Sunday, May 30, 2010

Brännboll Team



Yesterday I awoke at 6am to take part in the world Brännboll Championships (sound grand?). We did not get so very far (won 2 lost 1) but it was a lot of fun. The Borg was the name of team. A rich set of associations accompanied the name. One being the mighty Björn.

The team from left to right: Lisa, Jason, Ewa, Paul, Magnus O, Jim (me), Magnus N, Scott and Dennis. Seven nations were represented in the team along with our tireless manager Jenna. It is a memory that will live in my mind forever.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Pirate Philosophy- steal this!



Pirate Philosophy explores how the development of various forms of so-called internet piracy are affecting ideas of authorship, intellectual property, copyright law, fair use, patent, trademark, content creation and cultural production that were established pre-internet.

Professor Gary Hall looks at a number of ways in which the Arts and Humanities can engage their ideas outside of the traditional field of academic publishing, and how open access has the potential to liberate academia from its many constraints.

Please liberate/pirate this lecture from us, and feel free to remix it and do whatever you want with it.

Visit http://www.garyhall.info/ to find out more about Gary's work or visit http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/ to find more great Coventry University lectures and talks

Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control



Liquid Theory TV is a collaboration between Clare Birchall, Gary Hall and Peter Woodbridge designed to develop a series of IPTV programmes. (IPTV, in its broadest sense, stands for all those technologies which use computer networks to deliver audio-visual programming.) The idea behind the Liquid Theory TV project is to experiment with IPTVs potential for providing new ways of communicating intellectual ideas, easily and cheaply, both inside and outside of the university. We want to do so not so much in an effort to have an impact outside of the academy, be it economic, social or cultural; nor to connect with an increasingly media-literate audience that books supposedly cannot, or can no longer, reach. Rather we want to experiment with IPTV in order to explore the potential for different effectivities that different forms of communication have - to the extent of perhaps even leading us to conceive of what we do as academics, writers, artists, media theorists and philosophers differently (see Wise, 2006: 241).

The second episode in the series takes as its focus Gilles Deleuzes short essay Postscript on the Societies of Control. While this episode is being made available for the first time in an issue of Culture Machine which has the theme of creative media; and while Liquid Theory TV could be described as a creative project, to the extent it is concerned with producing alternative, rival, or counter-desires to those currently dominant within much of society (at its simplest, a desire for philosophy or more broadly theory, rather than for the creations of Richard Branson, Simon Cowell or Rupert Murdoch, say), this does not mean that either the series, or this particular episode, should be regarded simply as an attempt to perform Deleuzes philosophy. The critical and interpretive aspects of scholarly work remain important to us here, even if they are being undertaken in a medium very different to the traditional academic journal article or book.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Professional filmmaker looking for Machinima films

Professional filmmaker looking for Machinima films


I am a Swedish artist and filmmaker who is making a full-length documentary film about a boy from Kosovo who I have worked with for 8 years. The film is being made with the support of the Swedish Film Institute and the national Swedish Television (SVT).

The film will be 80% documentary material, raw, close and sensitive. 10% will be real archive material from the war in Kosovo. 5% of the film will be drawings showing things this boy has told me. Around 5% of the film will be machinima material of how he, at the time a 4-year-old boy, saw the war; the UCK guerrilla warfare, the ethic cleansing, the bombing of the mosques and churches, the families escaping through the forest and the horrible situation in the refugee camps.

When Gzim was 4 years old he lived in the poor countryside in Kosovo. After a massacre in a village close to them, the family fled to Macedonia to a refugee camp there. From there they came to Norway and the Sweden. This is when I started to film him. Now the family is back in Kosovo and the boy is 16. In my film the trauma of his childhood will haunt him in his dreams. This will partly be shown as machinima films.

So for my film I need three about 30 second machinima segments. Dream sequences centred on the flight of a 4 year old boy with his family through the war in rural Kosovo.

(The segments should have as high quality as possible. The film is shoot on DVCAM and miniDV. Aspect ratio is 16:9.)

I want the machinima films to show how a four-year-old boy saw the war from up close. Hiding in a barn, hiding in the forest, running trough the forest at night in the rain, being witness to killing and rape, hiding and seeing small farms being set on fire by soldiers in the night. Seeing crows eating from corpses. Raining, the fear of being found, escaping over the border, ending up in a totally crowded refugee camp with hundreds of other traumatized and hungry people.

Synopsis and images


Knutte Wester
contact
knuttew@hotmail.com
+46 70 485 31 32

Monday, May 10, 2010

Moved

This blog has moved slightly. The new URL is http://www.soulsphincter.com/. Please adjust you your feeds, bookmarks and notes accordingly. I hope you will remain with the project for the coming few months when things will be quiet as the thesis gets done. Following the defense of the thesis this blog will be reborn and we will all be happier.

