Absence of The Sacred live video excerpt

Absence of the Sacred LIVE at H.O.D
Uploaded by saito_nagasaki

This is just a live video of us taken at The Gas Haus doing the song "My Vendetta" off the current full-length album, "Atrocities That Birthed Abominations". Just a teaser to show those who haven't been coming what they have been missing out on. A proper Music Video is being planned and most probably we'll do it end of this year after the tours.

Absence of The Sacred is now the resident band for Heart of Darkness held every Wednesday evening at The Gas Haus. Two slots of shows are being done each night, with the company of Jack fuckin' Daniels going one-for-one all night long.

(click on picture to enlarge)

Just for laughs...

This woman is simply unbelievable. I'm really loving her already...







Many more videos of her available on YouTube. Should anyone of you know where I can get her DVDs, drop me a line. Thanks! ;)

Bonus Mission #2: Double Life, Double Death?

“But for millions it is more than a game – it’s an escape, an obsession, and a home.” [Levy, 2006]

Just as at every single second a new baby is born, a new “life” is created. Virtually. For anybody who hates their life and need a new life, or a “second life”, they have found a solution to it. Is Second Life just a game then? People are throwing their lives aside to spend large amount of their time on it.

In a blog post by Theory about Second Life residents trying to fight against CopyBots, which allows replications of created items to be made and used without permissions from the original creators. [Lim, 2006] Sounds familiar? Very much like copyright infringement in the real world, doesn’t it? Just from this alone we can derive two things: Firstly, the fact that people do business and Second Life pretty much proves that it is not a game. Secondly, look at how “players” take things seriously. There are even campaigns launched on this game! Does it still look like just a game? It is almost real-life already, the way things are going. Just look at how crazy things have become. People can even create virtual items resembling the real physical object now, for instance, the Gibson Flying V guitar. [Lim, 2006] It would not surprise me when one day people can actually form bands on Second Life, sell records and do shows on it as well.

If there can be an emergence of Chinese gold farmers in World of Warcraft [Jin, 2007], it would be just a matter of time that there are traders like these appearing in Second Life. To these people who find it an extremely hard struggle fighting their way for a place in the corporate ladder or whatever other fields are concerned, this is their source of income and livelihood. Plus the fact that people have been doing business in Second Life, like mentioned earlier, the picture is already clear. In years to come, be not surprised when one strike it big and become rich overnight through this method. It seems to be no joking matter anymore. It is becoming a new reality as time goes by.

While many people on Second Life adopt a different life and identity, there are also people who actually present themselves as who and what they really are in real life. Hence, not everything is anonymous and not all identities are false. In that sense, Second Life is not really just another game. People who are confident enough about themselves actually promote themselves here, and stay true to their true physical self. They also establish real connections on the “game” (notice I have even begun using quotation marks on words like game and players). In this sense, the virtual reality is a reality in itself. To people who do not use any fake identities, they “playing” as themselves and everything is pretty much real (except for maybe when someone hits you in the face. At this point of time we may not be experiencing any physical pain when that happens, but do not be surprised when one day we actually do. You know how crazy technology can develop).

In all due respect, if we look at Second Life just in its physical form, it looks like a game indeed. The interface, the landscape, the controls, the graphics, everything about it says game. But once you are in it, do you really think you are “playing” anymore? I am afraid not. With that said, now it just leaves me wondering about “second death”…


References:

Levy, S. (September 18, 2006). World of Warcraft: Is It a Game? CNBC Newsweek. Retrieved April 7, 2007 from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14757769/site/newsweek/page/3/print/1/displaymode/1098/

Lim, K. (November 15, 2006). Second Life: CopyBot causes widespread protests among residents. Retrieved April 7, 2007 from: http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=1388

Lim, K. (October 23, 2006). Video: Building a Flying-V Guitar in Second Life (plus Copyright woes). Retrieved April 7, 2007 from: http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=1346

Jin, G. (2007). Chinese Gold Farmers in MMORPGs. Video retrieved April 7, 2007 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEegohRPsqg

QotW9: Stompin' Ground

“Citizen journalism, also known as participatory journalism, is the act of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information” [Bowman & Willis, 2003]

If the above is how we should define Citizen Journalism, then I guess STOMP is indeed an example of it. In this website, for example, under the section “Singapore Seen”, they carry a slogan that goes, “You generate the contents, you write the reports, you take the photos, you shoot the videos”. This is indeed what Citizen Journalism is about. The public does the jobs of the journalists. The emphasis on “you”, referring to the public, being the ones providing the news, is a tell-tale characteristic.

“The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.” [Citizen Journalism, 2007] This seems to be the key in Citizen Journalism: it comes from the general public or laymen who are not trained professionals. Most of the submissions of updates, news and podcasts available on STOMP are indeed submitted by this very category of people.

