Vanessa is studying the semiotics of fashion in Halifax, Nova Scotia where she discovered the language of culture can be unzipped from the patterns found in textiles. From Chan Chan to Lake Titicaca in Peru to the mega-industrialized cities of Canton, there is a history of meaning woven into the very fabrics that under closer scrutiny reveals much about the culture. For example the pelicans find their way into Peruvian “mantas” – cloth used for everything from baby harnesses to satchels for carrying foodstuffs, because the behaviors of pelicans may reveal the stock of fish in a given body of water. The action of a certain animal running uphill may belie the coming of a storm. For these reasons, these systems of communication are transmitted in the images found in the weave.

Vanessa trekked four days up the Incan trail, not only laden with but constructed of a semi-precious green stone called Serpetina, to the mystic cloud city of Machu Pichu. She considered the flora and fauna along the way and how their colors and movements worked their way into the cloth.

At Lake Titicaca, the natives have created floating islands out of reeds where they have taken up permanent residence – powering their internet connection via solar panels. The implications of this are astounding and beyond the scope of this article. But consider what this means in light of a thing like the Principality of Sealand.

Although now some villages are using synthetic dyes and fibers, natural colors were created from insects to onions, from llama and alpaca wool – but now the global popularity of alpaca has forced prices to raise so high the the very natives who innovated use of the material can’t afford it.

A month later, Vanessa finds herself in Hong Kong en route to a tech convention in Guangzhou where the sky is, as she describes, a permanent ashen color from all the pollution to be found in the world’s central factory for technology. Nine-story high building filled with nothing but cell phone merchants bring on intense migraines and colossal skyscrapers – glass and steel wonders that put the best New York has to offer to shame follow the dictates of Feng Shui and yet these things remain virtually unknown and unseen by the Western world.

Textiles are made on looms and looms, which used punched cards to create the complex patterns used in textiles are essentially the precursor to today 8.9″ laptops, thus the patterns thereby created are miniature programs whose propriety belongs to those micro-cultures that developed them. To unlock these codes is to understand hidden knowledge about the world, language and development of a culture. In these times when thousands of unique languages are going extinct by the week, to learn to read these lines of code is to reveal much – to find the seeds for restoring their significance in the world.

I urge you to listen to this extraordinary interview with this designer on my podcast and explore further the possibilities and semiotics of fashion.

Listen to Episode 17 of the KeramCast – or subscribe at iTunes by searching for “KeramCast” in the podcast directory.

The post Unlocking the Code of A Culture Through Textiles appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

Hrm, I will endeavor to turn off my verbose brain I think to get this across.

As I write this it is 5am in Los Angeles, my sister left for Toronto this morning en route from a pilgrimage to the mystic ancient city of Machu Pichu in Peru to a Tech trade show in Canton, China.  My uncle Paco is visiting from Ecuador and is sleeping in my bed, my girlfriend is sleeping on the floor (her grandfather is being taken off life support in the morning) and Josh Joudrie, my co-producer and soundman for Blue Dog Pict, visiting from Toronto, is sleeping on my couch.  Having nowhere left for myself to repose, I am up typing this chronicle.

We started this album three years ago.  An effort to continue to the work we did with BDP almost a decade ago.  Lest you don’t know me, I am not some balding wannabe ex-rocker seeking former glory days.  I am a kid who didn’t feel like I had yet reached the root.  So I decided it was time to move to the next set of songs and find a way to tell their unique stories.  I had no money in my pocket, I still don’t, but I have found in that, some amazing benefits – restrictions engender innovation, experimentation, cunning, tenacity, faith and play, and all of those put together lead to extraordinary ideas that may have otherwise been circumvented.

I would not trade a single moment of my tumultuous journey for any other.  I have learned so much and continue to learn.

Because we recorded this album piecemeal – parts in Toronto, parts in Los Angeles, parts in England via email – it has been a fascinating jigsaw puzzle to assemble.  After months, even years of configuring arrangements, painstakingly lining up different audio sources and trying to find their relationships, something as simple as bringing a completely new voice like Marc Thomas (of LA band Madras) to play guitars can re-liberate a song  and make it feel totally alive all over again.  You see, in the editing process, we find all the various pieces that we have recorded and build a comp. After cleaning it all up it feels a little stilted and after the fact.  Having a new musician with fresh ears come in and just replay it with their own unique brain makes it feel completely inspired and in-the-moment.  And that is because it is.

Last week, Ryan Brown came in to replay some snare and cymbal parts.  Instead we ended up playing brushes on the windscreen, chopsticks on pots, pans and coffee jar lids and throwing things around the room while Pro Tools was faithfully recording at 24 bits in the background.

