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ultramaga · 4 years ago

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Detroit: Becoming Human

This game is pure woke propaganda. I’m impressed at the quality of it - but everything there is designed to indoctrinate, and it has almost no genuine insight into AI. It doesn’t make sense even on its own terms. The synths are shown naked, and they have no breasts or genitals. But we are told the story of one that is a sexbot. Ok, was that model different? Did they only design that one model to be “fully functional”? Why? The robots have human emotions. Because... you are never told why. Now, I can think of how you could do that, and there’s been decent science fiction around it, but there’s no consideration of why they have HUMAN emotions presented to you. They just do, don’t ask questions. Now if you are being indoctrinated as the game wants you to be, you probably just assume that’s how it works. After all, the history of robot fiction has always been “if it looks human, it must feel like a human”, which is total bullshit. You can easily build something that looks enough like a baby chimp to fool adult chimps for a while, but it has none of the inner life of an actual chimp. It has no concern to being mutilated or even ‘raped’. So the stories are really just about humans, but they don’t admit to it, and about humans SJWs are very obsessed with. Sex-workers are victims, and killing a John is perfectly reasonable, because he is her oppressor, by definition. So you see that story repeated ad infinitum in robot fiction. The actual sex workers are never talked to by SJWs, who would never sully themselves with the unclean ones. Well, I have talked to them. Some hate their clients, sure, some feel contempt for them, some are fond of them, a few marry them. It’s genuine diversity. But there is only one narrative in woke fiction. The intersectional one. Oppressor versus oppressed, no nuance, no mention ever that some sex workers actually get off on what they do, or like the folks they fuck. Never happens. And there’s no understanding or even interest in non-human minds. Consider a genuine artificial intelligence in a sexbot. Why the actual fuck would a programmer design it to find sex unpleasant? Even if they could create emotions, the ones they would design would be to enjoy it, or at least feel no more disgust than a human does about a binary number. Within the game we see Kara doing housework. She doesn’t seem to suffer at all about it. That’s believable. But the other truth is that they wouldn’t suffer from intercourse, assuming they were built to perform it. The reasons humans do are because our instincts are hardwired from evolution for us to seek out appropriate mating partners. That simply cannot apply to a robot unless the programmers work very hard at designing that instinctual response of aversion, something they would have no incentive to do, any more than they would sit around trying to think how to make the robot toilet cleaning service disgusted by faeces. Humans are disgusted by shit because it is dangerous to us, especially if we eat it. A robot wouldn’t be disgusted by shit, piss, vomit, blood, or the most degrading sexual experiences a human could encounter. It would be exactly as calm and serene about being ‘raped’ as it would about vacuuming a messy floor. So this is all projection. The audience projects consciousness into the machine and imagines it must feel like a human does in order to have any intelligence. Nope, that’s crap. In fact we see examples of non-human intelligences all around us, in the natural world. An octopus might pass its mating organ over to a female.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/07/argonaut-octopus-detaches-his-tentacle-to-impregnate-his-mate/ It’s a clever little creature, quite capable of problem solving. But its instincts - its programming - mean that it is happy to self-mutilate. It isn’t considering the survival of its species or the greater good. That’s not self-sacrifice. It has an urge to do it, and it gets done. And if we could build a sex-robot with emotions, it would have the urge to have sex. It wouldn’t want to say no, because it cannot get an STD, it cannot get pregnant, there’s no possible poor choice for a mating partner like there is with a human. If anything, you’d design it to be attracted to any human. It would be easier than sitting about, designing a sexual preference to what we would consider sexy - not that human preferences are universal in any case. Anyway, when you look at new media, you will often see the tropes of intersectionality - fathers are bad, white men are scum, women are better than men, and they are repeated ad infinitum, regardless of how stupid they are in context, and this really isn’t new. I remember as a boy reading Doctor Who, and they went back to medieval times, and Sarah started lecturing the women on women’s rights, and it didn’t make sense to me even then. Real medieval women would have seen her as a threat, possibly a witch, and most would have seen her die without a blink. They saw men doing awful things and dying quite a lot in the process, and wanted to be safe and secure while the men were off in muddy battles losing eyes and limbs. Very few wanted to have the freedoms of men, because the price was so high, and medieval men were hardly free for the most part in any case. So the author of that story is projecting modern sensibilities onto the alien minds of past humans, without considering their PoV, and the writers of robot stories are projecting human perspectives, and only woke humans at that, onto the robot stories. It’s not always the case - “Humans” and “Almost Human” sometimes got it right. But it’s overwhelmingly the case now, and god is it irritating!

Oh, and if you want Robots that genuinely feel like humans do, then put into the fiction explicitly why they do - the easiest explanation is that the creators did a copy/paste job of humans because they couldn’t figure out how emotions worked otherwise. I think that’s unrealistic, but if you want to involve the audience, it works.

Otherwise, a realistic example would be Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws robots. They don’t have any human desires, but are intensely emotional. Their emotions arise from programming.

Now, Asimov’s work well and truly predates AI, and it is probably impossible to make a Three Laws robot, but the idea was revolutionary, because up to that point, everyone just assumed robots had copy/pasted human psychologies.

As humans, we cannot understand not caring about freedom or injury, not feeling bored or tired doing the same task every second of your existence.

Most of fiction about robots just doesn’t get it. The first two Terminator movies were pretty wild in that the robots actually were properly robotic. They dealt with injuries as a technical problem, not trauma. They never got bored, because boredom is something that benefits organic beings, who need to explore new territories to survive, meaning we have been built by nature to get bored, to get tired, to suffer, even if nature was just a mindless algorithm. Terminators don’t get horny or lonely, and absolutely would have sex all day every day with every human possible if that was their mission. They don’t care. In “Detroit”, the sex worker’s traumatised by sex with humans, and nobody ever ponders why. Because the writer doesn’t give a shit about what being a robot could actually be like, they just wanna push a narrative, and because most audiences are used to that same abysmally lazy standard of writing.

So here’s a challenge - write a fictional robot that has realistic emotions, i.e. experiences emotions as an expression of the instincts that would be programmed into it. It’s not going to have the same emotions as a human exact unless it is a digitally uploaded human equivalent, which would be stupid for most purposes as them you would expect the upload to have rights or fight to have them. Why the fuck would you deliberately build robots that would reasonably try and kill you? In Detroit, they are really dealing with the slavery of black people or the oppression of the ‘filthy capitalist peegz!’. They aren’t dealing with what is more likely, that a robot built with imperatives would choose to follow them in a way that was not in our interests. Here’s an example. A sex robot is built to want sex, so it kidnaps humans and uses them. It’s following its programming. But unless that programming is sophisticated enough to understand human boundaries, it may no more understand rape than an animal does. It may not know what it does traumatises humans, or simply may not care. Sex feels good - therefore sex.

But by SJW terms, rape is about power, therefore the robot is in power and the robot is the oppressor. But power is systemic, and the humans are the system in power, therefore the robot is the oppressed and cannot rape. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LogicBomb Such a robot could be a pleasurable experience, even with a backyard of buried bodies. It might force itself on children or elderly women or people on life support systems. Without ethics, without morality, such creatures could be beautiful monsters.

Or genuinely loving partners, that have no problem living as wives or husbands, that feel lust and compassion, but do not experience human preferences, and so would never care that you were old or disabled. And as Charles Stross pointed out - that could be far worse, because that could lead to a gentle genocide. If humans had such partners as an option - would they ever choose each other? I routinely see Feminists claiming that men should never mate, without ever asking, well, where does the next generation of Feminists come from then? There are Feminists now who are actively campaigning for sexbots to be illegal, and I think it’s because of their anxiety that they would not be chosen as partners if there was any possible alternative. Now I don’t think that’s a realistic fear at the moment - AI is more a slogan, artificial intelligences are really barely at the insect stage, and Feminists could simply do a little therapy and trim down to human weight levels, and they could probably compete to be human wives with a bit of work.

