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.

Ellen Allien “Caress”

Chemical Brothers – Believe

CTM.09 – club transmediale’s 10th anniversary edition – takes place in Berlin from January 23 – 30, 2009 under the theme STRUCTURES – Backing-up Independent Audio-Visual Cultures. Our partner festival transmediale will take place under the Theme DEEP NORTH from January 27 to February 1, 2009.

The joint Call for Entries by club transmediale and transmediale is out now. As leading international festivals for art and digital culture as well as adventurous music and related visual arts, respectively, transmediale and club transmediale are calling for submissions for both festival’s program, to the transmediale Award competition and the Vilém Flusser Theory Award.

Deadline for submissions is September 5, 2008 (post stamp).

transmediale.09 – DEEP NORTH peers beyond the evolving alarmist scenarios of catastrophe prevalent in the often contradictory global warming debate.transmediale.09 shifts this focus to the global artistic, cultural, societal andphilosophical consequences that the presumed imminent collapse of the polar ice barrier may trigger. Are we about to reach another historically succinct moment of unavoidable and cataclysmic change – a point of no return leaving in its wake uncontrollable global transformations? Does climate change elicit cultural change, ashifting of extremes or a collapse in established, systemic and network norms? DEEP NORTH becomes not a fixed location, but a paradigm transforming loss, scarcity, inertia and rivalry into urgent and revealing states of being and expression.

With STRUCTURES – Backing-Up Independent Audio-Visual Cultures, club transmediale.09 presents projects that spring from the critical, interdisciplinary and experimental practice at the intersections of sound and other art forms. In recent years, a new breed of hybrid projects and initiatives that merges experimental audio and media cultures has developed in the convergence-zone between pop culture, science, arts and media technologies. This still remains primarily the domain of committed individuals and small, self-organised groups or networks that, often in the most precarious of circumstances, provide the supporting platform for these new artistic articulations and experiments. In its 10th year, CTM looks into the current state and potential development opportunities of these independent structures.

Together, transmediale and club transmediale invite the submission of works and projects that respond to these challenges and embody contemporary notions of art that embrace, question and enrich digital culture. Submissions of art works for both festivals participate in the transmediale Award 2009 while theoretical abstracts, papers and critical artistic positions are invited for the Vilém Flusser Theory Award, with prizes totaling ca. 10.000 EURO.

transmediale will handle all practical issues concerning the submission process, as all submissions do participate at transmediale’s award competition – no matter if they are for transmediale or club transmediale. All details are to be found in the PDF form, which is available for download here.