Thursday, Nov 19 at 8pm, free admission at New Nothing Cinema, 16 Sherman St (off Folsom between 6th n 7th), SF, CA 94103, MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) with ROBERT DOBBS - The public is invited to this engaging dialogue with Robert Dobbs (live via video-phone Skype), and Gerry Fialka and the audience (live in the venue). New Media and experimental filmmaking's interrelationships with Marshall McLuhan and James Joyce will be probed as Menippean reinventions of the global theater. Dobbs and Fialka delve deep into film as art, abstract cinema, lyrical filmmaking, internet, cellphones, twitter, Second Life, and much more. Percept plunder for the recent future. 'Joyce's FINNEGANS WAKE is an encyclopedia of lore concerning the origins and effects of words, of writing, of roads and bricks, of telegraph, radio, and television on the changing hues of the human spectrum... In fact, FINNEGANS WAKE is the greatest guide to the media ever devised on this planet, and is a tremendous study of the action of all media upon the human psyche and sensorium.' - McLuhan. ROBERT DOBBS, poet and politician, is a provocative lecturer on Joyce and McLuhan. His seminal knowledge of new media and avant-garde cinema has developed through encounters with innovators from Michael Snow to Craig Baldwin, Frank Zappa to Sylvere Lotringer, Nam June Paik to Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage to Yoko Ono, Bucky Fuller to Captain Beefheart, and Tim Leary to Robert Anton Wilson. DOBBS performed at the McLuhan International Festival of the Future in Toronto, and his appearances at Columbia University, University of Toronto, among others, have generated fresh new insights and new metaphors.The best presentation of Dobbs' work is his book, PHATIC COMMUNION WITH BOB DOBBS. Today, he travels the world explaining our victory over the Android Meme, and the tracings of these activities are featured at http://www.fivebodied.com The LA Times has called Fialka 'the multi-media Renaissance man”, and the LA Weekly, a 'cultural revolutionary.' His public interview MESS series finally travels to the Bay Area. 'Gerry Fialka is the Studs Turkel of Venice, California - nurturing active participation for common ground.' - Michelle Raven, writer/producer, Discovery Channel. '(Fialka is a) Los Angeles-based independent media hero.'- Holly Willis. 'Fialka's cool questions are right at the heart of all my work. By far the best interview I've ever been treated to.' - Ondi Timoner, only two time Sundance Grand Jury winner. 'Fialka's interviews are more gratifying than one could imagine, exploring ideas that don't normally get discussed. With his MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) series, a cumulative effect emerges as each progressive interview builds upon and enhances the previous ones. His diligent efforts examine the impulses that motivate people. The secret to good conversation lies in the questions, and Fialka's questions are an art form.' - William McNally, Activist/Author In his book 'I, Fellini,' Federico Fellini wrote, 'I don't mind speaking autobiographically because I reveal less of myself talking about my real life than I do if I talk about the layer underneath, the one of my fantasies, dreams and imagination.' MESS peers into the portals of discovering this layer. MESS seeks what lies beyond this layer. Participants -- including writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians and activists -- are the early radar systems and rear-view mirrors detecting how major transformations in technology affect us. As we live in a MESS-age, this interactive series shakes people out of their regular agendas and reality tunnels. MESS promotes mapmakers who search for new lands and new data. MESS seeks meticulous understanding of every thing we see, hear , feel, taste, and smell, passionately needling the somnambulists and proving that learning can and must be fun. As McLuhan asked, 'How are you to argue with people who insist on sticking their heads in the in visible teeth of technology, calling the whole thing freedom?' 'Technologies are not mere exterior ads,' said Walter Ong, 'but also interior transformations of consciousness.' And, in his book Immediatism, Hakim Bey observed, 'Simply to meet face-to-face is already an action against the forces that oppress us by isolation, by loneliness, by the trance of media.' 'If it works, it's obsolete.' -- McLuhan. 'Another fine MESS.' - - Random Lengths News. - - - - - - - 'Gerry Fialka's MESS series is a unique opportunity to meet special artists in a unique, intimate and revealing setting. His intelligence and dedication to research leads to a stimulating and highly interactive interview that is both entertaining and amazingly enlightening.' - Phil Proctor of the 'Firesign Theatre' 'Gerry Fialka is very special, well prepared and ready to take risks - I learned about my self! My kind of interviewer. ' -Martin Perlich, author THE ART OF THE INTERVIEW 'Gerry Fialka is willing to enter in new discussions even if they go against his current views. Fialka's multilayered delivery of ideas encourages the search for new questions and new paradigms that extend beyond. He is well-informed, off-beat and articulate - one of the most fascinating people I've met.' - Keith Jeffries, Ascalon Films 'What a great interview Fialka conducted with me. He made it so easy. There used to be people on TV who conducted interviews in depth, though few as good as Fialka. Tom Snyder was the last.' - Orson Bean 'I am very impressed by Gerry Fialka's energy in bringing together groups of people to think about ideas. That is very much in the McLuhan spirit, to create and foster interdisciplinary, living, educational projects in which people can talk about ideas. [Fialka] creates forums that bring together a plurality of critical perspectives into one multivalent conversation. ' - Janine Marchessault, author of MARSHALL McLUHAN:COSMIC MEDIA. 'When I participated in Fialka's MESS, he created a unique through-space kind of meditation. This collective free high fires up the ability/consciousness of not judging. It makes a gap between saying and meaning leaving a lot of room for interpretation. Really amazing event.' - Marc Herbst, editor-Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. 'Fialka's MESS interview series is a fascinating evening with stimulating questions and approaches. I surely enjoyed the depth of the arena and a chance to pontificate on questions of the spirit in a relaxed scenario and free speech surrounding.' - Lady Lord Buckley 'The confusion is not my invention...It is all around us and our only chance is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess.' -Samuel Beckett.