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October 27, 2005
When George met Al
A wondeful and somehow extremely apposite collision of egos, from
Just a shame it wasn't Liber AL vel Legis...
Via Erik Davis
Posted by Mark at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2005
Generation Hex launch
Thursday, 03 November
Generation Hex Launch
6-9 pm. FREE.
At Treadwells, 34 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London. WC2E 7PB
Please ring Treadwells on 020 7240 8906 to be put on the guest list.
Edited by SAJ2 contributor Jason Louv, Generation Hex is a collection of essays, both practical and autobiographical, which explore the overwhelming levels of interest in magic and shamanism in youth culture. The book is a collective portrait of initiation, a practical grimoire for engaging with the psychic and occult undercurrents of the world, and a template for an emergent shamanic Ultraculture.
Generation Hex assembles some of the brightest magical talents of the current youth generation, who ask not only what magic is and what place it holds in the Twenty-First Century, but also how it feels to engage with magic.
"Explodes with the energy and enthusiasm of its contributors. This book kicks major ass!" - Phil Hine
"At a time of global change and crisis, this incendiary, inspirational book can show you how to step out of the turmoil, seize control of your own destiny and participate in the creation of a whole new world." - Grant Morrison
"Nothing could be more crucial at this moment in time... Generation Hex reasserts the essential place of magic in our interaction with the universe." - Genesis P Orridge
Posted by Mark at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
Remote Control Humans
Via Jack Sergant
Remote Control Device 'Controls' Humans
By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer 13 minutes ago
ATSUGI, Japan - We wield remote controls to turn things on and off, make them advance, make them halt. Ground-bound pilots use remotes to fly drone airplanes, soldiers to maneuver battlefield robots.
19 OCT 2005
Prepare to be remotely controlled. I was.
Just imagine being rendered the rough equivalent of a radio-controlled toy car.
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., Japans top telephone company, says it is developing the technology to perhaps make video games more realistic. But more sinister applications also come to mind.
I can envision it being added to militaries' arsenals of so-called "non-lethal" weapons.
A special headset was placed on my cranium by my hosts during a recent demonstration at an NTT research center. It sent a very low voltage electric current from the back of my ears through my head — either from left to right or right to left, depending on which way the joystick on a remote-control was moved.
I found the experience unnerving and exhausting: I sought to step straight ahead but kept careening from side to side. Those alternating currents literally threw me off.
Continues, with pic, at Yahoo News
Posted by Mark at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2005
Jem Finer's Hole in the Ground
Beautiful film illustrating Jem Finer's new project, Score for a Hole in the Ground
via Mike Jay
Posted by Mark at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2005
Sounds of the future
Raagnagrok photo by Alyssa Joye
A cascade of gigs involving myself and friends in the next week or two, here's the skinny, more info below.
* 28 Oct, Raagnagrok at the King & Queen, London // Man From Uranus, Sculpture & Friends at Temporary Contemporary Gallery, London // Now at Bearspace, Deptford, London
* 29 Oct, Miasma at the Buffalo Bar, london
* 30 Oct Disinformation & friends @ The Foundry, London
* 31 Oct, Raagnagrok at The Coal Exchange, Cardiff
* 2 Nov, SMDO @ Metro, London
* 4 Nov, SMDO @ The Old Market, Brighton & Hove
Continue on for more details
28 October, Raagnagrok @ the King & Queen
* Raagnagrok are playing the always excellent Scaledown night, this Friday, 28 October.
This is the improv night hosted by Richard Sanderson and Mark Braby.
Upstairs at The King and Queen, 1 Foley St, London W1. Starts about 7.30, and I suspect we might be on early.
Other players include 60s improv and folk hero Mike Cooper, Keith John Adams and, following a chance roadside encounter, Mr Berk of Romania.
Entry is always free.
scaledown info
=====================
31 October, Raagnagrok@ the Coal Exchange, Cardiff
We support krautrock legends Faust, along with Angelssey's finest, Ectogram in what's sure to be a terrfiying night for all involved. "Cardiff Bay's most prestigious venue!"
Coal Exchange
=====================
2 November, Stella Maris Drone Orchestra support Faust, Charles Haywood & Ectogram at The Metro, Oxford St, London. Right next to Tottenham Court Rd Tube. £15 (gak!) and we Stellas are on at about 7pm.
