Fish friends

A couple of weeks ago Justina got our fish tank going. It's situated under the stairs that takes us out of the top floor and into the garden. The house is built into what was once a hill, so we enter on street level and walk down a set of stairs into the living area, kitchen and the fecund garden.

Here's the tank with Mr Fish and Mr Friend. There are two snails and five, surprisingly smart smaller fish from the Murray River (apparently).

A close up of Mr Fish... He has similar markings as Supercat, although Super is black and white.

Now here's Mr Friend, also a Comet, larger than Mr Friend, equally as gracefull.

Mr Friend and Fish spend a lot of time tailing each other.

The fish tank has become a kind of meditative corner where either of us, or both of us will sit, slow down, relax and empty our minds of inconsequential thoughts.

SmartMobs

Smart Mobs - The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold's weblog surveying mobile and wirless Internet developments. It's a support "document" to his recent book, "Smart Mobs". Do a search on "swarming"... Scary stuff... Interesting article about swarming in The Age and SMH.

Kids love galleries

Queensland University of Technology did a study of children's use of galleries and museums. The study was called, Child Exhibition Art Spaces.

They discovered that most, if not all kids point to the escelator and lift buttons as the most exciting feature!

The curator of Queensland Art Gallery, which now sports a "child friendly interior, described the research as "not [exactly] groundbreaking..." Thank you Radio National.

Letter from Fitzroy #01

The Art of Forgetting

For most Australian voters the difference between political parties and their respective factions has been effectively blurred. Debate is negotiated via rhetoric. Debate is usurped by language that does not inform and media campaigns that seek to undermine public critique and memory.

The powers that be would have us believe that we must relax, not react to the issues of our time. We are being taught to be fearful, as did the medieval religions of Europe, rather than pursue knowledge within the construct of a social economy (if we were to adhere to some of the more fundamental and original tenants of capitalism) that supports, not robs us of opportunity, wisdom, collaboration and community.

Some say humans don’t learn, that it is consciousness that does... If so, I hope this amorphous uber-self of humanity translates into tangible structures that would see the end of poverty in all its forms: physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional.

Are we to sustain a legacy of forgetting, or will history teach us that self-flagellation is that which awaits each step of our evolutionary struggle, or rather, devolutionary demise?

As a species we have won the battle for supremacy over our environment, but we are losing the skill and will to sustain that which we inherit. So it goes...

Download - Secession Propaganda 01.

No more Listening Room?

Last week we learnt that the ABC's landmark, experimental sound program the Listening Room was to be axed. And this evening, as I was preparing to write a letter about this, I read that New Music Australia had got the chop too...

The ABC's ADLib project was where I'd published this letter:

I was both astonished and appalled at the news that both the Listening Room and New Music Australia are to be axed.

The Listening Room gave me space and support to exert crucial ideas at a time when no one in this country was neither interested nor listening.

It provided the first experimental audio streaming project, to our knowledge, to be streamed and broadcast simultaneously in Australia, whilst in Europe this medium was already fast becoming utalitarian.

New Music Australia appeared at a time when I was near despair that radio in Australia was becoming bereft of challanges, evocations and new knowledge. Apart from numerous community broadcast efforts, the 3 B's, as Julian Knowles describes, were too often to be heard soothing the ears of the marooned.

Look ahead, not back... There's more to this country than sport and Americana.

For listening rooms everywhere,
-ag.

Secession MIDIbox

Ever since it was possible to engage with audio software via external controllers other than a mouse or Wacom, I've been dreaming of the ultimate USB MIDIbox. I purchased an Oxygen8 almost the week it was launched, but had a waited another two months (as is always the case with IT), I would've had many more MIDI controller devices to choose from.

MIDI software controllers have been around a few years now. The most popular of the low cost ones, although out of my price range, was the Phat Boy. Then there were the German range of devices from the home of Doepfer, expensive, elegant and complex tools that I first saw in Ludwig's studio in Vienna.

Last week someone sent through to the Audiomulch list, a link to MIDIbox from where I feel some of my ideas and needs will be satisfied.

MIDIbox hosts a broad selection of DIY software controller surfaces, some which have been designed for specific applications such as Cubase, Ableton Live, Reason and Tracktor.

What I'm looking for is a controller surface that gives me a great deal of flexibility to engage with a selection of applications, primarly Ableton Live, Audiomulch and perhaps Cubase (if I ever get enough money together to upgrade to SX).

And so begins, perhaps with the help of Frank Buechele, who seems enthusastic enough, the Secession MIDIbox project. Frank is a programmer who worked with us on D3. He has a penchant for soldering irons and cobbling together robots in his precious spare time.

Controllers of note from the MIDIbox gallery are:

• MBHP, designed to use with Ableton Live
• MIDIbox64 with faders, pots, buttons and joysticks

Aside from controllers, there's a few other things on the wish list. Well near the top is Dave Smith's Evolver. Mr Smith is the person behind the Prophet-5. I had a deposit on a 2nd hand Prophet in Sydney in 1987-ish.

It was such an emotional period, those last few years of the 80s, by the time I had the money to pay it off, the blokes at Hutchings Keyboards (Bondi Junction, Sydney) were far too attached to the Prophet to let it go and so too the $500 deposit I'd left them with. Curiously, the Evolver costs as much as that deposit... There's always Christmas, people :)