He’s dead now, but the legendary comic novelist Kurt Vonnegut has been predicting today’s ever-escalating oil prices for a long, long time.

“I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.” – K.V, 1994.

Kurt Who?
From Player Piano in 1952, a dystopian novel where human workers have been largely replaced by machines, through to a collection of post-humously published works in 2008 ( Armageddon in Retrospect ), the somehow simultaneously cynical and warm-hearted worldview of Kurt Vonnegut has been spilling onto the page of novels, film scripts, tv scripts, articles and essays. He’s funny too. And has an asteroid named after him ( 25399 Vonnegut – thanks wikipedia ). There’s probably a 2nd year arts student buying one of his books in a second-hand store right now. So he had it going on, wild leaps that were science fiction in scope, an ability to point out the absurdity of human endeavours, and as it turned out, he had a thing against oil.

Oil currently accounts for about 43% of the world’s total fuel consumption, and 95% of global energy used for transportation. Oil and gas are feedstocks for plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, electronic components, tyres and much more. For every one joule of food consumed in the United States, around 10 joules of fossil fuel energy have been used to produce it. ( energybulletin.net )

Back in the Day
Part of what made Kurt Vonnegut unique his experiences in World War II. As later documented in the semiautobiographical ‘Slaughterhouse Five’ ( novel and then a film), he had been captured by Nazis as a 21 year old and sent to Dresden, where the Allies dropped enough powerful new bombs to reduce the fireballed city to lava-hot rubble, and killing all of the mostly civilian population of 135,000. Incredibly, Vonnegut and 6 other prisoners were in a meatpacking storage cell during the raid, and emerged upstairs to a destroyed town. That’ll make an impression.

1973
This was the year Kurt had finished Breakfast of Champions, another book later to become a film, which explored the relationship between an insane car dealer and a pulp science fiction writer – whose plots for various stories were outlined throughout the book. 1973 was also the peak of the seventies oil crisis, and so it’s not entirely surprising that one of these sci-fi plots involved a dying planet called Lingo whose inhabitants resembled american automobiles. The planet is visited, and the idea of the automobile was brought to earth by aliens who “did not know that human beings could be as easily felled by a single idea as by cholera or the bubonic plague. There was no immunity to cuckoo ideas on Earth.”

“So what is the principle exactly underpinning your 5 cent a litre cut? If it’s to ease the pain to the tune of about $2.50 a week, what do you do when the price of petrol goes up to $2 a litre and then $2.50 a litre. Do you continue to ease the pain by coming up with another 5 cents a litre cut and another 5 cent a litre cut? Is that really smart policy when you look at the total global picture of what’s happening with oil as a diminishing commodity in a world where oil is contributing to greenhouse problems?”
-Kerry O Brien, on the 7.30 Report slowly grilling the Opposition Climate Change Spokesman, Greg Hunt.

2004
“Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”

• K.V, ‘Addicted To Oil And Violence‘.

So It Goes.

Stack of marshall amps in one corner, man with a movie camera in the other, both notorious for unique reasons, and both with interesting news of late. MBV, helmed by the sleep-deprivation-fond Kevin Shields, have finally announced that yes, there will be another album to follow-up their 1991 classic ‘Loveless’, and have even announced some UK tour dates. BYO earplugs. Vice.tv has the video scoop with a long Kevin interview, within which he reveals their favoured name before MBV : ‘Burning Peacocks’.

From wall of noise to blizzard-core, the tangent express takes us to Werner Herzog’s recently re-released diary from 1974, ‘Of Walking In Ice’, a diary written by the film-maker as he trekked through a fierce snow-storm to save a dear friend from her near fatal illness. On the film front, the documentary-maker also has a new feature out : ‘Rescue Dawn’ which is based on the true story of a pilot who survives a plane crash in the jungle, survives torture by his captors and eventually escapes the jungle for freedom. The actual pilot has already told this story in a Herzog film though, the mind boggling documentary ‘Little Dieter Has Learnt To Fly‘. Will be interesting to see how Rescue Dawn stacks up to this.

Condoms on microphones, the Yangtze river dolphin, Douglas Adams, audiobooks & wondering what archaeologists in the future will think of this era.

Poker Machines in the Future

Measuring 5.6 on the richter scale, 1989 in Newcastle introduced many people to the idea that an earthquake was even possible on the East Coast of Australia. It was certainly news to my brain, which had instantly attributed the sudden shifting of the houses walls, to the neighbours next door, who who had been reversing a caravan into their driveway a short while ago. Rushing outside of that previously stable house, enabled the sight of everyone else on the street rushing outside of their previously stable houses. And the radio revealed this to be a Newcastle wide phenomenon, an actual earthquake, with all the fear and panic it brings. A few suburbs away, The Newcastle Workers club, a den of bad carpets, bad music and poker machines, was apparently the worst hit building, with many feared dead. In the end, the earthquake claimed 13 lives, and over 50,000 damaged buildings. Interestingly a US academic claimed in early 2007 that the Newcastle earthquake was probably set off by stress changes in the earth’s crust, after two centuries of coal mining. And the poker machines were not long without a home.

