Soul Sphíncter

Kristine Schomaker's "My Life as an Avatar: The Gracie Kendal Project" & "1000+Avatars"

2012-01-29T22:09:00.003+01:00

Yoshikaze presents Kristine Schomaker's

"My Life as an Avatar: The Gracie Kendal Project" (http://graciekendal.wordpress.com)

"1000+Avatars" (http://1000avatars.wordpress.com)

via Skype Video

4pm on 30 January 2012, RL HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden

In "The Gracie Kendal Project" Kristine Schomaker investigates our obsession with the notion of the physical ideal, through her own relation to her alternative ego Gracie Kendal, the Second Life avatar. The interaction between Gracie Kendal and Kristine Schomaker has resulted in virtual dialogues between the two, revealing the conflicts and even dependency of her dual selves, as well as the influences and impacts one has upon the other.

"1000+Avatars" is an off-shoot project from "The Gracie Kendal Project", however, in its own right. By documenting individual portraits of more than 1000 avatars in Second Life, the project bears a testimony to the avatar constructions of our time and witnesses the unique composition of our desires in the pursuit of that construct.

Gracie Kendal/Kristine Schomaker is a new breed of Second Life artist. Rather than pursuing the futuristic vision of the technological possibilities of the virtual, her projects firmly place themselves within the social, historical and psychological context in which ""[t]he avatar becomes a vehicle for personal and public reflection."

Yoshikaze is proud to organise a presentation by Kristine Schomaker on 30 January, 2012. The presentation will be held from 4pm at HUMlab, Umeå University, via Skype video connection with Kristine Schomaker in her location in Los Angeles.

Yoshikaze curator: Goodwind Seiling/Sachiko Hayashi. Yoshikaze is part of SL HUMlab activity.

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

[Description of the Projects by Kristine Schomaker]

In 2006 I began using new media to bring more attention to the obsession our society has with physical appearance. The media is often the hub of this obsession, typified by stars and models with eating disorders, reality TV shows about plastic surgery and advertisements defining the paragon of beauty. This results in an internal conflict between our reality and the idealized.

The Gracie Kendal Project is a close-up daily view of a personal, social and psychological co-existence with my virtual persona. My work deals with the process of becoming self-aware while living in a society obsessed with physical appearance. It is symbolic of the personal anxiety and loss of identity occurring in a world where visually aggressive advertisements dictate who you are supposed to be. In this environment I find it difficult to be comfortable in my own skin.

Every day I would take pictures of both myself and Gracie and place them next to each other comparing the physical with the virtual, the real with the ideal. After observing how we were interacting with each other through photos, I realized there was a dialogue forming. The natural extension in this story was for this dialogue to be realized through actual conversations between Gracie and I.

Through written chat and eventually comic-like banter, we express our inner dialogue in a public way. We have developed a co-dependent relationship in which each of us wishes she were the other. I yearn to have the life she does, the beauty, the success, and independence. She yearns to be free from the constraints of pixels.Using Gracie as a form of self-presentation, I started to explore my relationship with my body as well as question my own identity. I realized that everything going on in my life was manifesting in my body and in the figure of Gracie. Both were becoming a site for anxiety, fear, stress, grief, loneliness and depression. My body and that of my avatar became a source of autobiographical material in which a story was being written.

Comparing the ‘perfect’ Gracie with my real self, I will bring more attention to the obsession our society has with physical appearance. I am hoping to engage with every person who believes they are unattractive, overweight and afraid. I hope young girls will see my project and feel empowered to be brave. I plan to videotape my performances with my avatar and post them on YouTube. I hope to give talks about my project to appropriate organizations and schools, boys and girls clubs and eating disorder groups.

While working on My Life as an Avatar on a personal level, I was compelled to expand my project universally to explore notions of online identity in the construction of other people’s avatars. My 1000+ Avatar project consists of individual portraits of over 1000 avatars within the virtual world of Second Life. This project also questions and explores commonly held assumptions about stereotypes, judgment, self-awareness and those marginalized by race, gender, sexual preference and physical appearance.

The 1000 Avatar portraits zoom in on the complex social and cultural conventions that determine our identity. The avatar becomes a vehicle for personal and public reflection. This series of portraits is a contemporary anthropology of a cross section of avatars from the virtual world of Second Life in the early 21st century. In these portraits, I explore the representation of the avatar as a construct, distinct from any traditional notion of the ‘self’. I examine the sitter’s identity and probe below the avatar surface to reveal and comment upon their character, personality and their diversity.

The subjects are neither simulacra nor characters in a game: they are people, complete, complex identities with defined social roles. The avatar becomes the projection of our identity. Each portrait represents a different personality, a singular life. These people entered the brave new world of virtual environments as explorers, searching for anything and everything, finding a new empowerment- and a new freedom to be themselves. Experimentation is welcome. As an avatar, they are provided with a safe environment which allows everyone to divulge and consider boundaries and barriers that aren’t readily accepted in the physical world.

The Textual Internet

2012-01-27T16:01:00.000+01:00

The Textual Internet on Prezi

Key quotations used in a lesson for Language Consultancy Program in HUMlab yesterday. The full notes for the class are here.

Specialisation is for Insects

2012-01-27T15:55:00.000+01:00

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying. Take orders, give orders, co-operate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects". - Robert Heinlein

I would add play a musical instrument, dance and have a command of at least two languages.

My Online Profile

2012-01-24T18:01:00.003+01:00

Virtual Reflections: avatar self-idenity

2012-01-19T14:19:00.001+01:00

A documentary I helped make about identity and avatars in the online virtual world of Second Life.

Centrum Sonic Lecture 4: Laurent Fintoni - A Boom Bap Continuum

2012-01-17T10:20:00.000+01:00

Centrum Sonic Lecture 4: Laurent Fintoni - A Boom Bap Continuum
19.00 Sonntag, Januar 22 2012

Description

Centrum Gallery Berlin presents Laurent Fintoni Sonic Lecture entitled A Boom Bap Continuum, which looks at the evolution and mutation of hip hop's 'boom bap' sound aesthetic from 1999 to 2009 and beyond. Exploring the sound's early mutations in the 2000s via the work of people like Dabrye, Machinedrum, Prefuse 73 and El-P through to the work of people like Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke, Ras G and Mike Slott. Using a chronological backbone, music selection and newly sourced input from some of the early pioneers, the lecture will show how terms like trip hop, glitch hop, IDM and later wonky were ultimately often attempts at pigeon-holing boom bap's mutations into more comfortable boxes and how its sonic evolution was influenced from the soul and funk of the 70s to electronic music, rave and video games which led to its revival and continued popularity. As Laurent says: "A Boom Bap Continuum seeks to trace what I see as the fascinating evolution of hip hop's most enduring sonic aesthetic and how it was influenced by technological evolution, cultural and geographical mutations as well as hip hop's original ethos of 'do what you want with what you have."

Please RSVP to david[@]centrumberlin.com.

Lecture starts at 7pm, please arrive by 6.45pm.

www.aboombapcontinuum.com/
www.centrumberlin.com/
www.centrum-berlin.blogspot.com/

Fau Ferdinand in HUMlab

2012-01-16T09:23:00.001+01:00

Yoshikaze Secodn Life "Up-In-The-Air" Residency presents

Fau Ferdinand aka Yael Gilks

23 - 27 January 2012

@ HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden

Opening Hours: 8am - 4 pm Weekdays

Opening: 23 January Between 2pm - 4pm

Artist Talk at 2pm

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

"On virtual landscapes and real feelings.

Photons, camera lens, screen, eye - mashed then mashed again.

Are landscapes seen from afar not virtual ? I can hardly see a thing but colour anyway, unless it’s on a screen near me soon.

The shrinking field of view, that particular scene affects me - that bird I couldn’t save. The cat too fast and ants have spread the word. Life abounds around death.

I join in, giving up on quality to make believe I’m really there though I was there.

Inflation and deflation of an avatar that was death before processing. Death gets pregnant by Deformation.

The avatar, as the persona, is a battlefield.

I’m what eats me.

Distress grabbed."

(Fau Ferdinand)

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

Fau Ferdinand, a.k.a. Yael Gilks, is an established Second Life performance artist, who has produced memorable works since her entry into SL in 2004. Her work manifests metamorphosis of life, often dealing with the theme of life and death, from one state of existence to another, in a manner almost expressed as surreal. Dissolving in fluidity, her subjects enter her world through the dreamscape which surrounds her Self.

