We have Hit the Road

"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life." Jack Kerouac

Back in Four weeks.

Reprap

RepRap from Adrian Bowyer on Vimeo.

Reprap is an example of how sharing has the potential to change the society we live in.

Look at your computer setup and imagine that you hooked up a 3D printer. Instead of printing on bits of paper this 3D printer makes real, robust, mechanical parts. To give you an idea of how robust, think Lego bricks and you're in the right area. You could make lots of useful stuff, but interestingly you could also make most of the parts to make another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself.

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right - a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the parts up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about €30,000. And it isn't even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs are about €500). That way it's accessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed world. Following the principles of the Free Software Movement we are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence. So, if you have a RepRap machine, you can use it to make another and give that one to a friend...

Coder Girl

I am struggling to finish a chapter rewrite before going on a months holiday (Copenhagen, Singapore, Australia). The title of the chapter is Methods and Terms: Response as Reading in Digital Literature. It is the first chapter of the thesis. At last I am getting positive feedback from supervisors and it looks like all that is between me and a PhD is a mountain (like a really very large amount) of work. So, why a video called Coder Girl, because I can actually understand everything the guy is rhyming about (those code classes for humanists really helped Gabe) and it's cool....

Back to work :-(

Some Warm Recomended Media

"Too Few are Shot" (Indirect translation from the Swedish)

Late on a Saturday night and time to clear some recommended media. This blog and all my other net activities will be going into a state of suspension for about four weeks from later this week. I shall be traveling to my homeland (Australia) for a while. As well a stopover in Singapore is planned. See friends and influence people. Plan to lose my mind. Now to my finds:

Aquarium Drunkard: Music Blog » Neil Young :: A Perfect Echo Vol II - Pt 1 of 2
This is a compilation of soundboard recordings from 1967-2001. The term soundboard is a bit of a misnomer. By soundboard I mean, basically, not an audience recording. Some are true soundboards, while others are FM, TV, ALD, or video-sourced recordings. The recordings were all taken from cdrs or videos that are circulating in the trading community. There are a total of 115 tracks (109 songs, as 6 get repeated). Some years were heavy with available recordings (1976 and 1989 come to mind). I tried to balance the set by not using too many songs from a single show. The entire 8 discs run in, roughly, chronological order.

Aquarium Drunkard: Music Blog » Neil Young :: A Perfect Echo Vol. I - Pt 2
Below is the second half of the Neil Young soundboard-derived live collection A Perfect Echo Vol. I. capturing the years 1974 - 1976. The first half can be found here. For those interested in the back story, here are notes on the series via sharing the groove

Internet Archive: Free Download: Midsummer Miscellany, 2009
Really nice acoustic jams from beautiful places


UbuWeb - We Love Charlotte Moorman (MP3)
Avant Garde Concert III. Third in a series of concerts recorded by WBAI this fall at Judson Hall. Cellist Charlotte Moorman is assisted by pianist Nam June Paik and soprano saxophonist Terry Jennings. In the Cage opus she utilizes not only her cello but additional whistles, chains, balloons (for breaking), etc. with recorded supplements such as the Queen Mary’s departure blast and sounds from Big Ben. In Stockhausen’s ‘Plus-Minus’, Miss Moorman is assisted by a full-size robot named Robot Opera, built by Nam June Paik.

MUTANT SOUNDS: MARBLE SHEEP & THE RUN-DOWN SUN'S CHILDREN-BIG DEAL, CD, 1992, JAPAN
While Mutant Sounds says this is not typical of the Marble Sheep, anything by these gods of psychedelic Japonoise is gold as far as I am concerned.

CDBurnerXP: Introduction and News
Something different, but this is a great piece of software that has served me well for years. CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Everyone, even companies, can use it for free. It does not include adware or similar malicious components.

Indian Rock Mp3.Com
Hardcore and metal from India

Trixxx Films
Brazilian and lots of art house films for download. Possible illegally (???).

UbuWeb Sound - The Dial-A-Poem Poets: A Diamond Hidden In The Mouth Of A Corpse
One of the albums of my youth. Oh how we dreamed to this one. A brilliant collection.
1. [listen] Hüsker Dü - Won't Change 2. [listen] David Johansen - Johnsonius 3. [listen] John Giorno Band - Scum & Slime 4. [listen] William S. Burroughs - Excerpts from The Western Land: The President, Colonel Bradford, Everyman a God 5. [listen] Sonic Youth - Halloween 6. [listen] Cabaret Voltaire - Dead Man's Shoes 7. [listen] Diamanda Galás - Excerpt from Eyes Without Blood 8. [listen] Coil - Neither His Nor Yours 9. [listen] Michael Gira - Game 10. [listen] David Van Tieghem - Out of the Frying Pan 11. [listen] Jessica Hagedorn & The Gangster Choir - Tenement Lover


UbuWeb - We Love Kathy Acker (MP3)
This is not background listening. Kathy Acker’s work is not a love-it-or-hate-it proposition: it’s a get-it one. Either you get it, or you don’t. Redoing Childhood, excerpted from her book My Mother: Demonology, is in many respects the most accessible way to experience Acker. Her voice, cool and precise but with an almost invasive intimacy, gives her work clear depth and dimension, creating a full and rich landscape. Every so often, entire concepts spring from throwaway lines: “But this is the question: is it possible to communicate with another person?” “I’ve got a terrible need to write to you, and for you not to reply.”

