“Sam Green has produced a brilliantly witty, but also moving meditation on our loss of faith in the dream of progress. Sam has created something completely original – a new form of live story-telling that draws you in emotionally in a way that traditional documentaries almost always fail to do. I loved it.”
— Adam Curtis, Director, The Power of Nightmares
Filmmaker Sam Green, best known for his work on the Academy Award-nominated Weather Underground documentary film, is bringing his new “live documentary” “Utopia in Four Movements” project to the Redcat Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, June 19th at 830pm. Sam narrates the film live, and the Brooklyn-based band the Quavers will be doing a live soundtrack. More info and advance tickets are available from lafilmfest.com
the Simplest Answer is Often Correct http://nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/titan20100603.html What is Consuming Hydrogen and Acetylene on Titan? “Two new papers based on data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft scrutinize the complex chemical activity on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. While non-biological chemistry offers one possible explanation, some scientists believe these chemical signatures bolster the argument for a primitive, exotic form of life or precursor to life on Titan’s surface. According to one theory put forth by astrobiologists, the signatures fulfill two important conditions necessary for a hypothesized “methane-based life.” One key finding comes from a paper that shows hydrogen molecules flowing down through Titan’s atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Another paper maps hydrocarbons on the Titan surface and finds a lack of acetylene. This lack of acetylene is important because that chemical would likely be the best energy source for a methane-based life on Titan. One interpretation of the acetylene data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food. On Titan, where temperatures are around minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit, a methane-based organism would have to use a substance that is liquid as its medium for living processes, but not water itself. Water is frozen solid on Titan’s surface and much too cold to support life as we know it. The list of liquid candidates is very short: liquid methane and related molecules like ethane. While liquid water is widely regarded as necessary for life, there has been extensive speculation published in the scientific literature that this is not a strict requirement. In addition Cassini’s spectrometer detected an absence of water ice on the Titan surface, but loads of benzene and another material, which appears to be an organic compound that scientists have not yet been able to identify. “Titan’s atmospheric chemistry is cranking out organic compounds that rain down on the surface so fast that even as streams of liquid methane and ethane at the surface wash the organics off, the ice gets quickly covered again,” Clark said. “All that implies Titan is a dynamic place where organic chemistry is happening now.””
Methane-Based Life http://dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/03/life-of-saturns-titan-could-it-be-methane-based.html “Saturn’s giant moon Titan has water frozen as hard as granite and Great Lakes-sized bodies of fed by a complete liquid cycle, much like the hydrological cycle on Earth, but made up of methane and ethane rather than on water. Methane-natural gas-assumes an Earth-like role of water on Titan. It exists in enough abundance to condense into rain and form puddles on the surface within the range of temperatures that occur on Titan. “The ironic thing on Titan is that although it’s much colder than Earth, it actually acts like a super-hot Earth rather than a snowball Earth, because at Titan temperatures, methane is more volatile than water vapor is at Earth temperatures,” even going so far as to call Titan’s climate ‘tropical’, even though it sounds odd for a moon that orbits Saturn more than nine times farther from the sun than Earth. But on Titan, which rotates only once every 16 days, “the tropical weather system extends to the entire planet.””
The team found two types of bacteria living in Lost Hammer that feed off the methane and likely breathe sulfate.
Non-Hypothetical http://sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=73778 Bacteria Suited for Life on Mars Discovered “Researchers have discovered that methane-eating bacteria survive in a unique spring located on Axel Heiberg Island in Northern Canada. The Canadian spring’s sub-zero water is so salty it doesn’t freeze and it has no consumable oxygen in it. There are, however, big bubbles of methane that come to the surface, which had provoked the researchers’ curiosity as to whether the gas was being produced geologically or biologically and whether anything could survive in such an extreme hypersaline sub-zero environment. “We were surprised that we did not find methanogenic bacteria that produce methane at Lost Hammer,” Whyte said. “But we did find other very unique anaerobic organisms — organisms that survive by essentially eating methane and probably breathing sulfate instead of oxygen.””
Flammable Methane Rivers, Flammable Methane Rain http://newscientist.com/article/dn6910-methane-rivers-and-rain-shape-titans-surface.html “Hills made of ice and rivers carved by liquid methane mark the surface of Saturn’s giant moon. Scientists speculated long ago that some kind of hydrocarbon liquids might flow on Titan. They now know that the fluid that carved the moon’s rivers and channels is methane. “Titan is a flammable world.” But all the oxygen is trapped in ice. “That’s a good thing, or Titan would have exploded a long time ago.”
