+ BALLARDIAN
Website recording the career and influence of J.G. Ballard. I’m the publisher and editor. I’ve commissioned and conducted interviews with J.G. Ballard himself as well as Bruce Sterling, Iain Sinclair, John Foxx, Simon Reynolds and Michael Moorcock among others. I’ve also published articles by numerous writers, academics and artists.

+ SUBTERRAIN
Publishing project documenting the experiences of people using the services at Ozanam Community Centre in North Melbourne. I was the project manager and editor. I commissioned writing — ‘life stories’ — from the people using the Centre via writing workshops: poetry, fiction, artwork, life histories and perspectives. I also conducted around 30 interviews with other clients, writing up the stories and editing them in consultation with the interviewees. I was involved in every aspect of the magazine’s conception: copy editing, commissioning, art direction, website design, publicity.

+ SLEEPY BRAIN
Online cultural mag (and later, personal blog). In the site’s early days, before it became a blog, I commissioned articles from various Melbourne writers. The project has been selected for archiving by the National Library of Australia’s Pandora project.

+ LIQUID ARCHITECTURE
Melbourne-based festival of sound art. I founded the festival during my tenure as Special Events Coordinator at RMIT Union Arts. Here’s a note on my involvement.

+ Website design (various clients).
Details to be posted.

On my recent trip to the UK, I kept a blog over on the old Sleepy Brain site. I hadn’t quite finished it when Sleepy Brain went offline, but I’m hoping to complete the rest somewhere on this site. In the meantime here’s my favourite entry from the series.

by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 13 June 2007.

At one stage I used to listen to people whingeing about long plane flights and think they were dullards with no imagination, that I was above them (literally) because I was a space nut and flying to me was the closest I’d ever get to floating in space. I positively relished 24-hour flights from Melbourne to London. I was a fool.

When I was considerably younger and embarking on my first flights, I would carry in my mind a story far more essential than any hand luggage. It was something I’d read about old-time astronomers who were so puzzled by the lack of landmass on gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn that they had to invent bizarre aliens. They told the world that these unfeasible creatures — shaped like fleshy zeppelins — populated the swirling clouds and raging storms of these enormous gassy planets instead of giving the world the truth: that space was as sterile as their research. But it was inconceivable to the humanist mind that barren energy could exist, devoid of life of any sort, so the myth caught fire.

I used to make sure I had a window seat on long-haul flights, and from there I’d recall those ancient astronomical images, artists’ renditions from yellowing copies of Time-Life that my parents owned. Pressing my nose against the jet’s tiny window, I would populate Earth’s skies with them, visualising among the clouds those hovering, billowing puffballs with their huge, rounded eyes, bared razor-sharp teeth and enormous mouths, which served as air-intakes for the wretched creatures, sucking in the methane-poison of Jupiter (or, in this case, the clouds of Earth) to be ejected out the back of their ridiculous bodies, propelling their pulpy bulk through that hell-world.

I made my own fun.

Now I hate flying. It’s become possibly one of the most stressful ‘elective’ activities a person can put themselves through, except for moving house and divorce. I hate having to seal my toothpaste in a plastic bag. I hate the notion that someone thinks my toothpaste could blow up a plane. To wait an hour, two hours, while my bag waits to be searched, despite the fact its sole contents are a pair of dirty boxer shorts, a can of deodorant and a belt, and they can see that on the X-ray — that’s hell. Smelling the paranoia in the queues as we are all herded towards security and through the metal rings like cattle to the slaughter, cattle that’s beside itself with fear because it *knows* what’s coming. Terrorist culture — maintaining the fear — keeps us all in line.

I no longer have the brain-space to devote to alien fantasies. Now when I fly I just want to sleep and get it all over and done with and wake up at the other end. Valium might help. Or smack. But I’ve never been into either so I resort to gin and tonic in the hope that I can knock myself out. But the seat, made for thinner, shorter people in a different age just won’t do and the food is unrecognisable, but that’s always been a given, nothing that can be done about that.

It’s just not fun anymore is it? And I know I’m not the only one who thinks that way because I know there’s a global movement underway, a mass-psych experimental travel meme to find and make viable means and ways of ‘flightless travel’, and I’m definitely investigating that for my next trip, but for now I simply have to make do. Watch a movie perhaps, but inflight movies are as crap as the food, everyone knows that. ‘Four Weddings and A Funeral’; ‘Rocky Balboa’; chick flicks; Steven Seagal; unspeakable Tom Hanks atrocities; Guy Ritchie and Madonna.

