Weekend Monolake: Sun 21 Dec

Lunch at Gore Core...

From left to right: Sean (Jeane Poole), Robert, Grant and Mark out by the car, Steve Law and Bunny.

Same, but this time with feeling...

From left to right: Paul Abad and Ross Bencina. It was Paul who helped to get Robert out to Australia.

We leave for the park in Grant's EK. It breaks down. We learn that to get it going we need to "thrash the shifter", a term Robert found amusing so much so we laughed outragously till we arrived at Edinburgh Gardens, Fitzroy.

Alan and co have been known for organising frequent Sunday arvo gatherings with battery powered PA and frisbies. We were due to play this fine afternoon, the rain taunting us all the while.

Grant did a great job getting us about and around Melbourne over the weekend. Safe and sound in the EK. Every driver deserves a beer at the end of a day long arching steers!

Left to right: Myself, Paul Abad and Ross Bencina, author of the infamous AudioMulch.

Left to right: Robert and the rest of what turned to be 5 of us...

The Terminal Quintet! Special guest appearance of the silent, but generous Steve Law.

I think we played at least two or so hours. It rained but no one cared much. The music was great, it was warm and plenty of friendly people :^)

Photos: Justina + Andrew

Weekend Monolake: Sat 20 Dec

The 20th of December saw the arrivel to Melbourne of one Robert Henke (aka. Monolake). He stayed at Gore Core leaving the following Monday for gigs in New Zealand.

No sooner had Grant arrived from the airport that Robert had his laptop out and online. Just earlier he showed me an MAX Patch he had cobbled together to emulate the sound of cicadas.

Intruiged by the Tibetan bowls he had seen and heard at Paul Abad's place in Brisbane, he made perhaps his one and only Melbourne purchase.

We had fun using the floor as a resonator :^) The trip to sound check was a treat to be heard!

Robert Henke with camera at Public Office, West Melbourne. Sound check!

Front row: Andrew, Grant, Robert.
Back row: Ben Dixon and Justine Leara.

Alan Bamford, pretty much the energy and vision behind our Public Office event... Here's Alan having a good old chuckle as Mark Harwood leaps off stage having completed a hiliarious work that included a brief show of fireworks at its end.

Surely not a day goes by in Melbourne when a musician really needs their beer.

Rapidly setting up for my set... I played works from the new album, Son of Science. A semi-autobiographical work spanning some 15 years or more of ideas, unreleased pieces, demo recordings. Planning to have the project completed, ideally, early to mid 2004.

The trimmed down rig: laptop (Ableton Live, AudioMulch), PMA-5 and MIDI controller/keyboard.

Visual accompaniment produced in collaboration with Andrew Thomas. "Rot Emulsion" was originally produced for Tat Fat Size Temple. It will accompany, at least remain as feature visual, all my forthcoming performances.

Down on the last track, Stars & Vermin.

Robert felt very connected to the audience... I think we all did!

Looking back down the venue from the side of the stage. The tall chap striding towards us is Mit who wrote a fine set for the evening. I think we all worked hard on our individual sets.

From the back during Robert's second and evocative set.

Robert and his (working) gear getting an encore... Most fine :^)

Photos: Justina + Andrew

Merry Crispness @ Gore Core

Crispness began with the making of our Crisp-Utopia cards, reflecting the light that shone on us in the many countries, many spaces we have inhabited this year or so past.

We posted these cards to family, friends and then some...

All the presents, still in their mailbags, were placed on the Crispness Piano.

Twas the night before Crispness and all the lovely presents had arrived. We celebrated Crispness Eve, as the Garton family does, and we opened all the presents marked "Andrew".

Some, like the records we kind of opened earlier in the day during the treasure hunt Justina took us on :)

First thing in the morning we opened all the presents marked "Justina".

Before we progress any further into the day, let's take stock of our gifts, some of which we chose to wear today. This is the chilli jam we got from Andrew's sister, Grace.

Some of the creams, lotions and gels we chose to wear today! The shaving gel from Justina's Mum gave Andrew a clean, pain-free shave.

Here's Andrew sporting a new pair of top-the-range headphones (Sennheiser HD 25-1). Thanks Justina :^) 15000Hz never sounded so good!

Justina displays poise and delight at the new Crumpler bag that will carry her laptop and spare her back!

And Crispness would not be the same without Crispness cards. Our cards are displayed for all to see.

However, passers by on Gore Street will see not only cards, if they care to stop and look...

...there will be elephants fashioned from stone!

We spent much of the day cooking... preparing for a late lunch. This is a recipe for Crispness Cake that Justina prepared.

The kitchen... is it ready for us? You can be assured it is... 24 hours access (is) required! Thermos coffee cups at the ready (thanks Patsy and Mark)...

Justina's cake mix in full swing.

The (wild) salmon we purchased in Tasmania several months ago. Clearly thawing after a long winter in deep freeze Melbourne.

Preparing the fish for baking.

Oil, salt, lime and some physical contact with the fish.

Whilst all this was going on, Supercat was practising nocternal vigilance by our sides... well, slightly upstairs, on the bed in his special fake fur blanket (formally Andrew's winter jacket).

With the cooking done, we leave the kitchen and find our selves in the sanctuary that is Gore Core.

With a bottle of our favourite wine... (and we ain't had lunch yet!)

Gosh, the cake came out well...