Marc brought in a heap of pedals and I added my own to his arsenal.  We spent four separate days tracking guitars just for Killing Days; primary melodies, harmonies, swirling ambient washes, whatever occurred to us in the moment.

I would then assemble all of this discovery into a variety of stereo tracks, line them up, make a hundred decisions, and then when I would retire as the sun came up over Santa Monica Boulevard, Josh would wake up and take over, making sure the drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals all lined up, that their phase relationships were coherent and so on.  He is the ultimate audio tech head.  It’s why I keep him around 😉

Now, almost two, three years later, we are closing in on seven amazing opuses. Sonic journeys.  I have no idea what they sound like in relation to what plays on the radio.  None.  We even recorded “Box“, an acoustic album comprising several of my songs that didn’t want to be played by a band while doing vocals for this record – for me and for you – just to tide things over while we sorted out the rest in the meantime.

Sure I listen to stuff coming out now, but that has nothing to do with this other journey I have been on – that of making this record I decided will be called “Come To Life” about a year ago.  The name comes from a catchphrase for the annual Sky Pirate holiday (celebrated August 4th) I created called Robot Pride Day – “My daddy builds robots; we don’t tell anyone.  They have come to life.  Come to life.”

The lyrics are poems I wrote at some point (of trouble, typically) to remind my future self that I have endured in the past, and that I will endure again, and every time come out the wiser, the stronger and the richer.  They are about the soul, about the death of some of my closest allies, about faith, about us, about the future, about the past, about mystery, reason and benevolence and fear.

I don’t know if and when you will ultimately hear the fruit of all this labor and play and duress and fascination.  Maybe it will be your children.  Maybe it will all be buried under the ground.  But if you do, drop me a line and let me know if you tapped in to everything that is going on with it.  It is all bigger than me; the amazing talents of those involved, the adventures that led to its creation, and whatever encompasses the sum of its parts.  I want to know what it is and what it did.

I hope to have Come To Life ready by the end of 2009.

Thanks for listening.  Really.  Every time you let me know your ears are receiving these transmissions, they fill up some little emptied battery cell in my soul.

kms
los angeles, april 6th, 2009

The post Come To Life: One from the heart, about the new record appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs have long been known to contain poisonous liquid mercury, but a study released earlier this year shows the level of mercury vapor released from broken bulbs skyrockets past accepted safety levels.

Following a story reported by WND last year about a Maine woman quoted $2,000 for cleaning up a broken fluorescent bulb, or CFL, in her home, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection studied the dangers of broken CFLs and the adequacy of recommended cleanup procedures.

The results were stunning: Breaking a single compact fluorescent bulb on the floor can spike mercury vapor levels in a room – particularly at a child’s height – to over 300 times the EPA’s standard accepted safety level.

Furthermore, for days after a CFL has been broken, vacuuming or simply crawling across a carpeted floor where the bulb was broken can cause mercury vapor levels to shoot back upwards of 100 times the accepted level of safety.

Read the rest of that article here: 1 broken bulb pushes contamination to 300 times EPA limits

And yet January 12th 2009 cover story of TIME magazine featured a warning that the world must begin to seriously consider its energy crisis, and that the time to fix it is now.  Here is how the article opens:

This may sound too good to be true, but the U.S. has a renewable-energy resource that is perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available. It has astounding potential to reduce the carbon emissions that threaten our planet, the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our security and the energy costs that threaten our wallets. Unlike coal and petroleum, it doesn’t pollute; unlike solar and wind, it doesn’t depend on the weather; unlike ethanol, it doesn’t accelerate deforestation or inflate food prices; unlike nuclear plants, it doesn’t raise uncomfortable questions about meltdowns or terrorist attacks or radioactive-waste storage, and it doesn’t take a decade to build. It isn’t what-if like hydrogen, clean coal and tidal power; it’s already proven to be workable, scalable and cost-effective. And we don’t need to import it.

This miracle juice goes by the distinctly boring name of energy efficiency, and it’s often ignored in the hubbub over alternative fuels, the nuclear renaissance, T. Boone Pickens and the green-tech economy. Clearly, it needs an agent. But it’s a simple concept: wasting less energy. Or more precisely, consuming less energy to get the same amount of heat for your shower, light for your office and power for your factory.

[snip]

There are two basic ways to save energy without deprivation or daily effort. We can use more efficient machinery, like fuel-efficient cars that guzzle less gas, or those pigtailed compact fluorescent light bulbs that use 75% less power than traditional bulbs, or state-of-the-art refrigerators that are three times as efficient as 1973 models.