But I was flying with Emirates, thank God, and Emirates has ICE, a ‘next-generation’ in-flight entertainment system. ICE has a ‘classic movie club’ — around 30 selections including 2001, perhaps the ultimate inflight movie (any Kubrick would do me) and the original Dirty Harry, which still packs a punch, and which contains a Lalo Schifrin score that’s funky, fuzzed out and completely over the top; D.H. is always worth seeing/hearing for that reason alone. Plus another 50 recent releases including Children of Men, something I missed when it came out. A lot of recent TV, too, like Life on Mars. Plus classic-rock albums on the audio channels, and not just overrated cock rock like Zeppelin but quality dirge-metal like Sabbath, and even some new wave and postpunk like Siouxsie. Best of all, it has the facility to rewind, fast-forward and pause films. It seems incredibly complex to set up separate feeds for each seat, but that’s exactly what they’ve done: movies are stored in a central computer and accessed by each viewer as required. I couldn’t quite believe that someone, somewhere, had finally listened to consumer demand, that someone had finally recognised the keyword ‘choice’. I felt a huge wave of relief wash over me when I discovered ICE.

ICE, then, made the flight basically bearable. But so did the lady next to me. She was rocking her little boy to sleep and he was clearly terrified by the turbulence. But he was being a good little soldier, keeping quiet and trusting mum. And mum was a real angel, with a smile that told him all he needed to know. When he was finally asleep she struck up a conversation with me and we managed to kill a few hours. Sometimes that’s all you need to iron out the stress. And I was smitten with the boy’s demeanour — he really was such a good kid — because the plane was really bumping; it gave me pause, to say the least. Then they were both asleep and I turned to 2001.

I knocked back a few more gin and tonics and then I watched Children of Men. And the impact blew me backwards. I’ve noticed (noticed? I’ve been disturbed by) a peculiar apocalyptic shakedown on the streets of Melbourne over the past few years, following a similar undercurrent that shook me to the core when I lived in London in 2001. It’s actually too huge to go into here, but it’s something I’ve been trying to articulate over here and here. To be confronted with this on the screen was just too much — Children of Men’s scenes of urban anarchy were chilling. They synched exactly with this vision in my head. The impact, even on this tiny back-seat screen, was immense, especially in a sleepless, semi-tipsy state. I couldn’t get over it and I kept rewinding and watching that unforgettable scene where the forest-dwelling crusty-feral traveller types ambush Clive Owen and his gang. There’s a lot of detail in that film, detail that’s just so jarring. The unexplained attack on the train by some vicious, half-seen gang; the doped-up guy with the tattooed face and neck playing some kind of virtual reality game that seems directly wired to his skin; the Pink Floyd pig floating past the window; the ultra-strange choice of very early King Crimson on the soundtrack, in among kode9 and Aphex Twin tracks; the rubbish and absolute despair etched into the buildings and street scenes…yes, the story has severe melodramatic flaws, but so does Blade Runner. Sometimes the setting is the story; the streets live and breathe as characters; the city is alive in these films, pulsing with an artificial intelligence that, in this case, is fetid, rotting at the core.

When you’re on a plane watching this, who needs puffball aliens?

The scene that did my head in (still from Children of Men; dir. Alfonso Cuaron).

I fell asleep to anarchic dreams and woke on the descent to Heathrow. The weather looked cold and grey. From the air I could see some urban ruins. Some smoke in the distance. We landed. It took forever to get through customs. People were in endless lines, looking miserable. The film was replaying over and over in my head; there’s a scene where illegal immigrants are herded into a refugee camp in a future dystopian England. It meshed with the scene at Heathrow. I was descending into the uncanny valley, that most spooky of voids: culture shock; the crushingly familiar made utterly strange. Future now, literally; I’d crossed however many time zones and my brain was still 24 hours into the future, superimposed onto a steel-grey past.

Jetlag. A bucking horse to be ridden. It flattens perspective, time and memory. I hadn’t said goodbye to the lady and the boy. I was shunted along ahead of them and then they disappeared. Our conversation seemed decades in the past. I was confused and sad. I’ve been through all this before and still it gets me. Circadian rhythms; do not mess with them, ever.

