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Sunday TINA Newcastle rain

Sunday TINA 2011 was a day when the rain set in - it was heavy at times, yet it didn't stop people attending the festival panel sessions and performances. this is recorded with binaural mics (line-in adapter - finally found the little battery for it!) on Hunter St Mall - complete with locals/passerbys talking as they walked past me

best listened in headphones
02/10/2011

http://www.archive.org/details/Tina2011Rain

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papert ra circles

papert logo program output - I made a little program to draw sun ra circles
this looks a lot like the lisp I used to use in early versions of AutoCAD in the 90s.
(I wrote a very crude program below - first try. run it multiple times without clearing the previous)
27/09/2011

http://logo.twentygototen.org/i2-IgazF ::: program link



papert seen on twitter via @mpesce

SETXY 10 10
SRAND 23
PD
REPEAT 54
[
 CIRCLE (RAND 23)
 PU
 FORWARD (RAND 51)
 PD
 CIRCLE (RAND 67)
 PU
 BACKWARD (RAND 91)
 PD
 CIRCLE (RAND 27)
 CIRCLE (RAND 56)
 PU
 RIGHT (RAND 21)
 CIRCLE (RAND 63)
 CIRCLE (RAND 87)
]

http://www.calormen.com/logo logo interpreter

http://logo.twentygototen.org papert

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musing ai monads

15/09/2011: this AI book (Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach) is good so far. hopefully it's all like this, not just ch1 ;) am thinking a test to help with archive project would be good. [1]

prob more of a parser than AI but maybe useful to learn some natural language processing & machine learning & automated reasoning #terms [2]

saw mention of using money as the 'reward' for the atoms/monads to learn. thinking of using music instead. like real life in that community [3]

music taste -> street cred -> popularity(?) of sorts. have to know history/share knowledge/durations of participation etc. [4]

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rearranging the patterns of the atoms / monads

reading issue #7 of Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology & Australian forum for acoustic ecology [1] - one guy has been recording sounds of beetles & found behaviours they'd missed by studying them in labs.[2] makes me think about all the sounds that have been lost. species & places lost. but sounds too

I guess there's less protection of the sounds lost since they're not living creatures. [3]

do you ever wonder if they are? little living frequencies [4]

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beauty in the soi

I see beauty in the soi - I went for a walk around bangrak streets this evening. it's still so hot & humid 6-7pm, but there's so many things to see. I'm not the best photographer, and my camera is not that good at colours, so they've come out more muted than they really are, and it doesn't focus well in low light - especially when zoomed - but here's a photo slideshow of some of the buildings and people in the soi. a couple of times I could hear people talking and looking - like the motor-soi drivers who sit on the corner, so I snapped a quick shot and kept walking past. there's also lots of very small and scrawny street cats. I love the colours and textures of the buildings - and the windows - I can imagine people looking out of the windows to see what's happening in their neighbourhoods - though I think they also seem to spend a lot of time outside, on the streets/soi, eating at the food stalls and talking with friends. it's nice.

beauty in the soi photos
bangrak
04/06/2011

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bangrak coffee notes

notes over coffee today - not very coherent & I notice I contradict my own argument/plot.. oh well. will try (perhaps) to make it easier to read later / think more on it. stream of consciousness notes between sips of coffee. fix / adjust later

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04/06/2011 bangrak, bangkok
With the articles in the international herald tribune this week about China’s plans to divert one of their rivers to meet the water supply demands of its people, and then today’s article about the race to find food that can be grown in droughts – rice growing experiments – it’s just like living in the opening page of a science fiction, futuristic novel.

Character: a global nomad – the prices of food have risen too high so she is forced to travel the world working in other places, living in hotels, because her employer is paying for her food and accommodation.
Places like India where there was a grain shortage and there was risk that the poor people would not be able to afford to buy rice.

