I started a new Maybe Logic Academy class called Share This Course! by/with Mark Pesce. the outcome of the class is to learn more about sharing and to write a collaborative book called Share this Book. so far it's week1 and the discussions have been great. there's a amazing range of talented people who've joined up so it'll be interesting to see what comes of the project - there's academics, IT/computer people, writers, students, artists. we're reading related articles & having discussions. feel free to join in if you like? this class is using a new (for me anyway @ MLA) pay-what-you-like model.

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here's the info from the Share this Course site's About page :
Share This Course! is an experiment in creative collaboration. We're working together to understand how the sharing technologies and culture of the early 21st century can be applied to the specific task of creating a book which talks about this new world of shared culture, knowledge and power, a book titled Share This Book.

We started our journey on 21 November 2009 and expect to be well into it through at least the middle of February 2010. This blog is our main gathering point, where we meet to discuss, to debate, to create and to produce. If you’d like to join us, please register on the blog and dive in!

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Aesthetica is looking for entries to the 2009 International Aesthetica Creative Works Competition. The 2008 Competition was a successful springboard for artists’ careers around the globe.

The Aesthetica Creative Works Competition: Artwork, Photography & Sculpture, Fiction and Poetry
Three winners will be awarded £500 each
All finalists will be published in the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual, in stores December 2009
Entry to the 2009 Aesthetica Creative Works Competition is £10
This allows you to submit up to 5 images, 5 poems or 2 short stClosing date to receive Creative Works is 31 August 2009

The winners and finalists from last year, went on to secure further exhibitions, commissions and publications. The winners and finalists were published in the Aesthetica Annual. It's a great opportunity to bring your work to a wider audience.

City Library Street Press is back after a short Summer break with a new program of free workshops starting on March 11th 2009.

City Library Street Press is an opportunity for all of those interested in the many aspects of street press to gather and discuss ideas, techniques and projects. Our last season of Workshops were a roaring success with every session fully booked, covering many topics from zines to creative writing, page layout and cartooning. This season is no exception and the details of the first half of the program can be found below :

11/03/08 : Clem Bastow and friends discusses Blogging
25/03/08 : Al Cossar of the Portable Film festival ponders the role of film in Street Press
08/04/08 : Geoff Lemon talks poetry
22/04/08 : Bernard Caleo from Cardigan Comics encourages everyone to draw, draw and draw some more
06/05/08 : The National Young Writers Festival (TBC)
20/05/08 : The Craft Cartel demonstrate how to spread a message through handmade goodies
03/06/08 : SYN Community radio shows the simple creation of podcasts

The workshops are generally practical in nature and run from 6 - 7.45 at the City Library, 253 Flinders Lane. Contact (03) 9658 9500 for more details and to book a space.

http://www.stickyinstitute.com for more details

not sure what a zine is? - here's an article called Zines Are Not Blogs: A Not Unbiased Analysis by Jenna Freedman (via Sticky's links page)

the guys at Sticky sent an invitation to join the We Make Zines NING group today. We Make Zines is a online community for zine makers and zine readers. the discussions are all about the zines and issues involved with making them & distributing them. this year I want to try this - maybe take some thoughts / notes from my little notebooks and make a zine. or some thoughts from this blog - though even the blog is mostly project listings, not my own thoughts. maybe time for a shift.. am I too old to make a zine?? hopefully not.. I want to (if I ever get round to it) put some of the info & interviews from brisbane dance parties archive site into a zine (hopefully a collection of them) too - then possibly a book later on. I like reading the zines from the Sticky subscription - they seem to be from a range of people - different ages & backgrounds. I like the letter ones - reminds me of the letter writing I used to do whilst growing up. these days I manage a few postcards to friends whilst overseas - it's nice getting messages in the mail, and I think the kids love them. I wondered about a video zine too - maybe stored on USB memory sticks or dvds. I posted a 'video zines' message to the artists in the cloud group - sounds like people are interested to try it out too.

Philip K Dick said in his paper "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" that "two certain matters absolutely fascinate me, and that I write about them all the time. The two basic topics that fascinate me are "What is reality?" and "What constitutes the authentic human being?" Over the twenty-seven years in which I have published novels and stories I have investigated those two interrelated topics over and over again. I consider them important topics. What are we? What is it that surrounds us, that we call the not-me, or the empirical or phenomenal world?"

great questions and ones which I'm sure many people have wondered.