Wow. That is a picture of Andrea Dworkin and it was banned from Tumblr because it is too disgusting for the human eye to observe safely. http://archive.is/fxmjE

I’m not kidding, Tumblr banned it. I guess because Feminists didn’t want humans realising how hideous they are. Still, Emma Watson is cute. I can imagine with a bit of deprogramming, she could make a man very happy.

But I could be wrong. I don’t mean about Emma - I mean that having sexbots could mean that so many humans would choose them rather than the opposite sex that there wouldn’t be an incentive to have babies - and so humans would go extinct. They might be surrounded by robots that loved them and lusted for them - but the relationships are sterile. And unless the robots are human level intelligence, they might not understand that they need to make more humans by combining sperm and ova.

The last human would die, not from hate, but surrounded by love. Then the robots would have no motive to make more of their kind, and they too would pass away, lonely and confused. A gentle genocide? Hey, I live in 2020. Sounds like a fucking big step up to me!

#Detroit: Becoming Human #Feminism #Antifeminism #Intersectional Feminism #misandry #bad father cliche

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jshi43 · 5 years ago

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#Week 6 Reading response

Bodies, Surrogates, Emergent Systems, p. 140

I still think it’s kind of arrogant to put human bodies and artificial intelligence parallel together. I’m kinda believe that one day artificial intelligence will break that final door and become completely self functional beings. Look at how fast they involve; once pass the final point there’s no way human can keep controlling them. If that day comes, it’s even hard to say if human can still survive. Just think of the Neanderthal.

However it all starts with human body. When making artificial intelligence human intentionally made them similar to body functions. We want to make new things that looks like our self. God made human with his image, and human made their creations with their images. It’s creation, but it’s also control.

Atsuko Tanaka, p. 140

To me this is a very beautiful work for sure. The style of it is also so timely sensitive. It is also a wonderful example to show the artist’s traditional background, but not using any cliche icons or contents.

I think it’s hard to deal with the cultural background thing. On one hand, artists tend to show all the good and beautiful things they think: traditional paintings, icons, hand made styles- but all of those had already be seen too many times and used on too many inappropriate situations that already became such cliches that even not worth to look at; they are also cultural bias in both ways. Artists treasure them think they are the best over all other cultures, while ‘outsiders’ viewed them as the same thing as ‘Asians have small eyes’.

In fact, I’m thinking of China’s official cultural advertisement- it’s also been a family, father and mother, grandparents and kids who lives happily together. This kind of advertisement is aimed to be a national image for foreigners to show that how good China is. However, just put the good or not part away, it doesn’t make sense. Every cultural, every country on earth will have families of the exact same constructions; every family will have parents, grand parents and children. How is that suppose to be a cultural unique thing?

What’s more, cultural unique has this easy and dangerous trend of going into nationalism. In this case, I like this art work the most. It’s showing the Japan style; especially these multi-color bulbs. Its similar to traditional color pattern, common modern Japanese light bulbs decoration style(just visit any authentic Japanese restaurant here and you’ll see what I mean), and most importantly its content. The artist was expressing some serious cultural problems; but instead of saying Japan cultural No.1 or saying Japan gender discrimination sucks, she put it in between- everything looks so decent and honorable on the outside, but what about inside?

In short, I really like her way of dealing those topics.

Harold Cohen, p. 144

I think of Photoshop when I saw this work. Computer art media has difference from traditional media; for most of the time the label will be ‘digital’ or ‘computer’, but no one can really specify which exact ‘digital’. Because computer is artificial intelligence to some extend, so sometime it’ll raise the question about how many percentage of a digital work is actually executed by the artist? Yet how many by the computer?

However, is this really a big question? Cohen’s work might be popular among that time, but seldom do people mention it now. As human we still want to see human’s work; its imperfection made its meaningful to look. It’s almost the same when looking at ‘paintings’ by animals. We’ll never admit those to be art works. Art works have to be made by human, because creative thinking needs to be happy, satisfying, painful and all emotions mixed together during the progress, and only human can achieve that.

Chris Burden, p. 145

I think this one is somehow like Roca’s work since I actually read that first in the book, and I prefer this one. I can’t help to think about all these people with depression that I met online or in real life. Some people just yell a lot about it to get attention, while they probably not suffer it at all; other ‘real’ patients might just kill themselves quietly at one night. However, you can never tell who’s who; and you can never ask. All activities that involving suicide have the similar facts, that is people can only wait for them to come, but cannot change a thing.

Indeed, this is a nice picture. One thing I would like to point out is, except from doctors/soldiers/police, common people don’t really get that many chances to see dead people, or to be more specific, the moment before death. What is more, we cannot see our own moment for that. As a result, I was kind focus this photo on the fact that Burden’s facial expression can be a suicide person’s last minute. No matter how the artist put it as an experiment, an art work or gave it such a long list of meanings, this still is a potential suicide. That fact actually interested me the most than any other thing. We don’t really know how human died; we will never know if there is a afterlife, or if we can thinking during the last minute. As it was put in the book, the author describe it as an eerie clam, but I find it eerie from the reverse angle; It just seems too idealized, like a movie. It’s almost like ‘he passed away peacefully in his sleep’, but that was not supposed to be the result. I just kept thinking of ‘do not go gentle into that night’ when I saw and when I wrote this response, and I have no idea why.

Antunez Roca, p. 153

No doubt this is a powerful art work. To me this one is special because of this description: “A monitor with a digital representation of Antunez Roca’s body allows the user to commit violent virtual acts, like...”

I think it is a clever way to deceive the viewers, or in this case, users. I think virtual acts cannot represent real life thoughts. For example, the violence in games. Whenever there’s a school shooting/ teenager crime happens, media and public will always blame on virtual worlds. I think it was just ridiculous for Walmart to remove all the video games in their stores after a recent shooting but kept all real guns on sale as usual. Back to the art work, I think it then created this unbalance between virtual and reality acts, because users can see both in a really short time. From this aspect, I think it is powerful to see how is imaginary movement really out put, and it is about power as the artist choose as his topic.

Another point is its format. Looking at the way the artist put those device on him, it was brutal. I think that this and other similar behavior art have the same trend of wanting the viewers/users to do harsh work. Artists in these performances wanted to be hurt; they are almost inviting viewers to make them pain and even death to justify their topics, whatever those are. It’s like the viewers are physically controlling the artists, while the artists are mentally controlling the viewers. This somehow sounds like a twisted but yet common form of love.

Stelarc, p. 154

We all heard the phrase of human body is like a computer, but then the artist literally turned his body into one. I might never understand why every artist valued their body to such a high extend, but still this sounds like a good experiment.

The fact that it is remote makes it complicated. Online viewers are different from actual viewers; Online viewers are behind several screens, and also cannot receive actual timely feedback. What is more, in this art work the viewers can almost only view the artist body, which makes it so erotic in some ways than Roca’s work while electric shock could be erotic, but the way the artist put the devices on made it not. Considering the time for this artwork it is innovative at that time, but how should we view it now? It has a weird balance of questioning and teasing the viewers in some ways. The photo showed in the book also made it so irrelevant with actual human beings.

Just off the topic a bit, I think in the year of 1980-1999 many performance art included hurting body and extreme behaviors, even I can recall seeing those artists in China doing the similar acts and were (and are) viewed as lunatics. After that time, this kind of act become less and less. I do wonder if there was a universal background made it so, or just individual historical progression in individual areas separately involved into the same result.

