In the finest recycled_tech fashion, Mekanarky is a converted Sydney ice cream factory now functioning as an art studio collective with traditional painting, animation, printmaking, jewellery and more. Distinguishing it from other collectives though, they feature a strong strand of robotic and mechanical art – much of which will be in full swing at their 3rd birthday this weekend ( details below ) Robo-welder and mech_animator, Dillon MacEwan explains more.

What did u do with the Mutoid Waste Co?
I first connected with the mutoids through varous ex mutoids based in SPINNINGJENNY.jpgEdinburgh while I was building metal and fire sculptures for Beltane – a free festival in the middle of the city. Through various affilliates I went on a mission to track them down in Italy, and travelled around with various of them doing the Euro free festival circuit for a couple of summers. I’ve since done collaborative work with various artists who’ve been through the mutoid ranks – sculpture projects, festival shows, and helping set up robodock – an industrial art festival in Holland.

Some favourite Mutoid moments?
Setting up techno free zones at technivals, and seeing what’s in all these hard core techno DJ’s “other” record collections. Any other moments are too incriminating for print.

How has your work with Mekanarky evolved from there?
I used to sculpt small plastic invertebrates and encephalopods, but now I’m building fully articulated quadroped, I hope to be onto pneumatic primates and sentient automatons by the end of next year.

What attracts you to robotics?
I was always inspired by the sci fi genre of the 30’s with the mad scientist building a robot army to take over New York. I like to build art that does something, has some interactive quality about it – I like trying to emulate complex movement by reducing them to an accumulation of simple mechanical processes. I think we’re surrounded by machines we take for granted – in using recognisable components from these, and building them into monster and imaginary creatures, I like to think I give the viewer a sense of mechanical wonder – and leave all the mechanics and robotics bare to enhance the juxtoposition of machine emulating living beings.

The attraction comes from a bunch of places, from science fiction movies and comics like 2000ad to the buzz I get from inventing and problem solving, to the effect of interactive “performance” based sculpture – or sculpture based performance has on the viewer. I feel it forces the observer to engage more in the art than static gallery based art.

What will you be doing at Mechropolis?
I’ll be presenting a couple of new mechanoids in a show involving robots by couple of other artists – Miles and Ben from Triclops, and Mike Turner – another mutoid affilliate. the mech’s are the first stage of a larger show I’ll be developing over the coming few months involving four or more mechanoids and their interactive computer based counterparts.

You’re looking for donations of old gas bottles, and a couple of rooted V8 engine blocks? What’s in store for them?
The blocks are for parts to build the drive mechanisms for more mechs, actually V6’s would be just as handy, the bottles are for fire sculpture set pieces.

And what are u looking forward to at the next MEKanarky event on Nov 20th?
Getting my dragon walking

MEKanarky turns 3 on Nov 20 with a massive party : Robots from Triclops & Dillon, Toy Death, Stelarc -Triclops & Mutoid showreels, a nail-gun shooting gallery! Kush Cabaret – gypsy cabaret, circus routines, Circusworks – physical theatre, Wildfire, Soosish, Rush Electra, the CELL pnuematic orchestra, SambaSK & more craziness : $15/$10 Conc. Donation
@ MEKanarky Studios, Cnr. Reede and Turrella St., Opposite Turrella Station.

Descore : Animators & Composers
Sep 16th 2004, ACMI, Melbourne.
Curated By Phil Brophy
Animation Review for Real-Time magazine.

The steps beneath a Mozart statue are no more musical than those at ACMI, when grinded on by a large skateboarding rabbit. Especially when multi-tracked alongside the floppy beats on the rabbit’s headphones. And yet, decidely unmusical is often the sound, when an ACMI audience lamentedly, dementedly shuffles down the steps after enduring yet another short film compilation of technically competent demo-reels, and punchline drunk half-bakers. It’s symptomatic of most short-film festivals and compilations though, not just those at ACMI. Thankfully Descore spotlighted a few gems amongst the ho-hummery.

Sustaining that glum note for just a little longer, let’s just say while Descore’s initiative to link together Melbourne animators and sound composers to explore audiovisual possibility is to be applauded, and while some of the shorts were great, the collection as a whole falls kind of flat when judged against it’s own ambition: ‘..surround sound experiments in audiovision’. Overall, Descore lacked experimentation and audio-visual inter-playfulness – especially knowing the composers and animators were commissioned to explore together. At times it felt like the animators were merely handed a soundtrack and asked to add visual wallpaper on top video-clip style, or the composers were fed an animation and asked to add mood music and sound effects. For the most part it was difficult to see and hear cinema that emerged as the fruits of juicy collaboration, rather than merely the addition of two parts. That out of the way, the gems that were, dazzled and seduced. Tickled, transported, provoked.

