Tag: saddle-stitched booklet

A Scanner Darkly Reality – 12 Page 8.5 x 5.5 in. Saddle-Stitched Booklet.

A Scanner Reality - 16 Page 8.5 x 5.5 in. Saddle-Stitched Booklet.

Download: Ordered PDF | Paginated PDF

Introduction: A Scanner Reality

In 1977 Phillip K. Dick published the dystopian sci-fi classic A Scanner Darkly. Robert Arctor, the books protagonist, is an addict; his mental capacities slowly degrading. Using Substance D an addictive pharmaceutical. A blind servant of an unseen force.

» READMORE

More than forty years later middle America is in the grips of an opioid epidemic. Four out of five new drug addicts say they began with the abuse of Oxycontin. An opiate that entered the market under the auspice of ‘non-addictive’. Lining the pockets of doctors and corporations alike.

Two stories in seemingly disparate realities. Then again, “Reality, by itself, becomes a story by Phillip K. Dick.”

A Scanner Darkly: A Summary

Robert Arctor is an undercover agent who’s addicted to a pharmaceutical, ‘Substance D’. Working anonymously for the police department, under the psuedonym ‘Fred’, Arctor dwells with a long list of addicts in his family’s former home. A house in the suburbs where addiction is now routine.

Arctor, his cognitive abilities waning, is assigned to investigate himself. Paranoid accusations abound Arctor’s friends begin to turn on him and slowly he loses touch with reality. No longer certain of his own actions Arctor checks into rehab at New-Path. 

New-Path, a federal contractor, is the only option for ‘D’ addicts. Stripping his ‘addictive personality’ Arctor takes on the name ‘Bruce’ and is transferred to a New-Path farm. A secluded operation growing the flower Mors Ontologica; Substance D’s chief ingredient.

Oxycontin: Engineering an Epidemic

Near the end of 1995 the F.D.A. approved the opioid painkiller Oxycontin. Hailed as a ‘medical breakthrough’ it hit the market in 1996 patented by Purdue Pharma. Whom lied in assuring the medical community patients would not become addicted. Aggressively marketing Oxycontin Purdue Pharma bought influence with professors, politicians, and researchers.

It quickly became, “the hottest thing on the street.” Between 1991 and 2011 painkiller prescriptions more than tripled. By 2012 one in three drug users were being prescribed drugs more powerful than morphine. Killing over 400,000 since 2000; with 15 seeking treatment for every death.

After more than $30 billion in profits, in 2018, a Purdue Pharma subsidiary patented an addiction treatment for opioid addicts.

Reality: A Story by Phillip K. Dick

In A Scanner Darkly Substance D is distributed by New-Path. In reality Oxycontin is distributed by pharmacists and doctors. In both cases entities whom society entrusted to cure sickened. All the while turning a profit.

Addiction treatment is a $35 billion a year industry. Those who pay are, “…punished entirely too much for what they did.”

While people die, serve prison sentences, and deal with the consequences of addiction, New-Path profits.

While people die, serve prison sentences, and deal with the consequences of addiction, drug companies profit.

“Every junkie, he thought, is a

Recording.”

“It’s easy to win. Anybody can win.”

Sources:

https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/opioids/opioid-overdose-crisis

https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/index.html

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/28/652546095/drugmakers-play-the-patent-game-to-lock-in-prices-block-competitors

https://www.usda.gov/topics/opioids

https://www.northpointwashington.com/blog/big-pharma-big-lies/

» ...

Art Theft – 24 Page 8.5 x 5.5 in. Saddle-Stitched Booklet.

Art is Theft - 16 Page 8.5 x 5.5 in. Saddle-Stitched Booklet.

Download: Ordered PDF | Paginated PDF

Pablo Picasso

“Good artists copy, great artists steal”

Four boys discovered the Lascaux cave accidentally in 1940; a French cave complex with more than 600 parietal paintings estimated at 17,000 years old. The most famous cave being ‘The Hall of Bulls’. That same year Picasso would visit the cave. Emerging to say, “They’ve invented everything.” In 1945 Picasso created The Bull, a series of 11 Lithographs. The caves weren’t available for public viewing until 1948.

» READMORE

Michelangelo

“The greater danger for most of us lies … in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

Discobulus of Myron, a Greek sculpture from the Classical Period of which the Renaissance was based, figures an athletic youth throwing a discus. The work survives via numerous studies by Roman artists. Like those 1200 years before Michelangelo would spend his youth studying works of the Classical Period, under the Medici. Studies which lead to the penultimate symbol of the Renaissance, ‘David’.

Marcel Duchamp:

“I came to feel an artist might use anything to say what he(or she) wanted to say.”

Davinci’s Mona Lisa is perhaps the world’s most well-known painting. Studied endlessly Marcel Duchamp was the first to parody the work in 1919. As what Duchamp referred to as a ‘readymade’: common objects altered, renamed, and placed in a proper setting. L.H.O.O.Q is a cheap print of the Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard in pencil then appended the title.

Andy Warhol:

Reporter: So you’ve just copied a household item then? Why have you bothered to do that? Andy: Because it’s easier to do.

In 1916 bottlers of Coca-Cola formed a committee and convened to select a design. Soon distinct green bottles with an embossed script began to appear nationwide. Thirty years later less than 1% of Americans could not identify a Coke bottle by shape alone. In 1962 Andy Warhol displayed hand-painted depictions of the bottle in an art show The Grocery Store.

Summary:

Show me something you think original and I’ll show you a lack of reference.

The Beatles lifted lyrics and melodies from Chuck Berry. Hunter S. Thompson typed out Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby word for word while practicing prose. Vermeer traced his images using Camera Obscura. Originality is just a pseudonym for ‘beg, borrow, and steal’. 

Creativity is being brave enough to rip something off.

Be brave.

Sources:

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/lascaux-cave-paintings.htm

http://www.euskomedia.org/PDFAnlt/munibe/aa/200503217223.pdf

https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/pablo-picassos-bulls-road-simplicity/

http://www.accademia.org/michelangelo/

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/definitions/classicism-in-art.htm

https://www.wikiart.org/en/marcel-duchamp/l-h-o-o-q-mona-lisa-with-moustache-1919

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.H.O.O.Q.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol

https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/the-story-of-the-coca-cola-bottle

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/beatles-5-boldest-rip-offs-54145/

*Disclaimer: This zine features digital reproductions of famous works.

» ...