I didn’t bother photographing it with my phone because it really wouldn’t have done it justice, but here’s a supermoon from two years ago I photographed with a decent camera.

Warmth comes not just from the sun, and this is the best place I could possibly be.

I always wanted to explore south America.

The future in a cup of coffee by Kika Nicolela

Fashion victim! - by Mylay

Another of the three was possibly not using mobile tech – a basic requirement – and though politely emailed, he didn’t send in an original file for us to examine as requested until the day after the shortlist challenge ended, and thus missed his opportunity.. the lesson being that if you want to take part, don’t use email addresses you rarely check.

This simple slide show includes images from phase one of the contest – some of the makers of these remarkable images didn’t even get to the shortlist, the standards were that high.

http://prixmobile.eu/finalists/phase-one-contestants/

Hang on, I thought, three websites later, I’m supposed not to be doing this any more.

I swung between self-aggrandisement and self-effacement wildly for a few days, before finally telling it enough as it was with enough fruit to make a cake but without over-egging it.

Still, it’s good to refresh the personal PR from time to time.

Instagram et al are every bit for me as exciting as Twitter was in 2007, or the web in 1994, except that because images are being shared rather than words, and because it’s mobile, it is rapidly developing a global, common visual language which reaches beyond the constraints of words contained by languages, and feeds into a shared experience of the world.

I am thinking about the implicatations of shaping this rapidly evolving communications network.

The possibilities are very exciting.

Instagram: deanw
Instagrammar: Facebook
Instagrammar: Twitter

Exhibitions in Brussels in October, and Paris in December to follow, which I am both curating and creating collaboratively.

I am unashamed about this desire to live here, which was born in me deeply and slowly over years, but which crystallised one hot June day in 2008, in the quiet stone cool of the 12th century church of Saint Pierre, next to Basilique du Sacré Cœur, Paris.

Of course, I now want a chic flat in Oslo, a large boat, and all the Norwegian fish I can eat.

The European continent as a whole feels continuing financial pain, with significant post-crash aftershocks in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and the social consequences of sudden poverty and loss of essential resources playing out. Even in more fortunate countries within the EU, funding priority for experimental art has diminished from low to off the list, pretty much across the board. A central purpose of this gathering was to understand and discuss the huge changes that are happening across Europe as a result of financial stringencies being implemented nation by nation, and to look at strategies to work in this new landscape.

Attendees were in the main from 11 different groups within Norway who are under the umbrella of ‘electronic arts’, including individual media artists, curators, administrators and academics.

Inside Norway, PNEK is an initiative to both coordinate artistic development and share useful information between disparate, often geographically distant groups making different kinds of art from the mainstream. Not all PNEK members receive funding from Norwegian coffers. Per Platou more than doubled the size of the network when he took on the task of coordination two years ago.

The field of electronic/digital/media arts is now an established, popular sector where great work is often done.

From their different perspectives, all three keynote speakers described a previously thriving art sector facing the need to adapt.

“The problem with net art is that it’s old hat. The problem with net art is that it’s too new” Dietz (1990)

Angela Plohman (Baltan Laboratories, Eindhoven, Netherlands) opening spoke vividly of differences of aims, expectations and methodology, as her lab begins working alongside the friendly local traditional institution in Holland. She was frank about the risk to the lab’s existence, including the possibility of it being subsumed.

A lot of electronic, lab-produced art is by its nature a hybrid form, the results of innovation and experimentation. It’s an uncomfortable moment when you realise your only hope of survival might be clambering onboard the traditional outfit up the road, whose funding is reduced but intact, in order to survive. But Angela’s measured positivity was more than keeping calm in a crisis, it was an optimistic choice and it was this attitude that set the scene for the day.

“A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.” – Art Blakey

Annette Schindler ( [plug.in], SHIFT, Switzerland) in the second morning session presented extracts and analysis from her ongoing research into funding, recounting not just the scale but the effect of the cuts, enforced mergers and reorganisations. As she carefully and forensically painted a bleak picture, the scale of the situation hit home. The losses already sustained of prized laboratories and small institutions sounded like a roll call of the fallen.

This blast of cold air woke up the room.

It was so bad that people began to fidget, but Annette was bravely confronting the beast. Her descriptions of the different kinds of funding chaos afflicting nations included her own country Switzerland, where there will be no electronic arts funding after 2011. The Dutch are facing different implementation of same financial policy as the UK, an effective immediate 40% cut. Most media labs are “heavily underfunded” already. For many small experimental groups still hanging on, the choice was obviously going to be jump soon, or be pushed. Along with funding reductions, new strings are being attached by the funders.