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Media Downloads Streams Rainbows and the Fluff of Reality


Its been a long time since I posted a list of the media I like from around the great big beautiful internet. So, here is a long list from past few weeks of things I would read, listen to or watch if I had the time to do so...which I don't. Thesis blah blah blah....

Dualtrack: VA - Electroacoustic Music History Volumes 25-35 (2010)

This is the third installment 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. He's arranged the material chronologically and this third installment cover recordings from 1974 to 1984:

CD 25: 1974
CD 26: 1971
CD 27: 1970
CD 28: 1972-1979
CD 29: 1975-1976
CD 30: 1982
CD 31: 1980-1982
CD 32: 1982-1983
CD 33: 1981-1984
CD 34: 1981-1984
CD 35: 1982-1984

Free Music Archive: Greatest It: Six Netlabels Join Forces

Six of the world's raddest netlabels -- UpItUp (Italy, Germany, U.K.), Ego Twister (France), Peppermill (Canada), Proot (France), Cock Rock Disco (Germany) and WM Recordings (Netherlands) -- have teamed up for a collaborative greatest hits compilation.

Gonjasufi 'A Sufi And A Killer'

Ahead of it's UK release on Warp Records, listen to Gonjasufi's debut album 'A Sufi And A Killer' on ClashMusic.com
The latest project from rapper, and yoga teacher, Sumach Ecks, the album sees producers Mainframe and Gaslamp Killer supplying the dust whipped, cracked and frazzled beats with Flying Lotus also helping out, repaying the favour (Gonjasufi appeared on his 'Testament' track), with 'A Sufi And A Killer''s 'Ancestors'.

Various Artists - Drums of Death: Field Recordings in Ghana (Avant, 1997)

The music is fantastic. The ONLY shortcoming is that an hour of this tends to lose the differences between the tracks, so to remedy this, I suggest listening to two or three tracks at a time. Each of those tracks will do two things: 1) you will see that one's sense of what constitutes "serious" music can vary dramatically depending on locale, and 2), and most importantly, drums can do everything, and there is no limit to the density involved. Each track is a pulsating cluster of drums, moving at their own pace, but together all the same, creating waves of acoustic textures. Each little pattern supplements the whole, and the different time signatures involved allow different pattens to crop up briefly and be prominent, sort of like the lead bird in a group, startled by a car, flying away, accompanied instantly by the group, echoing the flight path before a new leader emerges and the perch is reestablished.

essential ephemera

A small but potent archive of full PDF scans of late 70’s/early 80’s UK anarcho/ feminist punk zines is up now at Essential Ephemera.

Velvet Underground - Live at the Gymnasium (NY, April 7, 1967)

Excellent early live show, recorded just after their first album. I'd uploaded a transfer from the vinyl edition of this earlier this morning and then ran across a CD edition struck from the original open reel tape the LP was made from (which also included one song that was left off the vinyl edition), so I've replaced the link with this upgraded version. Also, the files of the CD edition are CBR 320 kbps mp3, rather than the HQ VBR mp3 made from the vinyl.

Various Artists - Pomegranates - Persian Pop, Funk, Folk And Psych Of The 60s And 70s (2009)

Bright Persian psychedelic pop, funk, soul and boundless grooves from the 60s & 70s -- one of the greatest compilations yet from Finders Keepers! Many of the tunes are actually classics of the era's Iranian scene, if wildly fresh and new our ears, while others are quite obscure all around, but all of it is fresh and exciting exotic pop that we're thrilled to see collected. The sounds draw from the creatively fertile period when traditions were combined in music all around the world -- with hypnotic eastern raga strings blended with global funk and jazz, bursting pop tunefulness and both meditative and instantly gratifying melodies of myriad influences, borderline disco grooves and beyond. Exciting stuff! 16 tracks in all: "Helelyos'" by Zia, "Biya Bar-e Safar Bandim" by Mohammad Nouri, "Talagh" by Googoosh, "Miravi" by Soli, "Kavir-e Del" by Marjan, "Naz Kardanet Vaveyla" by Sima Bina", "Sharm-e Boos-e" by Ramesh, "Cheshm-e Man" by Dariush and more. (dustygroove.com)

Stella Artois presents Free Cannes Films

Includes the Australian film Walkabout (1971).

Graham Harman Audio « ANTHEM

21st Century Materialism Workshop
“A New Theory of Substance”
“Assemblages According to Manuel DeLanda”
The Harman Review: Bruno Latour’s Empirical Metaphysics”
"The Greatness of McLuhan,”
“On the Origin of the Work of Art (atonal remix)”
On Actors, Networks, and Plasma: Heidegger vs. Latour vs. Heidegger”

Acyutananda Swami - India: Songs of the Bengali Vaisnavas

vinyl-rip at 320 k/Bits. Propably recorded around 1970. Following information is taken from the LP. Acyutananda Swami is an American sannyasi, who left his homeland at the age of 16 years and has been living in India since the last 10 years studying the spiritual culture and music of India. He is world renowned for his masterful singing of Bengali Vaisnava folk songs and playing on mrdanga (clay drum, unique to Bengal). The recordings on this LP were taken in Mayapura, India, and we beg the listeners to excuse the obvious shortcomings due to circumstances beyond our control.

