matthew levinson

August 24, 2009

Cult icons of Woy Woy

Driving through Woy Woy on the weekend, I couldn’t help but notice the St John the Baptist Catholic Church.

I didn’t have a camera, so just snapped with my mobile. It’s a bit scrappy, but you can see more in a project overview from the building’s designer PMDL.

The $4.5million, all steel, 500 seater building replaced two Central Coast churches, and according to PMDL, gives the new parish a distinctive new identity for the 21st century.

Its plan symbolises the faith journey. From a prominent traffic intersection, a covered pedestrian way directs visitors toward the main entry, on axis with and in sight of the community’s ‘holy table’ … a Christian’s ‘destination’. But, upon reaching the building edifice, one discovers that entry to the church is not direct. Instead it requires a ‘journey’ through the ever widening, conch-shaped gathering space. Along the journey, a series of four devotional shrines ‘feeds’ and prepares the traveller for liturgy. At the end of the journey are the church doors, through which the path to the altar is announced by the waters of baptism and watched over by the Word.

The forms are bold, but simple, evoking maritime characteristics without literal reference. Sacred spaces are clad with natural zinc; circulation and support spaces with render. The new church was dedicated by Bishop David Walker on 18 November, 2007.

It’s a smartly designed building in sustainability terms. Rainwater is stored and re-used for irrigation and toilet flushing, the building has solar-heated hot water, extensive natural light and ventilation.

But ‘distinctive’ is right – architect Randall Lindstrom (formerly Prism studio) is reputedly renowned for liturgical design – and the roof is pretty much astounding.

Bruce Holland (Kingston Building) said:

The building is clad in Titanium zinc sheeting, which gives it a very modern appearance at first but which will weather over time to develop a beautifully mottled grey appearance.

Ahem, how do I say this? Aesthetically unpleasing?

Is there a hyper Myers-Briggs in the making

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — matt @ 8:38 am

If you think about your links to other people as strings in a spider’s web – a pretty well used metaphor, I know – then, some are strong (friends, enemies), some weak (acquaintances, friends of friends, and so on).

Every year, the web grows. There are limits to how many people you can keep track of, in terms of cognitive psych/working memory/etc, but increasingly people are borrowing from marketers and using technology (e.g. social applications like Twitter) to keep abreast of larger groups.

All this information is stored on big computers. Who you’re friends with, and how often you interact with them, and who you’re not interacting with. I know, there have been whole newspapers devoted to the risks of putting your details online, but I’m talking about more sophisticated mining of that data.

Social networks are becoming more visible – through all those apps you can find on Mashable, but also through data collected by internet service providers, the post office (increasingly focussed on marketing), telcos, government departments.

By mining all that data, you could pick out the mess of links between people – how often you call a particular friend, what you said about another, geographical proximity, and so on – to work out what sort of person you are. What sort of people annoy you, which ones charm you, how often you like to interact (i.e. how social are you?), and so on.

It’s like a Myers-Briggs assessment taken much deeper. Looking at the kind of person you are by the kind of people you interact with and the relationships you have with them. Scary, but far from far-fetched. The data’s there, I’m sure, but modelling of interactions between so many individuals would be a massive undertaking – if you think about there being six degrees of separation between anyone on the planet, then the number of actors in this exercise jumps very fast.

Imagine though, all the magic and heartache of our relationships demystified in a single run through the data.

Cyclic Defrost 23

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , , , — matt @ 7:46 am

It’s been a while in the making, but our 23rd issue is out.

That’s Grant Hunter’s crazed marsupial/bunny cover for Cyclic Defrost #23.

Inside you can find Grant’s favourite record sleeves and an in-depth interview with the Novocastrian – by Shaun Prescott, who also turns in a killer feature on another steel city institution: Castings. Also interviews with Mata & Must, Chihei Hatakeyama, Pimmon, Peaking Lights, Jon Hassell, Swoop Swoop, and Tim Exile, and Tim Koch selects. The Cyclic website, which also features hundreds of record reviews, is set for a major revamp any day too.

I interviewed Paul Gough for a piece about his music (Pimmon) and radio (ABC, FBI, etc) making – the Sydney Morning Herald’s Spectrum section ran a shorter version of the piece on June 13, but for some reason not online (download here). So writing it up for Cyclic gave me a chance work on it a bit more, use a few more of my sources, and run it online.

August 1, 2009

2008 favourites

Filed under: General — matt @ 5:54 am

I looked down to work out what I’d fit into my favourites for the year and then all of a sudden it was a different year.

Things I liked last year included all of the following and undoubtedly loads more that have faded into the mesh of was it 2006 or 2009 or 1998 or something else. I can vouch for these though.

Charge Group’s Escaping Mankind was the record I chose when FBI Radio asked for my 2008 favourite. I even produced a passionate 30 second promo about it to play across the station. Spartak’s Tales From The Colony Room was so great I was inspired to track down its maker Shoeb Ahmad for an interview in Cyclic Defrost.

I came across Justin Townes Earle when he played a tiny bar in New York City last year. I bought his record, The Good Life, from him as I left. Not quite as good as him live – probably not possible – but a rollicking good listen.

I slept on the first Brightblack Morning Light I heard. Not sure whether I’d moved generations by the time Motion To Rejoin dropped or what, but I love this record. I listen over and over. And I feel the same way about their previous records too. Languid and lovely.

Seaworthy shows throughout the year hit a similarly soft spot.

Ron Peno’s record as The Darling Downs was great, as was No Age’s Nouns.
Tim Gane & Seon O’Hagan’s soundtrack for La Vie d’Artiste was perfect. I loved getting the chance to discover Tactics and Gas via fantastic reissues. On the same ’should’ve picked up on ages, but didn’t for some reason’ vibe, come Alps of New South Wales and Castings. Both fantastic. And I continue to be amazed by Robert Wyatt’s Comicopera, one of the most affecting records I’ve heard in years.

Other music makers I loved include.

Daniel Martin Moore
Vincent Over The Sink
Alexander Tucker
Tujiko Noriko, Lawrence English and John Chantler
Fuck Buttons
Los Campesinos
Micah P Hinson
Moe Grizzly’s blues/garage EP
Growing
Fabulous Diamonds
Grouper
Pocahaunted
Wavves
Kath Bloom

When I was dancing, sadly not too often, it was to Wiley’s awesome ‘Wearing My Rolex’ (especially the Heatwave version with Beenie Man), Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Flex’, Gang Gang Dance with Tinchy Stryder – actually the entire grimetapes.com catalogue – and a well and truly back on form Tricky, with the South Rakkas Crew remix of ‘Council Estate’.

Christos Tsiolkas on influences

I sat down and talked with the writer Christos Tsiolkas at the Sydney Writers Festival a while ago, and it was recorded by The Monthly’s internet channel Slow TV.

We were at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Circular Quay, in an upstairs room surrounded by Mike Parr’s wordplay and loads of zines. It doesn’t seem long ago, but it was actually May, so much for the immediacy of blogging.

The conversation stemmed from a piece we asked Christos to write, for Cyclic 22, on his musical influences. He was generous with his ideas and opinions at every step of the process, and I think that comes through pretty clearly in this video.

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