more cutout poems!

[batiferrite]

So, here's the robot series! First, the mock-up layout:



And close-ups:





These were made before the other ones and I basically just used the words and pictures from one article for them, so it's a bit different of a vibe / design philosophy.

That article itself was super dystopian, though, honestly! (If you play around with inspect element, you should be able to figure out how to get rid of the paywall... I got it once, but keep messing up in trying to reproduce it for a tutorial-ish-thing, and can't find guides that work online, sorry.)

I have one little scrap floating around my table: "they patrol borders and attack targets they deem hostile." It was treated like no big deal??

Then, there was another section talking about robots being programmed to care for children, disabled people, and the elderly -- after working in a center for disabled people, I realize such places have a high turnover rate, but I really don't think a robot could properly care for vulnerable people like that! In these facilities, basically the only human interaction residents get is with staff and if you take even that away... it's just inhumane!

And beyond that, sex robots?? And how employers are incentivized to have robot workers, even if they're less productive, because "humans are troublesome." And how having robots grab things in warehouses actually makes things more stressful for human employees and deprives them of that little bit of downtime -- the list of unrealized horrors goes on!

Comments

[vegetablearian]

If you load the article without js and delete the element called Article__Content__Overlay--gated the text loads, but no images. Normally you need js to get the images too but then there's a bunch more things to change. Anyway, I saw the pics in your post, hehe :)

It's pretty scary reading, especially the gushing from the roboticists. The one who describes it as "inevitable" is just astonishing really, what a lack of responsibility! And it's really not just her. Legal responsibility when robots hurt people is something people are talking about a lot nowadays with self-driving taxis - the fact that there basically isn't any. Nearly three years later and there are more and more robots but just the same lack of regulation and oversight.

You're so right that that quote about the drones is awful :(

[batiferrite]

If you load the article without js and delete the element called Article__Content__Overlay--gated the text loads, but no images. Normally you need js to get the images too but then there's a bunch more things to change.

Ah, okay, good to know that there's a pretty easy solution!

Yeah, it's all just such a mess...

[a_flyleaf]

The warning labels are a neat (and terrifying touch). “Keep out of reach of children” indeed :,D

Surprisingly the whole article loaded with NoScript, albeit without the mid-article images but oh well. The drone line is incredibly dystopic, wth.

Y’know, I keep thinking back to this one political comic, forgot who it was by unfortunately (was floating around tumblr), that said something like (paraphrasing badly) “How it should be: ‘A robot replaced my job! Now I don’t have to work and can spend more time with family/on hobbies/etc.!’” vs “How it is: ‘A robot replaced my job, and if I can’t find a new one I’ll lose my house.’” Which is definitely one thing, horrors of capitalism and all, but there’s really something to be said for what the jobs (quote-unquote “jobs”? the, uh, the work?) left behind look like and who else is affected. Admittedly I hadn’t thought about that much before but, yeah, christ. x_x Thanks for sharing, harrowing read!

[batiferrite]

Thanks! ^^

Oh, I think I remember seeing that post, too; can't find it, either, though... Yeah, same! Like, I've heard people talking about how they'd be hired to "edit" a machine translation for basically pennies when they'd have to completely rewrite and retranslate it to have anything decent, but I never put much thought into the more human element that's lost.

[a_flyleaf]

Oh man, I’d never heard that about the machine translation but boy, I can imagine x_x This is a bit of a tangent but I recently read this archived lesson on the translation of a short story and it’s crazy (at least to this semi-monolingual who never thought twice about it) how much craft goes into it. Human translators should get paid so much more!!

[batiferrite]

Oh, that little article was interesting and I agree translators should definitely be paid more! I took a class on translation in college and there seriously is so much that goes into it -- there are certain things that you just understand when reading another language, but it feels impossible to explain it, let alone in a way that feels sleek and natural. Puns are especially difficult (it was fun having the whole class working together to come up with something, though)!

[a_flyleaf]

Glad you found the article interesting! Although if you’ve taken a whole class, maybe it wasn’t anything super new, heh ^^; Seems like difficult-to-translate things come up a lot, at any rate, never mind puns :O How did that work? I’ve seen jokes that play with different languages (e.g. a word means one thing in one language, something else entirely in another) but pun translations sound like something else entirely.

