Monday, September 26, 2005

Create your own blog, remain anonymous and get round censorship !

´

Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents
An 86 page free download from Reporters without Boarders

"Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles."

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Culture Jammers

Little time for blogging at the moment due to the little one pictured below although things are going very well. However, I could not miss this, a flash piece on "culture jammers" in Sydney; add busters, graffiti interventions and textual deformations...Check it out!

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Meet Benyamin



The end of the sort of day one only experiences a few times in a life time (the "day" actually began around 10pm Friday night). At 15:35 Monday 19th September 2005 Erika delivered a healthy baby boy (3185 grms). His name is Benjamin and he is a brother for Silas (born 14 April 2000)......
Update:
Name. Benyamin James Sebastian Barrett Chotai

Friday, September 16, 2005

Nice Review on Broken Face

Finally for this morning (three posts in one??) I just read a very pleasing review from the mighty Mats at Broken Face of my own CD and some of my comrades in aural wonderment:

"Nada Baba’s Ambient Time Arm is equally psychedelic but has a more ancient feel to it, which probably has something to do with the ample use of heavily droning didgeridoo, intense percussion and all sorts of exotic instruments. This somewhat traditional (although experimental) and repetitious base structure is placed against a tapestry of spoken word, field recordings and samples. Nice."

For more words on musicyourmindwillloveyou of which I am so humbled to be part of..go go go Australian goldrush part 4:

"once you’ve heard one mymwly release there will be no turning back"
Mats, Broken Face September 2005

Danger Will Robinson Danger: Proposal for Treaty on Webcasting

This comes via Boing Boing and it scared me when I read it:
Subject: Request for Formal Public Comment on Proposal for Treaty on Webcasting
I quote:
"CPTech renews its request that the USPTO or the Library of Congress (LOC) invite formal public comment on the proposal to create a new International Treaty obligation establishing a novel intellectual property regime for webcasting, through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The treaty language proposed for a "webcasting"right would create a new layer of property rights, lasting at least 50 years, for materials that are transmitted by web servers over the Internet and other networks. Unlike copyright, the new webcaster right is not based upon a creative contribution. Any material, including material in the public domain, or licensed for public dissemination under a creative commons type license, would be burdened with this new layer of rights, which accompany any "public transmission" of any combination or representations of sounds and or images."

The net as we know it would be the stuff of fading memory and mythology.

Web 2.0

Slowly the so called Internet 2.0 is breaking cover and signs are emerging to what it actually is aiming to become. According to this brief article from Digital Web Magazine:

"these are what we see as the six main themes covering design in the Web 2.0 world:

Writing semantic markup (transition to XML)
Providing Web services (moving away from place)
Remixing content (about when and what, not who or why)
Emergent navigation and relevance (users are in control)
Adding metadata over time (communities building social information)
Shift to programming (separation of structure and style)"

The vision is one where users can "aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways" and that sounds good. The article itself is thin on aesthetics but perhaps this too early to begin that sort of talk.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Hayles in HUMlab and the world in a moment

This is still some days away but I am very much looking forward to it:

HUMlab Seminar 21/9 13:15-15:00
My Mother Was a Computer
Digital Subjects and Literary Texts

Katherine Hayles, University of California at Los Angeles

Of course there may be a problem with my attending if our baby that was due to arrive today is holding out for full moon (18 September) and arrives the day before....I am living very much in the moment at the moment.

Returning to the academic sphere, we had a literature seminar today which dealt with the activities of various staff and doctoral students over the summer break (conferences, summer schools, workshops). The breadth of the subject areas and developments suggested by what was presented were enormous: from the postcolonial discourse of Robert Young and Homi Baba, the post-nation of diaspora and globalization and the cyborg self of digital textuality. It is clear there are tremendous contemporary movements at work in literature, culture and society around the world.

Monday, September 12, 2005

My Summary of ICT and the Humanities Summer School

Over the two months I have been posting summaries of my notes from the 2005 ICT and the Humanities Summer School: Exploring Digital Artefacts. Here is the entire collection of notes as found on the increasingly active HUMlab Blog:

Days 1 & 2: Jay Bolter, Espen Aarseth

Day 3: Michael Joyce,

Day 4: Ken Knoespel & Mary Flanagan

Day 5: Morton Sorby

Day 6: Jonas Löwgren

Day 7: Ann Lantz& Erik Stolterman

Images: Mine and Everyone's

Selected Bibliography

Friday, September 09, 2005

Thylacine Track




Thylacine · Track


Journal of New Arts


A new online journal of arts, culture and ideas is calling for contributions in appropriate formats- text, sound (mp3), video(Mpeg4), collage, digitized images, essays, reviews, poetry.

Website: http://www.livejournal.com/users/thylacine_track/

AS Soon As Possible! But we do not have a deadline.
Issue #1 will be online around September full moon.

Material can be sent or application made to:
thylacine23@gmail.com

We look forward to receiving........