=====================
4 November, SMDO, Faust, Ectogram, British Sea Power and many others, The Old Market, Hove. This has to be one of the oddest lineups I've ever seen. Should be interesting anyway, there are marching bands involved. Don't know if BSP are doing their usual thing, and I'm not sure what it is, but I expect the night to be wild, chaotic and busy. Tickets £10
The Old Market
=====================
We Stellas have several regular-sized gigs planned for Novembver and December, including slots at The Klinker (our favourite venue) and another possible Brighton show. We also going to do some proper recording soon, before this whole crazy enterprise collapses spectacularly around us.
==================
AND THERE"S MORE
==================
FRIDAY OCT 28: KERNEL PANIC. exhibition/installation at temporarycontemporary
in Deptford. opening night/private view. It is really going to be a good night
because you can see Man From Uranus, Ninki V, Sculpture, and Dogheads, a live
art thing from Daedalus, and DJing by Daniel Perlin.
Here's the web URL for KERNEL PANIC:
http://www.tempcontemp.co.uk/kernel.html
http://www.tempcontemp.co.uk/Directions.html - map etc
NOW are playing the same night up the road at Bearspace (more art!) on Deptford
High Street at about 11pm I think. BEARSPACE• 154 Deptford High Street London SE8 9PQ
=============
29 Oct, Miasma @ The Buffalo Bar, next to Highbury & Islington tube, London
The always impressive Miasma play a special Hallowe'en gig at this fine underground venue, once home to my Guinea Pig nights. Miasma are spectacular, baroque and in the ascendent. more info here: Miasma
===================
And last but by no means least - ALL THIS WEEK AT THE FOUNDRY...
The Foundry sub-basement, Old Street, London
5pm-ish till late, 18 to 30 Oct 2005
Admission free, closed Mondays
Closing night jamboree with live performance (quite likely involving members of Stella Maris Drone Orchestra), Sunday 30 Oct
Last few days... "NATIONAL GRID"
Live electromagnetic sound installation
by DISINFORMATION
"Pulsing sub-bass audio suggests associations with the most primal anthropomorphic element in music - the rhythms of the human heart, with foetal and infant hypnagogic sense memories, with seismic activity, the rumble of thunder (Jimi Hendrix claimed that his earliest childhood memory was of a thunderstorm) and even with war. Disinformation's National Grid is a sub-bass installation sourced either from the ambient VLF field radiated by electricity pylons and mains circuits, or, more recently, directly from the output cables of mains transformers.
Posted by Mark at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
Disinformation at the London Foundry
Disinformation's sound installation 'National Grid' is running in the bank vault basement of The Foundry bar until 30 October.
There may also be a spontaneous Disinformation vs Strange Attractor performance in the space sometime next week.
You can find it at 86 Great Eastern Street London EC2A 3JL, nearst tube is Old Street.
"Pulsing sub-bass audio suggests associations with the most primal anthropomorphic element in music - the rhythms of the human heart, with foetal and infant hypnagogic sense memories, with seismic activity, the rumble of thunder (Jimi Hendrix claimed that his earliest childhood memory was of a thunderstorm) and even with war. Disinformation's National Grid is a sub-bass installation sourced either from the ambient VLF field radiated by electricity pylons and mains circuits, or, more recently, directly from the output cables of mains transformers.
National Grid offers live physical evidence of environmental electromagnetic pollution, a demonstration of the intrinsic musical properties of alternating current, beat-frequency effects, the architectural acoustics of its own exhibition space, a formula for the realisation and suppression of Futurist sound art, a cathartic response to the pressures of urban life, a monolithic soundtrack for the genius of electrification and for the bitter conflicts between government and organised labour for control over the nation's electrical infrastructure." - Disinformation "National Grid" Ash 3.2 LP 1996
Posted by Mark at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
Anarchist Book Fair
Not to be confused with the aforementioned Small Publishers' Fayre – I did! - this Saturday is also the Anarchists' Book Fair. This is where Gyrus and Merrick will be! And Strange Attractor Journal will be on sale at Merrick's stall.
It's on Saturday 22 October, at The Resource Centre, 356 Holloway Rd, London N7.
From 10am to 6pm.
Free entry.
Posted by Mark at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2005
Ancient forest furniture assembly instructions
A nice animation higlighting Greenpeace's current campaign, against logging in endangered rainforests.
