Shannon O’Neill

Liquid Architecture 9: Festival of Sound Arts
Sydney 11 –12 July 2008
@ The Factory Theatre
105 Victoria Rd, Enmore

TICKETS: $12 (including booking fee)
From The Factory Theatre box office (02) 9550 3666 or online at www.factorytheatre.com.au

Liquid Architecture, Australia’s premier national sound-arts festival celebrates its ninth year with live performances, surround sound presentations, audio-visuals and recorded work, screenings and installations, featuring our most imaginative musicians, composers, sound designers and media artists in a sense-specific feast for the ears.

SYDNEY PROGRAM
Friday 11 July – 7:30pm
$12
TOY.BIZARRE (Bellac)
ROBERT NORMANDEAU (Montreal)
LAWRENCE ENGLISH (Brisbane)
NAT (Melbourne)
JACQUES SODDELL (Bendigo)
KUSUM NORMOYLE

Saturday 12 July - 7.30pm
$12
ANDREW PEKLER (Berlin)
MARCUS SCHMICKLER (Köln)
METALOG (Sydney/Melbourne)
KAZUMICHI GRIME
NICK WISHART + HIROFUMI UCHINO
HEIL SPIRITS
IVAN LISYAK
TOECUTTER

An international screening program featuring new A/V works. Plus an installation program exclusive to Sydney, featuring:

CÉDRIC PEYRONNET (Bellac)
JODI ROSE
RENE CHRISTEN
MELISSA HUNT
MARK BROWN
JASON SWEENEY
JESSICA TYRRELL

The first TEN people through the door each night will receive an ERIKM cd - Stéme (Room40). Giveaways courtesy of Room40.

FULL PROGRAM AND TICKETING DETAILS: www.liquidarchitecture.org.au

We have a two week break from classes, so I’m looking forward to catching up on writing, paperwork and sleep (I can’t sleep before 3am, so the morning classes have been killing me).

In social network news, I left Facebook a few months ago cos it was taking up too much time and is, let’s face it, evil. Twitter has had a lot of hype recently, so I’m checking it out again, although I’m still unconvinced.

I keep vacillating between privacy and openness online, deleting or hiding info, then showing it again. Right now I’m back on Flickr, Last.fm and YouTube, and have also created a YT channel for Alias Frequencies.

One thing I’ve noticed about del.icio.us is that making your network private means that the people you’re following can no longer see that you’re following them. I’m sorry if I offended anyone who thought I’d stopped following them!

Lastly, my blog recommendation for today is the hilarious rantings of Tom Ellard. For someone who was always anti-blogging, he’s a great blogger!

OK, break over, back to writing! Schnell schnell!

My review of this year’s NOW now festival has just been published by RealTime.

I’ve changed web hosts and upgraded all the Alias Frequencies sites to the latest version of WordPress, so performance should be better from now on. Turns out the old host was being repeatedly hacked.

Oh, and this site is now at http://shannon-oneill.net. That may change as there’s another domain I’d like, but I’m waiting to hear back from the lovely owners. In any case, old links should redirect to the current address. If you subscribe to the feed, be sure to do so via FeedBurner: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ShannonONeill that way you shouldn’t be affected by any future changes. Unfortunately lots of comments got lost in the move. I have no idea why, but rest assured that I didn’t delete them!

Things are OK over here. Running the first year course at Uni has been a fun challenge, but we’re in the groove now. I’ve been going a bit crazy with the PhD and some writing projects (why do I do it to myself?) but I can see a bit of time opening up soon which I’ll use for making some new creative work and getting another batch of releases up on Alias Frequencies.

With this new site I feel inspired to blog a bit more. We’ll see! =)

The discussion list for Australian electronic music, which I started in 1998 (initially on Onelist, which was taken over by Egroups, which was then taken over by Yahoogroups) is no more.

