An haunting gallery of images showing the aftermath of a Ganesha-dunking ceremony in Bombay.
Over at Ultrabrown.
Thanks Alistair Strachan!
Monthly Archive for September, 2006
Tuesday, 26 September
Disinformation vs Strange Attractor perform “National Grid” and “Circuit Blasting”
Live at Westbourne Studios, 242 Acklam Road, London W10
Doors 6.30, show 8.30 – Admission Free (you must pick up a ticket on entry)
A rare chance to catch DVSA’s spectacular National Grid, a performance for live mains electricity, antique laboratory equipment, flashguns, striplights, electromagnetic fields and electromedical devices.
Plus “Circuit Blasting”. Our new album of the same name will be revealed soon by the good people at Adaadat Records.
“I think being a circlemakers is ultimately a masochistic pursuit… we are the heretics.”
A great interview with Field Guide co-author and regular Strange Attractor co-conspirator John Lundberg.
By Caryn Anscomb at Starstream Research
The brilliant illustrator (and SAJ2 contributor) John Coulthart has created a very contemporary set of tarot cards. Right now he’s just done the Major Arcana, but given time perhaps he’ll get round to a whole deck!
John has also designed a natty new logo for Strange Attractor Press.
Thanks John!
SF Said’s Varjak Paw was the last book I can remember needing to read while navigating a crowded London street. I’d reached the final chapter just as it was time to leave the bus, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from finding out how things were going to end for the renegade Mesopotamian Blue and his friends.
Luckily I was reading the right book. Using one of the mystical martial arts techniques taught to Varjak in his dreams, I gracefully avoided certain doom in the oncoming traffic and spared myself the tetchy tutts of lunch hour sandwich seekers, arriving at my meeting with only one thought in my mind: when is the next Varjak Paw book coming out?
Well, the wait is over!
Continue reading ‘The Outlaw Varjak Paw’
By Vince Beiser, 07 September 2006
A half-mile below the surface of the New Mexico desert, the federal government is interring thousands of tons of monstrously dangerous leftovers from its nuclear weapons program –plutonium-infested clothing, tools and chemical sludge that will remain potentially lethal for thousands of years to come.
It may be safely secured now, but how to keep our descendants centuries in the future from accidentally unearthing it?…
To address it, the Department of Energy convened a conclave of scientists, linguists, anthropologists and sci-fi thinkers to develop an elaborate system intended to shout “Danger!” to any human being for the next 10,000 years — regardless of what language they speak or technology they use…
“We looked at what messages had come from deep in time to the present, like the pyramids,” explains David B. Givens, an anthropologist specializing in non-verbal communication who helped conceive the warning system. “It boils down to stones,” he says — the only medium so far to have established a track record of retaining messages for as long as 5,000 years.
Full story over at Wired
Wednesday 13 September, The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Rd, Camden, London, NW1 8EH. from 7pm
Resonance FM presents a night of music and talk on the subject of death and space, as part of Space Soon: art and human space flight, hosted by Arts Catalyst.
OORT, featuring Richard Guest (guitar/fx), Zali Krisha (guitar/fx) Mark Pilkington (synth/fx) and Ninki V (space flute/theremin), will be performing live, accompanying a reading – “We Are All Depraved” – by Ken Hollings.
The night will also see an expedition into trapezoidal space by The Amal Gamal Ensemble, comprising Stephen Thrower, Gavin Mitchell, David Knight, Karl Blake, David Smith, Orlando, and Danielle Dax.
Plus Lembit Opik MP, Tom Mcarthy and the Resonance Radio Orchestra, The Bohman Brothers and DJs Original Bear, DJ Rocket 88 and Johnny Trunk.
“A special fund-raising concert for our Aerial Appeal. Is it possible to have a clean death in a vacuum? We’re All Going To Die is an operatic, radiophonic concatenation of space ephemera and near-Earth collision paranoia.”
Admission: £6.00. All proceeds to the Resonance Aerial Fund!
Photo by Gyrus! (sorry Gyrus!)
Friday Sept 8th at the Speakerpalace
A night of ritualistic theatre with the Metamorphic Ritual Dance Theatre Company
10pm screening their ritual opera film The Choronzon Machine
12.30pm Loom of Lila the company’s latest performance live
more info: (its a whole parallel world)
plus some rather musical hypnotic cabaret at 12pm
Freeform textural freakout from Aum Sahib (seen above) at 1am
And ORCHAStra-ted ChAOS (Australia/UK/Germany music improvisational collaboration) finishing off
plus Silver Dusk art exhibition and djs including Lerry, the Record King, from germany playing avante gard high weirdness.
14 Andre Street Hackney
doors 9pm-3am
£5.00
this is a private event
to gain entrance click the link and sign yourself in
Witches call up magic in Mexico’s Los Tuxtlas
Hexes and blessings are muttered in the same breath where witchcraft is a way of life
By DAI HUYNH, Houston Chronicle 1 Sept 06
CATEMACO, Mexico – The witch is cloaked in a black gown with a Chinese yin-and-yang sign, representing the moon and sun. Dark and light.
Through lace curtains, a shaft of light casts an eerie glow onto the altar. A spindly, wooden red devil dominates the table, towering over the potbellied Hindu elephant deity Lord Ganesha and statuettes of Merlin, Buddha and Shiva.
This is the room where Ignacio Cobix casts spells of life and death, love and spite.
His timber house is a block from Lake Catemaco, where Mexicans come for boating, fishing, bird-watching and spiritual cleansing. Catemaco is one of three major villages in the Los Tuxtlas region south of the port of Veracruz. Like neighboring San Andrés Tuxtla and Santiago Tuxtla, Catemaco is shaped by virescent volcanoes and magic realism. Here, hexes and blessings are muttered in the same breath.
Myths and legends flourish as lushly as the waterlilies in the lagoon: Tales of water spirits. Tales of la Virgen del Carmen. Tales of the devil.
Continue reading ‘Mexican Witch Convention!’
Scientists angry after platform is given to ‘charlatan’s fantasy’
By Steve Connor, The Independent, 06 September 2006
Leading scientists have criticised Britain’s premier public forum on science for hosting a series of lectures on controversial research into the paranormal that suggests the possibility of mental telepathy and the existence of consciousness after death.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) was sharply rebuked yesterday for allowing paranormal researchers to have a public platform at its annual Science Festival, held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
Mainstream scientists expressed surprise that the BA had invited Rupert Sheldrake, who investigates paranormal experiences, and Peter Fenwick, a retired neuropsychiatrist who investigates near-death experiences, to its annual meeting.
Continue reading ‘Rupert Sheldrake draws scientists’ wrath’
