Flash Fiction Friday - Community, Hashtags, and The Future of AV!

This will be one of two upcoming Flash Fiction Fridays dealing with the moon, and more science-fictional than my usual fare. As readers of this blog know, I not only work in the audiovisual field, but also have a somewhat active presence in the AV online community, including occasional appearance on AV-related podcasts, this blog, and the AV twitterati. AV twitter peeps (referring to ourselves with the hashtag #AVTweeps).

A massive #AVSelfie

One thing at which some AVTweeps have done an excellent job is the creation of community through shared experiences - often trivial ones. Last year at Infocomm (the annual AV tradeshow) Chris Neto came up with the idea for the "#AVSelfie" hashtag; people were encouraged to take selfies either at the show or with AV equipment. There was even, believe it or not, a music video. If you don't blink you'll see your favorite pixel-and-inkstained wretch, taking a selfie at the moment the song premiered (on the AVWeek podcast).

More recently, there's a weekly #AVHashtags game; a weekly joke hashtag with which we AVTweeps play. We've had AVTVshows, we've ReplacedAVWithFruit, and other silliness.

This year's game was #Infocomm2099 - imagining the AV industry through a trade show nearly 75 years in the future. I love the future, and like the idea of using small details from press-releases, foot-notes, and what would be other "found" writing to sketch a picture of future worlds. This is too much to cram into 140 characters on Twitter, so I give to you the following Two Excerpts from the Infocomm2099 Program.

Enjoy.

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"Two Excerpts from the Infocomm2099 program"

Training, Day 1

Tuesday, 9AM

Vid127 (Video, Intermediate), Instructor: Glenn Yorreazz. Use of standing tachyon waves to achieve lip-sync in non-deterministic video systems

• • For as long as video streaming has been with us, so too have lip-sync issues. Explore the use of time itself to solve the conumdrum!

Net103 (Network, Basic), Instructor: Jarash Gosou. Mystifying Time-Aware Networks.

• • Explore the metaphysics behind this newest incarnation of the soon-to-be-adopted TAW suite of IEEE protocols. Originally introduced as audiovideo bridging, this is a technology whose time has come. Learn why you'll expect to start seeing TAW products next year.

Aud322 (Audio, Advanced), Instructor Glenn Yorreazz. Catching the retro "wave" - the use of air pressure waves as an audio transport tool

• • Discuss the opportunities and challenges inherent in this age-old alternative to subcutaneous speaker implants or direct neural transmission.

Vid127 (Video, Basic): Instructor Marco Knox. Quantum Entanglement and HDCP7.2

• • Understand the physics behind the newest digital content protection standard, including a discussion of the continuing issues we have with the HDMI9.7 standard which still lacks a locking connector.

Gen133 (General, intermediate): Instructor, Glenn Yorreazz: Time Management Techniques

• • Learn how the instructor is using temporal fugue to teach three simultaneous courses while walking the show-floor and visiting the nearby theme park.

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Special Event: Lunar Projection Mapping
Congratulations to the Infocomm member known as AVSunrise, of NewBoston. In a first, her winning design will be projected onto the moon itself using multiple banks  Sircthie Digital's new advanced TurboLaser projectors, placed throughout the hemisphere. See the following Q&A with Sirchtie spokesman Dick Bowlerton.

Q: Tell us about this project

A: The TurboLASER projector is a first in its class. Centuries-out-of-date regulations limit use of LASER light in earth-based projection, but sending light to the moon is safe and effective.

Q: Tell us a bit about the technology

A: Light engines are located at various generation hubs (ie, Pacific tidal generators, Hoover Dam), with light pumped to transmission units via fiber optics. We'd planned a field-trip to the Southwest Windfarms, but the prototype wasn't read last year and this, as you know, is an Orlando year.

Q: How do you answe concerns that the focused energy would be any danger to the newly active Lunar tectonics, and the lawsuits threatening to shut the project down?

A: This is very, very highly unlikely. Our engineers are confident that the moon will survive! If it doesn't survive, out multi-body algorithm will be quite well suited for projecting images on the ensuing dust cloud. Just kidding about that last part. But it really would work.

Q: What else is new from Sirchtie?  