Aus_emusic was a pretty cool community in its heyday, arguably bringing a number of different scenes closer together. The aus_noise list split off from it in 2000 and is still going. Sadly I feel that many lists from that era are in decline, with little interesting discussion these days, and so I’ve decided to move on. I’ve deleted aus_emusic, but handed on some other lists that I started (audiovision, cmc) to new moderators.

In the late 90s I was on over 100 email discussion lists, but now I’m on none, with the exception of a few work-related ones. These days email is a chore. My interest in online discussion has shifted to blogs and RSS.

Some friends of mine are getting broadband (at last) and I’ve been asked for netcast recommendations.

Over the past few years most of my media consumption has switched to downloads, whether netcasts or torrents, accessed via RSS feeds, aggregated using Google Reader. My use of radio and TV is now mainly for news and occasional sports broadcasts. This feels like an inevitable technological and cultural shift, so I was surprised when I discovered recently that very few of my students subscribe to any netcasts.

Here are my current subscriptions. As you can see, there are a lot of them! I don’t have time to catch every episode, so pick and choose based on episode descriptions.

UPDATE: This post has been receiving links, so I’ll endeavour to keep it updated. I’ve just added some recent finds, such as Are We Alone?, The Bugle, and Epic Fu, and removed several others that I was no longer downloading.

Audio netcasts:

• Adam and Joe BBC 6 Music

Humour is such a personal thing, but Adam and Joe make me laugh. Frequently. I first got into them via their great XFM podcast.

• Alan Watts Podcast

Mostly talks on Eastern philosophy from Alan Watts’ archives.

• All in the Mind

Interesting RN program about psychology, neurology, philosophy of mind, etc.

• anonradio: the next generation

Run by Tom Ellard, this has evolved over the years and is currently mainly providing downloads of John Blades’ 2MBS-FM program ‘Background Noise’.

• Are We Alone?

The SETI Institute’s excellent program about science and skepticism.

• Artworks

A good arts program.

• ASX Investor Update Podcast

Nonsense, but useful if, like me, you’d like to understand the world of finance.

• Background Briefing

RN’s in-depth current affairs program.

• Big Ideas

Mostly public lectures from Australia.

• Blogariddims

Dubstep mixes.

• The Bugle

The Times Online’s satirical podcast, with John Oliver (of The Daily Show) and Andy Zaltzman

• CBC Radio: Quirks & Quarks Segmented Show

An entertaining Canadian science show, split into bite-sized chunks.

• CBC Radio: The Best of Ideas

Mostly public lectures from Canada.

• Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com

Cory Doctorow reads his stories, and sometimes others’, such as Bruce Sterling’s excellent non-fiction work, ‘The Hacker Crackdown’.

• Daily GizWiz

A silly program about gadgets, presented by Leo Laporte and Mad Magazine’s Dick DeBartolo.

• First Monday Podcast

Monthly academically-inclined podcast about digital culture.

• FLOSS Weekly

Interviews and discussion about the world of open source software. Often quite technical, which I reckon is a good thing.

• Hindsight

RN history program.

• hungbunny

Experimental music.

• In Conversation

RN interview program.

• In Our Time

Essential. A panel of experts discusses a topic from science, history or the arts. Hosted by Melvyn Bragg.

• KCRW’s Le Show

Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap, The Simpsons) has a voice that could make reading the newspaper sound interesting, which is sort of what he does here, along with sketches and songs. One of my favourite shows.

• Late Night Live

Interviews and current affairs presented by Philip Adams.

• Lingua Franca

A program about language.

• MacBreak Weekly

A favourite, mainly because of the amusing banter between Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann and Andy Ihnatko.

• Movie Time

Movie reviews and interviews, featuring some great collages by Paul Gough (aka Pimmon).

• Mysterious Universe

An Australian show about the paranormal.

• National Interest

Australian national politics and current affairs.

• net@night

Amber Macarthur and Leo Laporte are the engaging hosts of this net-surfing show.

• Ockham’s Razor

Short talks by various Australian thinkers.

• Over The Edge

Negativland’s legendary live mixing show which has been going for decades.

• Overlap.org » symbiosis

I thought this was a sound art show, but now it’s dubstep.