Annette Schindler: German government nearly closed their media lab down; now media arts must be more gov policy compliant, less critical. Harsh controls

This was actually priceless information for people who are making electronic art, as well as for those formulating strategies to allow such art to continue, and flourish.

Annette asked an important existential question: “Can we defend our Utopian world? Can, should we protect it from being distributed to theatre, dance, the visual arts?”

So began a thread which wove throughout: with options reduced, simplified, removed, exactly where do you put electronic and media arts in the larger scheme of things? Where do artists and curators wish the work to be put?

Since the invention of the ‘media lab’ 30 years ago, electronic art has moved a long way in popular estimation and many people choose to work in the field.

“Electronic Arts” is a term frequently filed under visual art, but the work may of course include music, text, performance, dance, film, as well as video, audio, computer graphics software and the whole gamut of physically interactive mechanisms, lasers, pressure pads, 3D headsets, cybernetics, the internet, etc. It is an art tree unto itself, albeit with many and various roots.

As I sat, listened and took notes, I began to ask myself whether Norway, itself relatively unscathed by the financial and political traumas which reduced a handful of European countries to pauper status and embarrassed the rest, was perhaps the only country represented in the room where ‘efficiency’ was not a euphemism for ‘cuts’.

But despite Norway’s self-confidence and progressive arts policies, on the basis of these discussions, this small country, well used to punching above its weight, does not believe it can continue in the same way as before, given the newly ravaged funding landscape, and this was evident via the level of engagement from the floor, and the serious faces throughout the day.

Angela Plohman: we need to stress the social connectedness which differentiates media labs

Art, like science and business, relies on exchange, and countries regularly send cultural ambassadors abroad. The situation outside Norway reduces options for Norwegian-based artists. Where do you send your nation’s bright, promising hopes to be cultural ambassadors if the labs and institutions that once hosted them no longer exist?

Sarah Cook: differences don’t matter too much, commonalities matter a lot more

After lunch, Sarah Cook (CRUMB, aka the Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss, Newcastle, UK) described the overnight decimation of the UK experimental art scene, and the arcane nature of the funding application protocols introduced by the UK’s austerity-led government.

Six hundred existing arts organisations in Britain were asked to re-apply in March 2011, no matter their previous history. Nothing can be taken for granted, and certainly not Arts Council funding, whoever you are. Gone are the days of loaf. From now on, funding is a much smaller piece of bread, broken up into thumb-sized pieces, to be distributed among the small.

One unexpected result of the reorganisation in the UK was an increase in previously excluded bodies appearing on the funding list, albeit competing for a fraction of the previous grants. Like Annette Schindler’s account of the wholesale removal of funds for electronic arts in Switzerland, a situation only slightly relieved by the appointment of a single advocate for the sector on the national funding board, this appearance of a few new groups in the UK funding basket felt like very poor compensation, at best slender straws for drowning media labs to try and grasp. The public sector is really paying for that bank collapse.

Sarah refocused the seminar on the art, confidently reminding us of inspiration, the reasons we were there. She showed Alfred Barr’s torpedo diagrams for MOMA, and asked what kind of torpedo would be created today. She described how MOMA’s original mandate had been to give the collection away to the Met as it ceased to be modern.

Conservation, a subject which spontaneously emerged in the seminar seemed to signify the gulf in the concept of art that exists to this day between the electronic/digital/media art world and the international art world.

The art world demands ownership, and puts financial value on objects. With electronic art, that can be tricky. But electronic arts do not exist in a vacuum; they stem from and are sometimes allied with the full panoply of cultural disciplines and traditions.

When a gallery or museum takes ownership, conservation of the work becomes an issue. The room chuckled at the story of traditional conservationists, who faced with a key component about to become obsolete, started buying dozens of CRT monitors from flea markets in order to future-proof a valuable video installation.

This object-fixated approach need not be applied, if digital artists worked more like musicians. Rather than leave instructions of how the objects currently fit together, it would be better, it was suggested, to write a script, or software which re-created or described the experience of the work using different objects, so long as analogous output mechanisms were employed. Just as a 17th century music score still has power to move our souls when converted from dots on the page using modern instruments of similar tone, pitch and function, its value not tied to the original period instruments, electronic art can be reproduced using future technology. Yesterday’s harpsichord is today’s soft synth.

