Fresh Air: Nicholas LaClair

I know it’s been two months since the last update — with work and ministry increasing by the bucketload, this site got left by the wayside. No excuses there.

The evolution of photography has been nothing short of miraculous, considering how technological advancements and downward-spiralling costs of entry-level DSLRs have effectively levelled the playing field for amateurs. Therefore it should come as no surprise that with the hyperconnectivity of the internet, a plethora of digital photos, good and bad alike, have also pervaded all known social media spaces. Ideas no longer remain new or unique, but have instead evolved or devolved, assimilated into the digital consciousness, regurgitated, transformed, sometimes no longer carrying even a vestige of its original self.

Photography, for example, and like design, has undergone similar change. Techniques that took hours in the darkroom and years of experience to properly execute can now be easily simulated by your average adolescent armed with a smattering of Photoshop skills and ninja Googling; what remains somewhat resistant to that sort of digital tweaking, however, is that innate knack to compose and craft more than a photo, but a story: a photo by itself may be visually appealing, made possible by any number of elements (clothes/pose/location/etcetera), but storytelling itself is a skill, a gift honed through discipline, unrestricted by its medium, be it photography, film, or prose.

Maybe I’ve been jaded or worn down by the cynics that permeate every strata of our modern society, but a photo has to be more than just good-looking; a photo, like a story, has to say something. A girl in her knickers taking a self-portrait with a vintage camera is all well and good to the throngs looking through tumblr and whatnot, but where is the story in that? Where is the magic, the  finesse, the silent gasps of awe?

All images by Nicholas LaClair.

Massively Multiplayer Offline Gaming: Dragon Quest IX

Outside the giant Yodobashi-Akiba department store in the Akihabara district, hundreds of gamers gather each day, crowdsourcing the hunt for rare creatures and virtual treasure.

They stand, packed together in a cordoned-off area reserved for them, as store employees attempt to keep the sidewalk clear, ushering the players behind safety barriers. Everyone is holding a Nintendo DS and playing this year’s hottest new game: Dragon Quest IX.

It’s a cartoony, easy-to-master role-playing game about grand adventures, but these players aren’t off slaying dragons. They’re swapping character data to meet other avatars and quite possibly collect valuable treasures.

Call it a massively multiplayer offline game

Outside the giant Yodobashi-Akiba department store in the Akihabara district, hundreds of gamers gather each day, crowdsourcing the hunt for rare creatures and virtual treasure.

They stand, packed together in a cordoned-off area reserved for them, as store employees attempt to keep the sidewalk clear, ushering the players behind safety barriers. Everyone is holding a Nintendo DS and playing this year’s hottest new game: Dragon Quest IX.

It’s a cartoony, easy-to-master role-playing game about grand adventures, but these players aren’t off slaying dragons. They’re swapping character data to meet other avatars and quite possibly collect valuable treasures.

Call it a massively multiplayer offline game.

From Why Tokyo Crowds Can’t Stop Playing Dragon Quest IX.

Another brilliant article from WIRED, which is incisive, informative and compelling. I love the term ‘crowdsourcing’ — which is decidedly old hat in the social media sphere — as the notions of harnessing the power of the collective presents the limitless potential in any endeavour, whether it’s finding a solution or creative brainstorming, with Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency being one such example.

Fishbulb

Looking at this makes me wonder if I can do the same thing.. won’t the fish have to be really tiny?

Lego Ceramics

Vinicius Zarpelon’s Lego Ceramics. If only we could buy them.

When Things Are Good Enough

all photos by Kenji Aoki. Lego sculptures by Nathan Sawaya & Michael Psiaski

Well, in short, technology happened. The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they’re actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as “high-quality.”

And it’s happening everywhere. As more sectors connect to the digital world, from medicine to the military, they too are seeing the rise of Good Enough tools like the Flip. Suddenly what seemed perfect is anything but, and products that appear mediocre at first glance are often the perfect fit.

The good news is that this trend is ideally suited to the times. As the worst recession in 75 years rolls on, it’s the light and nimble products that are having all the impact—exactly the type of thing that lean startups and small-scale enterprises are best at.

Another great piece from WIRED about the Good Enough Revolution. Which I think is completely true. I have to say the Lego sculptures are amazing and a brilliant idea.

Read the full article here. Via nic.

Archaeologists of the Impossible: Planetary

Finally, Planetary #27 is out in October. Planetary is a comic unlike most: it’s about explorers and adventures and the secret mysteries of the world. It’s about the drawing a common thread linking pulp fiction, comics, novels and the fantastical, larger than life characters in their pages and fuelling them with imagination and the sense of wonder we increasingly seem to lack.

These stories draw you right in. They breathe something marvellous in you — and you can’t help but be taken up along with it.

Check out the preview pages here.

rockstar by soon lee

We love shoes. And we love casual footwear of the plimsole or sneaker variety. There’s simply something liberating and magical about throwing on a favourite dress and sneakers for your weekend adventures. Pretty and ready for anything. After all, there are places to go and things to see.

