el cráneo de lobo (10.27.09, brooklyn, ny. mamiya rz67, 65mm@f5.6, 120 fuji provia 400 speed, slide).
By the inimitable S. Stratodrive.
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My name is Mills Baker; I write about love, culture, art, religion, mental illness, philosophy, memory, politics and the rather random.
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Your search for stratodrive returned 16 posts.
![“Phosphenes,” from Andrew Coulter Enright.
The inimitable S. Stratodrive informed me that the phenomenon in which one one sees spiralling, luminescing mosaics and masses of ghostly color when one presses one’s hands into one’s eyes is “an entropic phenomenon called a ‘pressure phosphene’ and it’s a result of stimulating your retinal ganglion cells.” He also shared that it’s sometimes called “prisoner’s cinema” by those in the darkness of jail.
The stimulation of these cells need not be manual: phosphenes can also result from magnetic fields, radiation, drugs, standing too quickly, or other conditions. Amazingly, astronauts report seeing phosphenes, presumably due to the radiation they encounter in space.
This is evidently because the high-energy particle radiation in space, blocked for us by our atmosphere, activates the cells responsible for detecting light; while I initially assumed this meant that, in a sense, we see such radiation (in a beautiful kaleidoscopic way), another author suggests a different explanation:
These ionizing radiation-induced free radicals generate chemiluminescent photons from lipid peroxidation, which are absorbed by the photoreceptor chromophores, modify[ing] the rhodopsin molecules (bleaching) and start[ing] the photo-transduction cascade resulting in the perception of phosphene lights.
I’m sure Jack can comment further, but I would note that (1) I think phosphenes are beautiful and, in their demonstration of the lower-order processes of our perceptions, fascinating; (2) I learned the word “psychoplasticity” while reading about this; and (3) the image above is a composite of photographs of lightstick chemicals poured into a toilet; I was searching for representations of phosphenes, which I’d like to see, and it was the best I found.
Update: be sure to read the King of Joy’s excellent corrections and expansions on this subject, on his fine site or in the comment below. Thanks, Ben!](http://17.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kqpkqdTBYR1qz6ivco1_400.jpg)
“Phosphenes,” from Andrew Coulter Enright.
The inimitable S. Stratodrive informed me that the phenomenon in which one one sees spiralling, luminescing mosaics and masses of ghostly color when one presses one’s hands into one’s eyes is “an entropic phenomenon called a ‘pressure phosphene’ and it’s a result of stimulating your retinal ganglion cells.” He also shared that it’s sometimes called “prisoner’s cinema” by those in the darkness of jail.
The stimulation of these cells need not be manual: phosphenes can also result from magnetic fields, radiation, drugs, standing too quickly, or other conditions. Amazingly, astronauts report seeing phosphenes, presumably due to the radiation they encounter in space.
This is evidently because the high-energy particle radiation in space, blocked for us by our atmosphere, activates the cells responsible for detecting light; while I initially assumed this meant that, in a sense, we see such radiation (in a beautiful kaleidoscopic way), another author suggests a different explanation:
These ionizing radiation-induced free radicals generate chemiluminescent photons from lipid peroxidation, which are absorbed by the photoreceptor chromophores, modify[ing] the rhodopsin molecules (bleaching) and start[ing] the photo-transduction cascade resulting in the perception of phosphene lights.
I’m sure Jack can comment further, but I would note that (1) I think phosphenes are beautiful and, in their demonstration of the lower-order processes of our perceptions, fascinating; (2) I learned the word “psychoplasticity” while reading about this; and (3) the image above is a composite of photographs of lightstick chemicals poured into a toilet; I was searching for representations of phosphenes, which I’d like to see, and it was the best I found.
Update: be sure to read the King of Joy’s excellent corrections and expansions on this subject, on his fine site or in the comment below. Thanks, Ben!
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Keith Jarrett - Opening
This live performance is one of the darkest and most overwhelming pieces of Jarrett’s catalog, and is best appreciated at extraordinary volume in pitch blackness; if it can be arranged, rain is appropriate as well; and if one is truly committed, one could do no better than listening to it during a storm at sea. I offer it as partial repayment to S. Stratodrive for his many contributions to my library.
(See here for other Jarrett posts).