Via Dave Walsh
Posted by Mark at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)
Small Publishers Fayre
Image by Xtina Lamb
This Friday and Saturday sees the Small Publishers' Fair hit Conway Hall in Holborn, London.
SAJ contribuotrs and friends including Counter Productions, Xtina Lamb and Mark Pawson will be there, and Strange Attractor Journal will be on sale at the Counter Productions stall.
Small Publishers Fair
Friday 21 and Saturday 22 October
11am - 7pm
Conway Hall
Red Lion Square,
London WC1
More info here: Small Publishers' Fair
Posted by Mark at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2005
The Kraken Wakes
OK, after the cephalopods walking on two "legs" come more things that just aren't right at the bottom of the sea.
The walking sea lilly... (.mov file). God help us if these things ever discover the world above.
"The humble sea lily, which normally remains rooted to the ocean bed by a stem, has been caught creeping away from predators in deep sea video footage.
The creature – Endoxocrinus parrae – is an ocean animal closely related to the starfish, sea cucumber and sea urchin. With a ring of feathery fingers and a stalk 50 centimetres long, it resembles an ocean garden flower. But the new video shows it has a sophisticated method for avoiding danger.
The footage was taken at a depth of 430 metres from a submersible close to Grand Bahama Island. It shows, for the first time, a sea lily crawling slowly across the ocean floor on its fingers, dragging its broken stem behind it."
Full story at New Scientist
Posted by Mark at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)
Build your own UFO Attractor
Click to enlarge image.
Well, it looks straightforward enough. Be sure to let us know if you have any luck with this.
Via Colsweb
Posted by Mark at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2005
Sunday is European Radio Day!
And I've contributed a piece to the Resonance special. Some of you will recognise the voice over to the track...
Sunday 16th October, 9:30pm - 10:30pm on Resonance 104.4 fm across London and via live web stream.
A collaborative radio art show made for European Radio Day featuring:
Javier Aregger, Jim Backhouse, Richard Bowers, Fari Bradley, CarterTutti, Angus Carlyle, Jem Finer & Marcia Farquhar, Iris Garrelfs, William English, Magz Hall, Bjorn Hatleskog, John Lovett, Mark Pilkington, Tom Wallace, Chris Weaver, Adam Windbush and Dan Wison.
Read on for details:
Show as will be broadcast
Jim Backhouse – (104.4)
Microedited sound of Resonance lasting ten point four four seconds.
Adam Wimbush - (Make Sure Your Working)
Javier Aregger - ( Radiophonica)
Adam Wimbush - ( short excerpt from Demon Call)
Mark Pilkington - (Universal Frustration)
"If it has to be about something, it's about frustration. This is the theme of 91-year-old Californian telescope maker John Dobson's talk. There's also my frustration, as a non-musician, trying to make music and use a new piece of music software. I used only my first takes for the musical parts. I suppose it's also about mankind's frustration at getting established in space, we're fumbling, like me on the keyboard. The whooshing sounds were recorded by the Huygens-Cassini probe as it hurtled through Titan's atmosphere earlier this year. Today, 12 October, China has launched its second manned spaceflight. They also only get one take, but I hope we all get there in the end!"
Dan Wison - (Nervous) this radio art is based around agglomerations of fingernail bites recorded from a piezoed jaw!
Chris Weaver - (Mexico City 104.4)
Adam Wimbush - (Virtual Radioality)
CARTER TUTTI - (4:16:16)
Concept: To create an audio sound piece from visual images of the creative process of the composition itself. The listener is hearing an audio representation of the visual form of the compositional process of the piece they are listening to. The structure is numerologically based upon the 104.4 frequency. (4 x 104.4 = 4:16:16) i.e. 4 images converted into 4 audio pieces and arranged to present the linear sound of the visual pixels of the 4 images. These images are found at www.chrisandcosey.com/41616
Tom Wallace - (Voice and Data)
John Lovett – (TV hijacking in the `80's )
Magz Hall - (Surfing The Euro 104.4 Pop Poodles and Greek Margaritas)
Bjorn Hatleskog - (Makeashit)
Jem Finer and Marcia Farquhar – (o is for rocket h is for shark )
(excerpt _ a to I ) An excerpt from a 16 minute piece made for the number 8 tram in Helsinki.
