Plug N Play VJs ( jean poole / dpwolf / keith greyspace, VJ Ari, Lindsay Cox & SDzeit.[state] ) have been invited to steer the Mobile Projection Unit on the following nights during the Melbourne Fringe Festival :
Friday 29th @ 5pm ( to coincide with the critical mass bike ride), Tue 3 Oct, Sat 7 Oct, Tue 10 Oct & Sat 14 Oct – all @ 8pm AEST ( +10 gmt ).

This means – we drive around in a van and project imagery at special locations, *and* the van’s encoder and wireless connection sends both the projection, and a view of it from the street – 2 live streams to a web interface – where viewers can also send messages directly to the van, or view it’s real-time position on a google map ( using the van’s GPS unit ).

Drop a line if u manage to check it out~! Should be some crazy fun~!

Pingmag have a nice recent interview up with champion animator and illustrator, Run Wrake. ( found via accent feed ) Seems he was visiting Japan for the Hiroshima International Animation Festival – where his new short ‘Rabbit’ picked up a special jury prize. Plenty of screenshots and storyboard shots in the article too, worth a look. And especially exciting to hear he has his eyes on a feature film.

Run Wrake’s home page,
director showreel site,
& compilation DVD @ Gasbooks
Ye olde Skynoise Runwrake interview here
( and aye :: suffering some blog-formatting issues @ ze moment, hence sidebar down the bottom of page…. any words from wordpress wizzes welcome… )

Another disc full-o-mutant pixels hoofs over the horizon, this next galloper into town being the ‘difficult second album’ follow-up to the acclaimed Reline DVD compilation.

Reline 1 contained a fantastic spectrum of lo-fi to hi-fi visual explorations, noodlings and generally provocative work. The sequel, co-curated and produced by Scott Pagano & Phoenix Perry, focusses much more on the expensive end of that spectrum, it still manages to provide quite a diversity of approaches, in line with the goal of showcasing “artists engaged in the creation of new visual forms deriving from experimental techniques and the re-orientation of high-end production processes.”

Clocking in with 64 minutes of abstract patterns and dense visual rhythms, black and white grains juxtaposed with saturated colours, and all manner of aesthetic invention, the disc veers from hypnotic to stroboscopic, turning a lounge room into something more akin to a nightclub or art gallery, than perhaps the party atmospherics provided by say a Resfest or music-video compilation. The niche being exploited here is a category blur of motion graphics, visual effects, sophisticated aesthetic manipulation and music video – at least where the audio and visual elements heavily interplay. The disc to that extent is an excellent collection of stunning visual experimentation, and those interested in any form of video manipulation will find much of it exquisite. Those same themes of visual play however, at times make the disc feel like a collection of clips in need of a stronger directorial hand – one which might better leverage the visual techniques in service of an overall idea, or overall momentum.

Highlights
e3 by Robert Seidel is a delicious hybrid of organic and inorganic, morphing and at times sharply mutating the soft curves of a 3 month gouache painting diary, into gorgeous screen pulses of mesmerising shapeshifting. The music by Michael Engelhardt of 4memusic in 5.1 surround sound matches the piece quite well. There’s a hazy, mirage-like otherworldliness to this piece, the muted colours and dirty textural noise in constant ebb and flow. (more…)

As a giant red blimp floats past my window ( true ), new music networks continue to sprout online, providing evermore ways to discover new sounds. Some blimpside reflections on a few of ‘em. ( WARNING :: EXTREME TIME WASTING LINKS FOLLOW ) (more…)

In the central control tower, they’re beaming out skulls. Have you noticed? From pole posters to surfboard covers, every second fashion boutique window and the walking one shouldered, Oxford st tee-shirt brigade, the skull seeps into our day. Even saw a little boy scrawling a skull onto the side ova stopping bus yesterday, but he didn’t watch the rearview mirror. Or the busdriver putting on his Mexican wrestling mask before stepping outside with his baseball bat to the cheers of the bus-folk.

