We recently re-published an old cartoon from the visionary humorist, W.K. Haselden, which imagined a portable telephone, and all the problems that might entail.
The same cartoonist, some years earlier, predicted the wacky possibilities of the pocket phone camera — a teledoc appointment, really? — and so here it is .
Petting Patty returns next week!
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Design by Steven S. Drachman from an image by GoodFreePhotos.com
Today’s virtual reality, or “VR,” is the stuff of yesterday’s science fiction; it’s become an amazing, immersive world filled with hyper-realistic dance clubs, parties, museums, cityscapes, expansive natural worlds, many inhabited by thousands of avatars, real people who mingle freely, hidden behind computer-animated identities.
It was in this world that we met “Shu Shu,” who is working on an ambitious theatrical presentation entitled Nymphs, which is to be presented at VRium, Shu Shu’s own VR performing arts center. Shu Shu graduated from the department of Drama Directing in the National Academy of Theatre PWST in Poland and Andrzej Wajda Film School, worked as an art-director and creative director in large artistic projects, as a theatre director, stage designer, graphic designer, 3D animation script writer, and as an opera stage technician and manager in his earliest years — back then, every night after La Boheme, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, he would grab a brush, sweep the stage and imagine that someday he would create his own theatre.
We caught up with ShuShu recently to talk about his vision.
SHUSHU: Theatre is the thing for which I have dedicated all my life, my greatest love in life, the only thing worth living for, as an old famous actor whom I admire once said.
I gained a significant experience in several fields of art. In each of those fields I have achieved a high level of art, a deep connection to my inner core, where you feel the essence of the art you are doing.
And now, I immerse myself in VR. My imagination and my soul are literally flying in VR. I can now do the only thing I was always dreaming of — theatre. In VR, all the fields of art I covered in the course of my artistic life assemble together in harmony.
A great polish theatre creator, Tadeusz Kantor, wrote once : “A theatre artist must explore and control all the fields of arts, if he wishes to understand the very essence of the theatre.” It feels like everything I have done in my life was meant to be accomplished in VR. I chose to focus all my efforts in the most powerful medium in art, an extremely metaphysical space, where your mind and soul can experience spiritual and mental elevation in its highest and deepest manner — the theatre.
LOVEHOTEL. This was my first VR creation ever. I created it not a long while ago, in January 2021, about 8 months ago.
This venue is a sensual space for live avatars concerts and VR love raves. This was the moment, where I first grabbed the world builder tolls and started placing basic objects piece by piece, using my VR headsets — not in PC, not using any 3D software, but simply flying in the air with a few screens with world building tolls in front of me. This was a truly joyful adventure. I recall some friends were calling me on phone inviting me to go out, while I was building LoveHotel — I said: “No! No, no way! Listen, I am flying here, do you have something better to offer me? Forget about it!”
LoveHotel became famous, it opened people’s hearts. I even met some couples who fell in love there. They performed their first “avatar kiss” in this venue.
I knew exactly what I am looking for in VR. I had no doubts about it. I knew, I am going to immerse myself for years in VR in order to create art. But before I begin to invest so much work and time in VR, I felt there is one thing I must prove to myself — that is, whether I am able to bring the metaphysical aspect of the “real” theatre into VR. And I believe we succeeded – myself and the creative team working together with me – in NYMPHS, the first VR performance which we are currently developing. This is more than just another VR world. It is an emotional, and I would even say that it is a transcendental experience, with its own space narrative.
I have been working on this piece for over 6 years already. So far, mainly on the concept, and now it is actually happening, in VR. It is definitely not a usual script, which you could have imagined on a real stage. In fact, it is a VR score, with detailed audio-visual instructions, more similar to a movie script.
There is one crucial thing I have learned in VR : you no longer need the stage. In a “real” theatre the stage was created to define an autonomic space with its own reality. In VR you create an immersive world and “all the world’s a stage”, as William Shakespeare’s once wrote. Just imagine, what can be done in theatre in VR — this is the ultimate medium that could bring the magic back into theatre. Yet, the story you wish to tell should have a different structure, which reminds of a myth structure, rather than a linear realistic narrative, something that uses symbols and visual counterpoints, dissonances and by this creates a whole new meaning. NYMPHS has a dramaturgical structure of a myth.
