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June 26, 1996 Today's pix are a mix of Canadian music and cyberfeminist adventures, so I rightly think all our listeners should find something to their liking. My first pick is a salute to all those fine Canadian musicians who are writing and performing innovative and funky new music that is not only be heard in the true North strong and free but also striking chords all around the world. It's called PrimalBeat@Canada - and it is, to put it briefly, a listing of Canadian music. The site categorizes all its groups into genres as well as offering an alphabetical listing. Bios and pix of the artists are given as well as audio clips from recent recordings. But, the best thing about it is, it offers free web space to any Canadian musician or performer interested. So, if you're a fledgling band and need publicity, Primal Beat is the place to go. One band featured on the site is The Wyrd Sisters, a Winnipeg, Manitoba folk-group whose music has been heard on TV, radio and in the NFB documentary A Web, Not a Ladder. The group performs either a cappella or accompanied by guitar, piano and percussion, and their latest album, Inside the Dreaming, was nominated for a 1996 Juno for Best Roots and Traditional Album - Group. Here's a clip from their song, "One Hip Shaking": Play wyrd1.wav My second pick of the week is The Adventures of Cyborg Krys. What's a cyborg, you may ask? The notion of cyborg is based on Donna Haraway's definition in The Cyborg Handbook. Her 'cyborg' is the exultant fusion of woman, machine, and animal, into a new organism able to better survive the particular conditions of global, late consumer-capitalism which we find ourselves stranded in. Adventures is a theory-based, Science Fiction (SF) hypertextual conceptual mapping journey. The webmasters of the site, Nathalie and Alan, have used feminist theory, sci-fi, and the hypertextual and multimedia possibilities of the World Wide Web in order to make a kind of "choose-your-own-adventure" game. You choose the cyborg that you want to be, and then you explore various worlds and make choices along the way. Depending on the choices you make, you might end up on a brave new planet exploring new technologies, or among unfriendly aliens who imprison you forever. It's up to you. A good thing about this site is there isn't any long image or sound downloads to make you lose interest. So, check it out! My last pic of the week is timely considering that Montréal is home this week to the annual INET conference. Since 1991, the INET conferences have become a common meeting ground for participants interested in the design, implementation, operation and use of the Internet. Global policy and economic issues, ethical concerns, and many technical issues are raised in a variety of contexts. Unfortunately, the strategies that are being developed by INET to bring the Internet to a global audience are excluding the very people they want to offer access to. With a hefty registration fee of $510 US, how many non-profits (like Studio XX, for instance) and economically-disadvantaged groups can afford to send delegates? The panels look interesting enough, but many people actively wanting to implement new Internet strategies will only have the chance to read about it in the paper. Let's hope they put summaries of the conference online, or else INET will have failed in their mission to make the Internet a "global community". Stay tuned... That's all for this week. My message to you is: Be Canadian. Be cybourgeois. Surf the net. You never know what might you might find |
JOYA'S WEB PIX