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‘Automata, or “living machines,” are manmade devices that imitate life functions. They can be as simple as wind-up dolls or as complex as a Cray Supercomputer. Computers (thinking machines) are automata, of course … as are pacemakers and dialysis machines. In fact, over the last two generations automata have gone from being the stuff of fairy tales (Tick Tock of Oz and the Golem of Prague to name a few) to being such an integral part of our daily lives that they are rapidly on their way to becoming transparent tech.

‘The construction of ‘living machines’ (and the associated debate about whether ‘living machines’ were actually living at all) is a surprisingly old pastime. The most sustained and productive periods of automata development occured in ancient China and 18th century France and Swizterland. The most famous 18th century automaton was Vaucanson’s mechanical duck, a metal duck covered with cloth and feathers that allegedly swam, flapped its wings and digested food … which was, depending on how you look at it, a miraculous piece of technology or a very complicated and expensive dirty joke.

‘Vaucanson’s duck sparked a mania and inspired many other mechanical ducks, as well as a number of other types of automata including the famous Jaquet-Droz automatic writer and von Kempelen’s Chess Player. The Chess Player was eventually revealed as a fraud; it housed a secret chamber from which the ‘automaton’ was operated over the course of a decade by a veritable cabal of Europe’s greatest human chess players.

Nonetheless, these devices were considered serious (albeit popular) science in their day. With shifting intellectual styles, however, they became curiosities, and many of the most famous ones were taken apart, lost to rust and decay, or just lost period. Nonetheless, the great era of French automata did introduce a significant idea to European scientists: the conviction that animals, including humans, were machines whose functions could (given sufficient knowledge and technical skill) be accurately reproduced by mechanical means. These ideas were popularized by books such as L’Homme Machine (or ‘Machine Man’) and in scientific expeditions. They would be revisited by Alan Turing, Seymour Cray, the Big Blue designers … in short, by all the scientists who developed the various technologies that I used to write this webpage and you are now using to view it.’ — Chris Moriarty

 

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. ‘Mars Attacks!’ rules. ** Dominik, Hi!!! My pleasure. You’ve never seen ‘WoO’? See, now that’s totally mind-blowing to me. Cool. My guess is ‘WoO’ could work in companionship with any other TV series or movie. It’s like a glass of water. Well, maybe you can help my Love out and publish a few of his love poems in SCAB. Or edit them into poems that would be SCAB-appropriate. Do jumping beans really exist? I can’t remember. I remember my parents bought me some as a kid, but I can’t remember if they were just a fake gag gift. Love kicking the ground floor tenants out of your apartment building (assuming you live in an apartment building and not on the ground floor) and turning their apartments into a miniature golf course, G. ** Tosh Berman, Yes, lots to wonder about. If you have to die young, it’s good to have a charismatic death. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, no. Ack, so sorry, Ben. You are most certainly not living in the Golden Ages of your life right now, but, yes, good to know, and good to be fixed. These are the blurriest days, even out here. Stay tough and as creative and inputty as possible, buddy. ** Steve Erickson, Wow, very strangely I did not even know there was a new Cheap Trick album, so the buzz hasn’t reached my browser. But I will snag it post-haste. I don’t think one can expect exciting from a new Cheap Trick album at this point, as much as I worship them. Fine with one or two knock out tracks seems doable though. God love them. New song! Everyone, Something for your hearing abilities from Mr. Steve Erickson. Take it away, Steve. SE: ‘I meant to include a link to this song I wrote today, “The Great Cop in the Sky”. (The spoken word sample comes from an interview with Claire Torry, the singer on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky.”) I made very heavy use of processed samples of wind and fans, and I was going for an effect of the melody, mostly played on harpsichord, slipping in and out of those louder droning noises.’ ** Billy, Hi. Hm, I have no idea about that no government money thing. Logically, I kind of doubt it? Surely there were other name pop and other type artists who weren’t on that payroll. But I don’t know. Is ‘Men in Black 3’ the one sans Will Smith, etc.? You kind of made it almost alluring. I watched a Norwegian disaster movie last night called ‘The Tunnel’ dubbed into English, and it kind of did the trick. It made me re-appreciate how all the inter-relationship stuff and mushy emotional stuff in disaster movies are just dried out signifying prompts, and it made me want to figure out how they successfully manage to evoke human personal dilemma without making one care the tiniest bit and how functional and hence subliminally enjoyable that is. Or something. Oh, mm, I don’t know why your lifelong Londoner status seemed wow really. It just did, I guess because I only see London as a place where things of interest can be visited for the short term? Oh, listen, I hate the kind of writing you hate too. Big time. The erudite and literary and filigree festooned and classy are hell earth to me, especially when they’re dolling up extremely faux-formal play and experimentation. That’s the enemy. And, of course, that’s not what I meant about liking your writing, which did not evince those miserable qualities. Au contraire. No, in fact, the psychiatrist my mom sent me to told me to just lie and tell my mom I was going through a phase, which worked, so I thought it was cool. Dude, I was thought to be the consummate nuthouse-bound kid when I was a kid. Gotcha on the public/private thing. Have you ever read Blanchot? He’s a master at prying into and representing that conundrum. ** Shane Christmass, It’s been years, but I remember the Willeford novel being very good. I do have the pdf. It’s on my desktop in fact. So, yeah, you can spare yourself the postal charges if that’s easier. Never seen ‘Backbeat’. What a band. Well, except for Dave Grohl. And I guess Pirner, but he had good hair. I love ‘Bad for Good’. It’s hilarious. Steinman was completely genius at nailing a kind of multi-faceted mawkishness, musically, and he was a master of simple but multi-level sentimental (but not really) lyrics. Quite a guy. ** Right. Today I ask all of you to get in touch with your overgrown, wide-eyed, slightly antique child aspects. So, please do that. See you tomorrow.