Douglas Adams @ The Newcastle Worker’s Club 1999

(the above photo is from one of Douglas’s many speaking engagements elsewhere )

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the main way people have encountered the absurd and deadly sharp wit of Douglas Adams. Like most absurd science fiction, his work also serves to interrogate the present, gently reminding us just how strange our behaviours and societal habits actually are. In conversation with Robyn Williams ( ABC’s champion science reporter ), and charming all at the revamped Workers Club, it became clear that the science fiction of Adams was built upon mountains of scientific reading, an incredibly broad knowledge of the sciences, and a relentlessly curious brain. And something about being a very, very funny man. When he died in 2001, Douglas Adams left behind a rich collection of fiction, and only one work of non-fiction, a meditation on death, or rather the ‘death of death’, a book exploring the threatened extinctions of many species.

Last Chance to See

Published in 1990, and co-authored by Mark Carwardine, this is a book that details the exploits of Douglas and Mark ( a zoologist ), as they travel the globe attempting to witness actual living examples – in the wild – of some of the world’s most prominent endangered species. Along the way, we learn about what makes each of those species unique, filtered by Adam’s eye for the absurd, and discover the factors contributing to the disappearance of each species. A kind of comedic thriller whodunnit – where humans are always the bad guys. The book is a great jolting reminder of the biodiversity that exists beyond our urban centres, and the escalating threats our footprints are placing on species everywhere. Threatened species I remembered most from the book was the Yangtze river dolphin, because of the BBC audio recorder’s technique for trying to record that dolphin – placing a condom over a microphone, thereby allowing the recording of underwater sounds. As it turns out, there’s an audiobook torrent for this floating around online, read by Douglas himself, the storytelling humour amplified even more by his rich, comedic delivery. And supposedly, a follow-up TV series is due in 2008. This will unfortunately feature no new footage of the Yangtze river dolphin, as in August this year, this species was declared to be extinct.

Distinctly Extinct

And so, the Yangtze river dolphin can die no more, a fate that happens to many species over time. What disturbs in 2007 thought, is the rate at which species are being wiped out, forever. Archaeologists and biological historians point to five eras of mass extinctions during the earth’s history, and many scientists argue that the current rate of extinctions sees us on the cusp of a sixth era of mass extinction. Time will tell.

True story : I gave a skateboarding lecture @ Istanbul’s Bilgi University, to an Architecture class two days ago. Was attending an ‘Art Experience’ workshop ( part of the Istanbul Biennale), and one of the participants introduced herself as an Architecture student. Mentioned I’d studied architecture for a year before, and asked what she was working on. A skatepark! Expressed keen interest to see any drawings she had, but didn’t expect her reply – “well if you skate, it would be very helpful if you could talk to our class… in half an hour”. Which turned out to be 30 students and two lecturers, eager to hear my perspective ( an actual skater! ), about their project. And so, with my internal laugh track set to 11, I talked about what makes a successful skatepark – the location and social space being as important as the materials and geometry, clicked through a variety of online skate videos, and answered a range of questions that made skaters sound like they were from another planet. Watched one of the presentations by a group before I had to leave, which was a conceptually interesting modular and reconfigurable, but unskateable skatepark – exclusively featuring 8foot pipes ( a diameter too small to allow any real skating ). Made my contributions to their skatepark’s evolution, and departed grinning.

The ‘lecture’ also got me digging up this old interview with a UK Architecture Professor who had written a book about Skateboarding and Architecture. ( Prior to skynoise.net, published a few hundred posts at octapod.org/jeanpoole – a server which was abandoned at some point, and I’ve long been meaning to extract the archives of stories / interviews / posts etc using the waybackmachine More to come… ).

Skateboarding Vs Architecture

(First published Aug 2003 )

As Arnold ( both the terminator & the Different Strokes character ) are no doubt testifying in the Californian elections, there is a better world possible. One of win-win situations rather than ‘us and them’ or ‘axis of evil’. Across the Atlantic and doing his bit to unite jarring camps, is Iain Borden, Professor of architecture at the University College of London. Iain has authored a remarkable book that should help smooth architect-skater peacetalks: ‘Skateboarding, Space & The City : Architecture and the Body’.

