Features

 http://in-a-perfect-world.podomatic.com/entry/2012-04-19T21_05_29-07_00

In this continuation of In a Perfect World 33, experiential journalist Rak Razam interviews author and academic Robert Forte about the origins of the Psychedelic Movement and manipulation by the power elites as a social engineering tool for control of the dominant paradigm. This far-ranging discussion covers Huxley, Wasson, Hofmann et.al and the social milieu and the role of the CIA and elite steering of the dissemination of psychedelics in the West and the vested interests behind them that have culminated in the global police state that confronts us in the West today. The medical, spiritual and religious arms of the movement are dissected in light of the political agendas that control civilization, as Forte and Razam examine the revolution of the 60s and the revolutionary times we now live through. They ask the critical question: is the commodification of the modern psychedelic movement a prelude to global Soma, and can individuals awaken to their own cosmic sovereignty before it's too late? Forte's seminal book, Entheogens and the Future of Religion , with contributions by Albert Hofmann, R. Gordon Wasson, Jack Kornfield, Terence McKenna, the Shulgins, Rick Strassman, and others is now back in print, with all proceeds going to support the Council on Spiritual Relations work with psilocybin research.

art: Tim Parish, The Journeybook anthology

The Digital McKenna, Terence (DMTi) Initiative


I, Terence is an experiment to bring alive the spirit of psychedelic philosopher Terence McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000)  by harnessing existing content in the public domain, his talks, ideas, videos, photos, geo-mapping, etc, with the Lifenaut system of AI intelligence into a functioning Avatar interface.

The platform is designed for multi-users to submit content that will eventually aggregate into a personality matrix ("mind file"). It's all experimental but the foundations are there: Lifenaut is a not-for-profit company with good intentions to explore this new AI modality, and all content is retained for ownership by the original makers.  The platform will hold the content and resynthesize with an AI interface, it will learn and grow in useability to enable an interface with the public and the spirit of Terence's ideas, perhaps eventually synthesizing new contours.

Tuesday April 3, 2012 is the 12th anniversary of Terence's passing and the launch of the beta-version of the iTerence project, aka the Digital McKenna, Terence Initiative (DMTi)... We ask the global psychedelic community to  crowdsource any bootleg talks, podcasts, images, text, etc. from Terence. This is a non-commercial, open-community project that in essence aggregates existing content Terence has left us into a new, more useable form.

The Lifenaut system is still in early development in that they are not pulling data or metadata from video, audio or text yet – but this is something they are working on,  trying to develop algorithms to extract ideas and voice synthesis from video and audio. We reinterate that they are not capable of doing this presently, although by aggregating this content now we will be positioned to work with it when their system is able in the near future. People with relevant skillbases  wishing to donate time and expertise or money to Lifenaut may help speed this process to fruition.

At the moment we believe the power in the project is in training the virtual Avatar. After 1000 lines of conversation that digital Terence Avatar starts to become coherent. We  have been spending time training the iTerence Avatar by feeding it interview question and answers and quotes from existing talks. The Avatar is still relatively incoherent, but it is getting there. Every day we work with it, it is increasingly more responsive. At the moment only a generic male voice is possible, but we hope that a closer simulation of Terence's voice will eventually be possible from learning from the audio samples.

THE ROOFTOP SUTRAS is a collection of strange and unusual tales set in the mythological 'Suburbia' of the mind, following various inhabitants as they attempt to stay awake amidst hypnotic routine of modern life.

Written into the vein of G.K. Chesterton, J.L. Borges, Franz Kafka and William Burroughs, Diatschenko has taken on a metaphysical subject in this mundane guise, and each story is a riddle within the fabric of his spell.

 Regard the bizarre parables of modern life contained within -- such as the man whose telephone follows him everywhere he goes, or the woman who becomes stuck in an infinite loop. Then there is the man who is summoned to court to justify his existence, and the band of gypsies who live on the rooftops of the city.