Long-time domestic fetishist, Ian Haig, brought some of Descore’s biggest (sometimes awkward) laughs with his zapping of life into a range of eroticised kitchen applicances – a stroboscopic click and purr version of ‘I Was Made for Loving You’. Amidst the whirr and stutter of these ‘devices’, we are swiftly cut or zoomed to the gyrating and protuding or ‘inviting’ details of Haig’s clean plastic sculptures. The avalanche of sex and turbo-gadgetry had most in convulsions, and more than once a viewer near me burst out laughing then abruptly covered their mouth. The apt soundtrack for this flashy, celebration of vibrating tupperware genitalia was delivered by Nat Bates with spirited jittery machinations, gradually perculating to the logical climax of music peppered with female moans : house music. As cartoon as it sounds, it was also one of the better milkings of the ACMI surround sound system.

Fuck The Vampires. Gothic Politic. Duck My Punchline. Feasibly zapped from the large nimble SMS thumbs of Emile Zile, straight to the screen, ‘Young Adult Thinks’ presents a series of witty and emotive narrative fragments, framed by graphics and Zile’s near trademark sloganeering. Sound is employed laterally throughout and in an evocative manner by Patrick Donlon ( DJ Spacey Space ) from watery sounds as a girl blows out flames through to cheesy synths that Chaplin woulda loved for the piece’s more gameshow moments. Capping it nicely though, is the use of silence and the unrelenting close-up focus on the breath of Old Man Zile ( hello Konstantin ) to create an intensely personal and electric finish.

‘Devil’s Eyes’ in sharp contrast, hurls over-cute pixelated japanimation with unexpected force, in unexpected directions, and a crackling soundtrack by Cornel Wilczeck ( Qua ) manages to add atmosphere and emotive weight to each scene. Directed by Paul Robertson, the clip unfolds and is composited like a fiendish gamer fairytale – where the ultra-cuddlies vomit vast rivers of blood, engage in vigorous disembowelling and eat entire planets. Captivation is in no small part due to Wilczeck’s beautiful treatment of the otherworldly story. Wistful moments are swept along by splicey reversish instrumentation in a tweaked folk manner reminiscent of The Books, and character movements and events are heightened by game-like twinkles and bleepy flourishes. Quite a stunner.

Philip Brophy did the sound, and Phip Murray the animation in ‘WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE’, appropriately the evenings last clip and featuring possibly the night’s best interplay of sound and vision. ‘Skull N bone vector’ will be a software preset one day ( if it isn’t already ) but nonetheless Murray’s take on it charmed, with cartoony electronica bats swooping an array of digi_sound FX down onto a typical suburban haunted house. Inside the camera lurches over literal TV zombies in AC/DC shirts as guitar riffs chug. This eventually reveals the apparent sound source : the zombies are watching a guitarist on the television. Later this guitarplay is reversed, a close up of a wolf howling at the moon outside, set against the sound of a wailing guitar solo. A red car dropping from the sky brings with it not just a layer of sound, but a shift to more urban beats. Similarly bats flying over the drums change the sound, and lightning is built into the song structure as a sonic element, providing a more engaging and layered viewing experience than many of the clips.

Ready to drown himself, apparently Buckminister Fuller reached an epiphany at the shore and went on to become one of last century’s most famous inventors. Berlin-boys don’t surf either, but mighty must’ve been the epiphany that lead the two musicians known as ‘Monolake’, to start up Ableton and become two of this century’s most innovative audio inventors with their musical performance software ‘LIVE’. And what a stupendous beast Robert Henke, Gerhard Behles, and their Ableton team have unleashed.

Ze Big Picture
Straight up – let’s admit – compressing the breadth, depth and features of LIVE 4 into a review is an absurd task. If you are interested in producing or performing audio with your computer, the LIVE 4 demo is an essential download – and wrestling with it is the only real way to grasp how gracefully and fluidly it allows incredibly complex real-time manipulations. LIVE 4 is a powerful yet intuitive composer, sequencer and recorder and it’s combined tools make it a monster of a live performance vehicle.

