Sound A Day was inspired by Shannon O'Neill who is posting one of his sounds each day.

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.

:::

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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4th edition Streaming Festival starts on the 20th of November 2009.
Online festival explores alternative presentations for upcoming artists

On 20 November the 4th edition will exhibit more than hundred works of audio visual art from international artists on the Streaming Festival website. Ten days non-stop contemporary art, films and visual experiments, available at any time from any location.
The Streaming Festival is based in the Netherlands but has no geographical borders; anyone with an internet connection can plug into a festival stream and start watching without having to pay an entrance fee.

Perth-based beats duo "Projekt Inertia" announce the release of their new single "Someone like You" through Trans:Com. This EP features 4 very fine leftfield vocal and instrumental dance tracks, and includes bonus remixes for breaks and dub lovers; with mixes by Lo Key Fu, Fridayz, and Victor Xray. The EP is available now on iTunes at http://itunes.com/ProjektInertia - so go and have a listen! -- Trans:Com. Keep an ear out for their upcoming album too

Projekt Inertia's soundcloud page

Rupert Howe, the amazing & enthusiastic videoblogger is running a video project. he's invited artists & people to create a video based on two videos made by other participants. for my video I wanted to practice using Processing so I wrote a (very basic) program which allowed me to "paint" with one video on top of the other, whilst drawing thin lines on the screen & between the videos as a way to link them together. my inspiration videos were made by Ryanne Hodson and Kevin Buckstiegel.

attached is the final version of the processing patch file I made, and also the initial version (& also here)

the inspiration / thoughts I had whilst watching the source videos :

atoms of life remuxed together
codes building blocks
diving into the infinite universe of code & atoms
video painting
interactive - controlled by mouse movements & 2 videos affecting each other (when creating the video, not playing)
lines draw points between the two - connecting them too

initially I used the audio from Kevin's source video but I wasn't sure if he'd made it so wasn't sure how to reference it properly (it was part music & part muffled conversations from what I could tell), then I read some emails about Stan Brakhage on frameworks and remembered the readings / viewings I'd done of his work when I was looking into Len Lye's work, so remembered he used to create videos with no sound as "visual thinking". so I've left the final version having no sound track (not quite a lumiere though) as a homage to his amazing work.

:::

I had some problems uploading the videos to youtube - the drawn lines turned from thin straight lines into aliased dotted lines. the video looked OK if played from my own webserver, but really bad from youtube.

Rupert sent me some conversion tips :
1. save as .divx & upload
2. use the settings below for mp4

Don't upload at 640x480 - upload at 480 x 360
Use the following settings:
H264 encoding
.mp4 not .mov
480x360
Bitrate: 12000 (really!)
Framerate: 29.97
Audio Codec mpeg4aac auto bitrate
Stereo 48000 sample rate

this is the .mp4 sample video using Rupert's mp4 settings : this video looked OK

:::

I also tried re-making the video using linewidth=2 (instead of default which is 1) & exporting as divx in QT pro. this looked OK. I ended up using this video for my project submission (well, this video with 10 seconds of black added to the end & no sound, so technically the final one is based on this version..) the final versio came out at 42 seconds duration - which is not 23 but 42 is a good number for life ;)

drawing divx test
line width=2 divx version

@nick_sweepah sent me the link to an excellent audio interview with Philip K Dick from 1974 on the Kick to Kill blog. the audio file is split into 11 mp3 tracks. I'm not sure if this is a temporary link, but I hope it stays active!

bookmarking Expanded Cinema - by Gene Youngblood - I have a printed copy of this book, but this online version will be useful for quick & remote access. there's an introduction by R. Buckminster Fuller too!

ExpandedCinema-GeneYoungblood

Call for Expressions of Interest _
http://www.intercreate.org/view/eco-sapiens

/
\\\\\\\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ SCANZ 2011: Eco sapiens

Extinction or adaptation? Evolution or Revolution? What are we facing?

The complexity and urgency of the crises of today calls for us to
engage together in new ways. Deep shifts in our consciousness may be
required for long-term cultural changes to occur. This is a call for
expressions of interest from people who are concerned with these issues.

