Media for Free(dom): Drink in the Wonder

Miroslav Tichý (b. 1926) wandered the small Moravian town of Kyjov in rags, pursuing his obsession with the female form by secretly photographing women in the streets, shops and parks with cameras he made from tin cans, children's spectacle lenses and other junk he found on the street. He would return home each day to make prints on equally primitive equipment, making only one print from the negatives he selected. His work remained largely unknown until 2005, when he was 79 years old.

This week has been one of deep creative pursuit, fevered writing, mixed meetings and the discovery of much good on the web. Let us begin.

Talking Heads :: Saratoga Performing Arts Center, NY August 1983
1983 was was an incredibly fertile year for the the Talking Heads. The companion album to Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense made an effort at capturing the band’s live mojo, but due to its length (neutered at nine tracks) failed to paint a complete picture. Thankfully there are a number of high-quality boots in circulation. The below show, a soundboard recorded in August of ‘83 in Saratoga, NY, captures this period beautifully. I ripped the FLAC files to 256 kbps mp3s. Highest recommendation.


Dualtrack: Throbbing Gristle - Greatest Hits (1980)
On this ironically titled collection, the band offers 11 tracks that plant the seeds for a number of genres. Synth pop is here in the primal, awkward guise of "Adrenalin," while "Hot on the Heels of Love" may be one of the very first techno songs ever. "Subhuman" would set the standard for the type of ranting industrial rock that Skinny Puppy and Ministry would actually have to water down, and "Six Six Sixties" is the sort of guitar-driven noise narrative which would later find brief popularity with the New York City art rock scene.

Jan Kounen - D autres Mondes
Documentary film. French (No Subs)
The secrets about unlocking the mysteries of consciousness by plant-drugs. The related chances and risks involved in this shamanism.

Time Has Told Me: V.A. Cornemuses
Cornemuses. Gaelic bagpipes
La cornemuse est un instrument de musique à vent et plus particulièrement à anches. Il en existe plus d'une centaine de types dans le monde. Son aire de répartition correspond à l'Europe entière, au Caucase, au Maghreb, au Golfe Persique et va jusqu'à l'Inde du Nord.

Whole Earth Catalogue at DOMENICO QUARANTA
These artists use simple tools and editing tricks in order to comment on the current status of the image, to talk about themselves, to edit found material and to improve its meaning; they explore cultures and habits in order to sample, remix and comment them; they use and abuse technologies; they export metaphors, practices, aesthetics and narratives to other situations. This may sound weird if you are not living in their same time slice, but please – don’t call them formalists. They are not working within a medium: they are working within a media-implemented reality. They are realists, in the only way that realism makes sense nowadays.

Free Music Archive: ESP-Disk Blog
ESP-Disk is a New York-based record label, founded in 1960[1] by lawyer Bernard Stollman. The label's discography was important in the history of jazz, and especially free jazz.
From the beginning, the label's goal has been to provide its recording artists with complete artistic freedom, unimpeded by any record company interference or commercial expectations—a philosophy summed-up the ESP motto, printed on every release: “The artists alone decide what you will hear on their ESP-Disk”.
Though it originally existed to release Esperanto-based music, starting with its second release (Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity), ESP became the most important exponent of what is commonly referred to as free jazz. ESP also released recordings by uncommercial underground rock acts including the Fugs, The Godz and Pearls Before Swine. Though it largely ceased releasing records in the 70s, a few new releases have crept out from the label, and it still exists to this day, with nearly its entire catalog still available.
Other artists who have recorded for this label include Ornette Coleman (the "Town Hall Concert"), Pharaoh Sanders (who made his recording debut on ESP), Sun Ra, Ronnie Boykins, Marion Brown, Sonny Simmons, Paul Bley, Ran Blake, and Perry Robinson.
The label's catalog has been licensed frequently over the years, but Stollman has reportedly resumed direct responsibility for reissues.
ESP-Disk's current general manager is Tom Abbs.

The Free Music Archive
The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.
Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright laws that were not designed for the digital era. Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio? A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won't put your audience to sleep? A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples? Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist? The Free Music Archive is a resource for all that and more, and unlike other websites, all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators.

