DOCTOR TRUDY BARBER: Cybersex Pioneer
TRUDY BARBER, above, and Mark shared a passion for the potential of virtual reality in sex, and in the 1990s collaborated on projects including a VR Suit — see below (photo: Russell Squires)
MARK WAS A TRUE individual. Thinking laterally and channelling the future, he was able to make connections where many could not. He could jump between arts and sciences, fact and fiction, magic and the mundane.
MARGI CLARKE, helped by Trudy, tries on the VR Suit co-designed with Mark, for 1993 TV show The Good Sex Guide (photo: Mark Bennett)
I was lucky enough to meet Mark in the early 1990s. He was a fetish photographer, working for fetish clubs like Torture Garden, wearing his rubber bomber jacket; and I was working on one of the first Virtual Reality Sex themed environments as part of my arts practice.
We struck up a strong friendship, and together we went on to make a prototype VR sex suit (above), which was shown on Carlton TV’s The Good Sex Guide in 1993 and worn by actress Margi Clarke.
I also helped him with some articles and illustrations for his magazine Black Ice. Mark‘s publishing ideas and writing were way ahead of their time, with Black Ice covering very early techno-culture and cyberpunk.
He was very influenced by various media from British ’60s TV such as The Avengers and The Prisoner. He very strongly identified with the character Mulder from the US TV series The X-Files, and was constantly looking for opportunities to make documentaries about the unusual, the uncanny and the bizarre.
His interest in 3D photography was part of his absolute passion for all things picture-making, and his collections of 3D photography paraphernalia were extensive.
It was desperately sad, as he became poorly over the last five years or so, to see Mark struggling with health issues. Nonetheless, he would still challenge nurses on esoteric healing techniques, and explore ideas of the language of magic and the intelligence of birds.
He was also a caring and solitary individual who was still looking for his own Scully (Mulder’s partner in The X-Files, played by Gillian Anderson).
We are sadly so much poorer by his passing, and the world needs more amazing free and creative thinkers like Mark. I’ll miss you very much Mark, and hope you are safe in your new transformation and now free from struggle.
BELOW: Trudy Barber in earlier times when she was ‘still just about on the fetish scene’
‘He strongly identified with Mulder from The X-Files and constantly sought to make documentaries about the unusual, the uncanny and the bizarre’ – Dr Trudy Barber
MICHELLE OLLEY: Writer/Editor/Theatre Producer
MICHELLE OLLEY admiring Mark’s orgonite at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival circa 2012
(photo: Mark Bennett)
MARK BENNETT WAS A true seeker. When he came to visit us at the Skin Two Showroom in Ladbroke Grove around 1988/’89 (often making himself comfortable in the shop or office for hours and hours at a time), he was always full of ideas and alt.culture gems.
These had very little to do with the fetish scene and everything to do with that late ’80s/early ’90s culture-jamming Mondo 2000 world just opening on the horizons of everyone else’s peripheral vision.
I remember Skin Two’s owner Tim agreeing to sell Mark’s mag Black Ice (below right) in the shop even though the fetish content was minimal — some cybersex/early haptics stuff maybe — but the spirit of enquiry and future positivity was infectious.
Mark had a gentle intensity about everything — and he was deeply committed to 3D photography. It was bittersweet to see the world catch up, then get bored, with this medium he loved so much.
Years after my fetish gear had perished down into black soup, I would still bump into Mark at, say, the Sci Fi London Film Festival or a Nick Knight SHOW Studio launch.
He always came camera in hand, always with some interesting new scientific breakthrough to tell you about — or pictures of enormous vegetables, grown with the help of his homemade orgonite.
Mark Bennett changed my life by adding me to the Ken Campbell Changed My Life
group, which resulted in me quitting corporate media and moving into theatre, starting with co-producing the Cosmic Trigger play.
He changed my life because he always shared what he found with The Others he thought might dig his discoveries too. This curiosity and generosity were his defining features (and an innate suspicion of dogma/received wisdom and authority too).
I will always treasure the orgonite he gifted me at the Cosmic Trigger crowdfunding event in Bloomsbury in 2014 — where a bite to eat beforehand cost us £23.
Also where my mates Rob and Fayann were ordained Discordian Popes, and we all went to Wagamama afterwards and Mark pulled out a device for measuring spectral frequencies/ghost-hunting. Standard.
I will miss bumping into Mark in the most-yet-somehow-least surprising places. I will miss his open-hearted, high-functioning riddle-tinged, low-key magicalness. Did anyone get to the bottom of his theory about the alchemy of birds?
Fly free, friend.
Michelle Olley
Black Ice Issue 01 – digitised mag
BLACK ICE ISSUE 01: a digitised version of Mark’s visionary magazine’s debut issue can be viewed via the link immediately above
‘Mark added me to the Ken Campbell Changed My Life group, resulting in me quitting corporate media and moving into theatre production’ – Michelle Olley
FRANCESCA MALAN: Ex-Skin Two Team Member/Model
FRANCESCA first met Tim Woodward’s ‘Canadian friend’ at Tim’s house, where she was then living with her photographer boyfriend Trevor Watson
MARK BENNETT WAS A rare gem of a person indeed. When I first met him I was living at Skin Two publisher Tim Woodward‘s house in Stamford Hill, north London.
We were a diverse household and I was sharing a room with my then boyfriend, photographer Trevor Watson. Among frequent visitors were Skin Two team-members such as Michelle Olley and Tony Mitchell.
I could write a book about those times — it was like the Brady Bunch gone fetish and wild.
Anyway, I came downstairs one morning to be confronted by a serious-faced Mark Bennett. That was his usual face by the way, even though he was quite funny.
He was wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and — get this — a huge pair of bear-clawed fluffy slippers — and he was sipping a cup of tea. He introduced himself as Tim’s friend from Canada.
It was hard not to laugh at this perfectly composed man with those silly slippers.
But that is just how he was: a complex soul, so very intelligent and ahead of the times and always showing you things that needed lots of thought to understand.
He somehow did not get regular jokes and stared at you, but I know he loved listening and being cared for as a person.
I remember going to The Brain nightclub in Covent Garden. He had invited me to a night of mindbending high-energy natural drinks and machines that controlled brain waves and frequencies but the club was full of neon ravers and fetish people.
He was a brilliant writer, so interested in the future and intelligent beyond most people’s comprehension. To know his wit and experience his immense ‘alien’ energy was to love him.
He will be missed — he was one of a kind. Rest in power my friend.
‘He invited me to a night of mindbending high-energy drinks and machines that controlled brainwaves; it was full of neon ravers and fetish people’ – Francesca
SAMMM AGNEW: Make-Up/Prosthetic Artist & Friend
SAMMM AGNEW, above, met Mark on the London fetish scene and became both his friend and his first-choice make-up and prosthetic artist on many of his projects (photo: Tony Mitchell)
MAY YOU REST IN peace Mark. Goodbye to the innovative ‘some sort of spy from the future’ with a laser-like mental precision ability to deconstruct and create in the realms of your special subjects.
These of course included rubber dolls, latex everything, transformational props, costume shoots and imagery, aliens, time travel, energetic transfer, autistic weltenshuuang,
struggles and experience, theories on the soul, life, death, the universe and everything and so much more.
After so much pain in the last few years I hope you are no longer suffering and have been able to have all of your questions in life answered. Black Slime forever!
‘Goodbye to the innovative spy from the future with a laser-like mental ability to deconstruct and create in the realms of your special subjects’ – Sammm
More Mark Bennett tributes from fetish friends and other admirers on next page!
Tags: Innovators, Personalities, Photographers, Tributes
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