A symposium followed by a residency is to be held late January to
early February 2011 in New Plymouth, Aotearoa New Zealand. Initial
expressions of interest are due 21 November, 2009.

\
//////////////// / Symposium

The SCANZ 2011: Eco sapiens symposium will be an event involving
individuals from a number of different worlds (e.g scientists,
artists, social activists and community change agents, cultural
commentators, educators, tangata whenua). Our primary aim is to
facilitate connections and foster innovative, and practical solutions
to the issues we are facing. Accordingly, a mixture of presentations,
discussions, informal exchanges and workshops are planned. Roger
Malina will be presenting from France on 'Open observatories', and Te
Huirangi Waikerepuru will speak on Maori conceptions of environment.
The symposium will inspire and inform the residency that follows, and
also provide opportunities for people to collaborate on projects
beyond SCANZ.

\
//////////////// / Residency

The SCANZ 2011: Eco sapiens two week residency is designed for those
individuals or groups who would like to work on creative, poetically
pragmatic or provocative projects which raise awareness of the issues
that confront us, generate connections between people, and with their
natural environment, and which grapple with the challenges of
individual and collective evolution.

Interdisciplinary approaches and the involvement of diverse groups is
welcomed. Residency projects can take place in a wirelessly networked
botanic garden, along the coastline and with communities. Networked,
DIY, or otherwise actively and openly distributed concepts are also
encouraged. Project participants are not necessarily required to be in
New Plymouth. Residency projects that are shortlisted will be included
in funding applications.

read more for details or visit http://www.intercreate.org/view/eco-sapiens

window farms are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials. The goal of the project is to create a new Research & Development model which puts the awesome power of discovery and creation into the hands of the masses, and then spread the know-how to every participant.

Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray are artists working to create crowdsourced R&D solutions for environmental issues. Their inspiration for community involvement derives from concepts of local production (think of the coming network of 3D multi-material printers) and mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0. They envision the DIY aspect, not as a nostalgia-inducing hobby or a compromise during hard financial times, but as a futuristic infrastructure-light alternative to big R&D. They work to frame a movement where people feel validated, welcomed into an effort to break apart scientific breakthroughs into actionable tasks, and motivated to contribute. They believe it's time to take the potential contributions of the general public to the environmental movement more seriously. They are currently residents at Eyebeam, the art and technology atelier in New York. Their work has been featured in ArtNews, on the Discovery Channel, at the Venice Biennale, and the A+C gallery in Chicago. They own an interactive design agency in New York, Submersible Design, through which they consult with science and art museums about creating participatory media.

Visit the project sites @ http://brittaandrebecca.org and http://windowfarms.org - contact Britta & Rebecca if you would like to make your own Window Farm

as part of the "Transhumanism, Singularities, and Other Far Out Futures" class with R.U. Sirius at Evolver Academy we watched TechnoCalyps: Transhuman documentary - here are my notes & quotes from viewing the film
note: times mentioned are rough times only

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT_LnUObIf8

- keeping the brain surviving outside of the body - experiments with animals
05:25 - total body transplant. Stephen Hawkings could possibly survive a total body transplant?
06:10 - consciousness can be transplanted. human soul? can be argued that this can be transplanted. they did experiments with monkeys - transplanted the head of one monkey onto another & it lived for 7 days before being rejected

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z257yC2HAlI

01:10 - humanising the pig kidney/liver so it's not rejected by human body, then transplanting these into humans (pigs as donors)

01:35 metamouse - laboratory grown ear on back of a mouse. hasn't Stelarc been growing an ear on his arm? art project?

03:25 - artist - designing future human bodies. 'after all the body is an extension of fashion' -- I think the body was around before fashion...

10:00 - most people think you have to build a brain and a body will fall out of it. but when you look at nature, well over half the species on Earth have no brain to speak of at all yet manage to move around and survive very effectively.

