BarCamp Mumbai

Monome & Birdsong

The birds are talking very fast, animated. They're like a swarm of DJ's pushing a note in the middle of a structure that is visible to all of them simultaneously. Can two snakes fight on a grid of nine buttons?

"You have the energy of the sun in you,
but you keep knotting it up
at the base of your spine."

- Rumi

1. Rajan Parrikar On Raga Multani
2. Tagore and Einstein talk:

E: Sometimes it does suffer very much. Sometimes the harmony swallows up the melody altogether.

T: Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.

To Try Acting...

[LINK]
[RE-LINK]

(((((((where would you look for the message in an electric light?)))))))

Where would you look for the message in an electric light?

Proph. Marshall McLuhan is very dense, man. Takes 5 times reading New Media as Political Forms:

What is to be expected in the mainly non-literate India and China, countries which are in a position to by-pass literacy and proceed at once with radio and TV? These countries represent high cultures which are almost entirely oral and pictographic. Their rapport with TV far exceeds our own. If the new medium of the press gave a radical imprint to American politics, how much more might the new medium of TV be ordained to shape power patterns in the Orient? Should this occur, our own political structures, tied to print, would be quite unable to catch up. Russia provides some hints for this process. Enjoying the end products of our technology as regards industry, press, radio, and movie, it assumed them at a pre-industrial point in its own development, just as the Orient is in a position to assume end products of an even later stage of our development into an even earlier stage of its own. The dream-character of movie and TV realism would seem to be connaturally adjusted to ''the dreaming East.'' The giant djinns of oriental fancy are pygmy-like in size and power compared even with the superhuman dimensions conferred by our own daily press and weekly magazines on nobody in particular. But even more, movie and TV have the almost uncontrollable power of inflating the most casually selected persons into million-horsepowered entities. Men trained in book culture are slow to assess these facts. Yet they will admit that even books, by and large, have been written by their reading publics. Authors have always been shaped by their potential publics.

But the new media are not ''authored'' by single individuals any more than a modern newspaper. As the public of the new media increases the ''author'' staff increases. Scott or Dickens could net a nation. But no single writer today can encompass more than a fragment of the available attention of the public. The media have transformed the public in many ways and the public goes on transforming the techniques and consciousness of the authors who would master it. The man who has something to say is the man who has mastered some segment of public awareness. He is capable of lighting up some dim, fusty corner of embryonic social consciousness. Formerly an author could do this by introspection, when he was essentially a member of society. Today when it is no longer possible to be sure of what being a member of society may involve, the ''author'' has to bestir himself as much as any pollster. He lives in an unknown world of strange new components and effects.

Or hear the 57 minute Speaking Freely mp3 that begins with:

Where would you look for the message in an electric light?

whoa! gimme a beer.

Tie-dee Beers all the way! Yoohoo!

Words In The Air

Two Essays I'm posting these here so I can remember them myself. My short term memory has altogether dissapeared following my latest invention.

1. Forms of Future, by Michael Joyce. This man is a visionary and one more feather in the Joyce tradition.
2. HTC, Grammatron, Hypertextual Consciousness:

I wonder why they never thought of what I just did for two days. It's...so simple. Joyce did foresee it - why did he never invent it?

This healing-over traces a circle like that of the zen paradox, the circle whose center is nowhere and whose circumference is everywhere. In writing some years ago about the emergence of a city of text I cited Wim Wenders angelic vision of the great Berlin film, Wings of Desire, in which angels walk among the stacks of a library, listening to the musical language which forms the thoughts of individual readers. Into this scene, shuffling slowly up the stairs, comes an old man, who the credits identify as Homer. "Tell me, muse, of the story-teller who was thrust to the end of the world, childlike ancient...With time," he thinks, "my listeners became my readers. They no longer sit in a circle, instead they sit apart and no one knows anything about the other..."

The new electronic literature will restore the circle as it always was and, paradoxically, as it never was before.