[batiferrite]

Oh, honestly, it was kind of a weird class. It was right at the beginning of the pandemic and we suddenly had to transition from in person meetings to online and the professor didn't bother at all for the second half -- he was talking the whole semester before this about how we'd have to write a giant final essay, but then he said forget it and gave us all A's without doing any work. We didn't even have Zoom meetings or anything. Before that, it was actually really interesting, so I was pretty disappointed in how it turned out. I do have an example from one of my earlier assignments, though!

We had to translate a chapter from a comic. Here's an excerpt in French and here's my English translation. It was about a Private Eye who was hired by some research company, I kinda don't remember the specifics anymore...

But the pun is that the me gonfler in "...Commence à me gonfler sérieusement!" could mean:

• literally: to inflate (oneself)


• or, idiomatically: that pisses me off

It'd make most sense to just say that he's annoyed, but, as he immediately orders a pizza right after saying this, we could also take this to mean "inflate" as in fattening himself up. There's one more possibility, though: that it's a dirty joke and he's... "inflating himself."

Needless to say, I had absolutely *no* idea how to go about translating this! How do you simultaneously convey that someone is pissed off, hungry, and a bit horny all in one snappy line?? During a workshop, someone in my class ended up suggesting "Time to suck it up, babe!" and I think that works surprisingly well, actually!

But, seriously, with how much of an ordeal that was, imagine having to translate, for example, some of Mako's rapidfire puns in Kill La Kill!

[a_flyleaf]

Ah, pandemic wrenches, gotta love ’em >_> I had a couple classes like that, felt like the professors just gave up/went hands-off as possible soon as things switched over. I’m sure they had their reasons but I sorta wish there’d been do-overs…. Sorry to hear this class got stiffed like that (though maybe not having to do the essay was a plus, hah)!

Academia woes aside, though, interesting comic! To whoever suggested that pun translation, A+, that does work pretty well :O (Unrelated to the linguistic topic, the art style of the comic is pretty neat, too; gives me the vibes of uhh, A Particular Era; can’t think of the specific one, though.)

That Kill La Kill post has me going O_O; all that in however long it takes to say two lines?! I wonder if it takes a rewatch even for a native Japanese-speaker to get all that!

[batiferrite]

Yeah, it was really unfortunate. The whole thing was just such an incredible mess, altogether; like, my school just suddenly kicked all the students out of their dorms with no further notice. At the same time, I was also in a lab class, so we had to try and do that online, as well. We ended up just filling out 'lab reports' without actually doing any of the labs.... It was nice to get out of the paper, though, at least!

Yeah, the art style is really neat! There are a lot of really interesting page layouts throughout the comic, also, like:


It might be similar to, like, constructivism or Bauhaus or something, maybe? I'm not really sure, either...

I found a clip of the scene from the link I sent you earlier and I feel like they probably would miss things! Many of them just show up for a second (or less!). It seems like in the dub they didn't even bother localizing them, so she's just randomly making all these weird poses (which are funny in themselves, honestly).

[a_flyleaf]

my school just suddenly kicked all the students out of their dorms with no further notice

Bro??? @_@
Lab reports without the actual lab sounds like a timesaver, at least…? Shame about the whole hands-on experience thing, though. 😔

Anyway, dang, those are some really cool layouts!! I especially love how your eyes wind all around the page in that first one; seems to reflect some sort of panic the character’s feeling? though even if it’s more stylistic than narrative it’s just straight-up fun to look at.

Bauhaus sounds somewhere in range, style-wise! Modernism? I dug through some graphic design history notes and posters by Alvin Lustig, maybe Saul Bass, also look somewhere in range. Cubist influence, maybe?? It’s like, uhh, “Corporate Memphis” but not, well, corporate. Drawing from the same wells. IIRC this video dives into the history thereof a bit, which might be relevant? I’ll have to rewatch it 🤔

Last but certainly not least, yeah wow that is some rapidfire posing!! All the better for humor, though. Makes for a fun (train of) freeze-frame bonus(es) :D

[batiferrite]

Yeah, it was insane! Like, we were literally given ten days from the announcement to get out. Apparently, the same thing happened at many other schools, too. The whole pandemic really was / continues to be a massive systemic failure on every level...