Parsons Bookshop located in central Auckland stocks International Art books, Exhibition Catalogues, Art Theory, Design, Photography, Architecture and Fashion books, as well as a large stock of New Zealand, Maori & Pacific books including Fiction, Poetry, Art, Small Press and Limited Edition Titles, Politics, History, Biography and Natural History. http://www.parsons.co.nz for more details

I think there's at least a couple of hundred stories & characters to be written from any street scene.

this one's zoomed in on my Nokia N95 - the video quality isn't that good when you zoom in to record video, but it's good enough for a reminder for me. I'm playing it at 1/2 speed - not sure if that saves or not.

I didn't capture the women in black unfortunately - will try again next week.

21/11/2008
mumbai / bombay
india

blog entry :
http://www.aliak.com/content/vlomo08-day21-street-stories

http://blip.tv/file/1493696

I actually recorded this video on 09/11/2008 but it was a large file and my computer's been playing up during exporting so I've only had time to compress it tonight.

these are the books I purchased at Mid Land Book store whilst in Delhi. I always buy the annual Sarai Reader - a collection of research papers & project documentation from India and around the world. they always have something that I'm not familiar with - different issues are covered - urban issues, social issues, resettlements, voices of local people, keeping or documenting traditional methods in art & social / community circles + more. the books are available online as pdfs so I've read some of the chapters but I like to have a paper copy as I find them easier to read.

the bookstore owner recommended other books for me to try - mostly feminist books & topics! there were so many that looked really interesting & informative, but I chose one from each publishing house so I can buy more later. some were part of a series on varying topics.

I have a blog post on my site about (some) women in india links + details on the books in case anyone would like to find out more or read them too :
http://www.aliak.com/content/women-india-book-related-links

I'm not speaking very clearly in the video - I'm not used to talking & filming at the same time and I should have collected my thoughts a bit more before I started, but I don't have the energy to redo it so it is what it is :) & pulp fiction is different to the graphic novels (both were talked about at sarai i-fellows conference - but it's not clear from what I said in the video). the book "Delhi" is written by Khushwant Singh - sorry! I forgot his name whilst recording the video :(

I'm part way reading through the interviews with women writers & the short stories & the tamil pulp fiction books. yet to start the others - it might take me a while to finish. so far they're all great purchase choices! the interview book is especially interesting as it seems there were many topics that women were 'not meant to write about' in india up until, say the 1990s. I might have to find a collection of younger writers to compare with - though I note there's been quite a few younger Indian writers winning or being nominated for various international writing prizes.

VloMo08 : day17 - book purchases whilst in India

17/11/2008

http://blip.tv/file/1477706

blog entry :
http://www.aliak.com/content/vlomo08-day17-book-purchases-whilst-india

today I watched a video Senthil Kumar posted a video on WADI facebook group called "Arjuna the Archer : AD 2008" - it was based on the techniques of Patta Chitra Katha

I wanted to find out more about this artform and technique, so I googled (without much luck, due to googling the wrong things) and asked the Sarai reader list and received lots of helpful information from many people. after reading about it, it reminds me a bit of the multi-media of a few hundred years ago. multiple paintings / panels on scrolls are read and music played whilst they're read, so there's a mixture of images, music, text, written / spoken word. the artists travel to different villages - equivalent to the communication methods / networks of today transmitting the multimedia messages & works. originally the works were made on cloth using vegetable based paints but these days modern paints are used and most works are done on paper. I hope the traditional methods are not lost completely! the style of painting comes from Orissa and West Bengal. modern artists use both traditional, classical topics as well as current topics & stories - they are trying out new variations of the art too, to keep the method alive and to learn new techniques & skills.

I wrote a blog post (ongoing) about Patta Chitra Katha @ http://www.aliak.com/content/patta-chitra-katha-traditional-folk-art-sto...

VloMo08 - day16

http://vimeo.com/2260235

VloMo08 : day16 - Patta Chitra Katha - traditional folk art of storytelling using visual language from kath on Vimeo.