During her residency at Yoshikaze, she has taken a step into a new direction, in which video/machinima proceeds not only as a mere documentation of her virtual performance but as a hybrid medium of the virtual and videoart for which she expands her theme as the end result.

Between 23 - 27 January 2012 at HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden, Yoshikaze is pleased to present her first independent videowork "Bird Funeral" which she has completed during her Yoshikaze residency. In addition the exhibition offers an opportunity to experience two additional derivative videoworks, into which "Bird Funeral" with the elements from the virtual world has metamorphosed itself through the techniques of moving image.

Currently Fau Ferdinand/Yael Gilks is a co-director and co-curator of SL sim Odyssey. Her work "Bird Funeral" completed at Yoshikaze is online at http://vimeo.com/32119484. The remains of "Bird Funeral" can be experienced inworld at Yoshikaze residency spot: http://www.slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/84/216/701.

Curated by Goodwind Seiling/Sachiko Hayashi in collaboration with HUMlab. The poster design by Beatrice Rosberg at HUMlab.

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency (www.slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/95/215/351) is a Second Life residency programme run by Sachiko Hayashi together with SL HUMlab sim manager James Barrett from HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden. As part of HUMlab, its 3264 sqm land in Second Life supports SL artists in their pursuit of virtual art practices and researches. For inquiries, please contact: goodwind.seiling@gmail.com.

Yoshikaze is funded and hosted by HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden.

Yoshikaze blog: http://yoshikaze.blogspot.com
Yoshikaze vimeo: http://vimeo.com/yoshikaze

Live Vänliga jättar + Jim Barrett @ Lagmansfestivalen Umeå 2011

2011-12-19T19:46:00.001+01:00

Vänliga jättar + Jim Barrett @ Lagmansfestivalen Umeå 2011 by viktor01

The Whisper Tree (Machinima)

2011-12-17T15:18:00.002+01:00

This machinima was made for the Madrid pavilion at the World's Expo Shanghai 2010.
In Second Life, Bryn Oh was given five islands by Linden Labs for this event. Each island is missing something . Island one is missing love, island two energy, island three color, island four sound and island five is missing light. When an avatar whispers to the tree, it grants a wish. The wish is to return that which is missing on each island.

First life curator Cristina Garcia-Lasuen, owner of the Open This End SL group, and also known as Aino Baar in Second Life, convinced the Spanish officials for the World Expo to showcase Second Life machinima and artists.

Artists Bryn Oh, Glyph Graves, Marcus Inkpen, Colemarie Soleil, Soror Nishi, Kazuhiro Aridian and Desdemona Enfield have each contributed their skills in virtual art to help showcase to the world the importance of the Second Life community.

Island One (no love/emotion) - Bryn Oh
Island Two (no energy) - Glyph Graves
Island Three (no color) - Bryn Oh and Soror Nishi
Island Four (no sound) - Marcus Inkpen
Island Five (no light) - Bryn Oh
Whispering Tree - Kazuhiro Aridian

World Expo Shanghai 2010
http://en.expo2010.cn/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_2010
http://www.madrid2010shanghai.com/
www.brynoh.blogspot.com

Music: Johann Pachelbel - Canon in D Major
http://www.incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

How Focalization Guides the Reading of Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day

2011-12-11T22:10:00.001+01:00

The foalizer is of primary importance in the narrative address of Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day (Egypt) by M. D. Coverley. The key focalizing point is the narrator, and the specifics of the character influence reading of the work. The role of the focalizer is described by Mieke Bal as “an interpretation, a subjective content. What we see before our mind’s eye has already been interpreted. This makes room for reading of the complex structure of focalization” (Narratology 166). The focalizer of Egypt is Jeanette, a woman who is searching for her brother, Ross, while he searches for an ancient silver coffin, along the course of the River Nile, and against a backdrop of archeology, ancient myth, and colonial nostalgia. One example of how focalization determines address is in a letter written by the narrator to her sister early in the text. Jeanette describes how “I’d be more annoyed about Ross being so elusive, but how like him to be caught up in The Great Drama of the Hour. It seems we knew something of this hide-and-seek game, too, since we are so often trying to find the right magic to follow him” (Egypt, my emphasis). Both the reader and the narrator (“we) are following Ross, and it is necessary for the reader to subscribe to the perspectives of Jeanette in her role as narrator. Accordingly, narrative contexts are developed in Egypt within the relationship of Jeanette and Ross, and the reader encounters them via the device of the focalizer.

The primary focalizer in Egypt restricts readings via the use of reportive speech related to the gendered pair of the narrator and her brother in stereotypical roles.[1] Ross leads the pair, and as a result of the focalizing narrator, the reader as well, through the narrative, performing actions and initiating situations. Jeanette observes and relates the actions of Ross to the reader. This relationship between Ross and Jeanette functions as a dual point for focalization, or as the aperture through which the entire narrative addresses the reader. Jeanette as narrator reports the speech, actions and events related to her brother, often at the expense of her own agency. Ross dominates the relationship he has with his sister by acting instead of speaking (the reader never received his words directly). In a reflective moment of assessing her own agency in the narrative, the narrator reflects, “I was no longer sure exactly why I had come so far. What did I want from my brother? What else was going on here? Had I stumbled into a drama that was already in progress, playing itself out no matter what I did?” (Egypt). Of all the characters this sense of swept-away powerlessness is confined to Jeanette, the only female in the story, who is following Ross despite spectacular events of danger and violence, and never knowing quite why she is doing it. Due to the focalization upon Jeanette as the narrator, the reader only experiences Bal’s “an interpretation, a subjective content” (166) of the narrative from the perspective of Jeanette, forcing a set of restrictions upon reading according to the gender roles and relations between the characters.

The narrator as the focal point results in the reader sharing her visual, spatial and temporal perspective. The narrator functions as a type of avatar in the narrative structure, at the point “where the representation of ourselves is located in the virtual environment” (Jää-Aro 39). During the boat journey down the Nile, at Abydos in the dark of night, the features of the place take over from the knowledge provided by sight, when the narrator describes in the darkness, “the original Temple had been built over a natural spring, and the sacred pool now spilled through the center of the tomb, I didn’t worry too much about the moisture seeping into my shoes” (Egypt). The sensation of moisture in the shoes is all the reader has to interpret the actions from, as the narrator is in the dark. Moving into the light, the moisture is revealed to the reader and the narrator and her companitons to be blood. The reader is thereby restricted in perspective to the space and time of the event, through the words of the focalizing narrator and not the visual imagery or audio of the work. The simultaneous character/reader awareness in narrative operates throughout the narrative, in such examples as when she states, “He gave me a glance that was a question and not a-question. I nodded, to seem agreeable, but I was not sure about what he meant by that look. He probably thought I knew more than I was letting on. Small chance!” (Egypt). In this instance, and through the narrative, the narrator and the reader share the same first-person knowledge of what is going on in the story in the same time frame.

The focus on the narrator influences the reading of the other characters and the events in Egypt. Places take on danger or nostalgia, and other characters become either sinister or helpful depending on the narrator. The narrator’s perspective on events and characters draws the reader’s attention to the state of Ross, based on the anxieties of Jeanette. The concerns of Jeanette that are not related to Ross are confined to passive activities devoid of agency, such as leisure and observation. The resulting agency for the narrator becomes the agency of the reader as when “Ross and Trimble spent all day down in the ‘library’ (really the parlor that had been converted to a serious map room), studying hieroglyphic inscriptions. They shooed me away when I suggested that we should all enjoy some recreation. I sat alone as the towns drifted by, reading Death on the Nile” (Egypt). The low degree of narrator agency produces limitations for the reader based on a dependency upon the perspectives of Jeanette. The consultation of maps by Ross and Trimble produces the next destination in the quest along the Nile, but no insight into why they, the narrator and the reader are going there. As the main focalizer in the narrative, the effect of this arrangement for the reader is, as Bal points out, that the narrative is based on the narrator’s perspective. With a low degree of agency in the focalizing character, in this case the narrator, room is made in the narrative for reader interpretations, but only according to the perimeters set by the degree of narrator’s agency. A level of control is thus asserted over reading via the limitations of the focalizer.