Thomson and Craighead, recounted Sarah Cook, build their art to incorporate instructions for future versions in order to preserve and allow collection.

Still, the conservationists have a point. Electronic art without the electricity plugged in and doing what it should do is junk, or at least, less of a piece. Few are interested in coming to see/hear a non-functional piece of electronic art. Galleries don’t want to own a dead chipset when it’s supposed to be appreciating in value and bringing in the punters. As an artist, what do I choose to use? If you rely on art funding, this becomes important when options are vanishing.

So it’s difficult (but not impossible) to sell digital art, but there are other routes to funding, and these were hesitantly mentioned early on, resurfacing more vigorously during the panel session, an earnest and fairly energetic round up. 

Annette Schindler: Media arts now are normalised and ubiquitous but still not recognised by the mainstream

Electronic arts can be as engaging as music or a game, as sublime as poetry. But the main reason it brings people together is because it’s such brilliant fun.

Electronic art does things; you can play with it, it can be generative, interactive, useful, weather-dependent, waterproof, sun-powered… it changes before your eyes and ears, it can exist in time scales and at dimensions and at heights and depth beyond the human. It can cool or warm you. It can move you both emotionally and physically. Sometimes, it challenges the very functioning of your perception.

Experimental artists are often met with bafflement by the non-art aware, non-geek population, and a similar misunderstanding barrier exists between them and the über-wealthy art markets. However challenging, unique and appreciated a digital work may be, it’s difficult to sell electronic art in traditional ways via traditional routes. It’s difficult to scale, too. Would you like an art installation in your garage this weekend? No, I thought not.

You can sell innovation, however, and you can market skills, you can generate specific work for sponsorship, and here lies the kind of deeper level engagement with the commercial world which media labs have yet to exploit. It requires thinking about though. With digital, it’s usually greatness of vision, success of realisation, not potential sales price, that wins plaudits and commissions.

Angela Plohman: “One person with a big Rolodex can be the lab”

Spinning off bright ideas for profit might seem like a good idea, but the glass and concrete of the commercial world is quite different territory from these electronic nurseries, these greenhouses for ideas. The road to cash can be treacherous, and people from art institutions are not all well versed in commercial ways. Overheads go up, legal bills increase because of licensing and contractual demands. The balance between keeping true to your central mission, and meeting the needs of the source of your funding can be difficult to establish. Some artists would rather leave than be in that unreflective media environment.

The economic reality is that both institutional and private galleries need people to show up at exhibitions to justify their own existence, and in uncertain times, they are less likely to invest in art which they don’t understand and which is difficult to maintain, and more likely to stick to the predictable, tried and tested, big audience-drawing stuff. Yet, it’s very important that innovation is maintained and supported, or as history shows, art will stultify, and cease to be relevant, and everyone knows this. Art audiences melt away confronted with a menu of yesterday’s recipes, however expensive the meal.

Sarah Cook: I want more than one world to jump into.. I want lots of different kinds of art

Artists of all kinds, some of the greatest artists have used technology, been interested in machines. Electronic art shares with every other artform the same ancient instinct, the urge to find form for thought and expression, to communicate, to explain and to enquire, but with a luminous history, it is also sufficiently unique in itself, and deserves its hard-won status as a separate, distinct arts category.

With a typically experimental ethos and deep engagement with all kinds of interactivity, media labs estimate their value in ways other than hard cash. They justifiably count social connections built through workshops, the impact of art on a specific community space, the extent to which they are contributing to what is a genuine media revolution.

Recognising how little in common their work has with mainstream commercial fine art, its dealers and auctions, stocks and shares, it’s clear that electronic artists, media labs have as tough a time ahead of them as they have behind them; but the future holds opportunity.

If they do survive, they will ensure not only the survival of their genre, but must be able to thrive as a viable, different group of art practices and processes, because that art trading world, where the price paid for a single object would keep fifty labs running for ten years, is surely going to go the way of all bubbles, and burst, eventually.

At which point, kudos to those with working alternatives.

See: http://www.pnek.org/archives/1326?lang=en

Dean Whitbread, May 2011.

Techwology means wonky technology, obviously.

This is where I keep my secret jazz ensemble.

My next aim is to relocate to the mainland, probably on its northern fringes which is a place I have come to love. I love water, hills, the sea and clean air, and I’m going to make sure I get more of that as I work on my writing and publishing.

