A Final Thanks !!! I’m Buzzing !
3 hours ago
Thursday, 12 July 2012
should we be compelled to be facebook friends with #asio? click 'dislike' here: http://ow.ly/cbv7H #natsecinquiry
♪♫ Dave Graney and the MistLY - Flash In The Pantz
Bonus:
Kerry Negara's tribute / profile to a great Australian band and personality - 'Dave Graney 'n The Coral Snakes' - for SBS TV's diverse music show 'nomad' 1992. Has snippets of Tony Mahoney's music clip, 'You're Just Too Hip Baby', music from 'Night of the Wolverine' & set in Melbourne locations that no longer exist!
http://negarafilmtvmedia.com/
Kerry Negara's tribute / profile to a great Australian band and personality - 'Dave Graney 'n The Coral Snakes' - for SBS TV's diverse music show 'nomad' 1992. Has snippets of Tony Mahoney's music clip, 'You're Just Too Hip Baby', music from 'Night of the Wolverine' & set in Melbourne locations that no longer exist!
http://negarafilmtvmedia.com/
Azealia Banks - Fantasea Mixtape
Download Fantasea here.
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50 years later...
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Catnip: Egress to Oblivion? [Classroom Drug Educational Film]
Catnip is all the rage with today's modern feline, but do we really understand it?
Is it a source for harmless kicks, or a potentially crippling addiction? Is it a tool to expand one's consciousness, or a downward spiraling path that can eventually lead to insanity?
Once and for all the facts about this controversial substance are frankly discussed, in the long-lost drug educational film that never-was, "Catnip: Egress to Oblivion?".
Is it a source for harmless kicks, or a potentially crippling addiction? Is it a tool to expand one's consciousness, or a downward spiraling path that can eventually lead to insanity?
Once and for all the facts about this controversial substance are frankly discussed, in the long-lost drug educational film that never-was, "Catnip: Egress to Oblivion?".
Spike Lee working on Michael Jackson film
Spike Lee has revealed he
is close to finishing a Michael Jackson documentary marking the 25th
anniversary of the singer's Bad album.
The director said the footage to which he was given access was a "treasure chest of findings"."We have footage in this documentary that no one's ever seen - stuff that Michael shot himself and behind the scenes stuff," he said.
The film is due to be released later this year.
It tells the story behind the 1987 album, the record-breaking world tour it led to and the short film music videos it spawned.
These include the video promo for the title track, directed by Martin Scorsese and featuring the actor Wesley Snipes.
"We had complete access to the vaults of Michael Jackson," Lee said. "He wrote 60 demos for the Bad record. Only 11 made it.
"We got to hear a lot of that stuff, too, so it was just a great experience."
The documentary features 40 interviews Lee conducted with Jackson's confidants, choreographers, musicians and other collaborators.
He also includes interviews with Kanye West, Mariah Carey and Sheryl Crow - who was a backup singer on the Bad tour - about the album's lasting influence.
"We really divided it into two things," Lee said. "Artists today who were influenced by Michael, and then people who worked side by side [with him]."
Besides Jackson's artistry, Lee said the documentary would show a more personal side of the singer who died in 2009.
"He had a great sense of humour, and he was funny," he said. "You'll see a lot of that stuff.
"I'm more than just a huge fan of Michael Jackson. Having the chance to actually know him and work with him, I deeply care about his legacy."
The 25th anniversary re-issue of Bad, titled Bad 25, will be released on 18 September.
@'BBC'
NPR's 75th birthday present to Philip Glass
o honor Philip Glass' 75th birthday this year, we here at NPR Music commissioned Glass to create a short work that would be great fun for amateur and professional singers alike. A big part of what we do is to try to make all kinds of music engaging and accessible — and wouldn't it be great to invite anyone who wanted to come and sing in a world premiere by one of the most celebrated composers of our time?
So Glass took a work he had first written for soprano and instruments as part of his 1997 3-D "digital opera" Monsters of Grace, and arranged it for soloist and eight-part chorus. And were very lucky indeed to team up with the Make Music NY Festival, member station WQXR and the Times Square Alliance to realize this project at one of the world's most iconic spots, the Crossroads of the World, Times Square.
About 200 singers gathered to sing with the ebullient Kent Tritle, one of America's most accomplished and beloved choral conductors, and soprano soloist Rachel Rosales. (And a handful of singers were folks who had simply been walking by and were swept up in the moment.)
On this sweltering day, the singers' mindful intention to gather in Times Square and its visceral result — all breath and sweat and palpable effort in the middle of glossy Times Square, with stifling heat, noise and a zillion blinking distractions — was just amazing and honestly quite moving.
