Autonomous Culture Center Burns

The culture center Cyclopen (The Cyclops) in Högdalen south of Stockholm burnt to the ground last night under very suspicious circumstances. I have never visited the place but I have been following its progress over the past two and half years via the Fria newspapers and am quite shocked at this has happened. With two large neo-nazi rallies planned for the Swedish capital city this week I wonder if the events are not connected. The Cyclops had been built from nothing (literally) by those who made use of it for music, meetings, education, festivals, art, study circles, visiting cultural figures and of course activism. I hope the loss of Cyclopen gets the attention in the mass media it deserves.


Video in Swedish on the Cyclops activist and culture house.


Cyclopen in better days- I hope it is reborn from the ashes.

More in Swedish HERE, HERE and HERE.

Happy Birthday William Blake

William Blake was born on this day 251 years ago - a visionary artist, poet, artisan, philosopher, mystic and husband.



"He who binds to himself a joy
doth the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it
flies lives in Eternity's sunrise."

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. During his lifetime, and for half a century afterwards, his work was largely disregarded or even derided as the work of a madman. Today Blake's work is considered seminal in the history of both poetry and the visual arts of the Romantic Age. Blake's prophetic poetry is often considered to be the writings of extraordinary originality and genius. Though he is now considered to have been a spiritual visionary of the Romantic age, his work has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one modern critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Born inside London, Blake spent the entire course of his life, save for three years, inside the city. His creative vision, however, engendered a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced 'imagination' as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".


The William Blake Archive
A hypermedia archive sponsored by the Library of Congress and supported by the Carolina Digital Library and Archives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. With past support from the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia, the Getty Grant Program, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Preservation and Access Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Sun Microsystems, and Inso Corporation.
Editors
Morris Eaves, University of Rochester
Robert Essick, University of California, Riverside
Joseph Viscomi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill


Books by William Blake on Google Books

Weeks Media Recomended

A more organised life (ha ha) has allowed me to post this week's recomended media on Friday as it should be. The world this week has me wishing the penguins were in charge. Although even they seem to have their troubles. The media for this week is an interesting mix of audio from the nature of the Great Southern Continent to the experiments of Swedish sound artists in the 1960s and 70s and a computer game that verges on art...or maybe its art that verges on computer game.

WYPR | Tapestry of the Times | Current Show
It's the inaugural episode of Tapestry of the Times, and we kick things off this week with a sampling of some of the label's original legends: Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie. We'll also hear blues from Warner Williams and Robert Jr. Lockwood, gospel music old and new, and international folk songs from Colombia, Cuba, and Iran. Real music, real people, and the stories behind the sounds... on Tapestry of the Time.

FYLKINGEN TEXT-SOUND FESTIVALS - 10 YEARS
A group of artists at Fylkingen started working with text-sound compositions during the sixties. At that time the medium had difficulty being accepted either by the poets or by the musicians; amongst composers the demand for 'pure' music was still very strong, and poets still clung to metaphor and semantic elements as the basic components of poetry. But the picture has changed during the last 15 years. The tyranny of the established media is no longer so powerful, and a belief in intermedia art is growing amongst artists from previously opposing camps.

Fylkingen Text-Sound Compositions
Text-Sound Compositions 1 and 2 (Sweden / Fylkingen, 1968)

Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) PALAOA - Livestream
You can listen to the underwater sound of the Antarctic Ocean with a delay of a few seconds here.

Immersions: Water Music and other Improvisations
Video artist Emile Tobenfeld (a.k.a. Dr. T) performs video improvisations using multiple DVD players,, utilizing his videography, photography and animation. Joining Dr. T for this performance is an ensemble of musicians featuring Dean (Deknow) Stiglitz (The Lothars) Electro Flute; Ramona Herboldsheimer--(The Lothars) Hammered Dulcimer; Rick Scott (Birdsongs of the Mesozoic) Synth; and Eric Crawley Harpeggi and and Synth. The free-flowing music and visual improvisations explore the theme of "The Secret Knowledge of Water."

Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash :: 1969 Sessions
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash’s 1968 sessions. This is a true peice of Americana — two iconic masters of their craft conversing with one another via song. Recorded throughout 1969 on three separate occasions, these recordings mark an important historical collaboration between two American poets/musicians. Even a casual fan of either artist should at least give these a cursory listen. Great stuff.
CBS studios, Nashville, TN February 17-18, 1969. Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN May 1, 1969. Nashville Skyline: The quadraphonic mixes

The Graveyard. A Tale of Tales. (Freee Dowload)
The Graveyard is a very short computer game designed by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn. You play an old lady who visits a graveyard. You walk around, sit on a bench and listen to a song. It's more like an explorable painting than an actual game. An experiment with realtime poetry, with storytelling without words.

Best for the weekend and the coming week.

Mumbai and New Media

Having spent several weeks in Mumbai during my first trip to India (1990) I, like most people, are sort of stunned by what is happening in the city. Like a nightmare come to life.
It seems that network social media and citizen journalism is covering the events in a round the clock constant feed to the web. Videos on Youtube on the Mumbai attacks seem to be being updated every few minutes. Google Maps is running a dynamic map of the attack sites. Live blogging from central Mumbai is happening here. Twitter is also being used to get out information: See Mumbai, Bombay and #Mumbai. Flickr is also running up to the minute images from the attacks.
I hope it all stops very soon.

Ah Pook is Here

Click on Images to Come to Truth.

The show runs at the Saloman Arts Gallery in downtown Manhattan till December 14. There is a website as well with some nice high rez images online.

Southern Theory by Raewyn Connell

I have just finished reading Southern Theory (2007) by Professor Raewyn Connell. I found it an excellent introduction to what Connell terms 'southern theory', theories related to the social sciences that are formulated outside the metropole. The metropole is the centres of knowledge production in the hegemonic sense, Europe and North America. Connell writes:

"I use the term 'Southern Theory' for several reasons. First, the phrase calls attention to the periphery-center relations in the realm of knowledge. The editors of the Indian periodical Subaltern Studies used the term 'subaltern' not so much to name a social category as to highlight relations of power (See Chapter 8). Similarly, I use the term 'Southern' not to name a sharply bounded category of states and societies, but to emphasise relations - authority, exclusion, inclusion, hegemony, partnership, sponsorship,appropriation - between intellectuals and institutions in the metropole and those in the world periphery." (ix)

As an Australian living in Europe I understand the distance between the periphery and the metropole. While I consider this a potentially useful concept, the region I live in Europe I would consider a periphery within the metropole, so while the general sense of the center-periphery concept is clear it is more complex than it appears as well. I think Connell is aware of this, and it does not prevent what I consider the strongest point of Southern Theory being established. As a survey of academic, activist, theorist and research from outside the globally dominant nodes of knowledge production.

The chapter headings of Southern Theory are:

Table of Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Part I: Northern Theory
Empire and the creation of a social science
Modern general theory and its hidden assumptions
Imagining globalisation

Part II: Looking South
The discovery of Australia

Part III: Southern Theory
Indigenous knowledge and African Renaissance
Islam and Western dominance
Dependency, autonomy and culture
Power, violence and the pain of colonialism

Part IV: Antipodean Reflections
The silence of the land
Social science on a world scale

References
Index

As a academic (approaching the end of initial training) one of the more concise and sharp paragraphs which made an impression on me in Southern Theory is

"Corporations are not the only institutions that allow the rich countries to exercise control and accumulate resources. There is also the metropolitan state, changing from its days of plump imperial pride to its scarecrow neoliberal present, thinning its commitment to citizen's well-being while growing its capacity for external destruction. There are museums and research institutions that have been key players in the centralisation of data from the colonial world. There are new sciences and technologies that, as Al-e Ahmad (1962) observed, lie behind the machine civilization that is the vehicle of Westoxification [Farsi: gharbzadegi]. Since his day computer technology has made the point even more forcibly. And there is the problem of tracing the changing locus of power in a system where now, as Garcia Canclini (1999:13) puts it the main decisions that shape everyday life 'are taken in places that are inaccessible and difficult to identify" (216)

Connell states elsewhere that Al-e Ahmad's suspicion of the machinist West was a not a resistance to technological change but rather a desire for the machines to be within the control of the fellahin.