Gender roles assigned to the narrator define much of the reading experience of Egypt. In writing to their sister, Jeanette questions her relationship to her brother Ross as, “I don’t know what the balance is between us. You and I have speculated for twenty years about the meaning of devotion, his intentions and reasons” (Egypt). This devotion by the female narrator to her brother is a dominant subject in narrative. She follows and attempts to keep up with him, and as she does so, so does the reader. The resulting perspectives include key elements in the story that are only revealed simultaneously to Jeanette and to the reader. Ross does not express his own perspectives regarding the events of the narrative. Rather, the perspectives of the narrator are what the reader interprets as she reports on the actions and events related to Ross. These perspectives are defined by the narrator’s roles as younger sister, caregiver, devoted lover, incestuous mother to their child and follower. Based on these roles, focalization aligns reader perspective with that of the narrator.

[1] These gendered elements are emphasized in such passages as, “Ross took a long bath, and I cleaned up the rest of his cuts and bruises, tucked him into bed. He was asleep almost as soon as he was horizontal. I waited until the sun went down, then climbed in beside him” (Egypt).

Works Cited

Bal, Mieke, Narratology: An Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

Coverley, M. C. Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day. Califa 2006. CD-ROM. 16 February 2011, http://califia.us/avegypt.htm

United States Use of Force in Protest

2011-12-04T23:35:00.001+01:00

Icon Indice Symbol

2011-11-18T22:17:00.001+01:00

"Peirce thought that “representations” generate further interpretants in one of three possible ways. First, via “a mere community in some quality” (W2 .56). These he calls likenesses, but they are more familiarly known as icons. Second, those “whose relation to their objects consists in a correspondence in fact” (W2 .56) are termed indices. And finally, those “whose relation to their objects is an imputed character” (W2. 56) are called symbols. Put simply, if we come to interpret a sign as standing for its object in virtue of some shared quality, then the sign is an icon. Peirce's early examples of icons are portraits and noted similarities between the letters p and b (W2. 53–4). If on the other hand, our interpretation comes in virtue of some brute, existential fact, causal connections say, then the sign is an index. Early examples include the weathercock, and the relationship between the murderer and his victim (W2. 53–4). And finally, if we generate an interpretant in virtue of some observed general or conventional connection between sign and object, then the sign is a symbol. Early examples include the words “homme” and “man” sharing a reference. (W2. 53–4)." - Peirce's Theory of Signs

6majik9 is Still Spreading the Fever

2011-11-16T23:49:00.001+01:00

Live in Toowoomba 2008

charles curse- eon phyre - DEMENTED THRUGG: Denigrated Jesus Bomb (Studio recording 2010)

6majik9: I got Sunshine in my Teeth (2011)

6majik9 is a loose collective of lateral acting young moderns who believe if a job is worth doing then it is worth doing invisible. Flight has never been so easy. Take out your hairs and wave them like you don't care. Its 6majik9 and everything is going to be alright.

Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home: Digital Remix and the Ends of Origin

2011-11-05T23:44:00.001+01:00

Opening of a lecture I gave at Amsterdam University:

'Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home: Digital Remix and the Ends of Origin'

Prezzi and the links to the videos shown during the presentation

“The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind. ”

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.

“One text that shows the disaster of the divorce between science and poetry would be the one by Mary Shelley whose name is Frankenstein.”

Avital Ronell, Body/No Body (in conversation with Werner Herzog)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (published 1818) represents a historical and literary divergence between the poetic and the technical, and is a significant reaction against this split as part of English Romanticism. It is the contention of my presentation that in contemporary digital works of art and narrative we are witnessing a re-marriage of science and poetry. However, this union should be no automatic cause for romantic joy, as the present situation in the education sector of most Western democracies indicates. Today, the natural sciences are separated from and weighted favorably in relation to the production and analysis of culture. There is little to indicate that this is an effective strategy in light of present global ‘network culture’ initiatives. Today, the union of science and poetry in digital media is felt most acutely in reading, or the performative interpretation of imaginative works. Computer games, websites, digital works of literature, apps, virtual worlds, interactive art, and spatial media (GIS, Kinnect, GPS, Wii) are interpreted as they are performed and often require some knowledge of the medium by the user in order for the work to function. This situation represents a form of reading that has not been practiced widely in Western academic and literate circles for several centuries. We are not witnessing a return to what Walter J. Ong famously terms a “secondary orality” (10-11), but rather we are seeing a form of inscription rapidly emerge that is spatial, multi-temporal, performed, place-bound, visual, sonic, and navigated. Two central concepts are important for understanding how digital works are generally interpreted, and these are simulation and remix. Representation has become the domain of mediating objects, both virtual and physical, while reading is as much about arranging and appropriating as it is about reference, symbolism, iconography and interpretation. Based on a relatively small selection of digital works this presentation examines reception practices involving digital media, which suggest an expanded concept of reading where the material technology of a work determines meaning as much as its representative elements do. In this examination I demonstrate how performance, participation, co-authoring, and remix make the reading of the digital works. These works are

Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson (1995)

Last Meal Requested by Sachiko Hayashi (2004)

Façade By Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern (2006)

Second Life http://youtu.be/9g-kYvK3P-Q

CONSTRUCT by salevy_oh (2011)

The Celebration by Iris Piers (2011)

Chungking Express: Paradox Waiting

2011-10-30T01:03:00.000+02:00

"beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella," - Isidore Ducasse, known by his pseudonym Comte de Lautréamon (1869)

Chungking Express is a film by Wong Kar-Wai from 1994. It is a beautiful meditation on paradox, absence and the rule of the heart over the mind. The loneliness of crowds peppers the gritty realism of people getting on with life in the famous Chungking Mansions of Hong Kong. In particular He Qiwu, also known as Cop 223 (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro). Qiwu's girlfriend May broke up with him on April 1. His birthday is May 1 and he chooses to wait for May for a month before moving on. Every day he buys a tin of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1. By the end of this time, he feels that he will either be rejoined with his love or that it will have expired forever. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman in a blonde wig (played by Brigitte Lin) tries to survive in the drug underworld after a smuggling operation goes sour. He Qiqu spends time at a snack bar in the crowded Chungking Mansions, using the phone to make hopeless calls to women he does not actually know ("we were in grade four together" or "has it been five years...you have two kids now") and chatting to the owner who attempts to find him a date.

In the second story of the film, the unnamed Cop 663 (played by Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) is similarly dealing with a breakup, this time with a flight attendant (Valerie Chow). He meets Faye, the new girl at the local snack bar (played by Faye Wong). She secretly falls for him. The flight attendant waits for the cop around the snack bar, and finds out he is on his day off. She leaves a letter for the snack bar owner to give to the cop. Everyone in the snack bar reads the letter, which is assumed to be the flight attendant's way of telling the cop that their relationship is over. The envelope also has a spare set of keys to the cop's apartment.

The film revolves around the themes of doubles, replacements or doppelgängers and how or if anyone really knows anyone. The doubles in the first story are not copies but dim reflections, fractured similarities recruited by the protagonists from the pain and loneliness that the original bestows upon them.

The paradox of relationships is fully explored in Chungking Express with a brevity and economy that is at times startling, but always beautiful. "Knowing someone does not mean keeping them" (知道一个人并不意味着保持其) says Brigitte Lin's character as He Qiwu tries desperately to engage her, the mysterious blonde woman who we already know he will fall in love with, in conversation in a bar. But the pair do not meet, even thought they are sitting next to each other, her in her Lolita sun glasses and blonde wig and him stumbling through his words as he wears his heart on his sleeve. People change. He's a cop and she is a drug dealer. They share a hotel room, although he eats and she sleeps. They are miles apart. Upon leaving at sunrise he cleans her shoes with his tie while she continues to sleep, and the world is turned upside down. Surrealism lives and love is madness.

While He Qiwu contemplates his 25th birthday, the blonde woman murders a western man while he waits for another woman in a blonde wig with whom he is intimate. Like a hallucination two dreams collide, one of death and the other of lust. Shadows move off the stage and blood runs with the rain.

There is little between them but they can barely hear each other. Cop 663 and Faye seem to be in two different pictures, but they are speaking to each other. He is elsewhere and she is stuck. Memories betray us. His flight attendant girlfriend has just gone and he is telling us about it in grainy images with audio from the take-off procedure of the flight upon which they met. "Onboard every flight is a stewardess that you long to seduce. This time last year, at 25, 000 feet I actually seduced one" (板载每次飞行是一名空姐，你长的勾引。去年这个时候，在25000英尺，其实我的诱惑之一). Is the truth being told?

Nothing lasts and there is no forever.