Article source: America’s Untapped Energy Resource: Boosting Efficiency

Interestingly, back in September, 2008, WorldNetDaily had a follow up on the incumbent campaign to promote the CFL:

Amidst all the current financial chaos, amidst global pandemonium and the spiraling economy, amidst the dangers from terrorism … you’ll be glad to know that the U.S. government is still hard at work protecting us from a threat so vile, so evil and so dangerous that it dwarfs all those other petty international and domestic concerns we face as a nation.

I refer, of course, to the incandescent light bulb.

[snip]

As an aside, it’s never been explained to me why, if compact fluorescent light bulbs are so superior, they warrant their own personal disposal facility to keep from poisoning the air, groundwater, etc. Nor has it apparently occurred to anyone that the energy required to conduct this specialized recycling of CFLs and corral the dangerous mercury completely offsets the potential energy savings over incandescents. The extra time, energy, cost and gas requirements for people to deliver their used CFLs to recycling facilities also counterbalance any individual savings in energy consumption. And how about the fact that almost all CFLs are manufactured in China under staggeringly hazardous and environmentally dangerous conditions by non-union state slaves?

[snip]

I don’t mean to cast doubt in anyone’s mind about the true environmental benefits of CFLs. After all, doubtless the medical complaints, the potential for groundwater contamination and the EPA requirements for cleaning up a broken CFL are all just right-wing nutjob conspiracy tactics to get We the Sheeple to bitterly cling to our incandescents just like we bitterly cling to our guns and religion.

The transition from incandescent to CFLs won’t be easy, of course. Mandated transitions never are. People tend to approach these things kicking and screaming because most folks have an annoying habit of wanting to think for themselves. Fortunately, the government schools are working on squelching that penchant, and in a few more generations we’ll be just like those genetically altered kids in the Star Wars “Attack of the Clones” movie. Can’t wait.

Don’t be alarmed when some houses burn down after CFLs are installed in circuits with dimmer switches or in track lighting (where they often smoke and cause fires). Also, people with light-sensitive medical conditions may suffer migraines, seizures, vertigo related to heart disease and other maladies. Even some green sites warn against a total ban on incandescent light bulbs, but doubtless they’re secretly in the pay of big oil companies or something. Besides, who cares? We should all do our part to save the earth, no matter what it takes or who has to suffer or die.

Article source: I guess I’m just a dim bulb

And so here we see again the extremes of opinion and typical alarmist polarities as a fundamental change in lifestyle is proposed.  So what is the stance of perhaps a moderate?

Strangely, it comes from a site called Ask Treehugger:

I quote:

Question: I have been in the process of converting to an all CFL household only to find out by trial and error (and some googling) that CFL’s fail very quickly in track lighting and recessed fixtures. In my online searches I have stumbled upon some real horror stories about people who have broken the bulbs in their homes which has resulted in thousands of dollars worth of cleanup to remove the mercury.

Response: Although mercury is a toxic pollutant, mercury exposures from broken CFLs are not likely to harm you and your family. This is due to several factors, including the amount and duration of your exposures and the specific type of mercury that you are exposed to.
Mercury in CFLs are present as elemental (or metallic) mercury. Once spilled, you can be exposed to elemental mercury by touching it, after which it can be eaten and/or absorbed through your skin. More importantly for health, you can also be exposed to mercury through the air, as elemental mercury vaporizes readily (essentially becomes a gas) and can thus be inhaled into your lungs. Breathing elemental mercury into your lungs is generally more dangerous than if you ate the mercury or absorbed it through your skin. Once inhaled, the mercury vapor can damage the central nervous system, kidneys, and liver.

These toxic effects are why any mercury spill should be handled carefully, including one that results from a CFL breaking. Having said this, careful handling does not mean that expensive or complicated clean-up of the spill is needed or that you should be worried about you or your family’s health, if a CFL were to break in your home.

This is because CFLs contain relatively small amounts of mercury — EPA estimates this amount to be 4-5 milligrams (mg) in a typical CFL. A spill of this amount of mercury is not likely to present any excess risk to you or your family. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows why.

Read the rest of the article here:  Ask TreeHugger: Is Mercury from a Broken CFL Dangerous?

But don’t be fooled by the se;f-conscious name of the source; the article is written by Helen Suh MacIntosh, a professor in environmental health at Harvard University.

In response to this thread, Freedom v.3.0 user Teens pointed out:

Just as an FYI – whatever rigorous testing you think products and chemicals are put through before they can be introduced to industry or to the public does not exist. A bare minimum of testing is conducted on consumer products and little to no testing is conducted on chemicals.