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Free Online College Courses for Students Displaced by Hurricane Katrina

At a cost of 1.1 million dollars a private consortium is offering free online courses for university and college students displaced by Hurricane Katrina. According to the website it will be an intense 8 week term.

This is potentially an excellent example of mobile e-learning. I hope it is successfully as there are thousands of students unable to attend courses at the moment in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

More info HERE.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Cyclone Katrina "working very well" for the "underprivileged"

I am stunned. George W Bush's mother Barbara on a tour of temporary housing in Huston for some of the refugees from New Orleans:

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

To hear the words fall from her own mouth: HERE
Or to download it as an Mp3 and make it part of a satirical sound collage: HERE

Short Article from Lessig

A short article from Lawrence Lessig, "The Public Domain: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow" is a nice summary of what is at threat when legislators use the activities of those who infringe present copyright law as a justification for the generalized dismantling of the public domain:


"So, for example, the United States has radically increased the reach of copyright regulation. And through the World Intellectual Property Organization, wealthy countries everywhere are pushing to impose even tighter restrictions on the rest of the world. These legal measures will soon be supplemented by extraordinary technologies that will secure to the owners of culture almost perfect control over how Â?their propertyÂ? is used. Any balance between public and private will thus be lost. The private domain will swallow the public domain. And the cultivation of culture and creativity will then be dictated by those who claim to own it."

Sunday, September 04, 2005

A Long Strange Trip



Taping the Dead




During the last week or two I have been reading (in times away from what I have to be reading) Dennis McNally's A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead and the Making of Modern America. To say the least it is quite a tale..I have not listened much to the Dead for about 10 years but last night I played Aoxomoxoa and it was inspiring. I then moved on to The Internet Archive, remembering that there a few live sets uploaded there. Actually there are 2892 live sets there! When I saw this amazing figure I thought about the subtitle to McNally's book; 'the Making of Modern America'. With such an open source attitude to their music the Dead were 40 years ahead of their time in light of recent file sharing technologies.

Catch My Drift

This will be definitely worth staying home in front of the computer for:

Catch my Drift
"Brian Holmes is driven by his own brand of 'geophilosophical desire' for change, and on September 12, the renowned North American art critic, translator, and activist will begin channeling his ambition into an experimental seminar on 'Continental Drift.' The week-long series of discussions, to be held at New York's artist-run 16 Beaver and webcast online, seeks to chart the related processes of globalization and 'continentalization,' on several scales. On the macro level, Holmes will focus on the economics and politics of nascent blocs such as NAFTA and the EU. But he also hopes to shed light on the effects of these post-national powers on individual subjectivities. To this end, Holmes will address the role of art and activism in the effort to redraw regional maps, examining the various
'microcartographies of difference, dissent, deviance, and refusal' that have arisen in response to the consolidation of multi-states. Drawing on his own critical work and on the theories of Felix Guattari, Subcomandante Marcos, and many others, Holmes is sure to forge a new and urgently-needed continental philosophy for a swiftly networking planet. In keeping with 16 Beaver's stated goals, his seminar will represent a point of many departures.' Established and aspiring drifters are encouraged to participate in person or by logging on to relocate their own geopolitical aims." - (from Ramsey McGlazer at Net Art)

Friday, September 02, 2005

Examples of New Media Projects

Some examples of New Media Projects which have received funding from the former New Media Projects funds include:

I Believe in You by Carey Young, 2004, SMS/website
Alleph.net by Sakab Bashir with Emote, 2003, website
This project won a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Interactive Arts Award in 2003
Love and Adventure by Julie Myers, 2003, website/DVD
Monument by Margaret Crane/Jon Winet, 2002, website
Dot-store.com by Thomson & Craighead, 2002, website
The Bank of Time by Richard Wright, 2001, screensaver/website
This project was nominated for a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Interactive Entertainments Award in 2001
Map 50 by Desperate Optimists, 2001, website
The Moby Dick Project by Rosemary Heather, 2001, website/email
Virtual Exiles by Roshini Kempadoo, 2000, website
.sciis by Michael Atavar, 2000, website
Superchannel: the Tower Block Project by Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) with Superflex, 2000, project ongoing, webcast channel
Donald Rodney:AUTOICON by Donald Rodney with STAR, inIVA and contributions from Eddie Chambers, Richard Hylton, Virginia Nimarkoh, Keith Piper and Diane Symons
Triggerhappy by Thomson & Craighead, 1998, website/installation which Arts Council England has recently purchased an exhibition version (1 in a series of 3) for the Arts Council Collection

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Mr Squiggle and Performance Art



My first exposure to performance art, like generations of other Australian children, came in the form of a neurotic puppet with a pencil nose who lived on the moon and had by his side (this was in the 1970's) Miss Jane, who held his hand while he created pictures out of abstract shapes sent to him by viewers. When completed they were turned upside down by Miss Jane, revealing a recognizable image. Mr Squiggle was his name and it was only the other day I was telling my partner about "Mr Squiggle the man from the moon...".
Says his creating, 85 year old Norman Hetherington, "Art these days is taken very seriously, too seriously for me. I just prefer having fun,".