The book has appeal for both (sub)cultural theorists and those who like to ollie, bordensk8web.jpgand unfolds an engaging history of public versus private space and skateboarding as a subculture and filter of urban experience. And you’ve gotta love photo captions like : “Exploiting the rhythms of modernist urban space and architecture. Phil Chapman, ollie between planters.. “. R-e-s—p-e-c-t ~! How often do we get a skating professor round here?

How do you describe your research/book at parties?

People use cities in ways different to how architects and planners intended them to be used, and as a skater I wanted to say something about the history of that activity.

Sk8ing & theory make unusual bedfellows – how were the seeds sown for your book?

In the late 80s I was a PhD student at UCLA, and asked to write an essay on something about LA that I knew about, but no one else in the class knew. I was also taking studying Henri Lefebvre, so writing about skateboarding and spatial theory grew from that moment. I’ve generally been interested in the history of architecture from the point of view of the user � i.e. Those who experience and utilised space and buildings, rather than those who design and make it.

If writing about music, is like dancing about architecture, then what does that make you?

Er, confused in mind and body.

How has skateboarding shaped your appreciation of architecture?

Skateboarding lets you experience buildings not as a set of objects, designed by architects, but as a set of spatial experiences. By this I mean that moving around on a skateboard makes you consider buildings and landscapes as a set of opportunities to skate � you are constantly sizing up banks, ledges, curves, curbs and so on for their ability to be skated upon. So there is this initial process of interrogation � looking at architecture differently, working out whether it can be skated or not. And then there is the actual engagement with the architecture, using the skateboard and your body in relation to the physicality of the building � and here one appreciates architecture differently again, this time as a direct sensual engagement, less to do with the mind and more to do the living body that we all possess.

How does sk8boarding critique architecture & capitalism?

Skateboarding is a critique of the Protestant work ethic, the idea that we should always be working to produce something: a product or a service to sell. Skateboarders (non-pros), at least while skateboarding, don’t generally do this, and so skateboarding suggests we can produce different things: expend energy not as work, but as the production of emotions, actions, effort and play. Skateboarding is also a partial critique of commodity consumption, i.e. when not working we should be consuming things. Again, skateboarders use urban space and buildings without buying anything, treating the city as a free wealth for all to enjoy.

Can u describe ‘rhythmanalysis’ simply, and how skating fits into this?

Rhythmanalysis is the term used by Henri Lefebvre to describe space associated with actions of the body � the space produced by walking, or by moving, or by breathing, or by the cycles of reproduction and regeneration. Space as lived over time, by people with physical bodies. For skateboarding this might mean such things as the speedy space of moving over the pavement, or the rhythmic space of a skater on a half-pipe, or the weekly or seasonal patterns by which skaters return to particular spaces over the course of days, weeks or even years.

How has your research affected the way you skate?

If anything, I guess it has made me want to enjoy my skating as a bodily experience and as a kind of play and fun � for me, that means enjoying simple things like carves and grinds rather than worrying about new tricks, and feeling the concrete move underneath me. I tend to be more of an old school skater than a streetskater . . .

3 things architects could learn from skaters?

Take risks. Learn from others. But do it your own way.

What interesting responses have u had from architects or theorists?

Lots of surprise that this was even a subject worth thinking about it . . . but then a lot of interest in the way other people can use and enjoy architecture in ways the architects never even dreamt of.

Do you know any architects who design with skaters in mind?

Not really � most architects don�t really get to design major buildings until they are at least in their 40s � and often into their 50s or older. So given that there are now a load of 40-something architects who used to skate in the 1970s, I reckon we are probably due some serious skate-friendly buildings over the next decade or so.

Favourite skateboard trick names?

Invert, layback, frontside – I like the ones that refer to the position of the skater�s body.

Can u recall any good skate-dreams?

Hmm, skateboarding tends to appear in my dreams as a representation of anxiety � where I have forgotten how to ride a pool, or some such frustration. Not sure if this good or bad, but at least I do dream about it. . . .

What would you prefer to ollie – the skull of einstein, a cloned sheep or a gaff-taped Tony Blair?

Definitely a gaff-taped TB � time to make the bugger realise that we don�t all want to be Christian, well-behaved model citizens all of the time.

‘Skateboarding, Space & The City : Architecture and the Body’ by Iain Borden is out now through Berg.