I’ve written about Jared S. Stratodrive many times, and once reminisced about the time -long ago- when we knew one another rather well. True to form, he modified the hardware of the Olympus D-395 to take the images above and below.
They seem like miniatures, or stills from US Army footage of nuclear blast tests: model towns constructed by GIs in the New Mexican desert to evaluate the effects of ever-more-powerful atomic explosions on ordinary, fragile human communities.
The tree’s leaves seem like an oncoming avalanche of smoke, dust, and debris overtaking the thin wood walls of the homes: in their suggestion of frozen disaster, these images underscore how violently photography can arrest the kinetic.
(Here).
And yet everything seems so delicate when shrouded in this light. I am reminded again of the quality Heineman’s photos have: the aesthetic of something captured, gently removed from the streaming temporality of life, measured and recorded and tagged, then let go again. I imagine, thinking about it now, that photography and scale-models appeal to me because they are comparable: the deliberation excision of a specific moment or set of dimensions and its careful reproduction.
(Here).
J.S.S. has even offered to help you learn how to do this, should you be so inclined; and if you’re not, you shouldn’t waste his time unless you want to wind up in his massive skull collection, the likes of which I’ve seen in exactly one place besides his apartment.
Cracklin, my favorite food (not to be confused with the song posted by S. Stratodrive called “Crackin,” which is amazing).
We had a nice time at JazzFest, although in my dotage I’ve grown fonder of the food and less inclined to stand in crowds to hear bands perform. There are some fun photos in the set, including many of my good friend Nehemiah, who lived and worked at the ranch with me for a summer and who just returned from his second tour in Iraq, this time in Ramadi embedded with the Iraqi Police.
But the most essential photo is this one, of a single piece of cracklin, which is certainly the great food of human history. It is like a fried cross-section of a pig’s skin, with a world of fat underneath, and it’s an intoxicating, alluring, repellant ecstasy of unhealthy deliciousness.
I see that many online like bacon, and I do too; but bacon is to cracklin what a bottle rocket is to the Big Bang. If you tried to make a meme out of cracklin, it would envelop the universe and bury all matter and energy in its essence. Evidently, FDA rules make it rarer than it used to be, and this has become the only political problem about which I feel pure revolutionary fervor.
Nudawn and S. Stratodrive are my heroes; their excellent and comprehensive and amusing and illuminating responses to this remind me that conversation is preferable to monologue, especially if you happen to have access to people like them. I recommend hers and his highly if you like to create things.
Regarding that: I enjoyed making this with Five; the full, widescreen version is here.
Seeking the Interesting
We say: “I want to be a writer,” or “I want to be a photographer”; or we say: “I want to take interesting photographs,” or “I want to write interestingly,” or “I want to be interesting.” This is itself interesting. What do we really want when we want such things?
I am trying to learn to take interesting or beautiful or otherwise worthwhile photographs (worthwhile meaning to me that they contribute to someone’s sense of reality or life, at any scale: the trivial, the profound, in between; they might be worthwhile in subject, in composition, in meaning, or in some technical aspect).
I am learning very slowly, despite kind advice from many talented acquaintances and substantial family history in photography. Today I drove around looking for things to shoot and, being what S. Stratodrive calls a ‘new jack,’ had as a discretionary mechanism only (1) what has seemed interesting in other, already-taken photographs and (2) the mildest and most banal internal sensibilities.
The immediate question: why am I trying to do this? If I do not already have something interesting to offer, why am I trying to learn how to offer something interesting? Am I not leading the horse with the cart, so to speak? The beginning of creative efforts is always strange in this way: before we can express something, we must sense that there is something we should express, something not otherwise explored; or is this too serious? Might we not simply have fun?
I am reminded of trying to write while in high school: perhaps I didn’t feel a compulsory or innate urge to say things; perhaps I merely wanted to write (to “be a writer”!) and selected things for the purpose; it is inevitable in such circumstances that one’s writing will be contrived, phony, pretentious (of course, mine remains so, but for other reasons now).
As a novice photographer I resort to the cheaper tricks of the form: massive Photoshop edits for color and composition, the exploitation of my subjects for the sake of the pictures, and so on. This seems comparable to me to the use of a thesaurus or the insistence on writing about the themes that automatically resonate with everyone whether or not your treatment is any good.