When something is discovered to be toxic it is the result of independant testing conducted by concerned scientists/public interest groups and the validity of such tests are immediately called into questioned by the companies promoting the product. So much (unwarranted) controvery is created and the regulating bodies take years to sift through the test results. The time it takes for a product to be taken off the market or deemed as toxic is laughable.

So where does that leave us? Ideally with a a slightly better informed set of considerations so that we can make our own decisions and come to our own conclusions.

I recently purchased a Sun Blaster bulb for my home so that I can grow some indoor herbs for my cooking, as I love gardening but have no yard. The package promotes the 75% savings (of what I don’t know, presumably energy? Electrical costs?), high output and of course “healthy energy efficient indoor lighting.”

Warnings on the back of the package caution:

• Minimum operating temperature is 8 degrees C/18 degrees F
• Use in dry location only
• Not for use in total enclosed / recessed fixture
• Do not use with dimmer or adjustable circuit
• Lamp contains mercury disposal properly (sic)

And then lists the following website: www.lamprecycle.org that turns out to be an information resource for what when and where to recycle, as opposed to a recycling center in itself.  I recommend checking it out and following some of the outbound links, particularly so as to find a recycling solution for your own CFL’s.

Summary:

Companies once sold nuclear fallout shelters, green-colored Palmolive and even duct tape to protect us from the scourges of humanity and nature (usually humanity).  Now the compact florescent bulb is taking center stage as the solution to “oil” and global warming.  There is some merit to that, as I suppose there is to living in a bomb shelter in the event of a nuclear holocaust.  But be informed when making your decision.  Recognize that as the alarms go off, companies will rush to capitalize on the heightened emotional climate and this rush may lead to not only sub-standard and knock-off, illegitimate products, but also a bum-rush by ill-informed consumers that could create more problems than solutions.

Skip forward ten years to the new cover of TIME wherein we are asking ourselves what to do with the millions of CFLs in homes and landfills containing trace mounts of mercury that we now have to clean up.

Cooler heads will prevail.

The post The Salvation and the Grave Danger of Compact Flourescent Bulbs appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

Then the my mother’s Ecuadorian traditions took over. We would return from Mass to open presents until two or three in the morning. Often the most bearded member of the family would play the surrogate Santa Clause and everyone would take turns accepting gifts from him and take pictures and so on.

Our house was the central HQ for the holiday season and so all the uncles and aunts and their growing legions of offspring would descend upon it. We could numbers in the dozens and the piles of wrapping paper could become quite formidable.

These traditions often came with some bemoaning as we opined about the gluttony and greed and consumerism, but also they maintained something else that was very important – the spirit of togetherness in a time of year that becomes quite cold and quiet and dark. It was a reminder that we all came from somewhere and that the things we believe, our perception of the world has direct roots to our upbringing. They also provided some sense of constancy in such a volatile reality and thus afforded us an anchor in the storm.

Years ago I studied Kaballah under the tutelage of a mystic named Gahl Sasson. One year, when I couldn’t make it home for Christmas, Gahl talked about a pattern that existed among all the great religions and traditions at this time of year – that is – that they all celebrated the Light in one form or another. I never forgot this teaching and was never quite so jaded about the holidays again. I Googled Gahl and sure enough he had a recent blog entry recapitulating what he had taught us in that ashram years ago. Rather than paraphrase I include a quote from his blog at CosmicNavigator here:

“The winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, is the day we encounter the least amount of light. The winter solstice has proven to be rather traumatic for many cultures in the Northern Hemisphere. As we progress toward the winter solstice, the days are stripped of their light. Everything becomes dark and gloomy. Early stargazers and shamans recognized this phenomenon and its deleterious effect on human mood and behavior…Bears have found a practical solution to winter depression. They just go to sleep. Psychologists devised a different remedy. They expose the patient to light. They call it light therapy.

[snip]

All over the world, wise elders, storytellers, religious teachers, and astrologers lit upon another solution. I am sure that you and your family have already practiced this same preventive medicine many times before. It’s called the holiday season, or to be more specific, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Saturnalia, and Yule, just to name a few. Our astute ancestors, like modern day psychologists, could not help but notice that people’s moods sour as the days grow shorter. Versed in the practical applications of the ancient alchemical axiom of “as above, so below,” they figured that as the light slowly disappeared above, people’s energy levels declined correspondingly below. In order to enliven their communities, these ancients decided to concoct holiday festivities to crown the winter solstice with special significance. During the darkest time of the year, they created the holidays of light.”

Indeed as I walk through my neighborhood in Hollywood, California, I reflect upon the strings of white Christmas lights adorning the hedgerows in front of people’s homes and recognize that they are reminding us of the little lights in the darkness.