(click above for full comic-style review )

As the creative media palette expands online, the storytelling and multimedia principles explored in Scott McCloud’s ‘Understanding Comics’, + ‘Reinventing Comics’ become more relevant everyday. ( Aye, aye’s they’s rad books that cannot be recommended enough to any kind of visual creatives ). ‘Making Comics’ is Scott’s latest, which he promoted on a yearlong U.S. tour, trialling mobile ‘home-schooling’ with his teenage daughter on the way. Given the way Scott uses the comic form itself, to deconstruct and explains the subtleties and potential of comics, art, technology etc, it seemed appropriate to review his book in comic-style. Melbourne’s fine comic auteur, Gregory Mackay stepped up to the drawing board for it ( or was it graphics tablet? ), with Francis Bear in tow. ( + Give him a poke to get some more of his enchanting dystopian inked suburbia up online too! )

Next up on the coffee table >> VJ : audio-visual art + VJ culture, edited by Michael Faulkner / D-Fuse, published via www.laurenceking.co.uk, with bonus 130 minute DVD.

“For many, vjing is a dirty word. artists view it as eyecandy for the clubbing generation; musicians view it as a secondary accompaniment to their music. at best, vjing is regarded as audio-visual wallpaper, not worthy as a serious consideration. yet to my eyes, the best vjs are creating a new fluid interface between sound and image – one that is genuinely mould-breaking and aesthetically invigorating, and one that deserves to be recognized as a 21st century art form.” – Michael Faulkner

Michael Faulkner aka D-Fuse is primely perched to edit/curate a book on VJing – well travelled as visual performer and graphic designer, an extensive array of profile gigs under his belt, and well hooked into the sprawling VJ networks. Coming from an artist inside the ‘scene’ then, the book is packed with useful insights, laid out with visual flair that respects the work ( and in full colour throughout too! ).

Alongside various new media / video art / motion graphics books that squeeze VJing into a few pages, ‘VJ : audio-visual art + VJ culture’ also slips onto the bookshelves next to a few books dedicated to documenting the global VJ practice. The VJ Book ( from Feral House ) included many interviews by a journalist with an outsiders view, but suffered from a lack of visual displays of the culture and processes it discussed. Live Cinema Unravelled ( available as a free PDF ) managed much sexier design, was written by someone immersed in VJing and came bundled with a lot more theory – aiming to dissect the role of the VJ against such topics such as ‘technological mobility, audience, environment, and codes of the medium’. Thumbs up, full review later.

Interviews with VJs the globe over makes up the bulk of VJ : audio-visual art + VJ culture, artist interviews from a significant spread of nations complemented with a range of live performance photos, and video stills, laid out stylishly and vividly demonstrating the diversity of aesethetics and approaches with live video. The DVD immerses even further, with a range of live performances, videos and documentaries of The Light Surgeons, Cold Cut, Hexstatic, D-Fuse and more. It’s a compelling package, the artist interviews supplemented by a range of specialist articles written by various VJs.

Bram Crevits whirlwinds us through an historical overview of ‘the roots of VJing’, taking in the expanded cinema of the 1960s, fluxus video art of the 60s and 70s, the ‘magic lantern’ (an oil lamp, with lens and pictures painted on a glass plate, creating live animations back as early as 1671 ), live animation devices of the 1800s, the development of cinema, the evolution of music videos, concrete music, electronic media, the graphical user interface in 1984 and gives good context to today’s pixel manglers.

Adrian Shaughnessy, further contexualises contemporary VJing (Last night a VJ zapped my retinas) :

“The digital artist is really an editor. We can generate imagery ad infinitum; the skill is to know what is good, what should be kept and what should be discarded. This is the art of editing and it is also the art of VJing. .. VJs often have to do their editing live, in front of an audience. It is one of the factors that makes VJing such an exhilarating ride for both the audience and the VJ.”

“Science and technology multiply around is. To an increasing extent they dictate the language in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.” – J.G Ballard ( as quoted in Live Cinema Unravelled )

Chris Allen of the Light Surgeons scribes a piece on sampling, arguing it is a technique that “allows us to see the components of our language in isolation – the bricks that then may be used to construct new meanings.”

The overview of technology and creative process by Vello Virkhaus is comprehensive and insightful, documenting processes from storyboarding with clients / collaborators through to venue design and live performance.

Elliot Earls, who looks like he has an intriguing live show, talks of need for VJs to work more closely with musicians, or better yet, to compose music themselves, if they are to move beyond merely being in service to musicians in a manner resembling ‘info-burger flippers’. Robin Rimbaud’s (aka scanner) article “listening to pictures” might provide some help in that regard, offering tips on a/v from a sound perspective.

The book rounds out with a decent coverage of hardware issues – different screens ( shapes, sizes, materials ) , advice on projectors, mixers, midi, computers, and graphics cards etc, a less potent software overview (only 8 of the dozens available profiled ) and an excellent selection of personalised diagrams profiling a dozen or so onstage-set-ups for major Vjs around the world. These are especially fascinating, usually a blend of hi and lo tech, expensive and cheap gear, to help create their custom look and processes.

Review of a book of a festival of a brain-tickling idea.