Guns of Navarone - Various Artists (Trojan Records 1969)
Tracklist:

01 Skatalites - Guns Of Navarone
02 Baba Brooks - Bank To Bank Part 1
03 Ike & Crystalites - Illya Kurayakin
04 Tommy McCook - Saboo
05 Carlos Malcolm - Bonanza Ska
06 Baba Brooks - Vitamin A
07 Lyn Tate & Jets - Something Stupid
08 Flames, The - Broadway Jungle
09 Tennors, The - Copy Me Donkey
10 Roland Alphonso - El Pussy Cat
11 Eric Morris - Penny Reel
12 Soul Brothers, The - Sound Pressure
13 Lyn Tate & Jets - Napoleon Solo
14 Skatalites, The - Ball O' Fire
15 Baba Brooks - Guns Fever
16 Baba Brooks - Bank To Bank Part 2


Tracey Moffatt - Bedevil (1993)
BEDEVIL is the stunning debut feature from Tracey Moffatt (NIGHT CRIES, NICE COLORED GIRLS) and the first feature directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman. Inspired by ghost stories she heard as a child from both her extended Aboriginal and Irish Australian families, Tracey Moffatt has constructed a sublime trilogy in which characters are haunted by the past and bewitched by memories. All three stories are set in Moffatt's highly stylized, hyper-real, hyper-imaginary Australian landscape. In the first story MISTER CHUCK, a young boy is fascinated and terrified by a swamp that is haunted by the ghost of an American GI. CHOO CHOO CHOO CHOO finds a family living by railroad tracks haunted by strange happenings. The mother (played by Moffatt) is drawn to the tracks at night as she senses the horror of a past tragedy. The final story, LOVIN' THE SPIN I'M IN, follows a woman who resists eviction attempts by her landlord so she can keep vigil for her dead son.

UbuWeb Sound - Tape-beatles / Public Works / Collaborations
The Tape-beatles are a collaboration of varying membership that make music and audio art recordings,"expanded cinema" performances, videos, printed publications, and works in other media. They work under the aegis of Public Works Productions.


MUTANT SOUNDS: VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA-LINO HI, CD, 1999, UK
One of the earlier and harder to locate titles by this preeminent drone syndicate and cosmic improv mafia. Shivery susurrations from the cosmic ether channeled by ethnic instrument-armed freaks that fulfills the promise made by The Theater Of Eternal Music and Limbus 4 and runs circles around a lot of the second generation freak folk/communal inprov whatsis that they helped usher in by their example.


Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers | Wu Tang Vs The Beatles
Crazy shit. No idea how but it sort of works.....


More Matrix and Philosophy Podcast
We're going in. One more time. And this time we're facing some pretty mean programs. Cynicism. Obfuscation. Postmodern despair. Plus, the usual obnoxious bunch of totally ruthless Agents, who always insist upon Conformity or Deletion. And just in case you were hoping to make it back, they've reconfigured the culture so there are hardly any phone booths left.
We're gonna need guns. Lots of guns. And an endless supply of logic, humor, disobedience, defiance, and argumentative tenacity.
The surviving members of the old crew are still on board, along with some new recruits, freshly located, unplugged, and debugged. Are you with us?
You've already made the choice. Now you have to understand why you made it.

Sex Pistols - (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone (1980)
aahhh Lovely.

Finally if you missed my video blog post on Krautrock from the BBC, watch it here. It is very very good.

Queering the Archive

Kimberly Austin, Cecilia Barriga, Mary Coble, Aleesa Cohene, MichElmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Conny Karlsson, Heidi Lunabba, Al Masson, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Flemming Rolighed, Tejal Shah, Ingo Taubhorn

How can we create an archive of the private memories of gender, love and sexuality that have been erased by official archives and excluded from the writing of history? How do we record and store feelings and intimacy? In the exhibition Lost and Found: Queerying the Archive these issues are addressed from queer perspectives through art works offering alternative histories and reworked archives.

