TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Belgica in the ice. 1897. Photo: Adrien de Gerlache   Y ou wouldn't ordinarily think of cats and penguins together in the same image but that's what I found myself creating when thinking of an idea for my next painting. I have painted penguins before as part of my Australian Animals series from the early 2000's, and I have a couple of cartoon  penguins (that you can see in a very old post, Designing Formal Penguins ) I created for a Yeti skateboard graphic, so, I didn't just randomly think, 'penguins'. Recently I had a revelation about my art, in that I don't simply paint pictures of cats, I paint 'relationships'. Almost all of my paintings of cats feature two or more cats, or a cat with something, such as a butterfly, bird, fish, goat... and why not a penguin? However, I didn't want to just paint some random cat with some random penguin. I wondered if there was ever any real cats in history that may have a reason to meet a penguin? Turns out, on...

T his was a movie that I was always interested in but was never going to see in theatres. I think that's the same for a lot of people judging by how well Masters of the Universe didn't do at the box office, while, as I write this, it is the number two most popular new release on Amazon Prime Video in Australia. In cinemas the reception seemed mixed but generally positive. The movie didn't seem to get bad reviews, rather reviewers said overall it was quite fun but flawed in what it was trying to be. I would agree. It's very much a movie that doesn't really know its audience, and is really trying to have something for all ages while simultaneously not delivering fully for any age group. It's too violent and adult for younger audiences (the ones that would play with the toys now) but not grown up and adult enough for older audiences (the ones who used to play with the toys back in the 80s). It comes off as trying to be a family film, with things that a younger aud...

Australian PM, Anthony Albanese. A midst growing concerns by Australian artists, specifically musicians most recently, about AI being trained on their work, on July 15 the world's most boring PM, Anthony Albanese delivered a keynote address from the University of Sydney on AI in Australia . I'm not going to pick apart the entire speech. Generally, it focused on the opportunities AI and its continued development in this country could bring to Australians, while assuring everyone the Government will be looking at (and possibly regulating) the negative aspects of the technology, such AI being trained with copyrighted data, and the environmental nightmare that data centres present with their excessive need for water and power. To that end the PM is setting up The Office of AI, within his own department and cabinet, that will spend, the rest of this year looking into all the issues and likely working towards building a framework for how we can benefit from AI technologies moving for...

T his wasn't a movie I particularly wanted to see even though it's right in my wheelhouse, realistic Sci-fi. However, after Project Hail Mary did so well in theatres it became a movie I wanted to check out once it reached streaming. In this case I watched it on Amazon Prime Video. It wasn't really on my radar because, on the surface, it's not anything I haven't seen before, even quite recently. Lone astronaut goes on some kind of mission, mission fails, astronaut tries to salvage the mission and somehow finds a way home. However, in my opinion, what makes this film different is in the detail. There are a lot of often seen tropes here presented in new ways, that may capture your imagination. The movie opens with science teacher, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), waking up from deep sleep on a spaceship, far from Earth, with no memory of why he is there. Presumably a side effect of basically being put in storage while the spaceship travels across vast distances. From the...

LEO Coupe Flying Car. Fully electric jet lift system. Image: LeoFlight website . O f the things we were promised for the future by movies, the dream of real flying cars, is right up there for me with autonomous humanoid robots.  I've actually written several articles about the development of flying cars concluding, most notably, that most working prototypes, and proof of concept flying cars, are really just compact aeroplanes or oversized drones. They don't look anything like actual cars.  Which is understandable given that, so far, no one has developed any kind of anti-gravity engine capable of  lifting the weight of your average family car with the family, probably a couple of dogs, and a picnic lunch all on board.  Are We Any Closer to Flying Cars? While I haven't done a deep dive researching the full state of play, I did fall down the rabbit hole enough to see some promising projects, including one that may just be the front runner to a mass produced flying car ...

I 've never read 'Woman of Tomorrow', the Tom King comic book miniseries that  Supergirl  is supposed to be inspired by. In fact I've never read a Supergirl comic at all. Which means I have no expectations for this movie to live up to. Much like all the comic book characters I love on the big and small screens - I've barely read any of their comics (even when I was in my prime comic book years of my youth. I read more Archie comics than anything because I could get their book collections for free - and my comic of choice was Mad Magazine so... there's that). All this to say, I can only judge these comic book characters from what I've seen before on screens. I've seen the original 80's Supergirl movie with Helen Slater (she's fine, the movie not so much). I've watched at least the first season of the CW Supergirl show with Melissa Benoist (Melissa's awesome in the role - she really commits to it, easily going from sweet to I'll burn...