John Cage on silence
"Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
"For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible. Such a room is called an anechoic chamber, its six walls made of special material, a room without echoes. I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heard two sounds, one high and one low.
"When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation."
Bills horse trough
Darrell Jones is shown cleaning a Bills horse trough at Griffith Pioneer Park Museum
Sketchy zine
Made this zine while I was waiting for my partner yesterday
It uses drawings from the sketchbook diary that I kept for a month in 2013, inspired by my family and the work of James Kochalka.
That project developed my comic-making skills surprisingly quickly and gave me an appreciation for how much work Kochalka put into his American Elf series.
This zine will likely be a parting gift to my class when I finish up next week and I hope it shows them the joy of drawing and self-publishing.
I've used the format promoted by Austin Kleon, see here.
You should print a copy of the zine and leave some lying around your part of the world because, assuming they don't become litter, it'd be great to be distributed!
Little things
Red Earth Ecology are planning an excursion to Fivebough Wetland
Kid art
I feel a bit sheepish for sharing this pic, since it's not my art and I can't attribute the artist.
However, it made me feel sentimental for when my kids would draw pages of random-looking characters.
Whelm
Recently I found the word "whelm" used in a book and thought it was unusual, so I looked it up
(Okay, shocking for a word nerd.)
How is that when you're underwhelmed, you're not underneath by feeling engulfed, submerged or buried; and when you're overwhelmed it is more likely evoking that experience of being under the thing?
Griffith during WWII
June McGrane (30 June 1932 – 21 May 2021) shares details about life in Griffith when the second world war raged, 1939-45
She remembers the trenches dug at the high school and air raid drills, as well as a bomb shelter built in the site now known as Memorial Gardens.
One remarkable recollection is the concern of locals for the real possibility of an invasion by the Japanese after the bombing of Darwin, because there was only one place in Australia where they grew rice!
June was a long-serving volunteer at Griffith Pioneer Park Museum, where this interview was filmed during February 2017.
Not love
Two in every three men are liars
That's my takeaway from the study that found "One in three Australian men say they have committed intimate partner abuse."
One of the questions was "Have you ever behaved in a manner that has made a partner feel frightened or anxious? (emotional-type abuse)"
I know I've made my partner anxious when I raise my voice and overtake cars on the highway.
Not saying that it's right, but it does seem a very low bar to be considered "intimate partner abuse."
Love
I'm grateful for the love of my family, particularly my partner of 23 years: Jo
This morning my Facebook Memories had this post and it's illustrated with a graphic she published to my profile yesterday:
In last night's subconsciousnews I dreamed that the vibrational field created by Jason and my love for one another was so powerful that it spread throughout the entire Universe in all directions of space and time.
It was so significant an event that it was taught as history in text/books on other planets, and also anecdotally in the form of oral myths and stories passed down the generations among all sentient beings.
Wandering in wonder
Recently Naviar Records called for contributions to appear in an exhibition in Japan
Marco wrote that his inspiration came from the Ainu, Japan's indigenous people, in his email to the Naviar community:
I've been working on this installation for a week now, studying and collecting sounds from my local environment, learning and understanding more about where my culture comes from. To someone who's been in contact with indigenous cultures all their life, this might seem like a childish game; however, for me, it's been an enlightening experience.
It brought to mind a project that I started to write songs reflecting my own heritage, which began around the time of Anzac Day and was inspired by the idea of that event being Australia's version of an ancestor celebration.
My contribution is a draft of one of those songs, drawing on the history of the Wanderer butterfly in Australia.
The lyrics are:
From foreign skies it came,
A fire-bright drift in golden flame—
On cyclonic winds, torn and tossed,
Somehow carried life across,
After this flight over the seas.
A stranger turned sovereign by the breeze,
In the year 1871,
Met the blush of Antipodean sun.
On winds of fate, it crossed the sea,
A monarch's flight to lands so free.
From foreign shores to Sydney's light,
The Wanderer took its maiden flight.
Milkweed bloomed—a bitter crown,
Bred the brood in orange gown.
Wings like stained glass kissed by fire,
A tale of travel, cocooned desire.
Not born of bush or Dreamtime's lore,
Arrived at a eucalyptus shore.
An exile once, now a monarch of air,
This Wanderer dances on blooms with care.
The rationale for this symbol is:
In my backyard is a mint plant that I hoped might grow to replace my lawn. Many butterflies land on the flowers when it blooms.And the bio I've provided is something I'm going to add here (mostly for future reference, sorry for appearing kinda bigheaded but it's my blog hey!):
I started researching their varieties as I began photographing them and became interested in the Wanderer, which is the Australian version of the Monarch in the Americas. It has distinctive white spots on a black body and magnificent wings coloured like autumnal leaves.
This type of butterfly arrived in Australia around the time my father's great-grandparents migrated here. It is thought it may have been blown here by a cyclone, but found the imported milkweed plant that supports Monarch caterpillars and was able to survive.
My parents were both born in North America, so I've come to adopt the Wanderer as a symbol for my cultural identity.