For his text, Glass selected words from the medieval Sufi Muslim poet Jalaluddin Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks. In his poetry, Rumi urges the reader to break free of the constraints of daily life — to upend expectations and jettison traditional thinking in an unending quest to unite with the divine. "Here's the new rule," Rumi wrote. "Break the wineglass, and fall towards the glassblower's breath." And somehow — beautifully, magically and only briefly — this fleeting chorus became the heartbeat of Times Square
So Glass took a work he had first written for soprano and instruments as part of his 1997 3-D "digital opera" Monsters of Grace, and arranged it for soloist and eight-part chorus. And were very lucky indeed to team up with the Make Music NY Festival, member station WQXR and the Times Square Alliance to realize this project at one of the world's most iconic spots, the Crossroads of the World, Times Square.
About 200 singers gathered to sing with the ebullient Kent Tritle, one of America's most accomplished and beloved choral conductors, and soprano soloist Rachel Rosales. (And a handful of singers were folks who had simply been walking by and were swept up in the moment.)
On this sweltering day, the singers' mindful intention to gather in Times Square and its visceral result — all breath and sweat and palpable effort in the middle of glossy Times Square, with stifling heat, noise and a zillion blinking distractions — was just amazing and honestly quite moving.
For his text, Glass selected words from the medieval Sufi Muslim poet Jalaluddin Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks. In his poetry, Rumi urges the reader to break free of the constraints of daily life — to upend expectations and jettison traditional thinking in an unending quest to unite with the divine. "Here's the new rule," Rumi wrote. "Break the wineglass, and fall towards the glassblower's breath." And somehow — beautifully, magically and only briefly — this fleeting chorus became the heartbeat of Times Square
William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin recordings released
The CD also includes 1960s recordings of Gysin performing his permutated poems, plus home recordings made in Paris by Burroughs and Gysin in 1970. More details here, and download extracts here and here.
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'Unleashed In The East' - Petter Hegre In Tokyo (NSFW)
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Audible Color
audible color is an audio-visual instrument.
Sound is generated based on color detected by a camera. Red, green and
blue correspond with certain music notes. When the colors are mixed, the
resulting secondary colors produce different notes. The size of the
colors influences the volume and frequency of the notes played. Color
detection and sound generation were created and are controlled using
Processing code.
Designed by Hideaki Matsui and Momo MiyazakiGenerative Design Workshop 2012 with Joshua Noble and Daviid Gauthier
Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (ciid.dk)
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Turkey: Stop this undeclared war against transgender people
This is a guest post by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous.
The status of transgender people has improved radically in many countries around the world in recent years. Unfortunately, even in a global context, progress is still patchy and every positive change in one country seems to be countered with retrograde activity in another.
Across Europe, there has been an increase in violent attacks by far-right protesters and these are occuring at the same time as countries such as Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine are adopting national and regional laws to forbid the public expression of support for LGBT people's human rights.
This disturbing trend has come to the attention of the European Parliament; in May this year, Dennis de Jong MEP, Vice-President of the LGBT Intergroup in the European Parliament, said:
However, there is no room for celebration or complacency in Turkey. Three years ago the LGBTT Rights Platform - an informal alliance of transgender and LGB advocacy and support groups - called for an end to what it called "an undeclared war" against LGBT people in Turkey [Source] - yet the situation for transgender people especially seems to be getting worse, not better.
In 2009, the Trans Murder Monitoring Project (TMM) was set up jointly by Transgender Europe (TGEU) and the academic online magazine Liminalis with the aim of collecting and analyzing published reports of the homicides of transgender people worldwide. The figures for Turkey are both alarming and dispiriting, showing a year-on-year increase in the murders of transgender people.
While this violence is to be condemned in the strongest possible terms, it is believed to be only the tip of the iceberg. As well as the reported murders, many other hate crimes against transgender people (transphobic crimes) go unreported, ranging from verbal abuse in the street and the workplace through muggings, beatings and rape. Perhaps worst of all is the attitude of many government agencies, many of which seem unconcerned at the extent of transphobic crimes. This has the result of enabling the rates of these crimes to escalate, because they send the message to the general population that it's acceptable to display such prejudices - even against members of the authorities themselves.
For example, earlier this week, Khaber reported on an operation against against an Istanbul police officer, known only as F.B., which bears the hallmarks of an undercover 'sting' action (a deceptive operation designed to catch a person thought to be committing a crime).
The officer, based in the Güngören district of Istanbul, was named in an anomyous email in which it was claimed that, out of working hours, she "dressed like a woman and prostituted". Posing as potential clients, police officers arranged to meet F.B. at a prearranged location, where they detained her then extracted a confession later at the police station. F.B. has been discharged from the police force and faces four years' imprisonment on charges of "soliciting and accomodation for prostitution."