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxBGMGxVCg0

00:00 - scientists have evolved very effective nervous systems. not brains

03:10 - history of humans is that they haven't treated other life that is similar to humans very well. even back to neanderthals when the homosapiens arrived - they didn't live in co-operation, even though they were very similar. even back to 500 years (or this year?) humans haven't treated other humans well (colonization)
won't be pleasant for the losers. -- joseph m rosen

08:30 - highlighted/coloured nerve cells - can see them working

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZShORepzB-g

04:45 - replacing part of the biological brain with microchip. inputs & outputs still work the same

06:45 - using these computer chip-brain replacements now for sound recognition - to recognise sounds of gunshots which make a camera zoom in on the sound - crime stopper cameras in high crime areas. member of the black community says that they are being watched whereas white community areas are not

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGQjwhntAG0

01:30 fit onto a cd rom - 600Mb I bet that's all you need to copy a person

03:25 scientists can move a single atom from one place to another

05:50 they want to build nanobots (low number of atoms devices with computers more powerful than today) - inject them into the human body eg bloodstream to kill cancer cells, modify dna, etc

06:15 basic goal of nanotechnology is to build an assembler (auto-assembler) - a very basic device, that can build copies of itself

06:50 molecular nanotechnology is to physical reality what computer programming is to virtual reality. .. bit of an exaggeration, but gives the idea.. whereas computer programmers can program software to do what they want, molecular nanotechnology will allow us to change matter at the most fundamental level. it will allow us to build just about any kind of structure, to our exact specifications by moving individual atoms. ... this sounds like a world of magic(k) where all that we imagined becomes reality but the role of the good fairy is taken over by robots so miniscule that we cannot see them. (background images of Cinderella where pumpkin changes into a coach) and instead of saying the magic word, we program them to grant all our wishes.
>> myths, dreams & fairy tales - the human premonition of what we will one day create. or if not premonition, the imagination of what we want to create?

07:40 the other side of the fairy tale is what is called the "grey goo syndrome" - nanobots programmed for terrorist action or rapidly start reproducing themselves & a chain reaction causes planet to be reduced in 72hours into a grey goo of swarming nanobots

08:00 most scientists think that "grey goo syndrome" is very unlikely - we will have nanotechnology to control nanotechnology.
>> the "watchdog" - who's watching the watchdog??

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Wx3UPyd6U

00:00 this is not the end of history. becoming post-human creates new problems. still have same personality problems as before. you're just going to be "more" than you were before. you'll have more power. with more power comes more responsibility.

GE AR - augmented reality
I tried playing this AR video at home tonight and it worked! this is the first attempt so the video I took is a bit dodgy but it gives an idea. the cat was purring whilst I was recording and kept nudging my head. I tried blowing on the mic but couldn't get the windmill blades to spin. try it out! now I want to try make my own!!
thanks to @LukeSnarl for tweeting the link

http://vimeo.com/4764743 :

GE AR - augmented reality from kath on Vimeo.

GE page
- print out the marker
- u might need to upgrade your flash player to v10
- turn on your webcam (mac - do this with flash player not photobooth - read the help tips on the url for help)
- launch wind power or solar energy links
(if you just see the green oval spinning then it probably can't see your camera)
- hold the marker printout so it's facing your webcam.. then watch the 3d images appear!

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality

http://bit.ly/9V5hV is a better video demo (clearer than what I've done - but I wanted to try it myself)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00FGtH5nkxM

luke sent me a great AR game by Julian Oliver (NZ) :
http://vimeo.com/1320756 :

levelHead v1.0, 3 cube speed-run (spoiler!) from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

this is amazing!
he's made a game using cubes - called Levelhead - it's won all sorts of awards (deservedly so!)
he explains it on his website @ http://julianoliver.com/levelhead (& has code for you to try too)

Julian is part of HIT Lab NZ - The Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand - from their site it looks like they're doing some pretty cool stuff!!