Who is leaving who in the sad memories of Cop 663? Soon everyone in the snack bar quarter is reading the letter from the flight attendant to 663, the moment of dissolution is shared before the cop (n)ever reads it. Or has it? His keys in the envelope make Faye the double (s)he does not know (s)he has. Noise between people is part of (mis)understanding.

By this stage of the film we seem to be swimming in clouds. A person is burnt upon the mind of another and they remain as a presence no matter the distance. What was presence in absence for He Qiwu has become absence in presence for Faye and Cop 663. He returns home for lunch, talking to the closet in the words he used for his flight attendant, but she is gone. Who is there?

She is. The double that we all carry. She inhabits the living quarters of the lonely cop. Watering his plants, talking to his stuffed animals, left behind by his love, and eating his food. Shouting to him as he passes by. Like a living ghost. A memory that answers back. How many of you can there be?

While he is absent, she cleans and redecorates. Changing the track of reality for the dreaming cop. "Did I leave the tap running or is the apartment getting more tearful?" (我离开的自来水运行或公寓越来越含泪). He is lost and dreams collide around him. Music she chooses becomes his and he remembers it as something it is not. Objects hold memories and as these change so does the man and his world. And then there is love in crowds...or not. One letter can make all the difference. Where do you want to go?

May the Coming Darkness be Mischievous and Thrilling

2011-10-29T15:29:00.001+02:00

Presentation at Amsterdam University Symposium

2011-10-24T10:44:00.001+02:00

Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home: Digital Remix and the Ends of Origin on Prezi

Remix in Retrospect: Looking Back to See the Future of Authorship
Invited Symposium at Amsterdam University
21 October 2011

Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home: Digital Remix and the Ends of Origin

“The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind. ”

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.

“One text that shows the disaster of the divorce between science and poetry would be the one by Mary Shelley whose name is Frankenstein.”

Avital Ronell, Body/No Body (in conversation with Werner Herzog)

Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson (1995)

Last Meal Requested by Sachiko Hayashi (2004)

Façade By Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern (2006)

Second Life http://youtu.be/9g-kYvK3P-Q

CONSTRUCT by salevy_oh (2011)

The Celebration by Iris Piers (2011)

Patchwork Girl is a work of electronic literature by American author Shelley Jackson. It was written in Storyspace and published by Eastgate Systems in 1995. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's 'Afternoon, a story' as an important work of hypertext fiction. "Shelley Jackson's brilliantly realized hypertext Patchwork Girl is an electronic fiction that manages to be at once highly original and intensely parasitic on its print predecessors."

The actions of the avatar, which is the identity of its operator in SL, conform to the traditions of Varjrayana Buddhism. The combination of the actions of the avatar and the audio is a two fold signifying structure, with the operator of the avatar at the center. In a simulative sense the operator of the avatar is enacting a practice that is firmly contextualized in religious and social contexts.

Last Meal Requested is an interactive net art work by Japanese/Swedish artist Sachiko Hayashi. It deals with themes of gender, state power, violence and the rhetoric of the image. The original work can be accessed at http://www.e-garde.net/lmr/lmr2.html

Selavy: What happens when you write in a diary? Of course, some people write down “got up at 7am, drank a coffee, had lunch with Jim, went to bed early”, but that’s not the type of diary I’m referring to. It is rather the idea of keeping a record of selected thoughts, feelings, moods, ideas, etc. The important part is, of course, that you do that regularly. And that is exactly what I did in CONSTRUCT: I added one room each day. Every one of the 75 days of the residency has its own room, often relating to the topic of the residency itself, a time capsule of ideas, artifacts, or reference to other work. If you read a diary, you may get an idea about the writer and her life. If you visit CONSTRUCT, you may get an idea about Selavy Oh and her residency.

The Celebration "combines a circular display of flatscreens, reminiscent of a giant zoetrope, containing amateur film footage from the 1910's-1940's with different soundscapes that can be manipulated by the audience" (Piers). How the audience manipulates the various audio and images, and how they combine to create an interactive and immersive space, makes The Celebration an engaging work of interactive digital art. The visitor enters a darkened space, where the only available light comes from the 10 screens showing the films of The Celebration. By moving around the space and judging their own distance, speed of movement, posture and height in relation to the (largely invisible) Arduino trackers, a dance begins with the audio and the cracked black and white images from almost a century ago. Each of the screens that make up The Celebration has an Arduino tracking sensor attached, which maps the movements of the body of a visitor, and implements pre-programmed changes in the presentation of images and sound. Unknown faces stare out from the screens, mostly laughing, talking (unheard) and often looking straight at the camera, and at the audience. As these faces watch, the visitor dodges and weaves, hops and slides, while the images and sounds change. At the same time the visitor is watching the faces, along with their bodies, their families and friends, competitors at sports events and classmates, neighbors and colleagues. It is according to this arrangement that a circuit of movement and gaze is achieved by the programming of The Celebration.

Façade is a prototype of interactive drama, a new genre of character and story-intensive interactive entertainment. Façade is freely downloadable at interactivestory.net. In Façade, you, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time. In this video Facade is used to promote an abstinence program.

8 Films I (Probably Should Not) Have Seen as a Child

2011-10-13T00:07:00.001+02:00

10 movies I should not have seen as a child by Nadine Von Cohen has inspired me to make my own shorter list. I was shocked at first by the mundanity of the films Von Cohan had chosen (Porky's and Cocktail!). I then remembered that my mum and dad did not really restrict me much in what I saw or read. However, I really did not have a lot of film watching when I was a kid. My life was books and British Television (Goodies, Dr Who, Kenny Everett etc). However, I did manage to collect a list of 8 films that scared me in some way in my tender years. These are not arranged in any order, but here are my 8 movies I should not have seen as a child:

Rocky Horror Picture Show (12 Years Old)
I saw Rocky Horror from the back of a station wagon with my mother and her best friend in the front seat. The film must have had an effect on me as I wrote out all the words to Sweet Transvestite on the front of my school ring binder folder. For the following two years I used it for all my classes. Later in high school, when I was about 16, I went to two school socials (dances) dressed as a woman. I am totally amazed I was not beaten up, but I was 189 cms tall when I was 15, so I was a very unconvincing drag queen dressed in a pastel frock and old lady shoes, complete with a bad wig and stockings.

Jaws (10 years old)
On Cavill Avenue at Surfers Paradise I went and saw Jaws with my best friend and afterwards we bought shark's tooth necklaces. Jaws was a totally unpleasant experience for a boy who loved the beach.

Bliss (14 Years old)
At a hippy beach house at Byron Bay my mother rented the video of Bliss by Ray Lawrence. Some of the other mothers staying there called my mother 'sick' for showing it in the public lounge area of the house to children. Its a great film and the book (by Peter Carey) and film changed my life.

The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus (8 years old)
On TV with Richard Burton as Faustus; I was fascinated and terrified at the same time. I remember the first appearance of Satan to Faustus was as a skeleton covered in maggots. The image is incised upon my mind.

Mad Max (11 years old)
This film made me look at Australia (where I spent the first 30 years of my life), differently.It is a brutal account of petrol head culture and the highway was a lot more frightening for me after seeing it.

German Piss Party (15 years old)
I stumbled into 'The Shed', a corrugated iron box at the back of my friend's house used for drinking, darts and a bit or work, to discover his older brother and friends watching a grainy film with people speaking a language I did not understand. What unfolded during the following 30 minutes horrified me. I did not watch another porno for decades, and even then I have never been a fan of it. I blame the urinating Germans in this bizarre document of 80s fetish culture.

Psycho (11 years old)
This is a deeply disturbing classic. I just wish I had not seen it when I was 11 years old.

The Shining (11 years old)
Nothing on the screen scared me as much as The Shining. This film is an exercise in psychological terror.

Blogging the (Un)Control Machine

2011-10-10T21:42:00.001+02:00

“I broke out my camera gun and rushed the temple — This weapon takes and vibrates image to radio static — You see the priests were nothing but word and image, an old film rolling on and on with dead actors — Priests and temple guards went up in silver smoke as I blasted my way into the control room and burned the codices — Earthquake tremors under my feet I got out of there fast, blocks of limestone raining all around me — A great weight fell from the sky, winds of the earth whipping palm trees to the ground — Tidal waves rolled over the Mayan control calendar.” - William S. Burroughs, “The Mayan Caper”.

