Próxima estación: Soledad

Yuri Endo 2004

Over the past 10 years, my life has become particularly productive and pleasant due to the advance of technology. I write academic papers better and faster, speak with my loved ones spread all over the world more frequently and watch the most rare movies that I have longing for the longest time. Owing mostly to that, I thought I had become more resistant to loneliness. In fact, I do not cry as much as I used to. However since I started writing my last posts of the semester, I realized that I was partially wrong. Of course, our body water progressively decreases as we grow older is a fact, but that is not the only reasoning for the amount of tears we shed actually does not always go in hand with the quality of solitude we feel.

A gazillion years of solitude

Shawn Yu 2008 "The Hunger Artist"

Today, the purpose of simulation seems to have shifted more toward entertainment use. As technology advanced, we have come to desire more edgy and stimulating experiences in less physical yet intimate ways. As a result, we started to use simulation as our personal playgrounds. In these final posts of the semester, assuming that we are just about to leave our world for a synthetic one, I would like to try envisioning how the value of solitude might or might not change once computer simulations become real.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are simulating

http://www.publicacions.ub.es
A scene from the film, Abre los ojos, directed by Alejandro Amenábar

Some may argue, notably Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, it is highly likely that we are in fact living in a simulation, which makes a possibility of each individual already being someone’s avatar not entirely unfeasible.

The unbearable redness of being

http://www.gamespot.com

While many Asian nations embrace color red as a sign of prosperity, take Chinese and Japanese use of the color for example, it is said that there was once a syndrome called “Red Complex” spread throughout Korea in which people expressed the feeling of fear and deep disapproval toward the color red.

There will be blood substitute

http://pauseliveaction.wordpress.com

According to a report last year, the UK scientists were actually planning to become the first in the world to produce unlimited amounts of synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells for emergency infection-free transfusions.

I am a Hematolagnia

I am a Hematolagnia from The Inbetweener on Vimeo.
For educational use only. * The rights for the music and some of the images are not reserved.

Photography and styling by Yuri Endo
Music Mad World by Gary Jules 

My intention for this short piece was to create a visual material that would make even 5-year-olds understand the fundamental concept of blood fetishism. I hope I accomplished my goal. 

I have all your equipment in my locker

Blood Fetishism on Prezi

I have created a visual material for my upcoming presentation and I am quite psyched by the outcome.  The program that I used here is called Prezi, a free online editing tool which  zooms and rotates by itself. I should warn you first though, it was not as simple as it looks to maneuver as I no longer can count how many sleepless nights I had to spent with this guy. Now that I have finally mastered it (sort of) let me show you its sweet moves! It even lets you embed You Tube videos and upload  Flash animations.  Unfortunately, it does not have video exporting function at the moment, but good news is, you can use another free tool such as Screen Toaster to capture and export your masterpiece as a movie file. I do not work for whoever created these amazing inventions but let me just tell you...I think I'm in love.

Prezi-The zooming presentation editor
Screentoaster-Toast your screen

Blood Fetishism 103

http://www.teknemedia.net & http://www.fadmag.com

Some artists experiment with bloodletting, blood consumption, self-mutilation and animal slaughtering as performance art. Quite frankly, I haven't completely digested many of those artists' true reasoning for their manners of expressions. Still, I found the following artists' performances visually intriguing and a little more convincing than those of the others.

Blood Fetishism 102

http://www.garyreed.net

Renfield’s Syndrome also known as Clinical Vampirism was named after the character Renfield in Bram Stoker's Dracula, and is a psychiatric disorder in which the sufferer feels a compulsion to consume blood. People who suffer from this condition are primarily male and often have the delusion of actually being a vampire and feeling the need for blood to obtain supernatural powers and sexual arousal. According to current psychiatric terminology, Renfield's Syndrome is classified as schisophrenia or paraphilia.

Blood Fetishism 101

http://www.anomalousmaterial.com

The ancient Maya Civilization said to be perceived blood as a substance processes powerful and magical properties. The Mayan gods were believed to be nourished by human blood, and ritual human sacrifice and bloodletting were regarded as the only means of making contact with gods. Consequently, the Maya believed that if they neglected these rituals, cosmic disorder and chaos would occur. In today, similar beliefs still prevail in some society and cultures often in rather deformed manners or a form of fetishism. As such, in these forthcoming posts, I would like to explore further on those particular individuals’ interest in blood as well the curious cases of related incidents and art forms in the history.

Color Me Redder

http://www.pbs.org
Po is she, the naughty one without a man purse. Presumably, Cantonese-English bilingual.

According to a reliable color study report, red is a stimulating and appetizing color, which promotes vitality, strength, sexuality, willpower, and alertness. Red is helpful for the farsighted individuals to become ego-centered and also the opposites to draws back into their shells. When excessively used, it would produce exhaustion or even hostility, anger and violence.

Color Me Red

http://renge.shop-pro.jp & http://media.photobucket.com

The whole Vampirism research makes me wonder what kind of effect does the color red exactly have on people. In fact, my favorite color is red although you barely see me dress in that color. At any rate, my choice color deeply stems from my childhood memories of Haribo Gummi Bear and the Power Rangers.