Why so many skulls? Why do people really want blood so bad? Apocalypse = now?
I mean where do you *really* want to go today? Possible paths for this week’s text include: ‘CNN’, ‘fashion’, ‘Hitler’, ‘fighting terror with terror’, ’skateboarding’, ‘An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind’ and ‘bus-boy narrative’. All this and you choose a combo: ’skater ollieing the skull of hitler preserved in a jar’. Ok, ok – let’s X-plore the relationship between entertainment technologies and the ways we use them.

Mark Pesce likes toys. Founder of Virtual Reality Mark-Up Language (VRML) which allows you to wander the web in 3D, Mark’s latest book, This Playful World, charted the emerging possibilities and implications of home-grade media technology, particularly gaming tech.

More recently, Mark produced a feature-length film about ‘the Impending End of Everything’, titled ‘Becoming Transhuman’, where appropriated sound and video images are used to create a new work which expresses Mark’s deeply-held beliefs on the future of humanity.

Who are we? Where are we going? What will we become? There are no easy answers to these questions, but they are enthusiastically debated on Mark’s mailing list, nurtured to keep track of cutting-edge trends in the sciences. The sites are well worth a visit, maybe a bit too fractal-techno for some, but with much worth chewin nonetheless. And here’s Mark text-Live:

What was the most useful feedback on your book This Playful World?
A pointer to an inaccuracy I got from the President of Tiger Toys.

What are your current projects / involvements?
Working on a small software application, perhaps will be patented. It’s a utility. (I like to get my hands dirty every once in a while.) Writing a few essays. Have been contemplating another book, but nothing looks very interesting right now.

How has Sep-11 affected your perspective on empowerment through technology?
It’s confirmed my suspicion that the history of the 21st century will be a constant struggle between our incredibly extended abilities and the fact that these abilities are available to an ever-increasing range of people.

What computer games have impressed u lately + why?
“Black & White” is very impressive. We’ll see that kind of tech in a next generation of Furbys, as I predicted in my book. “Majestic” is also incredible, because it confuses the line between reality and fantasy in very promising ways…

What are the interesting issues in VR today?
I don’t think there are any. VR is about as dull & boring as its ever been, and practically no one working in the field has a clue how to make it interesting, relevant, or important.

What do you think of extropians who want to upload their consciousness to a computer?
I think that they’re being overly religous and not particularly rigorous in their scientific thinking.

3 devices the world needs today?
Devices that don’t yet exist? Let me know.

3 urls for a desert island?
classics.mit.edu – Internet Archive of Classical Literature
promo.net/pg/ – Project Gutenberg
www.britannica.com – Encyclopedia Britannica (as long as someone else pays for the subscription!)

sidebars:
www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce
Outside the Light Cone is Mark’s homepage, or as he describes, his: ’space within the Noosphere’. Within it you’ll find most of his written works, rituals, lectures, papers, video interviews and links.

www.playfulworld.com
‘This Playful World’ is a “web-enhanced” book, meaning you’ll find a depth of additional resources here, such as research materials, links, articles and additional essays by the author, and a short promotional film which gives some background on The Playful World.

www.zap.to/textaqueen
Want to scrawl a skull on the side of a bus? You’ll need a fat texta, and texta art to guide you: try these portraits of emcees, deejays, performers, girls, ‘&’ texta scribblings by kids….

Equal parts banjoist, laptopper and pop cultural scream therapist, the warm whirlwinds of Kevin Blechdom have reached our shores thanks to the Dual Plover label. Brisbane, Sydney and soon Melbourne all under the spell of the tunesmith behind http://kevyb.com. ( @ The Corner Hotel, Thu Sep 7th )

>>How’s the unlikely marriage of max/msp software & the banjo working out for you?
Well, I don’t use Max/MSP as much as I used to, I still use my computer a lot, mostly General MIDI (Quicktime) and Logic to write songs, and then a traditional recording studio to record them. I like the contrast of the software world and the REAL instrument world. Keeps the future in check with the past.

