I’ve been looking through the craftivist collective website and some of their projects. they do many fibre / textiles / craft based activism (craftivism) projects to raise issues to people in the community. they also write about slow activism and the importance of personal reflection when making – I love this idea and it’s something people can do from home without having to be too vocal (verbally) with their ideas – work on projects to highlight issues they think are important. so I purchased one of their mini protest banner kits and it arrived from the UK yesterday. tonight I embroidered a message and sewed the aida onto the fabric. it was the first time I’ve embroidered letters so the first couple of lines are a bit wonky (especially the “D”), and I found it easier to write in all caps so I’m probably shouting the message, but I was getting the hang of it towards the end (though I ran out of space on the last line – need to plan it out next time)
I had the idea today to write a story about memory windows. I think it was after the second coffee. now I can't think of what to write - the characters. this week I've been on holidays and have been relaxing and reading. the "Exegesis" by Philip K Dick arrived (finally - it seems it might have been delayed due to a missing / between my apartment number and street number on the package's postal address). so I started reading it, but it's straight into the gnostic themes, which I haven't read for a few months so then I started listening to the Aeon Byte podcasts again and buying ebooks from Amazon & Google to read in my chrome cloud reader. one was about Hermes Trismegistus, called The quest for Hermes Trismegistus : from ancient Egypt to the modern world" by Gary Lachman. another is "Sacred Economics" by Charles Eisenstein, who's class I'm taking starting this week on Evolver. "The Gift" by Lewis Hyde - which has a great essay on Ezra Pound as the last chapter. I've been meaning to find out more about Pound for a while, so this was good to read. another is a collection of interviews in a book called "Voices of Gnosticism" by Miguel Conner - who hosts and produces the Aeon Byte podcasts mentioned previously.
today, I listened to a song that Matty Fresh had posted on facebook. very lush - lovely piano sounds & beats. I’ve seen a video interview with him where he showed the process he follows in producing a beat - digging in the crates, sampling the vinyl records, transferring to the computer.
then I had these thoughts about the piano sample taken from the record. the sound has layers of stories and human connections with it. there’s the pianist - all those years of training and practicing the piano which led to them playing that song on the day it was recorded. the composer of the original song. the booking of the sound recording studio - I can imagine the musicians in the room - the pianist at the piano, playing the song. how many times did they play this melody that day. did they get into the zone. the sound recording engineer recording the sounds - how did they adjust & tweak the sounds. was it recorded onto tape. was it a new tape or had it been used before and were there traces of older sounds already on the tape. then it was sent to the vinyl processing plant to be both archived and brought to life during the vinyl production process. were there any imperfections introduced in this process. all these steps took time. did the musician think about their performance again afterwards - wonder if they could have changed something, or if it was perfect as is. then the industry takes over and the record gets released and people buy it. who bought this record - the one that the sample was taken from. how many hands has it passed through, and how many plays did it have on people's home record players, or out & about? what were the people doing when they listened - what were they thinking. did their record players add some imperfections to the sounds by faulty equipment, or overuse? did they play the record over & over so it was almost worn out and the vinyl getting thinner and thinner with each play. at some point their lives changed and the record was sold and ended up in a dusty record bin that Matty Fresh pulled it out of and took home and added to his collection. how many other songs were listened to before this one was chosen - how many times was it played by him to be imprinted on his memory to pull it out later when this song was being created.
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
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
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)
]
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]
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.
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)
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.
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.
in China, dakou (to make a hole) + surplus from the West led to experimental music & art exposure @ http://bit.ly/8ZWnb1 ... "One could find collected works of Andy Warhol or Stan Brakhage or Leni Riefenstahl next to Disney or James Bond" ... "probably an average Chinese person saw more experimental, cutting edge cinema then most well educated people in the West."
notes from:
The Sound of the Underground
An Overview of Experimental and Non-Academic Music in China
by Zbigniew Karkowski & Yan Jun http://bit.ly/8ZWnb1
Dickson Dee -> label Sound Factory -> NoiseAsia
Wang Fan -> created arguably China’s first real experimental music work: a mysterious 40-ininute lo-fi piece
Sound artist, curator and critic Yan Jun -> Subjam label in Beijing
Taiwanese composer and contemporary music theoretician Dajuin Yao -> Post-Concrete label
last weekend I did a Spinning & Weaving class at Sydney Community College with Pat Davidson, and a yarn & fibre dyeing class in the Blue Mountains with Wooldancer. both were great - though I am now behind in answering uni philosophy class questions ;) this week I also came across Travis' actionweaver site via @spindexer. I made one of the card looms using his template on the site. I didn't use the backstrap though and because I'd folded the card - I'd only had photo paper available so it's not the most sturdy of looms - it became weaker. I've ordered one of his portable laser looms, so it should arrive over the next couple of weeks. photos of my first attempt :
