history lessons

Does humor belong in art and can it make an equally strong statement? The question is rhetoric. Visit Jonathan Gilhooly's website and read the review by Micheál O'Connell here .

Demetris is a good friend and photographer now living in Athens, Greece. He's got a new portfolio up with some beautiful photography both traditional and manipulated. Have a look here .

Statement of Academic Freedom 'We, the undersigned, believe the following two principles to be the foundation of academic freedom: (1) that academics, both inside and outside the classroom, have unrestricted liberty to question and test received wisdom and to put forward controversial and unpopular opinions, whether or not these are deemed offensive, and (2) that academic institutions have no right to curb the exercise of this freedom by members of their staff, or to use it as grounds for disciplinary action or dismissal.' If you agree with the aforementioned, please take some time to sign the on-line petition . Thank you.

Micheál O'Connell's 'Feed Lack Loop' had been a surreal experience to say the least. Whether to call it performance, installation piece I don't know. But what surely fits a description is 'experimental'. Upon entering Lighthouse there was a huge projector I noticed the familiar face of Dave (if I remember his name correctly), the clown Micheál used in some of his other works. There is indeed something intriguing about clowns, but that's another story all together. The event would take place both at Lighthouse and in the virtual world of Second Life supported by Ars Virtua Gallery. The projector would show the event in Second Life while a camera in Lighthouse would show in Second Life what was happening in First Life (or am I wrong, my head hurts already). The result is a strange loop. The avatar in the virtual world, designed to look far from attractive -unlike ones everyday encounters in the MMOG- was controlled by Micheál, while Dan from Grey Area assi...

Under a different light than the post on Seraphina, I will talk here about the informal talk I had with John Higgs, author of "I have America surrounded - the life of Timothy Leary". We met up outside the "Druids Head" pub in the north laines, went in and despite my efforts to buy him a drink he insisted on paying for both. Got a pint and sat down at a table where the first thing I thought was "damn, the speaker is there, I'm gonna find it hard to understand what he's saying". So I explained my idea to him, putting the whole Collective Unconscious, Web 2.0 into perspective. He immediately recommended the book "what the dormouse said". The book discusses how the American counter-culture of the 60's shaped the history of the personal computer. The title refers to one of the lyrics in the song "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, a homage to both Alice in Wonderland and the use of psychedelic drugs as food for the mind. This a...