The Burning Seed Festival came around for the second time, with a new location of Matong State Forest, Near Wagga Wagga NSW. Last year it was held in Bellingen, as part of the participation culture of the event I took along my audio recorder and captured around 15 hours of field recordings (interviews music and other sounds).

see burningmanaustralia.com and for the ‘parent’ gathering burningman.com/

Ive had the challenge of wondering how best to present audio pieces since I started making them, being too small and independent to use radio and finding podcasts useful but challenging to deliver well (tech, RSS, itunes compliant etc). So far the best tool has been soundcloud which is a great social media platform.

Ive slowly trawled through these recordings and asssembled a few different pieces which are up on soundcloud:

Burning Seed Festival ’10 – Opening Ceremony

Burning Seed Festival ’10 – Coco Poco Loco

Burning Seed Festival ’10 – Bacchus

| rhizone | seedpod audiospace

The festival is non-profit and ticket sales go directly towards items like on simple on site infrastructure (toilets) and funding arts grants. I was interested in applying for one this year to build an audio chillspace. The grant deadline passed but I was urged to apply anyway by a friend, luckily it was accepted and then began the process of making it into reality. A good kick in the butt for editing deadlines and making it happen.

from the grant application: Philosophical Statement: What the art means to you and what you are trying to communicate to participants.

| rhizome | : An expanding underground root system, sending up above ground shoots to form a vast network. Difficult to uproot. If separated into pieces, each piece may give rise to a new plant. The rhizome spreads underground, it is the first vegetation to sprout back after the flames.

| zone | : A given area distinguished on the basis of a particular characteristic, use or restriction.

| rhizone | : This space is characterised by its quiet audio focus, reflecting on the previous years moments during quiet times of this years gathering. Many spaces may have louder offerings which are live and in the moment, this space may slice a niche with those who may have unusual quieter desires. It is the artists intention for this space to sprout other similar audio/video reflective spaces in future years – curated by different characters each time. Each time also documenting the current festival with ethnographic interview / sound doco field recording style.

| connection to synergy, seed, burning | : rhizone carries sounds from the seed year, blended with some on-location site sounds from this years setup. This reflection and combination is a synergistic blend of audio, invoking memories and transporting participants to an inward reflective space.

Original drawing sketch design:

Photos tell most of the rosy story (storms, heat exhaustion and travel logisitics aside..)

There was a few tech things which were missing which managed to pop up on site like some 12v batteries and obscure drill bits for a spontaneous grey water filter but something really cool was the candle spiral/ labrynth.

I was hoping something like this would emerge and it did through our neighbor, thanks Nix. If anyones got images from the night time rhizone please link to it below in comment or send it our way.

Response : The installation seemed to go down very well with compliments both from organiser/initiator characters, site crew and participants in general. It was great to hang around nearby and see how people were interacting with the space. Be it quiet, refelective and mediative or screaming out quotes and laughing. Those pieces were no longer bits of data on servers and hard drives, silently clicking over play counts – they were alive ! The challenge of how to present this kind of audio work had been solved. Burning seed was the perfect artisic playground for it to emerge.

Many thankyous:
Laura Wills and Will Cheeseman in Adelaide and Siri Omberg in Alice for the art project inspiration, Rosie D in Alice for grant application encouragement, Xavier and Jackie in Darwin for computer edit time (the bacchus piece), Steph and Nivelo from Burning Seed Artery crew, rhizone extra helpers James C, Emily, Tammy, Charlie. Advice and bamboo sourcing from Jeremy Wells in Sydney, Mim/Hannah/Rosa/Dave/JP in earlwood for housing the project, workshop time in the Barn and Big big gratitude to the rhizone crew: Shaw, Beth and James R.

Feeling pretty energised from the first experience as an ‘artist’ and keenly looking forward to more.

http://glowwormbicycles.com.au/blog/2011/03/26/converting-your-bicycle-more-comfortable-sit-position

Its not really necessary to land in someone elses mail, social network, blog or online dating account when you jump on computers (fair enough if its their own usually..). It’s no wonder the jump in peoples emails getting hacked and spammed, log out of your accounts people ! Or password your computer, use guest accounts and such or… at least check out private browsing, not just for its “porn mode” reason but for the sake of everyones online decency.

