Tuesday 28 December 2010

Book Now for Love Hypnosis Exchange


Love Hypnosis Exchange is a group activity facilitated by Nicola Morton. It is all about what happens during a 4 second beep – stickers of different colours and radiuses are exchanged. In between beeps, the audience is involved in a trance activity – they spin left for 8 counts, the beep happens and they put a sticker on someone else, then spin right for 8 counts. This continues for over 10 minutes, to allow 100 stickers of each participant to be exchanged. The count is led by Nicola’s voice (in many different tongues), either in person, or through an instructional video. Performances in person also feature group breathing exercises before the activity to try and synchronize the participants’ pulses.

Synchronicity meets serendipity - this activity leads to a new economy of exchange. Redistributing the sticker currency, counting, breathing, spinning, under the guise of group trance, a micro exchange starts through touch and creative gesture. Love Hypnosis Exchange plays with the psyche of touch and physical representation within groups and is guided by the magic of numbers, repetition and the love emanating from its guru, Nicola.

Review from Labyrinth City

Nicola Morton is an inspired globe trotting-but-locally-based artist with, lately, an interest in time travel, hypnosis, physics, AI, memories, happiness (really hard to pin-point here) and an obsessive streak easily confused with an encounter with the Pink Light… Focusing on her live shows however, they (and like her installations/rituals) are entirely inviting & unpretentious with equal parts of injected confusion & humor, the complex undercurrent of truly inventive ideas set up against a celebratory, near-jubilant backdrop of manic-enthusiasm and the audience being as big of part of the performance as herself through mandatory group participation. From a writing & musical background too, mind, of very selected note a band back in the Euro states, journals and a daedalian arrangement & composition set against a multi-tiered set of rules, a la Cobra, in Life Is A Rubik’s Cube.

Impossible to capture with just a microphone, I’ll have to explain this one: Nicola’s presenting ‘Love Hypnosis Exchange’ – a group activity performance involving several hundred stickers, rules, a/v, breath, hypnosis, your heart. Although this performance was done last week at the Judith Wright Centre tonight’s the authoritative as she skipped a few segments last time: Nicola asks the audience to synchronize our heart beats and breathing so that we are all as one here, we yell ‘crack’ each time our heart beats whilst she does a short, quiet improvised piece with a bowed guitar. The third segment sees her request the audience take a handful of stickers each, about a hundred I think, and to listen to her instructions: She’s going to count to eight whilst you spin around toward people and then a loud beep will sound signifying that you have to swap stickers onto the closest person. There’s going to be a hundred eight-second spins, one taking one second to complete a revolution so yes as it was pointed out eight hundred revolutions. On the ceiling there’s projected visuals and a timer, noise too but I’m focused on the exchanges on the floor. Nicola spins around and through the audience with a keyboard & microphone until the end.

The thing I took from this performance is happiness; I couldn’t stop smiling. The manipulation: Breathing, your heart beat in synchronicity with the people around you there’s a sense of belonging (who doesn’t want that?) and swapping stickers, or anything, coupled with the confusion of the show itself (bonding together trying to figure it out) you’re bound to the room’s collective effervescence forcing you to realize that there’s really nothing between us at all – any barriers once created by our stupid preconceptions, opinions of one another can be quashed by simply exchanging a smile & a silly little sticker. I don’t know what you thought of it or was though.

Sunday 28 November 2010

Leif Gifford and Nicola Morton - Experiments in Particle Acceleration


Inspired by Leif's articles from the New Scientist. We try to develop a Brisbane interpretation of nuclear physics and create our own large hadron collider and mini black hole.

We conducted 2 experiments and several visual displays. Rain was a problem. Lucky we had linus, the wonder child. And one certain popster/scientist saved the day

1) particles or waves
2) perspective or relativity
3) high energy lead drawing circles

Thursday 18 November 2010

Mind Objects Phoenix Part 1





Mind Objects: Phoenix Part 2

part 1 to follow

i freed myself that afternoon by pissing my pants on someones doorstep and knifing them to his door. I had on stockings, high heels and a pretty dress but no underwear. I rode my bike and felt like I needed nothing else... except maybe for a few drinks. I hence got very drunk to celebrate my freedom. At the end of the night I didnt want to go home, I went to jules home and continued to party. The last time I saw jule was at the library where he was researching 'Zen and The Brain' and I was coming out after researching predicting fortunes through indonesian shadow puppet plays. Even then I affirmed my promise to myself that I must not go near that boy, he is dangerous and probably only 20 years old.