What do you think of the new place?

After a few months bubbling under, ask-me-a-question website Quora seems to have broken cover. I had an invitation back in May 2010, when to join the then-in-beta site would have been extremely hip, but I held back. Never shy of being second, now, at last, with the sheep, I’ve joined up to see what the fuss is about.

First, I refused to allow Quora to rob my Twitter account, then I switched off all notification emails (I can see perfectly well what activity I want to check when I choose to login). Then I asked a question, then I answered a question about consciousness: Is it plausible that consciousness preceded the physical?

I have made sure to follow mostly metaphysical questions because most of the content is around business / technology, and of course, it’s much more fun being a medium-sized frog in a small pond.

My first question is: What makes a treacle pud a tasty treacle treat? The answer: beef suet. I’m pleased to see someone is already following this important challenge to our collective intelligence. But I have in fact no special interest in treacle puddings, it’s much deeper than that..

The “Atora, you’re getting warmer…” tune was burned into this child’s psyche, and it is still there at the touch of a button decades later. I only have to hear the two-syllable “__ora” word and it becomes Atora. Those advertising jingle chaps knew what they were doing alright. Mad men, indeed.

The more I learn about Fred, the more I identify with him. I was called Fred before I was called Dean – it’s my second name. Apparently this was much to Fred’s approval. Nice to think that I got the name alone, from all his many grandchildren.

Guy Fawkes night on 5th November, now, that’s a different story. I like to remember that we’re celebrating insurrection, rather than the torture and execution of Catholics, as I watch the sky explode with fire flowers from the safety of my armchair.

One morning last month, Dad woke me up with a cup of tea. He turned up in a dream, walking into the room where I was trying to sleep, showing me concern. I haven’t dreamt about him since he died. In the dream, it was a shock to see his living face.

Actually, it was a good dream, I woke up happy. It was great to see him.

In fact, it was so nice to see him alive once more, and be reminded of his kind if sometimes inscrutable soul, that my gloom dispelled, and things have been easier since.

It seems more like a decade ago that this was pubished, but in fact, it’s only three years. Technology develops so fast, and with it the culture it has spawned.

I still prize the internet for what I first saw it as – the world’s first truly global cultural exchange.

What more can I tell you? Life is at a hinge point.

As you know, as Chairman of the UK Podcasters Association, I worked in 2006/7 to prevent badly formed WIPO television regulations from impacting negatively upon UK internet culture and business.

The Digital Economy Bill now passing through parliament is every bit as bad. I am currently deeply concerned that as parliament dissolves, this bill will not be debated and will end its days in the “wash up” period, being hastened into law.

There are many reasons why this bill needs proper consideration. Of particular concern to me are the negative impact of closing down of open WiFi networks, which allow many people who cannot afford expensive mobile data to work and access leisure information on the go, the disconnection of internet on suspicion of illegal activity, and the blocking of sites such as YouTube because of supposed copyright infringement.

The disconnection proposals are the worst kind of legislation. With progressive countries such as Finland now making internet access a human right, internet cut off is appallingly draconian. What is proposed does not require anything like the level of proof which a court would demand, merely the sending of letters based upon suspicion – a very slippery slope indeed.

Regarding the blocking of websites: aside from the many cultural benefits which sites such as YouTube offer, the negative economic impact in particular will be felt in the UK should this go ahead.

I am a member of PRS for Music, the UK organisation which collects royalties for songwriters and composers. PRS were in dispute with Google, and worked very hard to strike an agreement with YouTube/Google to collect royalties from YouTube, which they now do.

If such website blocking happens, I will not be able to inform PRS which content they should be collecting on my behalf. Given that 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute (as of March 2010) PRS relies on the inspection and reporting of its members to know what to collect. YouTube would not be able to deliver my music to UK audiences. In this way, my own income will unfairly and directly be affected.

Finally, many of this bill’s proposals are influenced by advice given by the BPI, for whom I have consulted on podcasting.

I find it impossible to countenance that a Labour government even in its last days would allow suggestions from the BPI to become law. From my personal experience, the BPI promote aggressive and backwards-looking protectionism. They do not speak for a very large proportion of the music industry.

I ask you to read the opinion of the Featured Artists Coalition http://www.featuredartistscoalition.com/ – who state:

“… rights owners are wasting their money by trying to control file-sharing. They are neither succeeding in their efforts nor acting with fiduciary responsibility to the content originators whom they are failing to recompense properly. Their vain efforts at control are merely Canute like attempts to maintain an anachronism of a business model.

