The Bauhaus manifesto of 1919 called on artists to make use of the tools of the trades such as welding, electricity and plastics. Douglas Davis' “Guide to Art on the Internet” (2002) extents this call to the new media, calling on artists to develop their skills into interdisciplinary art in the new century / millennium, leaving “the Bauhaus tools buried under their revered dust.” (p63)

A new exhibition on the theme of flies is now to be seen at the dotAtelier exhibition space

See the new dotAtelier exhibition at rock.

The latest strategy to save the Tasmanian devil is to place a number of them in quarantine on two islands off the coast. This is intended to maintain a healthy population away from the other sick devils. This is reminiscent of the last Tasmanian Aboriginals who were relocated to islands where they almost completely died out.

Despite this, the Department of Primary Industries, Water and the Environment answers the question in their FAQ:
“Are devils endangered?” with a firm: “No:”
They are researching what kind of cancer it might be.

Without the Tasmanian devil, the landscape of Tasmania will be lacking its most important predator. The devil is now threatened by a condition which kills it slowly, as Telepolis reports (in German).

The cause of this appears to be a combination of introduced dogs and poisons used in the logging industry. The Tasmania people do not want to talk about these reasons, despite the huge income they get from tourists, who want to see and hear the indigenous devils. In Australia, we hear nothing about endangered devils.

Dogs carry the disease which is killing devils, but it does not kill them. The huge numbers of dogs which are now kept in Australia have become a vector for the devil disease.

The forests of Tasmania are clear-felled for their wood. All the trees are removed and new seedlings are planted. Poison baits are laid for wallabies and other plant-eating animals to protect these small trees. The dead wallabies are then eaten by devils.

The combination of poisons in the environment and ever-present domestic dogs weakens and infects the devils. They get tumours on their faces which slowly grow, causing starvation of the faceless animals.

JavaScripts should be unobtrusive. They should make using the site easier rather than cluttering it up with unwanted events. Menus that are hidden and only show when the mouse is over them are a good example. Special effects can assist the user in recognising what is happening.

Good JavaScript should be reusable and well-documented so that you and other people can work out what it does at another time. It should also work properly and not conflict with other JavaScripts on the same site. Ideally it should be in small chunks of code avoiding spaghetti-code. With blogs, however, this may not be so easily achievable if one piece of code conflicts with another. Scripts should be in separate files rather than in-line, keeping them separate from the html which they operate in.

Accessibility is also important and often forgotten. Mouse-over events should be complemented with keyboard events to allow non-mouse-users to access the JavaScript effects. This is important for blind internet users.

Secunia warns about a JavaScript vulnerability in many browsers including Internet Explorer and Firefox. You can test if your browser is safe at:
http://secunia.com/multiple_browsers_dialog_origin_vulnerability_test/
The advice to users of these browsers is not to open secure websites and unsecure websites at the same time. Do your banking with only your bank connection open until this vulnerability has been fixed.

A new multimedia event has just been added to the dotAtelier nature music series. To hear the cascading water of one of Sydney's prettiest waterfalls, follow this link and click on waterfall:

With Java Script you can add an image to your blog that sits directly over any part of the page. Especially if there is an ad there, a picture looks much nicer. To do this you make a div object which contains the image you want to use. For this, you need to add this code to the HTML (Quellecode anzeigen):

<div id = "blume" style="position: absolute; top:150px; left:500px; z-index:10; width:80px; height:80px; background-color:transparent"><img src="http://www.path.to.your.image.file/hibbertiatrans.gif" id="pici" alt=""></div>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" TYPE="text/javascript" src="http://www.path.to.your.scripts/scripts/div3.js">
</SCRIPT>
In the body of the text, under the div object, is where you have to place the Java Script to make the image do something. This script makes the image move back and forth. The "top" and "left" values control the position of the image. Make a second div if you like with another id, such as "blum2", by copying and pasting the div tagged part.
You can find the source of my JavaScript  file here.
As long as the blog entry containing the div tag is on the page which is opened, the image will be there. Once the entry moves off the bottom of the page, you will have to enter it again near the top of your blog entries. Nothing actually needs to appear on the page in writing, just the div object.
Have fun and let me know if you have any problems.

show images

The relationship between the stars and the Earth has been theorised throughout history. Egyptian pyramids were built modelled on star constellations, creating a correspondence between the night sky and the Earth. Aborigines represented constellations on sandstone platforms.

In modern cities, most stars are invisible. The inhabitants live in the illusion of finite space, which convinces them that their own doings and their world of “real objects” is all there is. The context of life, in its small and large dimensions, is blocked out of perception.

Click to view images

This new exhibition includes images of the east coast especially around Sydney and Tuckers Rocks near Bellingen. The ocean images capture special moments of a watery nature, moments which quickly disappear but elicit feelings of the endlessness of time and change.

A beautiful scented Australian flower