I volunteered at Transmediale the other week and one of my responsibilities was guiding participants on and off the stage during The Long Conversation.  It was a cruisy job and so in-between reminding the conversationalists to look at the camera (but just be natural) I listened to the talks and took notes.

The broad theme of the conversation was “futurity” and some people responded to that topic better than others.  It was set up as a chain conversation and also a little like Chinese Whispers – how would Richard Barbrook’s keynote influence the final conversation and would Drew Hemment (first and last speaker) be able to draw all of the ideas together?

Ken Rinaldo pretty much jumped on stage for his first conversation in order to respond to Alan N. Shapiro’s musings on “the car of the future”:

“I’ve got one thing to say – The car of the future? That’s called a bike.”

Inevitably there was a lot of talk of the future regarding technology, but the conversation immediately switched to people and futures once Maja Kuzmanovic came on stage.  When Joy Tang started talking with her there was even more discussion about people. I really appreciated Maja and Joy’s conversations, though I’m not sure if it was a conscious programming decision, for it seemed that binary oppositions of men / women and technology / humanity were somewhat exaggerated.

I came back about 8 hours after everything started and by that stage it seemed that people had forgotten to talk about the future, but they did seem to be talking vaguely about time. The one thing that really stuck in my mind was Andy Cameron asking Julian Oliver whether he could name a piece of media art that was timeless.

And Julian was unable to name a single piece. And quite reasonably so. It’s a really tricky question to ask anyone, let alone a media artist, particularly when he’s sitting on stage in the middle of an increasingly vague conversation, under lights and with the responsibility of looking at the camera (but to just be natural).  Julian did frame his lack of specific response far better than just anyone would  – how has it (piece of art) been mediated, what is the context of its presentation  and what is the viewer’s relationship to the artwork.

Of course, I’d be challenged to name any piece of art that is timeless and universally acknowledged to be so, for example Picasso’s Guernica is very specific to a certain time and place and the Mona Lisa (for me) no longer seems to be an artwork, it is a highly mediated, replicated and scrutinised image.

However, the question made me think and without the pressure of looking at a camera (but remaining natural), I could name two new media / non traditional art pieces which, if not timeless and significant to humanity, ARE incredibly important to me

Jesper Just's "No Man Is An Island II" (film stills)

Jesper Just’s No Man Is An Island (really poor quality video over at YouTube)

and

Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand’s Camera Lucida

Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand’s Camera Lucida (project description)

One of the challenges when talking about new media / time based / art-science-technology art works is that they can’t be [re]presented with any great ease. There is no way that poor quality YouTube videos and flat stills of quasi-scientific apparatus can replicate the experience of watching a video art piece in a dark, quiet room on a big screen or in any way convey the feeling that some amazing scientific performance was happening right under in front of your eyes.  So you’ll have to trust my judgement when recommending these pieces to you.

see also:

Ken Rinaldo’s Farm Fountain

FLOSS manual’s Collaborative Futures book

The Puma Hardchorus sing “Truly Madly Deeply“

When speaking German, one will ‘make’ a pause when taking a break from something. For example in university a teacher might say “Sollen wir eine Pause machen?” before sending students out for a 10 minute coffee and cigarette break.

Let’s just say that I’ve been making a pause on this here blog.  It’s a relatively large pause made up of inertia, wondering what happens next, paralysing fear and the overwhelming feeling that I should somehow summarise my last year in just several sentences and oh gosh I didn’t do anything worth writing about… But you know, while I was pause-making I did do some other interesting stuff. Like start building a [small] boat.

So that time wasn’t entirely wasted if one is thinking from the perspective of a blogger – “if you did it, but you didn’t publically document it, did it really happen?”.

At least I started work on The Imperial Punt.  But there’s more (unblogged things) that I did over the last year or so. I’m going to try to do this summarising thing – to make the experiences real.