A: Inerplanetary mapping is a big thing. More of this will be detailed in the free interactive neural upload "Book of Explorations", including a new plan to "paint" canals on the surface of Mars, several major advertising initiatives, and a few surprises. At last, we can see the world as we see it in our imaginations. Expect new wonders, new miracles. The world is our canvas.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Fifteenth - Throwback Thursday

I'm not really a big hard-science fiction reader anymore, but have to admit that it was my first literary love. So, for today's Nightmare Fuel, I present to you an homage to one of the giants of American twentieth-century SF. He wasn't not an author whose politics resonate with me today, but was one of the figures who drew me to my love of speculative fiction. Enjoy.

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TV Preview: Out of this Real World

If one TV producer has his way, humans will walk on Mars not in the spirit of exploration but as a desperate gimmick to breath life into the rotting corpse of the reality genre. Decades after would-be space cadets were first bilked out of thousands of dollars for a "one-way-ticket to Mars", fledgling streaming service RAHStream seeks to make the ambitious "Survivor in Space" the centerpiece of its original programming. Technical details remain to be worked out, but tens of thousands of hopeful space survivors have already signed up....
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Application for Participation in "BarsoomHouse" Project [excerpted from criminal court documents]

Name:
Gender:

    Male

    Female

    Other

Orientation

    Straignt

    Gay

    Bisexual

    Other (specify) __________________________

Ethnicity:
Religious Affiliation:
List all social media usernames and passwords for background verification

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Mogul to Join Barsoom House Cast - On his Own Terms
Promises his own ticket will be "one-way" as well

Billionaire Ansom Roberts revealed plans to join the starlost "survivors" of his reality franchise "The Real Barsoom" in a one-way trip to Mars. More accurately, they'll join him. Roberts plans to leave in the single-passenger rocket Harriman one week before the remaining castmembers, allowing the flamboyant mogul  and financial backer of the project to greet the interplanetary castaways at the landing site.

"We're looking back at the history of reality television, nodding to that," a spokesperson explained. "...

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[Excerpt from Screams into the Dark: The Personal Blog of the One who Sees]

You all remember my proof of how the selection process for Real Barsoon was rigged, don't you? Well, if they wanted to silence me they rigged it wrong. Maybe they thought that my death on the launch pad would bring too much attention, get the wrong people reading this blog. Well, they miscalculated, didn't they? I'm still here, and still exposing them.

Remember, Roberts' endgame is nothing more than the hegemony of his secret Hindu faith over the world. The very name of his ship, the Harriman proves as much. Harri ... Hari ... Krishna. Wake up Sheeple! Does he need to spell it out in mile-high letters?

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Feature: The World's Loneliest Man
No return trip for Ansom Roberts

He never planned a return trip.

That much we knew, but last week's incident on the launchpad - one still being investigated - drove the point home in an unexpected way. Ansom Roberts continues toward Mars, not as the ringmaster in a made-for-streaming-TV circus but as the loneliest man to ever live, doomed to die farther from his fellow humans than anyone has ever been.

Scenes of his preparation are that much more poignant; the row of compressed air cylinders, still labelled with broad paper tags. A utility knife, some freeze-dried food, a few tools. Enough to have lasted him until the  Star Minnow was to arrive with passengers and supplies for long-term survival, if not comfort...

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Final Words of Lone "Martian" reach Earth
Over a year after his ill-fated launch, Ansom Roberts' final transmission reached a record audience of RAHGlobeStream's subscribers. The ironically-live feed of his dead body is still available, and will remain so for as long as the transmitting camera functions - this may be years. Viewers can see his spacesuit against the backdrop of empty space, with earth sadly missing from the background.

A sharp-eyed viewer can see the torn-off tag from a compressed air cylinder, pinned to the Martian soil at his feet with a knife. On it are written his final words, from British poet Robert Louis Stevenson

"Under the wide and starry sky

"The Astronaut" by Devin Francisco,http://www.loverofdarkness.net/pictures/picture/294

dig the grave and let me lie
glad did I live and gladly die
and I laid me down with a will. 

