Old Things & The Antiquarian's Imaginary.

IdleRich

IdleRich
I like Far Eastern "flying people" films. They sometimes get called "historical drama" - I have a DVD of "The Swordsman" ( 笑傲江湖 ) ( I think - it might be an entirely different Wu XIa film, but the principle is the same ), based on a novel by Jin Yong ( or the anglicised "Louis Cha" ), the most important author of the 20th Century, where amongst the extras there is an interview with one of the actresses ( who all the characters mistake for a "boy", gender confusion is an integral element of these films, even though it is entirely obvious that it is a female trying to pass as male ) and she boldly claims "Who is to say that people didn't fly back then? We weren't there, we can't prove that people didn't fly back then".

Exactly.
Very true, I've read quite a few old books and none of them specifically say at any point "and no-one was able to fly" so, yeah. In fact that's also true of modern stuff - films, books, news reports, friends talking about what they did last night etc - no-one ever says "no-one flew" so for all I know people are flying around all the time the second I turn my back.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
New stuff gets old eventually so I think that, unless you are the absolute opposite of an antiquarian - always updating your stuff so you have the latest version of everything - you might as well get something that lasts. And I sort of think that if something is really old that probably goes to show it was made with enough quality to survive that long at least. If it also looks good then I see no reason to prefer a new version that hasn't been tested and which may look dated in a few years.

There is a record shop in Lisbon that has one of these record players for sale, I have to admit that I find it very tempting. I think it would look rather fetching in my living room.

welltron.jpg
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I don't think of you as old Leo, in my book you're vintage.
Today we are offering for sale a very unusual but desirable lot. A vintage dissensus poster in very reasonable condition. Of course it has picked up a few bangs here and there due to years of experiencing and absorbing underground culture - a small scar on its face after an altercation with Jean-Michel Basquiat at The Mudd Club, a tattoo in an intimate place applied by Keith Haring and so on (see pictures below for details) - but these are really part of the charm of this truly unique piece.
The best part is that, despite decades of partying at Warhol's Factory and various other legendary venues in NCY, this dissensus poster is still fully functioning without any noticeable brain damage - if you are a collector you will know how rare it is to find one of this age that has not suffered any deterioration due to senility or prolonged drug use, or simply through years of interacting with Luka and Mr Tea - and is able to pontificate on modern culture or politics as though it knows what it's talking about at the drop of a hat. It has the basic music and culture knowledge that was built into all dissensians and as was standard with this model it contains the New York disco and house chip AND additionally one of the previous owners has upgraded it with some guitar music plug-ins and also another one containing various esoteric musics from around the world - for example, Favela Discos from Portugal - AND it is compatible with the new modules that come on the market, so if you choose to use your poster rather than simply display it - which you can do as the Leo model is one of the least argumentative ever created for the forum and so it will assimilate easily - you can keep it up to date and add more music (or other) modules as you desire.
As with all dissensus posters, of course you get the usual unnecessarily large collection of records, CDs and MP3s, and also books and dvds, but due to its extremely advanced age the Leo model has accumulated more than a few extremely desirable extras including a guitar pick that it was personally given by Leadbelly after one of his shows.
This poster has been so deeply entwined with the underground of NY that its story IS the story of NY; it could be years before another equivalent piece comes on the market in this condition, so bid freely and bid with confidence and this vintage piece steeped in history could be yours, we give you Mr New York himself - Leo!
 

Leo

Well-known member
well done, even though none of it is true. gonna use this as the basis for my obit, thanks rich.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I tried to do an affectionate piss take - with reference to some old conversations - I hoped that you would take it in the intended spirit.
 
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luka

Well-known member
he did get angry once about tibetan monks being able to levitate do you remember?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
hes gone off Tibetans now though he thinks theyre a bunch of cunts
He was a fully automated CCP drone the last time he posted anything on here. I mean he was always a nutter, obviously, but it was still a bit shocking all the same.
 

luka

Well-known member
I like old paintings. I like how you can watch the faces change as the centuries go by.
become ever more unmistakably caught in our own world, not abstracted into some other lustrous horizon
far away.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Speaking of old things, the other day I somehow got sucked into this YouTube channel where this guy fiddles around with old technology - for example, in one episode he spends 20 min reviewing the Sony CD-ROMman that came out in 1991 or something, marketed as a portable library cos you could fit whole books on a disc - but the screen was tiny and shit and all the books were reference books - and so it was a huge flop in Europe.

The channel is somehow both fascinating and incredibly boring at the same time. What drives someone to spend two years searching for a particular thirty year old piece of software (the only "choose your own adventure" book converted to this format) for a defunct and failed platform? The expenditure of effort to ge the dedicated printer that prints out one screen at a time ie about 5 or 6 short lines of text - simply to tell the viewer how bad it is - is mad really.

I find something quite appealing about the lifestyle of this eccentric old guy who spends his time tinkering around repairing ancient junk, tracking down out of print user manuals on ebay and reviewing stuff that is unavailable to anyone and which would be of no use to them anyhow. Certainly I found myself watching it at 6am the other day when I couldn't get to sleep.
 
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vimothy

yurp
what about this pop-heideggerian idea that the more comfortable you become with technology, the more you fall into a view point in which the mystery is gone bc you're just a cog in a giant factory, but old technology "re-wilds", somehow, existence
 

toko

Well-known member
i love old technology because it's more mechanical, more intuitive. seeing all the little gears in a clock I can build a basic mechanical model of how it works. old technology is usually more, should I say, physical. Conversely, my smartphone may as well be magic- I need multiple degrees to understand how input A leads to output B. you can't "pop the hood," and get your hands dirty, tinker around.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
what about this pop-heideggerian idea that the more comfortable you become with technology, the more you fall into a view point in which the mystery is gone bc you're just a cog in a giant factory, but old technology "re-wilds", somehow, existence
I'm not sure that the mystery is gone though. New technology has developed rapidly but although the average person's familiarity with using it has kept pace, I don't think that the understanding of how that tech works has kept up with it at all - the average user has no idea how their laptop or phone works. Imagine a 19th century guy whose watch stops, he can take the back off and even if he can't repair it he can see that that cog turns that one which tightens that spring and ultimately pulls that lever. His modern day equivalent who takes apart his laptop is just confronted by meaningless tiny boxes and so on... he knows it's not magic but, as ACC (not AOC as my hands tried to write for a second then) so famously said, for all most people understand of the day to day workings, it may as well be.

I think therefore I agree with the idea that old clock workings and even electronics can somehow be seen, in contrast to these smoothly alien plastic boxes, as organic natural technology that grows on its own in the wild, but my feeling is that that's more cos modern technology may as well be magic rather than cos its mystery has gone. Or perhaps something so unapproachable that we can't even reach the mystery to be mystified by it is in fact another side of that same coin.
 
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