Then I was out of Heathrow on the Tube train to London without really realising it and I noticed that every bloke was wearing similar boot-cut jeans and patterned t-shirts. Some of the t-shirts were pink. The Beckham fauxhawk still, somehow, remained a popular haircut for males. There were big sunglasses on all the women and fake bling everywhere. Tottering high heels were common. Lacquered hair was popular. There was an old huge bald man reading a huge leather-bound book called How We Used to Live: the Britain of Old. He kept looking up at the passengers then darting back to the pages as if seeking solace. He was in very good nick for his age and looked like he wanted to bust some heads. But all the lads on the train were huge, too. Roid rage.

I was close to passing out from exhaustion. My backpack weighed a ton. I’d brought too many books as usual. I just knew at that point that I’d never read any of them. I felt like handing them out on the train. They were mostly Ballard and experimental travel books; would anyone even want them? We’d just passed Osterley and there were 15 more stops to go until Victoria.

From there I had to interchange to Norwich.

I watched the two girls across from me. They were speaking native Spanish and they were tall and their nails were pink. They were super supreme and confident and they were eating Big Macs. They weren’t trash; their grooming smelt of lots and lots of cash. They just didn’t care about eating Big Macs. I remembered being in a McDonalds in Munich where you could buy beer and where there were Salvador Dali prints on the walls. Depraved, decapitated vaginal Dalis, too.

Europe sure is different; in Australia we have Formula 1 cars on the walls of our McDonalds.

‘England is not Europe but it does have McDonalds’ — that was all my sleepy brain could think of. I couldn’t even summon up the energy to recognise that these Spanish girls were incredibly beautiful.

Because I’d fallen asleep, finally.

+ Read the rest of the Brit Blog at the Sleepy Brain archives.

by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 1 April 2007.

On April 7 Channel Nine, accompanied by the still-infuriating-after-all-these-years Richard Wilkins, screened the films from the finals of the Sony Tropfest 2007 short-film festival, which was held on February 18. Tropfest purports to showcase the work of ‘Australia’s emerging filmmakers’ and there’s a big focus on numbers (it’s touted as the ‘world’s biggest short-film festival’, with a live audience of 100,000) but, as far as I can see, not so much attention to quality. I mean, is this really the future of filmmaking in this country: a crop of short films that feature talking dogs, fart jokes, faeces galore, cutesy kids…and sneezes? The Tropfest ’signature item’ — where each entry must feature an action or object chosen by the organisers — always makes for the most embarrassing moments each year the festival is held. In 2007, each short had to feature a sneeze somewhere in the film; wince as even the most promising scenes are suddenly deflated by this most saccharine of human sounds, or are ruined by a character sneezing in a totally haphazard and incongruous manner, thus ruining any tension, humour or romance the filmmaker may have been trying to generate. Imagine if the Tropfest organisers really had a desire to nurture challenging films: why not God as the signature item? War? Murder? Time-travel? UFOs? Uzi 9mm machine guns? Chainsaws?

Poo Joke No. 1: ‘A-Z’.

No, ’sneeze’ it was, and the Best Film gong went to Steve Baker’s ‘An Imaginary Life’, about the loneliness a kid’s imaginary friend feels when the kid grows up and stops believing in him. The mix of animation and Super 8-style footage is nicely done, but the story is hokey, so what’s the point? Anyway, it wasn’t even the best animation in the festival. That title goes to ‘A-Z’ by Zenon Kohler, with its effective technique: cut-out/cut ‘n’ paste photo stills set to a poem about a guy who goes on a ‘meat repulsion’ diet where he has to eat all his favourite animals and winds up a vegan. There are some mild laughs here, including the signature sneeze disguised as a fart…although that little explosion of gas is in itself a very bad omen, as toilet humour appears to be the main preoccupation of this elite group. Actually, you’d be forgiven for thinking that ’shit’ was the signature item. In 2007, Tropfest literally was Crapfest.

Poo Joke No. 2: ‘Bad Yoghurt’.

Take Shaun Beagley’s ‘Bad Yoghurt’, which is ‘about’ a thin supermodel type in a skimpy bikini lounging by a pool. She eats some bad yoghurt then falls about, twirling sexily, an action seen from many angles, before vomiting long and continuously, then collapsing. Then she shits herself and we see all of that, too. Classy. The whole thing, shit and all, looks like an ad, not a short film. Imagine the voiceover (featuring someone like, oh, Samuel Johnson): ‘New X-Brand Yoghurt. So smooth, so gentle — you’ll never shit your pants again’.