“The goal of science and the arts, and of education must be to decipher, not the genetic code, but the perceptual code,”

Marshall & Eric McLuhan, ‘Laws of media : The New Science’

as quoted in ‘Book Of Imaginary Media‘.

It’s a tricky question to answer – how do our current media and communication technologies alter the ways we perceive the world and each other? Coming at that from an unusual angle in 2004, was the Amsterdam festival : “An Archeology of Imaginary media”, which sought to explore ‘Imaginary media of past, present and future hoping to glean some insight into our relationship with media. A range of talks happened, and a play written by Peter Blegvad was performed, both later to appear in a book with DVD companion. Which as it turns out, is quite an engaging read (& watch ) despite the seeming abstractness of it’s theme.

“All communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact ( and perhaps even these ) are imagined.’ Communities are to be distinguished not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined,” points out the introduction, before further contexutalising ‘imaginary media’ : ‘like communities, all media are partly real and partly imagined. Without actual or imaginary characters, media cannot function’.

Imaginary Media, the book argues through a series of essays ( & DVD accompaniment), can encompass fictitious characters ( hello Sherlock Holmes), mythical beasts ( hello Pegasus ), the faded futurism of years gone by, and all manner of machines built to enhance or replace human interaction.
“Imaginary media may give rise to actual media, even when their final realization falls short of initial expectation. Media that were once imaginary may at some point become true. Imaginary media may also be sources of inspiration, in which case their effects might very well be felt and made manifest outside of the field of media itself.”

It’s a fun, provocative read, various authors exploring the book’s subtitle ‘Excavating the dream of the ultimate communication medium’ , with explorations of photographs of seances, a vinyl video player which plays back a video signal on a television set, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho distilled and blended down to one single frame, artificial intelligence as imagined early in the 20th century, Nikola Tesla’s plans for developing wireless transmission across the globe, a project that got well underway but was never completed, Thomas Edison’s early plans for a ‘psychic telephone’ that could communicate with the dead, Bruce Sterling’s ‘Dead Media Project’ where he collects dead media technologies… ( for more Bruce mythology, try his sci-fi novels, his viridian manifesto, or spimes ) and Roland Barthes comparing the eye contact he could still have with his mother via a photograph:
‘grasping the delayed light of a star, observing something in it’s course of it’s journey through time’.

DVDly Speaking

For those unfamiliar with the wondrous comicstrip and graphic novel, The Book Of Leviathan, remedy the situation via Amazon or however possible, muchos recommendos. Comic author of that greatness is Peter Blegvad, and he has a few comics on the DVD ( send your prayers faster and further with these patented flippers ), alongside comic authors such as Ben Katchor ( a large electronic eye with melancholy sensors, crying at an exhibition trade show ), Gary Panter and Aleksandar Zograf ( a new breed of plant was cultivated – sensitive to the mind of a dreamer. as a reaction to the close presence of a dreaming mind, the plant forms in one of its big leaves a temporary drawing like configuration that could be observed, photographed and analyzed as it sublimates the general mood of a dreaming consciousness… ).

Beyond these sequences of still pages though, is a 35 minute video by Peter Blegvad of a theatre piece made for the festival, titled ‘On Imaginary Media’, and dripping with his usual wit and esoteric wanderings. Speaking vegetables, a god-detector, Peter’s head as thatched house from which hatchlings emerge, virtual death goggles, mood enhancing military media and much narration, onstage action and occasional displayed quotes such as this future bumper sticker for VJs:

“It should be possible to project on a screen the image of any one object one conceives and make it visible,” Nikola Tesla

and:

“What is real is the life we lead when we lose ourselves, when we abandon or are driven from the rational fiction of our identity; when we fall in love, for example… “
– Michael Wood, the magicians doubts…

‘Book Of Imaginary Media’, Edited by Eric Kluitenberg, NAi Publishers.

Large video storage sites are booming, which means at least some of them are making lots of money off the advertising being shown alongside user contributed videos. Not many of them however, are actually compensating users for their work. Scott Kirsner ( Cinematech Blog) has compiled a list of the video giants that do actually reward contributors ( ie no youtube on this list) : http://www.scottkirsner.com/webvid/gettingpaid.htm. ( He also has an excellent book – The Future of Web Video, self-published at Lulu. Review of that coming up shortly.

UPDATE : YouTube has announced plans to ‘share revenue with users’ in the coming months. ( Found via digg – with a few useful comments added )

UPDATE 2: Long, relevant interview with founder of blip.tv, discussing web payments for video creators ( via dvguru ).