• I fell in love with a bearded maths captain!
• I turned 30!
• I was given a guitar (which I’m scared to learn how to play)!
• I learnt to understand and speak a bunch of German!
• I made new friends!
• I started a really good job teaching and geeking!
• I got health insurance!
• I taught people how to use HTML and CSS!
• I decided on a graduate program!
• I became far more mentally healthy!
• I started running regularly!
• I [kinda] snowboarded!
• I made my room and apartment look lovely on a limited budget!
• I went to Linz, Austria so many times to see the bearded maths captain!
• I went to Norway!
• I knitted a lot of stuff!
• I baked cakes and learnt how to make pies!
• I thrifted an amazing vintage 1970s Husqvarna sewing machine and a great food processor!
• I bought a lot of plants!
• I started to crave Sauerkraut!
• I stopped dying my hair!
• I bought a bed!
• I had visits from lovely friends!
• I learnt a lot of new things!
  • (but that’s another list)

And on and on it goes. There’s so much stuff I’ve done – but haven’t felt motivated or confident enough to record.  And while a lot of those things are only significant to me (buying a bed for instance is a symbol that I feel really happy, secure and at home in Berlin) it suddenly feels quite amazing to write them down.  And what is particularly good is that I have done all these things in the first year of living in Berlin!

I think a lot of this thought that I haven’t done anything worth blogging is a direct result of the interest that people showed in the DIY Masters concept and my progress with it.  I feel like I owe them something and that writing about anything unrelated to my list of 100 Things to Learn was an insult to them.  So I stop writing altogether which is probably a greater insult! Foolish eh?

Far more foolish is the fear that I couldn’t mention the graduate program I’ve finally enrolled in as it’s “formal education” and very much not a DIY Masters – despite my intention being to explore non-formal, online and flexible learning (particularly Open Course Ware). For the record I’m going to be studying a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning (GCTT) online through the University of Southern Queensland.

The program is designed to enable educators in the tertiary sector who already have a degree or diploma, to acquire an innovative credential in tertiary teaching and learning. The program focuses on applying educational theories to practical situations in university and other tertiary educational settings in order to design, develop, implement and evaluate emerging learning environments.

So yeah. That’s about it. Thing I’ve done, things I’m going to do. I also wanted to publicly give myself permission to write / videoblog about whatever I want – there’s no way this can ever be an environment where I only write about one topic.  Because not writing is worse than writing about everything.

• broccoli soup
• potatoes, carrots and celeriac roasted in Gänseschmalz (goosefat) and olive oil with rosemary
• ruby chard cooked down with onions and garlic and then baked with egg, sourcream, feta and blue cheese
• hummus (soaked chickpeas, and lots of parsley and cayenne pepper added)
• lots and lots of peppermint tea with the odd addition of jasmine green tea and mellisa (lemon balm).

and beyond food it must be autumn. I didn’t arrive in Berlin until mid-November last year so I was shocked by how punctual and quick the change was from late summer to autumn.

sure, it might just be autumn, but for a girl originally from Adelaide it feels COLD.

even though i’m layering my clothes and wearing socks and uggboots while working at the computer i had to turn the heating on to low or else my fingers were freezing up.

over the next week i start a new job doing some teaching and geeking a couple of days a week. actual jobs aren’t that easy to come by in Berlin so i’m incredibly grateful and enthused about the opportunity. also i turn 30 which feels just right.

i still need to decide what cakes to bake. i wish that friends from the rest of the world could come celebrate with me. oh well, a small berlin posse (with a ring-in from upper austria) will have to suffice.

And just like that, summer is officially over!

I guess it must have happened while I was walking home last night with Jocelyn.

There’s still blue sky over Berlin, and hopefully it remains (long sleeve) tshirt weather for a while longer.

I have to admit though, I’ve been looking forward to Autumn as that means a different kind of food. The other day I made up a leek, ham, corn and potato chowder and then there was roast pumpkin with blue cheese another day. And yesterday I finally made munggo guisado – a Fillipino dish that I’ve had my eye on for a while.

There must be something kind of hippie earth mother about me that lies below my more public nerd identity. Maybe it’s the knitting, the jam making or the gardening, but something made my neighbours give me a bag of mung beans saying “We don’t know what to do with these, maybe you’d like to sprout them or something?”

Damn straight I’d like to sprout them.

So I sprouted some mung beans which was kinda satisfying. But then I started thinking of the “something”.

If Berlin wasn’t satisfying me already with interesting icecream flavours such as licorice, or quark with sesame and honey, I’d have considered making mung bean icecream. So I googled mung bean recipes and found out about munggo guisado.

