Author Archives for Jay Babcock

NO SERIOUSLY

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/no-seriously/

Exopolitics (n. art or science of government as concerned with creating/influencing policy toward extraterrestrial beings)

As In : Are State Secrets Safe From Telepathy?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8662822.stm
http://trueslant.com/juliaioffe/2010/05/05/serious-allegations-kalmyk-governor-leaks-classified-information-to-humanoid-aliens/
“A Russian MP has asked President Dmitry Medvedev to investigate claims by a regional president that he has met aliens on board a spaceship. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the leader of the southern region of Kalmykia, made his claim in a television interview. MP Andre Lebedev is not just asking whether Mr Ilyumzhinov is fit to govern. He is also concerned that, if he was abducted, he may have revealed details about his job and state secrets. The MP has written a letter to Mr Medvedev raising a list of his concerns. In his letter he says that – assuming the whole thing was not just a bad joke – it was an historic event and should have been reported to the Kremlin. He also asks if there are official guidelines for what government officials should do if contacted by aliens, especially if those officials have access to state secrets. During the interview, Ilyumzhinov openly discussed his 1997 encounter with benevolent aliens: he came home to his Moscow apartment, watched some TV, read a bit, and drifted off to sleep. Mid-drift, he heard the balcony door open. Then someone called to him. Ilyumzhinov went to check it out, only to discover a hovering transparent tube, which he, naturally, entered. Inside, humanoids in yellow spacesuits awaited him. They had a pleasant talk, which occurred on the level of mindwaves because, Ilyumzhinov said, “there wasn’t quite enough oxygen.” The humanoids, who were friendly, told Ilyumzhinov that they were not yet ready for direct contact with human humans. Instead, they gave him a tour of the ship and sent him on his way. Lebedev wants to know, did Ilyumzhinov let the President know about his contacts with such beings? And, while we’re at it, “who else among the governors of the Russian Federations, members of the government, and other federal civil servants is communicating with aliens?” “Dmitry Anatolyevich,” Lebedev wrote, addressing the Medvedev by his patronymic, “you will agree that, unless Ilyumzhinov is bluffing, then this information is historically significant. If possible, I ask you to brief the deputies of the Federal Duma about your conclusions.” Medvedev has yet to respond.”

Need to Know
http://extracampaign.org/
http://bluebookarchive.org/
http://presidentialufo.com/

the Disclosure Project
http://disclosureproject.org/
http://youtube.com/user/DisclosureLobby
http://disclosureproject.org/docgallery.shtml
http://web.archive.org/web/20021202090635/http://www.cohenufo.org/Military+Nuclear+Specialists+Testify+To+UFO+Reality.htm

Lt. Colonel Dwynne Arneson, US Air Force (retired): “I was the top-secret control officer at Malmstom AFB for the 20th Air Division. I happened to see a message that came through my communications center. It said…that ‘A UFO was seen near missile silos’…and it was hovering. It said that the crew going on duty and the crew coming off duty all saw the UFO just hovering in mid-air. It was a metallic circular object and from what I understand, the missiles were all shut down. What I mean by ‘missiles going down’ is that they went dead. And something turned those missiles off, so they couldn’t be put back in a mode for launching.”

Acknowledgment
http://aolnews.com/weird-news/article/exopoliticians-say-governments-must-start-planning-for-alien-visits/19456520
“According to Salla, the issues include deciding how the alien presence will be announced (he advocates announcing the presence of microbes and working up to more sentient beings), and who will be in control — a secret committee or a corporate entity. Of course, another big issue is determining the protocol for contact between humans and aliens, lest either side be exposed to strange viruses, a Romeo and Juliet situation between Martians and Earthlings — or worse. “A big question is how will humans interact with aliens,” Salla said. “If someone is threatened by one, will they take a shot at them while driving by? And, if so, will this be as illegal as shooting a human?” Luckily, for Salla and the others in this pioneering form of paranormal political science, they aren’t the only ones asking these questions. “In the last six months, both the Vatican and the Royal Society of London have held astrobiological conferences studying the implications of life found on other worlds,” he said. Other exopoliticians, like political activist Stephen Bassett, believe that the governments of the world — especially the United States — don’t want to give such a momentous announcement to the U.N. Although Bassett believes any such announcement would be made by one nation, Webre says he and other exopoliticians have been talking with members of the U.N. General Assembly regarding U.N. Resolution 33/426, which is a proposal to set up a Department of Extraterrestrials Affairs. Salla says the extreme divide between cynics like Hawking and optimists like the Vatican, which has declared that God may have created theologically minded beings on other planets besides Earth, is OK, just as long as the debate is happening. “While one can heartily disagree with Hawking’s public policy recommendation of ignoring intelligent alien life, he is to be congratulated for elevating exopolitical study as a ‘perfectly rational’ discussion,” Salla said.