Dualtrack: John Cage - #4 (2000)

Joëlle Léandre, doublebass, voice (except tracks 3 and 4);
Kumi Wakao, piano (except tracks 2 and 4);
H. Okabe, R. Numata, M. Uenari, D. Terauchi & T. Nishimura; glass bottles tuned with water (track 4) Recorded 10 November 2000 in Hiroshima, Japan

Public Image Ltd - Peel Session (10 Dec 1979)

Recording date: 10/12/1979 - PiL (Public Image Ltd) TX (transmission)- 17/12/1979 Producer - Tony Wilson Engineer - Dave Dade Studio - Maida Vale 4 TRACKLIST Pop Tones Careering Chant LINE UP John Lydon (Lead Vocals) Keith Levine (Guitar, Synthesiser) Jah Wobble (Bass) Martin Atkins (Drums)

Bernard Parmegiani - Complete Works - Vol I - III

Bernard Parmegiani (born 27 October 1927 in Paris, France) is an electronic or acousmatic composer who trained under Pierre Schaeffer.

Sylvis Plath - Plath Reads Plath (1975)

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, children's author, and short story author. Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Before committing suicide in 1963 at the age of 31, Sylvia Plath recorded these works for the British Council at the Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard College Library on October 30, 1962. Listen closely, and you can hear the faint murmuring of traffic outdoors, or the gentle shuffling of papers and creaking of wooden drawers. You are lost in her world, locked in her slow destruction. Sylvia Plath's pain bleeds from these recordings, and you will not walk away from them unstained.

UbuWeb Sound :: Delia Derbyshire

"Dreams" was made in collaboration with Barry Bermange (who originally recorded the narrations). Bermange put together The Dreams (1964), a collage of people describing their dreams, set to a background of electronic sound. Dreams is a collection of spliced/reassembled interviews with people describing their dreams, particularly recurring elements. The program of sounds and voices attempts to represent, in five movements, some sensations of dreaming: running away, falling, landscape, underwater, and colour. Delia Ann Derbyshire (5 May 1937 - 3 July 2001) was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Kill Your Puppy (Punk Mp3 Blog)

Opens with a beautiful piece about the great Australian band The Scientists. This blog is a treasure trove of sound.

Kuusumun Profeetta - Kukin Kaappiaan Selässään Kantaa (2002)

Gorgeous 6 song e.p. from this strange Finnish group. The music here is a gentle and bewitching blend of low key jazz and Nick Drake-esque spacey folk. The instrumentation is spare and slightly precarious, and always completely engaging, carrying Mika Ratto's melancholic vocal perfectly. Sounds nothing like Circle, with whom the band has shared a couple of members.

KAREN COOPER COMPLEX-SHINJUKU BOARDWALK, 1981, USA, UNRELEASED

Despite the fact that this album has already been featured on a handful of other sharity blogs ('cause I was evidently asleep at the switch when it was being proffered), it feels essential to mount this unearthed gem inside the Mutant Sounds vitrine, as it both extends from one of the more significant bands featured on the NWW list (namely Bomis Prendin, whom Karen Cooper Complex's Bill Altice played with before this) and approaches the medium of post punk from a completely screwy perspective. As would be expected, there's a degree of hangover from Altice's days in BP, but the vibe here, while undoubtedly art fucked is absent some of the hot house freakishness of the early era of Bomis Prendin that Altice took part in. The tip that this feels like it's coming off instead is one that shares some of the inscrutable lopsided charm of Tom Fazzini, the off the cuff wacky gal whimsy of The Inflatable Boy Clams and Y Pants and, when the freakiness is foregrounded, a whiff of Milo Fine's old Residents-damaged unit Teenage Boatpeople. Hopefully, some enterprising reissue label will snatch this one up, as it's too good to exist only in the ephemeral form of a download.

Night Air - 11 April 2010 - Cave

An audio exploration of the cave of the imagination. We head down a drain with the Cave Clan and then uncover the early words and songs of Nick Cave the gothic diva of the underground.

Pavement :: Copenhagen, Denmark – June 20, 1993, Loppen

Pavement is an American indie/alternative rock band. Although they experienced only moderate commercial success, they achieved a significant cult following and were one of the most popular and influential lo-fi rock bands of the 1990s.In their initial ten-year career, they released five full length records, and nine EPs. The group remained signed to an independent label throughout their entire career. The group disbanded in 1999, but after a decade-long hiatus, a reunion was announced in late 2009. They reunited for their first performance in ten years in March 2010 and have embarked on a world tour.