Another good way to scope it’s boggling potential is via the extensive array of tutorials and videos at www.ableton.com which showcase some of it’s real-time performing, sequencing, recording, remixing, midi and FX abilities. Stuck here in review land, best we can hope for is an overview of some of LIVE 4’s new features.

MIDI
Far from the elevator muzak it conjures to many minds, MIDI doesn’t have to be such a dirty word. As a protocol, MIDI allows complex instructions to be quickly exchanged between software and hardware without having to send large samples. More like – play this sample now, play that sample then. MIDI can also be used to synthesise ‘virtual instruments’ – which is where much of it’s bad name has come from, and is great for synchronising different hardware. It has been one of the most requested features for an updated LIVE, and in typical style Ableton have delivered above and beyond – with a fantastically intuitive integration of MIDI. MIDI clips can now be easily dragged and dropped into LIVE, sequenced and combined, edited and graphically adjusted with the mouse, and even exported. Google yourself a midi clip for your favourite song, or search for ‘midi’ & ‘name of song’ in a peer to peer app, throw it into live and remix away, changing, adjusting, effecting on the fly – as it always is in LIVE. Plenty of functionality to please midi veterans, and a smooth and easy interface that’ll leave them grinning.

AUDIO
LIVE 4 continues to make crazy audio manipulation deceptively simple. Double click on a loaded sample to reveal – as it continues to play – a whole range of parameters that let you time-stretch, pitch-shift, reverse and time warp your sample. Dynamically control the volume, pitch, panning or FX of a clip by drawing curves over your timeline. Access to clips is all done via LIVE’s very well designed 1-window interface, and clips are easily previewed and added even as the software steams on. Built-in FX, VST or audio unit FX are also easily accessed via this interface and easily applied to individual clips or the entire mix. There’s much more but you need to play it.

PERFORMANCE
Built by people who know what live performers need, Ableton LIVE absolutely cleans the floor when it comes to versatility and live performance. It’s dual modes of operation – session view and arrangement view – work extremely well as ways to quickly navigate a song timeline or for zooming in on particular aspects of a single sound or sound effect. Very easy tempo changes, beat-matching, time-stretching and pitch-shifting allow fluid mixing between tracks and a DJ style crossfader has been added to the multitrack controls for this version, allowing easy fading between any number of tracks. All audio and midi files can work in synch easily, allowing a myriad of triggering and improvisation possibilities. And all audio and midi clips, as well as FX parameters etc can easily be mapped to whatever computer keyboard or mid keyboard controls you want – for instant access at your fingertips.

Recording & FX
All of the above can be recorded for later editing and refinement or playback as audio. There are plenty of editable automative controls for mixing and effects control movements and an unlimited undo allows unlimited experimentation. Even while the music is playing you can easily record parts of all of what you are playing onto a separate track for on-the-fly resampling and remixing. There’s a whole bunch of Ableton FX which are pretty good with a good range of presets, but of course these can be expanded upon with VST and Audi Units & Rewire – for wiring other applications to become ’slave’ applications to LIVE. Again, there’s so much more, but…

System Requirements
Mac – G3 or faster, 256 MB RAM, Mac OS 9.2 or later / Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later
PC – 600 MHz CPU or faster, 256 MB RAM, Windows 98/2000/XP, Windows-compatible soundcard
& 499 Euros ( it’s not cheap, but it is good ) – which also buys you a huge selection of royalty-free loops, built in tutorials and starter sets and a printed reference manual.

Verdict
The abbbb-b-b-so-lute bomb when it comes to real-time audio manipulation.

See Also:
Ableton Live 7 Suite Review
Ableton Live 6 Review
Ableton Live 2 Review

Gamebuilders and street artists have one thing in common – both view urban terrain as easily modified. Amidst an ocean of stencils in Melbourne, Tan from fugitivedesign.net noticed a playful streak of three dimensional street art, jutting out from walls and unexpected places. Inspired he got together an online mag of sorts – Urbaninstallation.com, and is happy to receive online photo submissions for future editions from the 3D eagle-eyed and happy snapping. Tan speaks now.

What appeals to you about seeing a ‘floppy disk glued to a street curb’?
So many people rush about from one timeslot activity to the next – in transit – 3d_streetart.jpg
closed up inside their heads – isolating themselves from everything around them. they don’t look up or down – don’t make eye contact.

Seeing that disk was like this surreal connection with another human being. Someone had been there. Left a message. It didn’t say anything specific. It wasn’t trying to sell me anything. it shouldn’t be there but it belonged there. It was perfect, beautiful. It made me smile.