• Philosopher’s Zone

I love this show. Accessible discussion of philosophical issues.

• Eleven Eleven

Excellent sound art and experimental music podcast by Jen Teo.

• Chasing the Tangent

Sofie Loizou presents lovely, soulful electronica.

• Radio Eye

Radiophonic features from RN.

• Read/WriteTalk

From the excellent blog on Web 2.0 etc., this podcast is good when they’re not recording from a speaker phone.

• RRR FM (Byte Into It)

Tech news from Melbourne community station RRR FM. Of interest to me is that the cast includes some members of the experimental music scene.

• SALT - Seminars About Long Term Thinking

Interesting lectures from people such as Brian Eno, Joline Blais & Jon Ippolito.

• Science With Dr Karl

Australian celebrity scientist Dr Karl takes listeners’ questions on this BBC show.

• Some Assembly Required

A musical fix for the Negativland/John Oswald style cutup scene.

• StarShipSofa: Science Fiction Audio Podcast

Spoken short stories, mostly, including some well-known names from the genre.

• Stephen Fry’s Podgrams

I wish I could live in Stephen Fry’s world.

• The Amazing Show starring James Randi

Sporadic at best, I heard about it through the Skeptics’ Guide.

• The Book Show

Reviews and interviews.

• The Economist

A recent subscription, I’m still making up my mind about this. Mainly short but serious political commentaries.

• The Media Report

When the topics interest me, this is a great program, with insights into the media industries.

• The Music Show

Andrew Ford is a respected classical composer who is open-minded enough to engage with all sorts of music makers on this program.

• The Night Air

Radio art is increasingly rare on the ABC, but The Night Air maintains the tradition. Its emphasis is on collage and remixing from the ABC’s archives.

• The Science Show

An Australian national treasure, the ABC’s flagship science program.

• The Skeptics’ Guide 5X5

The mini-me version of:

• The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe

Your escape to reality. The panel of rogues turn debunking feeble-minded superstition into laugh-out-loud fun. Cruel, but fair.

• The Sound of Young America

One of my faves. Entertaining interviews with smart people - mostly writers, comedians and media makers.

• The SubGenius Hour of Slack Podcast

Church of the SubGenius. Nuff said.

• The VFX Show

Mainly concerned with feature film CGI and compositing. One of the hosts is Australian, which is nice.

• this WEEK in TECH

I’m a big fan of Leo Laporte - he’s the consumate, charming tech broadcaster. The panel usually includes John C. Dvorak and others with plenty of personality, chatting about the week’s tech news.

• triple j’s This Sporting Life

From the legenday Australian characters Roy and H.G.

• WFMU’s Codpaste with People Like Us and Ergo Phizmiz

Amusing mixing from two well-known collagists. See also their individual shows below.

• WFMU’s Do or DIY with People Like Us
• WFMU’s Phuj Phactory with Ergo Phizmiz
• WFMU’s Seven Second Delay with Ken and Andy Breckman

Live radio shenanigans.

• WFMU’s The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling

Cult radio from WFMU.

• Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott

Insights into the Windows world with Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott. Not as much fun as MacBreak Weekly, but still interesting for the hardcore geek.

• WNYC’s Radio Lab

Essential. This is one of the most interesting programs anywhere. Ostensibly a science feature program, the radiophonic production techniques take it into the realm of art.

• You Look Nice Today

Merlin Mann and friends being silly.

Video netcasts:

• Boing Boing TV

Xeni Jardin is a good presenter, and there’s plenty of the weirdness one would expect from Boing Boing, but I want more from this show. Maybe longer, less frequent episodes, rather than the current morsels which leave me remembering the ads more than the content.

• Cranky Geeks

John C. Dvorak is indeed a very cranky geek, which makes this otherwise typical discussion of tech news entertaining. Some of the guests are interesting, too.

• David Wain

If you liked Stella you’ll like this.