>>How has max / msp changed your perceptions of sound?
It definitely brought me closer to the physics of music. Sine waves and signal paths… It’s a fun way to get to the basics of sound and then build back up again… I like the new Jitter software as well. It’s fun animating in real time. There is something about a pure sine wave really loud that makes me extremely happy.

>>And of music?
I really go back and forth in terms of what I’m focusing on. A few years ago I was really obsessing with software and weird sounds and weird ways to put the sounds together, but the past two years, I’ve been caught up in chord progressions and song structure and lyrics… And I like spending time in both ways, but then taking what I learn from one world and bringing it to the other… So when I start programming again, I want to build software that focuses more on chords and song stuctures and less on sounds and sequencing… just like a different magnification level on the microscope… keeep changing the scope and seeing which patterns are similar and which ones are different. So much in music is about waves, about periods of time… from frequency to rhythm to phrase to chorus to song to album to career, it’s all just waves, and I like trying to mix these different levels together as much as I can while still being able to perceive it…

>>What are the limitations / benefits of playing solo versus the band environment?
Playing in a band is a full on relationship… I benefit from playing solo by maintaining the creative control, and being able to afford to travel and play more shows. Adding travel for one more person and sharing the fee cuts money in half, and more people it gets cut even more. I don’t know how any bands survive like this… losing so much money in the beginning.

As for the bad parts of being a solo artist: when I work with others it’s easier for me to believe in the material more whole-heartedly. For instance with my solo stuff, sometimes I do the typical thing of doubting myself, etc… but with other people somehow it’s much easier for me to believe in myself if I’m working with someone. And of course, when you work with people ideas can bounce back and forth and really grow, there’s more outside influences to pull from. But then again, it can be hard to maintain and nurture creative connections with all the stresses of the music world mixed with exhausting traveling circumstances…

>>Who have you really enjoyed collaborating with?
My brother Lumberob was my first collaborator, and we still work together. I used to write the music and he would write the words, or we would write songs together and then fight over who wrote them later, both wrongly remembering that we had written them alone. He’s been a huge inspiration, and always gives good critiques – he understands what I’m trying to do unlike anyone else. I toured with Jad Fair in 1999-2000 and he got me singing, before that I was too shy, but he’d ask me to sing with him, and it just opened up a lot of performance possibilities, also a huge influence. Working with Blevin Blectum was super fun, because we were exploring music worlds we’d never heard before, and we would always end up making music we didnt expect to make, and it was great to be a “girl” band, because you can just tell the rest of the world to fuck off and do your own thing. Other people I’ve worked with who were awesome: kid606, jamie lidell, fred frith, mocky, heidi mortenson, ad hawk, max tundra, taylor savvy, planningtorock, phon.o, evans hankey, andre vida, eugene chadbourne, lucile desamory, the organlady, my robot friend… I’m sure I’m leaving some out… hmmmm… I really like collaborating…

>>Australian song most embedded in your subconscious?
“I come from the land down under” or kylie minogue “can’t get you out of my head” or Olivia “Hopelessly devoted to you” or the Kate Bush song about Australia (I know she’s not Australian) – - – > POP CULTURE DID IT

>>Donning your directors hat, what’d happen in Kevin Blechdom : the Musical?
I made a musical on the last record “Eat My Heart Out” called “Countdown to Nothing” – a surrealist auto-biographical self-help musical… that’s where I’ve left off. I’ve been working on some new musicals, the last one we did was “the Cosmic Baby” about the first baby born in outer-space. I don’t know what I would do if it were really about me, I think I need to live a little more to clarify the themes…

>>Can you tell us more about your upcoming duet with David Hasselhoff?
You can’t keep anything a secret these days… Well, we both really like power ballads, so we just get two mics and sing our hearts out! I just look forward to the sweaty hugs at the end of the song!

>>What do u..
Whatever you want!
(Questions cut off at the end of an email never deter an open minded, banjo wielding interviewee~! – jp )