Monthly Archives: June 2004

Patricia Piccinini : We Are Family

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As the title of the Blog hints at, I’m very interested in the convergence of Machine and Human. Where Technology meets Biology.

Now, I know I’m not the first to do this. Indeed last year, I saw Shane Gehlert’s fascinating Cyber Kangaroo work on display at Broken Hill.

I’ve just returned from a mini-trip to Bendigo and Echuca. I drove up to Bendigo to see Patricia Piccinini’s exhibition “We Are Family”. I’ve previously seen her work at the National Gallery of Victoria when it first opened at Fed Square, plus heard her interviewed on Radio National last week.

It really was worth the trip. Whilst there are ‘only’ a handful of pieces on display, they are intriguing. The recent discussions on stem cell research – in context of human genetics – have given PP great inspiration. The results are three dimensional, realistic pieces of What If. They are identifiable as human (or at least organic), yet something tugs away underneath whispering “everything’s not right, look closer”.
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BB 13/6 : When Live TV Goes Bad

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Woo hoo. I had recently watched the Big Brother DVD where you get to see what goes on behind the scenes, in the production room etc. About 7:50 tonight I was thinking how smooth it was all going on the Eviction show and the production gang must be in autopilot. Then, about 12 minutes later, it was on for one and all.

Merlin was announced as being evicted and off he went into the car. After the
ad break he appeared in the walkway, but was playing with some paper in his
hands – he was struggling to ‘unpeel’ it and pointedly not hi-fiving
the audience on his way to the stage. His fumbles came to an end and it was
revealed it was a sticker saying “FREE TH REFUGEES. The gap showing where
the E had fallen off. Finally out came the gaffer tape and over his mouth it
went.

He went onto the stage and refused Gretel’s repeated attempts – and eventual pleas – to at least say something. It was pretty fruitless, so they cut to the house for
an unscheduled “live” cross. “Live” is actually on some sort of sound delay to beep the swearing.

Not tonight. It was all happening too fast. I counted at least 3 full or
partial f*cks going to air. Probably going to be trouble as this was the 7:30
time slot. Then Bree, who was wearing a cute but plunging LBD, gave the audience an accidental flash of her whole boob. Later on she commented on this, so she must have been told (?).

Some more swearing, cuts to black screens and Gretel getting clearly annoyed with the audience, topped off one of those memorable nights of live TV.

Still,
the headlines will be worth all the stress. If they’ve got any sense, they’ll get
Gretel to replace Merlin on the PR trail this week.

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Fear and Donuts

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Today I was sent a moving poem on child abuse, as written by the 3 year old victim, Sarah. Here is my reply

On the train late last week I saw “Sarah” or a younger version. Her Mum and Dad both dressed in trakkies and hidden behind dark sunnies. Mum was lying on a train seat with one kid nearby in a pram. “Sarah” was with her Dad and her brother, sitting opposite Mum. All at the end of the carriage.

All of a sudden the whole carriage looks up when the Dad roars at Sarah. In terror she goes screaming to Mum. Mum then yells at Dad; “that was HER fkin Donut! You have given him HER fkin Donut!!” Probably breakfast. The Mum is now seething, so much so she nearly drops the open stubby of beer she is holding.

After rounding on the Father with another minute or so of fks and donuts, she turns back to Sarah, who is now nearly hysterical with shock and fear. Does Mum comfort the terrified girl? Does she dry her tears and hold her?

No. She shakes her, like a rag doll and yells at her to shut up.

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Great Ess v Haw incidents

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The feeling of deja vu was amplified by the camera work today. The way they
had a close up of the one ‘incident’ and had to quickly pull back (or cut
away) to a 2nd one a few metres away. It was just like that Ess V Hawks Grand
Final all-in-brawl of the mid 1980s.

We used to travel all the way out to VFL park to see us play Hawthorn back
then. I’m sure it was there were Dermie KO’d Van Der Haar and also ran through
our huddle. I think it was there where he kissed Billy Duckworth too. Perhaps
all three were in the same game!

Then there was Barney breaking the point post at Windy Hill; a young Dipper
smashing a Bombers face all over his, umm, face – and an older Dipper taking
out Kevin Walsh in a Grand Final. Even just a few years ago there was that
final played at the G when it was strangely humid and the umpires didn’t help
the oppressive atmosphere either.

What is it about these two teams? Our rivalry with Collingwood and Carlton
might be greater; but Essendon and Hawthorn seem to have more memorable
incidents. May it never change.

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Recording studio in your pocket

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As per the earlier post, I’ve been using something called “live” Linux ; which is where the entire O/S plus all software lives on a bootable media (CD) and doesn’t actually need a hard drive (!). Full GUI, mouse, network, sound etc. Windows cannot do this. It helped me rescue GB of data yesterday…

Now, there’s a good amount of musical recording/editing software for Linux; nearly all free and yet seen as professional quality.

Recently some guys have brought the two ideas together. They have the full Linux O/S, (inc GUI, network, sound, mouse etc). Whilst it can boot from a CD, they’ve squashed it onto a bootable USB Flash Key drive. With compression some 3 GB of s/w can squeeze onto 650 MB.

The beauty of using a USB key drive is that it frees up the CD for burning and it’s quicker than the CD. (The device that it boots from must remain in place as the O/S + all s/w lives there)

In theory you can plug this into ANY pc as it detects the h/w at boot time. They record away (it goes to the Flash drive), edit and can burn to CD or dump over a network to another PC. The main purpose is to fit all of this into the new very small PC cases called ITX. Their main project page

Linux to the rescue

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Had cause to yet again thank Linux yesterday. The free operating system never ceases to amaze me. Yesterday, it was front and centre as Windows refused to recognize an occasionally sick hard drive.

The hard disk had GB of valuable data. So I had it replaced by the good lads at my local PC store. They gave me back the faulty disk, ready for me to try and “pump”; being an old IBM 1980′s term for “get the data off a faulty disk to somewhere safe”

I had an old Dell desktop 200 MHz PC in the back room. These can only have 1 (one) hard drive, so I gingerly unplugged the built in one and replaced it with my “faulty” one. This disk was flaky under Windows; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t…and dear old Windows XP slowed to a grind and gave the Redmond Wave Off; aka Blue Screen Of Death
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