• Diggnation

I watch this so that I don’t have to read Digg.com. Like many Revision3 shows, it can be painfully frat-boy, but Alex Albrecht & Kevin Rose have enough charisma to carry it off.

• Epic Fu

At last, a Revision 3 show that has a clue about art and music. This is quickly becoming a favourite.

• Howard Rheingold’s Vlog

The author of Smart Mobs takes us into the classroom and his freaky wardrobe.

• iFanboy

I don’t have time to read comics these days, so I watch this instead.

• Internet Superstar

Martin Sargent is my Internet superstar. He’s obsessed with the weirder side of the web and presents it for our pleasure.

• Lynchland: The Liam Lynch Podcast

The guy who sang ‘The United States of Whatever’ and directed ‘Jesus is Magic’ makes this amazing-looking show full of music and humour.

• MacBreak

Not, as one might assume, a show about Apple computers, but mostly little tutorials about high end media production technology. Which is interesting to me anyway.

• My Damn Channel - Big Fat Brain

The ‘You Suck at Photoshop’ series is already a classic.

• My Damn Channel - Harry Shearer

Occasional satirical sketches and songs from Harry Shearer.

• PixelPerfect

Photoshop tutorials by someone from the Mafia, apparently.

• popSiren

A show hosted by women, for… guys? I’m not yet sure about this new Revision3 show, although Dr Kiki’s science demonstrations are fun.

• Rocketboom

I love this show. One never knows whether to expect serious news or something completely whimsical. Often it’s somewhere in-between.

• Tekzilla

Hosted by Patrick Norton, this Revision3 show isn’t sure what it is yet, but I think it’s intended to become a relatively mainstream, viewer-friendly tech show. UPDATE: The wonderful Veronica Belmont, whose talents had been wasted at Mahalo Daily, is now co-host of Tekzilla. Roger Chang is getting more screen time too. This bodes well.

• The Digg Reel

A compilation of popular videos from around the net. It’s funny downloading a huge HD file to watch lo-res YouTube videos.

• The Totally Rad Show

Reviews of TV, films, comics, etc. by ‘three rad dudes’. Good production values.

• Tiki Bar TV

A very silly show featuring Dr Tiki, Johnny Johnny and Lala.

• UChannel Video Podcast

Video recordings of lectures. Sometimes fascinating, sometimes dull.

• Wallstrip

A humorous show about the stock market? It shouldn’t work, but it kinda does, mainly cos it keeps things short and punchy, with each episode focusing on a single stock.

• Web Drifter

Martin Sargent meeting Internet weirdos again, this time on their turf.

• XLR8R TV

Whether it’s checking out Matmos’ record collection, or getting Ableton Live tips from Christopher Willits, this is a cool show for music geeks.

• Yacht Rock

A brilliant, melodramatic piss-take of the world of 70s smooth rock.

Any others you’d recommend?

UTS Music.Sound.Design Symposium 2008

February 13 - February 15

Investigating Cross - Disciplinary Practice in the Areas of Music, Sound and Design.

Featuring : Kees Tazeelar (Netherlands) / Ernest Edmonds (UK) / Yasunao Tone (Japan)

+ Many More

Three Days of Keynotes, Panels and Workshops from 10am to 6pm at UTS.

Two nights of performances from 8pm at the ABC Studios, Harris St featuring Donna Hewitt, Julian Knowles, Philip Samartzis, Kees Tazelaar, Peter Blamey, Robin Fox, Darrin Verhagen and Yasunao Tone, all in glorious eight channel surround sound.

And… Robin Fox in Residence in the new UTS Interaction Studio

All free and open to the public!

For more information, the full program and contact details to book your place at the performances check out:

www.hss.uts.edu.au/utsmsd2008/

is on this weekend. I’ll be playing on Saturday night with the Splinter Orchestra.

