I had aimed to re-launch Photobombing over the summer, but found myself bogged down with trying to finish the recording for my album (to meet a deadline for Creaked Records), so Photobombing has been delayed again. However I’ve reformulated quite what I want to achieve with it. Now I’m going to operate it just like a pyramid scheme; I will send a number of photographs to people that I know. With each one I will ask them to take a new photograph incorporating the original. This new image will go onto the website, and will be geotagged to show how it has travelled. Then I want the person to send the original photograph onto someone else and repeat the process. Eventually I should end up with a site that tracks the progress of these photographs in an ever expanding network, with photographic evidence the whole way a long. Why? Why not?

Prayer 2.0 is going brilliantly, I’ve ‘advertised’ the site on the web, and combined with the existing user base the site has become quite vibrant; with some extremely varied content. I’m mulling over the next stage, what to do with all of the messages; a book maybe?

Otherwise, I’ve “launched” (or more realistically, ‘tested’) The 100 Portraits; a concept where I distribute 100 photographic portraits of a person, each with a question on the back, to complete strangers and ideally at random. The aim is that the strangers will answer the questions, based on the image that they see. I tested it with the first year Interactive Arts students, by asking their tutor to hand them out. So far I’m only approaching 30 portraits that have answers, but take a look here.

Also I’m 99% done with the recording of my album, so fingers X’d we’re on for a 2009 release. Thanks Leo :o)

Also its my birthday next week. So happy 25th me!

http://truthseekingsouls.org/ is an interesting site with loads of information on all kinds of things to do with spirituality, this article; http://truthseekingsouls.org/2007/03/29/prayer.aspx has some nice extracts from Wikipedia. Also I liked this on “Dharma”

“Dharma” means “protection”. By practising Buddha’s teachings we protect ourself from suffering and problems. All the problems we experience during daily life originate in ignorance, and the method for eliminating ignorance is to practise Dharma.

Practising Dharma is the supreme method for improving the quality of our human life. The quality of life depends not upon external development or material progress, but upon the inner development of peace and happiness. For example, in the past many Buddhists lived in poor and underdeveloped countries, but they were able to find pure, lasting happiness by practising what Buddha had taught.

Iann Schonken is an evangelist blogger. This article begins with;

What is Prayer?

(a) A reverent petition made to God
(b) An act of communion with God
(c) Communication with an all-knowing, ever-present, almighty and loving God
(d) Adoration; Confession; Thanksgiving; Supplication (earnest petition)

It seems strange to me that it is a “reverent” petition – the definition of reverent appears to be Godly, so that makes it a Godly petition made to God. English I guess.

This one is a comic site, the commandments 2.0, the first three;

1. I am the LORD2.0 your God who brought you out of the land of web1.0, from normal colours and no tags
2. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me (except good friend – Google)
3. Thou shalt use “2.0″ or “beta” and pastels colours on your every new website project

http://cauley.preachersfiles.com/prayer/ has bible lessons and a wealth of in-depth information on the how the Church of Christ view prayer. Not exactly for me, but certainly interesting.

Yeshuablog says;

Many people question what is prayer because they desire to pray, but don’t know how. Consider these tips:
Praying is like talking to your best friend! It’s easy to talk to someone when you know they love you unconditionally!

This is taken from www.prayingconstantly.com;

Different faiths number them different. We base many of our laws on them, yet won’t display them in a public setting. If you can only learn one, learn the first one and the others will never be a problem.

The sections on manhood and adultery seem especially confusing!

While working with my spam/art concept, it occurred to me that a parallel could be drawn somehow between user-generated spam and the act of a prayer. The reasoning goes like this; one definition of Prayer (from Wikipedia) is this;

Prayer is a mental exercise and type of meditation in which the participant (the prayer) in many but not all forms of prayer attempts to loose mental connection with Earth and transport their mind to another person not on Earth. In most prayer this person is God or another deity. …

This definition is fairly non-specific, but it can be taken that when someone Prays they are trying to communicate or to impart their emotions or thoughts to another person or being – normally God.

In my model the mental exercise becomes the physical one of consolidating ones thoughts to computer-based textual information and the deity is replaced by an amorphous group of other internet users.

I have no aversion to Prayer, but unfortunately I do find it entirely inaccessible, mainly because I’m lumbered with disbelief in God. Prayer 2.0 is an attempt at reflecting upon that and engaging others to do the same, regardless of their point of view. Maybe we can all help each other.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks writing the code, and now Prayer 2.0 lives at prayer2.net.