Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

In a nice follow up to the Timothy Leary theme… Neuroscientists Probe Psychedelic Psilocybin.

Neuroscientist Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University and his colleagues tested the effects of psilocybin–a drug derived from certain mushrooms that appears to mimic the effects of serotonin in the brain–on 36 middle-aged Americans who had never tried psychedelics before.

More news coverage about the psilocybin research.

A recent New Yorker book review of Robert Greenfield‘s biography of Timothy Leary, aptly titled, Timothy Leary: A Biography, got me thinking about when I saw Leary speak at a computer graphics conference.

SIGGRAPH 1990 could have been virtually anywhere. As the primary conference for computer graphics and interactive techniques, since its first meeting in Boulder, CO, 1974, it’s a pixel pow-wow, a gathering of minds comparing their renderings and notes. My first SIGGRAPH was 1983 in Detroit, not long after the movie TRON was released. I had worked in traditional animation in the 70’s with Steven Lisberger and Eric Ladd in Boston. Taking breaks from tedious hand rendered in-betweening, inking and painting chores, we wondered when computers might come to our rescue. SIGGRAPH was the tribe with the best possible solutions.

So, SIGGRAPH90 was pretty amazing, because computer graphics had advanced into Hollywood’s visual effects, and the world was buzzing about the potential of a big new mind blowing idea: Virtual Reality. VR promised to take elements of what SIGGRAPH CSE’s did best: 3D graphics and intractivity, and enable “realities built for two.” But the truly amazing part was a panel session including Timothy Leary, “Hip, Hype and Hope: The Three Faces of Virtual Worlds.” This link provides a PDF of the entire transcript and some slides from that exciting event.

Even though Timothy Leary had been far ahead of the curve in his explorations of expanded consciousness through LSD, it was refreshing to me as a graphic designer and devotee of Marshall McLuhan to hear Leary speak this way…

“I’d like to make a comment about SIGGRAPH. I’ve not been a regular visitor to these conferences. To tell you the truth, I’m such a slow learner, it took me a long time to figure out that graphics are the key to the whole communications business. The key to the new global language.

Then I recalled the advice of a great prophet who had been babbling to me for years about graphics! Graphics! Graphics!

I am talking about Ted Nelson who patiently tutored me about the importance of eye-balling and rendering and optical realities. I thank you for that, Ted.

During that talk, Leary nearly coined the name iPod:

“But the eye is the pod of the naked brain. It’s spooky when you think of it. We walk around with our moist binocular brains bulging out of our faces.”

Because Leary was not a computer graphics geek or a VR advocate, he added a charming simplicity and unpretentiousness to the panel of sophisticates. Professional turf wars arose during the Q & A session, when Myron Kruger and one of his buddies pitched their pioneering ownership of VR under the name artificial reality. The incident is included in the panel PDF transcription, and is one of those cases of a disgruntled creative coming to grips with what might be called traction. Myron’s term artificial reality did not catch on, and virtual reality somehow captured the zeitgeist of the idea. Imagine the frustration of someone claiming to have invented Google 15 years ago, but gave it an unattractive name like fistulinks or altavista. Ew!

The New Yorker article is an excellent read, and is a fine reminder of Leary’s trippy times, in which he hoped to solve the world’s problems by coaxing our leaders to drop acid. Perhaps today they could fight out their conflicts through a VR interface into a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG). Far out man!

Additional related readings and listenings:
Erowid Timothy Leary Vault
A recent article by Jaron Lanier
The RU Sirius Show, If You Meet Timothy Leary by the Side of the Road
Timothy Leary: A Biography

I remember checking out Amanda Congdon and those clever daily online videos on Rocketboom, but I’m a busy dude, and I just kinda forgot about all that cleverness going on with them. The blogs are buzzing today that Amanda is departing from New York to pursue new opportunities in Los Angeles. Hey, if Stuttering John from the old Howard Stern FM radio show can become Jay Leno’s Ed McMahon announcer, then it’s just a no brainer, the next logical step.

True, Rocketboom can be seen as a “bellweather for homebrew media success.” Back in my days of making public access cable television shows in Madcity, we would have loved to have the distribution reach of today’s Internet, and yes, perhaps we too would have become little stars, and then big stars. Actually, I learned that I needed a better acting coach, and we needed better writers and directors.

Rocketboom’s main page message is bound to change, so for archival purposes germane to this story, here is what it states:

ROCKETBOOM ANNOUNCEMENT:

Amanda Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood.

We wanted to meet her demands to move production out to L.A., however, we are a small company and have not been able to figure out a way to make it work, financially and in many other ways at this time. While we continue to remain with open arms, Amanda has in fact quit and left Rocketboom. So sadly, we bid Amanda adieu and wish her all the best.

Rocketboom goes on.

Andrew Baron, the founder and creator of Rocketboom, will stay with the company in New York and will continue to produce and direct the show. We are in the daunting process of recruiting a replacement for Amanda.

While Amanda will be sorely missed, we have big plans for Rocketboom and are determined to make the show better than ever.

After Field Week and a week on hiatus, we know that you are hungry for the news! Rocketboom will be back with a news episode and an interim host this MONDAY, JULY 10.

Stay tuned for Amanda’s replacement.  To learn more, go ask a ninja.

America was born in a revolutionary spirit, and that spirit lives on today, thanks to the freedoms established by our forefathers. The Declaration of Independence was one of many steps taken by the insurgent Thirteen Colonies against the occupying British forces of government.