NYMPHS is to be the first project in our theatre, which we call “VRium.” It is meant to be a futuristic “acropolis” of art in the cyber world, an international VR performing arts centre which offers a new quality of VR art-works : theatre & dance performances, opera shows, VR fairy tales, VR art exhibitions and online concerts. This space is created to deliver you an emotional experience — to brings into VR the very essence of a theatrical artwork.
The exterior is inspired by Newton’s Cenotaph — a futuristic tomb, designed by the French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée in 1784. The project was never realized before (in reality) — and here we will bring it to life, with a very specific usage. The design-concept of the interior is based on the Theatrum Anatomicum (the anatomical theatre). The anatomical theatre was one of the most bizarre phenomena in the history of theatre. It used to be an amphitheatrical space, dedicated for autopsy and anatomical lectures. A truly macabre “theatre” of death. And so, our VR theatre is meant to be a sacral space.
NYMPHS is a requiem, an ode to those of the female persuasion, whose mind is forever poisoned by toxic love. Here they become Nymphs in an amorous yet lethal underwater dream.
The performance is a post-mortem study for the “stage.” It examines the anatomy of the female psyche, the beauty and insanity of love, using a collage of canonical literature (ancient and modern plays for theatre, myths and legends) as well as medical, psychiatric and pathological essays, cases of mental disturbances and true-life contemporary reports of female death by love. In this play, an extreme desire reveals itself to be destructive; the destructive side, on the other hand, is rendered as a pictorial fantasy.
All characters in this theatrical art-work had died by drowning — just like Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, or water creatures from myths and legends. That is why those characters are called “Nymphs” — because here they are submerged in the depth of the ocean instead of rising up to heaven.
In this performance we flow through two dimensions: the dramatic “reality”, where motives are set up in an autopsy space that resembles an anatomical theater and a mental hospital, while imaginary characters from ancient myths and legends take us into a scenic dream, “far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, as clear as crystal….”
This is an ambitious vision and it requires a huge amount of work in collaboration with several artists. I assume, that together with my creative team we will be developing this project continuously. It all depends on whether we will manage to bring some investors, sponsors and donors on board. At the moment we are doing what we can investing a huge amount of time and work. And also money. It might take some two years to create a complete animated performance. NYMPHS is planned to be 30 minutes long and composed of several short episodes. Each episode is an independent art-work, and each will be performed in a different language.
There’s a famous theatre manifest written back in 1907 by Edward Gordon Craig, called “The Actor and the Uber-Marionette.” This was a revolutionary call for all theatre artists to resign once and for all from using actors on stage, since they are “no longer considered to be a good material for a pure artwork.” Instead, Craig offers to replace them with a superior automated doll. Today we would call it an “actroid.” There is a Japanese genius, a scientist, professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, who is currently developing animatronic “humanoids” and “geminoids”, human robots. I was inspired by Craig’s vision and by Mr. Ishiguro’s robots for quite a while already and I wish to realize Craig’s vision for the first time — in VR. Our theatre will be performed by automated monumental art-dolls.
There is a great potential in monumental dolls which lays in the essence of my VR theatre — in one of the scenes in NYMPHS, called A Requiem for a Nymph, you will see a giant necro-doll submerged in the depth of the ocean, like an ancient goddess. When she dives and falls apart in the deep waters with her long hair swirling and waving through the water with the Love Dolls choir around her singing “Ave Maria” by Giulio Caccini — you can feel the power of the VR theatre.
This is another thing I have learned about VR — in VR everything has to be monumental.
No. The VR actors in NYMPHS are ACTROIDS, Fine Art Dolls, designed by the Popovy Sisters. However, when it comes to voice, this is where we need the actor. In VR, the voice is the soul of the character, so it is very crucial it is played by good actors. The moves and gestures of the dolls are planned to be achieved by using motion capture technology with an original choreography performed by dancers. The doll will then imitate the same choreography performed by the dancer.
