AliaK [filter] ::: specture

A new annual outdoor festival has hit Sydney's inner west. The 2008 Sydney Shakespeare Festival kicks off in January with Much Ado About Nothing, a boisterous celebration of love as well as a sobering examination of misinterpretation, dishonesty and deception. The festival is on at 8pm every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 11 January until 17 February 2008 in Bicentennial Park, Glebe Foreshore. The festival is FREE for children 12 years and under, people with disabilities and people aged 65 years and over. For the first two weeks of the festival only, for every ticket purchased, the second ticket is FREE. 10% of every ticket sold throughout the festival will be donated to the Millennium Foundation for HIV Research. read more for details or visit http://www.sydneyshakespearefestival.com.au

Maarav is an online art and culture magazine, established to present the contemporary Israeli art world, and to discuss and debate it from the perspective and reality of Israel in the year 2004. They examine the nature and destiny of art and culture that is being created in a place of continuous violence and conflict, as it struggles against extreme capitalism and the rules of the 'free market', as it creates itself under the influence of the great shadow of the 11th of September. Playing a role in the clash of civilizations (indeed clash of civilizations?), and in this era of the digital revolution with all these techno-digital toys that are so captivating but also so threatening. We will discuss art that leaves the confines of museums and galleries and enters popular culture and that its creators are also political activists, computer programmers, journalists, teachers, musicians, philosophers and designers.

visit http://www.maarav.org.il/en for more details

This month's presentations range from synthetic birds in swampy wetlands to wireless ultrasonic rangefinding with Arduinos. Steve Adam will talk about his Common Sounds installation, which was set in the Sale Common Wetland Reserve (Gippsland) for the WaterWater Festival in November 2005. The installation uses real-time generated synthetic multichannel audio which was diffused in a swampy wetland setting. The system was self-powered and involved numerous technical challenges. The installation's sounds include a range of synthetic birds and insects. Ross Bencina & Danielle Wilde will discuss the design and construction of an ultrasonic rangefinding system built as part of a recent residency at Steim Amsterdam by Ross, Danielle and Somaya Langley. The idea was to create a wireless system for measuring the distance between performers by timing ultrasonic pings from one unit to another. Each range finder unit uses an Arduino and has two separate ultrasonic sender and receiver circuits. The units use Nordic Semiconductor NRF2401 digital wireless radios to synchronise and transmit data back to a basestation. Ross and Danielle will discuss the successes and limitations of the project to date. read more for more details and links for each of the projects, or visit http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotmelbourne/

Reality Sandwich is a web magazine for this time of intense transformation. Their subjects run the gamut from sustainability to shamanism, alternate realities to alternative energy, remixing media to re-imagining community, holistic healing techniques to the promise and perils of new technologies. They hope to spark debate and engagement by offering a forum for voices ranging from the ecologically pragmatic to the wildly visionary (which, to our delight, sometimes turn out to be the one and the same). Counteracting the doom-and-gloom of the daily news, Reality Sandwich is a platform for voices conveying a different vision of the transformations we face. Their goal is to inspire psychic evolution and a kind of earth alchemy.

-- info adapted from the reality sandwich about page

Erik Davis is an award-winning journalist, independent scholar, and "performance lecturer" based in San Francisco. He is the author, most recently, of The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape, with photographs by Michael Rauner. He also wrote Led Zeppelin IV and TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information, the latter a cult classic of visionary media studies that has been translated into five languages. His essays on art, music, technoculture, and contemporary spirituality have appeared in over a dozen books, including AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man, Zig Zag Zen, The Disinformation Book of Lies, 010101: Art in Technological Times (SFMOMA), and Prefiguring Cyberculture. Davis has contributed articles and essays to a variety of publications, including Bookforum, ArtForum, Salon, Blender, the LA Weekly, and the Village Voice. For many years he was a contributing writer at Wired, and he is now the editor-at-large for Evolver magazine.

The Gnosis Archive offers a vast collection of primary texts and resources relating to Gnosticism and the Gnostic Tradition, both ancient and modern. There is also information on the Nag Hammadi Scrolls / Scriptures hosted on this site.

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.

News and events from ANDREW LEAVOLD of Trash Video, Vulture St West End - _the_ place to buy / access all those hard to get cult films. read more to find out the newest trash video finds, what's coming up on the Bris 31 tv show SCHLOCK TREATMENT: Drive-In Double and Triple Features, recommended film events not to miss and more. read more or visit www.trashvideo.com.au for details