UN report on UFOs 14-July 1978; Gordon Cooper, Jacques Vallee, Claude Poher, Allen Hynek, Sir Eric M. Gairy with UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim

Hawking : ‘Think of Columbus, + How Well That Turned Out’
http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece
“Stephen Hawking has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity. He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.” He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

LEAVE THE WITCHES ALONE

Diamanda Galas writes:

It has come to my attention over the last years that the stage reviews of many of my colleagues are prefaced by the words,”Although now 45, he is still a strong performer,” or “Looking older than we last saw him, he still manages to convince.” It is time now for me to say the following words to the anemic cretins who write these desktop reviews of virtuosos: “Stick to reviewing plant life and leave the Witches alone.”

A true performer, like Liszt, like Horowitz, like Birgit Nilsson, often has an extremely long career span—and will be performing long after your life is diminished from tripping over your child’s bicycle and impaling upon yourself upon the Christmas tree of your wife.

A great performer is a vampire. We have trained to be thus. We have trained to enter the Pantheon. Of course we are punished for this, but no longer by the Gods, who have retired forever in despair—so dim is their reflection upon the humans they once challenged—but by the tiny minds of paralyzed voyeurs, who are incapable of discussing our work on any level, never literal, and now not even figurative.

If a performer appears upon the stage bald or with white hair after you have not seen him for ten years, this is not commentary for a musical review. I will quote Gregory Sandow who wrote that whether or not Charlie Parker performed only in his underwear was immaterial to how he played.

Liszt performed with long white hair, the master of the piano, and not less so for his age. Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein and Mary Lou Williams were masters only days before they died. Sonny Rollins cannot be condemned to the grave which is inhabited by small minds who lurk like worms awaiting a fresh kill. It is to escape these worms that we choose to be cremated.

…The witch’s focus is upon the production of a new turn of phrase, a new twist of the song, a new fight, the immolation of a lie if it takes the creation of a masterpiece to do it. The great witch Maryanne Amacher,who was felled only by a freak accident,had a house filled to the rooftops of unparalleled work and she slept on the floors of every studio to which she was invited worldwide—and created more bizarre work through the years.

The vampire knows that only new blood will sustain her. New blood, new research, new language study, and willful deconstruction and reconstruction, new meter, new arrangements, new writing, difficult performances—which later become great ones—through perseverance.

You who wait for the ticking of the clock so that you might one day proclaim that one of us is approaching our dotage should imagine instead your own life, which is is fading behind you, like a reflection of your netherparts, wretched, hanging, like the flanks of a tethered animal, too long unfed,alone, and unloved…

Read on: diamandagalas.com

New drone music: MESSAGES "Tambura"

Stream: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/02-tambura.mp3%5D

Download: “Tambura” – Messages (mp3)

Beautiful, eh? From Messages, available now on vinyl from De Stijl Records.

Messages are Taketo Shimada, Tres Warren and Spencer Herbst.

Promotional text: “The baby believes the womb is the Universe. At birth there is a glimmer of light and a shifting of space. I was there, but now i am Here. Then there are still but 2 things : Me and the Universe. And then what happens is Other People. From a note sounded in 1960 and held for a long time, a continuum of Sound has been sluiced along a diagonal of personal ecstasy, and some have come to call it a Drone. Surrounding the Drone is a genre, and within, wheat and chaff often commingle all too comfortably. But with tones as thick and texturally luxuriant with spiritual resonance as their long, glorious hair, Messages are the two worthy gurus currently contributing to the echo. Messages evoke the womb. And when the womb smiles, it whispers Messages, and then there is the first glimmer of Light .. ”

June 4, Lower East Side: "Homunculi" show curated by Trinie Dalton at CANADA

Longtime Arthur contributor Trinie Dalton sent this over…

Homunculi
Matt Greene, Allison Schulnik, Ruby Neri and Matthew Ronay
curated by Trinie Dalton

June 4 – July 11, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, June 4th from 6 – 8:30 PM
Canada New York

While Charles sat there in a thoughtless, vegetative stupor, completely surrendered to circulation, respiration, and the deep pulsation of his natural juices, there formed inside his perspiring body an unknown, unformulated future, like a terrible growth, pushing forth in an unknown direction.
—Bruno Schulz, Mr. Charles.

If monsters are metaphors, then we now think of the little man that Paracelsus brewed by beaker as a pocket of thought deep in the recesses of the scientist’s unconsciousness. In alchemical magic, homunculi were diminutive men under twelve inches tall who, like goat kids who pop out as walking, whinnying critters, were birthed fully-formed through the mystical transformation of sperm. Their embryonic recipe consisted of bones, sperm, skin chunks and animal hair steeped for a month in horse manure. In slightly more modern science, homunculi represent the conscious parts of our brains. But as one website essay reiterates, “homuncular arguments fall into an infinite regress, with the consciousness of each homunculus explained by ever smaller homunculini, nested like Russian dolls.” At the very root of creativity is the desire to tame, harness, and generate art made of this miniature circus material, parading through our minds like a migrant herd of wildebeests.

The artists in this show make figurative work that feels like primordial, barely changed representations of their inner-homunculi. But actually, it is their artwork itself that is a labored, half alive thing with its own life. Their art is the homunculus. Their blobby, witchy monsters are sprung forth onto canvases like the homunculus concocted to chat with Mephisto by Faust’s assistant, Wagner. Like golems, some are even sculpted out of clay. Their figures pile up, fornicate, dance, rest in awkwardly yogic poses, and generally exude respect for charmed, ancient ritual. While these works are not made on diminutive scales, each artist here makes large works that incorporate miniscule elements to express a fascination with microscopic aspects of hybrid human forms.