This brilliant e-book from the BEYOND ZERO EMISSIONS group has been causing some major waves in the Australian environmental discourse recently, and it should. With a clear and concise roadmap for transferring Australia's energy generation from carbon intensive, non-renewable resources to a clean renewable energy network, these are just the kind of forward thinking, visionary ideas needed in the climate change debate, not just in Australia but globally.

Read it. Absorb it. Spread the ideas. 

TRANSITIONS FILM FESTIVAL

> CONSCIOUS CINEMA IN THE DARWIN BOTANIC GARDENS

>Every Thursday in JULY

Undergrowth is proud to partner with the George Brown Darwin Botanical Gardens and NT Herbarium to present a month of conscious films in the historic Wesleyan Chapel in the Darwin Botanic Gardens over July. This dry season film festival will raise funds for important community groups working toward social and cultural sustainability.

Entry to each film is by donation.

On Monday the 16th of May I went in to the Darwin City mall to document this fun, theatrical protest by young activists from community group Climate Action Darwin. The protest was a response to recent figures released by the INPEX GAS Environmental Impact Statement which has measured the expected carbon footprint of  the project to be in the range of 5 million tonnes a year – the equivalent of 1 million cars on the road every year for the next forty years!

Experiential podcaster Rak Razam interviews Max Igan, 'memetic revolutionary' and podcaster of Surviving the Matrix on American Voice Radio and probes the intertwined issues of planetary awakening and control. As the illusion of democracy crumbles across the globe and a cancerous consumerism strip-mines the planet, are we on the verge of a New World Order of enslavement or enlightenment? Are they the two sides to a larger awareness? Just who profits from a dead earth, anyway? Can a new language give us words for concepts beyond revolution, or a Newspeak to entrain the left brain? Who writes the history books and how far back does the organized conspiracy we call history really go? Where did all the gold go and just who is the Central Intelligence whose eye is in the pyramid? Welcome to Planet Orwell (or is it All Well?), where everything you know is wrong, and the answers will provoke more questions…

There exists in Melbourne an elusive community of artists, musicians, poets, flaneurs, fringe-dwellers, and radicals who have created a complex and dynamic social network which revolves around numerous converted-warehouse-come- arts-spaces, live-in-studios and grass-roots arts venues.

This is the rumbling in the underground. This book dares to capture the depth and charge of one of the most thriving creative hubs in the world, and thrusts its underground scene upon a national and global stage.

It reveals unseen aspects of Melbourne, and why it continues to be a haven for Australia’s independent arts and radicalism whose philosophy and lifestyles find expression in the city’s warehouse movements, its festivals, and in the enclaves of the rag-tag theatrical, musical and circus communities.

What has evolved is a significant social and artistic movement; an independent micro-society that organizes itself in accord with anarchistic principles and is without dogma or guiding manifesto. This unofficial community is bound together by the numerous, diverse, and ever changing arts-events which emerge from, and are usually held within, the communities venues. The result is colourful, energetic, vital, expressive, and rich, with events spanning decadent artist banquets, masked-balls, cabaret, theatre, visual art, and performance, which in retrospect, may be considered a signifificant contribution to Melbourne’s historical culture-scape, and could call forth a new generation of un-institutionalised artists capable of revitalizing and re-humanizing Melbourne’s Arts and Culture.

 http://thiscityspeakstome.com/

THE CUMBIA COSMONAUTS hail from a parallel dimension to ours, where Earth is more commonly known as La Terra. This world is similar to our own in many ways, except that the world's leading superpower is the United States of Mexico, a powerful socialist democracy that led the world into the space age back in 1969.

When Moses Estevez, the first man in space travelled on his maiden flight to the moon, this was the mixtape he made to fill the silence... We can only guess what happened as that tiny solar powered shuttle orbited La Terra, but upon returning he famously formed the CUMBIA COSMONAUTS with his fellow space crew, Carlos (Barons of Tang) and Soup (Editor).

Now, thanks to the interdimensional podcasting technology developed by SCATTERMUSIC Cooperatistas we on Planet Earth can hear the tunes that have kept that proud planet dancing into the next revolution.

 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1862402066/the-brotherhood-of-the-screaming-abyss/