‘Counter’ (Michael Noonan) wanted to get metaphysical, but was hamstrung by the Col’n Carpenter-style acting. ‘Fore’ (Duane Fogwell) was another self-consciously weird entry, about a guy on a golf range caught in a time loop. Naturally, he was only dreaming — what a pity. ‘The Grey Cloud’ (Matt Peek/Cam Ford) was an attempt at noir, with the classic ingredients: awestruck kid, femme fatale, double-crossing rival. It looks good (albeit too glossy to be true noir; it’s in COLOUR), but you’ve seen that story a million times.

Poo Joke No. 3: ‘Being Boston’.

‘Being Boston’ (Justin Drape) was about a talking dog (or, at least, a dog whose thoughts we can hear) and features a woman slipping in the dog’s shit. Talking animals and poo jokes — what century are we in? ‘Between the Flags’ (Jayce White) had a good central idea: a Lebanese guy and an Aussie guy, primed for the Cronulla riots, turn up to the wrong beach, discovering they’re the only two there. They proceed to play cricket and bond, but the director severely overplays his hand when the pair find they have virtually everything in common; it’s altogether too trite, too neat, too sappy. You half expect them to start kissing.

+ Read the rest at the Sleepy Brain archives.

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 19 February 2007.

Last night I attended the second (and last, for now) screening of Philip Brophy’s 50-minute film Northern Void, billed as a “live cinema performance” accompanied by the real-time sonics of Ph2 (Brophy and Philip Samartzis). Northern Void is set along Plenty Rd, in the northern Melbourne suburb of Preston — specifically a three-kilometre, decaying industrial zone. The film is divided into three sections: The Present, set in 2013; The Future (2085); and The Post-Future (3079).

“The Present”: Northern Void (dir. Philip Brophy).

In “The Present”, a series of tableaux unfold: factories, blank business parks, decrepit office buildings, brutalist petrol stations. They look like still shots, but close examination reveals subtle motion: clouds inch along; a bird flaps in the distance. There are no people. The shots are looped; almost imperceptibly, the clouds return to their original position. Is this a deliberate aesthetic? Or a a necessary suturing to prevent the intrusion of offscreen elements irrelevant to the plot? In any case, it’s very effective: nothing happens. Everything remains the same, trapped in an eternal loop. The sound design begins with processed field recordings: birds, insects, magnified to unbearable levels. It settles down and melancholic piano chords pick their way through.

Madeline Hodge in Northern Void (dir. Philip Brophy). Photo by Pancho Calladetti.

In “The Future”, the same shots appear, except this time the factories and buildings are pockmarked and scarred, and everything is infested with a queasy, irradiated digital-pink glow. Glowing red clouds gather overhead, and suburban zombies begin to appear: young people, spectral — they are see-through at the edges — repeating bizarre facial and physical tics.

Left: Nat Bates in Northern Void (dir. Philip Brophy).

One poor soul scratches his ear over and over again; another (played by Nat Bates, director of the Liquid Architecture sound-art festival) looks to the ground and back up over and over, mimicking the film loops in the first part of the film. The sound in this section is brilliant, with Samartzis generating extremely unnerving electrical effects — like dying power stations — and violent feedback via what appears to be hyper-magnified recordings of fire. Brophy, meanwhile, triggers some kind of funky synth-bass line, obviously unable to escape his iconic 80s past.

In the “Post-Future”, nothing remains of the buildings, or the zombies, really, except their shapeshifting ghosts, which float around a blasted landscape, totally devoid of life. The sound design amps up a notch. Yep, you guessed it: it’s positively unearthly. Who knows what these guys have done here? Fed cicadas through a cheese grater and processed it in a digital blender, for all I know. It’s freaky stuff. And that colour palette: it’s the colour of rotting pork or severed heads. Or something.

+ Read the rest at the Sleepy Brain archives.

by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 19 January 2007.

I was asked to contribute some thoughts about my family’s immigration story to the second book in Jim Hammerton’s ‘Ten-Pound Poms’ series. Ours is a strange tale, in that when we emigrated to Australia from England in 1970, on the Greek ship RHMS Ellinis, we left my brother and sister behind — they were old enough to do what they wanted and so they stayed put. I didn’t see them again for 20 years. This was clearly the most painful decision my parents ever had to make, but the context is that the grimy, economically depressed England of the time held limited prospects for working-class people like them.

