Wake up America!
join the movement in your area at
http://occupytogether.org
& keep up with current happenings at
http://occupywallstreet.org

Above: Live streaming video from the Occupy Wall Street protet in NYC

“Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.

The original call for this occupation was published by Adbusters in July; since then, many individuals across the country have stepped up to organize this event, such as the people of the NYC General Assembly and US Day of Rage. There’ll also be similar occupations in the near future such as October2011 in Freedom Plaza, Washington D.C.”

“On the 17th of September, we want to see 20,000 people to flood into lower Manhattan, set up beds, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months.

Like our brothers and sisters in Egypt, Greece, Spain, and Iceland, we plan to use the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic of mass occupation to restore democracy in America. We also encourage the use of nonviolence to achieve our ends and maximize the safety of all participants.”

Occupy Wall Street - September 17th, 2011

[Text from Charlie Chaplin's rousing speech in The Great Dictator:]

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible — Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there’s room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me I say, “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die; and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers: Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers: Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, “the kingdom of God is within man” — not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite!! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise!! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers: In the name of democracy, let us all unite!!!

Occupy Wall Street - September 17th, 2011

Occupy Wall Street - September 17th, 2011

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For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a new series of “Simply Surreal” digital collages. I have also included a few of my older surrealistic pieces which previously had no collection to call home To date, the Simply Surreal series contains 27 images, many of which were inspired by Rene Magritte and/or Salvador Dali, among other brilliant surrealists. I was also inspired by a number of contemporary collage artists to try and achieve a surreal effect with as little materials as possible (thus the “simple” in Simply Surreal). Not all of them keep to this ideal, but you’ll find that many of these pieces are comprised of only two or three source images. “Keep it simple, stupid” as they say, haha!

(watch full-screen for best effect)

Prints of the Simply Surreal artwork collection can be found at http://artfamilia.etsy.com

Fumar (Simply Surreal series)

A freeware Windows screensaver of the collection to date is now available & will be updated as the series progresses. Included are both a Windows SCR file, which should run on all versions of Microsoft Windows, and a standalone EXE for those of you who want to watch the slideshow “on-demand”. If you have any trouble with it, or have questions  or comments, kindly Contact Me.

[ Download the Simply Surreal screensaver for Windows PCs ]

The “Simply Surreal” screensaver includes both a Windows screensaver file (SCR) & a standalone executable file (EXE). Image titles are displayed in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

This screensaver is freeware & may not be sold in any fashion. The software included in this package, as well as all included images are © Kenneth Rougeau, all rights reserved.

Installation:
Windows Vista / Windows 7
- Just right click the SimplySurreal.SCR file and choose Install
or
- Run the SimplySurreal.EXE file and enjoy

Windows XP
- Copy the SimplySurreal.SCR file to your C:\Windows\System32\ folder.
or
- Run the SimplySurreal.EXE file and enjoy

There are no available configuration options at this time.
If you experience any problems with the screensaver, kindly contact me.Similar Posts:

• Surreal Mona Lisa Inspired Digital Collage: Lisa With A View
• Recursion Factor 3
• The Convolutions Collection

Justin Clark-Casey just announced in the Opensim-users mailing list that he has fixed the OSSL NPC code, which has been broken for the last several iterations of the popular simulator software (for the uninitiated, OpenSim is an open-source version of SecondLife that you can run on your own web server, or even on your local PC).

I’m very excited about getting back in and evolving my artificial intelligence bot with the new functions. I’d been working with Dan Browne and John McHaffie intermittently (mostly their work, I did very little honestly) on a seperate version of OpenSim called Aurora. It ran fairly well on my local PC, but running it and the AI (among other things) bogged down my computer and I wasn’t able to get far with my experiments. I understand that Dan has come quite a long way with his own experiments, however, so he may already be ahead of where the OSSL NPC code is currently… I was never able to get Aurora to properly compile on my Linux server, so I’d halted my own NPC experiments. Now they can continue with the latest version of the existing OpenSim software, which I’ve rarely had trouble running.

Idoru Unplugged, an OpenSim NPC artificial intelligence

My artificial intelligence bot, Idoru Unplugged, is about to get an upgrade. Aww yeah! If things go according to plan, she’ll be walking and talking, running, jumping, and even possibly be able to wander off the into the hypergrid under her own power. It’s all very exciting

Idoru Unplugged takes her name from a character in William Gibson‘s cyberpunk novel Idoru, in which an artificial intelligence essentially “faxes” herself into the real world.. Very cool stuff

Idoru by William Gibson

If you’d like to read more about the existing OSSL NPC functions, you’ll find the information here: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/OSSLNPC  & there is a brief wiki page on different options for running an OpenSim NPC here:  http://opensimulator.org/wiki/NPC

Justin Clark-Casey

According to Justin Clark-Casey, “New additions include functions to get avatar rotation and position, movement options and the ability to save appearance and baked texture data permanently so that it can be used by NPCs when the original avatar it was copied from is no longer logged in. ” “Very many thanks to David Burden from Daden (http://www.daden.co.uk) for sponsoring this work and bumping it way up my priority stack. “

I’d like to second that and thank David Burden, Justin Clark-Casey, Dan Browne, John McHaffie, and Revolution Smythe (who got the Aurora NPC code working) for all of their efforts, contributions & hard work in this area.

You guys rock!
\m/(>.<)\m/

Rock on!

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• OpenSim Server-Side NPC Experiments: Day Two
• OpenSim Server-Side NPC Experiments: Day One
• OpenSim Server-Side NPC Experiments: Day Three

Lisa With A View (surreal digital collage)

My latest surreal digital collage is entitled Lisa With A View. It is from the upcoming “Simply Surreal” series that I’m currently working on (while I’m putting together the second TypeFace collection). In my mind, it’s what Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa would have looked like had it been painted by Rene Magritte instead… The image & the upcoming collection were inspired by the many brilliant surrealists who have influenced me, both past and present, including Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, Michael Cheval, Rafal Olbinski, and may others. The idea is to create as surrealistic an image as possible, as simplistically as I can achieve the desired effect.

Here’s a detail view that shows Lisa’s “face” a bit more closely. Can you make out the horsemen standing at the edge of the cliff, looking out over the valley beyond?

Detail image

11″ x 14″ prints of Lisa With A View (and my other surrealism) are available online for $15 at my Etsy & Artfire stores, which are listed below. Larger & smaller prints are also available by request. You’re welcome to contact me if you have any comments, requests or suggestions.

Thank you for your support!
- Ken Rougeau

Lisa With A View – surreal fine art prints on Etsy.com

Lisa With A View – surreal fine art prints on ArtFire.com

Similar Posts:

• Simply Surreal – a free windows screensaver of surreal artwork
• TypeFace – typographical portraits of famous faces & historical figures
• She’d Entertain Herself For Hours – Daily Digital Collage Art (06-29-2010)

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