Dialling The Sun

The signs are becoming clearer and clearer, and I'm now able to navigate through this path much better. There is the occasional speedbreaker, but one always learns something. Well, without wasting any more of your time, O Jungle Wild, these are my discoveries of the day:

1. The wavefunctions of a quantum-mechanical electron, when expressed as here, look like sunsets bifurcating through a quantum mechanical lens, which is the string theory "string". It is no wonder then, that they resemble Chaldni's cymatic figures, and also the infinite set diagrams of John Venn, expressed progressively. What does this mean? Is it the same sun I see when i close my eyes?

2. Mr. Miniver's Problem led me to the work of Jan Struther (Joyce Maxtone Graham). Raja has mentioned both Joyce and "dial-in" to RG in his feedback. Graham rings a Bell too. So perhaps the next show will be over a dial-up! Here is an excerpt from Sycamore Square and Other Verses, a section called Dialling Tones:

[London telephone exchanges had names, before the introduction of all-digit telephone numbers.–R.M.G.]

VICTORIA

When I dial V-I-C,
Here's the dream that comes to me:

Leisured world where no one hustles,
World of crinolines and bustles,
Jingling hansoms, spanking hoofs,
Planeless skies, unaerialled roofs;
World of whiskers and of waists,
Drawing-room songs, domestic tastes,
Low taxation, high ideals,
Narrowed creeds and bloated meals;
World of wax and wool and tartan,
Sound and safe beneath the Spartan
Rule of Her who quite refused
'Gainst her will to be amused. . . .

Here's the dream that comes to me
When I dial V-I-C.

What's going on here? I have no idea.

Sun Watches

When you're done cumming at these sundial watches, have a look at this game. These guys are heliophilic like myself.

And, did I mention the photosynthetic perpetual motion
machine?!


*so pretty, my gawd!*

FutureFarmers, you rock!

The Idiot Returns

The IIHMC newsletter is just out and features a quote by Fadereu on the Varanasi blasts. Download it as a PDF here.

And this blurb turned up in the mail:

Storytelling is a calling. It is appalling that Rohit has a laptop
that does not have a powerpoint presentation, but a rambling account of
obscure events in 1910, which he claims is a story. To distract viewers he
not only gave his moustache a Dali-esque twist, but wore a turban. Instead
of reading out of the pages of a neatly bound book, in a manner that
befits a writer, he pretended to convert digitized text into analog
speech - letting loose a volley of utter nonsense. At the end of it, when I
mentioned Joyce and Finnegan he nodded animatedly, instead of calling me a
snoot and a name-dropper. Clearly he is a crook. But, but, but if you are
bored out of your wits, you can dial Rohit to substitute the idiot box
with a live idiot. In an age of packaged content, trade your personal
plasma screen for a performance, and should Rohit fail to deliver, God
promise, full-paisa wapis.

- Professor Raja Mohanty
Industrial Design Centre

On the show at IDC auditorium,
IIT Powai. 3rd April 2006

Etcetra
The Art Of Whistling, by DJ Papa (lovely piece!) [Download MP3]

DreamVenue

The Audium

A hollow that teems with animals

I realised that I can sustain some throat frequencies, and with practice I could merge it with textual renditions. I have been reading and dreaming mostly, as usual, but I find myself going for a standing column sometimes while drifting to sleep. Download the pilot program, Trinity, while I close my eyes.

It is not suprising that I had foreseen the ThereminVox in my head before I got to the Wikipedia entry. I had, in fact, thought of wearing magnetoid-rings in my fingers to excite the wasted frequencies of a radio receiver. In this interview with the inventor Leon Theremin, you might get brainfucked on the Einstein reference.

The Tuvan national anthem Tooruktug Dolgaï Tangdym or
The Forest is Full of Cedar Nuts is somewhat inspiring in this regard. When you play the RealAudio, let him begin and wait for the changes. By the time this guy is done, your chemistry will have altered.

There in the mountains, the
cliffs, the taiga, I was born.
Because of that I am strong.
I will raise my livestock
and be rich.
Nine different animals -- If I herd
them and feed them
And take care of them as my
own -- I'll be rich.

And Leon Theremin was one of the "taiga" inmates in Russia. Capiche?