Lost and Found - Queerying the Archive, curated by Jane Rowley and Louise Wolthers, is an international show of 13 contemporary artists focussing on memory and history in relationship to gender and sexuality. The exhibition is presented at Bildmuseet in close collaboration with Umeå Centre for Gender Studies and is accompanied by a series of seminars, artist’s talks and lectures. Using the potent and emotionally laden detritus of society, like silent movie footage, a jukebox archive of pop songs and alternative family photo albums, the art works in Lost and Found present new readings of the past or produce other archives. Using photography, video, installations and performance, the artists in the exhibition challenge official versions of history with humour and intelligence, tenderness and rage.

The Na'vi Have Arrived

There is a Pandora in Second Life. The blue is engaging. The furries will be out numbered by Easter.

Latest Thesis Abstract

Reading Mutlimedia Digital Texts from the Prespectives of
Response-inviting Structures

My thesis is based on the examination of five contemporary digital
narrative works for how they presuppose the responses that can be made to
them. As designed, copyrighted and addressive examples of digital
literature, these texts anticipate the creation of meanings in relation to
the structures from which they are composed. Such indicators suggest
formal modes of reading around digital texts that do not often focus on
written lines of words, but rely on systems of narrative architecture for
the composition of story.

Findings include a reliance on the recognition of cultural signifiers,
often as iconic images or compositions in the texts. A series of
redeployed features across the texts are used to guide responses, which
includes repetition, signifiers of place, the use of space, and
inter-textual referents. Copyright is found to contradict the responses
suggested by the material properties of the texts, as it suggests a range
of responses that are not reflected by either their material design or the
narrative address.

My thesis has implications for subjects ranging from interactive design to
language, and more specifically, narrative studies.

Some Downloadables from a Week that made me Dizzy

I figure if I have to explain much of this week's recommended media (just music and a book really) then you are in the wrong corner of the blog-o-whatever. Here it is. I am tired. Goodnight.

The Primal Eye by Steve Nichols in Medicine & Science (Free PDF)

The PRIMAL EYE gives a complete scientific account of the early evolution of fundamental consciousness. Dreams, R.E.M., waking and hypnotic states are explained mechanistically. This theory is no less than a solution to the 'Hard Problem' in Western Philosophy (aka Descartes' longstanding 'Mind-body Problem'). Many academic philosophical difficulties are immediately cleared up by this revolutionary approach.

Aquarium Drunkard » Tom Waits :: April 27, 1979, Paris France, Palace Theater

Tom Waits :: Heartattack And Vine
Tom Waits :: Till The Money Runs Out
Tom Waits :: Annieís Back In Town
Tom Waits :: I Wish I Was In New Orleans
Tom Waits :: Wrong Side Of The Road
Tom Waits :: Jersey Girl
Tom Waits :: Step Right Up

The Product Bay

Download things you can create with a 3D printer.

THE KNIFE

The Knife, in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock, are to release the studio version of the opera 'Tomorrow, In A Year', on the 1st March 2010. Free download for all mailing list subscribers

Max Neuhaus Online Archive of Sound and Images

American musician Max Neuhaus (August 9, 1939 – February 3, 2009) was a percussionist and interpreter of contemporary music of the 1960s who moved on to become a pioneer in the field of sound art, a term he rejected but with which he is nonetheless associated. He has created numerous sound works (including sound installations) that have extended sound as an autonomous medium into the domain of contemporary art.

Born in Beaumont, Texas, Neuhaus grew up in Pleasantville, a Westchester-County suburb of New York City. The music of jazz percussionist Gene Krupa inspired Neuhaus to become a drummer. The teenage Neuhaus studied with Krupa for a year before taking up with "Sticks" Evans. In 1957, after finishing high school in Houston, Neuhaus enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music, where he would receive both his bachelors and master's degrees in music. At the Manhattan school, Neuhaus studied jazz percussion with Paul Price. Yet, during his studies, he encountered the work of a group of American experimental composers who had composed music for percussion: Harry Partch, Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff. For his graduation recital, Neuhaus decided to perform Karlheinz Stockhausen's Zyklus, a notoriously difficult piece for solo percussion.