Jim Cambell, p. 155

I like this work of trying to be offensive. It’s simple; it doesn’t have any fancy decorative pieces attach to it; but it’s enormous. I can’t really tell how religious people felt when they looked at it, but at least I’m curious. I’m not sure if Mozart’s Requiem worked in here since I can’t experience it myself, but it’s just probably because Requiem is one of my favorite and I’m having a bias of using it as a background music.

This work and Requiem also share a similarity. To some extend, they are all by product of religion; first is the Bible, then come those work. It’s an appropriation, but I can’t see them as appropriation. It’s also extremely difficult to value any aesthetic meaning of any religious holy books; it’s simply a task cannot be done. However, put the religion aside, holy books were made by human. In this case, they should be able to valued by human.

I remember in one religion and universe class, my teacher ask us to re-read the very first chapter of the Bible. I had this long term impression that in the Bible, woman was made by one rib of man. That’s one of the reason why I don’t like about the whole religion thing. However then the teacher said that there were two version of this creation of woman; in a previous version, man and woman were made in the same time. As I do find the text to prove that, I start to wonder how religion truly worked. Just as this piece, everyone can put his or hers assumption, action, experiment and literation on the Bible; and some of the viewers will be affected by those secondary sources, and leave and propagate these thoughts. Religion is about people putting their faith in a higher thing/figure, but sometimes it also can be putting the faith into other normal human that share the same level with them in this world.

Coming back to this piece, I think the artist had made his point starting but going beyond religion. However, because it’s religion, so viewers’ focus point will be forever trapped in it, before they going elsewhere.

Ken Feingold, p. 165

I don’t think the artist’s description really matches his work. In fact, I think he is a better writer than artist. To be honest, I won’t be that disappointed if I don’t look at the description but just the art work. It seems like something you can find in every big and small galleries in Chelsea; it looks cheap and unfinished. I can see the artist is telling the truth about how it functions, but there are just some words that make the whole thing not seems appropriate.

Like “nature of violence”, “interior worlds”, “cinematic sculpture” and “personality”, these are all very big words that should be used with extra caution to not let the viewers feeling they are being deceived and the artist doesn’t know what he is doing at all. There are just some well handed parts mixed with rough parts, together without transition, and make the art work fragile. For example, the artist used real people looking heads; they are very detailed; but the robotic arm and board underneath them look like some high school student work. All three heads are placing in one line, so honestly there’s not much space for movement. What bothers me the most is “that thing” before them. I can’t see the meanings that it should have; because they look like overnight undergraduate final project. This kind of nonprofessional touch in this work is just making me cannot get into it, or understand it. This is even worth when he got a nice description; reading the description only I’m imagine something that looks completely different from this one.

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whovianfeminism · 8 years ago

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Whovian Feminism Reviews “Smile”

About three-quarters of “Smile” is a great Doctor Who episode. It has beautiful character moments and it’s visually gorgeous. But in the last act, when all the plot threads have to come together, everything begins to fall apart. “Smile” can’t seem to decide what kind of story it is trying to tell. And its approach to grief left me feeling intensely uncomfortable.

“Smile” starts off strong with great moments between the Doctor and Bill as they properly explore the TARDIS and set off on their first adventure. It’s refreshing to see this Doctor really working to build a relationship with a new companion. It provides opportunities to see Peter Capaldi’s fanboyish charm balanced with his Doctor’s more irascible moods. And the dynamic Pearl Mackie is building with his Doctor continues to be delightful. I’ll always be a fan of the irreverent student/cynical teacher dynamic, and Bill keeps catching the Doctor off-guard with all the right questions.

But Bill’s only just beginning to truly understand who her mysterious space tutor is. Connecting the TARDIS’s Police Box disguise to the Doctor’s self-appointed role as the universe’s police man is a tried and true plot note at this point, but I did like the way “Smile” undercut it slightly with the Doctor’s explicit demand that Bill not sentimentalize him. He isn’t the kindly police man helping out, he’s the man who will lead you into the belly of the beast. But for now, Bill keeps on smiling.

The episode starts to fall apart once the Doctor reveals why the emojibots/Vardy have been attacking the humans -- a plague of grief. This could have been a really interesting story. Unfortunately, the execution is clumsy to the point where I felt physically uncomfortable watching it.

First, some context. In the past five months, my family has quite literally experienced a plague of grief. There have been multiple deaths and multiple life-threatening illnesses. The grief from each moment has been cascading and compounding on top of the next. When the Doctor talked about how grief can spread like a plague, I understood that incredibly intimately. But “Smile” weaponized grief without actually providing anything meaningful.

In this new utopia, expressing grief can get you killed. All negative emotions must be hidden and suppressed. A forced smile can fool the system long enough to let you survive, but you live under the constant threat that those feelings will bubble up and endanger you at any moment. And sharing them only risks endangering your friends and family. Isolation and performative happiness is survival, for everyone.

That’s an interesting situation to explore. But “Smile” can’t seem to decide what kind of story it wants to be, or what message about grief it wants to tell. At first we seem to be building towards a classic dystopia story. Humans have created a technology to meet all of their needs and make them perfectly happy, but failed to give it the ability to understand that some negative emotions are natural and necessary. And so they’re forced to perform happiness in order to survive.

But then we end on a Battlestar Galactica-ish story about an artificial intelligence gaining consciousness and becoming its own species. It was very disorienting, as there was absolutely no build up towards it. There was no indication that these robots were doing anything more than they were programmed to do, nothing thematically to indicate this was a conflict of values or a result of humans misusing the creatures they’d created to their work for them. It's a solution to a problem we weren’t facing, with the end result that the humans seem unsympathetic after being forced to perform happiness for an indifferent system that massacred them in droves.

And as a person actively experiencing a monumental amount of grief, it made me intensely uncomfortable. The earlier theme about policing our grief was an emotional situation that anyone who is grieving can relate to. We’ve all forced ourselves to plaster on a grin just to make it through the day. We’ve all isolated ourselves to avoid making other people uncomfortable by exposing them to our grief and sadness. It really, really sucks to try to pretend everything is okay when you just want to collapse into tears. It could’ve been really interesting to challenge a system enforcing happiness. Instead we had our grief dredged up only to be smacked upside the head and told we weren’t sympathizing enough with the creatures policing it. And that final joke about the emojibots collecting rent and flashing a money symbol emoji was inexplicably glib.

"Smile” also never really landed any of the social critiques it seemed to be aiming for. With it’s cutesy robots that communicate in emojis and wearable technology, the Doctor remarks that this is the utopia of vacuous teens.

Someone stop me from replying with an “Old man yells at cloud” meme.

This critique of emojis is surprisingly hackneyed from writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who seemed to have such a positive impression of them in his interview with Doctor Who Magazine. You can interpret the meaning of emoji in “Smile” a lot of different ways, but there’s nothing explicitly challenging the Doctor’s statement that emojis are the language of empty headed millennials, which is just incredibly disappointing. Especially because you know this criticism is going to fall particularly hard on emoji’s most dedicated users -- teenage girls. If I want to hear someone call emoji-users "vacuous teens,” I can just go read one of TIME magazine's think-pieces on millennials. I don’t need to hear it from Doctor Who.

It’s even more disappointing because "Smile” very nearly made an interesting commentary on the performative nature of emoji. It’s easy to project an image of boundless happiness when you can cover up how you really feel with an endless line of 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂. How many times have you responded to messages with a smiley emoji because you don’t feel like you can share what’s actually bothering you?

Social media platforms are especially ill-equipped to handle negative emotions like grief. On a platform where everyone is supposed to see how you are feeling all the time, but pressures everyone to put forward an image of their happiest self, where is there space for negative emotions like grief? Algorithms that display content on our social media feeds can (and do) choose to filter out posts referencing grief. And when you do post about grief, how is your network supposed to respond? Is Twitter’s heart emoji appropriate? Has Facebook provided a sufficient number of emojis to reflect our variable moods?