Postcard depicting the RHMS Ellinis.

Although I was three years old when we came over, I used to have a recurring dream about the voyage when I was about 10. In the dream I was flying through the air, above the Ellinis, with all the passengers below, pointing up at me and gasping. The wind was very strong and everyone seemed afraid that I would be carried away, although I can remember thinking, “What’s the problem? I know what I’m doing.” Like crows do, I was able to manipulate the wind, soaring and sinking according to the thermal currents. My mum tried to reassure everyone. “Don’t worry” she’d announce. “He’s just playing on the humps of air.” That’s what she said — “humps”. This odd, out-of-place terminology has remained with me to this day. The dream is as vivid now as it was then.

This head has seconds to live (photo: Mary Sellars).

In real life, not in the dreamworld, there was a dress-up party on the boat and someone had made a papier-mache head, which was thrown overboard. I have a photo of the head bobbing in the water far, far away. Even as a kid, this image touched me in ways that I am only just beginning to understand — as a symbol of something lost, something out of reach, on the edge of reality.

The Ellinis landed at Melbourne’s Station Pier and I remember visiting the pier a few years back, staring at the Melbourne Welcomes You sign. When I was growing up I couldn’t help but think we were like colonists on Mars – that we’d left Earth to live on a different, harsher planet. Today, looking back over the water, towards the horizon, imagining the Ellinis powering into view, is like looking into the Martian sky, seeing Earth as a pinprick of light. Another memory I have is of the family being housed in corrugated-iron barracks in Nunawading, like we were in some kind of prisoner-of-war camp. I also recall searchlights in the sky over the barracks, which only added to the martial atmosphere.

Three cheers for the vague blur! (the speck in the water to the left is the papier-mache head; photo Stan Sellars).

Australia seemed lawless to my young mind — we lived in the suburb of Upwey at one stage and I remember thinking “how can this place be so close to the city”? It was like the bush – with mountains, huge spiders, strange birds, redneck neighbours…one time my dad got into a fight with some guy who came speeding over the hill in a car, almost knocking me off my bike. I remember thinking England couldn’t possibly be like this, because all I knew of it was from comedies like On the Buses and Benny Hill, which I loved. Anything British from the 70s I just lapped up, so desperate was I to imagine this far-off place where my brother and sister lived, siblings that I never knew and had never met.

+ Read the rest at the Sleepy Brain archives.

by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain 19 December 2005.

In late 2005 I travelled around the North Pacific on assignment for Lonely Planet. I visited the islands of Yap, Kosrae, Guam, Pohnpei, Rota, Tinian, Saipan and Palau and had the most marvellous time. The fruits of that research were published in Lonely Planet’s South Pacific & Micronesia guidebook, but I also maintained a blog while away. I’ve reproduced my favourite entry below, detailing my time on Yap.

Yap is the most traditional island in Micronesia. Some men still get around in loincloth; women often walk around topless. And everyone chews betel nut, a centuries-old tradition that is stronger than ever.

When my plane landed at Yap ‘airport’ (such as it is; the terminal is about as big as my head), I looked for my hotel driver but all I could see was a huge mob of people (mainly children), all laughing, joking and pointing at the silver lump that had just landed (yes, I know my hair is getting greyer by the minute, but I mean the plane). Then a mob of kids encircled me, their tiny hands touching mine and their high-pitched laughter ringing the air. I felt off balance and had a vision of being whisked away by these little demigods, like Richard Dreyfuss was at the end of Close Encounters. Before that could happen, though, my way was blocked by a hefty guy, who opened his mouth to speak.

“Hey, man…”

He paused to spit out something crimson red.

Ptooie!

Was it blood? His teeth were whittled down to black stubs and his lips and tongue were redder than blood.

“Where you going?” he said.

Betel-nut saliva, Yap (photo: Simon Sellars).

I told him the name of my hotel and he found the driver for me, and everyone turned out to be very warm and welcoming. All the same, this bloke’s appearance still threw me, even though I knew he’d been chewing betel nut. Betel nut is actually the seed of the betel palm and what you do is you split it open, sprinkle some dry coral lime onto it, warp it in a pepper leaf and maybe some tobacco, and then chew. It makes your mouth go red (and, for long-term users, rots your teeth) and gives you a vague, relaxed high. (Did I try it? Of course I did; but that’s for later). When European contact was first made with Yap, it was assumed that the Yapese were suffering from some kind of plague, or typhoid, and were constantly throwing up blood. More superstitious types brought out the crucifixes and garlic cloves.

