Sun, 17 Apr 2005
particle/wave is over. Three notable things stand out. First is the product from the transmitter building workshop. It's a functioning FM transmitter we built by hand on a 3 x 2 inch board. It is 0.15 watts and has a range of about 25 feet. I have the specs so getting American parts (the parts we used were German) shouldn't be hard. Then I can start teaching others how to build them. Next is a piece of software called User Radio, which in it's current form is a collection of pieces that allow one to upload audio in many file formats, or a stream from the Internet into an online mixer. Users then can fade channels in and out. It works really well and the guy who made it is very helpful. It got me thinking that it (or something like it) can be used for our monthly CMRN broadcasts. The third is really a combination of all the performances. The opening night party had a this telephone installation in the dining room. Each telephone was wired directly to a big speaker, which were in turn wired to a computer processing any sound that went into the telephone to delay and loop. It was one of the most fun installations I've seen and everyone loved it. Then there was a performance with these tiny machines transmitting and sequencing and feeding back into themselves over radio frequencies. The noises were very sophosticated for such a simple configuration. I'm really into these euro art festivals. All the people I talk to say there are many of them all over the continent. It's so much better than anything I've been to in the states, which I realize is a totally cliche thing to say but still true.posted at: 14:16 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Thu, 14 Apr 2005
Not much on these pages in the last month. After losing my job, freaking out, getting another job which is far more interesting and preparing to take my first trip to Europe, I've been more than distracted. When I was 16 years old I discovered the music of Aphex Twin. At the time I hadn't heard anything like it, nor did a lot of other people I knew. It totally changed the way I started listening to music, and consequently making it. Being an urban kid stuck between suburban parents one of my wild fantasies was when I got older I would go to England on tour with my own music, befriend Mr. Twin and everything would live happily ever after. I would only go to Europe under these conditions. Any other way would be terribly boring since I would just be a tourist. It's been 11 years since then. I'm writing this in a hotel room in Helsinki, Finland at five in the morning because the time travel has made me sleepless at opposite hours. I'm participating in a electronic arts festival called Pixel Ache, at the contemporary art museum in Helsinki called Kiasma. A sub genre of the festival is a workshop group operating under the title Particle/Wave, and is a group of about 30 of us who are working with Hybrid Radio, which is any way to transmit or broadcast audio to a location, not only via popular ways like FM. This obviously involves The Internet, which is what interested me. This is the first place I will present Auppix to others and put it into practice. In order to do this right, I have to have the language down. How is Auppix different than the three other big LiveCD distributions? There's Dynabolic, Knoppix and a lesser known project called DiMuDi, which actually got government funding. Auppix is different because in addition to a set of tools to produce art, it also is art itself. The group we have working on it are more interested in audio and visual art than hacking. The graphical interface is just as important as the software tools on the disc. The writing on theory of transmission art provides information of equal value as the documentation to how to create a stream. My vision for Auppix is that it will be the first Linux distribution which is generic enough to be used by others to express their individual voice yet is specific enough that it can be identified as a work in it's self. Apple has successfully done this with OS X to a point. Their goals are obviously different than ours but the comitment to having one's digital tools be aesthetically pleasing are the same. Unfortunately, because my the jetlag, I slept through all of the activities and performances on the first day except for the orientation, which was fine. I'll have more to write about as the week goes on. Here's a photo from the flight across the Atlantic ocean
posted at: 13:01 | path: | permanent link to this entry