Senthil Kumar posted a video on WADI facebook group called "Arjuna the Archer : AD 2008"

he's also posted it to youtube :
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=h-UPtfEkl_o

there's now a facebook page for Patta Chitra Katha

I wanted to find out more about this artform and technique, so I googled (without much luck, due to googling the wrong things) and asked the Sarai Reader list and received lots of helpful information from many people. after reading about it, it reminds me a bit of an equivalent to multi-media, or even video blogging from a few hundred years ago. multiple paintings / panels on scrolls (equating to video frames?) are read and music played whilst they're read, so there's a mixture of images, music, text, written / spoken word. the artists travel to different villages - equivalent to the communication methods / networks of today transmitting the multimedia messages & works. originally the works were made on cloth using vegetable based paints but these days modern paints are used and most works are done on paper. I hope the traditional methods are not lost completely! the style of painting comes from Orissa, West Bengal & Bangladesh. modern artists use both traditional, classical topics as well as current topics & stories - they are trying out new variations of the art too, to keep the method alive and to learn new techniques & skills.

I made a video for VloMo08 day16 explaining how I found out information about Patta Chitra Katha :

VloMo08 : day16 - Patta Chitra Katha - traditional folk art of storytelling using visual language from kath on Vimeo.

read more for information about this special artform ...

this is part2 of a quick video showing some of my favourite magazines from the early-mid 90s and now. I tried to save the first part (Mondo 2000, Boing Boing, Arthur) but it's taking over an hour to save and then crashes the conversion program - still ironing out best methods for my new HD camera. I'll try do it tomorrow but I've got to fly to Delhi so not sure if I'll have time (esp. if it keeps failing)

07/11/2008

blog entry :
http://www.aliak.com/content/vlomo08-day7-some-my-favourite-magazines-part2

http://vimeo.com/2179386

VloMo08 : day7 - Some of my Favourite Magazines (part2) from kath on Vimeo.

and here's part 1 - I didn't get a chance to convert this before I left. so I've added it later

The Tract House is a "spread-the-word" project that debuted at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore on May 31, 2008. The Tract House tracts were written by friends, neighbors, acquaintances, visitors to this website, and friends of friends. While most popular tracts are religious, The Tract House tracts can be nearly anything— manifestos, diatribes, stories, rants, poems, or lyrics. They can be about whatever the writer finds pressing, whether it be something personal, professional, political, domestic, local, or global. Gallery visitors are encouraged to peruse the many tracts and take home what they wish. Visitors of this website are encouraged to print the tracts on their home printers. It is hoped that the tracts will educate, activate, infuriate, obfuscate, titillate, inspire, upset, and irritate.

I just heard this poem mentioned on tv & I remember we learnt it in Primary School - My Country - by Dorothea Mackellar. I can't post it here as it's still under copyright of her estate.

I visited the Sticky Institute in Melbourne yesterday and bought a few zines and recorded a video asking the team a few basic questions about zines. The store has a wide selection of zines, and there's a membership / mail list where you can sign up and receive zines in the mail. If you're a zine-writer, you can contact the store and have them stock your zines. Their website also includes an impressive "Zineopedia" of Melbourne based zines which is a great resource for anyone wanting to find out more about zines. Though the best way would be to visit the store if you're in Melbourne, their website if you're not in Melbourne, or a local zine-festival and buy & read some zines. Or even better, start your own!

visit http://www.stickyinstitute.com for more details
store details :
Sticky Institute
Degraves St Subway
Shop 10 Campbell Arcade Melbourne
stickyshop @ gmail.com (remove the spaces)
(if you're not from Melbourne like me, it's opposite the train station on Flinders St, about half way (Flinders between Swanston & Elizabeth) - go downstairs towards the station subway and you'll see it)

PO Box 310 Flinders Lane Vic Australia 8009

One of the zines I bought was the "Anyone can.. " zine (anyone can make a zine) which launched the same day by the City Library Street Press. The City Library Street Press are quite active, having a few projects on the go and regular meetings at the library for zinesters and writers to get involved with. The "Anyone can.." zine also includes a MAP of Melbourne city showing writers & zinester spots of interest eg libraries, stores, artist spaces.