Richard Bowers - (Hymn) includes a poetic text cut up from an English translation of Novalis' "Hymns to the Night", read by the artist. The cutting up of the text is echoed in the (partly) randomised segmentation of radio voices:often reduced to textural reiterations of single phonemes. This near chaos is suspended on a bed of noise which drives the piece forward, like a 'plane during take off.
Angus Carlyle - (For Gimpo And Tim) – Poor recordings of a sublime event. For the past eight years, at the time of the Vernal Equinox, Gimpo, Tim and those brave enough to join them embark upon a continuous 25 hour voyage around the M25, London’s orbital motorway. In 2004, the white transit van leading the procession was equipped with an FM transmitter locked to 104.4 FM. I DJ’d non-stop in the back of the van throughout the trip. What you hear are snatches of conversation 17 hours in as we refuel to the accompaniment of Clackett Lane Service Station’s own choice of music".
Fari Bradley - excerpt from (Euros)
These three artists have created radio pieces made from edits of programmes aired on several European radios which broadcast on 104.04 (Radio Klara-Spain, Era Aegean-Greece, 104 Dublin, Eire, Radio Pilatus -Switzerland, Sputnik-Germany, Stanta Cristina-Spain, Radio Factor-Czech Republic).
William English - excerpt from (Tape work)
Iris Garrelfs - Excerpt from (Talking) Space To Space is an ongoing radio project by Iris Garrelfs. Switch on your radio and listen to this echo of creation! Using captured natural radio emissions from celestial objects, Iris reshapes these sounds into an audio composition and flings them back to the stars in a radio broadcast. A poetic gesture, a sensual fiction which takes the past, re-shapes it in real-time and travels with it into the future.
Posted by Mark at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2005
US UFO Sightings Googlemapped
At last, a sensible use of Googlemaps!
Using UFO data from National UFO Reporting Center
From the site:
Q: But UFOs aren't real?
A: Maybe so, however the sighting reports are real.
Q: So aren't you tracking sighting reports on a map?
A: No, we track the cities where the reports indicate that a sighting took place. Tracking the reports would mean that we would track the cities from where the reports were submitted, and that would not make sense.
Q: But it would still be a map, and you would still be tracking UFOs
A: No, we would be tracking UFO reports, which we are not. We are tracking the cities of interest where UFOs were sawn as told by the reports, not the reports themselves.
Q: seed
A: sighted
Q: right. But since it's an established fact that UFO sighting reports are filled out by UFOs to divert the UFO trackers' attention to any other place than the one where the UFOs are located, in order to confuse and disorganize the UFO tracking efforts, would it not make more sense to track the places from where the reports where submitted, instead of the places that these report indicate?
A: Good point. We are not to judge if the reports are filled by UFOs, and that actually might be an interesting thing to plot on a map. So, could this be meta-ufomaps.com?
Posted by Mark at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2005
What FEMA does best...
Says it all really.
From FEMA's site.
Found at Signal vs Noise, by Gyrus.
Posted by Mark at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
The President's Speechalist
Why do Bush's speeches feel *so* good? This film has the answer...
The President's Speechalist (streaming media).
Thanks to Anthony Matt
Posted by Mark at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2005
The Secret Life of Plants
This has been around the blogosphere the past few days now, but I put it up here because it's
one of the most startling things I've seen for some time.
Seems very inspired by the artist Jim Woodring, which can only be a good thing!
Thanks to Dave Walsh
Posted by Mark at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)
October 08, 2005
The Return of Raagnagrok
Posted by Mark at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2005
Ballard Conversations
SAJ2 contributor Tim Chapman has contributed some excellent photographs to the new Re/Search anthology, JG Ballard Conversations, a fine collection of interviews with the author by the likes of V Vale, Mark Pauline and Graeme Revell.
It's a finely produced book in a new handbag – or manbag – size, and certainly one that any Ballard obsessive, and you know who you are, will want to own. Ballard comes across as a warm, private man and a highly prescient writer: recent news images of 100-mile traffic jams outside Houston as people fled hurricane Rita, or passengers on a flaming jetliner witnessing their predicament unravelling live on televisions inside their own aircraft, appear to have come straight out of his fiction. This is, for me, where the Ballard Paradox comes into play: his futures share so much with our present, that they can now feel a little old-fashioned, making even his earlier writing seem increasingly less like science fiction as time marches on.