David Lynch’s Inland Empire ( official site, wikipedia background on it ) is slowly getting around, it’s distribution mirroring the unusual and independent path of it’s production. Wired magazine recently published a long uncut interview with the man behind much memorable cinema. He talks about his creative process, his daily weather report on his website, and the founding of a transcendental meditation foundation.

Lynch: OK, I’ve been working on this book called Catching the Big Fish, and it’s all in there. It’s changed for me. It’s gotten better. If it just stayed the same or got worse, I’d stop meditating. People get up and brush their teeth. They brush their teeth so they don’t get cavities, right?

Lynch: But if they brushed their teeth and were able to dive within to contact that pure ocean of bliss and consciousness, they’d get a huge blast of euphoric energy and be wider awake. And that ball of consciousness would expand over time, so they would really look forward to brushing their teeth every day.

It always strikes me as amazing that everyone doesn’t meditate. Because they haven’t had that transcendent experience, they don’t think they’re missing anything. I was in the same boat. I never had that, or I didn’t know I ever had it, and I was curious. I wanted it. And that’s the key thing: You’ve got to want it, even if you don’t know why. Something is there that you feel but do not know.

But I’ve always felt that there were other things to life that were not so obvious. Everyone sort of feels that there is more in the world than meets the eye, and its pull grows stronger and stronger, until they say, “I want to know what the full potential of a human being is. I want to unfold that for myself. I don’t want to stay exactly the same as I am. I want to rapidly move forward.”

Mininova has a link to trial David Lynch reading his audiobook “Catching the Big Fish_ Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity”.. and it can be bought here.

“I don’t want your spare coins. I want change.” – Melbourne graffiti.

Mad World Statistics

Who wants to compile them, let alone digest their brutal shapes? We’re awash in all kinds of cruel numbers : the species disappearing daily, the football fields of forests getting razed, the masses of people starving, suffering preventable disease, the enormous military budgets that could be spent elsewhere. And sure, these facts can be amassed and distributed in the hope that an informed population will help bring about change for a particular issue, but that’s a dirty job, examining and detailing our big, sloppy footprints.

And in the end, even with the information, people mightn’t necessarily feel empowered to make any difference about an ever growing list of societal and environmental problems. Jessica Williams is an optimist however, believing that an aware public will choose the more responsible paths available to them, and so she used her journalist and BBC television producer skills to compile a book of key facts, each supported by a mini-essay, lots of references, resources. To her immense credit, ‘50 Facts That Should Change The World’ doesn’t come across as a nightmarish depressant, but invigorates a sense of unfairness, and a sense of possibility for change. These ‘facts’ are malleable, susceptible to change over time. The facts chosen are often counterintuitively provoking, something discovered as early as flipping through to:

Fact 2 : “A third of the world’s obese people live in the developing world.”

Not only does the developing world suffer such high levels of malnutrition, but large portions suffer obesity thanks to a shift from diverse traditional foods to monocultured farms, cheap imported junk foods, and lifestyle changes. Admittedly, the essay supporting this fact, and outlining some of the trade practices which sustain this trend, didn’t offer as much tangible actions or ideas as the essays for other facts.

Fact 8. “Every cow in the European Union is subsidised by $2.50 a day. That’s more than what 75 per cent of Africans have to live on.”

Globalisation is inevitable, is happening, and much of it can be good, but many trade subsidies in wealthier countries are hammering poorer nations.

Fact 27. “Every day, one in five of the world’s population – some 800 million people go hungry.”

We are actually making enough food daily for all of us to eat, but massive inequalities with the distribution of wealth mean that a significant portion of the people alive on the planet today go to sleep hungry each night. We are all dimly aware of this on some level, but another lucid 4 page summary of its scale and impact is perhaps a good motivator to do something about it.

Fact 32. “More than 70 per cent of the world’s population have never heard a dial tone.”

This was the case in 2004, and a useful reminder of the digital divide for those who complain when their broadband drops speed. Mobile phone technology seems to be leapfrogging over traditional phone lines however, and it seems that much of the developing world is rapidly embracing these possibilities, with the number of mobile users worldwide expected to reach 2 billion within a few years, that being one in every 3 people.

Fact 33. “A quarter of the world’s armed conflicts of recent years have involved a struggle for natural resources.”

Humans like to draw maps, and draw lines in maps. Natural phenomena like rivers don’t tend to care much for these though, and when they go across several borders and someone upstream is either polluting or steering the river elsewhere, trouble follows.

Fact 34. “Some 30 million people in Africa are HIV positive.”

That’s every single person in Australia, and quite a few million more. Intense. Epic. Tragic. And more, all in 4 pages.

Fact 43. “In 2003, the US spent $396 billion on its military. This is 33 times the combined military spending of the seven ‘rogue states’.

The US also spends more on the military than the next 20 highest national spenders combined. Uhuh.