Most guides talk about using it for when your looking at dodgy stuff or you want to ‘buy that surprise gift for someone special but I think its worthwhile anytime your using other peoples computers (which im always doing).

I was going to right a little guide on it but others with more resources and net time then me have covered it far better than I would, so here’s bits from them and some links:

From this AOL blog.. here’s how to quickly access the feature in the major browsers: (replace Ctrl for Command on Macs)

Internet Explorer InPrivate

InPrivate can be opened by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P or by selecting “InPrivate Browsing” from the “Tools” menu. If you don’t see the menu, press Alt to reveal it.

Firefox Private Browsing

A private browsing window can be launched with either the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+P or by selecting “Start Private Browsing” from the “Tools” drop down in the menu bar.

Chrome Incognito

You can open an Incognito window by either using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+N or by selecting “New Incognito Window” from the wrench menu in the upper right hand corner. (Mac users may find this option under “File” in the menu bar.)

Safari Private Browsing

To launch Safari’s private mode you’ll need to click on “Safari” in the menu bar and select “Private Browsing…”

Opera Private

Opera allows you to open either a private tab or window (the rest are all separate windows). You can right click on the new tab icon and select “New Private Tab” from the context menu. New private windows can be launched with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+N. You’ll also find both options in the “Tabs and Windows” section of the Opera menu (the giant red “O” in the upper left-hand corner).
*****

..and don’t get carried away with your newly secure powers, others suggest that its not so secure, others again have better options for that kind of thing.

Have you had some web browser embarrassments or discoveries which you’d rather have missed?

Why Sinhala? What is it?
Sinhala (Sinhalese) is the language of the ethnic group with the same name, from Sri Lanka. My heritage is whats called Sinhalese Burgher which is characterised by colonial descent (mainly Dutch, also British and Portugese), often lighter skin, english speaking and usually of christian religion as well. This makes up a small percentage of the Sri Lankan population at present but I would suggest quite a significant amount of the expats around the world.

This was the context which I was raised in Sydney in an english speaking household, just as my folks had been raised in Sri Lanka in an english speaking household – only thing is I had even less exposure to the Sinhalese language and since I didn’t show interest in going to language school on my childhood sundays – so I didn’t pick up the language.

You might be able to imagine the kind of short reaction I’m tempted to make when new folks blinded by the visual appearance, ignore my fairly clear Aussie accent and blurt out something like “Wow, you speak good English!” Thats enough of that, also, I’m not going to get into cultural identity of migrants or colonialism seeding future western migrants around the world – although they’re very relevant considerations which paint more of this scene.

I have few opportunities to be around Sinhalese speaking environments, usually in melbourne with family, so I went looking for other ways to try to immerse myself in sinhalese language. Podcasts and audio to the rescue!

First stop SBS radio and their regular podcast. I even picked up a few tips from a cooking vid on the first link there, yum.

If you have some sort of iDevice, search for sinhala or your language in podcasts or the open university project to find them. There’s a few but they’re mainly to do with technology so expect to hear murmus of “facebook” …. “gmail” …. “html” etc amongst the quick spiels of urban-slang sinhalese.

More Audio:
Many options on archive.org Sinhala search under audio

4 Channel music netradio: http://www.lankabroadcast.com/

Other Resources collated from wikis and such:

Pronunciation Guide with audio examples, other resources and downloads, some free: http://speaksinhala.com/

Phrases and Dictionary, with JPEG characters : http://www.sinhala-online.com/sinhalese-conversation.html
Dictionary which seesm to need the indic font to work: http://www.sinhaladictionary.org/index.php

web geek (unix creator)

Well you certainly don’t need to pay for one. I cringe when I hear people saying that they’re paying someone or a techie friend of theirs is building them a website soon which will be useful for their enterprise, band, project, life etc – if they ever finish it.

I went through the website alternatives process before starting this blog a little while ago. I was seriously considering using the live local site but in the end I wanted a bit more flexibility and I’m very glad I went with wordpress. The first theme I had was the classic blog look with all the post scrawling down the page in full, with the typical poor navigation. Eventually I took the leap towards this current theme which looked way too flashy for my liking at the time but I was well into the magazine style layout on the front page so that people stumbling across it for the first time don’t just read this whole rant about websites but maybe they could look at a community garden story, some cargo bike reviews or listen to an audio piece on a men’s shed. Sorry, that was a very long sentence. *breathes* ahhh.