I am lucky to have the privilege to collaborate with a very talented creative team. Among them the brilliant Andy Wood, Jose Ferrer, Daniele Colombo, Carlos Austin — a VR Director of Photography with a unique vision for VR filming — and Niko Lang, who in my opinion created a VR masterpiece called “Niko’s Solar System.” Lately, we were blessed in having new talents on board, among them the Popovy Sisters, who create extraordinary art-dolls. Some of these dolls are about to perform in NYMPHS.
We have a theatre space and a VR art gallery called ArtSpaceVR, where we invite unique artists from around the world to present their art. The plan is to get investors and sponsors and elevate the project up to a range that it becomes an independent platform. At the moment, we are developing our project in AltspaceVR, which, despite all its limitations, is a wonderful tool with an inspiring community.
Lately we have presented our project in the BRCvr — the Virtual Burning Man Festival, which took place in AltspaceVR in September this year.
My avatar’s name is ShuShu. My mother and my beloved aunt both used to call me this nickname when I was a little child. I feel that in VR I earned back the child that is in me. I enjoy my creativity just like little ShuShu used to enjoy creating his “inventions.”
My appearance is just the best I could come up with, taking into consideration the limitations of the avatars in the app I am currently using. If I could, I might have had a different avatar — for example, a unicorn, or one of the dolls used in my theatre.
There’s one thing I missed a lot in the “real” theatre and opera — it is the feeling that you belong to a family of artists, of people who breath theatre and “live” on the stage. And I found it in VR. I have managed to “infect” some artists with my VR theatre vision and I am blessed to have the opportunity to work and create with wonderful people. I came into VR just a few months ago and I was completely unknown. It took less than a half a year till my creations were exposed to thousands of people from all around the world.
I’ve met great personalities, whom I wouldn’t have the chance to meet in the “physical” world. I feel as we were all the pioneers of the VR technology.
The future? I think we are the future for VR — the first people, who understand the potential of this new universe and invest all their efforts in VR with a great joy. For most of our friends from the “other” world, we seem “weird” and “disconnected from reality.” I think that my friends from the “physical world”, those who are not yet familiar with VR and are not interested in VR, have no clue of what I am experiencing, and I cannot even find a way to describe them, how it feels to fly in my theater and dive in the depth of the ocean with monumental “actroids” surrounding me.
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All illustrations courtesty of ShuShu. VR Worlds photography by Niko Lang. Special thanks to Chiara Feriani.
VRium | NYMPHS Creative Team : ShuShu, Niko Lang, Andy Wood, Jose Ferrer, Timo, Daniele Colombo, Carlos Austin, Luminosity, Igor Korzhov, the Popovy Sisters.
Platform : AltspaceVR.
Worlds: NYMPHS : EPISODE 1, NYMPHS : EPISODE 2, NYMPHS : EPISODE 3,
Sponsor: TU Holdings, USA, Florida.
Main donors: VenusSX / Ph.D. Thomas B. Nickel
Contact ShuShu at : shushuvrart@gmail.com
Jefferson Machamer’s jazz age comic strip, lewd title and all, never made much of a splash when it first appeared, but we like it.
In the last episode, Patty, a beautiful heiress, has arrived at the resort Soak-You-on-Sea to search for her fiance, Peter, who, to her deep humiliation (and more than a little nervous jealousy), has taken a job as a waiter. Is he there for honest work, or to seduce other beautiful heiresses? The hunt is on.
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There is so much to love in the 1927 action film, The Gaucho: a lively, funny performance by Douglas Fairbanks, a fiery turn by Lupe Velez, who reminds us that she was a great actress before she became a gruesome punchline. That color sequence, those amazing technical innovations. Once derided, now recognized as a masterpiece, as well as an over-the-top hoot.
Not least among its pleasures, this wonderful poster by some anonymous artist, the kind of thing that could stand on its own even if there were no movie to advertise.
Just look at this.
One other thing: Don’t smoke, kids. But sometimes, in art, smoking is cool. And it’s Douglas Fairbanks smoking, back in 1927. He’d be dead now anyway.
By Samantha Maldonado, THE CITY
This article was originally published on Sep 3 at 5:56pm EDT by THE CITY
Recent projects have expanded sewer capacity in some neighborhoods. But antiquated storm pipes leave the city vulnerable to the new normal of massive rain storms. “We need to rainproof New York City,” one expert said.
