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By Rasharn Agyemang For LOVE Magazine.

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There is no merit in success. Until we destroy the impression of merit in people’s success, every discussion will be muffled by fascination—by the apparently objective, natural, collective fascination with success and successful people.

Francesco Pacifico, Workplace Hacks (via jacobwren)

#success #successful people #workplace hacks #francesco pacifico #merit #truth!

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People’s Flowers, Richard Estes, 1971

Oil on canvas 162.6 x 92.7 cm (64.02 x 36.5 in.) Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain

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Tuan Jie Hu, panorama

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Nokia in Dazed, vol 2, Issue 103 July 2003

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Mafundi by Elliott Pinkney, 1972 Restored in 1997

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Jaakko Pallasvuo

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donate to the Louisville Community Bail Fund for those fighting for justice for Breonna Taylor

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Indie Game Spotlight: Mutazione

We’re ready to spill the tea in this week’s Indie Game Spotlight. Mutazione is a mutant soap opera in which neighborhood gossip meets the supernatural. The player joins Kai as she arrives in the mysterious community of Mutazione to care for her ailing grandfather. With her, you will discover scenic hangouts, magical gardens, new friends, and old secrets…the people of Mutazione can survive an apocalyptic meteor strike, but can they survive their own small-town dramas?

Hannah Nicklin is the CEO of Die Gute Fabrik and the narrative designer and writer on Mutazione. We spoke with her about animation styles, the truth in storytelling, and the nature of communities. Ready? Let’s go!

How did the team come up with the animation style in Mutazione?

The creative vision for Mutazione has been developing for much longer than is usually the case for games, having been in Creative Director Nils Deneken’s imagination for over a decade. He has whole notebooks filled with his beautiful illustrations and designs, going back years!  

When looking back at early concept art, the designs seem to have arrived in Nils’ mind fully formed. It’s very much what you see in the game now. He draws influence from anime, comics, and illustration, and is interested in weaving nature and the natural world into his work. Our very talented animators (Esben Modvig and Anne Louise Laugesen) worked from Nils’ mock-ups to help bring his world to life. Esben and Anne Louise were both new to animating for games, and we think that helped us maintain a fresh feel for the animation—unburdened with ideas about how games ‘should’ look.

We’ve heard that there are musical plant gardens—tell us more!

When you travel to the community as Kai, you believe that you are going there to help care for your ailing grandfather. But it quickly becomes clear that he has other plans for you, like introducing you to several magical musical gardens.

Alessandro Coronas, who composed and designed them, was influenced by sounds from nature, as well as ambient music—in particular, Brian Eno’s Music For Airports. In the game, you can gather seeds and plant them in the gardens, adding their sounds to the symphony of all the other plants there.

Different plant families play in different harmonic keys, so you’ll experience a variety of moods, textures, and emotions—from melancholic orchestral instruments in a minor key, to tranquil acoustic guitars in a major key. In order to progress through the story, you must tune each garden in a specific way.

Sometimes you might like to move on with the story, but you can always return to adjust the tuning, and if you want some background music while you take a break from the story, you can just sit in ‘listen’ mode and enjoy your unique ambient composition.

How did the team approach the design of characters and their backstories?

When I joined the project over three years ago, the broad brushstrokes of the story were very much in place from Nils’ original vision. As the writer and narrative designer, being handed the story-world of Mutazione was a huge gift for me because it felt like it already really existed—our task has been less one of invention, and more like we are recording a history that has already been written. With an excellent and dedicated team, we’ve been able to take those first ideas, and develop and structure them to create something full of dramatic twists and turns, with rich characterisation, in a lush, hand-illustrated world.

That said, I did a lot of work on shaping the characters’ emotional journeys, making sure that none of them felt like a stereotype. I wanted them to be defined by their complexities, so there are no ‘goodies’ or 'baddies.’ only characters whose troubles and traumas are complex because everyone has darkness and light inside them. I think the key to writing an ensemble-driven story is to make sure that every character has evolved in some way by the end, even just a little.

Is there any juicy drama in the game that was inspired by real events?

Despite the supernatural elements, the stories within the community are the stories of every community, everywhere: unrequited love, meddling family members, old secrets, relationships breaking down, and lovers finally finding their way to one another. It’s a story that deserves to be told, with humour and honesty.

As a writer, I try to be alive to the truth of the stories I’m working on— whether that’s drawing on my own experience, exercising empathy, or speaking with someone who might know more about a particular situation than I do. For example, my brother helped us playtest the game. His training as a bereavement counsellor really helped me compose a convincing journey for a character who is revealed to be dealing with a tragic loss in the past. 

What do you hope people will take away from Mutazione?

We’re trying to create experiences in games that draw on references outside of games, and so we aim for a form of storytelling which is mature, complex, and unique when compared to the typical ‘hero’s tale’ that consists of one character moving through the world, and a world that revolves around their quest. It’s a trope we inherited from film and theatre and is designed for a shorter experience and an era of kings and emperors.

In games, we often tell longer-form stories, and the problems and concerns we face today are collective, not individual. It’s vital for us to think about how we exist as a series of communities, and how we might find a better balance, both within those communities and as part of our environment.

Mutazione is about the messy, joyful, breathtaking act of living with people—not just alongside them, or through them, or in passing. It’s the kind of story I feel privileged to be a part of telling. We have used our resources to create a lively ensemble of voices, and hope this will strike a chord with audiences around the world.

Who’s ready for some drama? Mutazione will be released on September 19, 2019! Visit their website for more info on how to get an alert when it’s live.

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~*~*~ yonic tile sends yonic powers ~*~*~

#yoni #yonic #vagina tile #bloom #floral tile #tiling #maylands #bayswater #divine

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Talked to Japanese art-rock band Chai for Flood Magazine and made a few intentional and a lot of accidental Tom Tom Club references in the process (don’t hate the player hate the game!!!!) Link TK but it’s on newstands now!

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News From Home Diptych

Oil and Acrylic on Canvas

18 x 24″

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Moonlight on the River

Oil on Wood

18  24″

2020

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Haley Josephs (@haley.josephs)

Love Gaze

Oil on Canvas

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Toni Smith , Alek Wek and Akon Changkou by John Edmonds for Vogue US  - September 2020.

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09/20/20

Lebanese Youth Marched In Beirut Against Military Brutality

Hundreds of Lebanese youth joined with members of several secular political organizations marched from the Palace of Justice towards the Military court on Saturday, protesting the use of live bullets and rubber bands on un-armed protesters.

MADA, a political youth network of various universities, called to refute the status quo. “Quite simply, we won’t accept to see our country transformed into a military barracks by security officers who were brought up by the Baath and the leaders of despotism,” MADA declared in an Instagram post.

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09/20/20

Thai protesters defiantly install ‘People’s Plaque’

Thousands of protesters cheered as advocates yesterday installed a plaque in Bangkok declaring that Thailand “belongs to the people” — the boldest show of defiance in a youth-led movement that is questioning the unassailable monarchy’s role in the country.

“Down with feudalism, long live the people,” protest organizer Parit Chiwarak shouted to the cheering crowd. The plaque states the date Sept. 20, 2020, followed by the proclamation: “The people have expressed the intention that this country belongs to the people, and not the king.”