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Goth Pathology
Nov. 19th, 2010 10:17 am
I came across these:
And the necessity to make this called out to me:
( Goth Symptoms )
[ repost from 2005/02/25 ]
I came across these:And the necessity to make this called out to me:
( Goth Symptoms )
[ repost from 2005/02/25 ]
No Fun City
Feb. 12th, 2010 02:53 pmFrom an earlier post:
"It's ironic that, as happened with Expo '86, so much of the effort being put into present Vancouver as a 'world class city' is happening at the expense of what makes a city truly stand out on 'the world stage' -- its own unique character.
"An analogy I have made in the past is that Vancouver is a lot like a nervous but otherwise bright and attractive teenager trying way too hard to fit in with the older kids, not lacking any potential, but lacking the confidence to really come into its own. Vancouver always seems flailing around, shouting, 'I can do that, too!' and afraid that we'll get laughed at for anything out of the ordinary, instead of confidently doing our own thing whether 'the world' notices or not. You simply can't be extraordinary by consciously and purposefully trying to be ordinary."
Boardroom Punk
May. 2nd, 2009 03:05 pm
From a shoot I did last Saturday. I've yet to finish going through all the pictures and pick out the "keepers," but this is the first of the bunch. |
Another Gothified Mucha
Dec. 7th, 2008 11:02 pm
Another "Gothified" Mucha for Gothic BC. This one was considerably more work than the first one since the source image was a very small, very heavily compressed JPEG. The original I started with was a little smaller than this and the finished product is four times larger than this. In order to deal with the nasty compression artifacts the entire image was essentially redrawn / repainted. I'll be putting this on some Zazzle gear tomorrow evening and maybe offering up a version without the logo for prints. ( What I started with ) |
Gothified Mucha Redux
Dec. 6th, 2008 04:38 pm
I meant to post this a while ago. I originally did this for the Decadence posters and flyers for the Gothic BC 10th anniversary party. I liked it enough that I did another version based on the complete piece to put on T-Shirts at Zazzle.com. |
Gothic Anachronaut's Top-Hat
Aug. 26th, 2008 10:53 pm
Another steampunk-inspired top-hat. This is a bit more goth, though. I'm actually not a big fan of brown. The hat itself is premium wool felt with a white satin liner. The hat-band is distressed vintage leather. The gears and clockwork are vintage brass and steel German clock parts painted with gloss-enamel rust paint. The hands on the clock gear can be moved to any position and the spring steel "feather" has a really fun bounce to it when you move. The hat was made for sale at Art of Adornment and as of this posting is still available here. |
Brilliant Dreams #1
Jul. 23rd, 2008 11:18 pm
Featuring my own terrible poetry, mostly typewritten (remember typewriters?) markup on an old copy of the Buy & Sell, and my co-editor Sara's failure to grasp booklet page ordering so the page numbers are all wrong. Other contributors were my art-school comrades and members of my army of pen-pals from the glorious days before e-mail and Crackbook took all the fun out of correspondence.
In a way these 'zines were the precursors to Gothic BC.
Apartment Archaeology
Jul. 22nd, 2008 10:41 pm
Last night I finally dug into a long overdue task: clearing out several banker's boxes of material retained from my university days. When I was in university the commercialization of the Internet was in its infancy, and the web was only just invented. State of the art when I graduated was at 14.4 modem and Netscape 1.1. The idea of conveniently calling up "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" or ""The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" in a fraction of a second when ever one desired was unthinkable. So I kept everything for reference. I had boxes full of photocopied articles of inscrutably dense Modernist and Postmodernist theory that I was sure I would want to reference along with my own painfully sophomoric hand-written essays that I was certain were of lasting brilliance. I also squirrelled away some delightfully bizarre bits of pop-culture and souvenirs like old rave flyers and tickets, the 'zine I put out in the 80's and whatnot. Most of it has now been relegated to the garbage, but some of was too kitschy to pitch. As time permits I will have to share some of best/worst of it here.Would you believe it's been 30 years?
Jan. 8th, 2008 08:51 pmCross-posted from my blog on Gothic BC
What you see here is my now thirty year old original 1978 Polydor U.K. pressing of Siouxsie and the Banshee's "The Scream," arguably the first "Gothic" album, though the word was yet to be applied. There are apocryphal stories (including the alt.gothic FAQ) that Siouxsie Sioux first used the term herself in describing the direction of the band, but it would be at least another year before the word "Gothic" would be used in print to describe any band, and several more years before the term really started to stick.
At the time, though, this would have been called punk and punk is how I came to it. Already a fan of the Sex Pistols, I'd read that Sid Vicious played once as drummer for band called "Siouxsie and the Banshees" and I was curious to hear them. Of course no one in Duncan knew who the Sex Pistols were, let alone Siouxsie and the Banshees. And there was no public Internet, period. I was still a few years away from trading mixed tapes with pen-pals. "Brave New Waves" on the CBC was also years away. The only recourse was pilgrimage to the "big city" - Victoria.