I've performed the song using a ukulele, as it is an instrument from the Pacific – the ocean that unites Australia, Japan and the USA.
With a focus on the Riverina landscape, Jason’s interdisciplinary art spans text, digital media, and community-driven initiatives, including his work with Naviar Records' Crossing Streams exhibition and Red Earth Ecology. As a writer and musician under the pseudonym Bassling, he has contributed to online music magazine Cyclic Defrost, won the Murrumbidgee Short Story competition, and collaborated internationally on projects like the Shinobi Cuts Remix Chain.
And in Japanese:
ジェイソン・リチャードソン（オーストラリア）
ジェイソン・リチャードソンは、オーストラリア・リヴェライナ地方の風景を軸に、言葉とデジタル表現、そして地域コミュニティとともに行う創作活動を横断的に展開しているアーティストである。
Naviar Records の「Crossing Streams」展や Red Earth Ecology などのプロジェクトを通じて、自然と文化、個人と土地との関係を探求してきた。
ジェイソンの自宅の庭には、芝生の代わりにと植えたミントが茂り、その花に蝶が集まるようになった。
それらの蝶を撮影するうちに、特に「ワンダラー」と呼ばれる蝶に惹かれるようになる。これは、アメリカ大陸に生息する「モナーク（オオカバマダラ）」に類似した、オーストラリアの在来種である。黒い身体に白い斑点、そして秋の葉を思わせる色の翼を持つ。
この蝶がオーストラリアに渡来したのは、ジェイソンの曽祖父母がこの地に移住してきた時期と重なる。サイクロンに乗って漂着した可能性があり、北米から持ち込まれたトウワタ（milkweed）の存在によってオーストラリアの地に定着できたとされる。
北米にルーツを持つ両親のもとに生まれたジェイソンにとって、この蝶「ワンダラー」は、自身の文化的アイデンティティの象徴となった。
本作では、オーストラリア、日本、アメリカをつなぐ太平洋を意識し、その象徴的な楽器であるウクレレによる演奏を取り入れている。
Memes make the news
It's a sign the mainstream media is continuing to become more detached from reality.
When I was young I wanted to be a journalist and gained a qualification, but found the jobs were all in public relations.
For many years I wondered how media organisations got away with using photographs from libraries that didn't reflect their localities.
Of course, it was an economic decision based on the fact they no longer had the advertising revenue to pay the wages of photojournalists.
Given the recent examples AI-written articles, I'm expecting to see a sixth finger appear on the handshakes of politicians in coming weeks!
Feeling sentimental
These days all I hear at the library are people talking on their phones!
Neve's iPad art
For years my daughter would rarely share her art
Anyway, she's now home from uni and brought a few prints of her artwork that have now taken positions on the fridge.
I’m stoked she’s sharing them freely, after my years of nagging to get a look!
Representing Leeton Shire in London
There you can hear the dawn chorus at Leeton's Fivebough Wetland, a location which is also part of a project that Red Earth Ecology are developing for a local primary school next month.
Return of the Firefox effect
Some years ago I was enthralled by glitchy images when I browsed the internet
On this blog I dubbed it the "Firefox effect" and that might've been misleading, although it's where I usually see this result.
Pickle in my pocket
Battle Critters
I made this role-playing game for a math-based exercise in my teaching
The idea is to use a six-sided dice to roll to pick your critters' super powers, then roll a second time for how many iterations.
Such as rolling 2 for extra heads, then rolling 3 for three of them to draw onto the figure.
This super power bonus (+3 for heads) is noted when you roll for attack, then is added to the other figure to tally each critter's energy.
Each round you must roll higher than your opponent's attack roll and roll below your defend score to avoid them, until energy drops below 0.
The attack roll has the super power bonus added to increase likelihood, and these two numbers form the damage taken from your opponent's energy if they don't avoid it.
Games last 3-6 rounds, take about 10 minutes and benefit from creative descriptions of the action.
I should probably incorporate the rules of gameplay into the design of the sheet, but that will wait for another draft.
Such as rolling 2 for extra heads, then rolling 3 for three of them to draw onto the figure.
This super power bonus (+3 for heads) is noted when you roll for attack, then is added to the other figure to tally each critter's energy.
Each round you must roll higher than your opponent's attack roll and roll below your defend score to avoid them, until energy drops below 0.
The attack roll has the super power bonus added to increase likelihood, and these two numbers form the damage taken from your opponent's energy if they don't avoid it.
Games last 3-6 rounds, take about 10 minutes and benefit from creative descriptions of the action.
I should probably incorporate the rules of gameplay into the design of the sheet, but that will wait for another draft.
How will COVID-19 impact the arts?
We're all still living in the pandemic
Despite the rush to return to crowded venues and the low numbers of people maintaining their immunisations.
Interestingly, the persistent cognitive impairment appears to be contained almost exclusively to the right hemisphere.
This means if you have lasting cognitive issues from long COVID they will affect your intuition, creativity and emotional reasoning more than your ability to do math or memorise prose, for example.
Along with the rise of AI, I wonder how this will play in the spheres of artistic production.
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