But a more welcoming group of people you’d be hard-pressed to find. Yapese are shy around newcomers but intensely proud of their heritage and fiercely determined to fight the onslaught of Americana that has swept through most of the other islands. They are taking steps to control tourism and they are trying hard to deal with their garbage problem, whether it’s cultural or landfill.

Yap has a wonderful history, brought into sharp relief by Sebastian, a guide at the Trader’s Ridge hotel. To my eternal regret, I only had one full day on the island (due to Continental Airline’s totally inflexible schedule), so I had to make the most of it. Sebastian came highly recommended and that’s because he’s the best; a noble, intelligent man; a warrior; a man of conviction.

I told him I especially wanted to see some ‘stone money’ (known in Yapese as rai). Sebastian drove me to one of the ‘banks’ where he explained that stone money was originally carved from quarries 300 miles away in Palau and brought to Yap by outrigger canoe; some ‘coins’ are 12 feet in diameter and their worth mainly derives from the amount of difficulty in getting them home and the amount of lives lost on the journey. Even now, stone money is sometimes used to purchase land on Yap. The ‘coins’ are not moved around, however (rather like the gold in Fort Knox, which stays put no matter who ‘owns’ it), but are kept in ‘banks’ in the villages.

Sebastian and some Yapese stone money (photo: Simon Sellars).

Driving north, Sebastian filled me in on what happened to his people during the Japanese occupation. It’s a harsh and cruel tale, and I’m sad to report that by the end of World War II, the Yapese indigenous population had been decimated to 2,000 (today, it’s 11,000). The Japanese used to smash stone money as punishment if the Yapese decided not to co-operate (they used the broken pieces to pave roads); if that didn’t work, they killed. I hasten to add that these tales were not relayed to me with rancour, rather in a very matter-of-fact (though melancholy) way – mainly as historical fact. For Sebastian, what’s important is that Yapese culture has survived and that it remains strong in the face of new challenges.

Americanism is the new threat. The FSM is under some sort of Compact agreement with the US, which means they get financial aid in exchange for certain strategic and geographical rights. Yapese can fight in Iraq; Yap can be a target for terrorists; American popular culture can eradicate indigenous tradition. It’s a familiar refrain, and we’ve seen it so many times before, but remarkably Yap is still the real deal…for now.

Bechiyal Cultural Centre’s faluw (photo: Simon Sellars).

Sebastian took me to Bechiyal Cultural Centre to see the faluw, one of Yap’s “men’s houses” where elders gather to tell stories and pass on wisdom to the young fellas; this respect for the elderly blows my tiny little mind, coming as I do from a country where old people are bashed, robbed and killed all the time. The storytelling used to happen every night but now only on weekends, because people work during the week.

We passed a concrete and corrugated-iron faluw on the way back and I remarked that it was as ugly as sin; Sebastian roared with laughter and told me he liked the way I thought.

“Yes, that’s how they’re beginning to be built nowadays. And that’s why my culture will fall apart, because no one is taking the time to do it right”.

Bechiyal used to boast a few more faluw until the supertyphoon in 2004 blew them away. I asked Sebastian about the typhoon and he told me perhaps his most amazing tale. His house is by the water and he said that when the typhoon hit, everyone by the coast evacuated to higher ground. But Sebastian knew that if the waves swept through his house everything he had would be lost. So he stayed behind and pushed against the front door so that the onrushing water couldn’t get in. He held firm continuously from early morning to late afternoon, arms weakening, with water up to his chest, until the typhoon simply went away. He lost his bamboo porch, but his house, belongings and most of his furniture was saved.

“Jesus, you must be strong,” I said.

“No Simon, only as strong as you”.

“I couldn’t do it,” I said.

He laughed. “Simon, it was a great experience! The greatest experience of my life. Sometimes you have to look outside yourself and go beyond your own strength. And now I’m a better person”.

And with that, I couldn’t shake the image of Sebastian standing on the coast, repelling the forces of cultural imperialism with his own bare hands…if Yapese culture survives into the future, this man will have a lot to do with it.