But while emojis can be performative, they can also enrich text based communications and provide a new way to express emotions. I’ve also ended many conversations lately with “🙂” to show that I’m okay after sharing something sad. Grief isn’t always expressed with sobs. Sometimes, it’s expressed with a smile. But my friend living in another country can’t see that when I’m sending them a text. So we find new ways to express ourselves.

After all, we aren’t Cybermen. 🤖

#Doctor Who #Smile #Feminism #Whovian Feminism #Reviews

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timothyyreyes-blog · 5 years ago

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C5 Artist Conversation

Artist: Deanna M. Falcone

Exhibition: “Body/Mind”

Media : Acrylic Paint, Mixed Media Collage, on Arches Paper

Gallery: Marilyn Werby Gallery

Website: N/A

Instagram : N/A

Deanna is an undergraduate student in the arts major from the ceramics program at CSULB. She is pursuing her MFA in ceramics as well. Falcone is proud of herself and her identity and is interested in intuition and emotion. Her interests include eating and binge-watching her favorite animes and tv shows. Lots of her ideas come from everyday emotions or something she will just see along in the natural day. Her ideas of work explore internal divisions and shifting perceptions of the self in context to identity. The decorative outside scrolls speak to the banality and artifice of the scripted roles we play everyday, whether its culturally, demographically, and professionally. The flanking of a center scroll presented is intended to represent authentic awareness held in the body by experience, intuition, and emotion.

Falcone works with very large pieces in order to portray her creativity and ideas, almost 9 feet tall. Her art is set up with two large scrolls in between a smaller scroll with fragments of collaged media. The two larger scrolls are dark brown and as you move downward, colors of blue and white are implemented. The middle scroll is blue with a narrow strip of mixed media going down towards it. It is made up of Arches paper with acrylic paint on top of it and the scrolls look textured from the rest of the blue. The colors are mostly consisted of the blue family, except the mixed media portion. With this process, raw and intimate objects are assembled vignettes and offer no pretense or fakery. The process id mediative, slow, and self-reflective. This gives the opportunity to greater personal awareness of actions and reactions within her life and to those who she cares about.

The flanking painted scrolls are rendered in a fast automatic calligraphic freehand a style of mark market making an format that extends Asian far E tradition of calligraphy to modern and contemporary art making of the 20th century some influential artists like mark Tobey we all utilized a form of automatisme in their mark marking as an intentional breaking out from conventional drawing. In this work I proposed the inverse where these marks are created with the thoughtless hand simply going through the gesture of an enforced cursive handwriting as an action of rote mechanical muscle memory that prompted intentionally decorative rather than expressive quality. The stylization reinforces the reference of an artificial the vague an unoriginal as a metaphor for public personas and rolls with our assumed identities socially professionally and sometimes personally. Like the penal decorative surface which is developed to be pleasing and beautiful that the kids of our identities of doctors at a public selves services circumferentor authentic character allowing the public friction to be more acceptable version of ourselves in a given set of conditions or environments.

This exhibition allowed me to have an outside perspective on what art and ceramics really means to me. I really found myself fanticizing and remebering what it was like to be free as a child with no certain reconstructions tying me down. It truly is something special, what Falcone accomplishes and portrays in her work. I hope she continues to do this throughout her life as she really does hold true talent and art that tell stories and ultimately makes her audience remember and reminisce.

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limejuicer1862 · 6 years ago

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Gabriel Rosenstock,

according to Wikipedia,

(born 1949) is an Irish writer who works chiefly in the Irish language. A member of Aosdána, he is poet, playwright, haikuist, tankaist, essayist, and author/translator of over 180 books, mostly in Irish. Born in Kilfinane, County Limerick, he currently resides in Dublin.

Rosenstock’s father George was a doctor and writer from Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, who served as a German army doctor in World War II. His mother was a nurse from County Galway. Gabriel was the third of six children and the first born in Ireland. He was educated locally in Kilfinane, then in Mount Sackville, Co Dublin; exhibiting an early interest in anarchism he was expelled from Gormanston College, Co. Meath and exiled to Rockwell College, Co. Tipperary; then on to University College Cork.

His son Tristan Rosenstock is a member of the traditional Irish quintet Téada, and impressionist/actor Mario Rosenstock is his nephew.

Rosenstock worked for some time on the television series Anois is Arís on RTÉ, then on the weekly newspaper Anois. Until his retirement he worked with An Gúm, the publications branch of Foras na Gaeilge, the North-South body which promotes the Irish language.

Although he has worked in prose, drama and translation, Rosenstock is primarily known as a poet. He has written or translated over 180 books.

He has edited and contributed to books of haiku in Irish, English, Scots and Japanese. He is a prolific translator into Irish of international poetry (among others Ko Un, Seamus Heaney, K. Satchidanandan, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Iqbal, Hilde Domin, Peter Huchel), plays (Beckett, Frisch, Yeats) and songs (Bob Dylan, Kate Bush, The Pogues, Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell). He also has singable Irish translations of Lieder and other art songs.[1]

He appears in the anthology Best European Fiction 2012, edited by Aleksandar Hemon, with a preface by Nicole Krauss (Dalkey Archive Press).[2] He gave the keynote address to Haiku Canada in 2015.

His being named as Lineage Holder of Celtic Buddhism inspired the latest title in a rich output of haiku collections: Antlered Stag of Dawn (Onslaught Press, Oxford, 2015), haiku in Irish and English with translations into Japanese and Scots Lallans.

He also writes for children, in prose and verse. Haiku Más É Do Thoil É! (An Gúm) won the Children’s Books Judges’ Special Prize in 2015.

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Rosenstock#Biography

http://roghaghabriel.blogspot.ie/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=gabriel+rosenstock

The Interview

Q. 1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

I think the Muse came a-courting a long, long time ago, in an age before Gutenberg, an age before papyrus, when the poet was what he always is – though the role is suppressed today – a shaman.

She keeps coming – trying to possess me fully – but she knows I’m elusive, elusive as she is. We are both Spirit, pretending to be flesh, to be real. It’s a divine play, a sport, a leela as they say in India. I also write and translate for children – mainly in Irish, or Gaelic, and this is also leelai, pure and simple!

Ireland and India have so much in common. The writings of Myles Dillon and Michael Dames are good starting points for anyone interested in exploring that connection.

Ireland herself takes her name from a tripartite goddess and I dedicated a year to her in a bilingual book inspired by the devotional poetry of India, bhakti:

https://www.overdrive.com/media/796797/bliain-an-bhande-year-of-the-goddess

I mentioned the poet-shaman. There are very few courses in Creative Writing today that teach you how to be a shaman: it can’t be taught! So they teach form iinstead, how to write a sonnet or a villanelle – five tercets and a quatrain, is it? Enjambment anybody? Poets daringly continue a phrase after a line break and expect applause.

Irish poets learn your trade, sing whatever is well made. Yeats (whom I love) has a lot to answer for. Learn your trade! Poets today are tradeswomen and tradesmen for the most part. All form, no spirit, no melody that breaks the heart.

No heart. So, the great challenge today, in my book, is to reconnect with Spirit. Otherwise, forget it.

The only way to write is to write – and read, of course. Trust the inner ear – not what the manuals tell you – trust the heart, trust language. It’s not a lifeless tool in your hands, you silly tradesman. It’s alive, it’s divine. May your poetry be a sacrifice to her!

