assagai

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

“Have you ever fallen into a mental space where even the slightest detail seems excrutiatingly overburdened with meaning?”

Thats just the typical jargon riddled silliness that I’d come to expect from my friend and sometime persecutor Umberto Vlok. (aka Big Jim)

But being of a rather sensible disposition, especially since the course of ECT that I got for half price in Panama, I felt obliged to nudge Big Jim back towards a semblance of sanity.

“Ja Nee ou maat - it happened once when I confused the dosage of my anti-psychotics, tranquilizers and Tic Tacs - think it was the Tic Tacs that done it!”

“But have you never thought that we are surrounded by meaning, tips, hints, intimations of a world that makes sense?”

“Ummm not really - not since arriving on this planet. I once believed in fate but my pot smoking lesbian neighbours cured me of that.”

Anyway we rambled on in a similar vein for some time before the Tannie at the next table intervened.

“Jislaaik julle twee kan sommer kak praat - why don’t you go home an watch the Rugby like good Safricans!”

I did go home but instead of the Rugby decided to watch a particular episode of Only Fools and Horses for the 17th time certain that I had missed something the other 16 times. Then my mind started drifting towards matters of deep and dark significance.

“Isn’t it better to die living than to live dying?”
“Maybe if I cut off my ear I could sell my series of 213 portraits of my favourite toothbrush”
“I better start doing my life’s work before I get fired!”
“Why did the lady at the till give me THAT look ?!?”

I was starting to panic - had Umberto infected my brain with some nano virus?
What if I really am supposed to make a difference in my job, save the company and discover a new and improved toilet seat!

I reached frantically for the remote which was sinisterly just out of reach and started flicking through the channels in desperate need of solace and salvation.
Shit no Top Gear, Masterchef or Weakest Link.
I was begining to sweat - my mouth was dry and stomach filled with wasps (Much worse than butterflies!)

Then in that last terrible moment before falling into the abyss I had an epiphany - I didn’t need to go mad. I could regain control. I was flooded with a feeling of pure joy as I took off my Steel capped safety boot and threw it with all my might at the TV. Woooohoooo - fuck DSTV I’m bigger than that. I’ll go play in the hills and valleys and shopping centres.

I had found FAITH, I was bigger than TV.
When the nice men came to take me to a safe place they gave me a nice big injection and just as I was drifting off the man tightening the straps said

“Hey don’t worry bru - there’s a TV right above your bed!”

AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHHHH

Adam Lieber was born in South Africa where he did his BA in sculpture at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT Cape Town. During this time he began mixing sound and video into his work.

After graduating he remained in Cape Town and spent a hell of a lot of time exhibiting, organising music events (pickle, geto 3000, balearic & a few others) and art events, co-running a little gallery (the Mau-Mau Gallery) and making music.
In 2001 he moved to Italy where he spent a year working at Fabrica in the music department focusing on producing audio, sound design and music for film, live performances and installations.

He completed his MA in Communication Art & Design at the Royal College of Art in 2005, focusing on film & moving image.

Adam is 4.8 feet tall and currently learning how to dance.

Spectrasonics - Omnisphere Episode 1 - The Revealing

Eric Persing welcomes you to the new Omnisphere video series.

Mobile phones ‘more dangerous than smoking’ - Health News, Health & Wellbeing - The Independent

Brain expert warns of huge rise in tumours and calls on industry to take immediate steps to reduce radiation. Young people are at particular risk from exposure to radiation.

By Geoffrey Lean

Sunday, 30 March 2008

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take “immediate steps” to reduce exposure to their radiation.

The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.

It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.

Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that “there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours”. He believes this will be “definitively proven” in the next decade.

Noting that malignant brain tumours represent “a life-ending diagnosis”, he adds: “We are currently experiencing a reactively unchecked and dangerous situation.” He fears that “unless the industry and governments take immediate and decisive steps”, the incidence of malignant brain tumours and associated death rate will be observed to rise globally within a decade from now, by which time it may be far too late to intervene medically.

“It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking,” says Professor Khurana, who told the IoS his assessment is partly based on the fact that three billion people now use the phones worldwide, three times as many as smoke. Smoking kills some five million worldwide each year, and exposure to asbestos is responsible for as many deaths in Britain as road accidents.

Late last week, the Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana’s study as “a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual”. It believes he “does not present a balanced analysis” of the published science, and “reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews”

more info here.

Get the album here: Sound Vs Silence - Shawn Smith - The Diamond Hand

After a screening of “There Will Be Blood” last night at Writer’s Guild theater in Beverly Hills, director Paul Thomas Anderson said he “had to learn how to be simple” to make film. The movie tracks the life of an oil magnate played by Daniel Day-Lewis, and takes its inspiration from Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!.”

Much of the post-film discussion focused on the way Day-Lewis (above, with Dillon Freasier) approached the role of an arrogantly scheming and oft-paranoid oil man. And if there’s anything simple about the film, it’s in Anderson’s focus on this one man, as the film has an underlying — almost horror-like tension — to it.

That foreboding sense of dread, though, comes in large part from the score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. The soundtrack won’t be released until Dec. 18 via the Warner Bros. imprint Nonesuch, preceding the Dec. 26 opening of the film. It should be a fascinating, if difficult, listen, judging by the moments of the music in the movie.

It’ll be curious to see if it stands as a singular piece, or if Academy voters find it too experimental, too hauntingly sparse, for the original score nomination it deserves.

Like Anderson’s film, Greenwood’s music often feels deceptively simple, playing out like a twisted, mutated take on orchestral music of the turn of the century.

At times, strings are manipulated into something that sounds like an air-raid siren, and in the few moments there’s percussion, it’s startling. The rhythms resemble the clangs of the oil machinery in the film, a carefully orchestrated but scattered-sounding noise — the sound of a mind going mad, perhaps.

Greenwood and Anderson earlier discussed the music and how it relates to certain scenes of the film with Entertainment Weekly, where Greenwood said “The Shining” was a conversation point between the two. Indeed, the opening scenes of “There Will Be Blood,” with its wide-open shots of Texas land and guttural orchestra sounds, certainly recall the 1980 Stanley Kubrick thriller.

Greenwood told EW:

I think it was about not necessarily just making period music, which very traditionally you would do. But because they were traditional orchestral sounds, I suppose that’s what we hoped was a little unsettling, even though you know all the sounds you’re hearing are coming from very old technology. You can just do things with the classical orchestra that do unsettle you, that are sort of slightly wrong, that have some kind of undercurrent that’s slightly sinister.

Greenwood’s words above best describe the music.

Last night, Anderson also cited John Huston’s 1948 film “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” as inspiration, and said he sent pieces of Max Steiner’s score to Greenwood. While the music of the latter took a more majestic approach, Greenwood is able to grace “There Will Be Blood” with a similarly epic sonic scope.

“I knew our score would sound nothing like that,” Anderson said, “but this is what I was trying to get into the mix.”

More on the film, and the soundtrack, as their respective release dates approach.

(Photo courtesy Paramount Vantage)