How Liminalism Became the Defining Aesthetic of Our Time

“This crowd-curated digital movement is one of the most pertinent and explicit reactions to our particular slice of dystopian late capitalism.”

“The placelessness of Liminalism — these spaces could notably be anywhere — flattens experience in the same way that digital homogenization obliterates distance. Anonymity, alienation, and anxiety are now the bywords of our age, and Liminalism is the ultimate expression of that trinity.”

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“In Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (2014), critical theorist Mark Fisher describes the generational affliction of being “walled off from the lifeworld, so that … inner life — or inner death — overwhelms everything,” where there is “nothing but the inside, but the inside is empty.” It’s an apt summation of Liminalism — the visual accompaniment to neoliberalism, post-industrialization, early apocalypse, whatever you want to call it, as silent and dark as an abandoned shopping mall. “

The Thousand Faces of Cassian Andor

“Hollywood script doctor Tony Gilroy had finally decided to write his friend Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm, a long-overdue letter; one that took the experiment that he, Gareth Edwards, and the cast and crew of Rogue One had started years ago to the next level. A radical pitch that framed the Star Wars Galaxy as the backdrop for a story about a revolutionary in-the-making, set upon a collision-course with history, destiny, and the unrelenting forces of Imperial oppression.”

Poster adaptation: “Tōfu-kozō (tofu boy)” yōkai

Found this cool little dude looking up old wood prints and figured I’d spin out a band poster from it. It’s a “Tōfu-kozō (tofu boy)” yōkai which could easily be a skateboard graphic from the 80s. Super fun.

“In Japanese folklore, tōfu-kozō (Japanese: 豆腐小僧, literally "tofu boy") is a yōkai that looks like a child holding a tray of tōfu.

They are generally depicted wearing bamboo and kasa on their heads, and possessing a round tray with a momiji-dōfu on it (a tōfu with a momiji (autumn leaf) shape pressed into it[6]). The patterns on the clothing they wear, for the sake of warding off smallpox, include lucky charms such as harukoma (春駒), daruma dolls, horned owls, swinging drums, and red fish, and sometimes lattice patterns of the child that shows its status as a child can also be seen.”

Cat cat catcat

Vanessa Stockard aka Derek Milkwood (Australian, b. 1975, Sydney, Australia) - It Fell (By Itself), 2024, Paintings: Oil

Why 90s Movies Feel More Alive Than Anything on Netflix

“There's something about the way older films were crafted that modern cinema seems to have lost. Take Goodfellas from 1990. Scorsese doesn't just tell you a story about mobsters, he pulls you into their world. The tracking shot through the Copacabana, the narration that feels like a conversation, the way violence erupts suddenly and brutally. You feel the seduction of that lifestyle and the paranoia that comes with it. Every frame has purpose. Every scene builds character. Compare that to The Irishman from 2019, which is actually good but feels bloated, overly long, relying too heavily on “de-aging” technology that never quite convinces you.

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I think the difference comes down to this: older movies took risks. They trusted audiences to pay attention, to feel something, to think. Scorsese and Tarantino had visions and the freedom to execute them without endless studio interference. They weren't chasing demographics or worrying about franchise potential. They were making films, not products.”

More Pics From Yachats

Just wanted to take a few more of my phone snaps and post up here from our trip this past weekend to Yachats. These are just from the a old iPhone which has made me do some research on the new cameras coming out in the 17. Kinda interested from a RAW file perspective.

The Theremin!

Full disclosure, one of my bands has a lot of theremin in it ;)

“Eyck agrees that the sight of a human body manipulating invisible electromagnetic fields adds to the theremin’s otherworldly aura. The fact that it sounds like nothing so much as an unhinged soprano – listen again to the original Star Trek theme – adds to the unsettling effect.

“You don’t tune it to the A from the piano, but you tune it to your own body and to the surroundings,” she says, citing something called “body capacitance”. In this way the instrument is unique, “except for the voice, but that’s inside you”.

“With its sci-fi antennae bristling left and right, Russian physicist Leon Theremin’s novel invention of 1919 remains the only musical instrument you play without touching anything. “Aerial fingering” was the technique devised by the inventor’s original Lithuanian prodigy, Clara Rockmore, in the 1930s.”

Magnus Hjalmar Munsterhjelm (19 October 1840 – 2 April 1905) was a Finnish landscape painter

Hjalmar Munsterhjelm was a painter I was digging on last night. Wiki is pretty cool for finding this kind of stuff, bonus points that the jpgs are sometimes in the 4k relm.

Albert Bierstadt- painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes

Just a little dive into Albert Bierstadt, this painter I was looking up. His landscapes are really something. I like the lighting quiet a bit.

"NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI

Cool break down of some older movies and very old VFX techniques. From the comments:

‘5:47 Removing bluescreens from behind the scenes footage is just wild”

Band poster and EP artwork!

Made a new band poster for a show and did the artwork for this EP by Manx. Rock and Roll Portland Peoples!