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Thursday, 31 July 2008
Intersexed - Posted by larry williams at 07:02 PM
NOVA wrote:
After five weeks of study and surgery, they weren't any closer to the truth; mine was a fuzzy picture. Not even the almighty gene provided any clear answers, since it was discovered that I was a mosaic, with some cells in my body having the XY genotype and others having XO. The decision was made to raise me female.
Ok, I'll admit that I stumbled upon this after looking for pictures of hermaphrodite genitals to terrify the guys #disrupted with. But I'm also going to call out Tab, because he started it.
This is a very interesting article about a hermaphrodite/intersex person's life of trying to figure out what his or her sexual identity is. A quick read, very engaging.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/gender/beck.html
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
numbers stations - Posted by butt mariner at 08:39 AM
Numbers Stations are creepy and mysterious radio stations that broadcast nothing but voices reciting strings of random numbers, letters, etc. 
Not so much music, but these are quite interesting and mysterious. I think we blabbed about it in the channel at some point or another and there was a collection released.
Wiki wrote:
Numbers stations are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. They generally broadcast voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters (sometimes using a radio alphabet), tunes or Morse code.
The voices that can be heard on these stations are often mechanically generated. They are in a wide variety of languages, and the voices are usually women's, though sometimes men's or children's voices are used.
Evidence supports popular assumptions that the broadcasts are channels of communication used to send messages to spies. This has not been publicly acknowledged by any government that may operate a numbers station, but in one case, Cuban numbers station espionage has been publicly prosecuted in a United States federal court.
Numbers stations appear and disappear over time (although some follow regular schedules), and their overall activity has increased slightly since the early 1990s. This increase suggests that, as spy-related phenomena, they were not unique to the Cold War.
Seems the consensus is that these are encrypted messages for and by spooks, but the variety of voices and odd additions denote some sort of creativity, to me. They often include music and strange effects.
To listen to some, download the Conet Project:
http://irdial.hyperreal.org/www/conet_p … ooklet.pdf
http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet … /disc%201/
http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet … /disc%202/
http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet … /disc%203/
http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet … /disc%204/
Monday, 28 April 2008
Mr. Turnmire - Posted by larry williams at 08:10 PM
Saturday, 16 February 2008
edit this image - Posted by butt mariner at 12:12 PM
Yeah I think we should... 
Thursday, 14 February 2008
New Babylon - Posted by akka at 11:42 AM
Constant Nieuwenhuys was a painter, innovator of Unitary Urbanism, and artistic and political avant-garde, helping found the Situationist International. And a pretend architect.
New Babylon was his utopia which he developed over a span of 20 years. It would be a physical manifestation of his situationist ideals. Its realization would be dependent on the socialization of space and complete automation of production. In it, future man, homo ludens (man the player), would live without hunger, without having to labor, with all basic necessities provided for. Inhabitants would lead a nomadic existence, and one could be shown to full advantage as a creative being, in accordance with his desires.
New Babylon envisages a society of total automation in which the need to work is replaced with a nomadic life of creative play, in which traditional architecture has disintegrated along with the social institutions that it propped up. A vast network of enormous multilevel interior spaces propagates to eventually cover the planet. These interconnected "sectors" float above the ground on tall columns. While vehicular traffic rushes underneath and air traffic lands on the roof, the inhabitants drift by foot through the huge labyrinthine interiors, endlessly reconstructing the atmospheres of the spaces. Every aspect of the environment can be be controlled and reconfigured spontaneously. Social life becomes architectural play. Architecture becomes a flickering display of interacting desires.
The ambiance of an environment possessing certain specific plastic and acoustic characteristics depends on the individuals who find themselves there. A single individual can passively submit to this ambiance or change it according to his mood at the time. But with the entrance of a second person, a new presence is felt and the interaction of the two presences excludes any passivity. The quality of the environment and its ambiance no longer depends on material factors alone, but on the manner in which they will have been perceived, appreciated and used, on the 'new way of looking' at them. And when a third or fourth person comes to take his place alongside the others, the situation -- being more complex -- escapes the control of any of the people present. As the number of visitors gradually increases and the composition of the group alters, complexity also increases, while the individual control of space decreases.
The collective use of space entails qualitative change since it tends to reduce passivity. The activity of the occupants of a space is an integral part of the ambiance that, being static, becomes dynamic. In a social space where the number of individuals is ceaselessly changing, along with the relations between them, each and every person is prompted to change his personal ambiance. All these impulses, brought together, represent a force that manifestly acts on the ordering of space, and in New Babylon, where space is public, it acts continuously. Space in its entirety will thus submit to the most unexpected influences, and one can imagine that a similar process unfolds simultaneously in infinitely diverse ways in a multitude of spaces, whose number is as variable as the links created between them. One arrives, then, at the image of an immense social space that is forever other: a dynamic labyrinth in the widest sense of the term
The entire built environment would become completely dynamic, with the reorganization of sectors, additions of partitions, stairs, ladders, being able to change the sounds, color and ambiance of any given place at any given time. What would be more fun is if all these walls and partitions were just big microsoft surfaces, being able to locally scale infinitely deep.
But, after 16 years, Constant became disillusioned with humanity, thinking that the inhabitants would become bored and kill each other. He never put people in his drawings, as he didn't know what they'd look like (perhaps they'd even be as reconfigurable as the built environment in which they live). But then, 16 years later he brings people in. And they're dark, and dying and killing each other and there are huge amounts of blood. He devoted the last *four years* to showing what a horror such a 'liberating' society would really be.
Which is pretty paradoxical in itself, really. This self propagating mechanism which is supposed to be an enabler of liberation is really still a societal control, culturally and tangibly. Architecture doesn't build freedom, it builds reductions of freedom.
http://www.classic.archined.nl/news/9812/Babylon_e.html - general introduction
http://www.notbored.org/new-babylon.html - in depth description by Constant
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/ar … -with.html - interview discussing architecture as a limitation of freedom and the real politics of Constant's New Babylon.