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charoen chan and charoen krung

tonight's taxi driver got a little lost - we ended up on the wrong side of a split one way road and he couldn't find a place to turn, so we did a loop of the back streets / soi. I can't remember the name of the street nearby - at first I thought it was charoen may but it might be (thanon) charoen chan?? not too far from (thanon) charoen krung anyway, if you take an earlier exit off the highway and end up in turning sai (left) instead of qua (right) to get to charoen krung (there was a sign but we were in totally wrong lane by then.

anyway, it was great to be lost - I just love the soi! (small streets / lanes) there's so much activity - people getting their hair done at the local hairdresser, people eating at one of the many street stalls, people waiting for the bus, people at the stores - working, visiting or shopping, people just sitting out on the street / stoops talking or watching the cars and motor-soi drive/ride past. the tuk tuks. the motor soi waiting on the corner with their coloured flouro jackets and motorbikes - they're like a single person taxi on a motorbike. people at the fruit stalls. I saw a durian store and a man about to cut a durian open.

the soi feel "very Thai" to me - at least in my limited view of Thailand & Bangkok so far. perhaps "very Bangkok" or "very Bangrak" / "very Si Phraya", though the latter two I think of the Chao Phraya River too. I've walked down to the temple in the charoen krung video & back on my first weekend here - it was so hot though. I was really dehydrated and hot & sweaty when I arrived back at the hotel. "very Thai" is a phrase I hear all the time - even the Museum of Siam posed the question "what does it mean to be Thai?" in their exhibit. and the WordPlay! Writer's Festival at Neilson Hays Library a couple of weekends ago had speakers who also spoke about this and posed the question. (even though they were mostly expats! which I thought was a little strange - why wouldn't you ask a local Thai citizen, rather than an expat - granted some had lived here for a number of years..)

I'd bought and tried a durian earlier today after we went for lunch (great pad thai too!) - it was in my bag. I could still smell it - it was intoxicating in a way - the tangyness of it is really striking, though the texture is really smooth - sort of like a hard banana texture, but the taste is sweet - I kept thinking of dragon fruit punch (though perhaps that's not the right smell / taste also - have forgotten my words again). not sure if the taxi driver liked the smell of durian - I could hear him sniffing every so often. the smell changed during the evening, I couldn't eat all of it, but I had some more after dinner. it's in the minibar fridge now so the room smells less of durian. apparently it's banned on some public transport and hotels because of the smell. I've tried many Thai fruits now - most from this Thai fruits page that one of the guys from work had sent me - they've been sooo generous at work, especially with food. once I commented to one of the guys that they had a lot of food, and chats at work with food (usually at the end of the day or lunchtime), and he replied, "yes. happiness is most important" which I thought was a fantastic attitude! work pays for the food - apparently it makes the programmers work better in the afternoons. I'd say they're probably right - maybe more places should do this - it's quite common in Asia (so I've noticed) for work to provide food at the workplace.

some photos - lots of river and food photos this time. I hope to get some more of the buildings, doors, gates and windows - they have such great textures, though I feel a little strange walking the back streets taking photos of people's houses and the soi are very narrow so it's hard to get them all in frame on my nicer camera (as opposed to phone camera)

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Hunter & Mortar - Fear and Loathing

Hunter & Mortar - Fear and Loathing—a few words with Hunter SBX about his new album with Mortar—this was originally an article for ozhiphop.com : article in forum & on http://officialozhiphop.tumblr.com. by AliaK 31/05/2011. Thanks very much to Hunter for taking the time to answer my rambling questions

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Hunter and Mortar released their new album "Fear and Loathing" in May 2011—the guys seem a perfect match to release an album together. Written over a few years, there's a range of styles, and fans of either of the two will not be disappointed. My personal favourites are the more introspective songs, such as Mortar's "Expecting to Fly" and Hunter's "Love and Fear" but there are also plenty of hardcore rap songs for the fans to play at parties and bars around Australia. Hunter answered a few questions and replied to comments about the new release. You can find the album in all good stores supporting Australian Hip Hop, and I'd encourage you to buy all of Hunter's and Mortar's albums, including this one—the latest chapter in the Hunter SBX story.