And then we had a chew; I told Sebastian I wanted to try betel nut. He showed me how to prepare it and I chomped away. A bit bitter, but not too bad. But it’s true – it really turns your saliva red, and you generate buckets of the stuff; I was spitting every five minutes. And the effect? My mouth went numb, my angst about culture and politics dissipated, and I felt well and rested as I slipped into island life and saw things anew; I saw that everything was good.

Sebastian – thank you. All the very best for you and your people.

– From Simon.

Beachfront, Bechiyal Cultural Centre, Yap (photo: Simon Sellars).

+ Read the rest of the Micro Blog entries at the Sleepy Brain archives.

interview by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 25 October 2004.

Newton Armstrong is a composer/performer, ex of Melbourne, now ensconced in research at Princeton University in the US. His recent project for kids, SPACE MONKEYS, focused on interaction design and performance. It involves rethinking and reconfiguring generic game controllers as tools for facilitating alternative forms of conversation.

In its first incarnation, SPACE MONKEYS was the work of 5 students from the Princeton Young Achievers after-school program. According to Newton, the project could not have happened without the help of Janet Stern from the Arts Council of Princeton, Ann Marie Grocholski and Dana Hughes from Princeton Young Achievers, Emily Doolittle, Laura Blinkhorn and Ted Coffey.

How did the Space Monkeys project come into being?

There were two basic motivations behind Space Monkeys, both of them negative. In standard school curricula there’s a heavy bias towards visual media in the teaching of design, and there’s also this implicit notion that technology is what manufacturers of technology tell you it is. So what I wanted to do was put together a project that would get kids thinking about designing with sound, and at the same time get them thinking about alternative applications of standard consumer technologies.

Why exactly did you want to get the kids thinking about alternative applications of standard consumer technologies?

It was entirely political. For the most part, kids are not being taught how to engage these technologies tactically. It’s bleak that in ten or twelve years of schooling the relationship to technology is only ever defined by a standardised repertoire of techniques. But these are the systems that are in place, and these techniques are being incorporated – actually registered in the sensory-motor mechanism – by all these millions of kids. This is not to say that the producers of consumer tech are all colluding in some dark conspiracy, but I do think it’s important to teach that media are not passive, impartial things.

How can it be of benefit to rethink a manufacturer’s stated purpose?

This varies with the medium. If we take some game controller or other as an example, then it’s unlikely that the manufacturer will state its purpose on the box. But this is a generic device and there’s already a presumption that it’s going to be used in a fairly diverse range of contexts. That a great many of these contexts involve the simulation of violence (whether that purpose is stated or not) is already sufficient reason to start thinking about alternative applications. The rationale behind the rethinking we did in Space Monkeys is pretty explicit, I think. We took this device that’s emblematic of anti-social practices (not just in terms of shooting stuff, but also in terms of the hours spent in seclusion while doing so), and we redefined it as a tool for facilitating technologically-enhanced conversations.

What would be a practical example of this outside of Playstation technology?

Again, I think these kinds of questions begin at the medium. Take some random piece of technology, examine how it works, think about the ends to which it is regularly put, take it apart, reverse engineer it, and so on. Already you’ll start devising any number of alternative scenarios and many of them will be both more interesting and more useful than the scenarios that are prescribed by the standard implementation. I’m not sure if this is what you mean by a practical example but there are plenty of people out there who are doing this kind of thing.

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interview by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 5 September 2004.

Melanie Chilianis, a Melbourne flautist, has sallied forth in recent times with a successful union between the instrument she made her name with, the flute, and technological mixes, patches and crunchy electronic treatments.

Melanie has an honours degree in music performance from Monash University and shares a close working relationship with notable Australian composers including Paul Moulatlet, Thomas Reiner and Steve Adam. She features as a soloist on Melbourne outfit re-sound’s eponymous first CD and as part of the ensemble on their second release IN C, an interpretation of a Terry Riley work. Several of her live performances have been broadcast on ABC Classic FM. As an improviser, Melanie has had airplay on Radio National, Triple J FM, RTR-FM (Perth) and 3PBS (Melbourne).

What’s the inspiration behind your latest work?

I wanted to make some small, self-contained sound pieces that would stand alone for the listener – as brief encounters. Two of the tracks were made as part of the soundtrack to a NeoPoetry video piece. I also wanted to use a limited number of samples that would be quite recognisable as “instrument” or “voice” – kind of a game with myself, to see how I could work within the constraints I had set (three or four short flute samples, not too much space-age processing, and so on).