Aquarium Drunkard » Bob Dylan :: Yesterday (CBS Studios: Nashville/NYC Outtakes)

As nice as the official ‘bootleg series’ releases have been over the past 10+ years, it’s the unofficial stacks I regularly find myself turning to when looking for an off-kilter Dylan fix. Long available in trading circles (at times known as the Yesterday bootleg) the following two sessions were cut in ‘69 and ‘70 at CBS studios in Nashville and New York City respectively. George Harrison guests on the NYC session, and it would not surprise me if this, or a session like it, were not the impetus for the inclusion of “If Not For You” on his 1970 solo debut All Things Must Pass.

Silver Currant: Fitz Heavy Riff Comp II

The second is an extraordinary mixtape of psychedelic heavy rock from around the globe, compiled by Howlin Rain’s European promoter, John Fitzgerald. “Fitz Killer Riff” is pretty short on familiar names - I recognised Erkin Koray, Coloured Balls, Ike Turner and Tommy James, and discovered through a bit of Googling that the mildly obscene garage Led Zep of Zipper was an early vehicle for Fred Cole of Dead Moon. But I can’t think I’ve heard a better comp this year, certainly not since Chasny sent over his “Golden Years” thing.

"International Psychedelic Podcast"

In 2010 Fitz has also gone live broadcasting his world wide heavy jams in his "International Psychedelic Podcast". These podcasts are amazing!!! If you've ever ridden shotgun in a sprinter van careening at 90 miles per hour through the Swiss Alps in November while Fitz blasts Edip Akbayram and Baris Manco and exclaims with wonder (with both hands off the wheel) how beautiful Selda must have looked on her wedding day on the Bosphorus with the eastern sun shining down on Asia Minor behind her---well, these podcasts are as close as you can come to that particular exhilaration without actually going on tour! So let some Peppermint Tea steep, set out a bowl of Licorice and Pistachios, jam the podcast and you're as good as in the passenger seat. For the Podcast, go to your itunes, click "advanced", select "subscribe to podcast" and paste this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DOODcast.

Will Self on Psychogeography

Will Self visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book, "Psychogeography." This event took place on October 29, 2007 as part of the Authors@Google program.

Avatar: Blindness in an Old New Vision

I witnessed the spectacle of Avatar in 3D on the weekend. It was a late night showing and the cinema was totally crowded. The audience applauded at the end, and I understand why. Visually, Cameron's film is an amazing piece of work. Nothing is spared in the optical extravaganza that fills the 162 minutes film. On the other hand, I found the narrative at times inconsistent and unoriginal. In Avatar we are witnessing a recounting of Dances with Wolves, told by J. J. Rousseau with a bible in his hand. The film can be excused for this, as the image of the forests of Pandora are what people have come to see. But it is the imaging of the film that actually drives so much of the narrative.

In a similar sense to a computer game being composed of its own narrative architecture, the visual components of Avatar are primary in how the story is conveyed. The stereoscopic cameras (pictured above) are used to place the viewer in the perspective of a witness, in regards to the narrative action of the film. Action sequences are not shot in panorama (although there are plenty of such shots in the film), but are composed by a series of point of view shots from within the action. What is the result in the reception of the narrative? I gained some idea when I stumbled upon the Avatar fan site www.naviblue.com;

"I've read on this thread and various other sources on the web about Avatar fans feeling heightened sense of mood changes along the lines of despair and depression from the realization that Pandora and all of it's inhabitants are not tangible. I have also read about fleeting thoughts of suicide, self induced coma, and prolonged sleep from members of this website and other websites as possible ways to physically and metaphysically connect with Pandora and its inhabitants".

-----------------------

"I've had problems with depression for years, and the first time I saw Avatar didn't help. My entire reality was shattered, so to speak. there was such a wave of emotions flowing through me that I really didn't know what to feel. I simply had to see it again, which helped a bit. A little less shock and awe, but still some general depression with the reality of how much of a crap-hole this planet is".

------------------------

"There's something about the Na'vi that I just love to watch. They must have stuff that we Sky People do not..the connection with their world, animals and each other that I wish was possible to obtain".