* (restored)
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I don’t know enough about art to know if Stuart Sutcliffe was an especially talented artist or not, but I do know that I like some of his paintings and collages.

 

Untitled, Hamburg Series

 

Hamburg Painting No. 2

 

 

Untitled (1961-62), exhibited at Victoria Gallery and Museum, University of Liverpool

 

 

Just as importantly to me I was always interested in this guy who was once a part of what was to become the most famous pop group in the world – that would be The Beatles – before they became famous.

Also I’m fascinated with ‘pop culture personalities’ who are not captured on moving images because in our day and age EVERYONE is on video and EVERYTHING is captured and uploaded to YouTube. But not Stuart Sutcliffe. No film footage exists of Stuart Sutcliffe that I’m aware of and that to me makes him even more special somehow.

By all reports he wasn’t a very good musician and he was very aware of that, which was also one of the reasons why he left The Beatles. Another major reason for him leaving the band was meeting the love of his life, a German art student and photographer Astrid Kirchherr.

 

Stuart and girlfriend Astrid

 

They met in Hamburg when The Beatles were playing there in the early 60’s. Kirchherr later became known for having taken some of the most iconic early pictures of The Beatles. Like this one:

 

Pete Best (the drummer in The Beatles until he was sacked and Ringo Starr joined), George Harrison, John lennon, Paul McCartney, Stuart Sutcliffe.

 

Stuart Sutcliffe was born in 1940 – same year as John Lennon – in Edinburgh but he grew up in Liverpool from 1943 onwards. He met Lennon as a teenager at art college, they became close friends and Lennon persuaded him to join his band when Sutcliffe won a cash award for a painting he’d done. John’s band needed a bass player – and a bass – and figured Stuart’s money would be well spent on a bass for their band. Thus Stuart joined though he couldn’t play (kinda punk) and he was part of The Beatles when they were booked to play in Hamburg in 1960.

 

Stuart Sutcliffe and John Lennon on beach near Hamburg, early 1960’s.

 

Stuart on the beach

 

Stuart and George Harrison on stage in Hamburg

 

The Beatles played on and off in Hamburg night clubs and strip bars (Indra, Kaiserkeller, Star Club, and the Top Ten) for the next couple of years but Stuart left the band in the summer of 1961 (a little more than a year before The Beates released their first single, Love Me Do in autumn 1962). Instead he stayed in Hamburg with Astrid when The Beatles returned to Liverpool and decided to pursue a career in art, like he’d always wanted. In Hamburg he studied under future pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi and he intended to stay to marry Astrid.

Unfortunately Sutcliffe began having violent headaches also resulting in temporary blindness. He went to the hospital in Hamburg as well as in Liverpool for tests but the doctors didn’t find anything wrong. As The Beatles got more and more popular back home in Liverpool, Stuart got increasingly ill in Hamburg. On April 10, 1962, shortly before The Beatles were to return to Hamburg for yet another stint, Stuart collapsed and tragically died of an brain haemorrhage, aged 21.

 

Stuart Sutcliffe in his atelier, Hamburg, 1961 or 62.

 

Many years later there have been some speculation that Sutcliffe might have got his head injured in a fight with Lennon previously and that the injury led to his death a few years later.