I’m really digging this art form. It has to be discovered, usually by accident. Except now I’m searching for it. And participating. It is defiant. It’s dimension reaches out to you. I think it will be almost impossible to relocate this art form into a gallery – it’s primary magic comes from it’s life on the streets. The entire world becomes a gallery.

Why do you think so many people are amped on street-art these days?
I don’t really think about that too much at the moment. I think it’s more interesting to just do. I guess it depends on who you are referring to. If you mean the artists – I think people are realising that they need to and can express themselves, their creativity and ideas. Of course anything cool is always eaten up be advertising. For now I believe it will be impossible for the machine to eat up 3d street art. Hope I’m right.

Who else is battling Melbourne for the 3D street art throne?
I’m getting submissions from overseas now but I haven’t seen enough yet to know the level of activity in other countries. There is some amazing weird stuff coming from Germany, a very active cool group in Chicago, another cool group from Buenos Aires. Even stuff from Hong Kong. They are all doing very different stuff. Of what I have seen Melbourne could still be in the lead for quantity and diversity, pushing the boundaries – but maybe only because I’m here and photographing it.

What’d you like to wake and see glued to the front of your house tomorrow morning?
Minigraff’s butterflies

Who’s been good at extending graffiti / street art aesthetics into 3D virtual spaces & computer games?
Honestly I’m not sure. I haven’t explored this area – I’ve been too hooked on the physical to investigate the virtual. I’m not into games anymore (overdosed on c64 as a kid) I’m not so interested in other people co-opting the style to appeal to a target market. I am interested in graff/street artists doing this exploration. I’m sure there is someone out there right now about unleash something amazing upon us all.

Filtering out election noise has proven health benefits. Fresh ears can re-hear eucalypt jingles over the hum. Brains can remember that world-shaping happens in many places other than buildings full of politicians. Below are a few parties not on ballot papers anytime soon, but you’re still invited anyway.

The Boycott Party
ecolinks.net
ethicalconsumer.org
Many multinational corporations have annual budgets much bigger than the Australian Governments, and accordingly their larger impact on the world is open to influence from your wallet. Both of these sites outline a range of several Boycotts in action worldwide, pressuring and reshaping the practices of many large_corps. Branding is often all that distinguishes many companies these days, so they take their public relations seriously and will act on anything attacking the glossy sheen of their reputation. The meagre economic impact of each individual can also have considerable positive effects on the world when (re)directed towards ethically and environmentally sound products or services, or spent with community in mind.

Bicycles First
“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race,’ HG Wells.
For those who insist on buying wheeled vehicles, a bicycle is a great place to start. Changing the shape of the world’s dependence on oil might take a while, but your thighs will at least look different much sooner. Google some interesting bike paths near you and take a long distance hike, grin at the oil prices and revel in the breeze, and do check out www.criticalmass.org.au for monthly two-wheeled carnivalesque celebrations.

YAWUE
While the ‘You Are What You Eat’ party recognises that many of us won’t decompose for 200 years after burial ( think plastic – food and cosmetic surgery), they still stand tall in the support of those farmers who aim to farm for the future as well as the present. Reports the Daily Glutton:
“The dietary habits and choices of any nation may shape it’s future landscapes ( & bodyscapes ) more than any politician.”

World War III Hemp For Victory Party
Not so long ago, Governments appealed to their citizens to grow hemp for rope and other purposes to assist with the war effort of the time. With the hardy hemp plant able to provide much in the line of paper, clothing and even nutrition, hemp’s time may have come again. Not to be confused with the Home Brewers for Victory Party.

The Squirt Less Party
“Relax don’t do it, when you want to go to it… ”
- warned Frankie Goes to Hollywood all those years ago.
While Taoist Sperm Retention techniques might indeed be flavour of the month at inner-city dinner parties, the mind does boggle at the potential benefits to NATIONAL SECURITY if the ’sacred life_force’ of many thousands of litres of sperm were instead kept inside the bodies of the Aussie male massive. Ejackulaishun ( Family First friendly spelling ), the taoists believe, is best avoided by pressing firmly just before orgasm against an indentation on the ridge between the testicles and the anus. With practice you can also lock / tense this area to achieve the same effect. ( learn here ). Say the non-squirters – this is the path to more control, pleasure and overall energy.