Terminal Quartet V1.0

The Terminal Quartet performing Drift Theory 01, a structured improvisation and collaborative composition by Andrew Garton.

This debut performance was held at the Lambsgo Bar, Fitzroy, Melbourne, 18 December, 2003.

Once we got through the logistcs of space (fitting four laptops and MIDI controllers on a small table) and sound checks we met out the back of the bar to discuss the piece.

The Terminal Quartet V1.0 is Andrew Garton, Paul Abad, Steve Law and Jeremy Yuille (from top-right clockwise to top-left). That's Brains in the DJ booth finishing up his set before we hooked in.

Photos by Justina Curtis.

Merry Crisp-Utopia Everyone

It comes but once a year...

Merry Crisp-Utopia

Instead of buying something, why not make a present for someone? Christmas for me has always been about family, sharing and giving... It has had nothing to do with the rampant commercialisation that sees Christmas, as Craig put it earlier today, as conduit to commerce from cradle to grave. So it goes...

So this is christmas...

How quickly the meme spreads, despots become icons, icons smear across cultures, transparent, impotent, the future collage...

A collaborative story in jpgs from lvxiao.

Says it all...

Now the spin begins... Beth sent me an SMS late Sunday evening... we punched the tele on and watched the charade unfold, orchestrated right down to the military garb on the person checking Saddam's teeth and hair for lice...

Saddam ain't a nice guy, but neither are those spreading and sustaining the fear of "terror"...

I took a bunch of stills and video off screen... intruiging images... thousands of people must be doing the same. I wonder who will ask of the Weapons of Mass Destruction now? The perfect smoke screen has been made manifest. The Bushs, Blairs and Howards will milk it for every pixel it's worth. I'm actually relieved... once the noise dies down, perhaps the people of Iraq will find peace...

---

We are listening to Too Many DJs. (Thanks Warren...). It's just gone past 5am. The essay birds are awake. Time to rest. We have a meeting at 11 after which should see version 2 of the Rowville-Lysterfiled History Project get up and out... Life goes on...

Friday DAO sessions

Several months back we instituted Friday jam sessions with who ever was keen to make it over to Gore Core (where Justina and I run and rest our lives in). After a spontaneous jam with Andrew Sargeant (Future Eater) at Kent St Cafe (Smith Street, Fitzroy) last Thursday evening, we continued on into Friday, recording several hours of dark ambient operations...

Amidst some fine musical moments Andrew ventured outdoors and got his hands dirty in our garden...

I learnt some fine AudioMulch techniques and we managed to get both our laptops talking MIDI and in doing so discovered inconsistencies that inspired an hour or so of 20 bpm sonic smearing. Most engaging! The Dark Ambient Operators have returned from their two year hiatus!

All good fodder for the the days ahead... this week I debut the Terminal Quartet and a piece I've given a considerable amount of thought to, the structured improvisation Drift Theory 1.

Data Collection at WSIS

OBTAINING A WSIS BADGE IN PICTURES

Does this violate Swiss, EU and UN data protection guidelines?

Note, this story was eventually picked by Slashdot and the Washington Post.

Seouless Nights

[We were in Sth Korea mid-November 2001... Justina for a WENT workshop and I for the first Asia Internet Rights Conference and the 4th Labor Media Conference. The following is an extract from emails describing one evening in Seoul, one of those rare moments when pinkies like ourselves are subjected to discrimination.]

last night was a curious mix of flicker lights, rip-offs and a few unfriendly gestures. sometimes it's useful to know how others are discriminated against, but it can be hard to deal with it up front.

at one point in the evening we had a bight to eat at a street vendor behind that huge shopping centre with the outdoor stage. we were charged 30,000 WON! no matter how we argued, the language problem and our "visitor" looks let us down. the stall holder literally removed 10,000 from my hand as justina handed over 20,000. i was furious. we had 1 pancake, 1 piece of fish, 1 serve of spicey chicken pieces and 1 bottle of soju.

shortly afterwards, i was looking at some coats in a shop and these guys started pushing into me. none would look at me. they just elbowed me out of the way. justina had a similar experience at the same shop with a girl who was quite upset at her.

later that night we tried to catch a cab. the first one drove off yelling "no, no english" at us, even when we showed him the card from sookmyung university with directions in Korean. i couldn't help but slam the side of my fist into the car.

then i had someone come up to me while i was trying to video something, this tall guy in a long, black coat... tapped me on the shoulder. i looked round, he looked on me and shook his head and waved his finger at me and the camera. no video... very imposing.

oh well, it wasn't so bad. i'm just sensitive to that kind of thing and it's hard to shake off at the time. but now it all looks pretty hilarious. well, sort of. i don't like getting ripped off... who does!

WENT-India 2003

Justina recently completed perhaps the last Women's Electronic Network Training (WENT) in Mumbai, India.

Justina and her colleague, Pi (Womens Hub, Manila) trained 20 women from various NGOs, reflecting a significant demographic of the women's movement and organisations dealing with women's and children's issues.

When the training was completed she spent a few days in Goa, now back in Mumbai and staying with an old friend and colleague of mine, Suchit Nanda, she is preparing to return to Melbourne.

During the course of her stay in India she kept a detailed, moving and challenging account of her experiences in a photo journal, perhaps the most engaging document thus far on Toy Satellite.

WENT-India 2003 is well worth a read, providing an insight to the challenges faced by women, both local and foreign in an ancient culture, ruptured by colonialism and values that lean far too heavily against women.