October – Transformation By Surprise – coming soon! Three shoutouts for our lovely readers :)

 

Received slightly fewer submissions for October’s issue but have been able to go into greater depth with each of them. Our theme is… Transformation by Surprise, which I will explain in the next few days or so when the work goes online. For now some shoutouts for opportunities for our artists.

First of all, I recently visited San Francisco’s Valencia Street neighborhood for the Modern Times Books release party of fellow zinesters who produced a guide to community-based approaches to handling intimate partner abuse. Great stories, not technical or boring at all, full of useful information. People from around the world attended the release party, including a traveling performance troupe with members from Zimbabwe, Israel/Palestine, etc. Dropped off Synchronized Chaos cards at the shops and galleries along the way there – also planning to crosslink and mutually promote our zine and theirs (I do this with many different zines with a variety of emphases, would like to consolidate resources and publishing opportunities, promote fellow artists, and encourage networking. I also liked their pragmatic, community based approach to handling an issue without huge bureaucracy.) If you’d like one of their zines please comment here and I’ll put you in touch with them.

Also visited the San Jose Museum of Art, interesting techy Silicon Valley feel with an exhibit on robots, another on old computer memory component history, another on minimalist installations. Sci fi esque – but they take art of various styles and does NOT have to be tech oriented. Paintings, vistas, everything welcome as far as I know. They take proposals from interested visual artists for review by their curators and I took a flyer about where to submit proposals and work samples and will forward it on to anyone who comments and is interested. Preference given to CA artists but CA residence not required. They’re booked for the near future but will consider proposals for later on.

An organization I endorse, the Neighborhood Housing Services of Silicon Valley, provides foreclosure intervention and counseling as well as neighborhood improvement projects. Aims to help keep people of all income levels able to own homes in Silicon Valley neighborhoods. They need a volunteer or more to revamp their www.nhssv.org website to make it brighter, more appealing, and easier to navigate. They need translation, a site map, a hits counter, etc…would love to see someone here get involved, if you know how to improve websites this would be a great portfolio and experience building project.

October issue coming soon!!

Another shoutout – a very well-written, articulate liberal social-justice, ecological blog.

Shoutout to a social-justice and environmental blog, “Unmasking an Inconvenient Truth” (no direct connection to the Al Gore documentary) produced by fellow San Jose State students as a personal project: http://happylandmanifesto.blogspot.com/

I find this blog very well-written and interesting, and encourage people to check it out! Synchronized Chaos itself is not explicitly political (open to everyone with something unique and creative to submit) and encourages contributions from those of all cultural viewpoints. (i.e views expressed here are those of the contributors, and I proudly affirm that we have never rejected a submission. We exist to promote and encourage people’s creative projects and help talented people find an outlet, regardless of POV.)

When I come across other blogs or sites or webzines, I tend to make the offer to crosslink/cross reference, and I invite anyone else reading this to suggest creative projects for our blogroll.

Shoutout for a very good friend of mine’s blog – life on the autistic spectrum, struggles with social services, humor, hopes and dreams

Synchronized Chaos invites anyone and everyone to check out my very good friend’s blog (he goes by the name Sodalis, is a young autistic transgendered person living in California.) Right now he’s working towards becoming a civil rights lawyer or professor of evolutionary biology while scraping by looking for more permanent housing (he’s couch and shelter surfing at the moment) and work. He’s very articulate here, has a certain unique sense of humor and favorite pet interests.

Would love to see people read this – well-written and interesting. Describes the complex realities of life in the Bay Area for those whose minds work differently. Perhaps drop him a note of encouragement or advice while checking this out.

http://anotherautismblog.blogspot.com/

Shout out to a fellow zine, Ivory Tower!

 

Great, varied, and currently much more navigable zine run by a great group of people: http://www.theivorytowerzine.com/index.htm

Please check them out, there’s a whole “Meet the Artists” section as well as many stories, poems, and pictures. Ivory Tower’s staff creates a theme every quarter…this time it’s horror and the macabre, next quarter the environment and planet Earth. Please feel free to spread the word and/or to submit simultaneously to Synchronized Chaos and Ivory Tower if your piece concerns nature or environmental issues – so important they should get covered by as many zines as possible 🙂

Zines. They do the artistic soul and the world good. (yes, I’m old enough to play off of that old milk industry campaign slogan!)

http://www.theivorytowerzine.com/index.htm

Quotes and links we like

Thoughts on the Synchronized Chaos project, quotes and links we like:
“An interdisciplinary art, poetry, literary, science, nature, cultural issues, and travel writing webzine. The brainchild of an international group of contributors and volunteer editors/creative facilitators. Inspired by the mathematical concept of chaos theory, the study of how to effectively model and predict the behavior of systems which seem random, but are in fact highly influenced by initial conditions not yet fully understood.
 