"Only the society that makes machines, rather than always importing them, can control their power and use them in a labour-intensive, more appropriate agriculture that would reduce imports and support the population." (123)

Granted Connell is no economist. Being able to produce a good, be it a high-end manufactured one, does not guarantee an equitable society. But I believe the point regrading access to and use of technology in a global perspective is a good one. Witness the travesty that is internet access in sub-Saharan Africa today:


It is all going East-West!!!!

I would recommend Southern Theory to just about anyone who wanted to gain a broader picture of how "the global dynamics of knowledge" (the subtitle of the book) is organised today. With both integration of global economies and inequity and exploitation working in an unholy triad and many people being aware of this and acting out of desperation, it is very necessary that the issues addressed by Connell gain a broader scope of consideration. If they do not it will be bad for everyone.

Keeping Culture Free

Public Lecture by Lawrence Lessig in Auckland, New Zealand, about the war between "prohibitionists" and "abolitionists" in the copyright debate. Builds on old stuff, adds an idea about how best to deal with copyright in developing nations.

The Swedish government yesterday rejected any change to copyright law following a European Union directive for member nations to enter into a dicussion regrading the possibility of increasing the manditory copyright period from the current 50 years to 95 years following composition.

Book: Software Studies by Lev Manovich Available Online

Lev Manovich's new book Software Takes Command is available online as a PDF under a Creative Commons License. Here are the details:

Note: In the Spirit of the commons Lev Manovich makes available online his latest book. Release notes from the book’s website follow below.

———-

DOWNLOAD THE BOOK:
format: PDF.

VERSION:
November 20, 2008.
Please note that this version has not been proofread yet, and it is also missing illustrations.
Length: 82,071 Words (including footnotes).

Software Takes Command by Lev Manovich is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Please notify me if you want to reprint any parts of the book.

ABOUT THE VERSIONS:
One of the advantages of online distribution which I can control is that I don’t have to permanently fix the book’s contents. Like contemporary software and web services, the book can change as often as I like, with new “features” and “big fixes” added periodically. I plan to take advantage of these possibilities. From time to time, I will be adding new material and making changes and corrections to the text.

LATEST VERSION:
Check softwarestudies.com/softbook.html for the latest version of the book.

SUGGESTIONS, CORRECTIONS AND COMMENTS:
send to manovich@ucsd.edu with the word “softbook” in the email header.

Brought to you by Remix Theory

Stanford Laptop Orchestra: Writerase

Trying to wake this blog up a bit, I give you the Stanford Laptop Orchestra performing Writerase by Brett Ascarelli (2008).

Media for Calm Waters

My other half has arrived home from the orient. The cold continues both inside and outside my head. Great events are eventing around the world: the Tibetans are activating, Sweden has passed the Treaty of Lisbon by a parliamentary vote, the USA is changing in the world with a remaining 45% of the global military, the Democratic Republic of the Congo really needs help and in Palestine the struggle continues.
Here is some media to ride out the storm of the now:

Jan Steele / John Cage (MP3s)
Brian Eno's Obscure Records label released only 10 albums during its existence from 1975 through 1978. Some of these have been reissued on CD (among them Eno's own 1975 masterpiece Discreet Music), but for some reason the album Voices and Instruments (Obscure No. 5, 1976) only exists on out-of-print vinyl. It is a very quiet and beautiful record, featuring three compositions by Jan Steele on one side, and five compositions by John Cage on the other side. Lyrics are by James Joyce and E. E. Cummings, performers include Jan Steele, Richard Bernas, Steve Beresford, Fred Frith, Robert Wyatt, and Carla Bley. It is not just mellow, it is avant-mellow...

