Dortmund bonus #2

Pretty sure the soap knows what it’s talking about.

Dortmund bonus #1: non-euclidean pavement

TU Dortmund Psychogeography

My friend Feloris and I were stranded on TU Dortmund’s campus over the weekend. Everything was deserted, except for the wild rabbits that have tunneled under, well, everything, we think. Originally we set out to find a place that would sell us some coffee, but soon the dystopian atmosphere called for some psychogeographical documentation. These pictures are the result of our walk – and the inspiration for a collaborative Weird short story in progress. Please excuse the cellphone cam (my good camera is broken), but I honestly think that the cheaper lens rendered the clouds even more foreboding, etc.
(Warning: LOTS and LOTS of pictures.)

Autoform: Forming Reality

Going Up…

…and Down.

Uniformity.

Ominous Containers.

(72) Autoform.

(18) Autoform.

Achtung!

Solar Panels.

(Did I say foreboding clouds?)

(I did, didn’t I.)

Weird Echo. (Urban Ammonite.)

(& from another angle)

Goethe reveals sinister secrets (and not even between the lines).

(Utopia doesn’t age well.)

Imprisoned.

Moreau.

Ritual Site.

Night Time.

alien event site photo wallpaper

Spotted two days ago at a furniture shop.

Another failed utopia.

Pickman’s Cellar

Pigeon Code

(click images to enlarge)

…And They’ve Done It Again.

The latest episode of “Black Mirror”, entitled “White Bear” (S02E02), features this ominous symbol, which is first mentioned in combination with a signal that supposedly changes people into zombie-like watchers who, equipped with their smartphones, help so-called hunters take down the ones not affected by this signal. Creepy, right? This is what the symbol looks like:



Now, I have never in my life been in actual contact with Minecraft, let alone playing it, but I’m a citizen of the Internet, and as such I know what a Creeper looks like. For the record, their faces look like this:


If you’re still thinking that any similarities might be purely coincidental, by the time the first hunter arrives you might agree with me:


At this point I felt compelled to ask Minecraft Wiki what exactly it is that Creepers do (besides, well, creep up on players). Here’s what it says:
“The Creeper is a hostile mob that will ambush players and explode, causing damage to the player and the surrounding blocks and entities. Unlike Zombies and Skeletons, Creepers will not catch fire in direct sunlight, meaning they can wander around unharmed any time of the day until it is killed or despawns. However, the creepers will still be aggressive during the day. [...]“
It’s downright scary how well this description applies to the zombie-like, camera-wielding population of this week’s nightmarish episode. They don’t really explode, but hey, what do we have those hunters for.
I won’t be giving away all of the plot here (after all, some of you might not have seen it yet, and I strongly recommend it), but in a final plot twist the background story is revealed as what looks very much like Running Man rewritten by Ben Elton’s evil mind twin. And while the whole concept of who the victim is here is seemingly turned around… is it really? After all, it’s not only the judicial system that defines “victims” and “perpetrators”, and it’s not only the tabloids that distort things for us to read at the hairdressers and feed our inner rubberneckers while we’re waiting for the dye to take effect. I think this episode makes it very clear that this is about actual living people – including the ones in front of the television. Even if one reviewer is of the opinion that it is “marred” by “the incessant screaming and crying of the ‘victim’ [note the quotation marks] that engenders a longing for someone to put her out of her misery”. To me as a viewer, her pain feels very real. And no matter the circumstances, even if a person is guilty of a crime, what gives anyone the right to torture her? In the end, respawn after respawn, what remains, what returns every time without fail, is the pain, and the Creepers. All of us.

Portals

united we stand…