they often leaned on  Greek (Apollo, Gemini) or Roman (Mercury, Saturn) mythology, which tends to be overused in many industries, with a few general mytho-poetic names (Atlantis, Columbia) thrown in for good measure. Other than those examples, NASA falls into the trap of most government agencies when they do naming, in that they feel compelled to convey patriotic or historic significance, great importance, and not risk offending anybody. That mentality has lead to a bunch of mild, OK-but-uninspired names like Pioneer, Voyager, Spirit, Opportunity, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour, Mariner, Pathfinder, and Odyssey, the last one being the name of a minivan, which can’t help its cool factor.

SpaceX, welcome to outer space. As a Pioneer of non-governmental extra-terrestrial branding, we hope you Endeavour to seize this Opportunity to be a true Pathfinder, and in the Spirit of Discovery, continue to be a Challenger brand Voyager on your epic Mariner Odyssey across the cosmos.

Wildwood Flower / I’ll Twine ‘Mid the Ringlets by The Carter Family

I have been feasting all day on the Carter Family “Wildwood Flower” compilation. The album contains 25 songs recorded for RCA and Decca from 1927-1938. It features the original crew of A.P. on vocals, Maybelle on vocals, guitar, autoharp, and Sara on vocals, guitar, autoharp. Sadly there is no film on youtube of the RCA/Decca performances, but this clip (from the 1950s?) with Maybelle, Helen, June Carter, and Anita Carter will do nicely. The original title of “Wildwood Flower” was “I’ll Twine ‘Mid the Ringlets.” The song was written in 1860 by Maud Irving and Joseph Philbrick Webster. (RIP Doc. Keep on the sunny side.) Here are the opening few lines as sung by the Carters.

Oh, I’ll twine with my mingles and waving black hair,
With the roses so red and the lilies so fair,
And the myrtle so bright with the emerald dew,
The pale and the leader and eyes look like blue

“The Archive” of Paul Mawhinney, by Sean Dunne

The Archive is a short video of Paul Mawhinney and his record collection. “I have given my life to this, but I have to give it up” This is about one million albums and about a million and a half singles. The Record-Rama. “And I have a had problems with all the kids, first of all just imagine this, they move the music by computer then they chop off the highs, they chop off the lows, and then they compress everything. How could that possibly be equal to the open sound you get on a record?”

The interesting mystery of doubt and unknowing

“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. […] I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose.”
~Richard Feynman

Reduced Ceiling and Visibility / Atmospheric Conditions That Strangle Up My Mind

Steamer W.E. Fitzgerald
Image courtesy of the The Marine Historical Society of Detroit and the Matt Miner Collection.

A bright (bright), bright (bright) sun-shiny summer day in San Francisco and my mind is back aboard a 400 foot frozen in lake boat (For example: The obstinate, stubborn and defiant W. E. Fitzgerald 1906 – 1971 stoically portrayed above). This account of Ernest (“so here’s to you you articulate dead fisherman”) Hemingway writing about Paris when in Michigan and writing about Michigan when in Paris always strikes a chord with me. Is there a word, name, term or phrase for this phenomena other than homesickness? Or as Dylan wrote “to be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again.”

Writing about Michigan

Hemingway would for the rest of his life make references to Michigan and his youth. In A Moveable Feast he describes writing about Michigan while sitting in Paris cafes in the twenties. In True at First Light he remembers from Africa the sweet taste of cider pressed at Horton Bay and in Islands in the Stream the lead character is asked when he had been most happy. He recounted days at the lake as a boy. Clearly Hemingway might have physically left Michigan but its memories never left him.

Source: Clarke Historical Library
Image Source: The Marine Historical Society of Detroit

Cooking Stew In The Bunker With Neko Case

necko_case
Photo: Jason Creps.

Steve Inskeep interviewed Neko Case on NPR’s Morning Edition this moring, Birth Of An Album: In The Studio With Neko Case. Below is the text teaser for the interview.

In the months ahead, Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep will check in from time to time as singer-songwriter Neko Case creates the follow-up to her 2009 album Middle Cyclone. In the first installment, we listen in to a song that’s not quite finished, not quite recorded, not even quite written. First, Case has to learn what the song is.

“That song is kind of just an ambient thought process,” Case says. “I don’t really know what the song’s gonna do yet, so that’s kind of the best description I have of it, I think.”

There are people who go into the studio and know exactly what they want to hear. To that, Case says, “I’m always in awe of those people.” Along with her band mates, she’s wrestled with the song in rehearsals in Georgia, and then as part of an 18-day recording session at a studio in Tucson, Ariz.

‘There’s A Lot Of Inner Conflict Going On’

One phrase lingers in the not-quite-finished song: “Where did I leave that fire?” Case says it’s about “just not feeling yourself, in a not-so-good way.

“I’m kind of just figuring out the themes now of the record,” Case says. “So there’s a lot of — I feel like every word I say is gonna sound super-cliche, but there’s a lot of inner conflict going on.”

“Is that always the case when you’re writing?” Inskeep asks.

