I just saw the email for the upcoming Maybe Logic Academy courses - there's another by Douglas Rushkoff called Corporatized - An Alternative To Corporatism & Beyond coming up in January 2009 - scheduled for 6 weeks from January 12 to February 22. his last class "Technologies of Persuasion - From Propaganda to Paranoia" was great - the class was very popular and had a lot of people in it. the first few weeks moved really quickly, by the last few weeks it was running at a slower pace so I could try and catch up. I was doing the The Crazy Wisdom of Philip K. Dick class with Erik Davis at the same time, so I was running behind on the Rushkoff class as the PKD class was so interesting! Fingers crossed there might be another PKD class with Erik Davis too - I asked and they said Maybe! (excuse the pun :)
I think Rushkoff's new class will be really interesting, especially as in the Persuasion class he mentioned his thoughts on the global economy and how we should be using a different 'money' system & alternative currencies. He's written many books, and columns with newspapers such as New York Times & Guardian of London. He now also writes for Arthur Magazine, which I think in some ways has taken over from where Mondo 2000 and previously Reality Hackers magazines started. Arthur No. 29, May 2008 has one of his articles, Riding out the Credit Crisis which I think was very timely considering the state of economic affairs around the globe now with some regions stating they are in a recession. this month's Arthur # 31 - October 2008 has another article by Rushkoff called "No Money Down" (pages 26-27) which is worth a read too - the pdf's are available to download on their site (part A has this article). he also has a forum on his site where some of the discussions can take place & continue from previous (and I'm assuming future) MLA courses, boing boing posts, Arthur articles and his books.
from Riding out the Credit Crisis : "Whatever the case, the best thing you can do to protect yourself and your interests is to make friends. The more we are willing to do for each other on our own terms and for compensation that doesn’t necessarily involve the until-recently-almighty dollar, the less vulnerable we are to the movements of markets that, quite frankly, have nothing to do with us."
...
"Think small. Buy local. Make friends. Print money. Grow food. Teach children. Learn nutrition. And if you do have money to invest, put it into whatever lets you and your friends do those things."
today 18/10/2008 was the Sydney Drupal Camp - held at University of NSW campus in Camperdown & hosted by the Drupal Australia Group. Ryan Cross did a fantastic job organising the "unconference" with assistance from many people in the group. I'm too tired right now to write up my notes about it - suffice to say it was a great event and I learnt a few new tips to try out. I'll try write more tomorrow & post the photos (I only took a few) after some sleep. I'd helped out by recording audio of the sessions which will be uploaded to the group site & available for those who couldn't make it.
attached are the raw notes I took during the day - pasted below for searching purposes. I spent all day in the "B" area - which was beginners, but they went through some of the new drupal 6 modules I haven't used much yet. area "A" was more for the hardcore programmers.
IN CONJUNCTION WITH 21:100:100 AT GERTRUDE CONTEMPORARY ART SPACES ,
GCAS AND MIAF PRESENTS,
21:100:100 IN CONCERT
An evening featuring phenomenal sound artists from Melbourne and beyond
This live performance at BMW Edge, Federation Square is a companion piece to the exhibition of sound works at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. This concert takes the concept of 21:100:100 beyond the gallery walls, beyond the headphones and enables audiences to listen to the works in a live concert spectacle.
Yokoo is a relatively new face in Brisbane's clubs, though not without experience and a bag full of top shelf deep techno. Productions as well complete the picture, also making good use of an intelligent ear for tonal and tribal deep tech. His sound is evidently a recreation of his deeply spiritual relationship with technology and music.
Originally hailing from Strasbourg, France, Yokoo has made good use of the short time he has been in Australia, hitting up both Family and The Met in Brisbane, Platinum on the Coast, and Spice in Sydney. He also translates to the festival crowd, chosen to set up rooms at the recent Armin van Buuren event, and coming up at Global Gathering.
I went to the Sydney Drupal Usergroup - October Meetup last night - my first one in Sydney. previously I've only been to the drupal sessions at fosdem 2005 in Brussels as I'd never been to Brussels and wanted to see what it was like. I'd been using drupal for a couple of years at the time and was testing upgrades. initially this site was a custom made php site that I coded to let me do data entry for events / news items and display them on the site in the same format I used for the mail lists which had been running for a few years prior to the site - so at the time, the custom php site saved me time. but also I found I spent a lot of time getting the site to work and adding new features, so when a friend (thanks Damian) asked me over to try out some CMS's including Drupal and we got it working in about an hour, I was hooked! the format of the articles was not exactly the same as what the previous site had been using, but it was so much easier to manage! I can't remember the exact date I moved the site to drupal, but by looking at the the wayback machine pages, it seems to have been in june / july 2003 - maybe 23rd july??
so, back to the Sydney meeting...
