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Vintage Ads of Fictional Futures, Mark II

By on September 12, 2010 in But is it art?, Parody & Satire

Vintage Ads of Fictional FuturesIt’s back!

This contest ran a couple of years ago, and it was a lot of fun, so let’s do it again.

Here’s the concept: find a vintage ad, and then create a product from a created world — it can be from a book, movie, TV, etc. It doesn’t have to be science fiction; you could go with a fantasy world, an alternate reality, whatever. The only proviso is that it has to have been written by someone else, so none of your own bizarre fictional futures. Here’s a couple I mocked up, based on the grim post-apocalyptic THE ROAD and the less-grim, but still post-apocalyptic THE POSTMAN (both books worth reading, btw):

The Road - portable meal systems The Genius of America - postman spoof

It doesn’t have to be post-apocalyptic, by the way. If you’re more of an optimistic Star Trek kind of person, then I’m happy to see Oil of Olay ads featuring Warf, scotch ads with Scotty, or ear-hair trimming systems endorsed by Quark.

Here are the finalists from last time to help you get the idea.

Or you can in a gallery here“>check out the gallery for this year’s contest is here.

How to enter:

  1. create your masterpiece (a jpg, png, pfd or gif, please)
  2. post it to your blog, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous … or just email it to me
  3. let me know about it (including the work it’s based on), in the comments, by email (markarayner-at-gmail-dot-com) or Twitter (@markarayner) — let me know who to credit, and include your website if you watn
  4. they will go in a gallery here, and I’ll update the blog periodically too
  5. do it by midnight, Monday October 4th
  6. wait for the aplomb and/or ridicule of your peers
  7. I’ll narrow it down to a shortlist of five, and then everyone can vote on those.

The Prizes:

The winner chooses from:

  • a walk-on appearance in the novel I’m currently working on (this will be the last chance for a year at least)
  • a tshirt from either of my shops, CafePress or Wordans

The runner up:

  • whatever the winner didn’t choose

All five finalists:

All entrants:

Some things that may help
Vintage Ads at Livejournal
Vintage Ads search results at Flickr

Go be awesome!

Alltop is instantly vintage. Wiki: synopsis of The Road, and plot outline of The Postman

Is Mozart still alive?

By on December 5, 2007 in But is it art?, Hinky History

cartoon of Mozart with rainbow wigAnd is he wearing one of those rainbow clown wigs?

One of the premises of my first novel is that Mozart is alive and well. (And living in the future, where clown wigs, political posturing, and human stupidity have been eradicated.)

In the book, Mozart spends a lot of his time playing jazz piano, considering sex-change operations, and falling in love with lesbian nurses, but how does he support these diverting hobbies? By selling “lost” Mozart manuscripts through auctioneers such as Sotheby’s.

Kinda like the one they sold yesterday:

A leaf in Mozart’s hand with cadenzas written for the Sinfonia Concertante in E flat, one of his first masterpieces, sold Tuesday for £110,900 ($230,550) at auction in London.

The full story is on the CBC.ca site. You can get the book directly from the ENC Press site, or at Alibris.