Munggo Guisado is Filipino comfort food, a blend of mung beans, seafood, pork meat and assorted greens like morning glory or spinach that’s usually served with rice. I had some quinoa I wanted to play with so I served it with that. Though I’m pretty sure munggo guisado could be good served over toast.

Let’s just say, I think I’ve found a new meal, one of those recipes like spaghetti sauce or ratatouille that you return to again and again because it’s so easy to modify.

But for now, here’s a writeup of my initial foray into Munggo Guisado. I didn’t have spinach, but I substituted in a couple of handfuls of parsley as I always have a bunch in a jar on my windowsill.

(more…)

Homework from battlecat on Vimeo.

In a shout-out to both Stubby and Pete I do some video blog homework.

In 2007, my friend Jess and I would meet up almost every Tuesday evening to drink wine and eat tapas.

Our favourite venue was the Richmond Hotel on Rundle St. There was a hot bartender with amazing hands, but I think the main reason we kept going back was for The Cheese.

The Cheese is tasty morsels of haloumi, cherry tomatoes and mint, all wrapped up in a filo pastry parcel and then shallow fried.

I was speaking to Jess today on Skype and she somehow dropped the word Cheese into conversation where it normally wouldn’t have been.

And then I realised… I had almost the right ingredients for Cheese Production in my kitchen. I had some cherry tomatoes, just on the edge of being too ripe. No haloumi or mint, but feta and basil would work just as well. I’d been saving some filo pastry for another baking opportunity after a spanakopita (Greek Spinach Pie) became more pie than spinach.

So in honour of Jess (and occasional Tuesday night associates Ellie, Simon and Simon) I made some replica Cheese.

While we may be separated by distance, Skype and Replica Cheese can help bring us together in spirit and stomach at least.

#2 On Friends and Mindapples from battlecat on Vimeo.

My latest vodcast – as recorded on May 29th, 2009.

I only just realised that I could have included links to bands, projects and friends using the amazing power of titles.

Oh well.

My friend Marc, is the writer behind http://www.un-understand.co.uk.
The Australian band I mentioned was Brillig http://www.brillig.com.au.
And my friend Andy Gibson http://sociability.org.uk is the founder of Mindapples http://mindapples.org!

California by FBZ, originally uploaded by Fighting Tiger.

Fabienne (aka FBZ) of fabienne.us and HardHack (May 28, 29, @ C-Base) drew a map of California for the nottoscale project.  The first Berlin Geek Picnic was rained out as you can see by the water stains on the map FBZ drew.

FBZ draws California from battlecat on Vimeo.

If you subscribe to Fighting Tiger’s RSS feed you may have noticed several hand drawn maps appear in the stream. They’re part of a project I’m calling Not To Scale. I’m currently just collecting and blogging low-quality scans of the maps that friends and strangers draw me, but long-term I’d like to collate them into an electronic map.

I find that it’s far easier moving forward with nottoscale than it is working on the ideas I have for conceptual projects more specifically sited around friendship. Maybe nottoscale is easier because it is an unplanned project that’s worked its way into my headspace, rather than an idea which grows in importance and angst before I’ve even done the first sketch.

It’s also good for me that Not To Scale requires involvement with other people. Even though I can appear to be a very social person once I’m actually out of the apartment, it sometimes takes a lot of effort to venture out into the world. So much thinking I do is about other people, how they interact with each other, what I could do with them and the projects we could collaborate on, but I don’t seem to be very good at putting those ideas into action by sharing them with other people.

With Not To Scale, all I need from a person is a map. At its most basic level, all I need is pen or paper. Simple!

Though, I love the stories that people tell while they’re drawing maps, the added information that is lost in a drawing through limited cartographical skills and the restriction of pen and paper. If I have a camera or video camera to hand then I can pull that out to record the stories that are told during the map creation.

Actually, until recently I didn’t have a video camera of my own, but a good friend Pete Hindle generously gave me an old miniDV cam to record maps with. Thanks Pete!

I’m grateful for all my map creators so far, but I’d like to say special thanks to Juho and Marc who’ve emailed me some maps of Finland, Japan and the UK! Danke! Kiitos, Dom Arigato!