Crystalline/Glacial

[sadmanbarty]

C the vision of a universe indifferent to our passions. To see the mechanical deathliness of the human world from the perspective of that indiffferent universe: that is what Kubrick offered us. A vision of God (which is also an approximation of God's vision)."

that's great

 

[luka]

Cool video of a freezing monkey in a hot pool

 

[luka]

that's great

One of his best things that I reckon.

 

[version]

This seems a good thread for that book yyaldrin was on about the other week:

Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form

While it is responsible for today’s abundance of flat screens—on televisions, computers, and mobile devices—most of us have only heard of it in the ubiquitous acronym, LCD, with little thought as to exactly what it is: liquid crystal. In this book, Esther Leslie enlightens us, offering an accessible and fascinating look at—not a substance, not a technology—but a wholly different phase of matter. As she explains, liquid crystal is a curious material phase that organizes a substance’s molecules in a crystalline form yet allows them to move fluidly like water. Observed since the nineteenth century, this phase has been a deep curiosity to science and, in more recent times, the key to a new era of media technology. In between that time, as Leslie shows, it has figured in cultural forms from Romantic landscape painting to snow globes, from mountaineering to eco-disasters, and from touchscreen devices to DNA. Expertly written but accessible, Liquid Crystals recounts the unheralded but hugely significant emergence of this unique form of matter.

‘There is every chance that you will be reading Liquid Crystals on a liquid crystal display screen, if not in the year of its release, then somewhere in the future. The ubiquity of LCDs makes them invisible, unthought. Leslie drags us back to the screen, to the discovery of this uncomfortably contradictory state of matter, and to the vast range of implications it has for the way we imagine the materiality and abstraction of our world, from financial liquidity to Superman’s icy Fortress of Solitude. She raises the tantalising prospect that liquid crystals are key not only to images but to perception and to our worldview: the governing metaphor through which we comprehend the rival claims of dialectics and flow. Erudite, lucid, enthralling, Esther Leslie's eclectically logical investigations transform our understanding of the historical generation of ideas and ways of thinking.’ -- Sean Cubitt, Professor of Film and Television, Goldsmiths, University of London

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/L/bo25037001.html

 

[version]

@yyaldrin - did you ever get a copy?

 

[luka]

 

[luka]

Chewing gum marketing plays around with this aesthetic; “Ice”, “Spearmint”, “Wintermint Ascent”, “Ice Breakers Cool Mint”, “Winter Mint”, “Airwaves”.

That thing of clearing your airways.

Being bunged-up is the polar opposite of this. Your mind gets all mushy when you have a cold. Snot is viscous. Sonic viscosity is swampy and mid-range rather than sharp and treble.

 

[sadmanbarty]

the bass on the 2nd one's like a giant, driftic plane of arctic ice

 

[version]

"Ice... Ice."

Everything about this release nails this whole surface thing. The tunes, the artwork and look at the titles:

1 H.U.M2.E.R.
2 E-Cig
3 Blood Type : 5 Hour Energy
4 Dry Ice ¥2K12
5 Raiden - Blue Lights # NZT - 48
6 Fatal
7 #Acidrain
8 Ice_Cut_Digital
9 Black And Red
10 Sex Tape
11 Turbulence
12 Blu Smoke Rings -R.I.P. Crypt Keeper
13 #Flamethrower
14 Liquid Metal #TCIZ4

 

[version]

There seems to be something futuristic about liquids and things being fluid too. LCD screens, the liquid metal terminator, STF body armour.

 

[bassbeyondreason]

Cold and slow:

 

[bassbeyondreason]

When doom metal is completely emptied of the blues, but resists the lure of the blissed-out drone. "The Unknown Kadath in the Cold Waste" indeed:

 

[version]

Earth 2's a bit like that. I also remember reading someone describing it as "the black side of the Tao".

 

[luka]

The other quality of ice/crystal is transparency which is where the alignment with light and all that light signifies comes from.

"I have brought the great ball of crystal;
who can lift it?
Can you enter the great acorn of light?"

Pound. Canto CXVI

 

[bassbeyondreason]

From 7:03, black metal minus the drums and distortion. Pure blasted tundra music:

(Full disclosure: band later went Nazi, they weren't on this record)

 

[Trillhouse]

 

[Trillhouse]

 

[version]

 

[Trillhouse]

 

[muser]