http://www.oceanwithoutashore.com/

If you happen to be in Melbourne, go and see this at the NGV.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

Vladimir Nabokov, "Speak, Memory"

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090115.html

As part of a screendance project "Anamnesis" that I am developing with Cormac Lally, David Corbet and Bagryana Popov, we have been attempting to work with final cut project files collaboratively and online. We use simple 'cloud' technology - a programme called Dropbox - that automatically updates the fcp project files (or any files) remotely as I work on a file locally. It informs the others in the project when the file has been updated, and they are then able to open the project file and view the work I have been doing (and vice versa). In the case of video projects, this is of course all dependent on each of us having copies of the media files (about 300GB of data).

We then use google docs to edit and add to notes about our choices, and possible ideas (which has exposed Final Cut as a poor collaborating choice in that there is no way to add notes, or colour code the timelines).

It has been fascinating developing the project this way – each giving the other ideas to push against, to take on board, to leave behind. The final edit will still be Cormac's, but in this way we are able to keep abreast of the form-content of the project as we all contribute to its video and audio edit.

'We've always been more associated with image, and our physical work,' he says of Ex Machina, the company he founded 15 years ago. 'We have always been as much fascinated by text, music and voice, but I guess because our visual sense is stronger, it kind of eclipses sound in the work. Lipsynch is still, of course, highly visual (you are who you are), but in this show, what's important is what comes to the ears before what comes to the eyes.'

Robert Lepage
http://lacaserne.net
speaking in The Australian, 2 January 2009
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24863143-16947,00.html

http://dance-out-there.blogspot.com/

http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/

Michael Leunig
The Age
2 January 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/2005/10/04/1128191706446.html

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.

Jimmy Carter, 1979

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the thinking.

J.M. Keynes