------------------------

"I also plan to hand out ballot papers during the convention, but I will be giving them to everybody, including non-Avatar fans to ensure a fair referendum. The issue will be as follows:

Option A: The Na'vi remaining part of Avatar based fangroups (An autonomous tribe will not be formed) (the status quo)
Option B: The Na'vi becoming a self governing tribe according to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Option C: The Na'vi becoming a new ethnic group and community in hopes of "self-determination"

------------------------

I am astounded by the reactions of these (and many many more) people to the film. Especially when one thinks of the struggle by actual indigenous groups in the world (i.e. planet Earth) to survive in the present moment as distinct cultures. Consider a story such as that of anti-mining activist Dora “Alicia” Sorto Recinos, who was murdered last week in El Salvador, while carrying her two year-old child. Is anyone in the United States or Europe likely to form a tribe dedicated to the Environmental Committee of Cabañas? No, I doubt it. But the giant blue forest-dwellers of Pandora seem to have awoken an almost Noble Savage fantasy in the minds of many. The prospect of a stunning, green, far away world where apparent harmony with natural forces is what governs society is attractive to many people. The visual technologies of Avatar have succeeded in bringing the image of such a place into such a sharp focus that people are willing to believe that it is possible for it to exist.

"First of all I would like to say that everything on Pandora is 100% scientifically possible, yes even the floating mountains. but more to the point I would like to direct everyone's attention to these two articles about more or less the same thing: we may very well discover a planet a like Pandora within the next few years (i'm not sure how many few is supposed to be but lets be reasonable and say 10 years.) For all we know now, there could be a planet out there very similar to Pandora, all we need to do is discover it!

http://www.sidewaysnews.com/science-technology/avatars-pandora-possible-within-years
also
http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/blogs/astronomy/2009/12/28/pandora-made-possible.aspx"

I would suggest that people who are looking for a deeper sense of meaning in their lives check out sites such as Intercontinental Cry, a blog that focuses on "the world's many indigenous struggles, and reading material focused on alternatives, movements, social issues, and related". Or the website Conversations with the Earth:

Conversations with the Earth is a collaboration between an international indigenous-led advocate for the rights of indigenous peoples Land Is Life, an expert in participatory video, InsightShare, and a Paris-based photographer, curator, and specialist in maintaining oral traditions, Nicolas Villaume, founder of Conversations du Monde. CWE also draws on contributions from a range of editorial sources, including Project Word, a media NGO that helps develop journalism articles on indigenous communities and by native writers.

A generally felt need for a more engaged sense of presence in relation to the biological processes of the planet is reflected in both the forums of Naviblue and in the enormous earnings of the film. In Avatar, we are presented with an idealized image of the Other, where any need to question the values of our late Capitalist, post-industrialized, globalized world are relieved by the Hollywood fantasy that it will 'all be right in the end'.

The POV created in Avatar places the experiencing of the narrative of the film in the sight of one sharing the struggle of the Na'vi. A struggle for what their savior, the ex-marine 'gone native' Jake Scully describes as "our land". The contradictions are many and the vision as old as it is new. The power of new forms of cinematography to present these old subjects in new skins is something we shall be seeing more of in the near future. Where they shall lead people is going to be interesting to watch. Where it has come from is not such a mystery:


A detail from Benjamin West's heroic, neoclassical history painting, The Death of General Wolfe (1771), depicting an idealized American Indian.

‘Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind’

"You know, one of the intense pleasures of travel and one of the delights of ethnographic research is the opportunity to live amongst those who have not forgotten the old ways, who still feel their past in the wind, touch it in stones polished by rain, taste it in the bitter leaves of plants. Just to know that Jaguar shamans still journey beyond the Milky Way, or the myths of the Inuit elders still resonate with meaning, or that in the Himalaya, the Buddhists still pursue the breath of the Dharma, is to really remember the central revelation of anthropology, and that is the idea that the world in which we live in does not exist in some absolute sense, but is just one model of reality, the consequence of one particular set of adaptive choices that our lineage made, albeit successfully, many generations ago" - Wade Davis.

NEXT, a Primer on Urban Painting

From my Home town, Toowoomba, Qld Australia. July 2009.

I just watched the film Next: A Primer on Urban Painting.



A global culture movement. Living not consuming.