European Film Archive
Film Treasures safeguarded by important European film archives are finally on the net! Incredible collection of early and important European films. All streamed online and all free. An important site for teaching.

Headphonica
Seventy four albums for free download from the headphonica label. I recomend My Log by Koen Park
There is also a Myspace site.


"Flower Travellin' Band-Anywhere -1970 Japan"
Flower Travellin' Band are an influential Japanese psychedelic heavy rock outfit that was first active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, consisting of Akira "Joe" Yamanaka (vocals), Hideki Ishima (guitar), Joji "George" Wada (drums) and Jun Kozuki (bass). As of January 12th, 2008 they have officially reunited and hired a new member, keyboardist Nobuhiko Shinohara.

Kev Carmody "Cannot Buy My Soul: The Songs of Kev Carmody"
2 CD Tribute Set (2006)
The songs and song order are identical on each of the CDs although, of course, the cover artists have their own interpretations. The cover artists are all popular and award-winning Australian performers (listed with the track list below) but, if you must choose, then I strongly recommend that you get CD2 with the originals.

Kevin Daniel Carmody is an Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter born in 1946 in Cairns, Queensland. His father was a second generation Irish descendant, his mother a Murri woman. The family moved to southern Queensland in early 1950. Carmody grew up on a cattle station near Goranba, 70km west of Dalby in the Darling Downs area of south eastern Queensland. His parents worked as drovers there, moving cattle along the stock routes. When he was ten years old, Carmody was taken from his parents under the assimilation policy and sent to a Christian school, after which he returned to his rural roots and worked for seventeen years as a country labourer.
At the age of 33 Carmody had the opportunity to go to university where he attended the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education, at which he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree, with honours. He later undertook postgraduate studies and completed a Diploma of Education from the University of Queensland, eventually finishing a PhD. While at university Carmody used his guitar as a means of implementing oral history in tutorials, which led to his career in music.
His first album, Pillars of Society, was released in 1989 and drew heavily upon country music and folk music styles. Australian Rolling Stone described the record as "the best album ever released by an Aboriginal musician and arguably the best protest album ever made in Australia". In subsequent recordings he has adopted a broad range of music styles from reggae to rock and roll.

British National Party (BNP) membership list Nov 2008 (download torrent) - TPB
Leaked membership list of the British right-wing party, the BNP (British National Party). Leaked in November 2008, believed to date from late 2007. Includes names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, occupation details and membership comments. Ten thousand members of the BNP spread, strangely enough, across the world. Knowing who these people are is perhaps a step towards understanding the retrograde politics of isolation preached by the BNP.

Talan Memmott in HUMlab

The Topic of the Seminar: In[ter]venting Multi-Modal Rhetoric(s)/(a) Poetics of Emergence


A Portrait of Selves

Yesterday I attended two seminars in HUMlab, one on fan fiction, which was very interesting but primarily focusing on pedagogy and younger authors (not really my scene), and one on digital poetics. The second of these (which was actually the first in the order of the day) has been making me think since I attended it. Talan Memmott presented a word and image performance with a basis in critical theory, art and design (although he is no fan of the last term). When I was actually listening to the seminar I found some of it difficult to follow, dense and intense at the same time. But then afterwards we adjourned to the pub with a chance for chat I (drank very little and) went back over the talk and began to realize how close much of it was to the area I am working with in my own research. As a result, today I have felt a renewed sense of focus in my thesis writing (I managed a page today, not bad considering I only started working on it a 16:00..a long story, single parenthood continues for another 24 hours).
I have spent the last few days in a bit of a confused state about how to finish a chapter I have been (re)working on for a month now. Talan's wild imagery and persistent questioning of the possibilities helped me see what it is I am trying to say.
If you want to see the seminar here is the link to it.

