The solidarity hit!

Please give the Cognition Factor homepage a hit today, Sunday the 21st of June, as a
sign of solidarity with the Cognition Factor mission, which is to help raise consciousness.

see you at
cognitionfactor.net
the magik show!!

Happy solstice cognizing!

Schwann Cybershaman
Exec-Producer: Cognition Factor
cognitionfactor.net

Cognition Factor - This Sunday!!

Cognition Factor is an independently produced multi-dimensional audio-visual construct, conceived by Terence Mckenna. It is to be screened in seven cities around the world, with thousands of people watching the movie from Australia, all the way around the world to the West Coast of America. It is going to happen this Sunday, from sunrise to sunset on the solstice.

The plan is for as many people to watch it on the day as possible. A global experiment in the evolution of consciousness, if you like.

Original soundtrack composed and performed by Indidginus, 'The ORB', Ozric Tentacles/EatStatic, The Shamen/Pablo_Sandoz, Steve Hillage.

The future is here, don't be late!

Home Page: cognitionfactor.net

Cognition Factor, a movie on the evolution of consciousness starring Terence and Dennis Mckenna to be released internationally 21st June

Have you ever wondered what it means to be human in the 21st Century?

Inspired by Terrence McKenna, we probe the outer limits of consciousness in ‘Cognition Factor’ in a quest for enlightenment in the digital age during which the viewer is taken through a narrated virtual world in search of answers to the " Big Five" questions relating to the human experience.

Cognition Factor stitches live conversations with Terence Mckenna, brother Dennis Mckenna, along with Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Metzner, Alex Grey, and twenty more of the top thinkers of our times, into the plot. It's a narrated gonzo documentary, showcast inside a 3D landscape backed by original compositions from top musicians like Dr. Lx Paterson, Dom Beken and Phil Le Gonedic, of The ORB, Merv Pepler (EatStatic/Ozrik Tentacles), Colin Angus& Matt Catt (The Shamen/Pablo_Sandoz), Steve Hillage (System 7), brought together by South African ambient composer, performer and originator, Mike Martin - Indidginus.

Cognition Factor is now available from Amazon in both PAL and NTSC from - cognitionfactor.net/purchase.aspx

A Blu-Ray (BD-R) version in PAL and NTSC is available for Broadcast and will be available for special delivery. The first 100 purchasers of Cognition Factor in Blu-Ray format will also get a FREE DVD included with their purchase.

Register on the Cognition Factor forum so we can update you on new release locations. The forum is the place where we will be giving away FREE stuff, like a Blu-Ray copy in a competition soon to be announced there.

best wishes from Cape Town, South Africa,

Schwann
Exec-Prod: Cognition Factor
Home Page: cognitionfactor.net
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1413787/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Participating Venues for the Cognition Factor global premier on Sunday 21st June

New York: The Wild Project Theatre - 7.00PM
London: Princess Anne Theatre: BAFTA-[British
Academy of Film and Television Arts] - 6.15PM
California: Sonoma: The Sebastiani - 3.30 PM
Toronto: The Cineforum - 7.00PM
Amsterdam: The iLLUSEUM - 8.30PM
Cape Town: The Labia Cinema - 6.15PM
Byron Bay NSW: As yet undisclosed.

Corporation Planet

The Dow Jones plunged more than 400 points. Obama vowed to rescue economy. McCain supported Bush administration push to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Cover-up of health effects from cosmetics. Health facilities flushed 250 million pounds of drugs a year. The House approved $700 billion bailout for Wall Street. America's secret dealings between Shell and the Iraq Oil Ministry disclosed. US-India nuclear deal passed. The FBI opens probe into financial troubles of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG. The global food crisis worsens.

"This is the first time in the history of the United States that the president has sought to provoke a financial panic to get legislation through Congress. While this has proven to be a successful political strategy, it marks yet another low point in American politics. It was incredibly irresponsible for President Bush to tell the American people on national television that the country could be facing another Great Depression. By contrast, when we actually were in the Great Depression, President Roosevelt said that, 'we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.'" - Dean Baker, The Center for Economic and Policy Research

Looking back, Americans were undergoing a crash course on the corporate state. One can only hope that there’s a learning process going on somewhere in the machine but for now there seems to be no backup to the shattered delusions illuminated by the Wall Street meltdown on the 30th September. American stocks had already haemorrhaged a trillion dollar loss but I didn’t feel sorry for those Wall Street lads who’ve had it so easy for so long. Even Obama, supposedly more ‘in tune’ than Mcain, successfully appealed to voters to support $700 Billion to bail out of Wall Street. It was either that, or no more easy credit and loans, he said. Loans? Easy credit? Elsewhere in the world, ‘loans’ and ‘credit facilities’ are not the inalienable right of every citizen. We all know that some haven’t even got basic access to pharmaceuticals, running water, regular food, clothing or shelter. A private toilet? Man, that’s luxury!