ARToolKit

ARToolKit
ARToolKit documentation page - with samples, tutorials and background details

QR code twitter posts (bookmarks) :

11:18 AM May 15th from web : Invader's tile graf - using QR codes / binary code street art @ http://bit.ly/CIZ1T (via nettime-l)

9:41 PM May 15th from web : nice. just found out my phone already has a built in QR barcode scanner & it read one I'd made & saved ok

9:42 PM May 15th from web : now, are there any secret coded messages out there

10:00 PM May 15th from web : oh right, so I could scan a mobile code on a poster/flyer and it'll take me to the url. maybe I could make a video/flipbook-book of codes

10:01 PM May 15th from web : codezine decoded via phone

(you can almost see the lightbulb light up here..)
10:01 PM May 15th from web : maybe ARGs are using these? they're popular in Japan

:::

used Nokia's mobile codes page to make a QR code

QR code wikipedia page

link to a movie file :

I've been reading Erik Davis' "Techgnosis" book and thinking about MUDs and MOOs again. I used to play on the MOOs back in the early-mid 90s and read up about them again to see if they were still running a while ago : mud articles + moo articles. so I was thinking on the train home last night that twitter seemed very similar - it seems similar to IRC to me, as well as the MUDs/MOOs - the syntax of the commands ie the @ like the @command_name in MUDs/MOOs & IRC. some twitter software uses the auto-reply DM when people follow you, so I was wondering if you could reuse / subvert this to be used in a MOO/MUD on the twitterverse? or even not using DMs, but just open tweets.

yesterday, @DustForEyes posted an "AR scratching" video by vanderlin to stealth board & twitter. it's tagged with tags such as AR, augmented reality, opencv, and openframeworks, so I googled some of these. the AR markers seem like the fiducial markers found in reactable - note there's going to be a performance / demo of one of these called dubtable at ripped next week which would be cool to check out.

USE YOUR TALENTS TO EXPAND THE GENE POOL

Charles Darwin discovers social networking! Salute the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species, by sharing your adventurous vision of evolution and mutation in Gene Pool (pool.org.au/genepool).

Gene Pool takes evolution way beyond survival of the fittest, sex and the 'selfish gene', or scientists in lab coats. Cultures and ideas mutate too. Contribute a poem, story, photo or tribute, or perhaps a home movie or mini-documentary, a piece of music or field recording. Use other people's contributions to create your own recombinations, mash-ups, mutations, mixes and musings - or slice, dice and remix gems from the ABC archives - Gene Pool is full of possibilities.

In an ABC first, Gene Pool releases content from the ABC's archives under a Creative Commons licence so it's free for you to download and rework however you wish.

any ideas of history/origins of Apollo Space program samples in electronic dance music? (Q via maillist, pls help) http://tinyurl.com/cdx84e

I'm on a maillist which discusses EDM (electronic dance music) and one of the members/list managers, Graham St John (an Australian scholar who has compiled a few books on EDM) has asked about origins of samples from the Apollo Space mission in music. he's asking specifically about dance related music but the discussion has brought up Sun Ra's name. so I was wondering if anyone here knows of examples/history along hip hop / funk /soul / electro (80s, not 2000s) & electronic dance music lines which might help plot the history deeper? (the discussion then went onto alien imagery at some psytrance events but that's another topic)

here's the initial request from Graham St John :
I'm attempting to trace the appeal of Apollo Space Program dialogue

Vibewire Youth Inc. is proud to present their six-year running online conference for young people. This year, held in conjunction with the Australian Innovation Festival, the festival is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to log on and create or join conversations with a range of exciting guest panellists.

WHAT IS e-FESTIVAL OF IDEAS?
The festival has four general areas on politics, human rights, the economy and generation Y. Within those there are forums with discussions on issues such as:

* What's the upside of the current economic downturn?
* How much do online profiles affect (or create) jobs?
* What's missing from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
* How is Facebook and Twitter making a social change?
* How is 24-hour news cycles affecting politics?
* Is the quest to save the environment just really about politics and power?

read more for details or visit http://www.vibewire.org, @vibewire or e-FESTIVAL facebook event

Streaming Festival and Geborgen Kamers present:

Fragments

15 - 17 April 2009

Fragments brings together video work that in some way address the idea of fragmentation, whether through visual technique or concept. Several films in this selection focus on the object of the photograph -a reminiscent of a fraction of time and memory. Others are based on the structural elements of film making such as the close up shot and abstraction as the basis.

hotel textures from kath on Vimeo

heritage hotel auckland - textures - these are short clips of different textures in the hotel - rooms & floors, furniture & wall dividers

07/04/2009 tuesday
auckland

#videobloggingweek
#videobloggingweek2009

http://vimeo.com/4060723
http://blip.tv/file/1971044

blog entry @ http://www.aliak.com/content/videobloggingweek2009-day2-hotel-textures

late night after work from kath on Vimeo

late night after work

auckland

06/04/2009 monday

#videobloggingweek

#videobloggingweek2009

http://blip.tv/file/1971082
http://vimeo.com/4061062

blog post @
http://www.aliak.com/content/videobloggingweek2009-day1-late-night-after...

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.

the RHIZOME discussion list has had threads recently and in the past about "Epic Net Art" & whether there has been any net art that is EPIC.

I followed a few links and thought they were interesting projects - epic or not I can't comment.

Bruce Sterling's workshop - Designing Processes Rather Than Art on designing processes for generative art, which can be replicated by other people to produce the generative art work

generative nature - text by Marco Mancuso (in Italian)

Transcription of Lecture by David Ross, San Jose State University, March 2, 1999 - including Ross's 21 Distinctive Qualities of Net.Art

Announcing Synaesthesia, Art, Science & Technology Discussion Group on the Leonardo Education Forum (LEF)

Following the Synaesthesia Discussion on YASMIN Discussions List, during the month of February 2009, we wish to inform you that this discussion will continue on the Leonardo Education Forum on the topic of Synaesthesia, Art, Science & Technology.

To join the discussion, please register at: http://forum.lefnet.org/node/26

This Discussion Group invites comments on Synaesthesia, Art / Science topics as well as announcements on art projects, research and relevant events.

The LEF Synaesthesia Discussion Group is part of the Leonardo Synesthesia and Intersenses Special Project launched in 1999 by Jack Ox and Jacques Mandelbrojt (www.leonardo.info/isast/spec.projects/synesthesia/synesthesia.html) and is currently moderated by Veroniki Korakidou, PhD Candidate - Research Associate at the University of Athens NT Lab, Communication and Media Department.

I'm on a mail list about net cinema and art videoblogging called "Artists in the Cloud". Rupert posted a message yesterday about Adrian Miles's Vogme Manifesto and subsequent thoughts on group philosophies. I'm posting Rupert's email below in full so I don't have to keep referring back to my email account or the web email account (as they move quickly sometimes & it's easy to lose track). I've added links to Adrian Mile's vog manifesto for reference too.

I don't really know much about film history or theory and I've forgotten most of my art theory, though I keep across net art and new media, I guess I havent' sorted out formerly in my own head what it is that I do when I try to make 'art'-like videos. I'm not sure I need a manifesto, but perhaps it would be a good exercise to think about it. I've looked back at videos that I've made over past years and they do seem to be similar so perhaps there is an unconscious 'manifesto' in play already.

so, last night & today I've been finding some from artists I either admire or have recently been finding out about. and of course, in using the internet, this has led me on some tangents so I've discovered some new artists too. collating snippets here for further thought.

cicada is a collection of artists who work with landscape - urban, natural, constructed and imagined... a combination of results occur, including site-specific installations, performances and interactive pieces... cicada also make other bits of sound+image works for theatre, dance and performance projects... and occational urban gifts of unexpected enlightenment...

Cicada projects have included :
* Mob - an installation exploring the crowd as a discrete organism.
* Saltmilk and other wonders - work resulting from a residency in the West Australian wheat town of Kellerberrin.
* Amensal - an interactive street level installation, a purely negative urban symbiosis.
* Re_Squared - an immersive outdoor audio visual performance celebrating moments of discovered beauty in the city.

visit http://www.cicada.tv for more details