Monday Morning Wake Up

Flower Travellin' Band, live 2008, Satori Pt II

Recomendations from the Net for Now

This week's recommended media is dedicated to lone parents everywhere. After one week of caring for two children, ages 3 and 8, I am in awe of anybody who manages such a life by themselves. I believe we should have a week each year dedicated to lone parents, where public transport is free for people who are raising children alone, as well there could be theater, music and other cultural and even sporting events where lone parents get cheaper (or free) entry and child minding is free. Any town or local government that implemented Lone Parents Week would be setting a standard for the world to follow.
And now for a few online media pieces that I thought help me get through this difficult week:

HEVOSET-S/T, TAPE, 2004, FINLAND
Predating their recently issued eponymous LP on Dekorder by four years, this blink-and-you-missed-it 50 copy cassette by Finnish freak folk/freak out operatives Jan Anderzen (Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Tomutonntu etc) and Jani Hirvonen (Uton, Aan, Last Night On Earth) finds these two initiating a typically (if enjoyably) bedragged pseudo ritualistic trawl through wheeze, twang, rustle and stumble on their way toward heavy lidded enlightenment.

Six Albums of Studio and Bootlegs by Syd Barrett
Six albums of bootleg and studio material by the late Roger 'Syd' Barrett. Opel was the original lp with left overs from the Barrett and Madcap sessions and is extended with more extra tracks. The 5 song John Peel Session does not add a lot to it but it's nice enough for those who need more. Magnesium Proverbs is a bootleg with singles and takes from Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett solo. Quality is not always good so it is mostly a listen for the diehard Syd Barrett fans.

Why Google’s book deal is such a big deal
If you want to search for PDF-files containing out-of-copyright books, go to the advanced search form and by click on the “Full view only” radio button before entering your search terms. Once you select a book from your results, you’ll see a “Download” button on the right side of the page. The result pages also have a pull-down menu that lets you select this option.

Mp3: Grievous Angel - Devotional Dubz Mix for FACT Magazine
00:00: Jill Scott: Slowly Surely (Grievous Angel's Erzulie Edit)
02.20: Craig Mack: Brand New Flava (Grievous Angel's Iron River Edit)
05:19: Grievous Angel: Lady Dub
08:07: Jill Scott: Watching Me
09:30: Vaccine: Wishful Thinking (VIP Mix)
12:03: DJ Abstract: Touch
15:18: Jill Scott: Crown Royal (Grievous Angel's Fucking In Sunshine Edit)
17:07: Jill Scott: My Love (Grievous Angel's Deeper, Tighter Edit)
19:29: HorsePower Productions: Gorgon Sound
21:56: Grievous Angel: Lady Dub (2Step Remix)
25:10: Groove Chronicles: Be Happy
28:09: Grievous Angel: What We Had
31:47: El B: Bison
31:58: Groove Chronicles: Faith In You
34:13: Dru Hill: Freak Like Me (El B Remix)
39:11: El B: Two Thousand
40:34: Our Lady of Rage: Afro Puffs
42:00: Grievous Angel: I Love Dem
49:13: Ends

Space and Place in Architexture

I gave a lecture yesterday on Space and Place in Architexture for the Museum Studies course I have been working with. I made a long blog entry for the session on my teaching blog Augmented Reality. Accessible from the link are such gems as

"The power a place such as a mere room possesses determines not only where I am in the limited sense of cartographic location but how I am together with others (i.e. how I commingle and communicate with them) and even who we shall become together. the "how" and the "who" are intimately tied to the "where", which gives to them a special content and a coloration not available form any other source. Place bestows upon them "a local habitation and a name" by establishing a concrete situatedness in the common world. This emplacement is as social as it is personal. The ideolocal is not merely idiosyncratic or individual; it is also collective in character." Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Towards a New Understanding of the Place-World. (23)

Over on Augmented Reality there are images, a couple of videos, lots of quotes and a great map:

Two Seminars in HUMlab (Streamed online)