The police action raises questions in several areas. First of all, there is an ethical concern over whether a sting operation in fact comprises entrapment. It may be that F.B. had committed no crime, but the actions of the police officers had the effect of provoking a crime by someone who might not otherwise have done so. And, if it should prove that F.B. was indeed engaged in paid sex work, then it may perhaps be counter-argued that the police officers engaged in the crime of soliciting.
There is also the wider question of society's attitudes to paid sex work, and many experts have suggested that pursuing individuals is ultimately counter-productive, attacking the symptom rather than the cause, and that the energies of the authorities might be better focused on tackling the root issues around the sex industry. From this perspective, it could be argued that issues around coercion, trafficking and the spread of HIV/AIDS on a national scale deserve greater attention than the alleged activities of one person.
While it's true that some transgender people are sex workers, there may be good reasons for this. Transgender people are stigmatised, marginalised and generally demonised by swathes of society; as a consequence obtaining necessary medical supplies such as hormones will always be difficult. Additionally, for those who wish to transition fully, the costs of such things as sex reassignment surgery (SRS) - often requiring travel to another country - and building a new life may be prohibitively expensive. Unemployment rates amongst transgender people are universally far higher than in corresponding sections of society as a whole and for some transgender people, sex work may be the only option left open to them.
However, it isn't always so straightforward. This quote from the Khaber article is particularly telling:
Many transgender people are aware at a very young age that the bodies in which they find themselves are not the bodies their brains were expecting. This incongruence is known by medical specialists as "gender dysphoria"; its effects are severely debilitating and may lead to depression, despair and suicide. Over many years, various methods of alleviating this distress have evolved with a proven success rate; from occasional cross-dressing, through hormone therapies and surgery.
While some are fortunate enough to transition fully and live completely in their preferred gender, for others this solution may not be desirable. F.B.'s comment above suggests that she is in this latter category. That being so, then the actions of the police would seem to be an unnecessarily heavy-handed and entirely inappropriate response to a member of one of the most vulnerable sections of society.
Given that, only a day after F.B.'s arrest, TGEU reported the violent murder of a transgender woman in Antalya to add to other transphobic and homophobic murders and hate crimes known to have been carried out this year alone in Gaziantep, Pendik, Istanbul, Izmir, Maltepe, Kusadasi and Kocaeli, surely an attitudinal change amongst the majority of Turkish society is long overdue and the undeclared war against transgender people brought to an immediate end.
---------------
Turkey - TG symbol made by Helen from images found at Wikipedia (here and here). Both original images are public domain and so is this one. If using elsewhere, please ensure correct attribution.
Cross-posted from Bird of Paradox
The status of transgender people has improved radically in many countries around the world in recent years. Unfortunately, even in a global context, progress is still patchy and every positive change in one country seems to be countered with retrograde activity in another.Across Europe, there has been an increase in violent attacks by far-right protesters and these are occuring at the same time as countries such as Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine are adopting national and regional laws to forbid the public expression of support for LGBT people's human rights.
This disturbing trend has come to the attention of the European Parliament; in May this year, Dennis de Jong MEP, Vice-President of the LGBT Intergroup in the European Parliament, said:
The Commission and the External Action Service must take note of these bans and condemn them without hesitation. These are clear breaches of universally-agreed human rights, and we will work to ensure free speech remains a reality everywhere in Europe, including for LGBT people. [Source]
However, there is no room for celebration or complacency in Turkey. Three years ago the LGBTT Rights Platform - an informal alliance of transgender and LGB advocacy and support groups - called for an end to what it called "an undeclared war" against LGBT people in Turkey [Source] - yet the situation for transgender people especially seems to be getting worse, not better.
In 2009, the Trans Murder Monitoring Project (TMM) was set up jointly by Transgender Europe (TGEU) and the academic online magazine Liminalis with the aim of collecting and analyzing published reports of the homicides of transgender people worldwide. The figures for Turkey are both alarming and dispiriting, showing a year-on-year increase in the murders of transgender people.
While this violence is to be condemned in the strongest possible terms, it is believed to be only the tip of the iceberg. As well as the reported murders, many other hate crimes against transgender people (transphobic crimes) go unreported, ranging from verbal abuse in the street and the workplace through muggings, beatings and rape. Perhaps worst of all is the attitude of many government agencies, many of which seem unconcerned at the extent of transphobic crimes. This has the result of enabling the rates of these crimes to escalate, because they send the message to the general population that it's acceptable to display such prejudices - even against members of the authorities themselves.