The problem is that they are spending a lot of money defending the old model and it’s hard to find evidence of a single major record company investing in new ways of nurturing talent or developing artists careers online or offline.

Independent labels (like Beggars Banquet and other smaller labels) are increasingly seeing the economic arguments in favour of the new model. The Zelnick report just published in France has recommended it. The UK Music Manager Forum has been calling for it for nearly a year. The UK music industry group called the Value Recognition Strategy group has been planning to trial a version of this on the Isle of Man for about eighteen months, but the major labels and the music publishers have prevented it. Universal music themselves proposed a form of collective license for unlimited downloads to the Virgin Media group for their music service and this has not launched due to the objections of the other major labels.

Running out ahead of the crowd, a group of thinkers with a great deal of experience and insight into digital media has been proposing this for some time. Myself, Pete Jenner, Gerd Leonhard, Paul Sanders, Paul Hitchman, Matthew Brown and occasionally our cousin Jim Griffin in the US have been meeting for about five years to develop the thinking around this. But we have often felt ourselves to be in the wilderness. Jim has been trying to work through the issues with his Choruss group courtesy of Warner Music in the US but his proposed trials on US university campuses have yet to launch – hopefully we will see some action this year. Meanwhile, the UK Government’s Digital Britain programme has spawned Digital Test Beds which are being managed by the Technology Strategy Board and which may become precisely the kind of platform that could help try out some of these new models in a relatively risk free fashion – and with some public subsidy – how enlightened is that?”

The DE Bill bill deserves a full and proper debate. It is clear that the bill is deeply flawed and in its current form will probably damage the UK’s culture and economy, will adversely affect innocent people, and will make a mockery of enforcement.

Therefore, please make your voice heard on this issue, and give the Digital Economy Bill the full and proper debate it sorely needs.

Yours Sincerely,

Dean Whitbread.

It’s called One Way Journey and it’s available here as a paperback and a PDF and also on Amazon Kindle.

I’m going to write a lot more books, and probably a lot less blogs from now on.

Looks like Blogger is discontinuing FTP support, so I will also have to change this blog, which I’ve been writing since June 2004. No idea what I’ll replace it with yet, but whatever it is, it will be equally boring.

I’m very happy that all my interesting stuff is elsewhere.

My family and friends know well that I tend to remember birthdays but send no Christmas cards.

Instead, I buy presents at random throughout the year, absent myself from stress and observe the soltice. I urge you to do the same.

Remember: no shopping, no presents, no guilt.

I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing but finally, the Clean Air Act smokeless zone DEFRA-certificated Aga Little Wenlock Classic SE looks like it could be the one.

Never thought I’d get an AGA.

After who encouraging user input, Simon responded to my addition of the birth of podcasting, called up and interviewed me.

Click 2004 to listen to my nostalgic recollection of those pioneering glory days.

I’ve written a monthly post since Jun 2004 but last month I didn’t feel much like doing anything, so I didn’t. This is one of the great benefits of being one’s own editor.

Nothing like pausing to allow new things to come along.

Activities around the making and consuming of media have evolved hugely in three and a half years, and the digital media scene is set for more growth, with forces such as governments and media empires vieing for control. Never more important a time to stand up for citizens’ basic rights, and to ensure a level playing field for businesses sandwiched between the BBC and Rupert Murdoch. The UKPA was frankly too small to be effective, and so has found a new home with its close ally.

So, big thanks to Michael and Jim from ORG. This is a good move. It is my hope that we we will be able to add to ORG, and that in the time to come, the alliance will be a good one.

Podcasting as a word may be less prominent than it was, but the culture of download is incredibly strong. Anyone who is interested in online media’s future prospects should get involved in the Media Makers Group which is set to have its first meeting on September 26th in London.

I have come to really like FriendFeed. It’s a great way to follow someone and keep in touch with their activities and interests. It’s a good surface level browser, with an easy to navigate interface. It also does what it says on the tin – it’s an RSS Feed reader. But like Facebook and Twitter, it enables conversations and comment threads.

I read my own feed to catch up with my own thoughts and think twice about things. Using it can be like keeping a kind of public notebook.

Dean Whitbread’s Friend Feed.

