It should come as no surprise to anyone living in a major urban centre that overcrowding is going to be a massive problem in the future. The very near future if you live in Melbourne. One of the huge issues here is that people in Western countries are simply not willing to give up their “quality of life” (read: massive mansions that are far too large for their actual needs and only serve to live out fantasies put upon most people by 1960s sitcoms, and current Hollywood dramas), and live in places that are actually of a suitable size to their needs. Everyone needs a mansion, but there’s not actually enough land for everyone to have one.

The Cyberpunk genre gives us two solutions to this quandary:

1. Massively unchecked urban sprawl, leading into megacities that span multiple state boundaries, and have impressively large buildings situated in the middle, where all the work is done by an underclass of artificial humanoid life that totally doesn’t resent us like in Appleseed; or
2. Arcology type structures. (more…)

May 15, 2010 10:00 pm

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May 16, 2010 4:00 am

For over a decade now, the man behind Cyberball has been running a few irregular BDSM/Fetish costume theme nights. Achtung is one of those, with a uniform (particularly militaria) bent to it.

By and large I’m a fan of these events provided they’re in a good venue. Sadly, this one isn’t, being held at Inflation, 60 King.st, Melbourne, with $15 entry fee.

There are a lot of things that Dark Events does right. They’re good with promotions. Find nice DJs. Are ok at not pissing off too many of what I like to call the “fractional scenesters”. It’s just the venue thing seems to be a real bugbear. Since the Paladin effectively became closed down, and goths are effectively persona non grata at what it’s become, it’s been hard for Dark Events to become situated at a venue that is cost effective for the promoter, and not a massively overpriced, understocked shit hole.

DJs include Schism, Doctor D, Robert Cyberman, Iggy D, and Onya Box.

April 30, 2010 7:00 pm

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May 1, 2010 2:00 am

Steampunk is really starting to pick up in a big way in Australia. Good thing too, considering how we missed out the first time around, and only really caught on to the end of the Art Deco period for design.

From what I can gather, Clockwork Carnival is not quite a club night, not quite a festival and not quite performance art. There will be fashion displays, live piercing, a couple of events, and then some good old thumping of the subwoofer courtesy of DJs Voodoo, Cy B Netic, Antochrist & Casiono. (more…)

For starters, no, this blog is not abandoned… I’m just having real trouble being motivated enough to do things for it lately. However, today strikes me as a day for procrastination, so I’m writing numerous articles and scheduling them. My apologies to people if they’re out of date by the time they post.

There are two parts to this review: There’s my rant about why, from an organisational perspective, this is a bloody shambles and could be done way better. There will also be the part where I go on about it as someone that attended it and had a bloody good time. Please keep in mind that one is my professional opinion, as an events manager, and the other is personal, and the two should be treated separately. (more…)

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