Sergeant Star in Fallujah

The Recruiting avatar Sergeant Star as he appears on the GoArmy website.


Sergeant Star is always "well within standards"


How it could really look if a teenager joins Sergeant Star in his "profession".

I made this deformation as a critique of the Sergeant Star text after writing about it on the HUMlab blog.

All About me....

"I began by cutting up and sticking together and looping cassette tapes and recording sounds and stories with a friend of mine between the ages of 7 and 12 years."
My interview with the SoundLAB project in Cologne has been published.

Steal This Film

Two Weeks in Two Days

SoundLAB Edition IV "memoryscapes" is planned to be launched on 13 October 2006 and I am on it (yeee ha...Its been a too quiet summer for music for me).
Apart from that, the last two days have been deep in the world (whirl) of the PhD folk. These people should get paid more as they work so hard. DIRN 06 was great, amazing mixture of researchers and practicioners. I finally got to meet Jill Walker, plus see Patrik H again and meet T L Taylor. Of course Patrik S is always good value as we say in Australia.
Today we had panel sessions where we spent all day listening to each others WIP. As Peter said, it is amazing that so many people can be working in similar fields but have such different approaches and sources in their work. I got a lot of good advice and content over the two days. Now I just have to apply it.
Tomorrow I have 24 hours to finish my thesis plan, post it to my supervisor and then on Thursday it is off to 24 hours of solid planning for HUMlab.

Bakhtin on Poets

M. M. Bakhtin by Jan Valentin Saether (c) 2007 Jan Valentin Saether/BONO (Used with permission).

“The poet is not able to oppose his (sic) own poetic consciousness. His (sic) own intentions to the language that he (sic) uses, for he is completely within it and therefore cannot turn it into an object to be perceived, reflected upon and related to Language is present to him (sic) only from the inside, in the work it does to effect its intention and not from outside, in its objective specificity and boundedness. Within the limits of poetic style, direct unconditional intentionality, language at its full weight and the objective display of language (as a socially and historically limited linguistic reality) are all simultaneous, but incompatible. The unity and singularity of language are the indispensable prerequisites for the realization of the direct (but not objectively typifying) intentional individuality of poetic style and its monologic steadfastness.”
M.M Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel” in The Dialogic Imagination (1981) edited by Michael Holquist (Austin; University of Texas press 2002) 286.

Avatar Poem

With Mask and Zebra Coat
A poem done from text to synthetic voiced avatar.

Duran Duran and Susan Vega in Second Life

A news piece that is interesting (although a very S-I-M-P-L-E explanation for what it now housing "370,000 members"). This is actually something I really want to try myself (I though of it two years ago using Adobe Atmosphere...a jam over distance):

The 1980s pop group Duran Duran is trying to repackage itself as a band for the 21st century, using a an online game, in what it says is a promotional first.

Garage bands and iconic groups like U2 have turned to the internet for everything from music sales to marketing.

Duran Duran said its five original members - Simon Le Bon, John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Andy Taylor and Nick Rhodes - would appear as custom-designed characters, or avatars, in the Second Life online game. They will also perform a live concert on the site in the coming weeks.

Duran Duran said it was the first major band to have a large presence on [in???]Second Life.

Last week, singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega's Second Life avatar performed a live concert in the game.

Rhodes said Duran Duran, known for songs like Rio and Hungry Like the Wolf, experimented with music videos in the 1980s. They hope to do the same with the internet.

"Whatever you can imagine is now possible ... Second Life is the future right now, offering endless possibilities for artists," Rhodes said in a statement.

In the online society created by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, 370,000 members operate avatars that interact with each other. Users can build virtual homes, have fantasy jobs or experiment with alternative lifestyles.

There's a video of an interview with Suzanne Vega in Second Life (yea..on Youtube....the link).

Contempory Nudes

Carlee Fernandez
Bear Head, Arm, and Leg Study I, 2004
C-Print
30 x 42 in./76.2 x 106.7 cm
Courtesy Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Los Angeles



Nirvana Series #125, from The Museum Project, 2001
C-print
71 3/4 x 99 1/4 in./182 x 252 cm
Courtesy the International Center of Photography, New York

Global Lebanon Web Jam Saturday, August 12 2006, 15:00 - 19:00 PM CEST

Mrabba Electroni[c]que: Global Lebanon Web Jam. Stop the war!

