Category: link

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listening

Tara Brach is a psychotherapist and meditation teacher based in Washington DC. I was listening to a podcast episode of hers last night called The Sacred Art of Listening. In it she quoted Mark Nepo’s understanding of the nature of listening:

To lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

That willingness to be changed bit is remarkably beautiful and, speaking personally,(!) probably quite rare. I wonder what it would be like to work in an environment in which willingness to change was valorised at the expense of staking claims, protecting territory, and competitive ambition.

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idiot-syncrasy once again

Igor and Moreno’s remarkable dance called Idiot-Syncrasy is being presented once again at The Place in London. It’s on Tuesday 9 October 2018, and you live in London (or nearby), and you haven’t seen it before, or want to see it again, now’s your chance.

Igor and Moreno bounce out the pleasures and perils of unison with one another; they tease out where idiosyncrasy and love lie within the rhythms of human life.1

Details at https://www.theplace.org.uk/whats-on/igor-and-moreno-2.

 

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eu copyright directive

I’ve posted before about The Electronic Frontier Foundation – the non-profit organisation that defends “digital privacy, free speech, and innovation”.

Today they posted some details about the upcoming vote on the EU’s proposed Copyright Directive. The EFF uses some pretty fierce language in relation to articles 11 and 13 of the proposal. They describe it as an “extinction-level event for the Internet as we know it”1.

Under Article 11 — the “link tax” — online services are banned from allowing links to news services on their platforms unless they get a license to make links to the news; the rule does not define “news service” or “link,” leaving 28 member states to make up their own definitions and leaving it to everyone else to comply with 28 different rules.

Under Article 13 — the “censorship machines” — anyone who allows users to communicate in public by posting audio, video, stills, code, or anything that might be copyrighted — must send those posts to a copyright enforcement algorithm. The algorithm will compare it to all the known copyrighted works (anyone can add anything to the algorithm’s database) and censor it if it seems to be a match.

And the (inevitable) Star Wars simile: “using mandatory algorithmic censors and new intellectual property rights to restore balance is like Darth Vader bringing balance to the Force”2

The EU vote is on 12 September 2018 and the EFF take action page is at https://supporters.eff.org/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=9327

 

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RealTime archive

When I was developing as an artist in Melbourne the one magazine that seemed to matter in the world of art, dance, theatre, media art and performance was RealTime. It came out monthly and would be dumped in large piles at different art institutions. RealTime gave me a sense of the art that was happening in all of Australia (and beyond), what was possible, and also what I wanted to avoid.

Recently, RealTime released their entire print archive as searchable PDFs:

Hot off the press!! At long last RealTime print editions 1-40 are available in our online archive. PDFs of each edition preserve the look of RealTime and each is searchable — treasure chests of highly responsive reviewing, critical thinking and, yes, humour (we even had ‘sports’ columns in those days).

– https://mailchi.mp/realtimearts/print-issues-1-40-now-available-online-and-the-first-of-our-series-of-retrospective-long-reads-on-australian-art-and-performance-in-the-1990s?e=224354627b

The archive is here – http://www.realtime.org.au/archive/ – and if you have any interest in the way art and performance in Australia has shaped and been shaped by culture, then it’s a perfect collection of materials and ideas for you.

 

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to avoid having to communicate and Jana Perković

The fantastic Jana Perković wrote/tweeted this sometime ago:

If you listen carefully, you will notice that Australians primarily use language not for communication, but to avoid having to communicate. The Australian English, spoken and written, relies heavily on formulas and linguistic presets (“How’s it going?”, “Oh, not too bad. You?”) for much longer into any given conversation and into any given relationship than in other languages I know.

I have a sneaky suspicion that New Zealand English is pretty similar. It seems like much of my adult life has been looking for ways to fight such resistance to entering communication.

Jana Perković (she used to be on twitter as @relatively) is such an arresting writer and thinker (among other things). See this post on the theatre scene in Melbourne as she calls a hiatus from her own website and to a certain extent social media:

http://guerrillasemiotics.com/2017/06/on-hiatus

And here’s a link to Jana’s podcast series called Audio Stage:

http://guerrillasemiotics.com/category/format/podcast/

There are rich pickings in there.

And, finally, here she is on Matt Cornell’s Wombat Radio podcast:

Part 1: http://wombatradio.com.au/jana-perkovic-part-1/
Part 2: http://wombatradio.com.au/jana-perkovic-part-2/

Jana – if you are reading this –I’m a fan, and hello from Italy.

 

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skellis dot info

When I first started a website I used the domain name skellis.net. About a year ago I mapped (or forwarded) that old domain to a new personal domain name:

skellis.info

There are still a good many old projects to add to the new site, but it is the space online that I now keep up to date with various projects, collaborations and ideas.

 

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cognitive biases

I really like Jason Kottke’s blog at kottke.org where he covers diverse topics about culture, design, and technology (etc). More than a year ago he posted a link to a cognitive bias cheat sheet written by Buster Benson who writes over at betterhumans.coach.me.

Cognitive biases – “systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment”[1] – are fascinating. And what that little definition doesn’t really get at is that cognitive biases are actually the norm. We can think we don’t fall prey to them but …

Some of my particular favourites are about how and why we notice the things we notice: confirmation bias, subjective validation, [observer effect](observer effect) and the availability heuristic.

As both Kottke and Benson point out, the wikipedia page on cognitive biases is both remarkable and a remarkable mess.

So Benson spent a chunk of time thinking through the wikipedia page and came up with what he calls a cognitive bias cheat sheet. His post is fantastic, and he categorises the biases as being related to four problems:

  1. There is too much information.
  2. There is not enough meaning.
  3. We need to act fast.
  4. What should we remember?

The entire post is here and it’s worth every moment of your time: https://betterhumans.coach.me/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18

To cap things off, Benson produced a “diagrammatic poster remix” of his post:

benson-biases.jpeg

Source: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*71TzKnr7bzXU_l_pU6DCNA.jpeg

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases  ↩