Today’s journalists and bloggers see parallels to what appears as a reversal of roles. An excellent article by Marie Coco: King George Dethroned covers how the U. S. Surpreme Court has “given us back the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and that document’s recounting of “usurpations’’ by King George III of England—a historic bill of particulars with stunning relevance today.” This refers to their decision that the “war on terror” detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have a right to bring their grievances before American courts. This basic human right of the imprisoned extends far back into Western history’s 1305 usage of habaes corpus.

And so, many Americans every day are redeclaring their rights in the face of threats to our freedoms of the press, searches and seizure, and the U. S. Constitution. Fine examples questioning the White House’s interpretation of Constitutional law can be read in Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s A July Fourth Declaration and Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article about David Addington, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff and legal advisor.

These are divisive times within America. We must lead by example from within, at home. That should be a good enough start. There is no need to spread our “Manifest Destiny” in the belief that God The Almighty has chosen the U.S.A. to supervise the globe, except maybe Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. If there are other nations or religions who happen to think the same way, then does that make them wrong and us right? Probably both tribes are wrong. I don’t buy into the unchosen versus chosen people ideology, and I declare my independence to say so. Have a good day!

See The War Tapes Trailer

Thanks to high quality low cost digital video cameras, documentaries can be shot by many people in many locations, such as Iraq war footage recorded by soldiers. This is media made by soldiers, not the media. No media bias. Reality, believe it or not.

The War Tapes. Read review by The Daily Kos. Read background story by S.F. Chronicle and the S.F. Chronicle movie review.

Don’t blame the American media for all the bad press about Iraq. Apparently the word is leaking out, even as far as down in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Latuff is a Brazilian artist who chronicles the horrors of the war in Iraq in his well crafted comic book style blog. These are even more realistic and depressing than the real life comic tales of American Splendor Harvey Pekar who is alive and well in Cleveland and blogging no less.

While the government is busy stripping you of your Constitutional rights, wildly spending your money in Iraq, and monitoring your private banking, telephone and internet activity, you may as well be a good American and distract yourself. If you complain, you’re just the enemy. Run along and play, Dorothy. Don’t pay attention to that man behind the curtain.
Silly things done in Flash:

• oooooouch.com: Here’s a virtual xylophone of sunbathing girls moaning out your own tune or a jukebox of tunes, such as Beethoven’s Ode To Joy.
• Treasure Box: a strange little puzzle with Rube Goldberg interactivity.
• Online Doodling

Funny Amusing Videos:

• Futurama’s Terrifying Message From Al Gore
• Star Wars and The Holy Grail
• Animusic – Pipe Dream
  
• Diet Coke and Mentos reaction
  
• More Mentos + Diet Coke videos

Art and Photography:

• Cool Text: create a logo online in a variety of graphics styles
• Mikons: create little black and white icons and share them.
  
• Elvis Visits Nixon: In case you feel that you are escaping too far from whatever reality may be, check out the National Security Archive and their collection on Nixon-Presley meeting documents. It is enough to convince you that Presidents do not live in reality either.

Via and Zappa photo by mudshark.

Saw the ZPZ show tonight at the (Civil) Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. There were so many battered, long haired old timers creaking up the balcony steps with the aid of canes and crutches, it looked like a Civil War Veterans gathering. The Warfield’s lobby contains a large enshrined photo portrait of Jerry Garcia, so you can well imagine the creaky soul survivors who have fired up many a fat joint in this old time theatre.

It was the last show of a lengthy tour and Dweezil deserves a lot credit for pulling this together from the extensive Frank Zappa discography. Opening with Montana video footage from Frank Zappa’s great Roxy club performance, the entire night had an eerie emotional vibe, a battle between the energies of the living and the memories of the dead. It truly must have been traumatic for Dweezil and the Zappa family to witness free spirited Frank being prematurely aged and taken away by cancer. In a touching moment at the close, Dweezil brought his mom, Gail, out onto the stage and thanked her for helping put the tour together. They plan to rest up and return to touring again in October, including a Halloween New York City show.

Dweezil’s playing is quite good and faithful to his father’s music, and he’s found some fine new band members in addition to the veterans, to spice up the mix. They play over three hours of strenous music, which took it’s toll on Terry Bozio’s bicep a few days ago in Las Vegas. Still Terry appeared on stage and livened things up with his hilarious singing poses and gyrations on I’m So Cute and two other Punk Angst theme songs.

Napoleon Murphy Brock’s voice is in great shape, and his added choreographic antics were true to the roots of Frank Zappa’s humor in music tradition. His theatrical voice provides authenticity to the songs, such as The Idiot Bastard Son, Cheepnis and Oh No since they sound pretty much the way he performed them while touring with the FZ band in the 70’s and 80’s.

Steve Vai is an excellent technician and carved strong, sweet notes on Peaches En Regalia, stunt sounds on Zombie Woof, and great power on Sofa. His stage presence is different from when I saw him play with Frank Zappa’s band. He’s now a virtuoso star, with a theatrical presence not unlike a David Copperfield stage magician. I’m not up on Steve’s solo work and would like to hear more of what Steve does on a sweeter melodic side, rather than losing the melody of a song such as More Trouble Everyday in a high pitched guitar screamfest with Dweezil. I would love to hear his rock guitar treatment of compositions by John Dowland, Beethoven and Copland.

There are ZPZ tour blog stories, tons of great photos and a few videos at the Zappa Plays Zappa web site. Music is the best.