I doubt many people are fully aware that having ‘your own’ website means:

• You have digital real estate in the form of a domain name which comes knocking annually for $10, 20, 50 more? and if you don’t get the renew email you  might just find you’ve lost your domain name, possibly forever ! Countless friends have had stress over this. Don’t let it happen to you!
• You have to pay a server company to host your site, this is according to how complex the site is and how many people access it. This tends to fluctuate and your server host generally won’t.
• Unless your web dude has setup a Content Managment System you probably need to be a web geek yourself or at least very tech savvy to ever have a hope of updating it
• Stale, old and non-updated websites look baaaaad. (I say this full well knowing that I have considerable black outs from updating this place, ahh “Do as i Say…”)
• ummm, I’ll think of another one soon enough. Just heckle below.

Alternatives for your own site:

Live local, Permaculture Global, Wiser Earth, Aussies Living Simply are all alternatives to having your own simliar  simple/frugal/eco/permi blog. They might even be better for you because of the communities which are formed within each little directory group.

Instead of starting a travel blog, have a look around at sites which are built specifically for that, ive seen ones like My Trip Journal/Book, travelblog.org etc. They have alot of specific tools which suit traveling and staying in touch with folks eg: progress maps and itineraries which will prob be more efficient than setting up a blog from scratch for travel writing.

Website alternatives for Musos include Reverbnation or tools like soundcloud. Between them you could have everything you need to promote your music, tour dates, recording etc. If you have finished recordings to plug then Bandcamp is the clear independent alternative to AppleMacs force: iTunes, and it’s making its own little waves in the music industry.

Of course, im a big advocate of wordpress.com blogs since they are so flexible. Also, whilst im not thoroughly researched on this, the word-of-mouth vibe on their ethics/values is solid. We met some of the founders when tech-ing on a conference for them in Sydney – they were pretty solid decent web nerd characters. I say this in contrast to the bigger badder brother which is blogger, aka blogspot which google owns. Not fantastic for privacy or ethics I might suggest. They tend to be quite inflexible with the themes & layout (traditional blog scrawl) but more flexible with plugins eg: intense debate, link within etc which do not play nice with wordpress – and with all of this im talking about wordpress.com not .org, the difference is defined here for those keen folks yet to know.

Mum’s Music Site (case study/story): Take for example this workflow, my mother is a singer/teacher/performer and recently recorded an album.
Phase one was getting a blog site up which basically looks like a website, tabs, pages and all. Only the home page features the blog style reverse-chronological posts. We also looked around for online directories and posted her details on Music Teachers Online . A free alternative to a previous directory which she paid to be on, which is stuck in the web design dark ages of the 90′s. Things like myspace and reverbnation weren’t really relevant because she also wanted to promote these teaching aspects with extended blurbs. It’s here at http://sherineprins.wordpress.com. Zero setup costs and a quick, easy roll out made it a breeze for me to do. Now getting Mum to come up with content was another story we got there soon enough.

Phase two was getting some sound on there, also, relatively easy. Upload the recordings to SoundCloud then embed their player into the wordpress pages. Bingo! we had a setup which would save alot of time explaining about the teaching styles and the music performed and people could listen to performance samples straigh off the page and even download them to show to friends offline (mp3 players and the like). This provided a real alternative to a physical trip which people would make out to the studio to hear Mum perform her tunes for them individually. Very useful.

Phase Three was, once the album was all finished and ready, to get it out there! I know nothing better than Bandcamp for this, they are the shining light for musos as far as im concerned. So once that was all slowly uploaded at full quality the bandcamp wigdets also play nicely with the wordpress site so it’s all one happy family. As well as nailing digital downloads, the lovely BC folks also cater for physical units so our relatives and friends around the world could have a decent choice for how they would like Check out the bandcamp side of things here.  By the way there is a 15% profitshare involved with the Bandcamp sales which sounds fair enough to me. Theres a whole van load of good reasons to check out there model, so I won’t rave anymore here. Apart from putting a litte widget here to demonstrate, one of about 7 which you can customise alot:

Pretty pro hey? Overall I reckon a nice tidy solution – and that’s just one example. Theres loads of free tools which you can assemble to suit your needs, perhaps just a simple directory site is all you need, perhaps a slightly complex arrangement like this one. Good luck with it whatever the project. Feel free to bug me for more info below..