Of course after a few drinks I embarassingly become like the 'man vs wild' guy, and tackle danger head on in a solo play about how amazing I am. I managed to not get with jule for the duration of my iPod playlist, but then what ensued was pure freedom, no akward moments just love. no fear, it was amazing. Even within the test of the morning - where my logic and fear kick in. He played it so well he deserves an Oscar. No breakfast in bed shite, sorry but that would make me run. He is beautful, and has the body of a 20 year old from the country. He asked me of the worst novel I had ever read. We then went on to talk of the art of relation, reference and story telling, he quoted examples and then amused me with his Harry Potter and Ron Weasley impersonations, not the actual characters but the celebrity actors. It was so funny I almost died. I stayed in bed with him in a mixed state of sexual and mental arousal for a lot more of the day. I laughed a lot. We started a 'flat thinking' philosophy. My hangover was hideous and I tried to leave again, he offered me a banana and a kiwi fruit, I ate the banana and we made out in the kitchen, while talking to his flatmate about supermarket politics, I didnt leave but went back to his bed with a big bottle of water. He never begged me to stay but asked me what my favourite word was. Mine is God. His is orb. He asked me what my least favourite word was. Mine is Nietzche, he then did the most hilarious Nietzche impersonation, I never found out what his least fav word was. He asked me if I loved Baudrilliard and I replied that I can only love Kant, Marx and Derrida. He told me how his left arm had been numb from yoga. I told him how i am telephysically everywhere but only one moment at a time (later he disproved the logic of this), that my brain space is infinite and i have several worm holes to the universes of higher beings. We talked about nothing, which is his favourite concept. We talked about energy. i tried to disprove the principle of conservation of energy but he taught me about neutrinos. We talked about the unique nature of experience, a humans automatic actions and developing your senses, 'You can only have your heart broken by someone you love, for the first time, once'. We talked about the future and developing a search engine that searches for things that are the opposite of what you are searching for, to give you what you are missing, we call it 'hereditary deadshit synapse'. We discussed aphorisms of Gurdjieff - i took particular interest to how we do the most productive work in times of stress-duress, because it elevates our consciousness, but we must remember the work. I was relating this to my hangover, and took a mental note to remember what is going on here. i told him how I stress about finishing things, and he told me he stresses about starting things because every start has its own end. It was getting dark again and we went back to the established truth that sexual arousal abates the hangover. bliss. he left to go to his zen lecture and i went home to my mum's. in the kitchen it was written that jule's real name is dandy fandango.

Wednesday 28 July 2010

Results Published on Alternative Intelligence Creation & Time Travel

1) Results Published on Alternative Intelligence Creation

Date: Friday January 15th 2010
Where: Exist-ence Performing Arts Festival, White Canvas Gallery, Brisbane
Attendants: 50

Assumptions:
  • Our bodies own information processing system provides a networked model for alternative-artificial intelligence. 
  • Neurotransmission can occur between different information processing systems (bodies). This is not chemical or electrical but a phenomenal one. This kind of neurotransmission is so far unexplained and supernatural. These performances do not try to explain this but try to prove that this process exists.
  • This phenomenal neurotransmission results in an ulterior energy phenomenon which could be called an alternative intelligence.
Questions:
  • What happens when different information processing systems (bodies) are networked sensorily and cognitively?
Hypothesis:
  • Artificial-Alternative intelligence can be created from the sparks that imitate neuron activity when human bodies are networked sensorily and cognitively.

Method:
  • We use the cognitive process of mindmapping 'Spiders' and fast group word/touch/smell/musical association to generate synaptic activity across all bodies in the room, this activity/energy will create an ulterior form of intelligence.

Challenges: How does one recognise an intelligent energy being?