Saturday, August 12 2006, 15:00 - 19:00 PM CEST [--> 16:00 - 20:00 EEST]

http://beirut.streamtime.org
http://streamtime.org

Live audio/video streaming transmission from Waag Society in Amsterdam, in direct connection with Beirut and surrounding localities. The event was initiated by Streamtime, a web support campaign for Iraqi bloggers.

After one month of violence and carnage, this Global Web Jam brings together live interviews and conversations, video clips, cartoons and blog blurbs, soundscapes, DJs and VJs, a lively mix of information, art, protest, party and reflection. We feature the voices, images stories, reports and initiatives from Lebanon and beyond, with participation of activists, artists, bloggers, journalists, musicians and many others.

This is a call for an immediate end to the violence and destruction, in defiance of war, and in search for solidarity. With contributions and participation of: Wahid el-Solh, Mounira el-Solh, Sonya Knox, Naeem Mohaiemen, Kanj Hamadi, Jim Quilty, Randa Mirza, Mazen Kerbaj, Raed Yassin, Charbel Haber, Nathalie Fallaha, Henri Gemayel, Fadi Tufayli, Tariq Shadid, Peter Speetjens, Chalaan Charif, Martin Siepermann, Arjan El Fassed, Ruud Huurman, Kadir van Lohuizen, Thomas Burkhalter and Anna Trechsel, Beirut DC, Tarek Atoui and many others.

This Global Web Jam is an initiative of Jo van der Spek, Geert Lovink and Cecile Landman (from Streamtime), Nat Muller, Paul Keller and Denis Jaromil Rojo in Amsterdam; and Tarek Atoui and Rawya el-Chab in Beirut.

info: http://beirut.streamtime.org | mail: beirut@dischosting.nl

This project is supported by Waag Society, Novib (Dutch Oxfam) and X-Y Solidarity Fund.

RSS, Feeds and Chreodes

Chreode: A canalized pathway of change within a morphic field.

Over the summer break I have been using Bloglines as an experiment in RSS or aggregation (or "dynamic content", "shields you from the confusion", "online news to be fresh", blah blah as they tell me). It is, as they write on the site many times, "FREE". It does also "save time" as I only go to the blogs on the list that have been updated since I last looked (usually 4 or 5 a day). However, I am also missing out on a lot. In fact it is the internet equivalent of Intensive Care on a liquid diet.
I listed 17 blogs on my site feed. Some of these were group blogs so I was checking my list whenever I logged on, as the tray bar icon always has the red button on, saying that one blog at least had been updated. So I had the feeling of reading blogs, funneling information, tasting life outside my own "morphic field". But no! I was actually in a furrow, a chreode. I read the same few blogs as they always had something new to read, but as I did not think to update the list (too busy reading) I lost contact with other blogs I used to read only occasionally. Before this summer I just browsed blogs, letting accident take me where it will. In the last few weeks I have been going around and around the same 17 blogs.
I think I need to stop looking at my feed and just wander. I like confusion...it feels like freedom.

Evidence of Change (on a quiet blog)

This Blog July 6th 2006


This Blog 28th September 2004 (from the Wayback Machine)

This is just to show that something is going on here, even if my posting is not really happening at the moment. I am, however, working on several things; a literature review on reader reception in digital narratives, a thesis plan, a workshop for doctoral students researching in digital interaction, and trying to teach my son to swim (46 people have drowned in Sweden so far this year!!). I have also submitted material for a sociology research project in the UK and the SoundLab Interview Project. Plus a track for an upcoming didgeridoo compilation , as well as preparing to lead a discussion in HUMlab (soon) on the new Aspect Vol. 7 DVD; PERSONAS & PERSONALITIES , with great work from Sachiko Hayashi,Lyn Hershman, Cariana and many more.......Yes, I am busy.