>> AliaK
Hunter SBX

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reading McLuhan by the Siphraya Pier


280520113997, originally uploaded by AliaK.

lunch by the Siphraya Pier, Bangkok. reading McLuhan's interview from late 1960s and thinking of it related to the Jean M Auel Earth's Children's series books I've read - am reading her latest "The Land of the Painted Caves" during this trip. so his ideas on the development of the phonetic language are interesting. I think he's talking about more recent times (& Homo sapiens / modern humans - probably around 3500 years ago up until today). but since I've just finished the book - which is about the period when both Neanderthal & CroMagnon man/humanoids are living together on Earth, I was relating his ideas back to the ideas in the book. Auel's books have talked about the sign language and large, communal memories of Neanderthal man (previous to CroMagnon) - they didn't have developed speech - or the ability to talk properly apart from a few words/sounds. so perhaps McLuhan's ideas mean we get the best of both worlds - memory outsourced to writing. I think Erik Davis has talked about these things in his Techgnosis book too iirc. I also liked how in the McLuhan article he was talking about such a "connected world" & computers and communication networks in the early 1960s! well, he did pretty much invent "communication studies" type uni classes, but still, you could read this article with today's technology in mind and it would still be relevant - if not even more today than in the '60s

anyway, a lovely afternoon - lunch, reading and writing and ideas.
...

tonight I've been listening to some of this talk and reading the article - it ties in to the book/ideas of this trip / today's reading also : Scott Taylor and Bob Dobbs discuss "FIBONACCI AND THE ECSTATIC DIGITAL CLUB SCENE" http://bit.ly/iy9YNK http://bit.ly/jbSrZP the "anti-cave cave" - they're talking of techno club as a modern cave with paintings on the walls (glowing lights) as well as mentions of the more obvious comparison to Plato's cave & the archetypes of reality, and McLuhan's ideas of advertising and tv being the "cave paintings" of our modern world.

[quote]The McLuhan Dew-Line; and, punning on that title, he has also originated a series of recordings called “The Marshall McLuhan Dew-Line Plattertudes”.[/quote]

McLuhan Dew-Line newsletters ad - love some of the topics: future editions will discuss.. "the end of history via the computer" "the end of the stock exchange via the computer" "the satellite as the end of Nature" "why the 'backward' countries will inevitably dominate the western world"

& I watched this video "I'm not beer" - mentions Bob Dylan, McLuhan, and Bob Dobbs

I also came across this : LITERARY/AESTHETIC CLICHÉ-PROBES IN THE AMERICAN CLASSROOM-WITHOUT-WALLS whilst searching for online versions of the McLuhan Dew-Line newsletters. & some more essays by Bob Dobb's on McLuhan - I haven't read these yet - might try the McLuhan and Holeopathic Quadrophrenia essay (every time I heard it on the not beer video above I kept thinking of the band Quadrophonia - different word, but close enough for my tired mind)

2011 is the 100th anniversary of McLuhan's birthday. there's a few events celebrating this : McLuhan 2011 (this weekend - just heard about it) and McLuhan on Maui has phone conferences feb-dec 2011 and an in-person conference later in the year (december) their about page has the details - there seems to be audio archives of the calls (eg the one above discussing the essay)

Next Nature has published one of his interviews from Playboy magazine in the 1960s (the one mentioned above that I was reading today) - maybe it is true that some people just bought it for the articles?!??

28/05/2011
siphraya pier, bangrak
bangkok

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sunday 29/05/2011

siphraya reflections of light

the camera didn't really do this justice, but there were these amazing ghostly reflections and patterns of light moving on the ceiling next to the Si Phraya pier today whilst I was having lunch. mezmerizing

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Bangkok - found sounds and art

some links on Bangkok sound art and digital art and other interesting blogs / media

art
BAM - Bangkok Art Map - BAM is a printed art map available at galleries, hotels, art-cafes and various other places around the city. there seems to be a different issue each month. I found a copy of the 05.2011 version at the Kathmandu Photo Gallery off Silom Rd in Bangrak. the website has art listings and information also and is definitely worth checking out - you can even download a pdf version of the current BAM if you don't find one on the soi

Kathmandu Photo Gallery - there's books, art prints, and a gallery upstairs. it's a great old pre-war building, painted pale green - which reminds me of the smaller rooms in the old RSL halls in Brisbane in the 1970s where we did ballet classes - even the same pale green paint on the wall boards - it's very fresh and colourful. owned by well-known Thai photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom and artist/filmaker Ing K.