The interviews date from 1983 to 2004, during which time Ballard's opinions and obsessions – power, celebrity, media domination, war, politics and the future (and what else is there?) – have remained fairly constant in a changing world, perhaps because he was already into his 50s when the first interviews took place. Our man in Shepperton reveals a solid grasp of the broad sweep of both historical and contemporary geopolitical affairs, as well as the human, and inhuman condition. On a more personal note you'll find insights into the origins of Crash, The Atrocity Exhibition, Ballard's childhood experiences in a Japanese POW camp (the basis for Empire pf the Sun, his experience of success and Hollywood following Steven Spielberg's film of that "breakthrough" book. And he likes cats. A lot. It's also interesting to discover that while Ballard has always been something of a respected, almost canonical, late 20th century author in the UK, his earlier books were difficult to obtain for American readers, where he has developed a cult following akin to that of William S Burroughs, largley thanks to the work of Re/Search. While not a Ballardophile myself, reading these interviews has driven me to dig out some of his short story collections, so the programme works.
Find a copy via Re/Search, or The Ballardian or at the usual bookshops.
--> MOP <---
Posted by Mark at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2005
The End is Nigh
Book review by David Ehrenfeld in American Scientist.
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.
James Howard Kunstler. x + 307 pp. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005. $23.
James Howard Kunstler begins The Long Emergency with the hope that "the American public will wake up from its sleepwalk and act to defend the project of civilization" while there is still time. "Throughout this book," he writes, "I will concern myself with what I believe is happening, what will happen, or what is likely to happen, not what I hope or wish will happen." The reality that our society is currently refusing to face, Kunstler says, is that time is just about up for industrial civilization as we have known it.
Kunstler's thesis is straightforward: Malthus was right, but cheap oil has postponed the day of reckoning, creating a century-long "artificial bubble of plenitude" and generating a host of intractable problems partly or entirely related to our prolonged energy spending spree. These problems include serious damage to our agricultural infrastructure, global climate change and the reorganization of living places into unsustainable suburbs and cities. Now cheap oil is disappearing fast, leaving only the problems behind.
What sets The Long Emergency apart from numerous other books on this theme is its comprehensive sweep—its powerful integration of science, technology, economics, finance, international politics and social change—along with a fascinating attempt to peer into a chaotic future. And Kunstler is such a compelling, fast-paced and sometimes eloquent writer that the book is hard to put down.
Beginning with the story of Edwin L. Drake, who drilled the world's first oil well in northwestern Pennsylvania in August 1859, Kunstler takes us through the development of the global oil-based economy of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He carefully traces the origins of the idea, first proposed by geologist M. King Hubbert, that oil consumption by modern industrial society will draw down current and potential supplies in a predictable way. Hubbert's 1956 prediction of the date of "peak oil" production in the United States (which he put at sometime between 1966 and 1972) was strikingly accurate—the peak occurred in 1970. After Hubbert's death in 1989, the distinguished petroleum geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère, Princeton geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, University of Colorado physicist Albert Bartlett and others adapted his model and applied it to global oil production, yielding a prediction that the global peak would occur between 2000 and 2010.
Continues over at: American Scientist.
Thanks to Gyrus for this one.
Posted by Mark at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)
Universal Frustration
And you thought you were getting nowhere fast...
John Dobson, a 91-year-old telescope maker from San Francisco, demonstrates his theory that frustration is the universal driving force. Wonderful.
Download the .wmv file.
Thanks to Shelli Joye, via Alyssa Joye.
Posted by Mark at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)
Mumbai needs vultures!
Parsi tradition dying out for lack of vultures
Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Thursday October 6, 2005
It is one the most poignant images in India. Muslin-wrapped mourners carry the dead up a leafy hill to a temple, conducting an ancient ceremony in modern Mumbai. They reach the Towers of Silence and the bodies are laid on slabs of marble to be devoured by vultures and bleached by the searing heat of the sun. For Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest mass religions in the world, bodies left in this manner will see their soul join the spiritual world.
The trouble is the vultures of Mumbai are dying out. Their numbers have been decimated by cattle carcasses contaminated with an anti-inflammatory drug widely used in south Asia.
To dispose of the dead a group of Parsis, the ethnic group that practises Zoroastrianism, are using solar panels and lenses like a magnifying glass to penetrate bodies and aid decomposition. Burial, burning or disposal at sea are not permitted as they would see bodies contaminating the sacred elements of earth, fire and water.
Continues at The Guardian
Posted by Mark at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)