It is worth wondering what motivates one’s creativity, as the decision to pursue creativity professionally likely entails substantial material privation: if it is not compulsion but desire, not need but want, it is perhaps preferable to secure an ordinary job and make a hobby of your efforts. It worked for Kafka, after all.
I had a musicology professor who said that when he didn’t play the cello for a few hours each day, he felt unwashed; short of that sort of need, what will sustain you when you are hungry and no one wishes to date you in your dull poverty? When I heard him describe his addiction, I realized that dilettantism is preferable to falsified compulsion for me. Indeed, I wish we were more comfortable with the idea of craft rather than art, that there was a cultural sphere for semi-serious art. Is that the Internet?
It is more fun, more amusing, when one accepts the inauthenticity of oneself: a phony photographer trying to be interesting without any damn reason is more tolerable when he can laugh at himself, I hope; and the same should be true for a phony writer. It is all play, after all; perhaps, then, a disclaimer is in order: please know that the author of this site is comfortable with laughter.
Bill Hicks’ “Ninja Bachelor Party.”
In light of his reintroduction to public awareness on Letterman and the fact that S. Stratodrive may ban me from attending his weekly seances should I fail to prove my enthusiasm for Bill Hicks, here is his film treating the story of Clarence Mumford, a Robitussin addict hoping to become a ninja. Produced by and starring Hicks, this movie has several lines that have become part of my ordinary conversational lexicon and probably the best soundtrack I’ve ever heard.
I first saw this on a VHS we found in a dumpster in New Orleans.
S. Stratodrive and I in his “Debating Darkroom,” illuminated by audience flashbulbs moments after he scored the winning point in our argument over whether magneplanars are better than electrostatics.
In honor of RRS’ Mustache Saturday, Fat Manatee’s policeman’s mustache, and Cameronr, I thought I’d link to the strange and amusing essay Rich Cohen wrote on Hitler’s mustache for Vanity Fair, recently included in The Best American Essays 2008.
Called “Becoming Adolf,” the essay includes considerable historical reflection on the evolution of facial hair in politics and the genesis of the “toothbrush mustache” made ruined by Hitler, as well as some notes on Cohen’s experiences wearing the mustache for a week.
You could not wear a Toothbrush mustache after World War II, obviously. Because if you did, you were Hitler. In fact, you could not wear any kind of mustache after the war, because, running from Hitler, you might run into Stalin. Hitler plus Stalin ended the career of the mustache in Western political life. Before the war, all kinds of American presidents wore a mustache and/or beard. You had John Quincy Adams, with his muttonchops. You had Abe Lincoln, whose facial hair, like his politics, was the opposite of Hitler’s: beard full, lip bare. You had James Garfield, who had the sort of vast rabbinical beard into which whole pages of legislation could vanish. You had Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, and Teddy Roosevelt, whose asthma and elephant gun were just a frame for his mustache. You had William Howard Taft—the man wore a Walrus!
The entire essay is worth reading, particularly if you have or are interested in facial hair (and who isn’t?). He includes what he calls (and I note this mainly for Langer and J. Brissenden) a “a theory—my only stab at a Tom Friedman–like, one-phrase-tells-all formulation—which I call “¿Quien es mas macho?”“:
According to this theory, a country led by a man with a mustache is more likely to start a war, and more likely to lose it. Because such a country is certain to value machismo over the nerdy qualities that actually win wars. A macho leader will counter a tank division with a cavalry charge—or promise, on the eve of battle, to drive his enemies into the sea. Such a leader will make some of the same mistakes as Hitler: he will overvalue physical courage; he will call on supernatural forces; he will consider even the smallest skirmish a “test of wills”; worst of all, he will answer the question “How will we win?” with the question “¿Quien es mas macho?”
In the rhetorical war between me and S. Stratodrive, I can only note that the more macho prevailed, and I had to buy his tobacco -a rare blend imported by a man who lives on a boat on the Hudson and speaks no English- for a month.
Do You Know Superdoofus-Stratodrive?