The author William S. Burroughs proclaimed, “smash the control images, smash the control machine” in “The Mayan Caper” from his 1961 novel The Soft Machine. Burroughs believed that the word and image has been used throughout human history to control thought. He particularly associated it with the Mayan civilization of Meso-America. Whether or not Burroughs was historically correct in his assessment of the “Mayan control calendar” is largely irrelevant today, if one pays attention to Burroughs more simple claim that images and words populate the imaginations of people when they are broadcast using the electronic mass media. Mass media for the majority of Burroughs’s life (1914-1997) was broadcast using the one-to-many model. Newspapers, Television and Radio beamed messages into the lives and minds of millions of people every day. This network of one-way information channels (if one ignores the heavily censored Letters to the Editor and talk back radio) is drowning today in an ocean of user driven digital content. Fourteen years after the death of Burroughs, anyone who can access the Internet can fashion their own ‘camera gun’ and begin beaming images into the minds of others. As a revolutionary force, the writings of William S Burroughs provide us with a set of principles that can be used to understand how the ruling order is replaced in relation to the digital media sphere. The blogs, wikis, live feeds, podcasts, web journals, micro blogs, RSS feeds and forums of today are soft weapons that ‘take and vibrate images to radio static’, breaking them up, distributing them and making the digital food of revolution. Blogging with its millions of channels is now the media ‘uncontrol machine’.

In his fiction Burroughs paints a picture of a bygone society where one delves “Into the interior: a vast subdivision, antennae of television to the meaningless sky. In lifeproof houses they hover over the young, sop up a little of what they shut out” (Naked Lunch 11). Today it is nearly impossible to shut much out in the average suburban Western home, and controlling production of media content is like trying to contain a solar storm. Millions of channels circle the planet offering input and output possibilities for anyone with a story or an image. Among the many, the Chinese government attempts censorship in the face of this image horde, but there are always holes in any Great Wall. Recently a colleague travelled to China to give a series of lectures on film and the digital image. She was of course unable to access YouTube, so she Skyped instructions about which videos to rip off the site and I sent them to her from Europe via the file-sharing site Sprend. These videos were then shown in a Chinese university lecture hall. This is just one crude example of how information always finds a way. I would like to mention some others.

The proposed revolution of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is radio-sonic, if one judges by the radiating ‘i’ logo of the Global Revolution livestream site. Twenty-four hours a day, beginning on September 17^th 2011, people began occupying Zuccotti Park (Liberty Park) in Downtown Manhattan in New York. Coinciding with the physical occupation is the digital barrage of Twitter (micro-blogging run off hashtags), the live video stream, forum discussion, archives of links and comments, blog posts, still images, podcasts, live audio streams, email lists and YouTube videos. This river of information has sparked Occupy [enter-town-name] around the USA and even overseas. What could be relegated as a collection of disenfranchised and left-leaning complainers has quickly evolved into an idea (“occupy everything” seems to be its slogan, and it of course comes with a manifesto http://occupywallst.org/article/a-message-from-occupied-wall-street-day-five/). The ability of digital media to spread this idea (and I am doing it right here) is a testament to the tenacity of the word virus. The need to overcome the dominant dream narratives is most recently articulated by popular Slovenian philosopher Slovoj Zizek when he spoke at OWS on 9^th October 2011 and said, "The ruling history has even limited our capacity to dream". The dream of authenticity goes on.

<p>&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;Ph</p>Philosopher-at-Large Slavoj Zizek addresses the crowd gathered in Liberty Plaza

Global Revolution media feed, Saturday October 8^th 2011. The end of the Mayan Calendar as we know it?

The OWS movement is the latest and possibly most visible outside mainstream media of a series of high profile digital image barrages connected to popular protest and resistance we have seen develop over the last couple of years. In a rough time line that also shows a growing sophistication, these include the 2008-2009 Israeli-Gaza War, the 2009 election protests in Iran, the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the civil uprising in Syria, and finally the present Occupation of Wall Street. The Israeli-Gaza War was mostly conducted on the Internet via Twitter, with some videos and websites taking up the events only often after they occurred. The 2009 election protests in Iran were Twitter based, but many of the feeds from the micro blogging site were located outside the boarders of the Islamic Republic. However, videos built an enormous following online for the ideas and demands of the dissident forces in Iran. This culminated in the murder online of Neda Agha-Soltan, a video of the shooting death of a beautiful young woman on a street in Tehran that went viral. As Neda gazed into the camera lens, blood gushing from her nose and mouth, the viewer was propelled into the human drama of a cruel and unjust situation. The image wars in Iran had just been stepped up a notch.

The speed of the revolution in Tunisia stunned the world. On 17^th December 2010 a street vendor in the town of Sidi Bouzid set himself alight in protest over long term persecution by corrupt local street officials. Mohamed Bouazizi died on 4 January 2011, at 5:30 pm local time. Protests began immediately afterwards, and built up until President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia with his family on 14 January 2011. The rest is history, and the role of social media in the build up to the flight of Ben Ali is contentious. Wikileaks is said to have playeda significant role in the turn of events in Tunisia, along with high unemployment, inflation and official corruption. However, the Tunisian uprising is clearly an example of the masses no longer believing the official control narrative of the government. As Mohamed Bouazizi lay dying in his hospital bed, Ben Ali visited him on December 28^th 2010, promising to appoint a new Minister of Youth and to look into the unemployment problem (running at around 40% in Sidi Bouzid) . What resulted from the visit was an undermining of the official information line, with Al Jazeera reporting, “For many observers, the official photo of the president looking down on the bandaged young man had a different symbolism from what Ben Ali had probably intended.” The game was over for Ben Ali and a new set of images are still being developed to replace the old in Tunisia.

The revolutions in Egypt and Libya seem to follow a similar pattern to that of Tunisia, as information channels are gradually developed and become dominant, in form if not in content. This progression often mirrors the changes occurring in the streets and corridors of power in each nation. Images replace images as power shifts. Flows of information supporting one group or idea become larger, more regular and more widely distributed, as support grows and gains are made on the ground. What is different from the usual flows of propaganda in any political changeover is that the sources in these contemporary changeovers are multiple based on weight of numbers. While major broadcasters such as Al Jazeera covered the assembly in Tahrir Square in Cairo from atop the buildings around it, creating a visual metaphor of distance and collectivity, the real coverage was happening on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and countless Egyptian blogs. Wael Abbas, Sandmonkey, Hossam Eid, Ali Seif, Nora Younis, Misr Digital, and Baheyya are some of the most popular blogs. It must also be remembered that in the last weeks of the regime of Hosni Mubarak the Internet was shut down for the entire of Egypt in an attempt to silence dissenting images and ideas. Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates commented on the shut down in a highly perceptive analysis, "Whenever you do something extraordinary like that, you're sort of showing people you're afraid of the truth getting out." In the same story by The Huffington Post it was revealed that efforts to shut down such an information network inevitably fail. As they did for Hosni Mubarak.

Attempts are still made in digital media sites to summarize the movement in a single form of language. In doing so the summary attempts to return a movement to the singular, what the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin calls a monoglossia, which identifies the locus of control with the authoritative interpretation of the word. The OWS movement is one example of this, where a major digital news site took pictures of 34 people in Liberty Park and described it, as “This should give you a pretty good idea of the different types of people occupying Wall Street“ . What I would ask of buzzfeed’s summary of who is occupying Wall Street is where does the occupation begin and end? Is the video feed running 24 hours a day part of the occupation? What about the forums, blog posts, videos, and Tweets? Are they part of the occupation? If they are, where are they? With millions of channels open all over the Internet, the occupation of Wall Street has become part of the infrastructure of the World Wide Web, which as its name suggests, is worldwide. There is no place for an idea, as it occupies the world as a virus does, in time but not in space.

As the forms and practices of the OWS movement become more established they are copied. Well not so much copied, as manifested. It is contagious and how it is going to end we do not know yet. In researching this article I cam across a new site in the United Kingdom called BEYONDCLICKTAVISM, which gives a little bit of background and then four reasons for its existence:

Beyond Clicktivism was set up following the netroots uk event primarily to address the following questions:

What can we do online that is uniquely progressive so that if others emulate us their response is informed by progressive values?
How do we get people climbing the ladder of engagement, moving from Facebook “Likes” to actual concrete action?
How do we integrate progressive use of social media with non-political use of social media?
How can we build tools that can also be used to call politicians to account and stop the next Blair or Clegg from flying in the face of the principles of their parties and shamelessly tearing up their pledges to the electorate?