Previous Trials
2009 Thursday August 13th - Tacheles, Berlin
2009 Tuesday August 25th - White Rabbit Gallery, Berlin
2009 Sunday September 20th – Ptarmigan Space, Helsinki
2009 Thursday November 6th – Discobeans Artspace, Melbourne


Results:
On January 15th 2010 we finally created an energy being of alternative intelligence, who to prove its existence, manifested in the Zoom H2 Digital Audio Recorder.

Previous Trials:
At Tacheles, Berlin about 60 people tried to make an alternative spider intelligence. Amazed largely by the concept of artificial intelligence creation and mystified as to why I was tying tape around them, they finally got the message and fervently joined in our word touch association game. We talked a lot about 90's and grunge music and maybe got a little bit obsessed with talking drugs. The large challenge here was that no one knew what I was going to do, and ironically remembered me for falling off the stage whilst performing at Wasted Festival, Transmediale 2007. But everyone will now remember me for introducing them to Hide, the Japanese Glam Rock Star.

Photo By Ve Mac

At White Rabbit about 20 people witnessed the next invocation of the spider intelligence. This time I had instruments to create an extended sensory arsenal touch and sound, together with our cognitive mind mapping and word association. The crazy recycled horns were a definite hit. In retrospect, I think I had made them look too much like jewelry.

At Ptarmigan to about 50 people I took the spider intelligence calling to a whole new level. I had the whole month in residence to prepare and decked out the gallery space with all kinds of musical instruments that I thought could bring out more interactions and synaptic connections – pipes, marimbas, chimes, dishracks. I even made T-shirts. Everyone loved the horns and other room instruments and played them during the whole performance, creating much better sound-word interaction than ever before. The audience was very enthusiastic and really helpful in trying to bring the intelligence out. Words were shouted, sounds and hands were bound all over the place. I also introduced the use of another language apart from English and Japanese, Latin. I was really close tonight, I could feel it.

Photo by Yoko Kimura


At Discobeans, I got majorly distracted and the large piece of word association ended being about how hot the day had been. A few people had a go at the horns, and I got 8 eyes drawn on me. There were no audible results on the Zoom recorder (embedded here)



Photo by Holly Fluxx
The Successful Trial:
At Exist-ence, I was playing to my home town, everyone was prepared and I decided to introduce the sense of smell. The audience was very responsive and we didn't get off track. It was similar to the Ptarmigan performance and I finally ran out of my washing machine pipe horns. The danger-oil-water-flame-coriander- association even set off the fire alarm. The connection to the
Emergency Services Network tipped our critical mass of
neurotransmission. The evidence that was waiting for me, I didn't find until July, when I finally went through my documentation.

The tape was left recording after the performance at Existence – shortly after Alan left, a presence entered the tape machine, you can hear it for yourself. It is a true artefact. It is the intelligence we had been trying to create for the last 45 minutes. Powered by our synaptic communion and interaction around the theme of 'Spiders,' we created an AI that wished to make itself known. 

Proof of Artificiial Intelligence & Time Travel from nicola morton on Vimeo. Further Questions: Does this being exist materially in another dimension? If so, how do we get there... 2) Results Published on Time Travel
Date: 20 July 2010 (nr Winter Solistice)
Venue: Tidy Kid Space, Brisbane Australia
Attendants: 35
Hypothesis: Travel through other times and dimensions is possible and can rewrite our past and future.

Last night I attempted to enter the fourth dimension.

Assumptions: Time is not homogenous. Time is not linear. Time travel subsists of our phenomenal perception/s of other times/dimensions.

I accompanied my time travel with a cinematic projection of a time/space where I developed my shamanic power (Asheville, USA). The recording of moving time, and time itself being moved was the medium for our time travel. We channel the creative force of Om to cleanse and charge us.

In the performance I had to admit that for the second half of my hypothesis my intentions were personal,

• I wanted to rewrite my past, not just in my mind but also in other peoples (and their preconceptions) plus somehow affect the technology that recorded it.

• I wanted to start exploring the future

• Why? My life was alerting me to repetition, habit and involuntary memory. Time is not linear. I kept on experiencing nostalgic time loops, I felt like I was reliving time by travelling across the same routes to the same destinations, experiencing the same sensations in a different time and re-encountering demons I thought I had slain. I thought I was falsely experiencing Nietzsche’s rebirth (hence the reading of Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” and Arthur Rimbaud‘s “Jadis, Si je me souviens bien” (Once, if my memory serves me well).