It has also been speculated that Lennon and Sutcliffe had been lovers. In fact Sutcliffe’s sister Pauline wrote a book where she states she thinks that Stuart may have been homosexual though a lot of people dispute that. One thing’s for sure, according to the many letters Sutcliffe wrote home, he appears to have been very much in love with Astrid.

The Beatles remained friends with Astrid Kirchherr and two other German friends, Jurgen Vollmer and Klaus Voormann – in fact Voormann did the cover art for one of The Beatles later records Revolver and also played bass on some of John Lennon’s solo records. The picture that is used on the cover of John Lennon’s Rock ‘n’ Roll album from 1975 was an old picture taken by Vollmer in the Hamburg days.

 

Rock ‘n’ Roll, 1975. The 3 blurry people in the foreground are Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe.

 

Klaus Voormann, Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart Sutcliffe at party in Hamburg, early 1960’s.

 

Stuart Sutcliffe was ‘immortalised’ when he became one of the many faces bracing the cover of The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In an homage to their old late friend they included him on the cover among some of the other people they had been inspired by over the years.

 

Stuart is on the far left, number three from the top (and three from the bottom)

 

A fitting tribute to an old friend who never became a star in his own right but then again he didn’t need to. Despite becoming famous by association there was clearly more to Sutcliffe than his superstar mates. And the fact that he didn’t become as famous as his friends and the fact that he died young, makes him less accessable and a little mysterious – and that, in many ways, makes him even more special.

 

‘Fifth Beatle’ died after fight with Lennon, sister claims
from The independent

Pauline Sutcliffe, who believes her brother was beaten up by Lennon in the months before he died, is to sell off a huge archive containing a sketchbook that indicates a rapid decline in his mental health after the alleged incident.

The timing of the pad’s entries will bolster her case that the brain haemorrhage that killed Sutcliffe at the age of 21 was caused not by a street brawl, as has long been supposed, but by a blow to the head from his closest friend.

The black book – dated to October 1961, after the alleged Lennon fight – contains a series of barely legible scrawls and pained exclamations apparently reflecting Sutcliffe’s gradual mental collapse.

The pages of the book are peppered with cries for help. Words and phrases such as “torment”, “shout”, “explode” and “the bloody brain” appear in shaky handwriting, often surrounded by exclamation marks and accompanied by unsettling abstract designs. Elsewhere, Sutcliffe uses sketches to “dissect” his brain and tries to rationalise his condition while comforting himself with details of the help he can expect from medical specialists.

“I believe that the cerebral haemorrhage that cost Stuart his life was caused by an injury inflicted by John in a jealous rage,” Pauline Sutcliffe writes. ‘A postmortem revealed Stuart had a dent in his skull, as though from a blow or kick. And a few months earlier, John had viciously kicked my brother in the head in a sustained, unprovoked attack.”

 

Is Stuart Sutcliffe Andy Warhol?
from Piece of Mindful

My assertion is that Stu Sutcliffe was an Intelligence asset who faked his death in 1961, and was reassigned the role of artist Andy Warhol. To understand this is useful to understand the context of both the Beatles, with whom Sutcliffe was supposedly the first bass player, and the art scene of that era, which was infiltrated by Intelligence to remove meaningful content from it.

We know now of at least five Beatles, that is, the “McCartney” twins, John, George and Ringo. TBNE insists on more than one George and Ringo as well. We’ve not done any research here on the matter, but we have spotted two Paul’s and a few body doubles too. Since we have tied this to their photographs as children, we think the evidence strong. (Note: I do not assume with any of these people, the Beatles or Sutcliffe, that we know their real names.)

Now take it back to Hamburg, when Stu Sutcliffe was a Beatle too. The group trained in Hamburg for 29 months, from August of 1960 to December of 1962. He was not just a guy trying to make a rock band with some other guys. Something much larger was in play. The people who formed this group, according to some, can be called “Tavistock,” but that has that undefined “Illuminati” sound to it, faceless people operating to control our lives without our knowledge. It is, in my view, unduly mysterious. There is such an institute as Tavistock, but it is claimed to be merely a group that studies group and organizational behavior. I will let others worry about that.

I prefer to keep things a little simpler. The Beatles were a planned phenomenon, in my view. Their early “fans” were girls hired to act for cameras, to get the ball rolling. Their music, supposedly written by John and Paul, was catchy. Of course, we don’t know which Paul, if either, actually penned those tunes. In Hamburg and before, when the group formed in Liverpool, we are told they merely met and decided to play together, but knowing as we do now that there were two sets of twins involved, some larger game was surely afoot. Otherwise, why the secret?