Einsturzende Neubauten - Drawings of O.T. (1984)

Zeichnungen des Patienten O. T. (or Drawings of Patient O. T.) is the second studio album by the Berlin-based musical group Einstürzende Neubauten. Some Bizzare Records released the album in 1983. In the United States, PVC/Jem Records released the album in 1984 as Drawings of O. T. The title refers to artist Oswald Tschirtner. The original vinyl release of Zeichnungen des Patienten O. T. is Rough Trade Records #RTD 18 and Some Bizzare Records #SBVART 2.

Radio Radio :: Paul D. Miller

RADIO RADIO is a sixteen-part series of forty-five minute broadcasts which asks an honest question: Is there really a place on radio for experimentation? Twenty people immersed in radio, sound and performance (Prix Italia winners, Prix Futura winners, SONY winners and platinum recording artists as well as sound poets, unconventional radio producers, audio artists, critically savvy DJs and writers on the social and aesthetic margins) offer, in their own ways, answers to this question through conversation and the presentation of their work. Things called "voice bumpers" frame and counterpoint larger discussions throughout the series. Ironic versions of the music bumpers in NPR-style magazine programs, these voice bumpers combine found sound with conversation fragments from interviews with important radio critics, scholars and inventive practitioners (Allen Weiss, Kersten Glandien, Kenneth Goldsmith, Lauren Goodlad, Mark Percival, Himan Brown, Tim Crook, Matthew Finch, David Chesworth, Sonia Leber, Simon Elmes and Jo Tacchi) to create a listening experience more restless and engaging than it is wallpaper.

John Cage - A Dip in the Lake

The composition is very open-ended - it is "for performer(s) or listener(s) or record maker(s)" - which we took to mean that it could be performed by musicians or artists at the specific locations, or that the sounds that were found at the locations themselves could serve as the basis for the composition. It seemed more Cageian (and more interesting) to us to make field recordings and mix them together in the specified combinations. The piece can also be made for other cities or places by assembling through chance operations a list of 427 addresses and then arranging them into the groups listed above, again through chance operations.

UbuWeb Sound - William Carlos Williams

The poetry of Williams read by Williams

Alice in Wonderland Original Manuscript

This manuscript - one of the British Library's best - loved treasures - is the original version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, the pen-name of Charles Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician. It is reproduced here in book format, with turning pages and drawings by Dodgson.

Tony Conrad, Edley ODowd, & Genesis Breyer P. Orridge live at WFMU

The combined accomplishments of Genesis Breyer P. Orridge and Tony Conrad are legendary and enormous, and are well-documented elsewhere. Over the years, both artists have appeared and performed at WFMU many times.

Genesis first came by for an interview in 1988, on one of my late nightshifts in the old basement studios at Froeberg Hall, when WFMU was still part of Upsala College. That was during the early Acid House days of Psychic TV. (And just last year he came to the station with all of Throbbing Gristle for a long and lively chat session in the studio).


Faust - Live at WFMU Fest, Oct 1 2009

Faust, the giants of Kraut Rock and a seminal if under-appreciated influence to avant-rock returns with a live recording from the WFMU Fest of October 2009. Here is an hour and a half of in your face guitar, electronic mayhem, and wild grooves with an experimental jazz-rock leaning. Not bad for a band that is nearly 40 years old.

Coil, "How to Destroy Angels"

This release is subtitled "ritual music for the accumulation of male sexual energy".
How To Destroy Angels" was originally intended to be the b-side to the track "Silence & Secrecy" on a clear vinyl 12" released by Temple Records. This release was aborted, presumably due to Balance and Sleazy's departure from Psychic TV who ran the Temple label.

I think I will stop here. I know. Its too much. You don't know where to start. Incredible isn't it. Confused by choice? Overwhelmed by it all? Best get to it and start listening, reading, watching. Taking-it-all-in......

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Blub Blub 3-D Animation By David Krantz





Blub Blub is a site-specific 3D animation by the artist David Krantz. We find ourselves in a future reality in which man is only a memory. Norrlands Opera and Umeå have all flooded by a huge tidal wave. Fish and other sea creatures swimming around in the now quiet opera ruins.

The work can be seen as a contribution to the environmental debate, but equally well as an adventure inspired by Jules Verne. 3D glasses offered on site.

David Krantz, living in Malmo, has long developed its own special 3D technology. He builds animation on the basis of the world we live in.

The artist is present at the opening. Part of the MADE festival.

Time: Wed 05/05 19.00 - Opening!
LOCATION: White Cube, Norrlands Opera House, Umeå
EXHIBITION PERIOD: 5.5 - 5.6

Monday, May 03, 2010

Öronsus at Gallery Alva, Norrlands Universitetssjukhus