The 2008 NOW now festival will be happening at Wentworth Falls School of Arts (217-219 Great Wstrn Hway, Wentworth Falls) Blue Mountains, 18th,19th,20th january. Get your tickets before it’s too late! To book online:
http://www.moshtix.com.au

“Although usually held in the polluted, confined spaces of Sydney’s experimental musicghettoes, the NOW now Festival will take a deep breath and relocate to Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains.There are 3 days and nights of instrument building workshops (for kids and families),outdoor concerts, installations, post-gig jams, soundwalks, noise works in the car park,good food, all the exploratory music CDs from Australia and overseas, surround soundscapes, noisy electric, quiet acoustic, and audiovisual work.”

PROGRAM:

Friday, 18 January, 2008
The NOW now Festival night#1: Wentworth Falls School of Arts Main Hall

7pm sci-hi - paul winstanley (nz) - electronics

7.30pm
greg kingston (tas) - guitar
carolyn connors (vic) - voice

8.15pm louise dibben - audio visuals

break

9.30pm
clare cooper (berlin) - chinese harp
thomas meadowcroft (berlin) - organ

10pm passenger of shit

11pm festival club at Akemi – spontaneous and unscheduled collaborations feat. Sun of the Seventh Sister

////////////////////////////////
Saturday, 19 January, 2008
The NOW now Festival Day#2: Wentworth Falls School of Arts
10am Sound Walk

3pm workshop for kids (both young and old!!)
instrument building – Dale Gorfinkel & Rod Cooper

Small Room

6pm
Jo Truman – voice
Mike Majkowski - double bass

6.30pm
Ross Bolleter - ruined piano
Jon Rose - violin

Main Hall
7.30pm Brendan Walls - inventions, creations and monstrosities

break

Main Hall
8.30
Emmanuelle Pellegrini (france) - sound poetry

8.50
Philip samartzis (melb) - electronics
Marcia jane (melb) - live video

break

10pm Splinter Orchestra
shannon o’neill - electronics, mike majkowski - double bass, abel cross - electric bass, finn ryan - percussion, milica stefanovic - electric bass, dan whiting - laptop, rod cooper - cooperisms, dale gorfinkel - vibraphone, monika brooks - accordian, jim denley - flutes, alex masso - percussion, clare cooper - guzheng, mira pert - violin, michael sheridan - guitar, ben byrne - laptop, grant arthur - souzaphone, laura altman - clarinet, simon ferenci -
trumpet, karen booth - saxophone, cass mcglynn - euphonium, ian pieterse - baritone sax…plus more.

11 pm festival club at Akemi, spontaneous and unscheduled collaborations

//////////////////////////////////
Sunday, 20 January, 2008
The NOW now Festival Day#3: Wentworth Falls School of Arts
12pm outdoor kids workshop – Wilson Park
ross bolleter - ruined piano and story-telling

2pm Outdoor Concert
sam dobson - double bass, sarangi, clock radios
peter farrar - saxophone
alex masso - percussion
simon ferenci - trumpet
yusuke akai - guitar

carolyn connors (melb) - voice
rosalind hall (melb) - prepared saxophone

Main Hall
6pm
mathieu werchowski - violin (fr)
dan whiting - laptop
xavier charles (fr) - clarinet

6.30pm Metalog
amanda stewart - voice
jim denley - flute & saxophone
ben byrne - laptop
natasha anderson (melb) - contrabass recorder & laptop
dale gorfinkel - vibraphone and deconstructions
robbie avenaim - percussion

7.15pm ora(ra)
matt earle - electronics
adam sussman - guitar & electronics
rory brown - double bass & guitar
rivka schembri - cello

8pm Joyce Hinterding - electronics

8.30pm Taste of Teeth (brisbane)
Yusuke Akai - guitar
Daiji Igarashi - electronics
Nik Mayer-Miller - percussion
Sam Mitchell - sounding things
JoJo Dogshit - sounding things

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Thanks to Zina and Snow of the House of Laudanum for web hosting and the email list
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thanks to ARTSNSW for their ongoing support of the NOW now.
www.splitrec.com
www.thenownow.net

The new Australian government’s proposed Internet censorship regime has been widely and rightly condemned. Here’s EFA’s position:

Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. (EFA)
www.efa.org.au

Media Release: 2 Jan 2008

Title: EFA Attacks Clean-Feed Proposal

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today attacked a government plan, championed by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, that would mandate “clean feed” filtered Internet connections to all homes and schools. This scheme, which will supposedly censor the Internet of pornography and other “inappropriate material”, goes further than the Coalition’s previous policies, by requiring individuals to opt-out of the scheme rather than request filtering from their service provider.