V. A. – Vielles à roue et cornemuses en Europe – 1974
Alpha 5016F – 17F
Enregistrements réalisés à Gand à l’occasion du festival européen de vielles à roue et de cornemuses à Nederokkerzeel en 1974.
Bagpipe drones from the ancient chambers. French, Italian, Czech, Sweden, Belgian. Drones and tones to trance by. Double disc, so four LP sides.

Sunn o))) live at Primavera (MP3)
Speaking of drones. Recorded by Brian Turner on Sony D-50 PCM wav recorder; Sunn o))) that night was the duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley, performing their Grimmrobe Demos (originally from 1999) in entirety.

An interview with Mark Ellingsen author of Sin Bravely: A Joyful Alternative to the Purpose-Driven Life.
Ellingsen demonstrates that awareness of sin is shown to lead to freedom and joy, as the pressure is removed to do and be good all the time. The book's other primary aim is to flesh out an alternative approach to life to Rick Warren's and the dominant American Christian vision. This alternative, life of brave sinning, is rooted in the worldview of the Protestant Reformation (esp. of Martin Luther). When people sin bravely, believing everything done is done in sin, people can get out of the way and recognize that all the good done is done by God despite individual seedy motives. This awareness leads to freedom and joy, since the pressure is now removed to do and be good. In addition, total dependence on God entails a self-forgetfulness that leads to happiness.

Lucas Abela. Rice Corpse and Justice Yeldham Downloads
Download three MP3s featuring Lucas Abela. Justice Yeldham's "March Of the Bodypumpers" was recorded especially for Wire readers, while "The Imperial Family Reigns Supreme Pizza" and "No Penis" are free improvisations by Rice屎Corpse (outtakes from the Mrs Rice album sessions that didn't make the final cut) with Li Zenghui on piano, Yang Yang on drums and Lucas Abela on glass.

MUTANT SOUNDS: MINIT-MUSIC, CD, 1999, AUSTRALIA
A subtly fascinating broadcast from the brainwave tuning end of the abstract electronica spectrum, Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly's work under the Minit mantle mining a vein of transcendence through stasis that lands this debut CD of theirs somewhere in the neighborhood of Ikeda/Alva Noto alpha wave patterning and the sonar ping-'n'-pulse "isolationism" of Asmus Tietchens work with Thomas Koner as Kontakt Der Junglinge, but with a faint overlay of spectral musicality that gives this it's own specific frisson.


Audio of James Joyce reading from Ulysses (mp3)
Amazing to hear his voice reading, it sounds like music.

The Recorded Voice Of Virginia Woolf

This is the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf's voice. It is part of a BBC radio broadcast from April 29th, 1937. The talk was called "Craftsmanship" and was part of a series entitled "Words Fail Me".


ComingAnarchy.com » Early 1980s Nuclear Armageddon Films
In the early 1980s, the world was fatalistic and paranoid about the prospects of nuclear war. Filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic used this theme to create movies about the lead-up to nuclear war, what the civilian population would experience, and the gruesome aftermath faced by the survivors. Many of these films were disturbing in their raw realism. They brought the horror of this kind of holocaust to viewers, reminding us that it wasn’t as unlikely as we might like to believe. Due to technology, you can now see many of these films on the web. Five of the most famous from the era are posted below, both linked to and embedded in this browser so you can watch them right here.

Right Where You Are Sitting Now! | EPISODE 27 - What happened to the Counterculture?
Douglas Rushkoff, Richard Metzger and R.U.Sirius

If the revolution happens before morning, can someone come around and wake me.

Sky

The sky over Umeå Sweden at 14:34 8 July 2009.

Racism: A History (BBC 2007) Episode One

Executive Producer David Okuefuna presents a general summary of the formation of race as a discourse in the 15th and 16th century as part of the enlightenment project. Focus on slavery, the Haitian slave rebellion of 1791-1804. Features commentary by many star academics, including David Theo Goldberg (who I have met and whose work I admire).

It is an Anglo-American account of race and racism with some attention paid to the French, Spanish and Portuguese colonial missions. I suppose the bias can be attributed to the time frame and the series seems to follow a chronological order. It is interesting that they say slavery was abolished by the British in 1833. But I know that it continued in the part of Australia I come from until 1901, the year the colonies there were granted independence from Britain. So-called 'blackbirding' was part of the economy of Queensland until that time and the workers continued on after then often in harsh conditions.

Didgeridoo Music in Memory of Alan Dargin

This is a recording that I just uploaded to the Internet Archive of me playing three didgeridoo pieces. It features clap sticks and bells, playing in the street sometime in the summer last year.

