Political game designers Molleindustria have produced a beautifully disturbing video game that reflects the soul-sucking monotony of corporate cubicle life.
In their own words, Every Day The Same Dream “is a slightly existential riff on the theme of alienation and refusal of labor. The idea was to charge the cyclic nature of most video games with some kind of meaning (i.e. the ‘play again’ is not a game over). Yes, there is an end state, you can ‘beat’ the game.”
To complete this sad story the player must stray from their well-worn routine. Becoming inevitably numb to the world around you will bring you closer to the end — both figuratively and literally.
The monochrome game features a delightfully dark and eerie soundtrack and was made in less than a week as an entry for the Experimental Gameplay Project. You can play it online, or download it for either Mac or PC.
Via BoingBoing.
For those of us who still have holiday gifts to purchase — and let’s face it slackers, that’s most of us — here’s our last minute gift guide for your politically inclined, arts-loving friends and family. Of course, some gifts here are also well-suited for those people us pinko commie types have yet to brainwash with our liberal, freedom-hating propaganda. You never know, you may even catch Glenn Beck questioning his convictions after watching the right documentary.
Where appropriate, separate affiliate links are provided for our Canadian and American readers.
Movies
Music
- K’naan’s Troubadour (US | Canada)
- Ember Swift’s folktronica collection, Lentic
- Johnny Cash’s seminal album Bitter Tears: Ballads of The American Indian (US | Canada)
- Propagandhi’s latest, Supporting Caste, on disc or in vinyl (US | Canada)
Books
- Dr. Seuss & Co. Go To War (US | Canada)
- Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism (US | Canada)
- Diario de Oaxaca: A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Mexico, by Peter Kuper (US | Canada)
- How to make trouble and influence people
- Che: A Graphic Biography (US | Canada)
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Another modelling industry lie
Having recently watched the documentary AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL (Darryl Roberts, 2008), a film that explores the shadiest, most morally bankrupt nooks and crannies of the modelling industry, I have to say I wasn’t totally shocked by the image at the left. Still, this photoshopped nightmare of a model whose body is too thin to hold her head up is such a powerful signifier for an industry propped up by lies and profit, it is utterly worth following Boing Boing’s advice, and circulating it widely.
The image first appeared on Xeni one month ago, and Boing Boing picked it up to bring more attention to the absurd levels this industry will go to to convince women that . But instead of cowing to Ralph Lauren’s legal team, Boing Boing and others are citing Fair Use and posting the image for the purpose of criticism and comment. So are we. It’s not often we get to see Ralph Lauren’s dirty laundry in such shiny, glossy, horrid detail.
There is a kind of hubris we share about time. We often forget to remember the future. How we treat the environment is one obvious example – our unclever depletion of fresh water supplies. Or oil. We trade away futures in part because we can’t see them.
Contemporary architecture, according to Nicolas Graspierre and Kobas Laksa, must shoulder some of the blame for this shortsightedness. Our cityscapes are pocked with glistening edifices, a little like arrogant jewels in a crown, so shiny and new they seem like the future itself.
The Afterlife of Buildings by Nicolas Graspierre and Kobas Laksa hungrily 
challenges both architectural arrogance and our reluctance to admit some of the less attractive consequences of our ways. Originally conceived for the 11th International Architectural Exhibition in Venice 2008, this second installation takes six new high-profile buildings in Poland and transforms each into palimpsests of urban use. The images are playful and thought provoking. There is something about how we render urban space over time – how the ways we use it intensify, densify and ultimately transform everything we build into decaying clutter – that humbles even the most ostentatious moments of financial celebration.
The full exhibition can be viewed online.
Atheist bus advert in London. Photo: Reuters.
An idea imported from the UK and sweeping many of the world’s larger cities has come to Canada: adverts on public transit vehicles suggesting there just might not be a god. The advertising campaign has been turned down by some, and in most cases organizers were forced to insert ambiguous words like “might not” or “maybe” in the adverts, lest believers should feel slighted. La Presse reported that the ads would run in Montreal for the month of March, while the Montreal Gazette reported two days ago that Toronto and even Calgary have joined the list of cities willing to reap advertising dollars from a campaign that questions divine creation.
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Screen grab of the Laboratory of Insurrection Imagination site
The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination presents C.R.A.S.H: A postcapitalist A to Z. Take part in a free course combining art, activism and permaculture or get paid to actively imagine a postcapitalist world!
“We are looking into an unprecedented abyss of economic and social turmoil that confounds our previous perceptions of historical risk. Our vertigo is intensified by our ignorance of the depth of the crisis or any sense of how far we might ultimately fall.”(Mike Davis, Historian and social commentator.)
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