Directly below these points is the statement; “The scope and ambitions of the site have expanded since then.” I am sure I can say the same thing about the activists and media artists mentioned in this text, working around the clock and around the globe to realize some crazy dream they have, over and over again.

Redfern the Didjeridu and Me

2011-10-06T09:24:00.000+02:00

Download: Vision Mission
Didjeridu solo by James Barrett

In 1995 I was living in Sydney, Australia in a suburb which was home to many Aborigines, the indigenous people of Australia. Called Redfern, it was centred on an area known as “The Block”, a crowded jumble of houses and old factories where around 1000 Aboriginal people lived on land that was returned to them by the Australian Government in 1973. Despite having grown up in Australia this was, at the age of 26, my first exposure to large-scale Aboriginal culture.

All up I lived in Redfern about 3 years between 1995-99. The atmosphere changed a lot in that time. This is a short account of a cultural sanctuary that existed along side and because of the independant nature of The Block (long may it live...) [Names changed to protect the innocent.]

The Fern (1995-96).
Our house looked like a wooden ship long run aground. The lower decks silted up and stuck fast in the earth. A crew of tattooed white nomads of soul had moved in. Hair every color of the rainbow, fleshy bits pierced, and always curious to pick through any unattended pile; rubbish or recycle, silo or asylum. We would occasionally awake to find strangers sleeping in the basement cellar spaces. These homeless or traveling folk would usually be given tea and porridge before they jumped back over the fence into the world beyond. Once a wine merchants premises, three huge brick barrels like rooms made up the ground floor, and each opened out onto the tiny backyard which was being composted from day one; vegetables drawn from cement. The middle and main story was four large rooms with a verandah running along three. Sculptures of twisted metal, bone, plastic, feathers, artificial limbs, manikin torsos, crazy flags, and banners hung from the railing and tumbled down into the garden where a two meter dragon with leather wings and a rotating blades for a head presided over a collection of urban jungle and classical forms. In the rooms above lived a various individuals over time, but that was usually the first thing they forgot.

I came to live in Redfern, inner city Sydney, one day, some day; I can't remember the first day. I remember I was frightened by it long before I ever saw it. That same thing (brainwashing?) you laugh at today when you tell people your suburb, and they go quiet and then ask "Is it dangerous"?
Answer: "I like it because the hype keeps the tourists, fashion clowns, and yuppies away". The thing I really liked about it the most was the feel of community, the spirit of the suburb, which spread an almost equally in distance from the railway station for all directions but west. Opposite the station beat the real heart of Redfern; The Block, for this was Aboriginal land. Australia has existed for only a short time. Before white people named and claimed, tied her up and robbed her, she was a living, breathing entity. The spirit of the Aboriginal people is not dead and life in Redfern was evident of this. This was one step out of Babylon, community where people don't pretend to be nice, either they are or you know about it fast. Sure, there was a lot of drugs, and a bit of violence, but we lived in a state of psychological siege with the TV. telling you what you've got to believe. As always the thing that everybody wants is plastic and covered in fingers, and the only way you can be a man is if you buy a house and have a retirement plan. Fuck the Brady Bunch family values.

So let me tell you some things of The Fern. Our house was found by Burn whilst looking at a possible squat site across the road. It was a tumbled down triple story plaster and timber terrace with a secret garden in the middle of the city for rent. It was taken immediately as the deficit was growing for low cost accommodation and production space for artists in inner city Sydney. A month before ten years of tradition had ended with the eviction and demolition of 134 Campbell Street, Darlinghurst. This had been a madhouse of creativity and alternative culture with strong links to the National Art School just across Taylor Square. The so-called gentrification of Darlinghurst was ploughing ahead. The way The Glebe and Balmain had gone in the 1970's and early 1980's was happening to Darlinghurst, Newtown, and Chippendale in the 1990's. At this same time Cyberspace Studios in Glebe, home at one stage to 80 artists was going through the eviction process. For a while in 1994 it seemed that everyone who was not prepared to prescribe to the normality of experts in Central Sydney was retreating to Redfern.

In Regent Street was to be found The Golden Ox, once a restaurant, now a venue for everything from Koori bands to trance traveler's techno parties. It was also home to many, some long, some short term. In the next block Renwick Street provided the public with Airspace Studios, Sylvester Studios, and The Punos Warehouse. A combined living space for as many as 50 artists this was also perhaps the busiest street in Redfern. Airspace contained a large warehouse style gallery with different exhibitions and performances every month. It was managed by one who went by the name of P.C.D-23, a long time resident of Cyberspace Studios in Glebe. Both Airspace and Sylvester Studios were situated in a former meat works factory providing vast combined living and studio space for artists, and both were always full to capacity during their relatively long history. The Punos Warehouse was home to the Punos design team who constructed environments for techno parties, and the interior of their warehouse was testament to their abilities. A huge dragon and a fly at the entrance leading to a space filled with all manner of objects floating and flying. Punos worked a lot with the famous Vibe Tribe sound system in 1993-95, which ended a glorious career in a police provoked riot with a party at the Sydney Park brick kilns on 8th April 1995.

Vibe Tribe party, Sydney Park Brick Kilns 1995.

At the city end of Renwick Street on the intersection of Regent and Cleveland Streets was the Artspace Gallery and performance space. Not to be confused with the recently government conspired Artspace in Wooloomaloo, which was created from the building occupied by The Gunnery, Sydney's most famous artist run space. Around the corner was 2 George Street, a 6-floor terrace house occupied by many of the Vibe Tribe organizers (situated next door to the Independent Commission Against Corruption and as a result under 24 hour video surveillance). It was at one time the home of 30 adults, several dogs and a few children. Across the park from George Street, following the eviction of Glebe's Cyberspace, was the 5 floors of The Sydney Sculpture Studios. About 40 people lived in the warehouse building, engaging in activities ranging from music to sculpture, dealing and party planning. Next door to the sculpture studios was one of the few squats in Redfern, occupied by about 10 punks they made use of the facilities at the Studios for water, eating, and toilets. At the other end of the street at 186 George Street were a crowded terrace house and the city base for many techno style travelers, with around 40 of them crowded into the three floors for weeks at a time. Around the corner on Redfern Street could be found 140a Redfern Street, a large warehouse space and home to many over almost 15 years. Heading east down Redfern Street brings one to 120a Redfern Street, my address and a somewhat typical home for about 30 travelers and wise fools from 1994-98. Some of us worked a little bit. In fact at most times the house (3-8 occupants at any one time) was funded by Roy Morgan Market Research (to this day I hate telephones), and the Department of Social Security (bless the memory). Everyone wanted to spend as much time dreaming as possible, and did not worry too much about money. We were living on the almost dead, kissing the carcass, and taking from the old what we needed to build our own fragile reality. Somehow it suited the time and the place. This rekindled philosophy of the hippy aesthetic given a punk attitude. Often labeled as Ferals it was more than just a fashion for many who embraced this understanding. Lacking the nihilism of the European so called New Age Travelers ("Not in this age, not in any age", said John Major), much angrier than the hippies ever were, and determined to breed and build a micro-society, unlike the short lived, do or die punk movement. Excess was the enemy and transcendence was the goal of many. However, as always with humans the ideal often falls short in practice, and the pressures against any self-directed autonomous zone are many.

The top level of our house was a single grand bedroom with cracked plaster ceiling, two arched windows in each opposite facing walls, a fireplace at one end. It was like living in a tower. When I came to the house the tower was occupied by Sev, who began his day much later than most usually in the area of high noon or sunset. Sev's public life consisted of, among other things, the Erotometre. A device comprising voltammeter and frequency generator, with a needle through the penis of each male (Sev and friend), they became a naked switch in a high pitch electrical storm of tongues and fingers, touching and rubbing. Sev also performed telephone research at The Morgue (Roy Morgan Research) but said it was far below his intelligence (this was true of everyone working there except perhaps administration). Below Sev's chamber was the velvet cave of Burn, a witch and sorceress of the highest spirit. It was she, Burn-Ya-Debts who found the house along with Kira, and the famous Lebanese/Australian wild poet of the Snowy Mountains, Riesh. When this story began Burn made statues and told stories. She was drawing and painting, a poet and student at the National Art School.