“No, I’ve never worked on a record where I couldn’t recognize the songs when I went to rehearse them,” Case says. “I didn’t know really who the person was who wrote them, and it’s been interesting, for sure — terrifying sometimes, but interesting, to say the least.”

Case still doesn’t know what the song is by the end of the day. “But that’s OK — I’m all right with that,” she says. “Because when they’re not done, the songs, they’re like little nuclear reactors that are throbbing in your suitcase. And you’re like, ‘When’s that thing gonna go off? Is it just gonna die out? Is it just gonna poison the groundwater? What is that thing doing in there?'”

Making Stew

Maybe it’s just a matter of getting something out. “I have a real dog-like mentality, in that it’s like, ‘Where is my next meal coming from? Am I ever gonna eat again? Will I ever write another song again? Will anyone show up for tour?'” Case says. “I think it comes from being really poor as a kid, where you’re like, ‘OK, gotta figure out how to get some cases of stew in the basement, because clearly there’s gonna be a long winter ahead and I’ll never get a job.’ I don’t know. It’s my survivalist mentality. Or dog mentality.”

By the end of the 18 days in Tucson, perhaps there was a little bit of stew left in the basement. “There was stew in the bunker,” Case says. “I felt like, ‘OK, I can breathe a little bit easy. There’ll be something to eat come winter.'”

Neko Case says she’s not yet done with that song: She needs to add some guitar, and she’ll re-record the vocals. We’ll listen to the creative process in the coming months on Morning Edition as that, and other songs, come alive.

Salesman by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin

Before An American Family (1973), The Real World (1992), Road Rules (1994), True Life (1998), Making the Band (2001), Project Greenlight (2001), American Chopper (2003), American Casino (2004), American Hot Rod (2004), Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County (2004), Dog Whisperer (2004), The Real Housewives of Orange County (2006), The Real Housewives of New Jersey (2009), The Real Housewives of Atlanta (2008), Ice Road Truckers (2007), Jersey Shore (2009) or American Pickers (2010), there was Salesman (1968). Featuring big, beefy, gin-soaked, topcoat-wearing, caddy-wielding bible salesmen like Jamie “The Rabbit” Baker, Paul “The Badger” Brennan, Raymond “The Bull” Martos and Charles “The Gipper” McDevitt. There are some wonderfully candid scenes and it is perhaps one of the most lifelike films (in pace, tenor and tone) that I have ever seen. The Maysles-Zwerin team are very, very patient observers, and they must have literally become flies on the wall to have captured the emotional nudity contained in this very empathetic film. There is no hint of the filmmakers either leading or directing the participating characters into “behaving,” “acting” or “performing for the cameras.” The dramatic (unscripted) rise and fall of many of the characters’ fortunes are in fact in the hands of a higher power and/or fate depending on your personal beliefs. Either way its a powerful reality and enjoyable to watch from a safe distance.

From the Criterion Collection: “A landmark American documentary, Salesman captures in vivid detail the bygone era of the door-to-door salesman. While laboring to sell a gold-embossed version of the Good Book, Paul Brennan and his colleagues target the beleaguered masses—then face the demands of quotas and the frustrations of life on the road. Following Brennan on his daily rounds, the Maysles discover a real-life Willy Loman, walking the line from hype to despair.”

Lightweight Giant: Mathias Bengtsson’s “Spun”

Mathias Bengtsson - Spun bench
Mathias Bengtsson, Spun, 2005/2012. Dimensions variable. Carbon fiber.

From a story today on Co.DESIGN: In his Spun series from 2002, Danish designer Mathias Bengtsson created “a series of benches and chairs woven from super lightweight carbon fiber. Each piece weighs about two pounds (the lightest furniture ever produced!) thanks to a low-cost industrial fiber spinning technique used by aerospace engineers.” The Co.DESIGN story continues:

A new show at Industry Gallery in D.C. is exciting new interest in Spun, even though the series was designed a decade ago. Why? Because the curators of the show asked Bengtsson to weave 12 Spun benches into a single sinuous tube that spirals around the gallery in a figure eight. Since each bench weighs only a few pounds, the mega-bench doesn’t weigh more than 11 or 12 pounds. And while it may not look structurally sound, it is: visitors are welcome to relax where it touches down on the gallery floor.

“The pattern of the fibre is designed to produce maximum strength from minimum material–only 20% of the surface is carbon,” Bengtsson told Design Museum. Carbon fiber is notoriously expensive (think road bikes or climbing gear). That’s because it’s usually made by hand. The difference here is that Bengtsson is using an industrial fabrication technique in which a robot arm spins around two rotating discs, pulling a thread of carbon into a form dictated by a 3-D model. The final piece is then cured in a kiln, sealing its shape in place. It’s how NASA rapid prototypes things, and it’s far quicker and less expensive than handmaking carbon fiber objects.

From space to your living room, just one example of advanced technology that NASA begat. What other potentially amazing future technological advances might we miss out on if we continue to shortchange space exploration in the name of crashing budgets here on earth?

Sources: Co.DESIGN | Mathias Bengtsson
Exhibition: INDUSTRY announces SPUN: An Installation by Mathias Bengtsson, May 12 – June 29, 2012, Washington D.C.