algroth

True, but even so I reckon a neutral regional voice would be more appealing than a stock character personality simply because by means of their dialect and accent you are already adding traits that feel more like they're the natural result of a personal history and background. For the voice actor it is also easier to picture a character and his personality/manner of being by picturing them in a specific setting and rolling with how they'd imagine that character would be, whereas stock character personalities lack that "Magic If" that is inherently present in thinking a voice set from a background or culture instead. Mostly I see this as a good idea with which to expand on the current choices which are based on personality instead, that way you have the choice of going for the region-neutral voices should any of the regional ones not fit the way you picture your character.

So I was just thinking about the voice sets for the original Pillars... It is a relatively minor complaint, but all the same I recall how on character creation I attempted to look for a voice set to match my character's appearance, only to have to settle for the next best thing which was about as neutral a voice set as I could find... And looking back at many other games and the kind of voice sets you're allowed to choose from, to my mind what I usually find to be the case is that they are grouped according to broad 'character types' (e.g. aggressive, stoic, sneaky, mystic) and each is played in a very broad, exaggerated fashion. Pillars is no exception for me in this matter. So I was thinking about this matter as to how to reach a parameter for voice sets that would add much more colour to a character than the stock character types, and one that immediately came to mind was regional differences. In Pillars, for example, wouldn't it be interesting to have the new voice sets correspond to the different regions of Eora, i.e. have a voice set for Aedyr, Deadfire, Ixamitl, Rauatai, the Vailian Republics and so on? These would be interesting inasmuch as they could help better define the PC's background, and also would give some space with which to play with regional slang and language in some of their lines thus integrating them better to the game's world. This is just a random thought that came to mind, but wouldn't it be an interesting idea as a more unique and immersive approach to the new voice sets than simply doing "aggressive 2", "stoic 2" and so on (especially since we also have the stock character sets from the first game to choose from should we want something more personality-specific)? Anyhow, let me know your thoughts.

Definitely agree that the blame for the bombing as such has to fall on the perpetrator, but a repeated failure in security can also be blamed of negligence (I don't know enough about this matter to argue in favour or against it myself, but I can see how it can be a valid claim to make). These are two different accusations even if they do relate to a shared event and one shouldn't shadow or replace the other.

Just watched episode 4 for American Gods, and now I can't help picture this song:

Same, pretty much, just last week. :D

Sad. I don't think Snyder was the problem with Batman v. Superman myself, and am even pretty sure the best aspects of it were pretty wholly his doing. Sad that the above should happen to him and his family.

Has technology gone too far?

Train wreck of a movie. Even more nails on chalkboard than listening to Avellone speak. It's actually a pretty phenomenal movie. Avellone is the awesome. But he will not be getting back together with Obsidian again. I'll also have to agree with Blodhemn on it, it's pretty poor. I did however enjoy the original version, Open Your Eyes. Recommended, especially for fans of the remake.

Same, actually! Run the Jewels may well be my favorite hip-hop act right now.

Oh yeah, I do like a lot of his films. Dead or Alive 2: Birds is probably my favorite of the lot, and it's superb at that. He's a very creative and intelligent filmmaker when he's on point, just, he isn't always.

Not sure what to think of it, Miike is generally pretty hit-or-miss in my book. There's some shots in that trailer that I really liked, though.