The kitchen was the heart of the house. A large round table, dozens of flowers in dried arrangements hung from the ceiling. Stove was quick to cook with cupboards full of spice and fruit, vegetables, and soy products (god bless the bean). Many chairs, a stereophonic cassette-playing machine, and chai made to order. Famous for it's wall of obituaries including Andy Warhol, Vincent Price, Sterling Morrison, Brett Whitley, Tracy Pew, Kurt Cobain, Nico, Frank Zappa, Salvador Dali, River Phoenix, Kurt Wolf, and more always to come. From the kitchen a long hall went passed a bathroom with some tales to tell, and many seashells scattered. Then a small painting studio occupied by the occupier of the room at the end of the hall. Kira was in love at this time and shared her room of ancient objects and beautiful cloth with an intense young artist by the name of Dun. Together they danced love for a time, made art in every movement, took to walking in parks, making forward in each other's eyes. This was that moment you find your whole life out in front of you.

In 1995 the National Art School was in threat of "rationalization" by faceless beauracrats unless the staff, students, and friends of the school could influence the decision makers. We in our corner of the urban sprawl decided to assist and at a rally in Martin Place we performed on the back of a Dodge flatbed truck. So was born Senselesss, a floating collection of performers, artists, musicians, poets, and attention seekers. Fuelled by belief in existential coincidence, redundant technology, and cannabis, Senselesss would undertake a variety of acts and demonstrations in numerous settings over an eventful twelve months.

Sound sculpture and the collective subconscious were the seeds of the group consisting of a core of three people and involving many. The large steel sculptures included a 50 strings box harp suspended from the ceiling, the size of a coffee table and weighing about 120 kg. Also three round steel bells a meter in diameter and weighing 100kg each, and a single string upright base that sounded like a compressor pedal from hell. Combined with films, tape loops, poetry, lighting effects, fire, costumes, dance, and a sense of ritual. A variety of reactions were received when we committed an act. Performances were made at the Sydney College of Fine Arts, Sydney College of Art, The Metro Theatre, Airspace Gallery, King George's Hall in Newtown, and for the art terrorist organization Brainwash. Throughout 1995 there were 12 public performances made and in 1996 the group began to engage in a more private exploration of sound. Following the suicide of one of the major contributors in early 1997 the original group disbanded.

By 1997 things in Redfern were beginning to noticeable change as well. A deal had been done between a few powerful government appointed individuals in the Aboriginal community and the South Sydney City Council. The aim seemed to disband and scatter the residents of The Block (Divide and conquer served the British invaders well and is still employed in black-white relations in Australia), and then reclaim the real estate. The heavy police presence in Redfern was also beginning to give the area a feeling of siege or open warfare. The harassment and strong-arm tactics from law enforcement included ten police marching up and down Everleigh Street (the main street of The Block) in full riot gear and then getting back in the van and driving away, daily for about two weeks. Street strip searches were almost a daily occurrence, and despite a police station being set up in the train station, heroin was still being sold openly only meters away. One night in 1997 some person or persons unknown emptied a machine gun into the doorway of a female aboriginal elder's house (the council of elders opposed the relocation of the residents of The Block). The newspapers (which were already publishing shock stories about the drugs in Redfern) the next day ran a story about right wing extremists terrorizing the Aboriginal population, although nobody was detained over the attack and nobody saw who the attackers actually were.

The atmosphere in the area was degenerating into violence and resentment. Nothing was being done to improve the living conditions of Block residents and no policy of prevention or harm minimization was attempted in regards to the flow of heroin into the suburb. A needle exchange program consisted of simple handing out hundreds of syringes each day without any support, counseling or care offered or available. The local exchange program was halted after public outcry over a newspaper photograph of a 15-year-old white boy injection himself with heroin in an alleyway in Redfern. After this action a Commonwealth Health Department car would simply leave 1000 syringes in the middle of Everleigh Street every morning, not even bothering to pick up the used syringes. The pressures upon the community seemed to be coming from the very top levels of Australian society and Government. It was the final stage in the "gentrification" of the inner city area of Sydney.

Most of the artist run spaces in Redfern had been evicted and demolished by the end of 1997, and the process of "gentrification" was well and truly underway. Throughout 1997-98 Redfern was the subject of several shame articles in the tabloid press, and real life "shock TV" programs. The traders of the Redfern Street clothing factory seconds shops began to notice a drop in trade at this time and many were forced to close by early 1999. Appeals by the local small business organization to begin a plan to revitalize the area, using the vehicle of Aboriginal culture as a means of achieving this were met with brush-offs and silence from local and state politicians. Real estate speculation was not suffering however, and the first million-dollar terrace house in Redfern (Pitt Street) sold at auction in mid-1997. The cafe culture also began to establish itself in Redfern and Regent Street, although they did not yet open at night when the windows were covered with very heavy security grates. I left Redfern on 21st February 1996 to help nurse my grandmother through the last weeks of her life. Although I would live in Redfern again the necessary lessons had already been learnt.

I was fascinated by the stories and struggles of the Aboriginal people and after a short time of living in Redfern I wanted to learn to play their long flute-like instrument from the far north of Australia. Most people call it a Didjeridu, but that is a European interpretation of the name based on the sound the instrument makes. The Aboriginal people call it by several names, some being Yiraka or Yidaki ( trachea), Artawirr (hollow log), and Ngaribi (bamboo).

My first Didjeridu was a copper pipe, played a bit like a trumpet, but with a small enough aperture to make it easier to circular breath, as is needed to play Didjeridu. Shortly after this a friend of mine who lived in an isolated Aboriginal community in the far north of Australia sent me a Didjeridu. This instrument I played for a year, until I had the opportunity to leave Australia and travel as a near destitute backpacker. When I arrived in England in 1997 an English friend gave me his Didjeridu as he was about to go to Australia and could not carry the heavy instrument with him. So I was now broke and in Europe with a Didjeridu. I began playing on the streets as a busker, earning enough money to survive and stayed in Europe for 18 months, meeting up again (we first met in India in 1996) with the girl who I would eventually marry and set up a home with.

I lived as a street musician in Amsterdam for most of 1998, and have played at cafes and festivals in Spain, Holland, Germany, Sweden and Belgium. In Amsterdam I spent 3 days in the company of Alan Dargin who was one of the two best Didge player I have ever seen (the other is Charlie McMahon). My most recent achievement was playing at the 397th and 399th Saami Winter Market in Jokkmokk in the far North of Sweden, in February 2002 and 2004 where I was part of a group of Saami, Inuit, Swedish, American, Japanese and British musicians whose first performance (2002) was recorded by Finnish radio. The second perfromance was the highlight of a multimedia web project undertaken by Umeå University.

Playing the Didjeridu has given me many opportunities to meet people. There is much interest in the instrument and the ancient culture it represents. The Didjeridu is more than just an instrument for me, as it has a presence that is difficult to describe without using spiritual terminology. The breathing technique and the hypnotic tones it produces have a highly meditative effect on myself and often on those who listen.

The Didjeridu has become identified with what is labelled The New Age. I think of myself as coming from a culture which is described in the book “The Didjeridu: From Arnhem Land to Internet” , as alternative lifestylers’ whose “model society is based on four essential elements; firstly holism of experience, secondly community with it’s qualities of interrelatedness and co-operation, thirdly ecology, with its sustainable ethos and fourthly, a creative spiritual milieu.” (Neuenfeldt et.al. p140). It goes on to say that it is the rejection of materialism by alternative lifestylers’ which separates us from the New Age movement, which “has become in many cases a highly commercialised and profit making industry” (ibid.).

Bibliography:
Neuenfeldt Karl (Ed.) The Didjeridu: From Arnhem Land to Internet John Libbey Publishers. Sydney. 1997

By james barrett

Why and How I am Leaving Facebook

2011-09-24T17:24:00.000+02:00

My Facebook Page 24th September 2011

I have been a Facebook user since August 2007, when I began investigating it as a real time social text. Four years later I have so had enough. The upcoming changes in the form of Timeline is not the same program I signed up for in 2007.

When I signed on to Facebook in 2007 it was defined as "a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them." Now, with the implementation of Timeline, Facebook is defined by its founder as “[A]ll your stories, all your apps, a new way to express who you are.” Anyone familiar with the architecture of Facebook knows that it is far from simply 'expressing who you are' on the platform. Who I am on FB is formed by Facebook itself. If I contribute 'all my stories, all my apps and express myself' on FB, I see myself as losing those contributions to the vast database of the program. Plus with Timeline I am now part of an information flow in real time, the nature and perimeters of which I do not control. Suddenly friends-of-friends are within my feed and I am, I presume, within theirs. There is little time or space available for my own self-expression in FB now, because if I even just throw a pebble in the pool, it returns to me as a Tsunami of unknown origins. The entire equation of FB has changed. the analogy used by the Napperville Sun is today ancient history:

"To users, Facebook will no longer be a bench by the side of a river where they sit and watch an endless flow of ephemera float by and then disappear."