I purchased this used sometime in late 1979 from "Lyle's Place" (the price tag is still on the front, $5.95) on Yates Street in Victoria, most likely while out with my dad to see some awful movie at the Odeon that would never play in the cinema in Duncan. I would have been 12.
This is it. This is the beginning. This is the undifferentiated stem cell from which all goth music split. And what's most remarkable is even now, thirty years later there is nary a song on this album that wouldn't fly on the dancefloor at Sanctuary right now in 2008.
Seriously...
Dec. 23rd, 2007 01:57 pm
Does this not look strikingly like what you would expect to see if Elaine and I went on a Summer holiday? |
Collide - Live at the El Rey
Dec. 18th, 2007 04:35 pm
I've been meaning to post about this for ages. This is the CD-insert for Collide's "Live at the El Rey" album. You might recognize the image to the left (which, when the insert is in place in a case, appears inside), it's the same image of mine that was published in Keyboard Magazine in 2005. My photo credit (as "Atratus") is on the flip side of the insert. |
Had to be done.
I just can't put my finger on it
Oct. 30th, 2007 10:04 pm
I was watching some old episodes of the Addams Family with Elaine and something seemed strangely familiar... |
Time-Traveller's Hat
Oct. 15th, 2007 09:32 pm
You may recall that I bought some gears a while back. Here is the first fruit from that crop:
The hat will be for sale in Elaine's store tomorrow. If it is well-received, there will be many more like it (but no two will ever be the same). Each gear is hand-sewn to the hat, as it the leather hat-band, and brass "feather". The gears on the stalk of the "feather" are soldered while those at the ends are held by the wire. The hat itself is quality 100% wool felt. |
Suicide Girls would be Suicide
Oct. 9th, 2007 11:31 am
While working my photo-booth at the last Sin City I was asked about shooting for Suicide Girls. Being aware of Lithiumpicnic's legal troubles with SG, and just plain being a stickler for knowing what I am getting into (just last week, for example, I found myself in a room with four people staring at me impatiently while I read every word of a contract, twice, before signing it) I was reading the photographers release contract for SG.The Jesus-Fuck-I-Wouldn't-Touch-That-With-A-3.048m-Pole clause, similar to what has Lithiumpicnic in trouble from his contract, is the non-competition clause.
8. Non-Competition. Photographer agrees that for two (2) years after the full execution of this Assignment, Photographer will not directly or indirectly: (i) sell or otherwise provide Internet, photographic, video, film, audio, text, design, artistic or other creative content to any “SG Competitor”; or (ii) own, manage, operate, join, control, finance or participate in the ownership, management, operation, control or financing of, or be connected as an officer, director, employee, partner, member, principal, agent, representative, consultant or otherwise, to any “SG Competitor”. “SG Competitor” means any person, entity or organization other than SG that competes with SG, including but not limited to any person, entity or organization that creates, develops, manufactures, produces, distributes, markets, licenses or sells events, products or services that compete with SG.Should, for example, at some point in the next two years Gothic BC or any of my other sites be deemed an "SG Competitor" I'd be screwed. If I shot for any other site I'd be screwed. If I so much as provided my professional services as a photographer, artist, programmer or consultant (how I make my living!) to any entity that happens produce any kind of material that competes with SG, even if my work is not directly related to the competing products, I'd be liable.
And for what? SG pays $500 USD (now worth only $471.97 CAD) per set. Split with the model I'd have about $235 taxable dollars in my pocket. In return they have me by the short-hairs for two years. How not worth it is that?
With this non-competition clause, no sane professional photographer would have anything to do with SG.
Behold my (rejected) suggestion for the first round of alt.gothic t-shirts. This would have been 1993 (or maybe 1992... I don't remember) and done on my 386SX with (most likely) "Deluxe Paint II". This is the best version of it I have managed to find. Prior to accidentally finding this tonight (hooray for stumbleupon!) the only other version I'd ever managed to find was the tiny one in the icon for this post. I used to have this painted on the back of my leather jacket. |
Conversation #1 - Overheard about two weeks ago.[ Young guy with a death-hawk talking on his cell phone ] "Sanctuary? Why would you want to go to Sanctuary? They don't even have a dress code anymore. Sin City is much better. Ordinary people in regular clothes show up at Sanctuary."
Conversation #2 - Overheard last night
[Two English guys, mid-to-late 20's] "Sin City is OK, but there is another night on Fridays at the Lotus that is much better - same music and attitude but you don't have to do the clothes."
Gothic BC Stats
Aug. 7th, 2007 02:30 pm
I worry about whether Gothic BC is still relevant in the face of Facebook, Flikr, and whatnot, but the stats seem to say otherwise. On the chart above the red line, hits, is read against the left axis, the other lines read against the right axis. I was amazed when I got 1,000,000 hits in a month for the first time in May 2005. The last few months have been well over |