• I wanted these trajectories into the past to not affect my progress into the future. I found some power in cleansing rituals, but I realised what I wanted to do was not cleanse but tidy. I wanted to tidy up my past and future, add a few words, rewrite it, culminating in the final statement “My debt is paid”


The first jaunt into space I passed around my diary, which contained a drawing of a diagram that appeared to me during one restless night in New York where I was working on equations for time travel. I was adding, subtracting hope and redemption to the past and the future, multiplying that into the future and dividing by probability.


I see the carpet is no longer blue but green. We first hear the sound of keys, it is a Rhinoceros. The Rhinoceros follows us everywhere we go making that noise. The Rhinoceros actually flies. How can something so big fly? There are more animals here, and a very loud noise of Marimbas (but the noise comes from a machine). A wolf makes tinkling sounds while it sleeps. We do not wake it, but come across a giant fruit loop but its organic, made from organic raw sugar and natural flavours, a treat from the Gods. Is there a river of soy as well? No, this is not heaven, there is a river of Cocaine. Or is this Paradise? The carpet is green still, so is my dress. It came from Sweden, the group now wants to go to Sweden, but I can smell the brewery, not ready to leave the space here, we do not have time and have to go back.

On our second attempt, I pass around photos of my mother, she turns 77 on 20/12/2012. I invite Rin Healy to take us to Sweden. We had been in Sweden together in the past. I could smell Hot Cross Buns. They were being baked by Moto X Riders, The Machine makes that loud marimba sound again. The Moto X Riders are more like Roly- Poly, but then all of a sudden they are fucking each other its Sodomy and I feel like I'm in Rome. I want to go to the future.

Future smells like Jasmine, main street but there is no street but a mainstream. There is a faint smell of lavender from the side. There is a meow from a robot cat, everyone is quiet in the future, because we are scared. I want to pat the robot cat. The robot cat feels like honey, is it actually a hologram my hand goes right through it, but I was told it’s a robot cat, I hear you can get high from a cat lick. The Cat licks Akiko, she sees a Dog in a tuxedo, she has gone to another dimension. Joel is still stuck in Sweden. The group is breaking up I must go back. My Debt is Paid.

Friday 23 July 2010

Wagner, Beethoven and Monumentality in '2010: The End of Capitalism'

Simply, it's time to declare the end of capitalism. How better to signify this than with the use of monumental music, a term coined by Alex Rehding, meaning music that is full of fanfare and exudes moral authority. From what Thomas Mann calls the "bad nineteenth century" it is hard to ignore the 'midas touch' that exudes from Richard Wagner and Ludgwig Van Beethoven. Lydia Goehr waxes lyrical about Wagner the modernist hero "He showed the dangers of losing the musical in our music, the meaningful in our philosophy and freedom in our politcs." Whilst time and time again, I have personally experienced the sight of the most stoic audience driven to tears AND 30 minute standing ovations from the sublime Beethoven.

This film like the monumental music it employs, "is a commemorative object that is capable of linking the present with the perpetual past,"(Rehding 2009) but through its added anti-monumentality blasts the film into our endlessly expanding post-modern future. It is not just a memory, it's a promise. The film links the private space (the small home) with the public declaration (symbol of oversized capitalism) giving the film emotional fanfare like a solo horn amidst giant strings. But I am a futurist, I turn the monumental into anti-monumental. I aim to take the collective memory/energy from post-unification Berlin, a site of anti-monumentality - they tore down the wall in 1989, Christo and Jean Claude wrapped the Reichstag in the summer of 1995 and I lived there in a bubble from 2006-2009 "..free to explore what life would be like without any cappo scum totally harshening her buzz" (Werkmeister 2010). The Wagner is not played by a full orchestra that can be driven to suicide, but by a computer, thus the monumental is made anti-monumental, and within the transition lies the promise.

