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Advocacy Environment Geoff Ebbs Moral Own Power Print Religion Social Stage

Giovanni Ebono

Founder of the Ebono Institute, Giovanni Ebono, is the nom-de-plum of Geoff Ebbs.

He was formed as a comic, working the club circuit in Byron Bay and the NSW Northern Rivers. In the tradition of Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Mark Twain or Lewis Carroll, the character became more famous than the originator, and took on a life of his own.

Giovanni had his own radio show, comedy circuit and theatre following before I decided to legitimise him through a legal name change and run him for politics. He ran for the Federal seat of Richmond in 2007 and 2010, did much better than Geoff Ebbs in 2013 and 2014 and has his own Wikipedia page.

Among other mainstream positions he was the general manager of sewage and water engineering firm, Simmonds & Bristow. I am still asked to present as the character or comment on historical events that he was involved in. Most recently he was asked to contribute a chapter to a book on the history of the NSW Greens and the role of the socialist workers clique that took over the NSW Greens party in the mid nineties and have dominated it since.

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Advocacy Audio/Visual Environment Geoff Ebbs Moral Own Power Social

The Generator

The Generator is a news service that started life as a radio show in Byron Bay, northern NSW in 2005. The Generator News was broadcast via the Community Radio Network to 40 stations around the country from 2007 until 2010. Most recently it was broadcast on 4ZZZfm Brisbane at midday on Monday and Wednesday. The website, thegenerator.news. continues to provide a valuable historical record of environmental news from 2005 until the current day.

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Advocacy Environment Geoff Ebbs Hired Moral Print

Giovanni_s Guide to Saving the Planet

This book was commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald based on the radio work I was doing with the Generator. It combined a directory of services, tips and hints for living sustainably with useful research into the relative impact of various activities on climate change. The foreword, written by Professor Ian Lowe, reminds us that “the future is something we are creating, not somewhere we are going.”

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Audio/Visual Code Computing Geoff Ebbs Meaning Own Puzzle Stage Tool

CHIME

Click the pic to see the PDF

One of the founding principles of UNIX was that Text is the universal interface.

While there has been much debate about that concept, we still assume that text is the key to everything from scripting languages to voice recognition.

Need that be the case?

What if music was the way that we interacted with the computer?

Here is a video, pdf and soundtrack exploring the concept.

Coincidentally, Radio National ran an interesting discussion on Artificial Intelligence and text the day this project was posted.

The video mimes a worker discovering that his golf ball typewriter has suddenly become musical.

The PDF provides the theoretical background to that concept

And the sound file provides an audio reflection on the concept.