*update: hey – just as i was saying this is a negative point for wordpress.com (non-social network comment plug in) – theyve just gone ahead and rolled it out. cheers wordpress folks – keep rolling out the good stuff!

The result is a fridge which is so efficient that it is off the charts on those little appliance energy ratings which were used to seeing on whitegoods. So just incase you were only considering importing a primo german new fridge, consider this option too. A combinaton with a cool cupboard design might well be the ultimate in cold storage.

If you do need a small freezer consider tracking down a second hand 12/24/240V camping fridge/freezer. They have only ever been designed to be super efficient since they run on car batteries whilst mobile.

The resource on this stuff is at MtBest so I won’t get into it here. Check out his sound logic on how front opening fridges are inherently inefficient due to the volume of air escaping and how much more volume you can use in a chest fridge. The green change blog has a local example of putting not of these retrofit units to work, I’ve also happily lived in a handful of places with these things. Thought I’d post about it since it’s not very widely known.

Mt best chest fridge guide
Click on the PDF for all the details
Green change chest fridge conversion

barter workshop on the little hill

It had a great decentralised, low effort max yield kinda approach with many cool little systems, was also organised and run with a real spirit of gifting and abundance! Some workshops were scheduled and others were just added to the blackboard, a bit like a confest style.

Top 5  take home points from the Barter Workshop (as offered up by the participants):

1. Build relationships : It’s a big part of what its about. You can’t just pay for something and walk off, you need to take some moments and make a connection there. Have fait as you may find this much more rewarding than connections based on monetary exchange, eg: the friendly barista who remembers your coffee order..
2. You are skilled : Don’t doubt that you have swappable skills! just brain storm it for a few moments or bounce it off a friend. Your probably already swapping something in a loose way already and perhaps just need to extend your swapping out ot others youve yet to meet.
3. Use intiative : Even if bartering is not common in a particular situation or space just ask people about it in a quiet moment and offer up some things you could do for them.
4. Get involved : This follows on from the last one, don’t wait forever to be invited – once you get a bit of permission – jump in there and get involved.
5. Celebrate abundance! : We can get scientific and equate X hours for X theoretical dollars so you shall receive X value of goods or we can gradually progress towards celebrating the abundance which we can create within our lives, be it produce, treats, hugs or otherwise. Give generously and be prepared to receive in a simliar way (for some you are giving by just receiving – strange but true).

the schedule blackboard

More info and pics here reskillingfestival.wordpress.com with some more great photos from Kim + esmedia used in this post.

Oo look heres a nice little vid, i love that the wacky musician is featured heavily, what a treat. Thanks ES media again.

She put me onto a great visualisation of the situation which is below. whilst checking the creators out I found a few more great visualisations so here comes another rare video feast for this little blog. Thought I’d make an exception since they’re done well.

Coles and Woolies

On google – which owns the delivery format – you tube so needs a little pinch of salt..

On Wikileaks

If you haven’t sussed it out yet check out the ‘urban wwoofing concept’ page link at the top – it’s got all the links to resources and the network through CouchSurfing.org

In other things, Adelaide is truly rad – in my recent experience anyhow. I ll be here wwoofing at the food forest for a little while. Check out toms fresh blog for some on that adventureswithtom.wordpress.com.

A little barter workshop has turned into a bit more for me at upcoming skill share gathering just out of dear adelaide town. They’re also wordpress friends so check it out at reskillingfestival.wordpress.com. happy days

Original photolog post is here : Urban Food Growing Course
[link should open in new window so you can listen to this audio]

At long last here is the mini podcast I was working on..

Originally recorded out of interest – then cut together for the live local project on ABC Radio National’s ’360 Documentaries’ program. But we missed the deadline .. so it’s just up here. has emerged slowly in spurts as ive been working on it with luke purse (BFG) on tech production.

Big gratitude to mal webb for track permission . . http://malwebb.com/ – luke purse for saving me from dealing with production and be able to play ‘producer’.

We didn’t quite get it to final finished quality (theres a few things I would change) but I thought I’d just publish it anyway. Enjoy. [check out the older post for lots more details]