The Squirt More Party
Champions for the furthering of useful human knowledge of our own bodies in the 21st-we’re-not-medieval-anymore-century, the Squirt More party aims exclusively at females, hoping to raise awareness of their capacity to enjoy ‘female ejackulaishun’. Without getting too athletic about it all, Jenny provides a very informative and pragmatic guide for adding this to a modern girl’s repertoire at her subtly titled homepage: www.jennyspray.com.

The Voltron Beatboxers Party
Try adding these guys, The Hare Krishna Breakers and the other above parties to your next political discussion, and some of those eager to leave the country friends might calm down a little.

DIY DNA DAY – if you missed it, was on April 10th and celebrated at a UK conference with a wide range of biotech and transgenic art demonstrations and tutorials. Aside from learning how to extract your own DNA, or the DNA from anything living, attendees were also introduced to a new way for remembering those who have passed away – storing their DNA within a living plant~! Believing that ‘a growing, living tree has the ability to comfort in a completely different way than cold gravestones’, Georg Tremmel and Shiho Fukuhara of Biopresence were happy to wax on about their ‘Transgenic Tombstones’:

How much do you think DNA is meaningfully coiled up in our identity?
GT: DNA should be seen as a pointer to a person, rather than a blueprint for a human being. What makes a human, and therefore identity, largely depends on the environment and experiences. The true power of DNA lies in its ability to bring together the symbolic and the real.

What triggered the idea to try and make ‘Transgenic Tombstones’?
GT: We were interested in exploring hypothetical design possibilities offered by biotechnologies. Thinking about code, codes, and codecs, their many manifestation came somehow naturally. It was only later we started to explore the mystical and psycho-historical connections and connotations of life, death and trees.

SF: My cat was buried in the garden in Tokyo where my family used to live, as he loved that house and garden so much. I’d much prefer to be buried in my family garden, rather than somewhere far away from them, and a tree is better than a gravestone in the garden. Our project reminds me of an old Japanese tale about cherry blossoms (sakura), which are white with a touch of red. Allegedly the reason for this colour is a person buried underneath the tree, his blood makes the cherry blossoms red.

When do you predict being able to offer DNA blended memorials?
GT: We are at currently at stage 2 of the project. Thanks to support from NESTA (www.nesta.org.uk) we are currently able to concentrate fully on it, and are exploring and assessing the legal implications that come along with our trees. We hope to offer Biopresence trees within the next 18 months, but I am not sure, if it will be in the UK.

What sort of genetic background did you have, and what’ve been the biggest hurdles for your learning?
GT: I have some a basic knowledge of genetics, I did study biology and informatics for a little while before studying media art. I think the hurdles in learning are not that big; much bigger are the hurdles in communication. After all it seems that artists and scientists seldom live on the same planet.

SF: It can be a little frustrating, if scientists don’t even try to understand what we are trying to achieve – they never ask us what we are doing and why we do it. I wonder if they don’t think this kind of question should be made before they criticise with a little (or even wrong) information on papers?

How has the scientific community reacted to your work?
SF: Some get it instantly, some don’t. Nearly all the scientists we were able to speak to directly reacted in a positive way. Even if they sometimes did not see the point of our project, they were curious about the technical details.
GT: Because of the sensational value of the project, we got a lot of distorted media coverage in the beginning. And most critic, from environmentalists or scientists, was targeted against the media coverage and not directly to our project. ‘New Scientist’ printed a full-page comment on our project, basically saying ‘they are not scientists, they don’t know what they do’. I was quite pissed off, because I gave them a 30-minute telephone interview, and then they (deliberately?) got two key facts wrong.

What is your response to the more critical scientists?
GT: Our response is to invite them to explain the project thoroughly. It helps.
SF: ‘New Scientist’ said something along the lines ‘interesting, if only it would be more scientific’. We are primarily artists and designers, our role is to pose question to the idea of bioethics and inquiry for better communication to non-specialists in science. We are also interested in being scientific, but it seems hard to understand for some, that science can also be done outside institutions. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Which ‘genetic artists’ do you especially admire?
GT: Heath Bunting’s Superweed project was one early and important display of how the powers of biotechnology can be put to work. Joe Davis, the ‘granddaddy of bio-art’ is hugely important. We are very glad, to have collaborated with him. And of course your very own SymbioticA. We met Oron and Ionat quite early on during our project, and their very positive feedback was highly encouraging.

Future Biopresence projects?
GT: The website (�_�). I’m also thinking about constructing a computer programming language, made only from the letters ATCG. Maybe I can find working programmes hidden in the genetic code.
SF: A book for children and adults explaining the project and its consequences. And a film documenting it. Other projects are secret!