“Waving the ’save the children’ flag may be good politics, but it ignores serious technological problems which will likely cause the proposed scheme to fail,” said EFA Chair Dale Clapperton. “Furthermore, Australia is supposed to be a liberal democracy where adults have the freedom to say and read what they want, not just what the Government decides is ‘appropriate’ for them.”

“These announcements smack of the condescending paternalism which contributed to the downfall of the Howard government,” Clapperton continued. “The proposals threaten the free speech rights of every Australian, and our concerns will not be silenced by Government sound bites equating free speech with access to child pornography.”

EFA has previously raised concerns about Australia joining North Korea, China and Burma in the club of nations who censor their citizens’ access to the internet. While the Minister makes no apologies for this alarming development, he has given us little reason to put our faith in his bureaucrats to administer such a system competently, transparently and fairly.

“Who decides what is ‘appropriate’ for adult Australians to read on the Internet, and according to what standards?”, asked Clapperton. “What will happen if the Government decides that information about abortion or gay marriage is ‘inappropriate’ at the behest of Family First Senator Steve Fielding?”

In an attempt to dismiss the policy’s critics, Senator Conroy said “If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.” EFA notes, however, that child pornography is already illegal, and very unlikely to come to the attention of either the casual web user or the censors themselves. “senator Conroy’s attempt to equate freedom of speech with access to child pornography is a transparent attempt to deter criticism of this fundamentally flawed proposal,” said Mr Clapperton.

Implementation of the proposal, insofar as it is technically possible, would cause significant technical and administrative headaches for Australia’s Internet Service Providers. “This can only have the effect of making Australians’ access to the internet slower and more expensive,” said Clapperton. “Given the Prime Minister’s election promise to focus on improving the nation’s access to broadband, the fact that the first measures put in place should do the exact opposite is as disappointing as it is bewildering.”

With billions of web pages available on the internet and changing every day, the crucial technical and administrative details of how the clean feed will be created have not yet been made available. Although the Minister has asserted that the Internet will not “grind to a halt”, he has yet to explain to Internet engineers how he plans to accomplish a feat that experts acknowledge would be very difficult. “Anyone with a better understanding of the Internet than the Minister will tell you this system simply will not work,” said Clapperton. “But a lot of taxpayers’ money will be wasted if we try.”

EFA supports measures to provide filtering software to homes where it is requested, and to educate parents on monitoring their children’s online activities. “Unfortunately, ISP based filtering will not make the Internet safe for children, and may even cause harm in and of itself. If parents are deceived into believing that a ‘filtered’ Internet service is safe for children, they will be less likely to take sensible precautions such as supervising their children while they use the Internet.”

At a time when all sides of politics acknowledge the importance of developing our information economy, EFA feels that this announcement sends the wrong message to the rest of the world. “The Coalition was rightly ridiculed by the rest of the world when they announced in the late 1990’s that they would censor Australian’s Internet access. The Coalition, at least, sensibly realised that their proposals were technologically infeasible. It seems that the current Minister with responsibility for the Internet has yet to learn that lesson.”

– Ends –

Below is:
- Background information
- Contact details for media

Background:
ABC News article on the announcement:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.htm

Past media releases by Senator Conroy about internet filtering:
http://www.senatorconroy.com/media95.html
http://www.senatorconroy.com/media70.html

About EFA:
Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. (”EFA”) is a non-profit national organisation representing Internet users concerned with on-line rights and freedoms. EFA was established in 1994, is independent of government and commerce, and is funded by membership subscriptions and donations from individuals and organisations with an altruistic interest in promoting online civil liberties.