We dress the way our souls feel to express the darkness per se

http://www.southparkstudios.com/

Does it ever come cross your mind why some goth kids are angry and frustrated? It's probably because the other kids can't tell the difference between goth and vampire kids. In this episode of South Park, they make this difference abundantly clear:

Whoa. Déjà vu

http://media.photobucket.com

Today is the sensational debut of yellow journalism in this blog. Larry Wachowski is now Lana Wachowski? Until it was mentioned in today's class, I had no idea this elder half of the Wachowski brothers had a thing for dominatrix as well as an ever-lasting desire for transformation. From both fetish and futuristic perspectives, he somehow does interest me like nobody else had ever done before.

Life’s a bitch... and then you don’t die

http://horror.about.com

While the majority is feeling rather 'vamped out,' I'm still like 'bite me.' Here comes Daybreakers, another vampire newbie by yet another sibling duo, Spierig brothers.

Bite me! (or don't)

http://www.greencine.com

When and how do you think people become so interested in vampires? Have zombies and aliens lost their cachet? Although I enjoy my frequent encounters with the latter species through the visual medium, I find them less romantic and fantasy-driven as opposed to the prior. If I were a zombie or alien, I would most likely have someone euthanize me.

Dirrrrr-ect-tivvve?

http://www.the-leaping-lamp.com

A few weekends ago, on a particularly dark and cold, rainy day, my fuse abruptly decided to blow itself out. Without any proper power supplies, and communication devices, (Internet, dead. Mobile, out of battery.) it took me good 3 hours to fully restore the electricity. The weekend following, I innocently decided to dewire myself and took a 2-day trip to 안동 (Andong), a charming folk village located in the northern part of South Korea, all the while wishing to return to the civilization where a modern toilet with bidet function, and high-speed Internet connection were. I would probably rank it as one of the most horrendous episodes of my life after the NYC blackout experience and the infrequent escapade at Heathrow in which I accidentally ran over Iggy Pop's foot with a luggage cart.

O human, wherefore art thou?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com

In The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, human like ourselves are living under the Machine supremacy where the direct individual contacts are rarely necessary as all the communication can be achieved via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine. The world has also became a place where you ask to be a parent, and your request can likely be turned down by the Machine because you are not a type that the Machine desires to hand on, or you can also ask for Euthanasia but the death-rate is not permitted to exceed the birth-rate, and the Machine hitherto might refuse it to you. Those who do not accept the deity of the Machine are viewed as 'unmechanical' and threatened with Homelessness. What a wild wild world it has become... Can you possibly believe that it was actually written in 1909, in other words, over 60 years before the Internet was even invented?

Finding otto

http://www.taringa.net
 

Otto; or Up with Dead People is pretty much my favorite gay zombie film directed by Bruce LaBruce, a very creative underground porn star. The film follows the coming-of-age of Otto, a handsome and sensitive neo-Goth zombie with an identity crisis. Otto basically looks and smells like a zombie but isn't certain that he is one. Already smells like fetish spirit. Here is a note to you from Otto himself:

Sexual fetishism for dummies

http://www.filmsquish.com & http://spank-the-monkey.typepad.com

The film, Spiklenci slasti a.k.a Conspirators of Pleasure by Jan Švankmajer follows the rituals of the “ordinary citizens” of Prague who seek better sexual bonds with unique objects. From a fetishism perspective, his depictions of food, animals, and human body parts make any Japanese erotic animations or his fellow fetish aficionados like Pedro Almodóvar look less perverted. In other words, he makes people’s wildest desires come true, often without even showing the actual intercourse.

The woman who married The Eiffel Tower

Ooh La La! "Aurore"

My mother just introduced me to a fascinating reportage on Erika La Tour Eiffel a.k.a The woman who married the Eiffel Tower. This Erika person is said to be one of the 40 people in the world called "objectum sexuals" -people who fall in love with lifeless objects such as Eiffel Tower, Berlin Wall, and Golden Gate Bridge. According to the coverage, the objectum sexuals believe in polygamy.

Flesh is my most favorite fabric - L. Bowery

http://www.xlr8r.com

In this class, we observed the contemporary art from a fetishism point of view, which was shockingly refreshing. Above all, I was pleasantly hypnotized by people's obsessive dedication to their actual bodies as a form of expression. The artists such as Orlan and Liegh Bowery are often regarded as mad or too avant-garde by conventional standard. Still, I found their über advanced experiments thrilling especially now that we are living in the society where the experience of body modification is no longer rocket science. Can we think of anyone else who had done that to the extent that they did? I believe the guys from Little Britain were the one and only who had more or less pulled it off but only with a help of crazy sci-fi tech. In that sense, the pleasure of watching Little Britain feels not quite as organic as those of the legends'.

A confession of a new respectful blogger

Yuri Endo 2005

Dear Readers,

This is my first blog entry to my first ever blog. If it weren’t for the class assignment, I normally have neither the guts nor the strong driving force to threw myself in front of some 6,808,100,000 inhabitants of the universe. As writing those first few sentences, I am already feeling at ease... and here comes my first confession in this little virtual space... I LOVED THAT MERYL STREEP'S BLOG MOVIE! I even admitted it in capitals. Okay now, you just sit back and enjoy!