Allison Schulnik’s chunked out paint application compliments her studies of hoboes, clowns, gnomes, and other tricksters. As a Claymation animator, too, she gets deep into golem territory, to create an overall body of work that pays homage to James Ensor but is more playful than plagued.

Matt Greene makes drawings and paintings reveling in his own female fantasies that transform sexuality into a magical symbolism. His works become talismanic portrayals of beings that, like Hindu gods and goddesses, incorporate myriad aspects of self into unified, all-powerful forms that fuse gender, species, and archetypal character into his own sexpot ideal.

Ruby Neri could have fallen off a wagon pulled by Der Blaue Rieter group. Her visionary paintings are reconstitutions out of Bay Area funk and early twentieth century Fauvism. There is a brute physicality in her work; these are figure paintings with the bones left in. Unnatural color and form stains us with the spirit world, they are paintings to die for.

Matthew Ronay’s sculptures, videos, and installations commingle tribal, indigenous, and modern formalist aesthetics to invent new mysticisms and Jungian-inspired things. Whether fictionalized or real, his objects and images seem borne from an infinite well of psychological chaos. Enduring extreme costuming and physical trials, Ronay has recently begun using himself in his sculptures to return to the ritualistic purposes inherent to sacred art. In this, he is the ultimate homunculus manikin.

CANADA is located at 55 Chrystie Street between Hester and Canal Streets in New York City. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 12 to 6 p.m. For more information, please contact the gallery at 212-925-4631or at gallery@canadanewyork.com.

"Fruiting Bodies" by Brian Chippendale at Cinders Gallery, 6/4 – 7/3

“Fruiting Bodies” by Brian Chippendale

Opening reception, June 4th 7-10pm

Cinders Gallery

103 Havemeyer St.

Brooklyn, NY 11211

Brian’s hyper busy mark-making achieves a similar barrage of rhythms akin to his drum playing in the band Lightning Bolt, obsessively filling up all available space until the viewer/listener is in a state of blissful frenzy.

Brian Chippendale comes to us from Providence, RI, where he has resided for the past 13 years. As a co-founder of now legendary art warehouse Fort Thunder, Brian has been an important part of the underground music and art scene that sprouted out of the Fort and other similar collective-living spaces. In addition to art and music, Brian is known internationally for his innovative comics and has just finished a new 800 page comic called “If N’ Oof,” to be published by Picturebox this Fall.

Brian has also shown his visual art at the Macro Future Museum in Rome, the Deste Foundation in Athens and the RISD Museum as part of Wunderground: Providence 1995 to the Present. This is his first solo exhibition at Cinders.

Dave Tompkins' Vocoder Mix podcast – 'nuff said

We need more of this kind of thing…

FROM AUTHOR DAVE TOMPKINS:

BODE BREAKER
This bonus beach was engineered, with much patience, by Monk-One, winter 2010, while I sat in a fisherman’s beer chair in his basement. The mix is meant to accompany the book [Tompkins’ How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop, The Machine Speaks]. Sometimes it ditches the book altogether. Sometimes it throws the book in the trunk and drives it to the middle of nowhere and burns magic hour donuts in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot.

All tracks contain some species of vocoder unless otherwise imagined. I apologize to summer, for the darkness, and the BB&Q Band, for running out of space.

STREAM: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/How-To-Wreck-A-Nice-Mix.mp3%5D

DOWNLOAD: How To Wreck A Nice Mix” (mp3, 103mb)

Excessive track listing below.

(:01) On the Beach—Neil Young
Twenty years ago, I “fell asleep” on Figure 8 Island wearing a Public Enemy hat. It had been given to me by Terminator X. When I woke in the morning, I was wearing a G N’ R hat. Two crossed pistols, a skull, and roses. Whatever maniac did this: Please return my PE hat. No questions asked.

(:12) EMS Vocoder Test (1976)
I was told this is an impression of Grover talking about the pyramids.

(:31) The Bells of St. Mary’s Condition—Bell Labs (1936)
“The true loves who come from the sea…”

The Bell Labs referred to their vocoder tests as conditions. All Bell Labs conditions here were acquired from the Werner Meyer-Eppler archives at the Institut Phonetik at Bonn, not Bell Labs. W.M.E. referred to the vocoder as a retro-transformer, thirty years before a Decepticon showed up in a Trouble Funk song.

(1:16) The Unvoiced Hiss Energy Condition—Bell Labs (1936)
Pass the conch like they used to say.

(1:32) Change the Beat—Beside & Fab Five Freddy (1982)
“If we were any fresher you’d have to slap us.”
—Fresh Market billboard, Greenville, S.C.

(1:40) Pak Man (intro)—Jonzun Crew (1983)
A song about one man’s desire to exterminate all Pac Man machines with the help of a device invented to rewire the chromatic spectrum of the universe using 17 million colors, the Suboptic Shadow World, and Sun Ra.

Continue reading →