I was majoring in Chemistry, so it really did suck to lose out on that.. *sigh*

Oh, I'd never heard of Alvin Lustig before -- his designs are really cool! Now that you mention it, his style is kinda similar to Corporate Memphis... The main difference, though, is that there are a number of characters who aren't so simplified, like this guy:

I think the author is kinda trying to go for a weird, edgy, indie sort of thing, more than anything. I do think they definitely, like, design cousins or something, though, sprouting from a common ancestor.

That video was really thought-provoking, though -- it just reminds you what a boring dystopia we're stuck in. Like, the one style mentioned in the video, where they explicitly avoid having characters with realistic skintones to make the designs more "relatable" and "inclusive"... by having no real life counterparts. It actually really reminds me of the one popular essay, "Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny." Such over-idealization that the end result is no longer fully recognizable as human...

[a_flyleaf]

God, what a fiasco x__x I was a commuter all through college and didn’t know anyone who lived on-campus, so this is the first I’m hearing about the eviction notices. But yeah, piece of a much bigger failure, we could probably be here all year and then some about all that >:\ Sorry to hear you missed out on so much!

Pivoting back to art: love the contrast of the smoking character and the simpler main guy, that kind of intentional stylistic juxtaposition is 👌👌👌 Extremely Good. Have you seen that one chart by Scott McCloud about stylization and relatability? It’s part of his larger work Understanding Comics, and that particular section dives into what simplification (or lack thereof) can do for storytelling. Looks like this artist knows exactly what they’re doing :D What’s their name, if you know, and what year is this comic from?

The point about unrealistic skintones representing everyone and no one is one of those things that Sticks With You, huh? Kind of the evil (or at least corporate, soulless) twin of ↑that sort of simplification talk, actually.

Ohh, I remember that article from a while ago; rereading it now, it kicked me in the face all over again. Feels sobering even though I’m too young to remember a majority of the media it’s talking about >_>" What happened? Like, the article picks at a few (never would’ve thought to connect body image with national sociopolitical insecurity, but here we are), but what. happened?!

[batiferrite]

It's definitely disappointing... The best we can hope for is that institutions, both large and small scale, will learn something from their mistakes with the pandemic and do better in the future, but seeing as the current position seems to be just trying to pretend that nothing even happened, I don't really see that happening..

Yeah, it's really cool! Also, funnily enough, when I was writing that comment, I was about to mention that exact scene, but decided against it last second, lol. The author / artist's pen name is Blexbolex (fun to say!) and this particular comic, L'Oeil privé was published in 2006. It seems like it was never professionally translated, though, and English publications don't mention it at all. In the English speaking world, he seems to only be known for his experimental picture books. Similar style, but extremely different vibes...

Yeah, the extent of marketing and consumerist culture is horrifying, isn't it? I really don't have the words to describe how scared I am for the future -- like, companies are already experimenting with making ads in the night sky and in people's dreams. What's the next frontier? What could be worse than this?? (Also, sorry that this comment is pretty negative..)

[a_flyleaf]

God, I wish. Oops, two-year blip on the radar that killed millions, and definitely is not ongoing in any significant way! Well, we’ll just brush our hands of all that and carry on like normal again!!!! . . . aughhhh

Continuing the tone boomerang, Blexbolex is fun to say! Wow, that picture book is gorgeous; similar stylistic hallmarks, very different vibes indeed. Shame about L'Oeil privé not being known in the English world. You might have seen it already but I found an English(-translated?) article about a newer picture book where he talks about his process and shows some before/after illustrations; similar style, but has an entirely different feel to it. Really cool stuff!

But yeah, flipping back (and dw about the negativity, The State Of Society can really call for it…)—christ, is it bad that I thought that the night sky ad link would be one thing and then it was something different entirely x_x As if billboards are not enough!! Dreams too, geez; although (and this isn’t so much a counter as a focus shift), I’ve definitely had various dreams about things I was thinking about before I fell asleep, and based on that survey graphic towards the end it’s not like the brands have to try to worm their way in >:V What concerns me a liiiittle more is “advertisers could, in theory, use smart speakers — 126m of which are now installed in US homes — to market products to us in our sleep.” I know they’re (the “smart” devices are) sometimes accessibility aids but god!! Surprising yet not, and entirely disappointing!!

