Smell can influence reproductive behaviour in 3 ways – as an initiator ( pheromones signalling availability ), or as a primer or terminator of another’s reproductive processes. As our noses adapt from wafting the flicked pages of second-hand books to browsing digital deliveries, here’s a few online comic makers still trying to kick up a stink.

Cloudy Definitions
Anyone curious about visual arts / visual storytelling, has probably come across Scott McCloud’s classic ‘Understanding Comics’ – an amazing investigation into visual meaning and play, with it’s explorations of sequenced visual art being especially relevant to multimedia. The spawned sequel ‘Reinventing Comics’ isn’t as revelatory, but is well worth a library borrow for it’s examination of the creative potential of online publishing, as well as it’s distribution, economic prospects. Scott also maintains a great comic site, with continued musings, daily improvisations, and many links. A micropayment advocate, you can also buy his latest graphic novella for 25 cents ( using the bitpass.com payment system) at www.scottmccloud.com. What’s to like about Scott though, is he really bugs the question -

Whatz a comic?
Words, pictures, storytelling, art-in-sequence, each comic maker has their own mantra. Now that many artists and audiences are gradually shifting online, the whole visual storytelling ballpark has changed dramatically. Some artists still pretend they are designing for a static and finite sized print page, even though the web medium ain’t like that. Quite a few are wrestling with the new dynamics though, and trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Aussie Comic Wrestlers
There’s a veritable army of boundary stretching Aussie comic makers such as Lachlan Conn, Mandy Ord, Tim Danko, Michael Fikaris, Kieran Mangan & many many more, exhibiting their inkiness soon in Melbourne at Early Space, 201 Smith St, Collingwood ( 6pm Feb 20th). For those who can’t make the show, www.silentyarmy.com has links to the works of many of the artists involved.

More Meta
Other worthy online comic overview linkpages include www.belfry.com/comics – which lists 1350 regularly updated comics in a nice quick-loading easy access frontpage, , www.onlinecomics.net and www.lambiek.net/home.htm – the exhaustive webpage for the famous Amsterdam comic-shop Lambiek. Global Comic Jam exploits the multi-threaded and co-authoring possibilities of online comic making, allowing you to not only read other comics, but actively participate in shaping them – www.globalcomicjam.com. Jenny Everywhere goes a step further – being an open source character that anybody is free to use – www.queergranny.com/jennyeverywhere, kinda like the anonymous authoring ‘Luther Blissett’ pen name commonly used online.

Networked Comics
Other comic-makers harnessing the network include : www.slowwave.com – a collective dream diary authored by different people from around the world, and drawn as a comic strip by Jesse Reklaw, and Most Emailed – a daily comic strip improvised around Yahoo’s top three most emailed photos of the day.

Audiophiles
Of course, web pages can easily contain sound, and while many comic artists prefer to call this animation, some are starting to include ‘listening tracks’ to set an atmosphere while you navigate their comic. Egg Sample? Kean Soo at www.keaner.net, with a melanocholic personal story mirrored by the sounds of the late Elliot Smith. Reminds me of an old comic I saw once where each comic artist was asked to interpret their favourite indie-rock song as a one page comic – which produced some inventive and evocative results.

More Browser Benders
Try the gorgeous www.allow-to-infuse.com & www.eiland.cc, or maybe www.nowheregirl.com, http://fortthunder.org, www.paperrad.org, www.kuildoosh.com – abstract visual storytelling.. www.fark.com – funny photoshop contests that use the web cleverly, www.e-sheep.com – so many fine web-bendables here, www.nowheregirl.com & http://gruntle.org/blog – a phonecam blog, txt_thru the right words at the same time alongside foto-snapz & u gotza another comic medium.

Some 60% of the world is covered by water, with underwater mountains taller than Everest, and places of immense pressure where sunlight never reaches. I mention this for no other reason than to remind of the pretty weird and alien creatures lurking in our oceans. They have some online too.

Disinformation
Founder of this cult-like ‘gateway to the underground’, Richard Metzger, said a long while ago, ‘New media is a great way to make money out of old media’ & seems to be finally reaping ye olde rewards. In other words, the Disinfo site which boasts a vast collection of links to ‘news, politics, conspiracy & weirdness’ has been busy moving into print publishing and broadcasting. ( Note – the site was edited until recently by Melbourne’s Alex Burns ( www.livejournal.com/users/alexburns). And so we see spawned : a series of investigative anthologies, distribution of a range of provocative books, and even a Channel 4 UK series focussing on counterculture interviews, also now available on DVD.

DVD Hi-lites
The Disinfo DVD bites nicely, rabidly, weirdly, charmingly. Like some sort of psychedelic car salesman, presenter Richard Metzger guides interviews through a range of New York’ s twisted underbelly. It’s typical Disinfo seduction : sex, drugs & rebellion – ranging from the freaky carnivalesque to counterculture esoterica, from investigative and confrontational journalism through to some kind of darkened, voyeuristic showbiz. Illuminatus! author Robert Anton Wilson is the sharp-witted interview subject you’d expect and there’s even a John Safran McDonald’s piece thrown into the mix. (Apparently Richard saw the unaired in Oz piece, and loved it ). The two discs contain more than six hours of viewing, and the companion book of interviews is also pretty classic, complete with colour photos.

Compilations
You Are Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes & Cultural Myths, edited by Russ Kick, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Howard Bloom, Douglas Rushkoff, Peter Russell, and other boys tackle hallucinogenic toads, hacking, bible codes, big bangs, species extinction, George Bush, female serial killers, the Columbine massacre and the cloning of humans.