I spent several months living in his apartment building; I say that it was his not because he owned it but because he had a workshop in the basement and an enormous, homemade telescope on the roof beside a brick fireplace and wrought-iron furniture, as well as some rooms on the thirteenth floor with enormous windows, half of which were covered with sheets of gallium foil (he said aluminum foil was for “new jacks”).
He seemed, in other words, to occupy most of the structure, and certainly the places that distinguished it from other apartment buildings.
From the workshop, outside the heavy, bank-vault door next to which I used to crouch while he was working during the late nights, I heard the whistling of machines at high speed, the hissing of molten metals dropped into dark water, hammering, clanking, cursing, laughing.
His telescope, which looked almost like steampunk but had obviously not been designed with any aesthetic in mind, was visible from the street, and passers-by would gape at it while they shuffled through our rather unsafe neighborhood. I only saw him use the considerable firewood he stored on nights when it was colder than thirty-five degrees, and never had the nerve to join him and the motley gang that sat with him, smoking opium, discussing art, and peering at whatever stars his lenses showed despite the ambient light pollution. I did hear gasps, though, mostly from women to whom he spoke rapidly about this or that nebula.
The very few visitors I had would often pepper me with questions about him: who was he? Where had he acquired the range of talents that seemed to place him between the poles of the Renaissance Man and the Navy Seal, the Goethe and the MacGyver?
From his rooms often flashed pulses of light which at first suggested something had gone wrong with several hundred strobe machines, but would later assemble into coherence: he might have been building light displays for installations at the Whitney, the artist behind the artist. He might have been conducting neurological experiments on willing (or unwilling) subjects, in the name of science or kicks.
I never had answers for my visitors, for a simple reason: he terrified me. Not for the reasons he terrified our super, who hated the skull collection and the robotic arms in his house that would gently lift his LPs onto a well-balanced phonograph player with a top-quality stylus (his way, I thought, of making the digital subserviently work for the analog) and the panic room he insisted on building despite the obvious fact that he had never been in a state of panic and probably couldn’t be made to experience even mild concern.
No, he terrified me because I felt deliriously frivolous in his presence. While introducing himself, he was totally friendly: “S. Stratdrive, pleasure. Really? New Orleans? When I was in medical school on a bet, I met a one-armed sadistic surgeon from New Orleans. I don’t want to bore you. Listen: have you seen a rusted astrolabe? I think I left it on one of the landings.”
But I could sense the tension in him of someone near exhaustion with stupidity, and as I ventured a few banal opinions I realized that he was bored, perhaps even cross; I felt that my banality was a form of stupidity to him, and that should I attempt further conversation I might so painfully bore him that he’d have no choice but to act in self defense.
He happened to be wearing a kimono at the time and holding some sort of curved sword, evidently of his own manufacture and bearing his name in a script on its blade, and I thought better of pressing my luck.
From then on, I kept my opinions to myself and acted in a hurry whenever I saw him, although I began to sit at his doors, eavesdrop on his conversations, and record the records he played loudly at night with a small pocket cassette player I found in a dumpster. He had extraordinary taste.
But back to my question: do you know Superdoofus-Stratodrive? If you don’t, I will answer any questions you have about him. For example, he:
- has only lost fights he chose to lose for the experience of loss or for some larger strategic purpose; for example: to bolster further the fragile pride of an enemy so that when he, S. Stratodrive, delivers the coup de grace at a later date it devastates even more than it normally would;
- can make anything out of anything, but only makes things out of the best materials because he’s not some punk show-off trying to impress you, some pathetic magician alchemist who transforms two apples into a television; no: if you want a television, he can make you one, but it’s going to be a fuck of a lot better in brightness, resolution, and aspect ration that “HD,” which he has a lot of contempt for, incidentally, not that he himself owns a TV (preferring a projector which preserves the original intent of the director),
- which is not to say he cannot make things out of two apples or whatever else you have, but he’s not doing it as a parlor trick: only if it’s a fucking emergency;
- has served in every branch of the US military, including the Coast Guard (just to silence those who insist on mocking them, because try mocking the Coast Guard to the face of S. Stratodrive), and the militaries of a few foreign countries, partly for the experience of more and less just types of combat, partly to learn the languages, and partly to score some sweet uniforms
- didn’t take Obama’s phone calls, not because he didn’t like Obama, but because he has a job and a life, and he’d hope Obama would focus on his job and life rather than taking “How’s yer family?” phone calls from S. Stratodrive; because what happened to professionalism and focus? It’s not always a slumber party, life; sometimes you have to get to work
- has killed, but has saved more lives than he’s taken, less out of sentimentality than a sense of dutiful obligation to keep everything going smoothly
I could go on, but you get the drift and I can take questions. I will conclude by noting this: although environmental exposure to S. Stratodrive’s workshop is probably the reason that I am a 28-year-old with emphysema, and although I still wake up terrified at the memory of the night I saw him suction-cupped to my seventeenth-story window, trying some new climbing contraption he whipped up at 3:00 AM, the time I spent near him was the best of my life, and ever since I’ve chosen to live alone.