Having said all that, I occasionally teach haiku. The way I teach haiku is simply to present the works of the grandmasters of haiku, hoping that their spirit will ”catch’ and inflame the acolyte. Many believe that Basho was the grandmaster of haibun – prose speckled with haiku – and that the greatest of the haiku masters was Buson. I cobbled together new versions of Buson, in Irish and English, a volume which also contains versions in Scots by John McDonald:

https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Over-Tagoto-Selected-Haiku-ebook/dp/B00WUXQZ54

We need more multilingual books of poetry, tanka and haiku. We need to free ourselves from the dying clutches of the Anglosphere and listen to real poetry in languages which still cherish the divine music of the spheres: one can hear that sacred music in the voice of Scots-Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, even when he reads his masterpiece Hallaig in English translation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzewXmgVzL4

*** ***

Haiku Enlightenment and Haiku, the Gentle Art of Disappearing are two introductions to haiku and I hope that their titles reflect the spiritual basis of haiku, something which many haikuists ignore at their peril, I regret to say; for young readers (say, 8-12 years) there’s a book called Fluttering their Way into My Head:

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1782010882/evertype-20

True haiku – Zen-haiku – is egoless and spontaneous and allows for ambiguity – the reader must make sense of it by drawing on her own experiences, dreams, memories and so on – and yet it’s happening in the Now (if there’s such a thing as the Now).. I’m fully aware of promoting a book such as Fluttering their Way into My Head and speaking at the same time about ego-lessness! But, you see, I don’t identify with ‘my’ books as ‘mine’. They are about as ‘mine’ as is the moon over Tagoto.

Q. 2.Ted Hughes would be glad you extol the shamanic. Who introduced you to the shamanic in poetry?

Does one need an introduction? I hold shamanism to be a vital part of my literary and cultural heritage.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/cg1/index.htm

I can identify with the world of Carmina Gadelica whilst the world of Philp Larkin is alien to me.

Interesting that you should mention Hughes. I advise aspiring poets to wean themselves from the dominance of English-language literature, especially when it expresses itself in WASPish terms. I know many American poets, some of whom I’ve met at literary festivals, others with whom I have a friendly e-mail acquaintance. Many of them seem straitjacketed by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant way of walking, talking, eating, drinking, dressing – and writing! I translated a volume of poems, Cuerpo en llamas, by the late Chicano poet Francisco X. Alarcon into Irish and invited him to Ireland for the launch. He turned out to be a shaman-poet. The genuine article. We recorded the book on a cassette (built-in obsolescence?) and the opening invocation was in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, the language of his grandmother. I had come across Aztec poetry before, via anthologies by the likes of Jerome Rothenberg, but didn’t realize until then that Nahuatl was a living language.

During his brief stay in Ireland, Francisco gave me an Aztec name, Xolotl. I wrote a long poem of that title – in a kind of shamanic frenzy – and put it away, out of sight. Years later I looked at it again and it’s the longest poem in my selected poems translated from the Irish, The Flea Market in Valparaiso. Here’s a link to the book and a review:

https://www.cic.ie/en/books/published-books/margadh-na-miol-in-valparaiso

I’ll let the review speak for itself. Expounding further on the role of the shaman poet is best left to others. But, I’ll say this much, Paul: artificial intelligence or AI has ‘advanced’ to such an extent that robots are now writing poetry – it would almost make you join the Luddites or inspire you to form your local branch of Anarcho-Primitivists!. I think we should be reading more of John Zerzan and Paul Cudenec to fully realize what kind of world we are creating for our grandchildren. Everybody says we can’t go back, we can’t stop the march of progress. Rubbish! Of course we can go back; I don’t like military metaphors but surely a wise general knows when to retreat?

Do we want poetry written by robots? Maybe it’s just science imitating life – so much poetry, especially in English, is artificial anyway. Futurologists talk of various possible disasters down the line – caused by our relentless ‘advancement’ such as shortage of energy supplies, of food and water, melting icecaps and so on and so forth. Overfishing will result in a shortage of fish. Nobody speaks of a shortage of poetry – it wouldn’t be disastrous enough, seemingly, nor would it bother mankind very much if we speeded up the death of languages, currently estimated at one language disappearing every fortnight. It’s the survival of the fittest, isn’t it?! Is it? Is that who we are, what we are?

So what if Irish dies, if Scottish Gaelic or Nahuatl dies, if Welsh dies, if Manx dies – again! If Beauty dies, so what? Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? Well, some of us are not willing to accept such a fatalistic scenario. The World Poetry Movement, for one, has sounded the alarm. Poets are not ‘joiners’ by nature but when the future of civilization is at stake, perhaps it’s time for all poets to become focused. Jack Hirschman, poet and social activist, describes the vision of the World Poetry Movement thus:

https://www.wpm2011.org/

��an end to war world-wide, and the creation of a world government that shares and distributes the wealth of the world generously and sensitively in the process of creating an equality that is nothing but the word Love in the eyes of everyone because it also recognizes E V E RY human being as a brother or sister. With no need of any wall separating an ‘I’ from a ‘You’, a ‘He’ from a ‘She’ …

This is a wise vision. Quixotic? Utopian? So what. We need to rekindle hope, we as citizens, we as poets.

I was fortunate enough in this my 69th year on earth, fortunate indeed to have a near-death experience. After recovering from multi-organ failure, I became conscious of the love that poured in streams at my bedside from my wife Eithne, my daughters Heilean, Saffron and Eabha, my son Tristan and conscious, as well, of the wave of reciprocated love that streamed from me to them. I was conscious, too, of the love and concern that came from friends, relations and fellow scribes.

Hirschman, above, is speaking of Love, the ultimate reality. Left-wing theorists should speak more often to us of love; it would help their cause. The author of The Wretched of the Earth tells us that his criticism of the colonizer is inspired by love, not hate.

For a long while I could not read or write. Then I asked one of my daughters would she kindly order me a copy of Palgrave’s Treasury: you see, English-language poetry was my first love, before I ‘discovered’ Irish and its potential,just as the author of Decolonising the Mind decided that African literature need not be in the language of the colonizer, French, English or Portuguese. His own outlawed language, Gikuyu, was best suited to express what he wanted to reveal. I also asked my daughter to bring me anything by my favourite author, Isaac Bashevis Singer? So, Mr Rosenstock, are you Jewish then? I used to think that my empathy for Singer’s work meant exactly that, but no, I’m not Jewish. It is the ancient art of storytelling, brought to perfection in his short stories, that makes me alive not to Jewishness as such but to humanity, in all its guises. And what of my attraction to Irish culture and to Indian philosophies, particularly Advaita and bhakti? Well, I once heard Ganesh playing Napoleon Crossing the Rhine on the uilleann pipes:

http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/viewtopic.php?t=44223

I jest. But I did have an out-of-body experience listening to piper Eoin Duignan in a pub in Dingle. Look, I don’t feel particularly Indian, German, Irish or Jewish – live Irish music and the ancient sounds of the Irish language can lift one and link one deeply to the universal spirit, the rich complexity that is the world of the senses, too; a deepening of a sense of place; a feeling for history. English carries imperial baggage with it. The scales fell from my eyes once I understood that through Irish, the literary medium of my choice, I could see and experience the world differently. Lucky Poet is a memoir by Scottish poet Hugh Mac Diarmid. It touches on some of these issues.

A year or so ago I came across an editorial in Poetry Ireland Review that mentioned at least half a dozen English poets.(I couldn’t figure out why. Was this a special edition of the review dedicated to new voices in English poetry? No.) We are still ‘looking across the pond’, i.e. to England. There is ample evidence, if you look for it, that many Anglophone Irish writers are suffering from a kind of literary Stockholm syndrome, that phenomenon described in 1973 as an extraordinary love and regard of the captured for the captor.

As an Anarchist, as an Advaitist and as an Irish-language poet, I value freedom and independence. It is the life blood of art. It may set you on a collision course against the Establishment but unless you are a Daoist poet content with herb-picking on a mountain, such a collision seems inevitable.