I post it here because I learnt only yesterday that Alan Dargin passed on in February 2008. I spent three days with Alan in 1998 in Amsterdam, playing didgeridoo and getting the only formal teaching I have ever had for the didgeridoo. Alan was one of the best didgeridoo players in the world. Before I met him I listened to his album Two Stories in One with the band Reconciliation from 1994 a lot;

As intriguing as any stylistic fusion one is likely to hear, Reconciliation combines Celtic and Australian Aboriginal influences to create a unique, seamlessly integrated mix of sounds. Surprisingly, the two seemingly disparate traditions have more in common than one might expect, including similar rhythms and compositional styles, and it's a strangely difficult challenge to discern which sounds are Irish and which are Australian. In fact, on "Pony Tail Reel," Sion O'Dwyer's dazzling Irish horn sounds so much like the distinctive nuances of the Aboriginal didjeridoo as to be virtually indistinguishable. A wonderfully inventive, magical fusion of sounds.

- Bret Love, All Music Guide

It is a sad loss (even if it did occur over a year ago) with the passing of Alan. I dedicate this recording to his memory.


The Web and Alan Dargin (R.I.P.) performing live @ Didge-Village Didgeridoo-Festival near Stendal in Germany, filmed by Reyk Hillert, www.didgevillage.de

Good Morning World!!!!!

Can, Mother Sky (1970)

Discourse and the Vampire Slayer

Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed

"The author's design for a character is a design for discourse. Thus the author's discourse about a character is a discourse about discourse. It is orientated towards the hero as if toward a discourse and is therefore dialogically addressed to him [sic]. By the very construction of the novel [remix] the author speaks not about a character, but with him [sic]. M. M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics p63.

Video Description
In this remixed narrative Edward Cullen from the Twilight Series meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer at Sunnydale High. It’s an example of transformative storytelling serving as a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward’s character and generally creepy behavior. Seen through Buffy’s eyes, some of the more sexist gender roles and patriarchal Hollywood themes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed in hilarious ways. Ultimately this remix is about more than a decisive showdown between the slayer and the sparkly vampire. It also doubles as a metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century.

Copyright and Fortress Europe

Earlier today I watched most of a two and half hour discussion on copyright, digital culture, file sharing and the internet hosted by the Fores Seminar (it is in Swedish but the video is available from the link). The panel was divided along the pro-copyright/anti-pirate and anti-copyright/pro-pirate divide (although several of the participants distanced themselves from such a simplistic divide). It started with a series of 'what is good about copyright?', which led into 'what is bad about it'? Those on the panel, many of them well known in Sweden for their professional activities in the areas discussed (lawyers, academics, politicians and business people including Monique Wadsted, Göran Lambertz, Olle Abrahamsson, Rasmus Fleischer, Nicklas Lundblad and Hans Pandeya) expressed standard opinions; why we need copyright, how artists must be paid for their work if culture is to survive, how file sharing is stealing, that it is not stealing, that we are in the midst of a revolution brought about by digital media, that we are not in the midst of a revolution and it has all happened before and so on. The main theme of the discussion (it never really got to the level of debate) was consumption and how it is to be preserved in any future digital culture that may eventuate. This got me thinking.

Even during the broadcast of the Fores panel I was amazed that nobody brought up the idea that copyright not only protects the interests of the artists (and producers, publishers, legitimate distributors etc.) it also protects the wealth of the nations from which they come. Why are we in the developed post-industrial world not seeking ways of helping the developing world through providing access to cultural resources? Why cannot the Global North produce a system of copyright which allows for those that can pay to pay and those that cannot, not? Countries could be given 'copyright credits' with a country like Sierra Leone having free access to everything for a period of five or ten years, while countries like Germany or the USA pay a bit extra. The benefits of these copyright credits cannot be channeled into commercial media until education in the nation has been granted the full benefits of them. Textbooks, films, computer software and audio materials are all free for the education system of the benefiting nation during the period allocated for the copyright credits. Implementation of the materials could be arranged via UNESCO.

Following my initial thoughts of the Fores Seminar, tonight I watched Zapatista, a film from 1999 about the struggle in Chaipas, a struggle that is a direct result of global policy making having catastrophic effects at local levels. As well the Tällberg Forum is on again, this year looking at the possible future that awaits us if we do not start making decisions based on the state of the collective, rather than the wealthy few who can afford to ride out the worst of the havoc wrecked by unbridled consumption and industrial production. I believe copyright is part of this scenario. Copyright is as effective as a wall or navy flotilla in holding out the poor of the world from the riches of the culture and knowledge economy. If there is to be a readdress of copyright in Europe (and this seems unlikely), the possibilities to help those nations to the South should be considered. It could even be offset by a reduction in development aid to the nations that receive copyright credits, saving money for the generous nations who are willing to support such a scheme (so kind they are).

Of course there is no mention of any such crazy ideas in the Fores Seminar.