MARIA DUARTE and MICHAL BONCZA review Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day, Familiar Touch, Nino, and Toy Story 5
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Graphic sensations of machine manipulation
BEN COWLES recommends an anthology exploring the sometimes terrifying, sometimes life-affirming nature of our symbiotic relationship with technology now and in the future
Shaun Tan's Here I Am
[SelfMadeHero]
MATTHEW HAWKINS explores the initiatives proposed by HEALING ARTS SCOTLAND
ALEX HALL welcomes an analysis of how modern capitalism is deeply intertwined with emotions, and their manipulation
MARTIN GRAHAM welcomes a statistical analysis of how much tax the super-rich pay, and foresees that the demand will flush out their agents
RICHARD WORTH relishes the fleeting moment and sense of flow of the late, great saxophonist
DENNIS BROE notes the thin, unfunny and apolitical quality of the gruel dished up by the US networks and studios for mass consumption
BARBARA BOSWELL remembers South African poet, storyteller, publisher, editor and activist Diana Ferrus (1953-2026)
I Feel Machine: Stories by Shaun Tan, Tillie Walden, Box Brown, Krent Able, Erik Svetoft and Julian Hanshaw
Edited by Julian Hanshaw and Krent Able
(SelfMadeHero £14.99)
BOX BROWN’S Uploading, the first story in I Feel Machine, ponders mortality, the need for human contact, obedience to authority and belief in the afterlife. With a beautiful blocky and minimalistic style, he depicts a world where the majority of human life is experienced online via a virtual-reality contraption reminiscent of an antique diving helmet.
Technology has allowed people to exist for 1,000 years and, at the end of their lives, their human bodies are discarded. Their soul, they are told, is uploaded to a server for the rest of eternity. Just as you begin to mull over the metaphysical intricacies of that, Erik Svetoft’s STHLMTransfer yanks us into an unsettlingly surreal world where human bodies have merged with technology.
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