“What will happen when 10 average citizens aim their phones at the stars and zap the images they take to their friends or to websites? Still images are only the beginning; video cameras will be par of our phones soon enough. The paparazzi have better cameras and are better picture-takers, but the swarms of amateur paparazzi will satisfy most of the public’s insatiable hunger for news about their favourite celebrities. And for the people who live in the public eye, that eye will never blink when they’re outside of their homes.” [Gillmor, 2004]

Under the section “Stompcast” audio tracks of interviews or podcasts mainly concerning celebrities and popular figures can be found. A lot of latest news about celebrities is uploaded here and pretty much all of them are submissions made by the public, just like the above-mentioned scenario. We are now living in a “society of voyeurs and exhibitionists” and that “the mass is now the paparazzi”. [Gillmor, 2004]

Apart from being an example of how Citizen Journalism functions, STOMP seems to offer a little more than that. The website also provides a platform for an online community to be formed. Forums are set up and are categorized accordingly. Students can participate in the “campus chit-chat”, females can check out “the tai tai room”, health practitioners can share tips at “the gym”, NS men and regulars can share about their army experiences in “wake up your idea”, gourmets and food lovers can make recommendations in “foodie groupie”, music lovers can gather at “backstage”, and the list goes on. Hence, users are able to interact with people of similar interests, and in a lot of ways it can also work like a gift economy when ideas and tips are shared and helps are rendered to one another.

As to how STOMP can be improved, personally I think that maybe the contents can be further broadened. The way I see it, STOMP currently focuses on a lot of daily stuffs as well as entertainment related things. Other than that, what we get to see on STOMP is mostly sensational news. Perhaps more serious contents (i.e. grounds that newspapers would cover, such as sports news, politics, etc) can be added in, that way participation by the community may be maximized as well, although I think it would not be that easy as Singapore is pretty much notorious when it comes to censorship. With the reason move taken by the government anonymously looking into people’s blogs, freedom of speech is not very much left either. However, in order for one to participate in Citizen Journalism, it does not mean that we have to post radical or controversial contents. Hence, it would still be good for people to contribute more.


References:

Bowman, S., Willis, C. (2003) We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information. The Media Center at the American Press Institute. Retrieved March 30, 2007 from: http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php

Gillmor, D. (July, 2004). We The Media: Grassroots Journalism by The People, for the People. Retrieved March 30, 2007 from: http://download.nowis.com/index.cfm?phile=WeTheMedia.html&tipe=text/html

Citizen Journalism. (2007). Citizen Journalism. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism

Absence of The Sacred interviews and reviews

The latest interview with Focal Pro is up now! Click on the banner above to view it. We're also on the front cover of the latest issue of Aging Youth webzine. Click on the picture below to view it.

An album review has also been uploaded on Metal Archives website. More updates would be posted soon.

Beauty in Darkness...

I'm not that big a fan of Gackt. This guy's got one hell of a killer voice but material wise I'm not very much into his stuff. When it comes to Japanese music I have lots of other preferences, but there's just something that I have to give it to Gackt: his stage presence is heavenly (yes, I actually used that word. Not something that comes out of me very often, and that says a lot!). Watch it yourself, you'll know what I'm talking about.

QotW7: Twitter - Online Community?

What makes up a community? It mostly refers to a sociological group in a large place or collection of people (or other organisms) sharing an environment. [Community, 2007] Judging from such an explanation or definition, does Twitter fit into these criteria? Seems like it does. In Twitter, people are linked to one another sharing an environment, in this case, the networking site itself. Most of the time people are linked to one another based on a similar interest, or any other things that they have in common. In my case, for instance, the people under my Twitter friend list are all BAC students of UB-SIM. That is our similarity.

How Twitter functions is also similar to what we know as Reputation Management, which is the “process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop”. [Reputation Management, 2007] What we do in Twitter is basically telling others what we are doing, and others would express their opinions and react to these messages as well, and then we might react to their reactions, hence, forming a cycle.

Fernback and Thompson mentioned in their article that “the structural process that is associated with community is communication. Without communication there can be no action to organize social relations. The intimate nature of this relationship is best illustrated in the words community and communications”. [Frenback & Thompson, 1995] In other words, communication is the key, which is basically what Twitter is all about. Twitter fits in this very description almost literally, as all that we do up there is to tell others what we are doing, describing it in WORDS. And then people respond accordingly: COMMUNICATION. Although Twitter may not have functions as elaborate as compared to Friendster or MySpace, it does serve a very similar purpose when it comes to social interaction and virtual interpersonal relationships. It is pretty much an online community in its own right.

There is a general understanding that in an ideal community, people are supposed to be getting along well with one another, and even help one another whenever needed. Here is a case-study of how people have actually helped one another through Twitter: A guy had lost his wallet and then made a Twitter post about his wallet being missing. The person who found his wallet happened to see his Twitter post about it and because of that, he was able to return the missing wallet to its rightful owner. [Mike, 2007] This may not be a common case that happens everyday, but it does prove a point; that Twitter functions just like a normal community, to the point that someone’s lost item can actually be found through it instead of having to rely on the authorities who would probably take much longer to solve the matter without any guarantee that the item can be found intact as it is.

Now that we have looked at Twitter using the above-mentioned descriptions and definitions, as well as the case study of the anecdotal experience by some users, we can very well sum up that Twitter is indeed an online community.




References:

Fernback J., Thompson B. (May 1995). Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure? retrieved March 15, 2007 from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html

Reputation Management. (2007). Reputation Management. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_management

Community. (2007). Community. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community

Mike (March 12, 2007). Release - Lost and Found. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://perpetualbeta.com/release/archives/2007/03/12/lost-and-found/