We’re working with the idea of not-obviously-apparent logic that seems to emerge spontaneously from randomnity. A way to facilitate and promote something we hope will bring enjoyment and inspire thought, creativity, and empathy among readers without imposing strict guidelines or themes upon our contributors.  
We welcome contributions from new and established writers and visual/musical artists, and focus on quality, craftspersonship, and building relationships with and among our readership and the contributors. We aim to publish a wide variety of work in a variety of styles – photo essays, digital artwork, formal and free verse poetry, short fiction and nonfiction, humor, well-written, unique personal experience and memoir, and effectively argued perspectives on pertinent issues.
We especially welcome those contributors who may not yet have found a home for their work in the publishing world, who prefer the process of creating to the process of selling and promoting their work.
 
Synchronized Chaos welcomes our readers and encourages people to peruse our offerings. We strive for professionalism, to treat contributors and readers with respect, to offer enjoyment, pleasure, and beauty, and inspire and motivate thought and creativity and love.
Link to the Wikipedia entry on Chaos Theory, which contains an accurate but much less readable link to a definition for Synchronized Chaos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
 
Link to von Williams’ The Lark Ascending, a piece of music I believe matches the intentions for this project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz1hWcPkods
 
Ray Bradbury on writing:
 
And what, you ask, does writing teach us?
First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation.

So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

Article about freedom of speech in the Russian Federation: http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGEUR460232008&lang=e 
 
Amnesty International’s Artists for Amnesty website http://www.amnestyusa.org/about-us/artists-for-amnesty/page.do?id=1031004&n1=2&n2=22 
 
In the near future I will see about linking Synchronized Chaos up with the Artists for Amnesty, as we do support freedom of speech and reasoned dialogue about potentially offensive matters rather than censorship.
San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness’ Street Sheet publication, written and produced in part by the homeless themselves and in the spirit of the original underground ‘zines: http://www.cohsf.org/streetsheet/
 
Listings and reviews of many art galleries in San Francisco’s South Mission/Valencia Street area (and if you come up north please let me know and I’d be happy to give you a minitour of some of my favorite city art and cultural spots!) http://www.sfmission.com/galleries/
 
SF Museum of Modern Art at http://www.sfmoma.org/ (many online features accessible for free to those all over.)
www.dontforgetburma.org (art in the service of human rights, people all over the world have found creative ways to get across the message that the Burmese deserve their liberty from the military junta.)
 
Free Battered Women www.freebatteredwomen.org (artwork and stories of incarcerated domestic violence survivors, the organization publishing the inmates’ work supports a campaign to review the sentencing of people locked up years ago before we allowed testimony regarding domestic violence/self defense as a mitigating factor in courtrooms and who would undoubtedly receive much lesser sentences today.)
www.freerice.org (vocabulary quiz, cash donated to the UN food program for developing countries for every correct answer.)
 
www.ivorytowerzine.com – a fellow webzine, this one has regular themes and more of a specifically art and literary focus. Very good, interesting submissions. Please feel free to resubmit work Synchronized Chaos has printed over a month ago if they allow it.
One-stop carpool information site, compiles info from Yahoo, Google, Craigslist, etc. www.gotalift.com
Click for free every day to support various good causes: www.thehungersite.com and www.accse.net (social projects in Mexico)
Cheap ($25) live opera performances in San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum: www.pocketopera.org
The Chabot Space and Science Center, where I volunteer and which hosts amazing, detailed exhibits on space travel, nebulae and galaxies, and the solar system, and which offers telescopes used by professional scientists for free public viewings: www.chabotspace.org
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html 
National Novel Writing Month – public relations group inspiring people’s creative projects, get off your rear and finally get that novel on paper/laptop screen! http://www.lettersandlight.org/