So why is this consensual hallucination of credit card spending, loans for cars and luxury goods being sold to us? Why shouldn’t there be hell to pay, and why doesn’t anyone ever talk about something simple, like saving? Face it, America is bankrupting its citizens by promising them another spending frenzy, if they just keep sending their unemployed sons and daughters to the Federal war machine. Meantime, it’s getting more difficult to survive financially for Johnny Sixpack’s America, and this is really ground zero, where increasingly desperate citizens turn to crime and the underworld, or just feed off each other, like in the so-called ‘Third World Countries’.

Somalia. Pretend, if you can, that you live in the town of Eyl, or maybe further South at Hobyo. If you live in this kind of neighbourhood you don’t give a toss about the stock market because your income depends on Somali pirates who provide income for this region as self appointed ‘warlords’. They commit violent acts of piracy against passing ships for the ‘people’.

One of the pirates, a dodger by the name of ‘Ali’, told some newspaper on his satellite phone; "We are sticking to the demand for 20 million dollars. This is not ransom, but a fine for unlawfully transporting weapons on Somali waters,".

I don’t think they care about Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc, and maybe the pirates are right, at least about that, because there are no brothers on Wall Street, just legalised egos using people as shop fronts. Meantime, the pirates say that there have been acts of international eco-terrorism in Somali waters. According to ‘their’ propaganda, ships have been found dumping cargoes of radioactive waste in the area. Of course this is only a nasty rumour spread by terrorists so let’s cut back to Wall Street, where the annual bonus of any CEO would go a long way in defeating poverty in this part of the world.

Aside; I watched the History channel with distaste as they glorified the new American Super Aircraft carrier, the ‘George W. Bush’. A huge chunk of labour and natural resources dedicated to ensure our ‘security’ from radical fundamentalist terrorism, and so forth. But then why is everything getting worse?

Obviously, piracy is more prevalent than we’d thought. It’s as if some people have pre-agreed to an idiotic consensual delusion which spreads like a virus, a thought pattern, a meme, replicating itself so fast that before you can speak someone confirms the thought to you. And that’s what it is, a positive attitude versus a negative one.

“You pessimists can’t build a better world” - Terence Mckenna -

And you, dear reader, are you an optimist or a pessimist? In the containment area, aka your mind, adaptationist processes, or reactions to stimuli, can be broken and a new branch somehow inserted that’ll open another level. If we can take this first step in our collective imaginations, an evolutionary step to reach past the boundaries of our pre-programmed, knee-jerk reactions, if we can call a stop to starvation and over-population, maybe the fundamentalists would have a smaller audience and rampant militarism would not be necessary. But let’s get it right in our imaginations first, and then maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance.

Schwann Cybershaman
4/10/2008

Scientology on Tribes

Tribes has reached an all-time low with Scientology ads popping up everywhere. I'm very tempted to log-off, permanently. What kinda shiite is this?

Schwann

Cognition Factor 2008 - Producers Rant

Sunday, March 16, 2008
Current mood: insubordinate

O moderators of media, O makers-of-cults, O compressors of nostalgia, O renderers of neural text, O transferers of holographic memory,

This blog serves to notify all of you that Cognition Factor has escaped the confines of the LAN. Five years in the making, and with some of the source foootage more than 10 years old, this is all not a moment too soon because it was 15 years ago that I started believing that usenet and email had bound humanity together in some inexplicable way; all of us, from the solitary surfers of fractal reality, to the Monster Truck Dystopians believing in everlasting cheap oil, and life as it was.

It was at that time that I envisioned/created/activated a meme called ’webtrance’, never realising that I would later see it as an audio-visual construct. Much later.