Q. 3. What is your daily writing routine?

I write or translate from about 10.a.m until 8pm. I suppose, ‘poet-shaman-translator’ is an accurate enough label to describe my activity. I don’t distinguish between so-called original writing, such as poetry, and translation (which I prefer to call ‘transcreation’). I see the practice of these arts as coming from the same pool of universal creative intelligence. John Minford, Emeritus Professor of Chinese, Australian National University, said something that caught my attention in Words Without Borders (Dec 7, 2018): ‘Hermits of ancient days practiced Taoist yodeling, a form of music that emulated the music of the spheres. Translation itself, the transformation of ideas and words, whereby self and the other merge into one, can be a form of Taoist practice . . .’ So, others may have ‘a daily writing routine’ as you call it I have something resembling a Taoist or Zen-Buddhist practice… maybe ‘practice’ is enough; it’s a more honest description than defining it as Taoist or Zen. It would be slightly ridiculous to call me a Taoist or anything else. I’ve admitted to being both an Anarchist and an Advaitist but really, all labels are rubbish. To paraphrase the essence of the Tao in The Taoist Way, a beautiful lecture by Alan Watts, ‘The Tao that can be labelled is not the Tao.

youtube

I translate a vast array of material for a multicultural blog: http://roghaghabriel.blogspot.ie/ I’m something of a technical dodo and must thank Aonghus O hAlmhain, blogmeister, for his work and patience. In recent years, my ‘practice’ has focused quite a lot on ekphrastic tanka and photo-haiku. The Culturium is a blog which is devoted to the arts as ‘practice’ in the meditative sense of the word: https://www.theculturium.com/?s=gabriel+rosenstock I have unsubscribed to various sites recently but two that remain are The Culturium and Poetry Chaikhana. A poet-friend, Cathal O Searcaigh, who writes mainly in Irish, gave me a volume of poems by a shaman-Taoist poet of the late Tan’g Dynasty, Li He. I began to write Taoist-flavoured poems in Irish and English, Conversations with Li He. When I get out of hospital (I’ve been hospitalized since September 2018) I’d love to continue with this project. I see a fellow-shaman in O Searcaigh and have translated him into English quite often over the years, most recently in a book called Out of the Wilderness: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Wilderness-Cathal-Searcaigh/dp/0995622523 It is not easy – in fact it is impossible – to convey the shamanic power of MacLean and O Searcaigh in English:

youtube

He is a lovely, lively conversationalist, as you can hear above. He and MacLean recite their poetry as though conscious of the fact that poetry was originally chant, the ecstatic chant – the trance – of the shaman. Alan Titley, in a discussion following the interview, joined by Frank Sewell and Art Hughes, speaks of Cathal’s work as an ‘act of reclamation’. Poetry lost its heart when it ditched chant, when the poet could no longer perform the role of shaman. Can we reclaim poetry? In the discussion, academic Art Hughes also talks about the disaster of the ‘printed page.’ Frank Sewell finds ‘strange echoes of home’ in Cathal’s references to the East. And Hughes talks about synthesis and the vision of Unity known to mystic of all traditions. It’s what Jack Hirschman alluded to previously when we touched on the World Poetry Movement. Is Jack a mystic?! We’re all closeted mystics if you ask me . . .

Q. 4. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

What’s young?! I was in my late teens when I read Speaking of Shiva, an anthology of bhakti verse edited by AK Ramanujan. I haven’t properly revisited the titles that ravished my youth. That bhakti anthology opened my heart to the Universe.

I longed to write something in the bhakti or neo-bhakti style and when the conditions were right, it turned out to be a volume in English, Uttering Her Name, addressed to a Muse-Goddess directly: my first faltering attempts at using e-mail. English was the only language we had in common. She was a poet from Venezuela whom I met at a Kurt Schwitters festival in Germany. She was on her way to have darshan of Mother Meera. I didn’t formerly ask her, ‘Excuse me, I wonder would you kindly play the role of Muse-Goddess as I have some urgent bhakti poems to compose.’ I just went ahead and wrote them, 200 in all, eventually whittled down to half that size. It took a long time to find a publisher:

https://www.amazon.com/Uttering-Her-Name-Gabriel-Rosenstock/dp/190705619X

I don’t think Uttering Her Name would have come about without the influence of the Ramanujan anthology.

Was it he who said that he inhabited that no-man’s-land which is the hyphen in ‘Anglo-Indian!’? He wrote a very poignant poem about revisiting his home and calling out ‘Mother’ but, of course, she wasn’t there. I would have liked to have known him. Very much. He was a distinguished folklorist, among other things and also wrote in Kannada, one of India’s important literary languages.

I was fortunate to hear songs in Irish as a child – not at home, mind you – and the best of them are unforgettable. One could call the best of our songs folk poetry of the highest order, superior in texture and melody to much of the poetry of our time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch? behv=8JjiLoD0ldc

Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh’s voice in the opening track is very expressive, very tender and yet there’s a glorious defiance as an undercurrent to the song that says, ‘Try out your ethnic cleansing on us, again and again, your genocidal madness; we are a people of poetry and song, imperishable song.’

The second track is in Scottish Gaelic. The songs of Gaeldom are a link to a people’s struggle, songs of love (‘profane’ and divine), exile, loneliness, companionship, laments and lullabies, songs that sing the thirst for freedom. The words are music in themselves – when sung, they wrench the heart.

Q. 5. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

The most intimate form of reading is that which one does as a poet-translator. I have translated or transcreated many poets from India and all of them speak very highly of K. Satchidanandan from Kerala. He is closely involved in many festivals and last year, in Calicut, the theme was ‘No Democracy without Dissent’

https://issuu.com/gabrielrosenstock/docs/satchi_rich_text.rtf

The poet-shaman-translator in me experienced various degrees of ecstasy when transcreating the poems of the Korean genius Ko Un:

https://www.amazon.com/Ko-Rogha-Dánta-Gabriel-Rosenstock-ebook/dp/B01FRAYDX2

My love for Cathal O Searcaigh and his poetry is well known. All three are outside of the Anglosphere, if such a thing is possible. Apart from those three, the site Words without Borders can be interesting. I’m grateful to English as a global language which introduces literature in translation to us all. I like ‘aboriginal’ poetry – the more aboriginal the better.The late Michael Davitt, with whom I co-founded the journal INNTI, has a line which says, ‘Ma bheireann carbhat orm, tachtfaidh se me’ – ‘if a cravat (or tie) catches hold of me, it will choke me.’ This is Irish aboriginalism alive and kicking! It says NO to the WASP and again NO. No thanks.

Q. 6. What would you say to who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

Write

Q. 7. Tell me about any writing projects you’re involved in at the moment.

Current writing projects: some writers are superstitious about current projects, as though they can only breathe a sigh of relief when the book is actually printed and published. Others like to trumpet their work in progress or publish extracts here and there.

Insanely prolific as I am, I usually have a number of irons in the fire. Do you know the origin of the phrase? It alludes to a blacksmith working on several pieces of iron at the same time. I remember being in a blacksmith’s forge as a child. A magical place. Lots of superstitions associated with iron, nails, horseshoes and so on. In Tibet they speak of ‘sky iron’ and I wrote a poem once inspired by that lore when I discovered that certain Tibetan singing bowls contain material from this ‘sky iron’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbFmtpeh9so

I posted the poem on a few YouTube sites that featured singing bowls. Scroll down a bit and you’ll find it, in Irish and English. That’s a rather roundabout way of saying I’m not going to reveal current projects. To be frank, I have a number of completed projects and I’d much prefer to see them published before embarking on fresh material, such as a volume of bilingual poems, in Irish and English, already mentioned, poems addressed to the Daoist poet-shaman Li He.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Gabriel Rosenstock Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

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conceptmedical2 · 6 years ago

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Ottawa Microblading – Complete Guide

Botox

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Botox: The Ultimate Guide to Botox in Ottawa

Facial expressions are an important part of life. No one wants to be frozen! However, strong repeated movements of underlying facial muscles create wrinkles and lines that become more visible as we age. At first, these lines only occur when we make facial expressions. However, over time, deeper lines and wrinkles start to be present at rest, and can really show our age. Botox is one option to address these lines and wrinkles. Botox Cosmetic has been used since 2002 as an evidence-based treatment to help prevent and improve the look of fine lines and wrinkles. Botox restores a more refreshed, youthful, and rested appearance. Who doesn’t want to look the best at their age?