I was surprised to see so many people there - probably around 25-30 people. I hadn't realised drupal was so popular in Australia - though to be honest, I hadn't really checked for a few years. even the European and USA conferences and meetings are really popular now! great to see!! and there's so many books available.
I've been in Brisbane for past 12 days - catching up with lots of old and new friends. Valli & Dave moved to the UK. Frankie and I made a video - he'd kept a Strawberry from Strawberry Fields '96 and took it out for dinner last thursday night, so we made a video of the strawberry wandering the streets of the Valley looking for some of the old clubs which have since closed down.
Strawberry looking for lost clubs in the Valley
How Frankie found his Strawberry
I went to the Reunion Rave at the Met on friday night. it was a fantastic party! the djs played all the old tracks that were played at clubs years ago Thief's set was a highlight - he played tracks from Magic Roundabout @ Metropolis + The Site, as was the return of Vision Four 5. The screens in the MET were amazing too - the visuals were so crisp & clear. The lasers in the main room were great too. I caught up with so many people and danced most of the night. could hardly walk on Saturday though! but as Custa said "it's because of the hard floors - not because of my age or the fact I haven't used those muscles in a long time" sounds right to me!
I took some photos and video clips throughout the night, but most of the time I forgot I had the cameras as I was too busy talking and dancing. I think this is why I have hardly any photos from parties back in the day!
so now I'm listening to Damage's Soul Mix - a great set to wind down after holidays and first day back at work. I'm really liking his selection in this mix. the terntable jediz guys are doing well. sheep's back in Brisbane, and Freestyle's records are selling for crazy prices on discogs - 80 EURO for the 2006 Roy Davis Jnr remix "The Session" 12''. good to hear! I've heard they're going to be playing some regular (additional) gigs soon too.
Alternative Media in Brisbane by Stephen Stockwell is a paper available on Griffith Uni website. It lists some of the more underground publications in Brisbane from 1965-1985
Graffiti Technica is dedicated to the progression of hardcore electronic art and 3d graffiti. The graffiti designs and lettering on the site are completely digital - to explore new ways of creating pieces.
Graffiti has always influenced me since the first time I saw works from trains on the way to the school... All the back industrial lots were covered in styles from generic tagging to intricately designed works. Back and forwards to school gave me loads of time to understand the styles and colors that were being used. It was so far advanced from anything that was in the modern culture that it was no wonder that people didn't understand it.
Australia's largest festival of experimental electronic arts and culture, "Electrofringe", will burst through the cracks of Newcastle from October 2 – 6, 2008, for its eleventh year as part of "This Is Not Art". More than 100 emerging and established artists from Australia and overseas will take part in 80 events over five days including workshops, gigs, screenings, performance and public intervention.
Electrofringe in 2008 brims with new ventures. These include an artists-in-residence program and a three-week interactive media exhibition. New program gems include a hybrid media/dance performance, an all-girls soldering workshop, a chorus composed for Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, an audiovisual "love-in", and a chamber recital for robots.
Special international guests include Birchville Cat Motel (NZ), Domenico Sciajno (Italy), xtine (US), The League of Imaginary Scientists (everywhere) and The Green Eyl & Sengewald (Germany). Japan is well represented by elongated harshcore musician Maruosa, noise artists Pig & Machine, and experimental multi-instrumentalist KK NULL.
crowdsourcing is defined by Jeff Howe from wired.com on his site http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com as "Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call." [The White Paper Version] and [The Soundbyte Version] "The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.". He coined the term then later wrote a book about the subject : Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. I think Facebook and Myspace are good examples of crowdsourcing these days - having regular people provide content for their sites. As is wikipedia. And even to a small extent this site - but I tend to provide 90% of the content here!
article abstract : "In April 2006, there were nearly 22,000 members of the Iowa State University community registered in Facebook. Two years later there are nearly 35,000 members, an increase of nearly 60 percent."
The Holga is a 120 film toy camera that produces colourful, sometimes vignetted photos and is used in the field of LOMO photography otherwise known as lomography. There are different models of Holga cameras.
the lomography.com site has thousands of examples of lomographic photos such as this one :
there's lomographic exhibitions too which feature lomowalls
Australia's largest festival of experimental electronic arts and culture, "Electrofringe", will burst through the cracks of Newcastle from October 2 – 6, 2008, for its eleventh year as part of "This Is Not Art". More than 100 emerging and established artists from Australia and overseas will take part in 80 events over five days including workshops, gigs, screenings, performance and public intervention.
