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I'm doing the Gnosis Now! online class at Maybe Logic Academy. once again Erik Davis has designed an interesting class and collection of readings and discussion topics for us - ranging from the Nag Hammadi scrolls - Gospel of Thomas & Gospel of Philip and academic analysis of these works, to modern authors such as Franz Kafka, William Burroughs and Philip K Dick.

what I find when I start reading about these things, is that the co-incidences become more obvious and fall into place easier. today I was reading a new zines ning site and came across the online version of Ben Platts-Mills' Two Heads zine. in his Sunday 28th December 2008 entry, he talks about Premembering & remembering the future, and light - the story of light..

which reminds me - evolver academy has some new courses coming up, including the "Transhumanism, Singularities, and Other Far Out Futures" with R.U.Sirius. I'm going to take this class - tempted to do the others there too. these classes are by the Reality Sandwich site writers - they seem to be connected to MLA and Growing Edge too.

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.

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.

A SHIMMY SHAKIN' NIGHT OF LIVE ELECTRO/DANCE-POP WITH SUPER MASSIVE & YEN

Award winning Sydney dance/rock band Super Massive team with fellow electro-funksters Yen for a very special night of electro/dance-pop at the Excelsior Hotel Surry Hills on Saturday 7th March. Newcomers Life Bitter Soul support.

The night showcases three of Sydney's best up and coming electronic/dance rock bands. With all bands on the bill sharing a love of deep rhythm, shimmering synths, poetic pop, not to mention lights and lasers, it's set to be a spectacular, shimmy-shakin' night, if not an outright dancing frenzy, if both Super Massive and Yen's previous shows are anything to go by.

The show is at the Excelsior Hotel, 64 Foveaux St, Surry Hills. The night starts at 8pm. Tickets are $10- at the door.

I've read a few of those money management, investments, shares & real estate books - there's quite a few on the torrent sites / scribd.com & I've bought a few (which I think is one way the author's make more money!) and they're always quick to read on flights. most of the time I think they have common sense tips, but I think a lot of people forget these things or get caught up in debt quite easily these days. I wish we'd had more basic money management and money familiarization education whilst at school as it wasn't something I learnt apart from self-study so perhaps my skills in this area have been lacking for a while. it might have been better to start earlier!

Douglas Rushkoff, "Whose Story is This, Anyway? When Readers Become Writers" at O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference

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The Trap - 1

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Wade Davis: Cultures at the far edge of the world

digital strategist and Stealth Magazine founder Mark Pollard wrote a blog post called How religion games you: Church-suasion observations. very timely as the Gnosis Now! course starts this week. so I've been reading some Gnostic books and Aboriginal Stories - creation myths and the animal talisman stories - and "Critical Path" by R. Buckminster Fuller.

my replies to the thread (I should edit these to be more readable one day, but oh well..)

reply #1

interesting Mark. I also read a lot about these topics. mostly to think about what it is that holds so many people's attentions - the different religions. I'm not religious, perhaps spiritual, but I respect other people's views. I think certainly the world would be a more peaceful place had religions not come to pass.

David Byrne performed in Auckland at ASB Theatre - Aotea Centre last night, 14th Feb 2009, as part of his "Songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno" world tour. I loved the show. The musicians, backup singers and David Byrne all wore white. The lighting was a series of subtle background colours changing for effect in different songs. Byrne chatted with the audience who shouted comments to him & showed their appreciation with loud applause. There were three dancers who acted out the songs - at times Byrne was the fourth dancer. The show was very theatrical as the story of the music, lyrics and movements of the dancers weaved together. The audience was generally an older crowd - mid 30s - 70s from my estimation. The show was sold out. They played a range of songs, from Talking Heads, his earlier collaboration with Brian Eno, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts", and the latest album "Everything that happens will happen today". Another favourite part of the show for me was watching the audience enjoy it so much! I watched one man in his 60s dancing in his seat, shoulders moving, fingers pointing in all directions to the percussive beats. Others were dancing in the aisles and along the edges of the rows of seats.

continuing on from magic squares - video project? blog post - my summary of urls & excerpts to follow from the YASMIN Cybernetics Serendipity Redux discussion in 2008

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Nicolas Schoffer - one of the first artist to talk in public about Cybernetics and art. Nicolas Schoffer wikipedia page (english) -- via jnm - jean noel montagne

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from the work of Vladimir Bonacic, shown in Zagreb in 1968 "Vladimir Bonacic - the early works, Zagreb 1968-197" by darko fritz :

could a maths story work?

at scanz there was a paper called "Complexity and Cybernetics Redux" by Nina Czegledy and it mentioned Magic Squares. these cover topics such as mysticism, philosophy, mathematics. could the game/puzzle be to solve the magic square. the game leaders send out clues which reflect the numbers& people go out and find the item that has been uploaded to represent each square. eg, so people could film clues like numbers from different places, a quantity of subjects (eg if the number was 10, then film collections of 10 things in a single clip), or even make a video about a saying/piece of writing that might represent the numbers. whatever people can think of

I'm heading to New Plymouth this evening for SCANZ 2009 - Symposium being held over the weekend. so I've been reading about some of the participating artists and their projects. the intro for Brett Stalbaum gave me a few ideas for a * very simple * gps video project. below is the paragraph that triggered my thoughts - especially the phrase "letting voluminous GIS data and some algorithms we wrote tell us where to go"

steps
- in your local area, or a place where you can go to easily more than once (eg probably best to do in your own country not whilst overseas unless it's somewhere you can visit again)
- walk around the space once and collect the gps data
- then use (write first) a program - perhaps web based so you could use your mobile phone??? - that randomizes the data co-ordinates and selects a position for you to go to

playing with isadora

http://www.vimeo.com/3076782

zoom'n'fx from kath on Vimeo.