This be the verse you grave for me
"here he lies where he longed to be
Home is the sailor, home from the sea
and the hunter home from the hill"

Again The Same River - on Fandom, Art and Neurodiversity with an old Webcomic Friend

I recently stumbled across a list of seventeen completed webcomics to binge-read from beginning to end. (A webcomic, for those unfamiliar to the term, is exactly what it sounds like: a comic book delivered digitally via the internet. The art form has an interesting history, including some writers who have taken full advantage of the unlimited digital canvass to experiment with form. See my earlier post on Order of the Stick for more on webcomics). At the very end of the list, I was quite surprised to see an old friend I'd neither read nor really thought about in well over a decade now: T Campbell's Fans (previously titled Faans). It started off as a black-and-white geek-culture celebrating print comic about a science fiction fan club getting mixed up in real-world SF adventures including battles with invading space aliens, vampires, "men-in-black" style  secret government agents, and others. It started off as great silly fun, picking up depth and complexity. While some geek-culture comics seem to have vanished (ie, the comic-book loving Three Geeks) and others have remained frozen in amber, repeating the same jokes over and over for years (I'm thinking specifically of Jolly Blackburn's Knights of the Dinner Table), Fans seems to have run through a complete story with some surprises, real character development, and a beginning, middle, and end.  Reading all those years of strips I'd missed was an interesting experience, and one which opens some interesting questions.

Fans are Slans
The above phrase, referencing A E van Vogt's 1946 novel Slan, was at one time a rallying cry for science fiction fans. The implication is clear to those who'd read the novel: fans are looked down upon despite being smarter,  more interconnected, and just better than regular "mundanes" (the fannish word for a non-fan). They saw themselves as the future of which everyone else is afraid. The early adventures of Campbell's characters reflect this attitude: the only ones prepared to protect the world against fantastic threats are those who've lived the fantastic in their imagination.

This attitude seems to have faded as science fiction and fantasy have become more mainstream and, to his credit, it's one with which Campbell seems to have become increasingly uncomfortable in his writing. As the comic wandered further from fan culture it thankfully dropped this attitude. We still end up with a quirky group of characters repeatedly saving the world from increasingly strange and high-stakes threats, but the emphasis on fandom fades significantly. This is a nice thing, and makes the series feel both more universal and less geek-snobbish. The final chapters involve a "next generation" in which most of the original fans have backed away from the saving-the-world business to settle in for some form of happy ending. 

And about those happy endings, there IS a touch of sentimentality at points, and I found the resolution of one love-triangle to be a bit wish-fulfillment-ish. Your mileage may vary, but it leads to another interesting positive. 

On Neurodiversity and Non-standard families

We end up with some  non-standard family arrangements (including a three-person marriage), and quite a few characters who would certainly be identified as either on the autism spectrum or otherwise mentally not normal. There is a bit of the autism-as-superpower trope with one character, but there are also cases in which different thought patterns - particularly cretaive, visual thinking - are more valuable than traditional analytical thinking. This makes a bit of the case for the neurodiversity movement - those who view what many of us see as mental impairments (particularly the autism spectrum) as differences to be celebrated rather than disabilities to be overcome. I have no idea as to whether or not this is intentional, but one art has an existence apart from the creator and one way to judge great art is by asking if it can be viewed more than one way, with more than one message. This is one of the messages I see in Fans. It's also a thought which I find interesting in the real world; while some people with autism or other conditions are truly unable to function in society, there's still plenty of room between what we consider "normal" and unable to function in society. It's something worth thinking about.

Various characters also end up happily single, in a three-way marriage and, perhaps most surpisingly in a traditional nuclear family. The people we care about all get happy endings, but they're all different happy endings - and not the ones a reader would envision on first meeting the characters. Most ring true though, as character grow to be something more. In a way it reminds me a bit of the aforementioned Order of the Stick in that we  start with archetypes who eventually grow into people. 

Worth Reading?

They say you can't cross the same river twice, as the river has changed and so have you. This is true, and the experience wasn't the same.Reading a completed webcomic is not the same as reading one as it's published; the anticipation between pages is a part of the experience which is hard to duplicate. On the positive side, there's none of the frustration in having to wait for the rest of the story; one can read at ones own pace.   Was this worth the time to read? I thought so, and not soley for the nostalgia value. Fans features exploration of different art styles, some real surprises, and a great deal of fun. Highly recommended for those into the webcomic form or playful sci-fi.