And we found the idea wrapped around our heads obstinately. Because sometimes we envy the boys and their sneaker wonderlands – they step into a shop and it’s filled with canvas and rubber that they might like.

We’d like that too, we find our inner voice saying. But we want it different. There’d be casual footwear and there’d be pretty clothes to match them with. There’d be books, magazines and our favourite music. Knickknacks to fiddle with, people to observe and things to discover. A place our canvas-shod selves would be glad to hang around in every weekend.

And then we wondered, why not?

– the proprietors @ rockstar

Sharon & Wei Loong of Haji Lane cult fave soon lee have expanded their burgeoning fashion empire with rockstar, located at the 3rd floor in Cineleisure. I was asked by Sharon to take photos of their new store before it opened earlier this month, but due to some unexpected scheduling difficulties I wasn’t able to. Not that I would’ve made that much of a difference — I think these photos she posted look more than gorgeous enough!

I haven’t been to the store yet — which I attribute to my aversion of crowds and Orchard Road in general — but I do think the concept is a breath of fresh air. Forget gladiator sandals that look like Russell Crowe’s hand-me-downs, the Louboutins or the Jimmy Choos, or the ungainly wedge (I have a preternatural bias against them — do not attempt to dissuade me of my opinion. You will fail); sneakers are sexy. Give me a socially responsible TOMS-wearing girl, anytime.

Garth Ennis On 2000AD

Finally, there’s the best bit of all, to me the greatest moment in comics history: part 22 of The Apocalypse War. Having fought a losing battle against the invaders, seen half of Mega-City One destroyed, massacred collaborators and euthanised the critically wounded, Dredd has led an elite team of Judges into an East-Meg missile silo. Following one of the best action sequences I’ve ever read in a comic, the Judges find themselves unable to gain access to the operations room, until Dredd simply bangs on the door with his pistol and shoots the curious halfwit who opens it point-blank. Our boys storm the ops room and seal the door. Anderson, the telepath (and only volunteer in the Apocalypse Squad- no peacenik cosmic wandering in those days) pulls the launch codes out of the silo commander’s mind. The nukes are targeted on East-Meg One. “Please, Dredd”, begs the commander, “There are half a billion people in my city–half a billion human beings! You can’t just wipe them out with the push of a button!” And Dredd doesn’t hesitate, not even for a second.

“Can’t I?”

He can and he does. I still think about that today; what it meant about the character, and about the comic I was reading (aged 12). Even now I don’t know if Dredd was right or if he was wrong. It was the only way to win, to avoid the further slaughter and enslavement of his own people–but it was genocide. It was moral courage on an almost unimaginable level–but it was appalling. In the end, it was a dilemma not unlike those faced by a number of good and bad men in our own history, and if I had to sum it up in one line, I’d say this: what are you prepared to do when there isn’t any easy way out?

And that, I think, is why I’ve never been able to care about Batman, or Wolverine, or Iron Man… or any of them, really. Not because of what characters like that would or wouldn’t do, but because their publishers would never have the courage to have them written into such a situation.

– Garth Ennis, from Bleeding Cool.

When your fave writer speaks, you listen. It’s stuff to think about — and to remember — that you write what you know, or what you know to be true to the characters you write about. It may a bit cliche to talk about it like that, but sometimes we forget that we can’t pander to political correctness for the sake of sacrificing authenticity; if we do so we forsake any form of credibility or respect as a writer. Might as well just go ahead and become an ST journalist.

Keep it real, friends.

Marvel Anime: Iron Man & Wolverine

From Warren Ellis:

This is the test animation for the IRON MAN anime series I’m writing, produced for the south east Asian market. Note test animation: it’s intended to show off the style of the piece only. Nothing in here reflects the actual content, just the design and the aesthetic and the animation. The only character in this piece that is in the actual series is Iron Man himself, okay?

Marvel Anime is a collaboration with Madhouse (Trigun, Chobits, Claymore) and written by Warren Ellis.

Watch the Marvel Anime Iron Man teaser trailer here. It’s pretty sweet, but the Japanese are the originals at mecha-lovin’, so the old tin can gets the treatment he deserves.

There’s another one for Wolverine, but I’m not a fan of his mullet and the fighting style is way off base; I’m still interested in seeing how it develops, though. Ah well, the writing should be good enough, I suppose.

I <3 You Online

Quirky and catchy little ditty by Rocky and Balls about virtual love on Facebook.

Watch I Heart You Online here.

“I want to be in your profile picture
I want to be a permanent fixture
On your wall
You’re so beautiful

I want to be in your profile status
Feature in the place where you update us
Maybe then I’ll have you in mine
I heart you online

I can see from your information
You like japanese animation
And stir-fry
Well so do I

I’ve read the books that you love reading
I must say you’re quite appealing
Maybe you could poke me some time!
I heart you online”