“NEXT, a Primer on Urban Painting” is a documentary exploration of a phenomenon that was born on the streets of American cities and has come to influence youth culture all over the world. Combining verite visual moments and interviews with painters, journalists, collectors, sociologists, DJ’s, art critics and other participants within the subculture, the film will convey the dynamism and creative brilliance of this important emerging artistic movement.



and meanwhile in Sao Paulo:



and, the unseen beauty of tagging

Graffiti Analysis 2.0: Digital Blackbook from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

Media Recomendations to the Nations

It is all here people. A swag of sounds and words and images that may make you think things that you had not thought before. It amazing really, that with simple books and websites and the like that one can actually change the way the world looks. By reading a book suddenly the work situation you are in can change. The boss is no longer a good natured old millionaire, but rather he has become a oppressive piece in a large machine that is keeping you in your place and profits where they have been for a very long time (elsewhere). Suddenly getting drunk and picking up a sexual partner for the evening each Friday is no longer enough to quell the stormy waters within your being. The money that is offered as compensation for your time, health and labor is not enough. Your thirst for more, for greater ideas, to explain the ideas that you are already burdened with. More reading and study brings greater and greater understanding of the thought of the ages. You begin to have your own thoughts, ones that are not from books or websites. It feels like a great conglomeration of ideas and images has joined together in your mind. You begin to express these ideas whenever you have the opportunity. Instead of chasing sex on Friday night in the pub, you now sit in a dim corner with a few others who have read and thought. You discuss the great ideas that you have all been exposed to. Each attempts to outdo the others in how these ideas can be brought about in the form and function of everyday life. Some propose more thinking, some propose no thinking but doing, some propose neither thinking nor doing but being. Some propose violence and some propose non-violence. You sweep up these ideas and take them home with you, granting them the consideration and care you once extended to those human beings closest to you. The money is still important but you now dwell in an effervescent cloud of thought. Images shift and change as you consider the options of interpretation. History is now a vast tapestry of forces and ideologies. Identity has become a complex ongoing series of agreements between influences both blatant and taciturn. You no longer read the same newspaper you grew up with, but you read ten different ones plus blogs, websites, email lists, and independent news sites. You scour the shifting the sands of opinion and perspective with a micro-tuned sense of subjectivity. You have emerged from the sea of your own ignorance and you are there!

Each morning as I go to work I repeat to myself, "Things could be worse".

Everyday The Same Dream
Radical games against the dictatorship of entertainment from Molleindustria. Molleindustria aims to reappropriate video games as a popular form of mass communication. Our objective is to investigate the persuasive potentials of the medium by subverting mainstream video gaming clichè (and possibly have fun in the process).

Dualtrack: VA - Electroacoustic Music History Volumes 1-24 (2009)
Link t a themed section of a fine Mp3 blog that includes parts one and two of an expansive 62 CD set put together by a Portuguese college student using his university's archival material. The original Portuguese title for the collection is História da Música Eletroacústica.

William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, The Third Mind (PDF)
The Third Mind is a book by Beat Generation novelist William S. Burroughs and artist/poet/novelist Brion Gysin. First published in a French-language edition in 1977, it was first published in English in 1978.

The Third Mind is a combination literary essay and writing collection showcasing a form of writing popularized by Burroughs and Gysin in the 1960s called "cut-ups". Cut-ups involves taking (usually) unrelated texts, literally cutting the pages up, and then combining and rearranging the pieces to form new narratives and often-surreal images. This form of writing can also be adapted for filmmaking, as demonstrated by Burroughs and director Antony Balch in their early 1960s short film, The Cut-Ups.

The book contains numerous short fiction pieces demonstrating or related to the cut up method. Also included is poetry by Gysin and an interview with Burroughs. Some chapters had previously been published in various literary journals between 1960 and 1973.

Brion Gysin & William S. Burroughs Ports of Entry: A Conversation (1986) [PDF]
At the Beat Hotel Burroughs discovered "a port of entry" into Gysin's canvases: "I don't think I had ever seen painting until I saw the painting of Brion Gysin." The two would cultivate a long-term friendship that revolved around a mutual interest in artworks and cut-up techniques. Scenes were slid together with little care for narrative.

Lev Manovich The Language of New Media (Entire text as PDF)
Anyone who wants to think clearly about the cultural implications of the digital mutation should read Lev Manovich’s new book, The Language of New Media. This book offers the most rigorous definition to date of new digital media; it places its object of attention within the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan." / William Wagner, English Department, UCSB, in Telepolis, 2002.