Fact 48. “A kiwi fruit flown from New Zealand to Britain emits five times its own weight in greenhouse gases.”

We’ve grown accustomed to seeing supermarket shelves filled with all manner of foods all year round. Never mind that particular foods aren’t in season, or that the cheese came from France and the biscuits from Japan. Extravagant banana prices in Australia recently, due to crop damages, are perhaps a reminder that perhaps we should be more considerate of how seasonal the food we eat it, and how far it has had to travel.

Fact 49. “The US owes the United Nations more than $1 billion in unpaid dues.”

Guess who is the worst International citizen when it comes to supporting the United Nations? Mind you, this is chump change compared to their overall debt. As of September 21, 2006, the total U.S. government debt was $8.500 trillion. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.publicdebt )

Sample Resources

Oxfam – UK based development campaigning group

Human Rights Watch

World Watch Institute Much good reading.

Slow Food movement

World hunger, its causes and effects, what is being done.

Global Fund- to fight AIDS, Tuberclosis & Malaria

Save The Children – international perspective on child poverty

50 Facts That Should Change The World by Jessica Williams is distributed in Aus via allenandunwin.com, $19.95.

Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet
by Graham Meikle, Pluto Press, 2002.

Book Review by Jean Poole ( first published for Real Time magazine, Australia )

I like the internet. I think Graham likes it too, perhaps for similar reasons: we can explore our favourite mudwrestling webcam sites, meet other fans, keep in touch. Graham’s position as an author and mine as a reviewer, also imply a healthy respect for the expanded research methods the net allows, the online communities we can be part of, the e-mailing of stories at the last minute. This shared respect, I suspect, finds us both very curious about how the wrestling of public and private interests will shape the internets development.

Imagining Grahams desk
Pens, paper, a compaq (?) laptop, dictionary, thesaurus and a gleaming crystal ball sitting to one side into which Graham gazes periodically with an optimistic pragmatism, rather than tech-utopian drool. Above the desk a mirror – reflecting bookshelves creak-heavy with politics, postmodernism and the entire cyberculture canon. And a good deal of print-outs, because net-dissectors still like to underline words with a pen. From this very desk, Graham has conveniently chronicled the most famous political uses of the net in recent years, pored over interviews with many key outspoken online activists and authors, grouped the different shapes of net activism into useful categories, and offered some perspectives on ways the internet may continue to be developed in an open form. I’m thinking it’s a nice old wood.

Imagining Graham’s Internet
Some of its key features include openness, resource sharing, communication, conversation and collaboration. While these are features celebrated by the early digerati such as Howard Rheingold and John Barlow, Graham is careful to debunk ‘cyberhype’ during a quick tour of the net’s early years and evangelists. He maybe spends a little too much time translating the hyperbole around the net as ‘market boosterism’, but is sharper in critiquing ‘interactivity’. Usefully, he outlines transmissional, registrational, consultational and conversational forms of interactivity, and proposes that Tim Berners Lee’s ‘intercreativity – solving problems together’ as a better challenge to aspire to. Throughout the book, an open, conversational, intercreative internet is described as a Version 1.0 internet. A Version 2.0 internet, Graham proposes, is one where we move to the closed system preferred by entrenched corporate interests, a broadcast rather than many to many model. By the way the book is riddled with characters doing their utmost to steer us away from a version 2.0 internet, I fancy Graham’s down with numero uno.

Some of The Riddlers
An English couple being taken to court by McDonalds, launched the mcspotlight.org website in 1996. Being dragged through the British legal system for distributing a critiquing pamphlet, they found with the website a way to match their wits rather than budget with the legal muscle of a multinational food giant. In subsequent years, millions of visitors viewed the original pamphlet and much supporting material, but as Graham reveals, it was the astute site development and understanding of online community and information navigation which made mcspotlight one of the more successful online political campaigns.

Future Active similarly traces many popular political campaigns such as the B92 radio station’s celebrated use of online radio to spread news during the Bosnian war. Much of the work is in documenting what happened as events unfolded and how the net was used, but this is supplemented with plenty of insightful quotes from both campaign organisers and relevant theorists. Graham diverges from the media theory pack a little though, by exploring ways some nastier groups have used the net.

Web Nasties
While Graham’s careful to point out he doesn’t endorse, merely analyses the net strategies of – deathnet, godhatesfags.com and the North American Man Boy Love Association, I don’t understand why he didn’t use the same sort of caution in detailing his flirtations with the Labor Party, Liberal Party and One Nation websites. To his credit, he thoroughly exposes the major parties’ lack of engagement with their constituents online, speculating that it’s not that the major parties don’t get it – but that they don’t want it. Prefer they, the broadcast or version 2 model rather than a community based model with lack of hierarchy or control. In contrast the web-Hansonites are shown to have embraced and harnessed the qualities of the internet effectively. Although One Nation sitemaster Scott Balson’s claim that ‘Hanson was the first cyber-politician on the internet’, is slightly dubious, their integration of e-mail lists and bulletin boards was apparently commendable.

