The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet
January 15th, 2007Ultimately stunning in its revelations, Lutz Dammbeck’s THE NET explores the incredibly complex back-story of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th Century web of technology – a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting counter cultural responses to the cybernetic revolution. For those who resist these intrusive systems of technological control, the Unabomber has come to symbolize an ultimate figure of Refusal. For those that embrace it, as did and do the early champions of media art like Marshall McLuhan, Nam June Paik, and Stewart Brand, the promises of worldwide networking and instantaneous communication outweighed the perils. Dambeck’s conceptual quest links these multiple nodes of cultural and political thought like the Internet itself. Circling through themes of utopianism, anarchism, terrorism, CIA, LSD, MK-ULTRA, Tim Leary, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, THE NET exposes conspiracies and upheavals, secrets and cover-ups along the way.
The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet
Links:
GET THE DVD – The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet
Marks Pesce @ Mind States 2005
January 7th, 2007Marks Pesce talks about internet, media, bittorrent, wikipedia, ipod, web 2.0 and other technological viral social networking swarm innovations in this lecture at Mind States ’05 in such a way that it’s actually really trippy to listen to regardless of the trippy visuals in the video.
Spoken word/Music/Video Art from MINDSTATES 2005
Visuals by Chris Barnaby Music by Kevin Whitesides Modulated Throat Sounds by Mark Pesce
Links:
www.mindstates.org/
http://www.cjbarnaby.com/ – Chris Barnaby
http://www.playfulworld.com/ – Mark Pesce
Playful World Entertainment
Mescaline Extraction Part 1
December 7th, 2006
About Mescaline
Mescaline is a naturally occurring psychedelic with a long history of human use. It is best known as the primary active chemical in the peyote cactus.
Chemical Formula : C11H17NO3
Chemical Weight : 211.26
Melting Point : 35-36° C (non-salt?)
Melting Point : 183-186° C (Sulfate dihydrate)
Melting Point : 181° C (Hydrochloride)
Soluability in water (the more soluable it is in water, the more mescaline will be extracted from the plant material in an aqueous extraction).
The two most commonly produced synthetic forms of mescaline are mescaline hydrochloride and mescaline sulfate which have very similar dosages. Mescaline sulfate is 11% heavier than mescaline hydrochloride, meaning it takes 11% _more_ mescaline sulfate by weight to get the same effects as a certain amount of mescaline hydrochloride.
If an acid–base–solvent extraction is done on the plant material the result is freebase mescaline. Freebase mescaline is 15% lighter than mescaline hydrochloride (and 25% lighter than mescaline sulfate), thereby requiring 15% _less_ material by weight for the same dose as mescaline hydrochloride. However, most (if not all) extractions end with the freebase being turned into a salt. If the extracted mescaline is not converted to a salt and the solvent is evaporated, it can readily form a salt with the carbon dioxide in the air, forming Mescaline carbonate (molecular weight unknown?).
source : link
Video: Mark Pesce, father of Virtual Reality Markup Language
November 22nd, 2006
Known internationally as the man who fused virtual reality with the World Wide Web, Mark Pesce is now based in Australia and espousing his philosophy of Internet “swarm” audiences and peer-to-peer “hyper-distribution” via the Australian Film, TV and Radio School.
The author of five books, Pesce is a ferociously illuminating technologist, futurist and philosopher. Forbes ASAP, TIME Digital, WIRED and The New York Times have profiled him and his views on the interactive age. He has written himself for WIRED, Feed, Salon, PC Magazine, and serves on the editorial board of TRIP magazine.
From 1998 through 2000, Pesce chaired the Interactive Media Program at the University of Southern California’s world-renowned School of Cinema-Television. His mandate – to bring cinema and broadcast television into the interactive era – led him to create a program that encouraged creative vision and is now producing a generation of entertainment professionals shaping the media of the 21st century.
Pesce’s current projects include TRUE HALLUCINATIONS, an opera based on the life and death of ethnobotanist and philosopher Terence McKenna, and The Next Big Thing, a book chronicling the science, business and politics of nanotechnology.
In this interview, Mark Pesce talks about the how the profound changes in technology consumption and distribution are likely to reshape the media landscape in the next couple of years. He describes in depth the legal, financial and philosophical implications of peer-to-peer networking, IPv6, nano-technology, mobile wireless video devices, identity management and theft, copyright and piracy.