I would also agree, but I'm curious as to what bad ideas you think Duchamp fostered. :D I think that Duchamp's Readymades (and to a certain degree, the Dadaists in general) are the source for the type of pretension in artists that "Art School Confidential" pokes fun of. They foster the idea that anything slapped together and backed by a rationale is art. But the Readymades (IMO) generally fail any sort of test regarding transformative nature of art. If you put a bicycle on a stool it is, ultimately a bicycle on a stool. I get that Dadaism was 'anti-art' but I'd argue that parts of it was art and helped re-expand the boundaries of art after so many years of formalism. But to me most of the Readymades I've seen fail in the effort to actually be art. To be fair, I'm not sure many people care about the transformative part of art, but to me this is the role of the artist. Whatever they've 'found' - whether its canvas and paint or a bicycle - needs to be transformed by the artist to really be art. Its part of why I think Lichtenstein's early "pop art" work isn't transformative at all and therefore doesn't qualify as art to me. Its a shame that he appropriated the art of others and made millions off of them, to be honest. YMMV. It's interesting that you should mention the transformative part of art, since that's sort of one of the reasons I love Duchamp's work. One of the oddities about Duchamp's work is the thread of alchemy that runs through all of his work, right from the depiction of the angelical egg and homunculus in Young Man and Woman in Spring to the concerns involving the exoteric and esoteric that are present in Étant Donnés, and transformation, or transmutation at least, is a theme that is present throughout his work as seen clearest in both The Large Glass, his 'futurist' period and the very idea of readymades. In the very early quasi-Fauvist works there's already a concern with the opposition of male and female and their eventual union/transformation into a hermaphrodite individual (this also translating over to L.H.O.O.Q. and his whole Rose Sélavy persona), and in many regards both the Fountain and Bicycle Wheel are also transformations into hermaphrodite beings, in the former's case as the form is both phallic in its topmost protrusion but also womb-like in its lower, more enclosed space, likewise signed aby the alias 'R. Mutt' (Mutt R., mutter), and the latter by means of the union between the classic opposition of stillness and motion in what he'd deem a "kinetic sculpture". I think these examples are transformative in essence as by appropriating these he's able to elevate mundane objects into works with a new purpose and meaning, though granted that the transformation is less literal than it is a resignification or repurposing of what is largely already there. That's my take on Duchamp's work anyhow. For the most part I think something like what the readymades were proposing was bound to happen at some point or other, it seems inevitable from today's perspective at least, but I think that he too made these with more of an idea in mind than just taking a dump on the academic dogmas of the time, and I value his work over that of many of his contemporaries, or Dada and pop artists in general, because of it. The general attitude of 'f*** conventions' is something that gets so far without actual purpose behind it, I feel, and Duchamp's work has that purpose, for me anyhow. I don't think readymades were a bad idea as Duchamp intended them above, I think the gesture is significant and so is this approach to transformation when placed in the context of alchemy, semiotics and so on, but I do agree that perhaps it started more than a few bad habits amidst future artists.

I would agree, but sometimes we just have to make do with what we have. I'm not so picky that I cannot derive enjoyment from a copy, much as the 'real experience' is still bound to trump it.

I have not seen it, but I get what you mean all the same - the Emperor's New Clothes argument and all that jazz. I can see how one can feel that way about abstract art but I for one find a lot to appreciate in experiences and ideas expressed in manners that stray from classical, hard-lined conventions; actually I would hope a fan of fantasy and a medium as broadly shunned as videogames and comic books to be more open about such means as well, given the bad rep any of these categories has received over time from those who believe they're only Harry Potter, Call of Duty and superheroes respectively. I mean, as with any such category there's a good and bad side to it, I certainly don't think all abstract artists are great and I do think some can feel quite fraudulent - but then, for every Hubert Robert there's also a dozen mediocre landscape artists painting the same city landmarks over and over so that some housewife can fill an empty wall in her dining room. There are contemporary artists who may be extremely simple in regards to their techniques while others (see Shahzia Sikander, Luis Felipe Noé or Duane Michals in this thread for example) to put a great degree of skill on display as well. In fact the scene is so varied that one cannot rightly point at any piece or art and say 'everything is like that': when you find yourself with a scene that incorporates everything from sculpting and painting to forging to creating electric circuits to manipulating photography to collage, all the way down to readymades and performance, it's pretty disingenuous to me to try and find a blanket statement with which to dismiss it all. In the end I value the effect and impact it has on me regardles of technical or virtuous display - to me the right technique or appropriation, however simple it may be, to convey rightly an idea or feeling is more worthwhile than any amount of skill placed on something that, ultimately, is little more than 'pretty'. That, I think, is worthy of its own place and praise in art. I wonder if Art is like music in that if you like a genre of music you can pick out the differences between the artists and what makes them unique and such, but if you don't like a genre it all sounds like repetitive garbage. It doesn't really happen to me with the music genres I dislike (depends on the specificity of the genre though, but this applies both to genres I generally like and generally dislike), nor do I see how it's the case with art. Taking some examples I have posted here: Pedro Reyes, Shahzia Sikander, Luis Felipe Noé, Chul Hyun Ahn. I'm not sure how these are alike at all despite being all contemporary art.

I would also agree, but I'm curious as to what bad ideas you think Duchamp fostered. :D

I have not seen it, but I get what you mean all the same - the Emperor's New Clothes argument and all that jazz. I can see how one can feel that way about abstract art but I for one find a lot to appreciate in experiences and ideas expressed in manners that stray from classical, hard-lined conventions; actually I would hope a fan of fantasy and a medium as broadly shunned as videogames and comic books to be more open about such means as well, given the bad rep any of these categories has received over time from those who believe they're only Harry Potter, Call of Duty and superheroes respectively. I mean, as with any such category there's a good and bad side to it, I certainly don't think all abstract artists are great and I do think some can feel quite fraudulent - but then, for every Hubert Robert there's also a dozen mediocre landscape artists painting the same city landmarks over and over so that some housewife can fill an empty wall in her dining room. There are contemporary artists who may be extremely simple in regards to their techniques while others (see Shahzia Sikander, Luis Felipe Noé or Duane Michals in this thread for example) to put a great degree of skill on display as well. In fact the scene is so varied that one cannot rightly point at any piece or art and say 'everything is like that': when you find yourself with a scene that incorporates everything from sculpting and painting to forging to creating electric circuits to manipulating photography to collage, all the way down to readymades and performance, it's pretty disingenuous to me to try and find a blanket statement with which to dismiss it all. In the end I value the effect and impact it has on me regardles of technical or virtuous display - to me the right technique or appropriation, however simple it may be, to convey rightly an idea or feeling is more worthwhile than any amount of skill placed on something that, ultimately, is little more than 'pretty'. That, I think, is worthy of its own place and praise in art.