The unprecedented rainfall that remnants of Hurricane Ida dumped on Sept. 1 made New York City’s climate vulnerabilities starkly visible, less than two weeks after Tropical Storm Henri broke previous rain records.
Boulevards across boroughs could’ve been mistaken for rivers. Yankee Stadium became a lake. Waterfalls cascaded into subway stations.
The scenes were vastly different from those from the coastal flooding in 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, which prompted high-profile protection projects focused on waterfront areas vulnerable to storm surge and sea-level rise.
The recent deluges highlight how heavy rains have been largely left out of the equation, experts told THE CITY.
“We need to rainproof New York City,” said Amy Chester, managing director of Rebuild By Design, a federal effort launched by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development after Sandy.
The flooding from Ida occurred because an overloaded, century-old drainage system was not built to accommodate that much water, city officials acknowledge.
“Rainfall rates were really extraordinary and far exceeded the capacity of the system,” city Department of Environmental Preservation Commissioner Vincent Sapienza said Thursday at a briefing with Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Kathy Hochul in Hollis, Queens. “Anything over two inches an hour, we’re going to have trouble with.”
The National Weather Service measured more thanthree inches an hour at the storm’s peak. At least 13 people died — including 11 trapped in flooded basement apartments.
Environmental advocates are calling for the city to enhance how it handles stormwater by expanding green infrastructure to increase absorption and by updating the system of sewers and pipes. Federal funds could help, but even with resources available it would take years to expand the city’s drainage capacity to handle massive weather events such as Ida.
“We’ve done a good job of thinking a lot about water coming in from the edge, but we’ve done a less good job of thinking about water coming from the sky,” said Rob Fruedenberg, vice president of the energy and environment program at the Regional Plan Association.
Ida’s downpour — more than 7 inches in all in many parts of the city — overwhelmed a sewer system already hard-pressed to handle run-of-the-mill heavy rain.
Much of the city’s network handles both waste and rain runoff in a single pipe. When rainfall exceeds the system’s capacity, starting at about a tenth of an inch of rain per hour, untreated sewage bypasses treatment plants and makes its way directly into city waterways.
Intensely concentrated rainfall adds the risk of flooding to the mix, when even the combined sewer system cannot keep up with the influx. Climate research commissioned by the city projected in 2015 that the number of days with rainfall of at least four inches would increase by as much as 67% by this decade compared to the period of 1971 to 2000.
“It’s hard to overstate on how many systemic levels this represents a clear and present danger,” said Eddie Bautista, executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, noting that the largest combined sewer overflows are located in communities of color.
When it comes to storm drainage, he said, “We’re taking it for granted at our own peril.”
After Superstorm Sandy caused citywide devastation, the influx of federal dollars mainly went to projects to rebuild and shore up the coastline. Many of those projects are still not near completed. But preventing inundation by rain in vulnerable locations is just as important, climate watchers say.
As required under 2018 laws sponsored by then-Councilmember Costa Constantinides (D-Queens), the city Department of Environmental Protection in May released a stormwater resiliency plan, along with a map of areas likely to flood due to stormwater. Both were due in 2020 but were delayed because the COVID-induced budget crisis forced the work to pause, said Mitch Schwartz, a de Blasio spokesperson.
The plan lays out actions for the city to undertake over the next decade, from advance storm alerts for basement residents to including stormwater flood measures in the city’s climate resiliency design guidelines.
The very first item on the agenda: “Inform the public about flood vulnerability from extreme rain.”
Those warnings did not come from city officials in advance of Ida.
De Blasio on Friday said he would accelerate the timeline for implementing the stormwater plan’s measures and establish an Extreme Weather Response Task Force to develop response protocols. He asked New Yorkers to brace for the unexpected.
“This kind of radical change in weather is beyond the understanding, beyond the reach of our typical measuring tools,” de Blasio said. “Things are happening that our projections can’t track with accuracy or consistency, which means we have to assume the worst in a way we never had before.”
Planning had already been underway for years. De Blasio’s OneNYC climate and infrastructure strategies are evolutions of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s 2007 PlaNYC, which identified what the city would need to address flash floods and upgrade the drainage system.
Ted Timbers,a spokesperson for the Department of Environmental Protection, said the city “invests hundreds of millions of dollars annually to upgrade the entire city’s drainage system, inland and coastal.”
