Ricardo Edwards.

© Ricardo Edwards.

© Ricardo Edwards.

© Ricardo Edwards.

Jamaica-based visual artist Ricardo Edwards says his detailed portraits are each infused with “little fragments” of his personality. If that’s the case, any meeting with him would sure to be a mind-blowing experience of beautiful renditions of Afrofuturist imaginings, as is the through-line of his work. Pulling from cultural histories, the artist’s paintings are rife with symbolism: there is a bloody police officer wading through water with a horned skull covering his face, and in another photo a person with tribal tattoos bursting through a similar skull.

“My main inspiration comes from my culture and the exploration of my own obscure thoughts,” Edwards explains to Artists of Jamaica. “Motive? to express myself and hopefully inspire. If my work inspires or motivates at least one person in this reality before I die my purpose would’ve been served.”

You can see more at Afropunk and Artists of Jamaica. Stunning work, all.

Tacoma.

Tacoma is a science fiction drama of survival experienced as a video game. Playing as a contractor named Amy who is recovering the artificial intelligence (AI) from a space station in 2088, you encounter the specters of its vanished crew through fuzzy recordings of their colorful silhouettes. Some of these voyeuristic scenes, retrieved from a fragmented augmented reality technology on the station, are from months ago, others are just hours, and each adds to a heightened sense of dread about their fate.

The recently released game was created by Fullbright, the studio behind the popular 2013 Gone Home. Where Gone Home had players navigating an empty house in the Pacific Northwest, piecing together the narrative of its absent family, Tacoma is set in a more isolated home. You can dig through the crew members’ belongings in their air-locked rooms and messy gym lockers, read their private messages, and eavesdrop on their interactions with the AI, called ODIN. There are key codes to find and doors to unlock that can add to your understanding of how the six-member crew dealt with the station’s sudden lack of oxygen.

You can read and see more at Hyperallergic.

Social Foretelling.

IV. – Development of Wireless Telegraphy. Scene in Hyde Park. [These two figures are not communicating with one another. The lady is receiving an amatory message, and the gentleman some racing results.]

This is from Punch magazine, in 1906. They didn’t quite get to cellphones, but they weren’t completely off the mark, either. The Punch Almanack, in 1879, also speculated on the possibility of a telephonoscope:

(Every evening, before going to bed, Pater and Materfamilias set up an electric camera obscura over their bedroom mantel-piece, and gladden their eyes with the sight of their Children at the Antipodes, and converse gaily with them through the wire.)
Paterfamilias (in Willow Place): “Beatrice, come closer, I want to whisper.”
Beatrice (from Ceylon): “Yes, Papa dear.”
Paterfamilias: Who is that charming young lady playing on Charlie’s side!
Beatrix: “She’s just come over from England, Papa. I’ll introduce you as soon as the game’s over!”

A version of Skype was foretold, too, by a number of people. You can see more here.

Painting Workshop.

From Kestrel, who notes: J. Chris Morel (website: http://morelart.com/ ) is a local landscape artist who does a fall workshop every year, just as the leaves are starting to turn. By great good fortune, I got to attend the workshop this year.  The workshop lasts for 3 days, and each day we traveled to two different magnificent locations to paint. Chris would paint a demo for us, explaining how he handles that particular subject and giving excellent and detailed instruction in learning how to “see” a landscape, how the color of the shadows work and many other things. On day two, the morning location was where the chamisa was in its full glory.

Chris Morel does a demo teaching us how to approach painting chamisa.

My set up, trying my hand at painting chamisa.

Another of our locations, where we set up and painted. The workshop was extremely informative and it was a great honor to be able to attend. Chris was a terrific instructor. I hope I can do it again next year!

© Kestrel, all rights reserved.