Conference Recordings - 26C3 Public Wiki
The 26th Chaos Communication Congress (26C3) is the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). It takes place from December 27th to December 30th 2009 at the bcc Berliner Congress Center in Berlin, Germany.

The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics and attracts a diverse audience of thousands of hackers, scientists, artists, and utopians from all around the world. The 26C3s slogan is "Here Be Dragons".

For 26 years, the congress is organized by the community and appreciates all kind of participation. You are encouraged to contribute by volunteering, setting up and attending hands-on events or presenting your own projects to fellow hackers.

BBC World Service - About Us - Philosophy in the Streets: May 68 Paris
Paris was the city where some of the most improbable post-war upheavals began. A mass movement in the streets and a huge general strike brought France to a halt for more than a month. People took to the pavements shouting about the nature of society and began to formulate what they thought the world might be like. The events of May 1968 shook the very foundations of French society and became a key turning point in the history of ideas. A world of possibilities In this programme Nick Fraser uncovers the intellectual revolution that spread from Paris throughout the world.

With original interviews and archive from key thinkers, 'Philosophy in the Streets' takes the May revolts not as a political failure but an intellectual success. They had a huge social impact, that saw the replacement of conservatism to a more liberal society. A powerful new generation of philosophers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Guy Debord and others made the intellectual world tremble.
Their ideas shaped one of the most iconic and enigmatic outbursts of political and intellectual energy of the 20th century.
Listen to Nick as he finds out why philosophy succeeded where politics failed.

Free eBooks: Great Books on Your PC, iPhone & Kindle | Open Culture
Free eBooks: Great Books on Your PC, iPhone, Kindle & Beyond GET A FREE AUDIO BOOK FROM AUDIBLE.COM! This collection features free e-books, mostly classics, that you can read on your computer, smart phone, or Kindle. It includes great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. To learn how to download these ebooks to your computer/mobile device, please visit our eBook Primer.

Internet Archive: Free Download: Gamelan Mitra Kusuma Live at Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia on 2007-12-14
Gamelan Mitra Kusuma led by I Nyoman Suadin; special guest instructors Ni Ketut Suryatini and I Made Kartawan Musicians Nyoman Suadin, I Made Kartawan, Ni Ketut Suryatini, I Gusti Putu Sudarta, Jill Brandenburg, May May Chiang, Roger Fox, Layne Garrett, Jennifer Henry, Eka Himawan, Michael Kiel, Linda McKnight, Junko Nakamura, John MacDonald, Andrew Clay McGraw, Maria Paoletti, Karl Seamon, Dana Smith, Jon Singer, Beth Varden, Amber Wagner, Talia Weiner, Jacob Howley, John F. Jeffey, Muryanto, Wayan Sukayade, Endang Saptorini,

All the best to all for 2010....

PressPress Chapbook Award 2010

Entries for the Award are now open!
The PressPress Chapbook Award is for an original manuscript of poetry between 20-40pp. The winning manuscript will receive $600 and chapbook publication with PressPress. The Award will be announced in July 2010 on the PressPress site. The manuscript must be unpublished and not on offer to another publisher in Australia or elsewhere (except that individual poems can be already taken or on offer to journals, sites or anthologies where you keep the copyright).

See www.presspress.com.au for details.

Happiness for 2010

View from my kitchen window, New Years Day 2010

Happy and Insightful New Year to all....

Rowland S. Howard 1959-2009

“Shut me up, shut me down, stop me if you can. My love, I'll tell you nothing, I'm a misanthropic man.”



Recording Jennifer's Veil

Roland S. Howard was the guitarist with the Birthday Party. He died yesterday.
He also played with:
Boys Next Door
Lydia Lunch,
Nikki Sudden,
Jeremy Gluck,
Crime and The City Solution,
KaS Product,
Barry Adamson,
Einstürzende Neubauten,
Chris Haskett,
Jeffrey Lee Pierce,
Fad Gadget,
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,
Henry Rollins,
and A.C. Marias.

Shivers


A genius. His music will be a long lasting presence.



Jenifer's Veil



Nick the Stripper