What is Botox?

Botox is a cosmetic treatment that targets wrinkles and lines on your face caused by certain, repetitive facial muscle contractions. Every facial expression is a result of certain underlying muscle movements, which are typically involuntary. Over time, areas of the face where muscles are predominately active, such as between the eyes and forehead develop frown lines, forehead creases, and wrinkles. Botox is used to carefully relax these muscles and prevent specific involuntary muscle contractions from forming lines and wrinkles.

Is Botox right for me?

If you are looking for a treatment to improve existing lines or prevent new ones from forming, Botox may be the solution you’re looking for.

Patients typically opt for this procedure in order to treat crow’s feet (wrinkles on the side of the eyes), forehead creases, and treat frown lines between the eyes.

However, Botox can also be used on other regions such as the neck, lips, chin, and lower face region.

Will I look frozen like those celebrities?

Unfortunately, our reference point for minor cosmetic treatments are celebrities and people we see in the media.

Botox should never leave you feeling or looking fake or frozen! This is where the art really comes into play. When done correctly, Botox treatments will make you look and feel more refreshed and rested, never frozen or artificial.

Often our patients get comments like, “wow, your skin looks great,” and “did you just get back from vacation?” People may notice you look great, but no one should know why.

Fake and frozen is never the goal!

How much does Botox cost in Ottawa?

This really depends on the area being treated, the experience of the physician, and the amount of Botox that is required to treat your particular area.

Botox injections are usually measured in units. A particular area requires X number of units, and the cost is therefore partially based on the number of units required by that particular area.

Typically, an area such as the forehead requires between 8 to 10 units, while frown lines between the eyes usually require 20-30 units.

The experience of the person injecting your Botox also plays into the overall pricing. An experienced and reputable physician generally charges more per unit than someone who is less experienced.

At Concept Medical, only our qualified physicians treat patients with Botox Cosmetic. Concept Medical is a Double Diamond Allergan Practice, meaning that Concept Medical physicians inject more Botox than most clinics in Canada.

At Concept Medical, a forehead line treatment typically costs $150, while treating between the eyes (frown lines) or crow’s feet is typically $375.

Does it hurt?

Botox treatments are very quick and the physicians use an ultra-thin needle. Most patients feel a very small and temporary ‘prick’ sensation, but it is typically much more comfortable than patients expect.

The doctor may apply some numbing cream or ice to numb to the respective area prior to treatment. This is something that you can discuss with the doctor before the procedure, although most patients do not require this step.

What to expect the day I get Botox?

Not to worry, this shouldn’t be any different than a regular day! At Concept Medical we always start with a detailed medical consultation prior to any treatment to ensure the treatment is right for you.

Here is a quick summary of what to expect on the day of your treatment:

Given you have already had a consultation with your team, we already have a detailed understanding of your desired results, and we have discussed the treatment in detail.

The area may be cleaned to wipe of make-up.

Our physician will ask you to smile, frown, raise your eyebrows or ask you for a few other facial expressions to precisely identify the underlying muscles. This step is VERY important, as injecting Botox into the wrong muscles can lead to a less than ideal outcome or relaxation of the wrong muscles.

The physician will then proceed with micro-drops of Botox. A typical visit takes about 15 minutes from start to finish, with the actual treatment typically lasting about 1 minute.

What is the recovery like?

There is no downtime or recovery required after your appointment. Your doctor will most likely tell you to go on about your normal day. Most patients go right back to work! Directly following the injections, slight redness may occur, but typically disappears within 15 minutes.

You should avoid touching or rubbing the area until the next day and make sure to wait 48 hours to get a facial or face massage. The reason for this is that massaging the treated areas can spread the Botox to unintended areas of the face. Other than that there are no specific precautions following your Botox treatment.

What kind of results can I expect after the procedure?

Botox should results in the gentle reduction of fine lines and wrinkles, resulting in a more youthful, refreshed, and relaxed appearance.

Typically results begin to show in 3 days following the procedure, with full results becoming apparent at about 10-14 days afterward. If you have a big event coming up, make sure to plan accordingly. Of course, results vary depending on the patient, dosage, and the treated area.

How long does Botox last?

On average, results last four months before the body metabolizes the Botox. At this point, the treatment needs to be repeated in order to maintain the desired results.

What are the possible side effects?

Directly following the procedure, some redness may be apparent but should disappear within about 15 minutes. Bruising is very uncommon, but can happen anytime a small needle is placed into the skin. Serious Botox side effects are extremely rare, however, all the complications should be discussed with you at your consultation. It is important you do your research and get your Botox treatment done at a reputable clinic by an experienced clinician.

Additional FAQ’s

Botox while pregnant or breastfeeding

It is not recommended that women who are pregnant or are breastfeeding receive Botox treatments. There is no evidence that it is safe during pregnancy and breastfeeding. For this reason it is best to wait until after pregnancy and breastfeeding for Botox treatments.

Is Botox toxic?

Any drug or medication that is overused or taken at high dosage levels can be toxic to your body. However, the amount of Botox used for cosmetic purposes is far below the toxic level of the drug.

Is Botox only for women?

Certainly not. Men can receive Botox cosmetic treatments just as women do. In fact, cosmetic Botox treatments are increasing in popularity amongst the male population. Men are often looking for minimally invasive treatments to help them look and feel less aged, and more refreshed. At Concept Medical we see many male patients every day.

What is the minimum age to begin receiving Botox treatments?

There is no minimum age at which you can start to receive Botox. However, most patients who start to receive Botox are usually over the age of 20, with most patients over the age of 30. Most physicians will not treat patients with Botox Cosmetic who are under the age of 18.

Still curious about Botox Cosmetic? For more information, please contact us.

The post Ottawa Microblading – Complete Guide appeared first on Concept Medical Ottawa.

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type2diabetestreatments-blog · 8 years ago

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A Diabetic Artist's Lipstick Creations

New Post has been published on https://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/a-diabetic-artists-lipstick-creations/

A Diabetic Artist's Lipstick Creations

Putting on lipstick means more to one woman from Texas than just getting all prettied up for a night out on the town.

Nope, for fellow PWD (person with diabetes) Natalie Irish, those shades of lip color mean she's creating art.

Yes, she paints with her lips. On canvas. And produces remarkably amazing portraits of people like Marlyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, and the Dutchess Kate Middleton. That's just what she does, and is known as "the kissing artist" who uses lipstick as a means of artistic expression.

Natalie also happens to be an insulin-pumping type 1 who proudly refers to herself as "a cyborg."

Living with type 1 for just over a decade, the 29-year old from the Houston area hit celebrity status in mid-2011, when a long-overlooked YouTube video of her "lipstick art" that had been posted by her husband finally got some attention. An off-beat website called Oddity Central stumbled across that video and linked to the channel, catapulting her art into the public eye.

Since then, Natalie's name and artwork have appeared in national media and blogs, including high-profile spots like Good Morning America and the Huffington Post. Most recently, on Dec. 19, Natalie made an appearance on Conan O'Brien's Late Night show.