This was a fascinating and challenging year. The economy faced a shakedown the likes of which we haven’t experience in half a century.  Dozens, if not hundreds of major corporations, banks, and even industries went under. The game changed in so many ways that we were simply forced to surrender expectation to be able to maintain any semblance of sanity as we were tossed around the storm of change and entropy.

We also saw America elect the most unlikely of candidates into the Presidency. Barack Obama was an essentially untried politician whose message of hope and desire for change captured the imagination of not only the country but of the world.

I began the year by releasing a humble solo music album. I had fifteen years experience launching albums and thought that my knowledge and wisdom in the music market would serve me well. What I found was quite different. Gone was the interest of print media, even handmade indie Zines, as was the process of submitting a music video for television broadcast or even college radio. In its place were music micro blogs, affiliate marketing, search engine optimization, free music streams, linkback directories, and handing out CDs for free in the hundreds of units. Before I was a prophet of guerilla marketing. Now I was a podcaster, a blogger, a new media consultant. All because I recorded a small intimate collection of acoustic songs that I wrote in the windy forests of Northern Ontario, Canada.

I proclaimed the death of Web2.0 – that world of social linking and networking. I decried the glut of intentionally made viral videos and begged for the next phase, one that had already become comfortable with the ubiquity and reach of the new broadcasting power afforded to anyone with a webcam, and created something of substance, art and depth.

I may have been radically premature in these proclamations, however the bell tolls.

I am a different person at the end of 2008 than I was at its outset. I have been exposed to very powerful tools that track how people shop, think and behave, though I look at their thought processes in terms of keywords and statistics.

When I removed myself from Facebook, I felt a strange void, as though a giant lead wall had been erected between me and social network. As though I was the last man on Earth. And yet my hope and desire was that my self-imposed exile would restore the warmth and intimacy of those relationships.

I started reading more books, more of the time as a result. I took more walks out in the world. I recommenced drawing, exploring various hobbies like Lomo photography, model-making, cooking.

And now as we face the shortest days of light in the year, I can see the little beacons of humanity set out on those front lawns, reminding us that someone is still home. They are displaying those strings of little hopes that say, its alright, the world may be at its darkest, but we have been here a long time, as substantiated by our traditions, and we have returned after the darkness to explore new ground time and time again.

Have a happy and safe holiday and thanks for reading The Culturepin this year.

Keram

The post The Celebration of Light and 2008 in Review appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

Would most of the people on your Facebook friend list really go out of their way to come help decorate your birthday party?  Probably not.

More than likely, they will prolly proffer elaborate excuses as to why they can’t: their cat has the flu, their back is out, they drank too much last night, they have work in the morning.

Granted, but perhaps they are on your friend list to share ideas, to discuss ways to transform your negative feelings and thoughts into productive happy ones? Again, probably not.

Facebook preys on your need to be important – to be relevant. To be desired. To not be alone. To “figure.”  It preys on your Status Anxiety.

One might argue that it’s a good way to keep in touch with people you haven’t seen in a long time. Isn’t there a reason you haven’t maintained contact with those people from long ago?

One might argue that it’s a good way to manage your contacts – business and otherwise.  Nothing more.

Consider using LinkedIn for that. Or your Blackberry. Or a daytimer.  Or your memory.

If you argue that it’s the new phone, a way to communicate with family who you can’t see as often as you’d like – phone’s didn’t track what you purchased today, what age group you were talking to ten minutes ago and whether or not you like broccoli.  And no Nielsen polls aren’t the same thing.

One might argue that I am a Luddite, Amish, purist, fundamentalist.  I prefer, as grass-farmer Joel Salatin would like to call it – “post-Big Organic.”

MySpace has become the 80’s roadside billboard: Blast the message and hope to grab some of the collateral damage.  Facebook, on the other hand is an insidious, micro-targeted “resource;” every personal detail, choice, preference you submit leaves you open to highly-focused targeting.  It’s quite brilliant and something that any small or large company would be naive to overlook as a tool for hawking their wares. 

But what does it do for you?  Does it enlighten you?  Does it advise you?  Does it challenge you?  One might consider that exposure to these many personalities and their interests would, but in fact I find the results utterly homogenizing.  Recall that you are being targetted and thus your choices thus far are merely being reinforced as they are pandered to.

If it’s 140 character Haiku you are into, consider Twitter.  No – I don’t have it out for Facebook, but let’s call it like it is – an obsessive compulsion to have people whom you keep at arms’ length know about your neuroses.  Come back to life.  There is a lot of room and it’s yours to discover.

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