Finished Legion over the weekend, absolutely loved it despite a rather lacklustre ending and a pretty silly post-credits sequence. Watching American Gods now... I haven't read the original source and I am so far enjoying this though I am also getting something of a Watchmen adaptation vibe out of it. I'll make sure to check the source material soon.

Every one of those is gorgeous. Its a shame nowadays art like that is relegated to concept work or illustration while abstract post modern garbage gets all the attention Agreed on the former, not on the latter. Abstract and modernist/post-modern art have their well-earned place as do any other artstyle (I have posted a number of contemporary works in earlier posts for example which I would rank amidst my favorites), the problem is when it becomes so monopolistic in the contemporary scene that it relegates the more classical forms to what you describe. All the same, glad you enjoyed these!

Well that's perfectly fine. I don't like Mark Shelton either, as I said, and to be honest I don't expect people to like Sirenia when I link it. Extremely distorted guitars, black metal rasps, death metal growls and a french choir against a gothic metal backdrop is not very compatible in my experience - and certainly not for anyone that isn't a fan of the genre to begin with. At the risk of sounding pretty pretentious or whatnot, to me the issue with most black metal - and metal in general for that matter - is less so the likes of distorted guitars or growling but rather its usual employment to extremely pedestrian or tacky effect. I do enjoy the tone of extremely distorted guitars, though more often when the instrument is approached in unconventional fashion, be it when making use of dissonant chords and scales, used for clusters and feedback and so on. I'm not saying there are no metal bands that do these things but they are usually the exceptions that I like. When it comes to vocals I find the growling in the context of something 'dark', 'heavy' or 'gothic' to be silly, practically all of the time.

Damn. R.I.P.

"The Dong with a Luminous Nose", by Edward Lear As musicalized by Neil Ardley and narrated by Ivor Cutler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkPGZFsOMw

The bigger names that are my favorite vocalists: Emiliana Torrini(!), China Forbes (of Pink Martini), Beth Gibbons (of Portishead), and...um, hmm, David Byrne (of Talking Heads/himself). I guess it's a little more than just five or so, really, as there's also a few smaller names, too, though, from artists most nobody has ever heard of and that you can't really listen to unless you actually physically own their stuff (->me). Most of the artists that I listen to I'm actually just merely "okay" with - VNV Nation, Weird Al, Tom Lehrer, They Might Be Giants, Depeche Mode, etc. It's more that their voices don't actively bother me than that I really like them all that much. Instrumental music is mostly fine - definitely subject to less arbitrary dislike than music with vocals. There are a few things that still bother me, though, and the usual suspects are brass instruments and electric guitars - however, the latter is obviously extremely varied in its usage, and so that's kind of hit or miss, too. Ohh... I believe we had spoken about this earlier. I wasn't sure if it had been you or majestic with whom I'd spoken about vocalists and so on. Interesting that you should list David Byrne and Dave Gahan as two vocalists you like (on that matter I did include a Talking Heads album in the list - The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads). There's a number of albums in the list above that are either purely or mostly instrumental, with varying presence of guitar though usually used in ways other than the traditional rock forms. Plenty of brass though, in great part due to my love for jazz - but again, these can also be very varied in their use depending on what you hear.

What of instrumental (or non-sung) music? Also, which are the vocalists you happen to like?

That's something at least! :D But it's not really that obscure a list all in all - yes, there are obscure albums, but so are there albums by Velvet Underground, Beach Boys, Hendrix, King Crimson, the Mothers of Invention, Genesis et al., as well as some pretty popular classical and jazz artists, and Piazzolla of course. With regards to vocalists I am a bit weird personally: I do take issue with a bad vocalist but what constitutes a good or bad vocalist is pretty different to most people's definition of the same. Usually I ask their delivery to be either interesting or authentic, or both - I value that over any amount of vocal gymnastics or "clarity" to their voice, and hence also why I would much rather listen to Captain Beefheart or Peter Hammill over the likes of Freddie Mercury or Bono. With regards to the two examples posted above I can safely say neither vocalist does anything for me. Sorry. And of course I do appreciate a skilled and clear singer as well - Scott Walker, who makes several appearances in the list, is a case in point.