I am making a connection here because later in this article we will see very strong evidence that Stu Sutcliffe became avant-garde artist Andy Warhol. He became famous – remember, he had those 25 prestige magazines to promote him.

(read the entirety)

 

 

See/read more:

Stuart Sutcliffe, The Lost Beatle

 

Backbeat – film ft. Stephen Dorff as Stuart Sutcliffe

 

Kirchherr interview:

 

Fab4Cast interviews Rod Murray (close friend of Stuart Sutcliffe)

 

They Trippers – Why, an Elegy for Stuart Sutcliffe

Stuart Sutcliffe page:
http://www.stuartsutcliffeart.com/

Short video about exhibition of Sutcliffe’s art:
http://lifeofthebeatles.blogspot.com/2009/05/beatle-people-stuart-sutcliffe.html

Article, John causes Stu’s death?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/fifth-beatle-died-after-fight-with-lennon-sister-claims-586684.html
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p.s. RIP Jim Steinman, Monte Hellman. ** Dominik, Hi!!! It’s more sort of boring and irritating than horrible, I guess. Well, okay, it’s horrible  too. I’m just trying to stay all ‘chin up’ about it. It’s weird I’ve never seen ‘QaF’ since everybody I know watched it, but it’s just one of those odd, inexplicable things. Well, like a lot of American kids, the movie I’ve seen the most times in my life is easily ‘Wizard of Oz’ because they used to show it on TV every Xmas basically since I was born. And I would totally watch it again, so maybe it. Huh, strange. I love your Love. I want to be his musical advisor. Love self-publishing his 10,000 page Collected Love Poems book and only one person buys it, G. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Ah, of course you know Kirsaoff’s work. Few seem to these days. The songs Shudder to Think provided for ‘Velvet Goldmine’ are wonderful, so there was that bonus to the Bowielessness. ** Misanthrope, It’s not that heavy. I don’t remember getting shoulder or back aches or anything. And I looked like a god, even though I played like a dunce. 15 rejections, well, sorry, yeah, although ‘Closer’s’ rejections still have yours beat. ** Tosh Berman, The first two or three Kirsanoff films are exquisite especially. Very excited to get to do the talkshow with you! Based on what my friend CB, who was one of the stars of ‘VG’, told me, your story of why Bowie said no is the correct one, yes. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yes, RIP Jim Steinman, rock/pop auteur genius! ** Billy, Hey, Billy. Exactly, re: the sort of line, and well put. You’re a lifelong Londoner. Wow. Or, well, why not? I think when we get our restrictions lifted in, dear god, please, three weeks supposedly, it’ll be much the same hereabouts but without, you know, pix of Prince Phillip, although you never know. You’re a very lovely describer, and, hence, writer, if you don’t know. No, I don’t do a diary. I have a kind of ledger/doc thing where I note what I’m supposed to do and did do at the appointed times, but that’s it. When I was a young teen, I kept a diary, and my mom used to secretly sneak into my room when I was at school and read it, and she eventually told me and busted me for being a gay boy with a bizarre imagination and made me go to a psychiatrist, and I think that indignity or whatever warded me off diary keeping forever. Or that’s my guess. Do you ever write things thinking the public might or even should see them? At the risk of sounding old fashioned, you write very well, even here, so maybe that’d be an  idea if you don’t? Or not. I probably prioritise books and stuff just because that’s what I do. ** Steve Erickson, Like I said to Tosh, I would start with his first two films. They’re kind of his masterpieces. I’m going to try to hunt down those two films you referenced. Thanks. ** Brian, Hi, Brian. Yeah, he’s been a bit forgotten. I love ‘Mars Attacks!’ One of the very best T Burton films in my estimation. Oh my god, yikes, that’s scary about your mom, but thank god it was a temporary scariness. It sounds like you bailing on work for a day was perfectly acceptable and a kind of appropriately self-ascribed balm. Cool about your brother. He’s an artist, or at least an aspiring artist? Awesome. Yes, first I hung with my friends Stephen and Kali, which was lovely, and then I hung with my friend Michael, which was also lovely. And I managed to stay awake long enough to see the reading of the very relieving Chauvin verdict, so it wasn’t a bad day at all. Did you sleep in, buckle down? ** Shane Christmass, Hi, Shane. I just saw that. It was interesting — only to me –that yesterday I was debating whether to make a Monte Hellman Day or a Lindsay Anderson Day, and I ended up making Lindsay Anderson Day, which feels kind of sad now. Whoo-hoo about the release and the post! Thanks! ** Right. Today I give you a until-now defunct old post made by another long lost blog d.l. Dandysweets about Stuart Sutcliffe, of all people. See you tomorrow.