This past Friday J.C. of Pangea Piercing just posted the latest The Modified World videocast show, this week talking about things like fossil, bone, horn, and amber body jewelry — organic body jewelry other than wood. As always, a wonderful introduction to and in-depth discussion of the subject from J.C.’s encyclopedic love of all things bodmod for the piercing geek — and always great “educated consumer” information as well, protecting you from the many scams floating about in what has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. It’s about nine minutes of meat (11:11 total), and this video gets into more depth than the wood jewelry one did and it was quite enjoyable — and a superb advertisement for Pangea’s enticing selection of jewelry.
I’m just terrible about regularly promoting things, so I should mention that last week J.C. interviews and does some work for Alexis Brown of the band “Straight Line Stitch”. Fans of either The Modified World or Straight Line Stitch will enjoy this. Here’s the link: youtube.com/watch?v=ZYqyxrFzfwA, although if you only have time for one of these two, the one on jewelry above was more to my liking.
I realized today that lately I’ve neglected to feature J.C. Potts’s “The Modified World” when it airs on Friday nights. I have so much respect for what J.C. is doing with his videos, and think they’re an incredibly valuable contribution to body modification culture. As I’ve said before, if it wasn’t for one important fact I’d do everything in my power to have Rachel offer him a job at BME and have ModBlog host his videos rather than just linking to them. But that big important fact is that one of the things that makes J.C. so valuable is that he is a true independent, and is beholden to no one other than himself. He’s not afraid to say what he feels needs to be said. I can’t say I agree with every word he’s spoken — although I do more often than not — but I can say emphatically that he’s an intelligent person whose opinions and knowledge I always take the time consider. He’s broadening horizons and spreading the gospel of the modified world for the betterment of this community, and I hope he continues finding the energy to produce “The Modified World” for a long time to come.
Anyway, his most recent show is a continuation in his excellent body jewelry series, this week focusing on Glass Body Jewelry Basics — a follow-up to his earlier introduction to wood body jewelry — seven minutes of stuff every piercing lover needs to know (about four or five minutes of actual “meat” — as he admits, there’s not all that much to say about glass). As a side comment, beautiful production and editing on this show as always — even though it’s only seven minutes of video, serious time and effort went into creating it. This is a true “television show”, not some vlog with a kid rambling into his webcam.
As I write this, Rachel is still moving BMEshop to its new location, but she carries some beautiful glass jewelry made by our old friend Jason from Gorilla Glass.
The glass video was admittedly brief, so hopefully you’re hungering for more. The previous week saw a quick interview with Jared Silverman, a St. Louis-based professional piercer. Personally I like the long videos and you may recall my interviews on BMEradio were often well over an hour, but five minutes is admittedly much easier to fit into your day. This interview I think will be of great interest especially to people thinking about a career in piercing. I also always enjoy interviews from different areas because it gives me a peek into the way this culture that’s so dear to my heart expresses itself in different geographies.
That’s actually part two from an earlier video from the same day that I won’t embed here but you can follow a link to it. It shows you what J.C. got himself up to in St. Louis both as a tourist, and while doing a guest spot at TRX.
The full-length body mod documentary below is all in Russian I’m afraid, but I still watched every minute of it and greatly enjoyed seeing so many friends and BME members that I’ve known over the years — Sinner Team for example is broadly featured as are a number of other well-known Ruissian body play icons. I also really liked it because it feels like body modification in America has gotten very “fashion conscious” and gentrified, but most of the people in this video felt very “real” — not all dressed up with lots of makeup and styling for lack of a better way of explaining it. I felt like I could relate to it, and it was just really nice seeing lots of modded people with a real purity about them. Or maybe because I couldn’t understand what was being said I was just projecting what I wanted to see? I can’t say for sure, but I do want to recommend this video. Put on some music if you can’t understand the words.
I was recently asked if I’d seen the “animated tattoo” that was recently done for the first time, and I replied that I didn’t think this was possible with current technology. The person who asked me the question did a little searching, and discovered that it wasn’t truly an animated tattoo — the tattoo didn’t move — but a tattoo of a QR-code type link that would cause a cellphone to display a specific YouTube video designed to sit as the center piece of the tattoo. This is the very misleadingly labeled news report they got back to me with:
The tattoo was done by French tattooist K.A.R.L. in June of 2011, and claimed to be the “first ever” animated tattoo, but of course readers of ModBlog know that it is neither an animated tattoo, nor is it even the first “augmented reality” tattoo of this type — let alone a particularly impressive one. For example, in May of last year, before K.A.R.L. did this PR stunt, Rob had already covered the subject of augmented reality tattoos here on ModBlog, and over the years many have been posted. A simple search shows that QR-code tattoos like the one K.A.R.L. claims to have invented, are not only incredibly common, but are regularly used in marketing in the form of temporary tattoos.
However — and this is a big “however” — people considering this should be aware that QR-tattoos do not translate well to skin. For starters, most tattoo artists are not particularly adept at the sharp and consistent linework and geometric perfection that QR-Codes demand, and to make matters worse, the undulating contours of the skin are anything but flat, and while QR readers are able to compensate for skew (taking a picture of the code at an angle), they are not able to compensate for warping that comes from the code being on a surface with multiple curves. This limits QR-code tattoos not only to the best artists, but to flat areas of the body. I took a random sample of ten clear pictures of QR-code tattoos, and tried to scan them. I was successful only with two of them. It’s likely that in real life, with careful repositioning and better lighting that I might be able to scan a couple more, but I don’t see more than half of QR-code tattoos being functional, which is pretty depressing — it’s the digital equivalent of a spelling mistake so bad as to make your quote gibberish.
You can zoom that in and see if your phone does any better if you want.
In addition to QR-code tattoos — which are really just an odd way of writing text data that I would argue would be better achieved just using regular letters — there are augmented reality tattoos. These don’t just give your phone a URL. They actually provide a “junction point” for the world of virtual reality to interface with your body. As you may have realized if you read Rob’s article, they provide your phone or computer information about the location, size, and orientation of your body by showing it a symbol that it can recognize from many angles. The computer is then able to take the video shot of your phone and add three-dimensional elements that move synchronized with your body’s movements — thus the term augmented reality. You can find more videos with a simple search for “augmented reality tattoo”, but let me show you a couple relevant videos to get you started. The first one, of the dragon, is from 2009 and one of the first that I know of. The second is more recent, but notable because it uses a realistic skull as its recognition symbol, showing that you don’t have to use a blocky icon that instantly identifies your tattoo as a digital interface.
I know, this falls far short of what people hope for when they hear the words “animated tattoo”, but it’s a start. It shows the dreams that people have for their bodies. It also points out that people are starting to see their bodies as interfaces to the virtual world, which is an important first step for cyberpunk and transhumanist body modification. One day we will surely have animated tattoos in the literal sense, but these QR-code and augmented reality tattoos are an unrelated trend — they are however very interesting for their own merits.
A lot of people will tell you what you see in this video is not possible, but following up on the photo at the bottom of this recent entry, in this video you’ll see Neil Chakrabarti — already a heavy guy himself — lift two other heavy guys for a total of something around 800 pounds. Off a single 4ga Gilson hook. He didn’t tear out, but the hook did bend slightly. I doubt there is a single other person on the planet who can make that particular claim. I should mention that this video is from a great big YouTube playlist of 122 videos showing Suspension Mecca 2012. Never forget that the human body is stronger than steel.
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