Without Buenaventura Press it’s possible I wouldn’t have been inspired to start Floating World Comics. Kramers Ergot (Buenaventura published volumes 6 and 7) was a game changer, and Buenaventura was there to pick up the ball and rewrite the rules. They published some of the best comics of the decade, from Vanessa Davis’ Spaniel Rage, to Jerry Moriarty’s Jack Survives, to Johnny Ryan’s Comic Book Holocausts, to new work by Matt Furie and Lisa Hanawalt. It’s sad to see them go but also interesting to reflect on how much comics have been changed since they started. It’s the Velvet Underground effect. Their books have inspired new comic scenes all over the world. I look forward to seeing the next generation rise from these ashes. — Jason Leivian
Personal apocalypse; acid, Canned Heat and Hyde Park, 1970; magic, transrationalism… and in the following parts, a bit about why the announced collaboration with Damon Albarn/Gorillaz for an opera about John Dee isn’t happening, after all… “It didn’t work out, shall we say.” But Moore’s libretto will be appearing in upcoming ish of the ever-intriguing Strange Attractor Journal…
“…Commercialism has completed the destruction of the spirit of devotion to Art, the spirit of real participation in the performance. The public comes to it in search of sensation rather than prepared to experience life as and through Art. The greatest need perhaps of the New Art is a new public; the greatest need of the Artists is a consciousness of their true relationship with their public. The Artist has ceased to consider himself a provider of Spiritual Food, an arouser of dynamic Power; he has ceased to consider his position an ‘office,’ himself as an officiant. He thinks but of expressing himself, but of releasing forces which he cannot handle within himself. Why such releasing? He does not care to consider. He does not face deliberately and willingly his spiritual duty to the Race. Thus he does not attempt to mould the Race, to gather around his work the proper public for this work. He sells his wares. He is no longer a Messenger of life, attracting by the very example of his own living, human beings to the Message of which he is the bearer.” (Dane Rudhyar, 1895-1985)
“So it is almost inevitable that over the next few years, as labor markets struggle, the humanities will continue their long slide. There already has been a nearly 50 percent drop in the portion of liberal arts majors over the past generation, and that trend is bound to accelerate. Once the stars of university life, humanities now play bit roles when prospective students take their college tours. The labs are more glamorous than the libraries.” (David Brooks, New York Times, June 7, 2010)
Throughout history, Magical ideas have been debated and spread by word of mouth or by books. Despite that magical ideas have so often inspired tremendous human advances; such word of mouth transmission have frequently faced suppression or even burning at the stake. Books have had to be smuggled across borders and hidden from the eyes of inquisitors. The ideas of magic have usually threatened the status quo.
Nevertheless, so much of our knowledge has its roots in magic. Astrology gave rise to Astronomy and Cosmology, Alchemy underlies Metallurgy and Chemistry, Numerology gave birth to Mathematics and Cryptography, and both Medicine and Psychology owe a huge debt to Magical and Mystical ideas. Magical ideas have almost invariably underpinned the foundations of all the world’s religions. Miracles remain both the ultimate justification and the Achilles’ heel of all faith based systems.
So what does magical thought have to offer the 21st century? I suspect that it has a seminal role to play, much as it has for the last 25 centuries.
Like most technical advances, the internet took off as a military innovation to decentralize command, control, and intelligence in the event of nuclear attack, and then it got used by science as a means of exchanging papers by hypertext. Recently it has become dominated by commerce, entertainment, and pornography, which seem to be humanity’s greatest concerns at the time of writing. The military now has an alternative network.
However, whilst a relative state of anarchy and absence of censorship prevails on the internet, we will take advantage of it to explore what the magical perspective has to offer. Accordingly I have asked a number of the finest Adepts of my acquaintance over the last 3 decades to prepare material for discussion for a planet-wide discussion of The Magical Perspective.
The College provides a variety of discussion and workshop facilities which remain open throughout the year, plus specialist lecturers give courses which normally last about 6 weeks. Our academic year consists of six by six week semester periods with breaks of a week or two between each. There will usually be about three courses going on simultaneously during the semester periods. Members may participate in as many of these as they wish.
The range of topics currently embraces Sorcery, Divination, Tantra, Runes, Neurolinguistic Programming, Chaos Magic, Thelema, Enchantment and Results Magic, Alternative Physics, the History and Culture of Magic, and Magical Software Design. The College also features an extensive Library of Archives and Links, Common Room areas for debates and socialization, and workshop facilities with online magical tools which remain open between semesters.
Membership follows quickly after registration. Application must be at least 18 years of age. A modest annual registration fee is levied to cover the cost of maintaining the College and to discourage frivolous applicants, but no further expenses need be incurred by members…
Speaking of sunsets, last night’s was shocking. I mean, sunsets aren’t supposed to frighten you, are they? Well, this one was terrifying. People were screaming in the streets. Sure, it was beautiful, but far too beautiful. It wasn’t natural. One climax followed another and then another until your knees went weak and you couldn’t breathe. The colors were definitely not of this world, peaches dripping opium, pandemonium of tangerines, inferno of irises, Plutonian emeralds, all swirling and churning, swabbing, like it was playing with us, like we were nothing, as if our whole lives were a preparation for this, this for which nothing could have prepared us and for which we could not have been less prepared. The mockery of it all stung us bitterly. And when it was finally over we whimpered and cried and howled. And then the streetlights came on as always and we looked into one another’s eyes? ancient caves with still pools and those little transparent fish who have never seen even one ray of light. And the calm that returned to us was not even our own.
The Alchemy of Things Unknown (and a Visual Meditation on Transformation)
at Khastoo Gallery (7556 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046 / (323) 472 6498 )
June 10 – July 31, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, June 10th, 6pm – 8pm
With a film performance by Raha Raissnia, sound by Charles Curtis.
“After the cursing comes laughter, so that the soul is saved from the dead.”
– Carl Gustav Jung, The Red Book
This exhibition intends to examine and expose individual works of art in relation to theosophy, sacred tradition and devotional practice. From William Blake’s illuminated works of divine imagination to Carl Gustav Jung’s drawings of collective symbolic unconscious, the visual is undoubtedly an integral creative tool for reaching, exploring, animating and pervading the indefinable spaces beyond body and mind.
The artists in this exhibition, some more explicitly than others, sought after or seek spiritual truths through art making and employ an almost fervent and reverent experimentation to their practice, one that is both ritualistic and against the grain. This mystic behavior is what defines the show; the persistence on new and unorthodox visual experimentation reaches beyond the worldly sphere to heightened states of consciousness.
This exhibition is made possible, in part, by the generous contributions of William Breeze, Ordo Templi Orientis, Richard Metzger, John Contreras, Scott Hobbs, David Brafman, William Swofford Cameron, Hetty Maclise, and The Estate of Alfred Jensen.
Arthur Magazine 