Postscript: After a I wrote this, I noticed that FriendFeed was coming far too high up in search results and drinking far too much of my Google juice, so I stopped using it. How fickle we are, us internet folk, and yet how wise.

Just to increase the fish connection, Tom Sparks who is featured in the track is also Piscean. Coincidence? Well, obviously.

Andrew’s two mixes are intense, deep and sonically scupltural, and my own remix did the logical thing and extended the fast techno-funk groove into danceability.

I also decided to use the excellent DIY site Bandcamp to publish a disco synth tune I wrote for Jack Cheese’s new video trailer, which I dubbed Tasty Disco Slice.

It’s just like Christmas and New Year have come at once! Which is what normally happens, in fact.

Podcasting has changed, and the practises of media makers have evolved out of recognition.

I seriously doubt that the core community of podcasting per se that once existed still exists. It’s been diluted, members have drifted away into other activities, media making habits have changed. With widespread broadband, non-linear delivery is less important, and with streaming services such Mogulus, UStream, Bambuser and Qik, and ever more efficient computers, self-powered live broadcast is now normal.

The content has changed, too. PR, marketing and mainstream media types now enforce old-style, predictable conformity upon this once free, wild and hugely entertaining frontier. Old style Blogging, which kicked off this social media revolution, has been largely replaced by mich lighter, less time-intensive, less literary forms such as Twitter and Tumblr, at least among the large community of non-writers. Carefully produced programmes by passionate amateurs with normal sounding voices are now made by media corporations. Not only do BBC announcers no longer speak the Queen’s English, they make the same kinds of pronunciation gaffes as the ill-educated public.

But all is not lost. Though I hereby pronounce the online media revolution phase one to be finished, revolution phase two began a while back, and its results will be upon us before we even notice. I do have some clear ideas about how this next phase will manifest, but I’m not in a position to share them here. Instead, look for clues in your sock drawer, which as everyone knows, is where lost things gather.

March 20th 2008 saw the writing of the song “Strike!” in the Rise and Shine show.

It’s just been released along with 25 other songs and this is a blatant plug.

You can listen and download MP3 versions of the song free.

I set up a website for my songwriting and composition, dubbed “Funky Fruit” in which I write about the joys and travails of song.

Write to your MP: I wrote this:

http://theothersideofeverything.com/flip/2009/01/letter-to-emily-thornberry-mp/

Use this as a template if you like, but make sure you change the wording.

Petition Downing Street:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Israel-Sanctions/

Petition the UN:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_time_for_peace/

Donate to Medical Aid for Palestine:

http://www.map-uk.org/

“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.” – Edmund Burke.

From The Daily Swarm. My own response to the war is here.

It’s a tragedy that the Israelis – a people who must understand better than almost anybody the horrors of oppression – are now acting as oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked “Everybody has their Jews, and for the Israelis it’s the Palestinians”. By creating a middle Eastern version of the Warsaw ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they’ve forgotten it. And by trying to paint an equivalence between the Palestinians – with their homemade rockets and stone-throwing teenagers – and themselves – with one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world – they sacrifice all credibility.

The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every chance to allow that to happen. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements. While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into which they are descending.

Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly…and, surprise, surprise – they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?

Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now ‘under attack’ you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn’t possibly reach an accommodation.

And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.

Here’s the widget – put it on your website, why don’t you – and please donate to our good cause fund – see the ChipIn box top right column of this blog.

By doing so I invented an entire genre of media-bending formats. Now that I’ve helped put podcasting on the map and it’s accepted as proper grown up media, and now that I don’t have to be so damn serious all the time, I think it’s time to pick that particular pantyhose up off the floor once more, and get moving with the eggs and the nails.

After all, as I often say – what is the point, except the sharp bit at the end?

Seesmic seems to be part of the furniture now. The original video conversation network, I keep returning to Seesmic for social reasons, much as others use Facebook, which I completely neglect. I find it’s one-to-one video messaging invaluable for both private messaging and business.

12seconds.tv I quite enjoy for it’s quickfire nonsense. I have the domain 12hours.tv ready to go – need a backer to help me build a website for 12 hour-long Warhol-style (or not) webcam videos “because anything less is superficial”.

Vimeo is a totally splendid video site, very useful for work, with a great and talented community. HD quality, fast uploads, fast conversion to flash, passwords, and the free version gives you 500MB a week upload. Great package.

I already mentioned Blip.FM, from which I take teenage delight – I should also add I love any site which allows me my first name as a user ID. I carefully update the professional network LinkedIn because it’s so very sensible.