Etcetra:
1. A Theremin Song: SleepWalk
2. Hilarious Japanese MusicMimes
3. Art's Theremin Page: Very nice.

The Dialektizer (Geddit?)

I: The Original Essay
The Dialectizer by Samuel Stoddard
Sequence: Jive

da Rezult:

Maps Widout Bo'ders

Each cartographa' is involved in de creashun uh two maps, dig dis:

1: One be de map dat he creates uh a gigantic area, shrunk and calibrated by scale into some much smalla' area dat kin be stugot wasted by some standin' man, o' projected onto some wall o' ceilin'. He tries t'construct da damn image uh a large territo'y by summin' down certain key info'mashun about dat place. De cartographa' acts as some camera obscura. WORD!

2. De second be de map dat be created not by de pen, but by de feet uh de cartographa' as he goes about his job, movin' around in his studio, livin' his life and leavin' his imprint in everydin' he touches o' walks downon. 'S coo', bro. In dis version uh de map, human movement acts as de camera – projectin' reality on de ground bediggin' hoth our feet. Man!

3. Dere be a dird map, de map dat 'esplo'ers make wid deir feet as dey carry dis cartographer's map, followin' its contours and co'rectin' dem on de map as dey pass. If some certain place be upon de map, dere be a chance dat it gots been passed befo'e by man, and derefo'e dey retrace and co'rect da damn olda' footprints. De hands uh de cartographa' make da damn fust map, and da damn movement uh his feet tracked by some global posishunin' system (GPS) make da damn second map. Jes hang loose, brud. When dese two maps converge, de need t'draw lines on de eard-grid would disappear. Ah be baaad...

II: Original Essay
Dialectizer Sequence: Hacker

Da rezult:

a devout pardi and virtUa7 dictatr0 opf bombay, sir pharozeshaH mehtya was a man com/\/\itted yo protect his spect4cles, rtesticlws, awllet and watcH, and campaIgn3d aainst curZ0ns insritution ofd teh ist in july of 1905. lolollololllololol.... THIS PROOPESD CHANGEP 7ACED BOMBAY 39 /\/\INUTES AHEAD Of ITZ LOCAL TIM3, AZ MEASURED BY THE COLABA OBSAR\/ATORY!!!!!!!!111~~~~~~ ololol it was writrten ofmehta ion the biofraphy by ohmi mOdy tha, so faR 4s hhe could /\/\ake 0it, teh Onl ything in favour of it waz thaT it was convene1nt to teh r4ilway trrvelling public~~~ cbt itt was nots uitable at All to tdh shipping 4nd marcantiel commuinite1s OLOLOLOLOLOLO..

DUE TO HIS GIGANTIC INFLUENCE IN TEh AFAFIRS OF BOBAY, SO/\/\E 3NMGLISH SARvANTZ OF ETH cROWN ROGANISED A TSRONG CAUCUA AGANIST MeHTA, AQHCK YOUIUUUUIUU bbevauSe I wi7l ahck an important role was playd byo n3 mr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1~~~ lovat frasaaR, a journalist with the times of india, in sendeing A miasleaeding cable to t3h aga khan, and using his reply to influemce hi sfOllower!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11~~~~~ itsa nothe rmATter thaat politica lleaders of that time wropte golWin gbiographeis of each oher in the1r fre timE, an dthaT teh froeword in mdis book on jmehta si by the aga khan H1mse7f~~~~~

Push me! Push me!

(He didn't) Captain's Log, AlgoMantra sequence initiated.
No physical response from subject. Signs
of mental paralysis, seizure. His mouth gained
independence and went automaton, couldn't stop
speaking. He looped around the "Don't mess with me!
You don't know me!" subroutine, while I was saying
calmly, "But!! I AM messing with you. Push me!"

Etcetra

1.(artwork: Early Spring) Hotlinking the Taiwanese Government.
2. WildType BacterioPoetics is going buzzerk!
3. Download Qu'uraan (Rapidshare link) by Eno and Byrne it. (heh!) The song is divine.