For example, earlier this week, Khaber reported on an operation against against an Istanbul police officer, known only as F.B., which bears the hallmarks of an undercover 'sting' action (a deceptive operation designed to catch a person thought to be committing a crime).
The officer, based in the Güngören district of Istanbul, was named in an anomyous email in which it was claimed that, out of working hours, she "dressed like a woman and prostituted". Posing as potential clients, police officers arranged to meet F.B. at a prearranged location, where they detained her then extracted a confession later at the police station. F.B. has been discharged from the police force and faces four years' imprisonment on charges of "soliciting and accomodation for prostitution."
The police action raises questions in several areas. First of all, there is an ethical concern over whether a sting operation in fact comprises entrapment. It may be that F.B. had committed no crime, but the actions of the police officers had the effect of provoking a crime by someone who might not otherwise have done so. And, if it should prove that F.B. was indeed engaged in paid sex work, then it may perhaps be counter-argued that the police officers engaged in the crime of soliciting.
There is also the wider question of society's attitudes to paid sex work, and many experts have suggested that pursuing individuals is ultimately counter-productive, attacking the symptom rather than the cause, and that the energies of the authorities might be better focused on tackling the root issues around the sex industry. From this perspective, it could be argued that issues around coercion, trafficking and the spread of HIV/AIDS on a national scale deserve greater attention than the alleged activities of one person.
While it's true that some transgender people are sex workers, there may be good reasons for this. Transgender people are stigmatised, marginalised and generally demonised by swathes of society; as a consequence obtaining necessary medical supplies such as hormones will always be difficult. Additionally, for those who wish to transition fully, the costs of such things as sex reassignment surgery (SRS) - often requiring travel to another country - and building a new life may be prohibitively expensive. Unemployment rates amongst transgender people are universally far higher than in corresponding sections of society as a whole and for some transgender people, sex work may be the only option left open to them.
However, it isn't always so straightforward. This quote from the Khaber article is particularly telling:
I have felt like a woman since an early age," F.B. reportedly said. "I always did it secretly to avoid destroying the responsibility of my job ... I am doing this not for money but for pleasure.
Many transgender people are aware at a very young age that the bodies in which they find themselves are not the bodies their brains were expecting. This incongruence is known by medical specialists as "gender dysphoria"; its effects are severely debilitating and may lead to depression, despair and suicide. Over many years, various methods of alleviating this distress have evolved with a proven success rate; from occasional cross-dressing, through hormone therapies and surgery.
While some are fortunate enough to transition fully and live completely in their preferred gender, for others this solution may not be desirable. F.B.'s comment above suggests that she is in this latter category. That being so, then the actions of the police would seem to be an unnecessarily heavy-handed and entirely inappropriate response to a member of one of the most vulnerable sections of society.
Given that, only a day after F.B.'s arrest, TGEU reported the violent murder of a transgender woman in Antalya to add to other transphobic and homophobic murders and hate crimes known to have been carried out this year alone in Gaziantep, Pendik, Istanbul, Izmir, Maltepe, Kusadasi and Kocaeli, surely an attitudinal change amongst the majority of Turkish society is long overdue and the undeclared war against transgender people brought to an immediate end.
---------------
Turkey - TG symbol made by Helen from images found at Wikipedia (here and here). Both original images are public domain and so is this one. If using elsewhere, please ensure correct attribution.
Cross-posted from Bird of Paradox
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
Vikram Gandhi: Directing ‘Kumaré’ - From Illusion Comes Truth
At PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Vikram Gandhi spoke about his latest movie
Kumaré - The True Story of A False Prophet. While he was born in New
Jersey, the film director spoke about how he had been noticing how the
Indian-heritage culture he had experienced as he grew up, was being used
by Americans and other Westerners to help solve their emotional and
spiritual issues. To explore this idea further he dressed up as a guru,
created a backstory with YouTube video and website, spoke like his
grandmother and recruited followers in Arizona. What's unique is that
throughout the film is that he tells everyone he was an illusion and
asks his followers to look in a mirror to solve their own problems.
I watched Kumaré the other day (Australians can see it here.) A fascinating and thought provoking film about the search for a meaning to life and how the answer resides in us all along.
I watched Kumaré the other day (Australians can see it here.) A fascinating and thought provoking film about the search for a meaning to life and how the answer resides in us all along.
Interzone - A William Burroughs Mix
Tuesday, 10 July 2012
Lol Coxhill RIP
Very sad.
All those times at The Engineers/LMC, the Bracknell Jazz Fest emceeing, Murder In The Air (which I shall play the record of now...) etc. etc. RIP & thanx.
All those times at The Engineers/LMC, the Bracknell Jazz Fest emceeing, Murder In The Air (which I shall play the record of now...) etc. etc. RIP & thanx.
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