Abuse Your Illusions: The Disinformation Guide to Media Mirages & Establishment Lies, edited by Russ Kick
Neglected information regarding the September 11 attacks, antidepressants & suicide, Mormon racism, Panama & Wall St, Islamic censorship, flouridation, resurrection and government-sponsored anti-drug ads and the real story about the founding of United Nations & more.

The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult, edited by Richard Metzger
Aims to ‘redefine occult anthologies and a huge array of magical essays for a pop culture audience’. And so the usual suspects are lined up : Terence McKenna asking about alien contact through the smokable drug DMT, Mark Pesce exploring the relationship between spellcasting and computer programming, Grant Morrison explaining how YOU can become a practicing magician, Erik Davis dissecting H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Anton Wilson reflecting on the similarities between Crowley and Leary, Genesis P-Orridge recounting personal memories of his magical education under William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, Hakim Bey on Sorcery and Occult Terrorism etc etc.

MicroCinema
Some of the more tenacious deep sea critters are also the smallest, and at www.microcinema.com they digs deep in the service of independent short films. Browsing the site you’ll find a ‘totally sick’ range of short films that Microcinema exhibit and distribute on behalf of artists to festivals all over the world. Particularly successful are their ‘Independent Exposure’ compilations ( available on DVD ), which are regularly scheduled to screen at International venues the year round. Alongside the festival circuit, Microcinema have started a fledgling DVD Label which has already started to release collections of short films. Two discs I’ve managed to glimpse through their site, ‘Urban Visions’ & ‘Signal Drift’, are a mixed bag. Signal is a meandering audiovisual portrait of a ‘day’ with old colorisation and chroma keying tools that tires quickly, but Urban is a better compilation of shorts – with the inventive panoramic by Pierre-Yves Cruaud & fantastic squidgy animation by GG Tarantola as stand-outs. More micro to come.

Salvador Dali & David Lynch once collaborated on a fashion shoot, trying to make the world’s most expensive perfume commercial – for a fragrance rubbed under the balls. They never finished the project though, so the highpoint of testicle art in the twenty century is still attributed to artist Matthew Barney & his ‘Cremaster Cycle’ films ( More on that later ). Avoiding reproductive organs altogether ( none exist ), Austrian artist Robert Jelinek is hoping to reconstruct the pheromone scent of the long extinct Tasmanian Tiger and use this as a territorial fence of sorts for Tasmanian farmers. Presumably there’s also a future with it as a perfume additive.

Grappling with Biology
Humans have always lusted after immortality, but perhaps in less embarrassing ways. Google ‘extropians’ online and you’ll find a mostly Californian bunch of techno_evangelists, who want to transcend biology, and seriously expect to be uploading their consciousness to a hard drive within their lifetime. On the flipside, this week’s artists embrace rather than abandon biology – Matthew Barney uses technology to explore the biological mystery and complexity of testicles, & Robert Jelinek who aims to recreate the scent of a Tasmanian tiger.

Matthew Barney’s Gonads
Email me if I’m wrong, but slang for male genitalia seems to vastly outnumber that for female genitalia. ‘Gonads’ is one of my favourites for testicles, but presumably Matthew Barney has a vast library of ball-names, given he’s devoted nearly a decade of his life to a series of conceptual films about the rising and falling of testicles. We’re talking full-bodied epic art-house pieces here, that smell of the sort of funding it might take to travel to the moon, or at the least – conduct a mini-war on terrorism. Somewhere in the American arts hierarchy, somebody loves this guy’s balls.

The Cremaster Cycle Crash Course: Parts 1-5
Screening shortly in Sydney & Melbourne, here’s some of what to expect.
- Lots of Vaseline ( Barney fancies this as a sculpting medium ).
- A car crushed into an actual set of dentures.
- A drum solo by Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer) accompanied by droning bees.
- Barney appearing himself, as alternately – serial killer, Diva, Magician, Giant, tap-dancing fool etc.
- the erection of New York’s Chrysler building.
- elevator cables used as a harp.
- A woman in a blimp feeding grapes through tubes to dance formations in the stadium beneath her
- Poseidon the sea god with a flock of doves attached to his scrotum by silk ribbons Etc

Clearly then, puppetry of the penis, this is not. And for the record – the ‘Cremaster Cycle’ refers to the cremaster muscle which controls the rise and fall of testicles in response to ‘external stimuli’. Boggle more @ www.cremaster.net

Melb_Screening:
Feb 8 @ ACMI, marathon 35mm print screening of all five parts, back to back. Solo sessions later.

Syd_Screening:
Saturday 6 & 20 March 2004
10.30am – 12.30pm Cremaster 1 & 2
1.30pm – 4.30pm Cremaster 3
5.00pm – 7.00pm Cremaster 4 & 5

Phantom Smells
Also fascinated with the reproductive process, albeit trying to artificially recreate it, scientists from the Australian Museum in Sydney have long been hatching plans to resurrect the extinct Tasmanian tiger, and to resettle it in the wild in 2010. More recently in this doggedly ambitious project, Austrian Robert Jelinek has been working with them to synthetically reproduce the bodily scent (pheromone) of
Australia’s missing carnivorous marsupial, the Tassie tiger.

Already a scent has been tested during a three-week artist visit in December 2002. Yellow ‘air fresheners’ spiked with the scent served as ‘bait’ and were hung on low-lying tree limbs and shrubs. The animals observed (wombats, kangaroos, foxes, sheep and rabbits) reacted to the scent as if the surrounding territory had been claimed by the Tasmanian tiger and avoided the area. Eventually the artist hopes the scent could be utilized in large quantities as a spray to establish invisible scent fences, helping farmers to secure their lands against constant fox and rabbit plagues without resorting to barbed wire and poisonous substances.

Scratch N Sniff: www.sabotage.at/News/tiger.html