Other Commendables
Veering into newer political territory, one of the book’s better sections links together the ‘free software’ movement, the growth of the indymedia online publishing centres, globalisation, and the role of two Sydneysiders in making this happen – Matthew Arnison on code and Gabrielle Kuiper. The free software and open publishing movements are becoming increasingly influential in many spheres and their development is well described here. With his encouraging tone and enthusiasm for the topic however, some chances for exploring the issues and difficulties currently being experienced by open publishers have been missed. This is my only problem too with the near closing pieces on ‘culture jamming’ and ‘tactical media’ . Fantastic coverage of interesting projects, people and events online, but scarcer on the ground critiquing the limitations of their approaches.

The book for you?
Depends. Maybe you’re a sociology, communications, cultural studies, art or media theory student looking for a good, brisk overview of recent online skirmishes, blossomings, battles? Perhaps you’re interested in understanding more about our transforming society and ways the net is being tactically used? Maybe you don’t share the same bookmarks as frequent indymedia visitors, or the ‘nettime’ / ‘fibre culture’ / ‘rhizome’ etc mailing list members?

For me?
I liked it, although much of the terrain was already familiar. Wished occasionally for more criticisms of people being celebrated, but admired the collation, the crisp, want-to-communicate tone. A broader ‘media activism and the internet’ might have covered more artistic strategies online, mp3s and more software development. Like Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’, this is a fine book which may end up being in the right place at the right time.

An old man on the bus yesterday told me that all bunnies know something we don’t. If you dig a tunnel deep enough it’ll actually take you to Atlantis, not China. And the bus drivers there only accept juice and electricity as payment. Brim full of juice & electricity, and therefore sorted for the long Atlantis rides, are the four artists/ coders explored in the book Generative Design: Beyond Photoshop.

The Artist as Coder
Making refined art, and refining tools for artmaking, please make browser-welcome:
Lia – creator of www.turux.org, www.re-move.org, www.wofbot.org
Adrian Ward – creator of www.auto-illustrator.com, www.slub.org
meta – creator of http://www.meta.am
Golan Levin – creator of www.flong.com

These cats X-plore programming and a range of apps such as auto-illustator, java, DBN, director lingo, max and nato, which allow them to transcend software limitations and create new customised software or new ways of making art, or allow them to develop generative processes which continuously generate art according to the parameters defined by the programmer. And slowly, software itself is being seen as an artistic creation, not just a tool.

The Book in a Nutshell
Generative Design: Beyond Photoshop is broken into 4 sections, each delving into the personal processes and perspectives of each artist, then walking through a particular example of their code and showcasing its results. This involves web-site pix, graphic design, thru to snapshots from real-time apps showcasing the flexibility of the artists approach. Some of it looks fantastic, some was perhaps more fun to make than appreciate, but combined with the artists comments makes for a rewarding read.

An end-section shows the results of the artists remixing each others work and commenting on it which is a nice touch, and an accompanying website encourages readers to download and mutate the software, then swap it with others. See: www.friendsofed.com/4×4

Why You Might Like It – Seeks to demystify and encourage computer programming and coding for artists. – It has code u can type out and play with – Very interesting artist writings about their work – Nice pix – It’ll look better than Rugby League Week on your coffee table.

“Computers are capable of an unimaginably greater number of things than any specific piece of software might lead one to believe. I believe individual artists should dictate the possibilities of their chosen media, and not some big companies like adobe or macromedia.” – Golan Levin

“liquid crystal displays. 3d headsets. instrument panels in automobiles. electron microscopes. radar. sonar. infrared. x-ray. humanity is attempting to reinvent the optic nerve so that it may see again, and the inevitable next step will be to reinvent the creative process to free it’s imagination.” – meta

“Code shapes technology into whatever form it desires. Before code, any system was fixed by its design, no matter how flexible. With code, despite it’s structure being fixed and defined by the system on which it is executed, a new area of creativity is opened: a definition of process rather than product.” – Adrian Ward

“What I aim to achieve with my work, in general , is to show how beautiful mathematics can be when depicted. ” – Lia

Generative Design: Beyond Photoshop is from a series titled 4×4, the others tackling photoshop and 3D: geometry and chaos, photoshop and flash: time and stasis, and photoshop and illustrator: light and dark. Costs $US49.99, and is distributed in OZ by mcgraw-hill.com.