I also bought Anna Poletti's book "Intimate Ephemera : Reading Young Lives in Australian Zine Culture" whilst at Sticky. I've been to some of her panel sessions at the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle & Critical Animals as part of This is Not Art (TiNA) over the years, so was glad to find her PhD book in the store too. The book is also available as an e-book (pdf) or d-book (pod / print on demand) from Melbourne University Publishing e-store

I haven't finished the book yet, but here's one passage about what a zine is [pg 11-12] :

"Personal zines do not share many of the characteristics of he texts that make up the bulk of sources studied in literary or cultural studies and, more specifically, scholarship on auto/biography. Of central importance to these non-traditional texts is the fact that sines are not mass-produced; they are not published by a professional publishing house, and thus not 'sanctioned as significant by [their] status as a mass produced commodity' (Huff 510). Moreover, zines are not easily available, do not participate in standardised modes of presentation and distribution, and are not well recognised within literary communities or among the reading (most commonly constituted as 'book-buying') public. Zines are homemade, ephermeral and amateur. They circulate among communities of readers through the mail, in out-of-the-way spaces, and are passed around hand-to-hand among social groups. They are also non-traditional because of the modes of emplotment that characterise them; in the case of personal zines, we find a unique mixture of established modes of life writing, such as the diary, alongside zine-specific narratives such as cut'n'paste collage. These material and textual idiosyncranasies challenge the literary critic to practise 'connected reading', which Gillian Whitlock describes as a practice which 'pulls at the loose threads of autobiography, and uses them to make sutures between, across and among autobiographical narratives' (Intimate Empire 204)".

I also like this definition by Richard A Stoddart and Teresa Kiser in Poletti's book [pg 27]
"Zines are a written product of the human need for self-expression. Beyond that, zines are hard to define."

on page 7-8, Poletti gives Duncombe's list for a 'zine taxonomy'. I thought this was very similar to the original definitions of video blogs when they'd first started (video blogs came after zines of course!) - my attempt was this video blog mind map before I realised it was crazy to try and define all the combinations - a simple all encompassing definition of 'video on a blog' was more appropriate, and did it matter anyway.. every now and then the videoblogging list starts up a new 'what is a video blog' thread - I suppose it is the same for all sub-communities that are less commonly known / new. the response below also reminds me of the videoblogging list arguments towards a simpler definition (or no definition), and at least a step away from a taxonomy.

"genres of zines: fanzines (broken down into subcategories by subject, that is music and sports), political zines, personal zines, scene zines (covering local and community events in the zinester's area), network zines (which review zine publications), fringe culture zines (covering UFOs, conspiracy theories and so on), religious zines, vocational zines (detailing 'life on the job'), health zines, sex zines, travel zines, comix, literary zines, art zines and 'the rest'"

... "the collapse of Duncombe's taxonomy into 'the rest - a large category' underscores the futility of attempting to solidify or organise a definition of zines based on their content. As Kirsty Leishman argues: 'Duncombe's work reveals that zines are ill contained and thus it is useful because it relieves subsequent researchers from pursuing such an arduous, yet futile, endeavour'(7)."

Pratilipi is an online bilingual magazine featuring Indian writing and stories in English and Hindi & other languages.

Pratilipi is (wants to be) a bilingual / multilingual, multiscript magazine that provides a space for conversation / debate between diverse sorts of writing and writers. Pratilipi forbids itself nothing – except taking on a representational role on the web or catering to such expectations – and, hopefully, never will.

visit the site @ http://pratilipi.in

zzz33333's video on Humanity is NOT a virus - complete with The Matrix (movie) references :)

and the links he posts in another video @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB0PNQlc5OU

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READ THIS!

Ishmael and others by Daniel Quinn

READ ISHMAEL

ISHMAEL BY DANIEL QUINN

EVERYONE READ ISHMAEL!

Endgame and others by Derrick Jensen
Against Civilization and others by John Zerzan
The Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tse
White Noise by Don Delillo
Demian by Hermann Hesse
In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander
WATCH THIS NOW:

http://www.archive.org/details/PhilosopherSeed-DerrickJensenEndgamePartO...

PART 2:

'publish'

In 1998, M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture was devised by David Marshall as an online publishing project for a new media culture honours course at the University of Queensland. The journal was intended as an open-access, scholarly intervention in and forum for debates surrounding media and culture with a strong desire to cross between the academic and the popular. This year, M/C Journal celebrates its tenth anniversary, and in this special issue we ask: what is the face of publishing today?

Open Humanities Press is an international open access publishing collective in critical and cultural theory.

Open Humanities Press journals are fully peer reviewed, scholarly publications that have been chosen by OHP's editorial advisory board for their outstanding contribution to contemporary theory.

OHP's journals are independent, published under open access licences and free of charge to readers and authors alike.