Next week on Wednesday 19 November there is a double header in HUMlab (all times are Central European GMT+1):

At 13.15 Talan Memmott who is a writer/artist and Lecturer in English at Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, will talk about In[ter]venting Multi-Modal Rhetoric(s)/(a) Poetics of Emergence.
Abstract: This presentation will look at electronic literary practices and the modes and methods of meaning-making there in. Using my own creative work as an example, I will discuss how the poetic formation and rhetorical outcomes of my work are integral to the ‘text’ of the work, and integrated into what could be called an environmental grammatology. From programming to visual design, the word to the image, user interaction to instrumentality -- we have moved from “Work to Text” to Work...
This is a joint venture with the Department of Language Studies and the Department of Culture and Media.

At 15.15 Christina Olin-Scheller from Karlstad University will talk (in Swedish) about Författande fans – om ungas läsande och skrivande på nätet.
Abstract: Unga nätkulturer, som en rad olika fanfiction-sajter, är många gånger kraftfulla informella lärmiljöer för barn och ungdomar. I fanfiction som handlar om att skriva vidare på redan publicerade fiktionstexter, tar läsarna kommando över fiktionen och utvecklar nya liv för karaktärer som Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker från "Star Wars" och manga-figuren Naruto. Den täta interaktionen mellan läsare och författare på fanfiction-sajterna skapar en konstruktiv skrivprocess som skolans formella lärmiljö kan ta intryck av. Seminariet behandlar frågor som rör skärningspunkten mellan unga nätkulturer och undervisning.
I samverkan med Språkstudiers höge seminarium i didaktik och litteraturvetenskap.

If you are suffering from distance the telematic body can help by accessing the stream from here (opens on the hour of seminar).

Google Earth Rome Reborn

Google today resurrected ancient Rome online, opening a three-dimensional virtual version of the city for cyber-explorers interested in trips back through time.

People using free Google Earth software can seemingly fly past more than 6500 buildings that stood in the city at the peak of the Roman Empire in 320 AD.

Online visitors can swoop in for close-ups of structures and peruse pop-up information "bubbles" written by historians.

Some buildings feature full interiors. Internet surfers can visit the Roman Forum; linger in the Colosseum; pass through the Arch of Constantine and follow in the footsteps of gladiators in the Ludus Magnus.

Rome is the first ancient city recreated at Google Earth, an interactive online Atlas that provides tools and technology that enable people to explore the world.

To commemorate the launch, Google is inviting US educators to take part in a contest promising prizes for innovative lesson plans based on the virtual Ancient Rome feature.

Google made use of the resources of the Rome Reborn project at the Univesity of Virginia, which has been working on 3D models of Rome since 1997:

From 1997 to 2007, the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) of the University of Virginia, the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory (CVRLab), the UCLA Experiential Technology Center (ETC), the Reverse Engineering (INDACO) Lab at the Politecnico di Milano, the Ausonius Institute of the CNRS and the University of Bordeaux-3, and the University of Caen have collaborated on a project to create a digital model of ancient Rome as it appeared in late antiquity. The notional date of the model is June 21, 320 A.D

War Ends Reality Continues

A fine piece of culture jamming has been reported from NYC today. Arts activists handed out copies of the New York Times this morning bearing the above headline. There is a website reporting how life could be.......

Monday Evening Wake Up

Kasabian - L.S.F
Uploaded by amandine025

Kasabian - L.S.F

and another week begins.........

Recomended Media for Mediators Meditators Agitators and Alchemists

Quite a week comes to an end with this evening's recommended media. I've been teaching and writing and running experiments in Second Life, watching the most powerful nation on earth test its own nature, preparing for two weeks of lone parenting, writing an exam and then feeling angst when the students sit the resit, meetings and conversations and cooking dinner three nights in a row...maybe four?

Now what's going to teach us something this week? '...listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox...'