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Hunter (SBX) - The Words

Hunter (SBX) — The Words

Reflections on Hunter's first three albums:
::: "Done DL" ::: Hunter and Dazastah (2002)
::: "Going Back to Yokine" ::: Hunter (2006)
::: "Monster House" ::: Hunter and DJ Vame (2010)

When Walter Benjamin stated in 1936 that, “the art of storytelling is coming to an end" due to the rise of the printed novel and the lowering value of experience, he hadn't anticipated the rise of the hip hop emcee to revive this craft in our modern world. In all his albums, Hunter shows his skills as a wonderful storyteller. There are tales of growing up, getting into trouble and later returning to his hometown of Yokine, Perth, in the songs "Adolescence", "Going Back To Yokine" and "Yokine (Drugs + Crime)". These are stories of self-discovery, and of changing his life, and of hope — giving up old ways that were not working for him to focus on music, rapping and living a hip hop-infused life instead. "What I Do Best" has the feeling of homecoming to a community of supportive people and finding his place in the world. There are stories of mateship and the value of community with his Syllabolix (SBX) family and crew. There are stories of having children and the specialness that can bring to one's life in "Ultrasound" and "Kids of the Future". Littering his rhymes in "Kids of the Future", "The Big Issue" and "Me Old Man" are stories based on his Dad’s advice, as he contemplates being a father himself.

k-film beach flying

my first k-film. I've been wanting to try this for close to a year or more, ever since Adrian Miles pointed them out on the artists in the cloud list. built using Korsakow. I was running an old version of mac o/s so I couldn't use the software. upgraded on sunday night & now it works. I've got a couple of orphan branches and I didn't clean up the clips or audio, so it's far from perfect, but gives me the idea on how to do it. this is just a simple one using flying / water / blue / waves / waveriding / patterns type keywords

these korsakow k-films really are quite wonderful. it links the videos on words (in & out). so u can have a language story underlying the film. there's many words / things I cannot say - either for not having the words or not being able to speak them. but I can think them when filming. then link them up later. story within the story. hopefully the mood / theme comes across. so many ideas to try.

this test film is using steps involved in the How to SNUify (first) tutorial. I'm sure there's plenty more things yet to try. it was very easy to make. just add all the clips, then add input & output words to create the 'links' between the videos.

if you play it, maybe turn down your volume as I didn't remove the audio so it's natural sound with lots of wind & plane/flying distortion. I might try a music soundscape next - replace the audio on the video clips and then link them - it would sound different each time, depending on the order you / the viewer (listener) played the films back

http://www.aliakprojects.com/kfilms/beach_flying/beach-flying-index.html

note: the default embed code seems incorrect : the url seems incorrect - it should be .html not .htm & the .js file shouldn't have the index.html before it, so change these and it should embed ok on other sites. doesn't seem to be displaying, so use the link above. will look at it later after some sleep

like isadora, the beach-flying-korsakow.krw file is tiny

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sophia's choice - listening & learning

sophia's choice - listening & learning

Expanding Mind with Erik Davis
Expanding Mind - 03/03/11 - Gnostic initiation, spiritual scholarship, and the evil trap of the universe: a conversation with Miguel Conner, host of Aeon Byte and author of the new interview collection Voices of Gnosticism. mp3 download
techgnosis.com

the god above god - Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio
CCG #42-- Philip K. Dick with Jeremy Puma author of 'Running Towards The Bomb'
Coffee, Cigarettes & Gnosis #1-20 - Abraxas

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Open call for submissions - Streaming Festival 6th edition 12-2011

Open call for submissions 6th edition

This year we’re doing things slightly differently. Instead of exclusively screening films, there’ll also be showcases for 2d art, flash and an audio program.

Moreover we’ve decided to open the call for online submissions again.
So, no more need for post and stamps. Just place a link to your preview, and that’s that.

But here is the thing. Only preview links from www.vimeo.com are accepted, nothing else. If you haven’t got an account at vimeo, simply register at vimeo and upload a preview of your film(s) there. If your film(s) on vimeo aren’t publicly available, which is fine with us, but do not forget to send us the access code to preview your work.

Obviously, you can still send your work by post if you prefer that.

The film competition will return again in the sixth edition, so if you’re up for running, tick the competition participation box on the submission form.
For now we’d like to invite you to submit your films or 2d art to the festival, while we’re working out the quirks for the flash and audio submission forms.
As per usual, no entrance fee - all genres accepted.

Without further ado, the submission form http://www.streamingfestival.com/submissions/

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