New album of music for HomeTaping

Hello all,

As part of HomeTaping 2011 I recorded an album of music in 30 days. If you fancy having a listen you can find it here: http://www.hmtpng.com/users/149

or here: http://soundcloud.com/caseymorrison

The concept (!) is based on Tokyo Doesn't Love us Anymore by Ray Loriga, about memory and its unreliability, stories about past and future and people getting stuck at a point in time. You can judge for yourself how well it sits together. Remember it was written, recorded and mastered in less than 30 days so please be a bit forgiving..!

If this isn't your thing, well, just skip on isn't it..Hope everyone is well.!

Casey

youtube video mashups

hello all,

if anyone wants to see video mashups i did this week you can see them here: www.youtube.com/user/invitationto

Hope everyone is well..

casey

YSPsculpture's photostream

YSPsculpture's photostream on Flickr.

Guayaquil

Just got back from a project in Guayaquil called Junconi (junto con ninos - together with kids), an amazing project working with street kids. I{ve seen a lot of second rate projects in uk and here, but this one is excellent-. really impressed. more later.

Pics of Cuenca Nov

Oops

will write something soon. both really busy..

Pics of Cuenca from Oct

Puerto Lopez & the Coast..

Cuenca

We are in Cuenca now, a gorgous colonial city high in the mountians in the south. All is going swimmingly. Casey is working with a theatre group in vest and pants. The performance is the last week of october. Its a version of Los Ciegos (the blindies) by Maurice Maeterlinck. There is also the possibility of some paid sound engineering work setting up a theatre near the coast. Also doing some workshops with Proyecto De Muchachos Trabadores (project for working kids) on conflict resolution.

Erica is chipping away at the beauracracy as always and working with the Central Bank Museum. She´s also setting up another project twinned with Ryedale, however unlikely that sounds. But we´re both waiting for things to kick off. Heading down to the coast to do some snorkling and see some whales.

2009 Study Abroad video with students from the university of georgia..

Cuba & collective incentives

Our good friend socialist Fabian came back from Cuba yesterday understandably excited. He regaled us for hours with stories of the ideal society. A few things stuck in my mind, mostly in relation to incentives:

1 - he says things are extremely well organised, which means that people want to organise things (unlike Ecuador).

2 - propaganda has put meant a generation knows nothing but the revolution, but we also know nothing but capitalism.

3 - he said that everyone wants to work in tourism because you get tips. If everyone makes the same money, who would ever want to clean the bins..?

4 - If the US got rid of the embargo tomorrow what would happen? maybe a short story in the offing, but (like Ecuador scapegoating the US - rightly or wrongly) there would be no collective enemy and the black market, already huge, would take over the country.

5- he says people are motivated, not by individual gain as every economist would tell us, but by collective gains. If this is true then we don't need to tinker with the incentives as everyone has been telling us (carbon credits anyone) but we need to realise the satisfaction in things that only groups of people can grow. So maybe there is a future for collective ownership and action, even if we don't want such drastic measures of getting there..

Jungle pics. swimming with caimans, piranas & anacondas..

Pics from Guayaquil (the mythical port shown in Pirates of the Carribean)

Pics from Joy & Alan's visit to Ecuador..

Short stories..

i am trying to write some short stories. i'm going to put them together into an audio book, with sound effects, like an audio play, but without any people or words. They're a bit war focussed because of the course, but i have others (including monkey tennis). One of the stories will hopefully be about pursuading everyone in the west to give £1 if isreal & palestine stop fighting; then everyone who lives there can have new cars. something like that.

Story about the first televison in the village and how it killed the sense of community and shared culture. everyone says the world is going to end. the same thing happens when cities were invented, now more people live in them every year.

Story about starting the great war in Latin America that will lead to the first genuine South American Unions, plotted by the same people who took the paintbrush out of hitlers hand.

Story about the physical high graound and metaphorical. A soldier discovers he only has to change the actions of his comrades and the batlefield changes. He comes up with a brilliant alternative to partitioning countires and ensuring more wars - he focusses on creating more civil wars..

and on..

Guayaquil..

We went to Guayaquil last weekend for our birthdays. It’s a hot port city which in any other country in South America would be the capital; huge inward migration, slums, drugs and gangs. The distribution port of large amounts of a rich countries natural resources sent overseas for peanuts (either 1500 or now, take your pick). The people have lazy accents, everything is ferociously air conditioned and there's not much to do. All is all a splendid weekend..

But it was interesting to see what they have done with regeneration. with the crime levels as high as they were the local publicity hunting mayor came up with some schemes. He privatised large parts of the city. which keeps out the scumbags. and it works. If you a look past the armed guards (and I the only brit who always wants to grab any gun he walks past?? just to see what would happen?) and the tarted up 'historic' streets. I'm not sure it would work in libertarian Europe or the US but is it really so far from standard gentrification??? I posted this to the guardian:

With highly competitive local authorities, it’s not surprising that gentrification means poor families will move out of an area; either because they are forced to, or because families grow and they can't afford a bigger house in the same area. So people in Leeds move to Bradford, this happened before gentrification. The only difference is people now have someone to blame..

The alternative is sink estates where only the hopeless are concentrated together. They may have knocked down Tinsley Cooling towers in Sheffield, but the alternative was to leave them there - not great options either way. If the community can come up with viable alternatives I hope the LA is brave enough to try them. How different is this situation from the indigenous tribes fighting against oil companies in the heart of the Amazon jungle? What constitutes progress? How can to have a collective response to individual ownership???