ecopolis

Primal Source (video documentation) from haque d+r.

Specially commissioned by the City of Santa Monica, California, for Glow 08, Primal Source was an all-night performance/installation brought to life through the active participation of festival-goers (estimated at approx. 200,000 over the course of the night).

Located on the beach near the Pier in an area that had been specifically landscaped over the course of several days, and making use of a large-scale outdoor waterscreen/mist projection system, the mirage-like installation glowed with colours and ebullient patterns created in response to the competing and collaborative voices, music and screams of people nearby.

Responding to sounds emanating from the crowd, the system’s modes changed every few minutes depending on how active the crowd participation was (more quickly when there was more noise). Each mode responded in a slightly different way to the individual voices and sounds picked up by 8 microphones distributed towards the front.

Some modes created “creatures” whose colour, shape and movement followed the frequency and amplitude dynamics of individual syllables and sentences picked up; other modes responded to wider collective phenomena, e.g. distorting a grid in response to the crowd volume, or creating a rush of wind through a wheat-field landscape.

Just A Souvenir : beautiful and funky synth/clavichord organic work.
Squarepusher moves into improvisational, jazzy, progr and effected bass slaps over barely comprehensible vocoder blurbs “this album started as a daydream about watching a crazy, beautiful rock band play an ultra-gig.” http://squarepusher.net/justasouvenir/
Just A Souvenir is currently available as a digital download (in FLAC as well) from bleep dot com.

Happy Birthday Luca from Ilari
(Tobi Neumann rmx)

So Gogbot Festival has gone. It was really an experience being there and particularly living it so closely to the organizers. First of all a word about Kees de Grooot and Viola von Halpen who did so much great work in choosing sucha an inspiring theme and realizing it so well.

What was immediately clear to me was that this people don’t have to study or keep updated about “steampunk”, they’re steampunk!
And the whole festival showed it really well. It wasn’t about the classical new media art exhibition, gogbot festival was an experience, in a steampunk vein, but first of all an experience.

Connecting to the do-it-yourself attitude of punk they selected pieces not just for their esthetical value but also for their social role: there were many interesting installation, but surrounded by the “europe trash bar”, the steampunk coffe bar, the bubble bar and radio barkas.

Gogbot was a steampunk performance in a way, beacuse it stopeed time for thrre days in the little town of Enschede and brought there under a suggestive frame like steampunk a lot of creativity that usually has no space in galleries.
The curators dealt more with the user experience rather than on reflecting about art, and the whole festival had a general steampunk aestetich, they had no fear in presenting such a complex show that was appreciated both by tech artist geek and old local mittle europenas.

And due to all of this there was a really well atmosphear between all the people involved, that were really kind with everyone.

GAY Against You live in Enschede for Gogbot Festival!!

Ellen Allien “Caress”

Chemical Brothers – Believe