The choice of pieces further illustrates the monumental/anti-monumental: the ending movement of Tristan and Isolde and Bernstein's version of Beethoven's Ninth. The ending movement of Tristan and Isolde is the dramatic resolution/death, in which Wagner "showed the danger of losing the musical in music" by resolving that infamous first cluster chord from the Opening. Whilst in the film's finale, Bernstein's version of Beethoven's Ninth celebrates the end of capitalism just as it celebrated the breakdown of the wall in 1989. "Transformation is central to monumentality" (Rehding 2009), as the Ninth's songtext was famously changed from "freiheit" to "freude" cementing it in our memories of unification and freedom. Bernstein stretched the truth by claiming it was Schillers original intent transformed a dodgy myth to a culturally sanctioned truth, just as the incomplete ARD Broadcast of the Günter Schabowski press conference convinced the East German masses they were free, so such large groups rushed to pass through the border that the guards just gave up.

Thanks to the cast of my friends, Berlin, Wagner and Beethoven this film is the medium, that delivers the rumour and promise - the message is clear 2010: The End of Capitalism - it is happening.

Reference:
Rehding, Alexander (2009) Music and Monumentality, Oxford University Press: New York.

Goehr, Lydia (1998) The Quest for Voice, Clarendon Press: New York

Werkmeister, Sarah (2010) '2010: The End of Capitalism' in 4000 The Best Cultural Guide for Things to Do in Brisbane at http://www.fourthousand.com.au/ Accessed July 9, 2010.

Thursday 22 July 2010

A Transformative Event: For 7 Days We Talked Until The Point of Exhaustion

with Simbi Dare, Pack Place, Asheville Art Museum

This is film documentation from 'For Seven Days We Talked Until the Point of Exhaustion' by Simbi Dare and Nicola Morton at Asheville Art Museum, NC, USA. The audio consists of live marimbas played as part of this performance. An alternative soundtrack of the "secret dialogue" can be purchased from the artists via Paypal for $1: bit.ly/aXtHNr. This film was then used for the performance of Nicola Morton 'Disembraining Time Machine' at Tidy Kid Space, Brisbane, Australia. Filmed and edited together were natural repetitions during this 7 day period. The purpose of the film medium, sense of repetition and ritual is to present a non-linear concept of time that can be travelled even though it cannot be measured. This prepares the audience for time travel. What happened to the crowd while this was projected, you can read here: bit.ly/aH8EaT

 More about the Asheville performance: The idea of the feminine pow wow, endurance, bringing new archetypes into our lives to reinvent the old ones. Britney became Beyonce, Gwenyth became Kali. "before anything, I just want to let you know, that it's over"

Monday 12 July 2010

"$1 A Blow" and '2010: The End of Capitalism'

Photos by R. Byers
are to be shown at Exhibtion IV, of twoten at appartment in Berlin, this friday night 16 July.

Review by Sarah Werkmeister

What denotes the end of capitalism? The growing of gardens, the burning of bridges, Denzel Washington starring in his own life thinking it's a movie? Nicola has just come back from Berlin - that place where you're pretty much free to explore what life would be like without "cappo scum" totally harshing your buzz. She made some video portraits about it and they're showing this Friday night. It might give you some ideas

Monday 21 June 2010

Results Published on Time Travel

Results Published on Time Travel

Date: 20 July 2010 (nr Winter Solistice)
Venue: Tidy Kid Space, Brisbane Australia
Attendants: 35
Hypothesis: Travel through other times and dimensions can rewrite our past and future,

Last night I attempted to enter the fourth dimension.

Assumptions: Time is not homogenous. Time is not linear. Time travel subsists of our phenomenal perception/s of other times/dimensions.

I accompanied my time travel with a cinematic projection of a time/space where I developed my shamanic power (Asheville, USA). The recording of moving time, and time itself being moved was the medium for our time travel. We channel the creative force of Om to cleanse and charge us.

In the performance I had to admit that initially my intentions were personal,

• I wanted to rewrite my past, not just in my mind but also in other peoples (and their preconceptions) plus somehow affect the technology that recorded it.

• I wanted to start exploring the future

• Why? My life was alerting me to repetition, habit and involuntary memory. Time is not linear. I kept on experiencing nostalgic time loops, I felt like I was reliving time by travelling across the same routes to the same destinations, experiencing the same sensations in a different time and re-encountering demons I thought I had slain. I thought I was falsely experiencing Nietzsche’s rebirth (hence the reading of Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” and Arthur Rimbaud‘s “Jadis, Si je me souviens bien” (Once, if my memory serves me well).