Audio Lectures by Rick Roderick
Rick Roderick was born in Abilene, Texas in 1949 and received his B.A. at the University of Texas at Austin. He did post-graduate work at Baylor University and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 1977, Professor Roderick taught at Baylor University, the University of Texas, Duke University and National University in Los Angeles.
His best topics were Marx and Marxism, Social and Political Philosophy, Critical Theory, 19th-Century Philosophy, and Contemporary Continental Philosophy. He also taught Ethics, Logic, History of Modern Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Existentialism.
He was the recipient of the Oldright Fellowship at the University of Texas and served as associate editor to The Pawn Review and Current Perspectives in Social Theory. Dr. Roderick was the editor of the Baylor Philosophy Journal and a member of the Phi Sigma Tau National Honor Society of Philosophy. He presented more than 25 papers, and published 13 reviews and literary criticisms. He was the author of the book Habermas and the Foundation of Critical Theory (1986) as well as numerous articles in professional journals. Rick Roderick died in 2002.

feedtime
(self titled/self released)
1985
1: Ha! Ha! , 2: Fastbuck , 3: All Down , 4: Mandead, 5: Searching the Desert, 6: Fly, 7: Dead Crazy, 8: Don't Like, 9: F#, 10: Clowns, 11: Gee 12: Southside Johnny, 13: I Wonder What's The Matter With Papa's Little Angel Child, 14: I Wanna Ride
feedtime was an independent postpunk rock trio from Sydney, Australia, formed in 1979. The name is spelled with a lowercase f. The members were credited by their first names only: Rick (guitar, vocals), Al (bass), and Tom (drums).
feedtime made four albums in the 1980s. Initially they recorded only for Aberrant Records in Australia, but their second through fourth albums were released internationally by the legendary indie label Rough Trade. The second album, Shovel, received the greatest critical acclaim. The last of these four albums, Suction, was produced by Butch Vig.
feedtime's sound was loud, primitive, and brutal. The most distinctive musical element is thick, roaring electric guitar, played with a slide, over a thick, chugging rhythm section. Their loud but stripped-down, minimalist approach led them to be compared to the British postpunk band Wire (although feedtime didn't know Wire's music), but feedtime's sound also heavily referenced rural American country and blues. A large influence from classic rock is most easily heard on their covers LP Cooper S on which they covered the Rolling Stones and the Animals in addition to punk forebears like the Ramones and the Stooges.

Arthur Mag World Service
Arthur World Service - free, 24/7 high-res streaming and on-demand video channel.
It's our attempt to blow/soothe/etc your curious mind every four minutes.


A Brief Guide to Online Video Lectures
The Boston Herald ran a piece this weekend highlighting different web sites that feature free educational video collections. If you give it a read, you’ll see that it features some familiar and not so familiar sites –Meaningoflife.tv, Fora.tv, Bigthink.com, TED Talks, Bloggingheads.tv, and Edge.org. All are worth a look. So give them a go. But you may also want to check out a few others not mentioned in the article.

Spectacular Times: Spectacle - A Skeleton Key (Manuscript PDF 27 pages)
Excellent...
"To survive, the spectacle must have social control. It can recuperate a potentially threatening situation by shifting ground, creating dazzling alternatives- or by embracing the threat, making it safe and then selling it back to us" – Larry Law, from The Spectacle- The Skeleton Keys

10 episodes of marvel comics fantastic four radio show
VBR MP3 Ogg Vorbis 64Kbps MP3
Fantastic 4 - 01 - Meets the Moleman
Fantastic 4 - 02 - Menace of the Miracleman
Fantastic 4 - 03 - Coming of the Submariner
Fantastic 4 - 04 - Dreaded Doctor Doom
Fantastic 4 - 05 - Prisoners of the Puppetmaster
Fantastic 4 - 06 - Meet the Incredible Hulk
Fantastic 4 - 07 - Spell of the Hate Monger
Fantastic 4 - 08 - Return of Doctor Doom
Fantastic 4 - 09 - In the Clutches of Doctor Doom
Fantastic 4 - 10 - Super Skull Walks Among Us




Psychic TV, Unclean
Unclean is a live album by Psychic TV. The album was pressed on 7" and 12" vinyl on Temple Records. The album was recorded live at the Building Site April 1984. This track from the album is taken from the Giorno Poetry Systems - The Dial-A-Poem Poets "Better An Old Demon Than A New God" record.