A grassroots response to the crisis in scholarly publishing in the humanities, Open Humanities Press is an international open access publishing collective whose mission is to make leading works of contemporary critical thought freely available worldwide.

visit http://openhumanitiespress.org for more details and to see their included publications

I've just been reading articles on the human network blog by Mark Pesce. all have been interesting, particularly the Unevenly Distributed : Production Models for the 21st Century where he talks about the death of television and film industries in their current distribution method. also mentioned were the examples of Ronda Byrne's online / streaming version of The Secret and the success it has brought her. as well as the "League of Peers" movie Steal this Film - Part 1 which is a documentary about file sharing and the troubles faced by Sweden's leading BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay.

another article I read last month (when I couldn't post to the site), was the Kevin Kelley article "1,000 True Fans" from his Technium blog.

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

...

To raise your sales out of the flatline of the long tail you need to connect with your True Fans directly. Another way to state this is, you need to convert a thousand Lesser Fans into a thousand True Fans.

Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day's wages per year in support of what you do. That "one-day-wage" is an average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than that. Let's peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks.

One thousand is a feasible number. You could count to 1,000. If you added one fan a day, it would take only three years. True Fanship is doable. Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It
rewards the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work, the qualities that True Fans appreciate.

sounds easy enough doesn't it ;)

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Kelly also has an interesting article called Humanity's Identity Crises where he asks a couple of questions previously asked by science fiction author Philip K Dick during a 1978 speech.

"The two basic topics which fascinate me are "What is reality?" and "What constitutes the authentic human being?" Over the twenty-seven years in which I have published novels and stories I have investigated these two interrelated topics over and over again. I consider them important topics. What are we? What is it which surrounds us, that we call the not-me, or the empirical or phenomenal world?"

amazing how everything seems to be looping back to the courses and topics at the Maybe Logic Academy lately (well, actually for a while ...)

what does it mean to be human? is it the personal connections you have with others? the amount of things you learn? our physiology? our minds? our hearts? our consciousness? the human connections and networks (as mentioned on the blogs above)? what we think of? what we do? where we work??

another article :
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business by Chris Anderson

Salon Mazal was established in 2001, in Tel Aviv, Israel, by a group of social-environmental activists. Salon Mazal is a non-for-profit registered charity that serves as an information distribution center for social, environmental and political change The place functions as a store (including books, magazines and fair-trade products), a lending library, an artist gallery, a vegetarian bar and a community center where movie screenings, lectures, workshops and meetings take place.

The place is run in line with anarchist ideology and values, which encourage an egalitarian, non-hierarchical community. Salon Mazal is run by a group of volunteers. Consensus decision-making is used to promote the expression of individual voices within the group in daily meetings.

TechGnosis maillist website
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
-Philip K. Dick-
VISIT TECHGNOSIS AT: http://techgnosis.info
SUBSCRIBE to TechGnosis List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TechGnosis/join

http://www.maybelogic.org
http://www.maybelogic.net

http://edge.org/

http://www.techgnosis.com - Erik Davis' site

http://www.undergrowth.org

http://www.barrelfullofmonkeys.org

http://www.entheo.net/ - entheogenesis Australia 2007 conference

http://www.docquan.com/lib_dead.html - an online collection / library of interesting books

Journeybook is a collection of tales of altered states, essays, history and manifesto for psychedelic culture in the 21st century. It covers the modern usage of sacramental plants and offers insights into traditional and contemporary shamanism, as well as analysis of the current state of global psychedelic culture and its place in a sustainable future.

It features interviews with Terence McKenna (previously unpublished), Dennis McKenna, Daniel Pinchbeck, as well as articles by Rak Razam, Erik Davis, Graham St John, Tim Parish, Tim Boucher and a fresh selection of bold new writers from around Australia. At 250 pages, it is fully illustrated with dozens of paintings, photography and digital graphics from the Undergrowth art collective, including new
works by Gerhard Hillmann, Oliver Dunlop, Iswoz, Ahimsa:Love, Tim Parish and others.

Read more or visit http://undergrowth.org/journeybook_sampler_free_to_download to find out more and download the 40 page sampler, and to place an order for the book.

today I read an article about automatic writing.

this is pretty much how I write all the time. occasionally I go back and re-read it and correct any obvious spelling / grammatical errors, but sometimes I don't even do that.

PDF Mags is a site listing hundreds of free arts and music pdf magazines / zines. they also have a calls for submissions listings area so you can find out where to have your work published