Tell me about the method used to create them, in terms of technology, philosophy and so on.

I’m using breath and the sound of the flute at many structural levels. In this way I can get into and pull apart the cycle of breath and flute sound. I recorded the flute and vocal sounds through the internal mic in my Powerbook because I didn’t have any other means to record samples into the computer at that time. The sound quality was pretty crap, but I thought, oh well, I’ll have to work with that. You can’t hold back because you don’t have the best system. The sequencer I use is Logic Audio. For these pieces, the creative focus was in the relationship of sound gestures to one another and the juxtaposition of events that have the potential to create an impression in the listener’s aural and psychological space. I use whatever technological methods I can to achieve this, and I keep it simple.

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Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 16 May 2004.

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Contact: Simon Sellars

interview by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 11 May 2004.

Recently I was in Amsterdam on a writing assignment. I hadn’t been there for years and I had the usual backpacker’s memory of the place: hash, beer, Red Light District, canals…all the old cliches. This time around, however, I gained a deeper understanding of this quite incredible pocket of Europe. I’m no expert, but Amsterdam seems to be undergoing quite a substantial change as the Netherlands — indeed, as much of Europe — undergoes a noticeable swing towards the political right.

Richard, as a South African, how long have you been in Amsterdam? What took you there?

While studying philosophy at university in Johannesburg I got involved in politics and became a member of the ANC. They asked me to teach at their school in Tanzania and I ended up working for a couple of years in several Frontline states before being sent to Holland. This was back in the late 1980s. It was an exciting time. I got involved in progressive underground politics in Amsterdam. I’d been living here for six years when Nelson Mandela was released. It was a high point in my life to be introduced to Madiba when he visited Holland shortly after his release. But I was suddenly faced with a tough personal dilemma: to leave my adopted home town or return to my original home town.

In 1994 I decided to return to Johannesburg. Exile, especially when it is sudden, leaves many relationships up in the air — family, friends, memories, projects. In South Africa I worked as a freelance writer and journalist, writing for a variety of national newspapers and magazines. It was great to reconnect with the city which I’d had to leave in a hurry eight years before. But I kept having dreams about Amsterdam — friends, concerts, cafés, Vondelpark in summer, galleries, spaces where I had been to parties, places where I had met interesting people, being able to ride a bike everywhere… I returned to Amsterdam in 1999.

What are some of the things you appreciate about living in Amsterdam?

Part of Amsterdam’s appeal is its unique combination of cosmopolitan atmosphere and smaller-scale city life. ‘Life on a human scale,’ as they like to say here. Another is the fact that the rest of Europe is so accessible. You can easily visit grander cities like Paris, Prague or London, and come back to the smaller scale of things here with a sense of relief.

How did you become involved with Amsterdam Weekly?

A few years ago I was working as a freelancer at Het Financieele Dagblad/International Herald Tribune. A fellow freelancer there, Todd Savage, a journalist from Chicago, was working on a business plan for a new free city weekly. He invited me to contribute ideas toward an editorial policy and infrastructure and to start developing a network of writers.

Our editorial aim is to offer readers a combination of quality features about the cultural scene with a ‘comprehensively selective’ arts calendar in an attractive free weekly format. Our business aim is to make the paper a culturally sought-after medium where mostly small and middle-sized city-based businesses can advertise to a culturally sophisticated public at competitive rates.

What’s your circulation? Who do you see your readership as?

Our circulation is presently hovering at around 21,000. We have more than 400 outlets around the city. We see our readers as cosmopolitan residents of Amsterdam. The city has become increasingly international during the last 15 to 20 years. There are sizable British and American communities, as well as quite a few people from other English-speaking countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa). In fact a slight majority of Amsterdam residents are now non-Dutch in origin, so we’re also keen to encourage interest from other communities which are comfortable with English. Many Dutch-speaking residents are also cosmopolitan in attitude and enjoy reading about their city in English, especially amusingly informative articles and ‘insider’ listings which they can’t easily find anywhere else.

I was surprised that there was no editorial, especially in the first few issues. Could you elaborate on that decision?

From the beginning we felt that the main editorial focus of the paper should be on report-based narrative writing, rather than opinion, so a regular editorial didn’t seem appropriate. Almost all of our writers are freelancers, and we want to give them an opportunity to develop a voice and profile in the paper before deciding on regular contributors.

+ Read the rest at the Sleepy Brain archives.