The last five years has been a combat zone. The front line. But suddenly, it's finished. The grueling 18 hour days, the seemingly endless preparations and explanations have all come down to the awesome simplicity of the movie explaining itself to me in the middle of the night.

The house is quiet, everyone is asleep, and I’ve just realised that Cognition Factor is just ’webtrance’ by another name. How cool is that?

Cognition Factor seeks to illustrates that we can not prevent change, but we can stop accepting what is wrong, and it may also send a clear message to smart people that they are not alone in understanding that without mental stimulation, western media and art is doomed to boredom.

Meantime, back in the future, any good meme knows that things are always changing, even in the past, so here’s what it looked like to me, 15 years ago, before I owned a movie camera.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Discussions on the Webtrance Memetic Effect : Usenet July 1995
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

:alt.webtrance Charter:

"the basic concept of the Webtrance meme involves netizens from all over the world simultaneously focusing into a mass computer generated trance; thus participating in humanity’s digital reincarnation. If critical mass is reached, maybe our entire species will be
bumped up in brain potential through a change in our morphogenetic field, and then it won't matter if you’re logged on or not.

To me, it feels like this has already begun."

- Schwann Cybershaman -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
headspace-studios.com
www.webtrance.co.za/webtrance.html

Cognition Factor: The Special Effects Teaser

A movie with 20 of the most important thinkers of our age, explores the outer limits of consciousness through the eyes of a cyberpunk seeking answers to the same Big 5 questions that puzzle everybody.

As you'll see and hear from the teaser, this film is unlike anything you've experienced before. Maybe this is because we've broken all the rules. The interplay between our interviewees and the subject matter underscored by the top ambient music seen through our awesome VR interface linked by a unique editing style make this a serious contender for the next cult classic.

Score by Dr. Alex Paterson, Dom Beken, Fil Le Gonedic (The ORB), with Steve Hillage on gliss guitar (System 7), Colin Angus and Mattcatt (Shamen Pablo Sandoz), Merv Pepler (EatStatic/ Ozrik Tentacles) and Indidginus.

On a personal note, everyone involved with the project has been of open heart and pleasant disposition. Also, no garden gnomes were disturbed during its making.

www.youtube.com/watch

The ORB's Cognition session on 9/11...

A crazy stretch of, 'time is always in the
present', as Mike Martin and myself went
online live with The ORB at their studios in
Ealing from our studio here in Cape Town.

In the house were Dom Beken, Fil LeGonelic and
Dr. Lx Paterson. Watch and listen as the sound
for the Cognition Factor movie is created.

www.youtube.com/watch

or get the big file, full updates and history
here: headspace-studios.com

Cognition Factor: Update: The ORB are in...

Greetings,

It becomes more difficult to blog.

The last few months has been a whirlpool of CGI/3D. But Jack Gallagher, (aka 'The Machine'), our senior 3D effects wizard, has finished his last render, and suddenly 6 months of making 3D special effects is behind me and I find myself in the last stretch of compositing it all together. In fact, the movie is 3/5 complete, with the remaining pieces all stacked up and ready to be played with.

"How long"? you may ask....

well, does life imitate art, or vice versa? Certainly, life tries to become more complicated, if you want.

For example, a month or so ago, while listening to one of my favourite ORB albums, 'Adventures beyond the Ultraworld', I just so happened to simultaneously be reading an old interview with Terence Mckenna.

Homework, y'know. The interviewer (1999) asks him what his favourite music is. He mentions 'The 'ORB'.
cleanvibe.com/boards/index.php

Alex Paterson (The ORB) just so happens to be one of my musical heroes, in that his music has provided me with lots of inspiration over the last 15 years, so it is without hesitation that I immediately begin tracking Alex down, after all, keeping it real is what this movie is all about.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orb

Some time later, but it could've been longer, I'm drinking coffee and eating toast and having an extended long-distance conversation with Alex Paterson in London and discussing his collaboration in the Cognition Factor movie.

Bottom line - The ORB are on board!

As to a rough completion date; well, another few months...

M

Cognition Factor - A movie about a cyberpunk's search for consciousness

I got a fright reading my own blog, which shows you the last time I was up here, but meantime, back in the moment, the 'carrier beam of consciousness' can strike you too from YouTube

Check the teasers

www.youtube.com/watch
www.youtube.com/watch

or search 'Cognition Factor'