I prefer the village square or Agora analogy myself, where I once could go to share with a group of people whom I actually knew, and we could talk, share links and catch up. The circle I once had on Facebook seems to be possible today with Google+, or at least that is what I am hoping.

Added to the expanse of contacts and information I am exposed to on the 'new Facebook' is the somewhat sinister promise of the Timeline interface, which is described by one commentator as,

"Your Facebook presence is now intended to be durable. In 2029, when your firstborn son’s holographic avatar is going off to lunar robot fighting school, you can rewind your Timeline to 2011 and show him what you were up to in the week before he was born."

as well

"Facebook's updated Open Graph will make the social network far more "sticky." Zuckerberg said users will have the ability--thanks to Timeline and a new addition, Ticker--to see what a friend is doing, like watching a movie on Netflix or listening to a song on Spotify, and engage in that same activity from within the social network. The Facebook CEO said he believes the improvements will help create "a completely new class of social apps" that will let users share every single facet of their lives on the social network." - (Cnet) Facebook Changes Creeping Out Some Customers

To me this sounds like a total nightmare scenario.The week before my son was born was and are my memories, my images and mine to explain to him should I choose to do so. Facebook or any other web platform (that I do not control) has no place in the representation or explanation of that period in my life. Futuristic fantasies do not convince me otherwise. Added to this is the intrusion of Facebook cookies;

"Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions." - Logging out of Facebook is Not Enough

However, I have a real problem in that the contacts I have gathered in my four years of using Facebook represent a large percentage of the entire number of people I actually know. I have real people in Facebook; friends and family. People I do not see, that are scattered around the globe. Many of them are very important to me. So I am busy exporting as much of the information in my account as I can. First the email address of my friends, all 397 of them:

Go to address.yahoo.com and click the Facebook icon. A log-in dialog should pop-up, just sign-in with your Facebook credentials and within seconds, you entire Facebook address book will be available inside your Yahoo Mail Account. Once the import is done, click this link to download a CSV file with the email addresses of all your Facebook contacts to your desktop. You can then import the CSV file into Gmail Contacts, LinkedIn, your phone address book or any of the social sites where you want to connect with your existing Facebook circle. If Yahoo! is unable to import your Facebook Address book, open your Facebook page and choose “Application Settings” under Account. Next remove the “Yahoo! Contact Importer” application from your Facebook profile and try the steps mentioned in the video again.

I have a Yahoo mail account so this was easy. I now have all my FB friends in my Gmail account. I now have to find those of my FB friends who are on Google+ via their email addresses. This is time consuming but not impossible.

You’ll find instructions to download the data in your Account Settings page. Once you’ve logged into your Facebook account click Account and then choose Account Settings from the drop-down menu.

On the first page of settings (cleverly titled Settings) you should notice a new option beneath Language that says Download a Copy. Click on it to lodge your request.

I did not receive an email notification that I could download a copy of my account and I had to log back in to Facebook and click on Download a Copy again where I got this message:

Another way to export the data related to your friends on Facebook is with the Facebook Friend Exporter plug-in for Google Chrome

Facebook has been doing everything it can to prevent the Chrome plug-in from working and I did not have much luck with it. However other people say it works and the advantage of it is that it exports not only emails, but phone numbers and photos as well.

To download any of your Facebook photo albums with ease, all you need is Fotobounce - it's a free Windows-only utility that would help you manage photos in your Facebook and Flickr accounts right from the desktop.

The links and collections of videos, audio and comments I have collected on Facebook seem to be doomed to oblivion. FBexport is one of many programs that functions as a web scraper, and it claims to be able to extract the following:

Using a web scraper to retrieve you data from Facebook will get your account closed permanently as it breaks the terms of use agreement. Section 3.2 states the following:

You will not collect users’ content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.

The problem with having your account closed and not deleted, as is the aim if you wish to discontinue your relationship with the Zuckerberg Empire, is that a closed account is still in existence and the contents of it remain the property of Facebook. This is a tricky situation. But if you are deleting your account anyway this may be a stylish way to go out. Just make sure you know when you want to be banished from the land of Facebook and understand that everything in your account still exists on the servers of Facebook. I hope to be exiled by the end of next week but I will not be leaving anything behind when I go.

Finally since publishing this post yesterday I have been getting a lot of traffic from Facebook itself. In directing the link here FB publishes the following warning:

The propagation of fear is the last resort of the wicked. Censorship is built into the architecture of Facebook and this is another reason why I am closing my account.

To delete the Facebook account follow the link here and then the instructions.

Workshop between Umeå and Wollongong

2011-09-23T17:36:00.000+02:00

A three-day collaborative workshop between the University of Wollongong (Australia) and Umeå University on social media in research and learning begins in HUMlab on Monday 27th September. Seven guests researchers and teachers from University of Wollongong, as well as Deakin University in Australia will be attending the workshop. The workshop is an open forum for discussion around a number of themes related to social media. The goal of the workshop is to develop further research and teaching collaborations by showcasing the work going on in each university and finding common areas of expertize and interest. The workshop is sponsored by Umeå University, the Faculty of Arts and the University of Wollongong.

The program for the workshop: http://socialmediacultures.humlab.umu.se/?page_id=2

Participants: http://socialmediacultures.humlab.umu.se/?page_id=17

The Twitter hash tag for the workshop is #SocHUM

Snow Witch (Wonderful Machinima)

2011-09-22T18:12:00.001+02:00

A Japanese ghost story adapted from Hearn's "Yuki-Onna"(Kwaidan). Two woodcutters, an old man and his young apprentice, Minokichi get trapped in a snowstorm in the forest and take refuge in a hut. That night, Minokichi is forced to make a bargain that will later be forgotten. Filmed and edited by Michelle. Sets designed & built by Michelle & Kheri. Huge thanks to gToon for the audio production, Simon Taylor the narrator and additional sound design by Overman. The music is by Tilopa (album Out of the Blue) and is available from Magnatune.com . Special thanks to all the custom content creators! (Filmed entirely in the Sims 2, October 2006) Winner of Best Story at the European Machinima Festival '07.

Gamification: Know Thy Enemy

2011-09-20T23:43:00.003+02:00

'Gamification' has entered my life world (to use the parlance of the practitioners) several times recently. I was so struck by the latest prick of Gamification this evening that I spent some time thinking about it. I Googled and watched a video where a follower presented her vision of a world explained through: “the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications (also known as “funware”)"

Gamification offers a form of aesthetics that anchors beauty and taste within a dialectic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. In gamification there is the dialectic cycle of life-play-completion. Combined with this structure is the supposed 'revolution' of transmediality. "A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole." (Henry Jenkins, "Searching for the Origami Unicorn"). Transmediality is a revolution within the appropriating culture that destroyed the earth mounds of the Americas, the barrows, earthworks, stone circles and cromlechs of Western Europe, the sonic ball-courts of the Maya and the Borra rings of Australia. In these contexts, the play/story dialectic is meaningless. In the enacting of myth in ancient ritual space and the place of meaning opens up before the initiated (i.e. the literate) in the embodiment of their socialized being. As the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud said, "The whites are landing. Cannon! We have to submit to baptism, clothes, work. I've received the coup de grâce to my heart." (A Season in Hell).

Avoidance of gamification offers us the space of play and the control of place. We are instead living the story rather than playing the game. A game is a set of rules and a goal at its bare minimum. It may require a story but it is not a necessity. The game becomes the manual for action and understanding for the collective of players. It claims space and anything that follows its rules and moves through that space is made part of the game. ‘Gamification’ – game-ifying life, just commodifies the dream once more. Smooth space is striated and ordered according to the game. Games can be revolutionary, educational, violent, cathartic, even spiritual. But the gamification of life is not about the seriousness of games. It is about 'funware'. Consuming your way to a shallow happiness. Ian Bogost sums it up very well with "Gamification is bullshit".

Happy Birthday Ben

2011-09-19T08:49:00.000+02:00

Happy birthday Ben, 6 years old today. A boy who lives in a time of his own......