Snow, from Elle in the Woods and S. Stratodrive at the Elder Street Train Platform.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Last Exit - Crackin.
Naturally, this was posted by Superdoofus-Stratodrive, who added:
“it ain’t just noize or run-of-the-mill free jazz, people. it’s ferocious and odd and dramatic and unbelievably tight at times (recorded at a show in paris, track ripped from vinyl).
hear the opening track of the album here.
they got sonny sharrock on guitar, ron jackson on drums, peter brotzmann on sax (he’s fucking nuts), and bill laswell on bass. fuckin’ outta this world, man.”
I initially didn’t want to reblog this as I imagine that fewer than one percent of people who read this site will find it appealing (although Nudawn listened and noted that this isn’t good for sleeping); but now that I’ve been unable to stop listening to it over and over for an hour, I have no choice.
The sax is amazing.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Superdoofus-Stratodrive posted III from Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band, and discussed in his inimitable fashion the authority with which Terry Riley made such music in the late 1960s:
get ready for some groundbreaking music shit. back in ‘63, riley developed the “time lag accumulator”: a pair of tape recorders connected in series and perpetually regenerating the sounds played into the first machine (he’d been experimenting with tape loops for the decade prior). you’ve heard the sound before; fripp and eno and even lennon (who’s a chump) all loved it and used it. this recording is over a D drone from a synth with riley playing solo sax, which is then fed into the accumulator.
now, riley is a huge fan of raga and studied all aspects thereof, let alone his mathematical understanding of waveforms and the awesome perfection of just intonation and its wolf integers and perfect fifths/fourths, which dates way back to its base in pythagoras’s mathematical work with music.
so, with that level of monumental understanding, you should absolutely listen to this. it’s not “accessible” to everyone. but to lovers of music, it is as essential to know as stockhausen, cage, schoenberg, young, reich, and the rest of them old noizemakerz. and don’t fall asleep to this: you’ll dream new universes. not kidding. ask around.
Not only did Will and I enjoy this immensely, but Superdoofus-Stratodrive has also mentioned The Ice Storm a few times recently, and just for reminding the world of one of the best films I’ve ever seen he earns my loyalty; I’d vote, kill, or die for this man.
Superdoofus-Stratodrive posted the above wonderful footage of Mississippi Fred McDowell playing “Goin’ Down to the River,” as well as some Son House and some Skip James.
N0wak posted a performance of Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase” by just one pianist; reblogged by Filthyphil, it came to the attention of one of my heroes, Superdoofus-Stratodrive, who added some illuminating commentary:
reich is one of the “big four” (young, glass, riley, reich), and this composition helps illustrate why. now, this may not seem all too special (“hay! you play piano with both hands anyway!”), but that’s only because you’ve allowed a mere cursory listen. what is actually going on here will sound somewhat familiar to those who understand how to modulate sinusoidal waveforms binaurally or have at least learned “beat-matching”. this instance, however, involves the pianist attempting to play one piano at a very precise tempo, while simultaneously (and very minutely) increasing the tempo (based upon a sinusoidal timeline) played on the other piano. thusly bringing the two pianos into, and then out of, phase — thereby never achieving actual synchronicity until the 1st note on each piano being played is matched up again, then the performance drops to 8 notes and the cycle starts all over, then again to 4 notes.
it is also worthy to note that this composition is twenty minutes long in its entirety and is meant to be played by two pianists. the fact that one person can mentally and physically process this is truly astounding.