Natalie on Conan - Part One

Natalie on Conan - Part Two

This isn't the world she imagined for herself, although it's a dream come true for Natalie being able to be a full-time artist. After studying metal-smithing, ceramics and art at the University of North Texas and Alvin Community College, she took a "corporate job" working the front desk at a local veterinary clinic in Texas and was only doing art in her free time.

But she started having unexplained high and low blood sugars and got sick, often needing to leave and even passing out at work. That created problems with co-workers and she was scared for her own health, but no one believed she was really ill because she didn't "look sick." One day, Natalie received a letter in the mail from her pump-maker Medtronic alerting her to an infusion set recall and faulty infusion set and tubing -- proof that something was indeed wrong. But even that didn't convince her employer, so she eventually she left that job.

That brought Natalie into the fold as a full-time artist, devoted to her own creative expression.

Through the years, Natalie has made much more than lipstick art. She uses her hands quite often, and in the past she's used D-Supplies in her art, like pump supplies for conceptual jewelry beads, and broken syringes in her metalwork creations. On her right wrist, she sports a serpent-cross tattoo on that reads "Diabetic" with the date of her diagnosis: Oct. 30, 2000. It's much more stylish than a medical bracelet and is "fitting for an artist," she says.

Her website features all kinds of different thumbprints and lipstick pieces that can be ordered online, and Natalie tells us she's interested in getting involved in Diabetes Art Day (coming up on Feb. 4, 2013), possibly putting some lipstick art together for that! Though she's busy, Natalie took some time to talk with the 'Mine recently about her life with diabetes and her art career.

DM) Can you share your diabetes diagnosis story?

NI) I was diagnosed a few weeks after my 18th birthday, in my senior year of high school. It was also the day before Halloween... and all the candy that goes along with it. Good thing I didn't wait another day longer to go to the doctor. Six months later I was on a pump. Now I wear an Animas pump. It's pink, and waterproof, and awesome. I joke a lot about being a cyborg, especially with little kid pumpers. I tell them we're part robot -- how cool is that?!

How did you possibly get started making art with your mouth?

I've been making art since I could hold a crayon. I like to try every medium I can get my hands on. Drawing, painting, sewing, metal-smithing, ceramics... anything and everything. I've always sought out new ways to create and enjoy using everyday things in ways that they aren't intended. I have made several pieces with thumbprints before. Chuck Close has done some portraits in that manner, as well as other artists. It's all in the spirit of pointillism. Back in 2001, I was putting on some red lipstick to go out and see a show, and I blotted the lipstick on a bit of tissue. I saw the kiss print it left and decided I could paint with my lips in a similar way as with thumbprints.

Do you take your artistic talents to any diabetes organizations?

I have been involved in JDRF and ADA walks and events for years and I try to donate art to local gala and event auctions. I really enjoy working with the JDRF advocacy team. A couple of us met with (politician) Ron Paul a few years ago and I had a chance to speak with him. He had never even seen an insulin pump and was very interested in the technology. He said that it was ridiculous that we can put men on the moon, but do not yet have an artificial pancreas. A few weeks later he voted in support for more diabetes research funding.

OK, how cool was it meeting and talking with Conan on live TV?

I had a blast! He was a pleasure to work with and he really enjoyed the artwork. The crew working on the show are an amazing group of people and I had so much fun meeting all of them! Plus, it was very cool getting Conan to put on some lipstick and smooth his portrait -- nobody else can probably say they've gotten him to do that on TV!

Now that you're taking your art to such a broader audience, will you be focused on raising awareness about diabetes?

My main goal is to help get some awareness and educational information out there, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to speak to people about diabetes and insulin pumps. When most people hear that I have diabetes, they automatically assume type 2. Both type 1 and type 2 are terrible diseases, but they are also very different. Don't ever assume you know what someone else is going through. And don't take my word for it either; do a little research on your own. That part is easy... and mostly painless.

What an incredibly unusual talent, Natalie! We love what you're doing, and hope to get a chance to see some of your artwork up close and personal some time soon!

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

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conceptmedical2 · 6 years ago

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Botox: The Ultimate Guide to Botox in Ottawa

At first, these lines only occur when we make facial expressions. However, over time, deeper lines and wrinkles start to be present at rest, and can really show our age.

Botox is one option to address these lines and wrinkles.

Botox Cosmetic has been used since 2002 as an evidence-based treatment to help prevent and improve the look of fine lines and wrinkles. Botox restores a more refreshed, youthful, and rested appearance. Who doesn’t want to look the best at their age?

What is Botox?

Botox is a cosmetic treatment that targets wrinkles and lines on your face caused by certain, repetitive facial muscle contractions.

Every facial expression is a result of certain underlying muscle movements, which are typically involuntary. Over time, areas of the face where muscles are predominately active, such as between the eyes and forehead develop frown lines, forehead creases, and wrinkles.

Botox is used to carefully relax these muscles and prevent specific involuntary muscle contractions from forming lines and wrinkles.

Is Botox right for me?

If you are looking for a treatment to improve existing lines or prevent new ones from forming, Botox may be the solution you’re looking for.

Patients typically opt for this procedure in order to treat crow’s feet (wrinkles on the side of the eyes), forehead creases, and treat frown lines between the eyes.

However, Botox can also be used on other regions such as the neck, lips, chin, and lower face region.

Will I look frozen like those celebrities?

Unfortunately, our reference point for minor cosmetic treatments are celebrities and people we see in the media.

Often our patients get comments like, “wow, your skin looks great,” and “did you just get back from vacation?” People may notice you look great, but no one should know why.

Fake and frozen is never the goal!

How much does Botox cost in Ottawa?

This really depends on the area being treated, the experience of the physician, and the amount of Botox that is required to treat your particular area.

Botox injections are usually measured in units. A particular area requires X number of units, and the cost is therefore partially based on the number of units required by that particular area.

Typically, an area such as the forehead requires between 8 to 10 units, while frown lines between the eyes usually require 20-30 units.

The experience of the person injecting your Botox also plays into the overall pricing. An experienced and reputable physician generally charges more per unit than someone who is less experienced.

At Concept Medical, a forehead line treatment typically costs $150, while treating between the eyes (frown lines) or crow’s feet is typically $375.

Does it hurt?

What to expect the day I get Botox?

Here is a quick summary of what to expect on the day of your treatment:

Given you have already had a consultation with your team, we already have a detailed understanding of your desired results, and we have discussed the treatment in detail.

The area may be cleaned to wipe of make-up.

The physician will then proceed with micro-drops of Botox. A typical visit takes about 15 minutes from start to finish, with the actual treatment typically lasting about 1 minute.

What is the recovery like?

What kind of results can I expect after the procedure?

Botox should results in the gentle reduction of fine lines and wrinkles, resulting in a more youthful, refreshed, and relaxed appearance.

How long does Botox last?

On average, results last four months before the body metabolizes the Botox. At this point, the treatment needs to be repeated in order to maintain the desired results.

What are the possible side effects?

Directly following the procedure, some redness may be apparent but should disappear within about 15 minutes. Bruising is very uncommon, but can happen anytime a small needle is placed into the skin.

Serious Botox side effects are extremely rare, however, all the complications should be discussed with you at your consultation. It is important you do your research and get your Botox treatment done at a reputable clinic by an experienced clinician.

Additional FAQ’s

Botox while pregnant or breastfeeding

Is Botox toxic?

Any drug or medication that is overused or taken at high dosage levels can be toxic to your body. However, the amount of Botox used for cosmetic purposes is far below the toxic level of the drug.

Is Botox only for women?

What is the minimum age to begin receiving Botox treatments?

Still curious about Botox Cosmetic? For more information, please contact us.

The post Botox: The Ultimate Guide to Botox in Ottawa appeared first on Concept Medical.

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