Free Online Courses & Lectures from Great Universities (via Podcast and MP3)

Australia on Film

I may actually go and see Baz Luhrmann's Australia as it will be showing here in the far north of Sweden in about a month.
What I am more excited about is the Australian Screen website. It is a treasure trove of Australia cinema going back to its earliest years. There are online streams from hundreds of films and some are in their entirety. Teaching notes and resources such as still images and downloadable segments make the Australian Screen site a valuable potential teaching tool. You can register as a member (there is also a Facebook group) and receive emails and make contacts with others interesting in the amazing world of Australian film.
I was happy to reconnect with a favorite film of mine, The Year My Voice Broke. Not easy to find a copy of these days, but a film that reminds me so much of growing up in rural Queensland.

The Aesthetics of Mimesis

I started reading The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems by Stephen Halliwell yesterday. It is the book of the month as far as I am concerned. For a long time I have been wanting to read more about the ancient texts on cognition, form, art and meaning. I think I have found what I have been looking for in Halliwell's book from 2002:

Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. This book offers a new, searching treatment of its long history at the center of theories of representational art: above all, in the highly influential writings of Plato and Aristotle, but also in later Greco-Roman philosophy and criticism, and subsequently in many areas of aesthetic controversy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Combining classical scholarship, philosophical analysis, and the history of ideas--and ranging across discussion of poetry, painting, and music--Stephen Halliwell shows with a wealth of detail how mimesis, at all stages of its evolution, has been a more complex, variable concept than its conventional translation of "imitation" can now convey.

Far from providing a static model of artistic representation, mimesis has generated many different models of art, encompassing a spectrum of positions from realism to idealism. Under the influence of Platonist and Aristotelian paradigms, mimesis has been a crux of debate between proponents of what Halliwell calls "world-reflecting" and "world-simulating" theories of representation in both the visual and musico-poetic arts. This debate is about not only the fraught relationship between art and reality but also the psychology and ethics of how we experience and are affected by mimetic art.

Moving expertly between ancient and modern traditions, Halliwell contends that the history of mimesis hinges on problems that continue to be of urgent concern for contemporary aesthetics.

I want to just go away and read for a week.....but there us too much else to do. Tomorrow I start teaching a short course at the Umeå Design School, English for Industrial Designers. Should be fun. As well there is the ever present thesis...will I miss it when it is dead? Maybe.

Monday Morning Wake Up

The Clash live (from Rude Boy film)at a Rock Against Racism concert at Victoria Park.

Murdoch on "A Golden Age of Freedom"

If you are interested, as I am, on what one of the largest media publishers in the world is thinking about in regards to the present global situation you may like to listen to the Boyer Lectures on ABC Australian radio National tomorrow. The introduction goes like this:

The 2008 lecture series, A Golden Age of Freedom is presented by Mr Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, News Corporation.

On a wall in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal office in Manhattan hangs a Russel Drysdale painting. It has travelled with him around the world. The Stockman and his Family depicts a pioneering Australia, steely and resilient in the face of solitude and hardship. Values which he feels have taken us to where we are today - one of the most prosperous and peaceful nations on Earth. But will these values see us through the times ahead?

Rupert Murdoch beholds a period of great transformation that will bring prosperity to billions around the world. This golden age of freedom will unleash a new global middle class. Markets, media and technology will all play their part.

But to reap the rewards we must make some drastic changes. A ballooning welfare state, failing state schools and full reconciliation among all Australians head his list.

Some predictable stuff, but of interest nonetheless. From tomorrow the lecture will be online for downloading and streaming from here.