• I wanted these trajectories into the past to not affect my progress into the future. I found some power in cleansing rituals, but I realised what I wanted to do was not cleanse but tidy. I wanted to tidy up my past and future, add a few words, rewrite it, culminating in the final statement “My debt is paid”


The first jaunt into space I passed around my diary, which contained a drawing of a diagram that appeared to me during one restless night in New York where I was working on equations for time travel. I was adding, subtracting hope and redemption to the past and the future, multiplying that into the future and dividing by probability.


I see the carpet is no longer blue but green. We first hear the sound of keys, it is a Rhinoceros. The Rhinoceros follows us everywhere we go making that noise. The Rhinoceros actually flies. How can something so big fly? There are more animals here, and a very loud noise of Marimbas (but the noise comes from a machine). A wolf makes tinkling sounds while it sleeps. We do not wake it, but come across a giant fruit loop but its organic, made from organic raw sugar and natural flavours, a treat from the Gods. Is there a river of soy as well? No, this is not heaven, there is a river of Cocaine. Or is this Paradise? The carpet is green still, so is my dress. It came from Sweden, the group now wants to go to Sweden, but I can smell the brewery, not ready to leave the space here, we do not have time and have to go back.

On our second attempt, I invite Rin Healy to take us to Sweden. We had been in Sweden together in the past. I could smell Hot Cross Buns. They were being baked by Moto X Riders, The Machine makes that loud marimba sound again. The Moto X Riders are more like Roly- Poly, but then all of a sudden they are fucking each other its Sodomy and I feel like I'm in Rome. I want to go to the future.

Future smells like Jasmine, main street but there is no street but a mainstream. There is a faint smell of lavender from the side. There is a meow from a robot cat, everyone is quiet in the future, because we are scared. I want to pat the robot cat. The robot cat feels like honey, is it actually a hologram my hand goes right through it, but I was told it’s a robot cat, I hear you can get high from a cat lick. The Cat licks Akiko, she sees a Dog in a tuxedo, she has gone to another dimension. Joel is still stuck in Sweden. The group is breaking up I must go back. My Debt is Paid.

Tuesday 20 April 2010

Photos of Life Is A Rubiks Cube: Movement 1 & 2


great photos from emeth productions.
Here are the photos from the performance. A special thanks to Marly for logic supervision and to all the other players - Rebecca Clunn, Henry Mills, Skye MacNicol, Josh Bell, Alex Cuffe, Joel Stern, Andrew MacLellan and the prerecorded Petar Gocic, Vanessa Tomlinson, Joy Weng, Ben Adkins and Luke Carbon.

Sunday 18 April 2010

Mind Objects: Charlatans & My Magic Face: My Magic Face pt1

I was telling Simbi of these Dead Sea skincare sales people positioned right outside the toilets in the mall I work at and how they constantly try to get me to put their magic creams on, even though I was going to the toilet and would wash it off. This made me think of the romance & faces of charlatans. Was I really one as well? I interviewed 3 beauty therapists while they were touching my face. To test the effectiveness of their beauty products and my own two facedness, I covered the right side of my face with gold glitter, left the other natural (albeit buffed, polished and full of minerals), blindfolded punters in the toilets at the Brisbane Emerging Art Festival and asked them questions about both sides of my face.

These videos investigate magical power, the art of interviewing and touch.

First, the 3 most popular blindfold interviews according to YouTube


Sunday 4 April 2010

Studies in Color and Cave Drawing: Life is A Rubicks Cube

Hi,

I am writing a MEGA composition. Some of which is graphical score.. along the ideas of transcribing musical ideas through symbols. Movement 1 references a quote from a Dreaming story 'when birds were still people'.. So I have been researching Cave Drawings. These are just a few of the scores I have written. A popular kind of Cave Art is where people would mark the rooftop of limestone caves with their fingertips, creating kinds of paths. This one is from a cave in Mt Gambier.

if you wanna find out more about the cave drawings. get Rock Art of the Dreamtime by Josephine Flood 1997 Harper Collins



And if u wanna find out more about the composition you can go to http://rubicksmusic.wordpress.com