I’ve just added Behance to see what will happen. I’m also a member of Discogs.com, in order to reclaim my musical past in the name of my future, as I return once again to the path of inner truth.

Quite proud of this video, executively produced by myself and my fellow Small Pictures director Garry Scott-Irvine, which appeared absolutely everywhere and seems set for one million YouTube views. From Seesmic, Vinvin presents and interviews, and Whit videoed and Jeremy edited.

Applause all round.

Just completed this video for the Open Rights Group, the first of a few that in the pipeline from video production company Small Pictures. One of our “actors” dropped out for the second shoot, I had to step in last minute and pick up the baton. Thankfully the team did a lot better than the UK olympic relay teams…

Its simplicity is very effective. Whilst in all other social networks I add my friends with some level of caution, on Blip I am happy to add DJ buddies purely on the basis of shared music likes. Leaving the page on autoplay, I am happy to let my friends and DJs play music for me all day long, and when I want to join in, I provide the same experience for them.

I don’t know quite how the music industry will respond to this – they don’t seem to have taken on board Seeqpod as yet which does a similar thing, scraping the web for MP3 files, millions of which are out there “in the wild” – but it treats the whole experience very differently because it has understood the crucial aspect of modernity which is that we are not alone. Like Last.FM it offers music streams easily shared and personalised according to taste, but unlike Last it offers a more genuinely live experience, with more in common with micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter. For me it beats Last.FM hands down on the basis of sheer ease of use.

You’d hope that labels and artists will see Blip.FM as a positive thing, as it unleashes a veritable army of amateur pundits and tastemakers.

Blip.FM also sensibly includes a “buy this” button prominently in its interface. This currently only searches Amazon, which is a bit useless, but the concept is sound. It works: in a few short days, I have had my ears opened and found many new artists via Blip, as well as been reminded of gaps in my own library which I have forked out cash to plug. There is an upload function (complete with cautionary copyright warning) which I have used to place free downloads from my MySpace music friends, CC-licensed podcasts and my own unreleased tracks in the Blip catalogue.

One word of warning: if you join, make sure you don’t let Blip.FM spam your friends with invites! There is an “uncheck all” option when you get to the “invite your friends” page which should prevent this happening.

If this takes off as I think it might, traditional music radio will soon be quaking in its boots. Of course, if I were running a station, I’d be uploading shows to Blip on a daily basis with a link to my internet stream in the accompanying text. As my friend and colleague Brian Greene says, radio is about to get social.

I’ve added the Blip widget to the right column of this blog.

I started a Vimeo account for some HD experimentation.

Meanwhile, back to making videos – four coming up in August and September, three to direct, shoot and edit, and a soundtrack to compose.

These thoughts have been rolling around my mind like a marble in a sweet jar for some time now, as I ponder my own paths in creativity and in business.

Business requires predictability, results and judges by the balance sheet. It demands efficiency, proof and reports. Business exploits ideas for profit. Business people have a platform, a position, and a salary. Creatives on the other hand have a trajectory, a vocation and a journey. Creativity generates ideas, celebrates strangeness, and messes with your head. Business makes money, maintains the market and will sell you whatever you will buy. Creativity wastes time, disrupts the market, and even if you can own it, it’s probably worthless.

The art business is the most conflicted in the world.

Creative people alight upon something new and invest it with form and meaning, showing the way forward and lighting the path. Business people seek financial gain, and will gladly steal the patent for the lighting system.

Not being able to sell your idea means nothing to the truly creative person. Ignoring trends is essential if you are to follow the thread of your inspiration, wherever it might lead, even to your personal extinction – although that is not essential. Creativity reinvents itself just by continuing – change is its only constant. Creativity demands the pointless. Blind alleys are the stuff of life. Purpose is a necessary sacrifice along the path of enlightenment. The search for enlightenment is packaged and sold as weekend breaks in the picturesque Cotswolds, £400 per person including organic meals.

Thanks to television, radio and the internet, there is now little left of undivided attention, lingering examination, or even careful re-reading. All is subservient to the immediately useful, the entertaining or the alarmist. The timelines speed past like landscapes viewed from a train, remote, unvisited, unless robot search alert takes you back there. The windows of attention are shrinking as we stare more and more at screens, and less and less at the faces of individuals.

“Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” – T. S. Eliot

“Finding a businessman interested in the Arts is like finding chicken shit in your chicken salad” – Alice Neel

What I love about the United States is that they have produced people of the stature of Gore Vidal. I wonder how many more sharp, fiercely intelligent, independent thinkers will arise from that nation.

Aled Fisher (LSE SU General Secretary-Elect) at 21 is the youngest candidate in this year’s London Assembly elections, which are to be held tomorrow, so I thought I’d check him out. He seems to have good values, has succeeded in raising standards of pay for poorly paid college cleaners, and has been involved in twinning the LSE SU with An-Najah University, in Nablus, north of Ramallah, so he gets my vote.

After one hectic month, I was very happy with our pilot show. We proved that the concept of a live, news-based songwriting show works really well. It generated the interest we thought it would, raising over $1000 US in sponsorship and song downloads. Plus, we have a whole series of songs presented in a brand new context – more about that later. Most importantly, we have a road-tested original show format, and people to who want to franchise it, which is a really nice thing to return to…

• Write a song (with assistance wherever possible) every weekday for a month;
• Broadcast the whole event as a breakfast show from 7am to 10am;
• Raise money for a good cause – BuskAid

I’ve dubbed the project Rise and Shine, and I’ve every intention of making this pilot show into a robust vehicle, combining creativity, commerce and charity, capable of traversing mighty landscapes.

Media moguls, commissioners, patrons, sponsors, and all-round nice people, feel free to contact songs [at] riseandshine [dot] tv to learn more.

What I’m Working On

I’m still working on podcast production, notably for John Cleese, Rob da Bank, JM Soul and others, but also now working on live radio and video projects, with music, art, performance and comedy. I will also be producing a brand new live radio format, which pilots end of February 2008, and I continue to write regularly.

Where I Work

Thanks to Michael Franklin, we’ve moved the centre of our operations to a new office / studio right in the heart of London’s West End – 4 Denmark Street, London, WC2H 8LP.

With Whom I Work

Talking Voices Ltd., the company which Funk started in 2006, is still going strong with some personnel changes. Mark Crook, Paul Carey and myself have been joined by radio industry stalwart Michael Franklin, and we’re pleased that our Irish colleagues Brian Greene and Sinead Murnane have come centrally into the business. I’ll post more about that soon on the Talking Voices blog.

How I Work

Those of you who want to engage my services either to speak, write, or to consult for very reasonable fees, please contact me direct by leaving a comment here. All podcast-related business is channeled through Talking Voices. For music production, contact me via Funk.

And Finally…

I’m really pleased to report that the Cinema du Lyon album I completed at the end of 2007 with Mark Crook is on sale and has some really nice reviews (see below).

I’m also still very much involved in the UK Podcasters Association – will be attending an interesting session on January 15th at Channel 4, held by the Radio Academy.

CINEMA DU LYON: The Particle Zoo

Buy from iTunes Plus (NO DRM!)

ABOUT CINEMA DU LYON: Cinema du Lyon are a European art/music group with the self-avowed intent of being “as pretentious as possible”. Amoral rather than immoral, they shun publicity at all times, with the intention of creating a more ego-less space for their consummate artifice to construct within the imagination of their unprepared audience. They constantly collaborate, and release very little of their compositions, preferring to infiltrate the real world and non-music spaces in unexpected ways via guerilla methods.

Their first public performance was at the Hanbury Ballroom, Brighton, April 2004. They played cards, smoked Gauloises, read Le Monde, and treated the astonished audience to art. By the end of the performance, with the venue resounding to avant-garde beats and fabulous visuals, they were celebrating with flowers and champagne at the bar.

Cinema du Lyon – “The Particle Zoo”

“If you would be a real seeker after truth,
it is necessary that at least once in your life
you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” – René Descartes

Full of shifting possibilities, alive with a seething miasma of portent, a fiercesome force of nature – “The Particle Zoo” is a place for the uncaged.

Shredding all previous works to relay an absolute truth about the new environmental sonic landscape that escaped from the laboratory and found its way into the world, full of awe, a measurement in the strength of the aural message, given that this is not a pipe, but a maze, lies in the unwavering conviction of the artists themselves to achieve excess in the name of truth itself.

“The Particle Zoo” is Cinema du Lyon’s twelfth audio collection, but the first to be made publicly available, the previous eleven having been private commissions and art events.

For more information and a beautiful audio-visual podcast, visit http://cinema-du-lyon.eu

Appropriate for everyone, apparently.