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DEMOBAZA

One of my favorite online clothing stores is Bulgaria-based DEMOBAZA. Raw, gauzy, tattered, asymmetrical knits dominate this unique, futuristic label. With unconventional shapes, various textures, cutouts galore, exposed seams, arm warmers, cowls, and hoods, it brings to mind the image of a fierce yet pixielike urban nomad. I would describe its aesthetic as haute cyberpunk. I love the unusual silhouettes which lend themselves so much to draping and layering.

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A Brief Review of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

“There is a spoon of medicine, I says, and it’s a silver spoon what you did get born holding, ever so painful for mummy dear but grasped so hard it was in a little screaming red fist. Later you used your spoon to dig a hole in the garden to get all the way to Mexico, and then you did eat worms with your spoon on the way to stay fat.
This spoon was the same you gave your twins, then you used it to dig a hole to their clockwork souls and you ate up their hearts like soup on the way to keep you fat.
Fat little mole, where will you dig next, I asks, you and your little silver spoon made from the silver spine of your children, and wrapped in the hair of your dearly departed?”

Although Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs has had a somewhat mixed reception since its release last September, it haunted and affected me as games rarely do. I think I even consider it to be stronger than its acclaimed predecessor, Amnesia: The Dark Descent – not from the perspective of gameplay mechanics or anything of the sort; and Descent is much scarier and more horrific in terms of actual terror. But I found Pigs to be much more moving, and darker in its far-reaching implications.

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Naomi Kizhner’s “Energy Addicts”

Energy Addicts is a project by Israeli graduate student Naomi Kizhner. Kizhner, a designer and “trend theorist,” seeks to “provoke the thought about how far we will go in order to ‘feed’ our addiction in the world of declining resources.” The project comprises three devices, the Blinker, the E-Pulse Conductor, and the Blood Bridge – jewelry pieces which harness the body’s energy to generate electrical power. Some of them are embedded into the veins, and thus invasive.

Kizhner plays with the idea of human bodies as “biological wealth.” Using “invasive gold and biopolymer devices,” electromagnets, micro energy cells, and micro turbines, she turns the wearer into a natural resource, where “simple movements performed by the subconscious are fully utilized” – provoking interesting questions about ethics and the quantification of the individual. The Blinker extracts energy from blinks of the eyelids, the Blood Bridge uses a hypodermic needle inserted into the arm and circulates blood through the wheel, turning it, and the E-Pulse Conductor is inserted in veins near the spine and picks up electrical impulses.

This ingenious project is simultaneously technological wizardry, fashion statement, and social commentary. She has also made a short film to accompany it, which depicts individuals using their bodies to light up their world in a way that makes it meaningful for them, drawing them further into this addiction, but also seeming to drain them. It is as if they only feel alive when they can have this visionary reality before them, which requires their energy to manifest; so what makes them feel alive is what ironically enervates and devitalizes them, and is also what closes them off to any other world, perpetuating the cycle.

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SOMA

SOMA is an upcoming sci-fi survival horror video game from Frictional, the developer of the Penumbra series and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This seems to have the intense atmosphere, deep horror, and lush graphics of the studio’s other titles, but in the new context of a science fiction setting within which it will explore existential themes. It’s set to be released in early 2015.

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The Somnabulist Bride: Paintings by Stephen Mackey

Stephen Mackey’s soft, dreamy, charming paintings are reminiscent of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century portraits. Animal-headed ladies and bow-lipped children pose enigmatically in idyllic, sumptuous settings, all enmeshed in an atmosphere of mystery, whimsy, and subtle eeriness. With an avid historical awareness and deft skill, Mackey creates little worlds within the edges of these paintings.

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The Abandoned Child: Necronymphic Creations by Tari Nakagawa

Tari Nakagawa’s exquisite ball-jointed dolls exude a deep sense of melancholy. With a haunting aura of mourning and vulnerability, these innocent, wan little faces expressing languor and dolor, malady and misery, with finely eloquent hands and limbs, bespeak a corrupt eroticism and a necromantic sensuality. They are disturbing as a strange alchemy of pathos, innocence, death, decay, and sirenlike allure. A primary inspiration for these lovely creations is 19th-century postmortem child portraiture.

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The Anatomical Art of Pole Ka

The whimsical, wistful drawings of Paris-based artist Pole Ka have the pensive elegance of vintage anatomy illustrations, expressing the emotional and personal entanglements and intricacies of human beings, no less than the delicate structure and beauty of veins and arteries.