Separating combined sewers is in process in Gowanus, College Point and Canarsie, according to Timbers. Meanwhile, the city is investing nearly $2 billion through 2025 upgrading drainage systems in flood-plagued Southeast Queens to increase capacity and prevent inundation, as well as making headway in Staten Island, he added.
But the city has no comprehensive initiative in place or planned to expand drain capacity throughout the city to prevent flooding.
Since Ida, elected officials have been demanding more.
“We need a much more aggressive and comprehensive approach now, one that doesn’t just rely on more studies and private-sector incentives, but brings the resources, regulatory reform, implementation, and enforcement needed to make change at scale quickly,” City Councilmember and comptroller candidate Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn) said in a statement.
He referred to the stormwater resiliency plan as “utterly inadequate.”
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said at Thursday’s Hollis news conference: “Queens needs to see much more infrastructure investment.”
“We cannot wait until tomorrow. We need it today,” he added. “These lives could have been saved if we had investment that we sorely needed a long time ago.”
A cheaper — and quicker — way to manage stormwater is through green infrastructure projects, which absorb and redirect water. These interventions include rain gardens, rain barrels, permeable playgrounds and green roofs — generally, practices that decrease impervious surfaces or divert stormwater from even entering the drainage system.
Those measures can minimize, but not fully eliminate, the effects of extreme weather, experts say.
“We need to think about a plan and an investment strategy that looks at reducing urban heat, stormwater based flooding and benefitting habitat and clean air all at once,” said Kate Boicourt, director of New York and New Jersey coasts and watersheds at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “A lot of that comes down to green infrastructure investments.”
New York City boasts more than 11,000 of these interventions, making the program the largest green infrastructure program in the country, according to the DEP’s Timbers. These include small “rain gardens,” also known as bioswales, designed to absorb excess rainwater on city streets and other public spaces.
Those programs haven’t been going perfectly: A 2019 audit from city Comptroller Scott Stringer found that out of 104 rain gardens reviewed, “the majority were not sufficiently maintained to ensure their proper functioning and appearance.” Litter and weeds plagued many sites.
Last year, the City Council voted to require certain construction projects to prevent runoff by retaining and managing stormwater on site. DEP is advancing rules scheduled to go into effect next year.
Environmental advocates say the city still has a way to go.
“There’s a limit to green infrastructure, but you’ve got to at least start with that,” Fruedenberg said. “Maybe it’ll capture that first inch, and then make it a little better.”
Beyond that, the city can then take more dramatic steps: Fruedenberg pointed out that cities in South Korea and China have transformed lanes of traffic into canals, for example.
“Water is our wildfires,” he said. “We can use design to accommodate that.”
If Congress passes a federal infrastructure bill, New York City would be poised to receive an influx of funds that de Blasio indicated would go towards resiliency efforts.
“We’re about to make massive infrastructure investments on a scale we’ve never made before as fast as humanly possible,” he said Friday. “Then we’ll have to deploy everything the city’s got and private contractors to keep updating sewer systems everywhere, but it will be a race against time.”
A windfall for the city could fund capital investments to solve interconnected societal and environmental problems, Chester noted.
“Every single time that we go to capital projects, we should be incorporating resilience planning for flash floods, for storm surge, for heat,” she said. “Every dollar we spend will be wasted if we have to build it back again in another 10 or 20 years.”
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THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.
Title image by Jose Martinez/ THE CITY
We’re not sure if we love this comic strip, or if we just love the idea that in 1929 there was a comic strip with this scandalous title. Maybe no one at the paper understood it. Maybe everyone was much more open minded during the Jazz Age than we might imagine.
Jefferson Machamer, the strip’s writer, became an artist of some note, although he never penned a truly successful and long-running comic strip.
In our last episode, a jealous Patty traveled to a seaside resort called “Soak-You-on-Sea” to check up on her boyfriend, Peter, who’s working as a waiter there. Now you’re all caught up!
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We’re publishing this anonymous, mid-19th century painting in our prestigious magazine just because we think it’s beautiful.
See this, and other great stuff, at the Brooklyn Museum, which is just down the street from the Audere offices.