Always worth reading: Rebecca Solnit, Invasion of the Democracy Crushers | TomDispatch

Jurassic Ballot 
When Corporations Ruled the Earth 
By Rebecca Solnit 

This country is being run for the benefit of alien life forms. They’ve invaded; they’ve infiltrated; they’ve conquered; and a lot of the most powerful people on Earth do their bidding, including five out of our nine Supreme Court justices earlier this year and a whole lot of senators and other elected officials all the time. The monsters they serve demand that we ravage the planet and impoverish most human beings so that they might thrive. They’re like the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, like the Terminators, like the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, except that those were on the screen and these are in our actual world.

We call these monsters corporations, from the word corporate which means embodied. A corporation is a bunch of monetary interests bound together into a legal body that was once considered temporary and dependent on local licensing, but now may operate anywhere and everywhere on Earth, almost unchallenged, and live far longer than you.

The results are near-invincible bodies, the most gigantic of which are oil companies, larger than blue whales, larger than dinosaurs, larger than Godzilla.  Last year, Shell, BP, and Exxon were three of the top four mega-corporations by sales on the Fortune Global 500 list (and Chevron came in eighth). Some of the oil companies are well over a century old, having morphed and split and merged while continuing to pump filth into the air, the water, and the bodies of the many -- and profits into the pockets of the few.

read Rebecca Solnit's full post:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175311/tomgram:_rebecca_solnit,_invasion_of_t...

Mark Sinclair's 'Dark Arts' surveys beautiful examples of projection mapping

Excerpt:

"Projection mapping can be thought of as the trompe l’oeil tradition brought bang up to date. Armed with high-powered projectors, various hardware and software packages, and the permission to digitally ‘map’ and project onto a particular building,

a selection of studios are capitalising on the creation of 3D outdoor spectacle. But as more projection-based work appears, anchored to yet more brands, are we simply witnessing advertising’s latest infatuation with high-tech creativity? Or are these experiments actually paving the way towards fully realised augmented realities?

If you’ve encountered projection mapping before (also known as ‘video mapping’ or ‘architectural mapping’ when conceived on a large scale), it’s highly likely you saw it on the internet, rather than on the streets. But for brands, ad agencies, even the creative teams involved, that’s another part of the appeal of this emerging medium. Documenting the projection and the subsequent distribution of film and imagery online are almost as important as the event itself. A few hundred people might watch a performance – a landmark building changing shape and colour, even collapsing into rubble – but thousands, potentially millions, can see it online."

read the full post on creativereview.co.uk