[batiferrite]

For real, it's so ridiculous! Like, in May, the US gov't just arbitrarily decided it's officially over and are stopping their coverage for at-home test kits and treatments, while new strains are still coming out every month...

Yeah, it's sad, I wish these little funky indie comics were more easily accessible.. Interesting article! It's amazing to have such an involved plot with only a noun per page. Also, I didn't realize that he was part of the whole Oulipo-thing (or that there was even a branch of it for comics, for that matter), but looking at some of his other works, it really makes sense.

Oh, I think I remember hearing about that one, too! I can't help but think of that classic Tweet (which is itself talking about, yet again, a completely separate instance of space advertising...):

NotABigJerk

if i ever look up at the night sky and see a space billboard i am becoming a terrorist

Ah, my dad has a bunch of Alexa's -- one for every room in his house. He seems to mostly use them for turning off the lights when he has a migraine or playing music and that sort of thing, but I still really don't get the point of paying for the privilege to have your house bugged... It really is impossible to satirize the modern day.

[a_flyleaf]

The United States has mobilized and sustained a historic response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bold, bold claim for a page that’s basically saying “we have arbitrarily decided this is not an emergency anymore so we’re scaling back to tracking it like a normal disease that is not continuing to change or adapt in any way.” God

Oh, I’ve never heard of Oulipo! Took a little Wikipedia dive and I am extremely amused by the page of a lipogram novel (cited as an example of an Oulipian work— actually, I won’t say why! It’s curious, and I applaud its author ;V

Ha, the tweet you linked seems to have been taken down since; thanks for quoting it! The sci-fi dystopia is today. 😔 There’s one singular Alexa in my family’s kitchen and it’s pretty much a glorified Amazon delivery notification device; I made a point to tell everyone to keep it muted when not in use, and I guess I’d rather it be 90% deadweight than get used for everything, but still…. Smart lights and the like scare me, honestly.

[batiferrite]

Still, just what a mess...

Ah yeah, I really like reading about Oulipo and other avant-garde-y movements! I haven't actually read A Void yet, but I did read a kinda similar book several years ago, where a totalitarian local government bans residents from using certain letters of the alphabet. Very neat concept!

Oh, lol, I guess it is good that I quoted it. Scary how easily things can just disappear like that on the internet... I think even with it muted, it'd still be able to listen to you, though, right? Yeah, my dad went super crazy with all of that, he even had an electronic lock installed... I can't help but think about what happens if the power goes out or he loses internet, or worse, if a malicious party hacked into it or something...

[a_flyleaf]

Scary how easily things can just disappear like that on the internet...

No kidding 😔 The Internet Archive has a browser extension, and if you land on a 404 page there’s a little notification-circle that tells you if there’s a backed-up version, but it’s a bandaid on a dam and all that.

I think even with it muted, it'd still be able to listen to you, though, right?

I… I have no idea, honestly, and I wish I did >:\ Without knowing more about the technology the best I can assume is that, if they were blatantly lying, there maaaaaybe would’ve been a lawsuit about it by now? But there’s always loopholes.

On smart tech in general, I am fairly certain I’ve seen local news blips about people’s home security systems getting hacked into, which isn’t the same thing but if people can do that… Like, this is basically hearsay because I don’t feel like doing a 5-second google search to lose a little more faith in technology, but y’know. Dystopia today etc.

[batiferrite]

Honestly, with increasingly instabilities in major companies, like Twitter's eminent demise and Google going down every now and then and basically taking the rest of the internet with it, it's really scary thinking about how the future of the internet is going to go. Like the one XKCD comic:

We're at a point of depending so much on the internet, but it's also so fragile...

I also came across this article a while ago, where Mozilla talks about how horribly literally every major car company violates your privacy, to the point of collaborating with police after even a "informal request" for info.... I guess the point of all of this horrible stuff is to make us apathetic and no longer care about our safety and privacy -- like how because almost everything has a warning that it can cause cancer, people just blow it off entirely and joke about it. It really does feel hopeless...

...Again, sorry that this has become such a depressing thread.