Floating Point

John and I will perform Drift Theory 2 utilising Epic Games' Unreal game engine in which we are creating an "instrument" of sorts.

Objects, which can be seen in this screen grab, have been assigned sounds which are set off when "nudged" by the player. Two to three levels are planned, each with their own set of sound objects that bounce from one end of the "performance space" to the other.

Art's Birthday: y a r t s t h d a b i r

Was art born on a specific day? According to French artist Robert Filliou, it was.

"He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born. According to Filliou, it happened when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water."

Using generative sound tools and Western Front's Scrambled Bites server, we're providing an interpretation of the original song that "happy birthday" was derived from. "Good Morning to all" was written by two sisters as a classroom ditty.

More information: y a r t s t h d a b i r.

All this, and a host of other international guests will contribute towards the proposed Art's Birthday on the 17th of Jan, round the clock. For more info, see the Art's Birthday Schedule.

Secession MIDIbox

Ever since it was possible to engage with audio software via external controllers other than a mouse or Wacom, I've been dreaming of the ultimate USB MIDIbox. I purchased an Oxygen8 almost the week it was launched, but had a waited another two months (as is always the case with IT), I would've had many more MIDI controller devices to choose from.

MIDI software controllers have been around a few years now. The most popular of the low cost ones, although out of my price range, was the Phat Boy. Then there were the German range of devices from the home of Doepfer, expensive, elegant and complex tools that I first saw in Ludwig's studio in Vienna.

Last week someone sent through to the Audiomulch list, a link to MIDIbox from where I feel some of my ideas and needs will be satisfied.

MIDIbox hosts a broad selection of DIY software controller surfaces, some which have been designed for specific applications such as Cubase, Ableton Live, Reason and Tracktor.

What I'm looking for is a controller surface that gives me a great deal of flexibility to engage with a selection of applications, primarly Ableton Live, Audiomulch and perhaps Cubase (if I ever get enough money together to upgrade to SX).

And so begins, perhaps with the help of Frank Buechele, who seems enthusastic enough, the Secession MIDIbox project. Frank is a programmer who worked with us on D3. He has a penchant for soldering irons and cobbling together robots in his precious spare time.

Controllers of note from the MIDIbox gallery are:

• MBHP, designed to use with Ableton Live
• MIDIbox64 with faders, pots, buttons and joysticks

Aside from controllers, there's a few other things on the wish list. Well near the top is Dave Smith's Evolver. Mr Smith is the person behind the Prophet-5. I had a deposit on a 2nd hand Prophet in Sydney in 1987-ish.

It was such an emotional period, those last few years of the 80s, by the time I had the money to pay it off, the blokes at Hutchings Keyboards (Bondi Junction, Sydney) were far too attached to the Prophet to let it go and so too the $500 deposit I'd left them with. Curiously, the Evolver costs as much as that deposit... There's always Christmas, people :)

Post-D3

Apart from a couple of odd health days, I'm starting to regain my energy since D3 went public. It's been up for two weeks now and seems to have been received with overwhelming enthusiasm... 1000 people had been through the gallery on the first weekend it was open.

ACMI has all the important data about D3 on their site. We have some photos from the installation, courtesy of ACMI Public Programs.

It's now 3:02, second attempt at getting this published! It's the first all night session Grant and I have been able to get in since completing D3. We find one all nighter, every so ofter, gets us through some of the more complex items on our c2o/Toy Satellite/Secession to do lists. Well, it helps having someone to cheer you along, particularly if one is making progress!

Here's Supercat, watching over us from his new perch, constructed from crates I'd bought in Byron Bay, made from off-cuts, off-cuts from a planned UFO landing pad! Oh, and a pile of cushions.

Justina is in Manila having just completed a WENT trainers workshop. Very shortly she'll leave for her first visit to the Philippines country side, including one night in Baguio, where I had spent an inspiring week, at the Tamawan Artists Village, last November.

Bobby (same guy who loves our WOK CMS...) at the entrance to Tamawan Village.

A sculpture of an eagle on a distant rock someone managed to carve. Baguio does that kind of thing to people...

Baguio taxi... yeh, lots of mirrors and they charge far less than cabs in Manila... and pretty friendly too.

Back to the present... at least within the past hour. Grant just having solved the "how do we get multiple forms to work on the WOK" problem. He's coding up the "Punter of the Month" questionnaire for the Lambsgo Bar site we recently rolled out...

And a rare one of me... prefering life behind a camera... hairy too... a week indoors, chilling out with no serious deadlines, music to keep me curious, and emails from Craig Bellamy to keep my brain from stagnating.

Wot makes me tick?

Every so often someone asks me to define one or more aspects of my work. This may take the form of a lecture, proposal notes or a chat over beer at the local.

This morning, a question was put to me regarding the integration of audio and visual material in real time performance. Having, without trumpeting my own horn too much, I believe contributed something towards the evolution of improvised video and sound performance in Melbourne, I felt it opportune to state my case, and in some respects clarify for myself what it is that makes my sonic perception tick. Here goes...

The integration of audio and visual components has been integral to my work since the mid-80s. In those days, physical performance in tandem with minimal lighting and projections was central to the surrealist aesthetic I had conceived in largely acoustic based works. From the mid-90s I began a series of collaborations with video artists exploring real-time improvisation of sound and vision, utilising techniques derived from jazz and electroacoutiscs. This resulted in a body of work that saw the integration of motion-control tools, development of context specific visual/sound instruments, large-scale multi-projection performances and more recently, a completely overhauled approach relying more on artistry, aesthetic resonances and intuative skill than reliance on technology. The integration of these two disciplines relies now more on technique, composition and communication than it does on sophisticated and often expensive technologies.

D3: Breaking Ground Meeting

We're ramping up to closure as one might say. The D3 prototype goes live around 14 July. To help us get from here to there we contracted our Technical Director, Grant McHerron, to project manage the remaining components of the project.

There's Frank, Grant and Jeremy... Justina is sitting off on the side. We met this afternoon to ratify the last few tasks, ensuring we deliver our prototype within a reasonable approximation of the original specification.

...and the paper trail rolls on! Grant encourages Jeremy to help us complete the project. Jeremy is one of the top Flash coders in Melbourne. I worked with him on our generative/synthesis beat engine, Freedrum. We "love his work" :)

(Note that link to Freedrum takes you to the SSEYO site, the company that developed the audio engine we used... Some of the gear on this site, like the broken banner adds, have nothing to do with us.)

D3: The Plinth!

The plinth for the touch-screen arrived today... Unfortunately, it wasn't sized up correctly. Some how the measurments had gone remiss.

Here, the exhibition designer at ACMI, Bich and her carpenter measure up the touchsreen.

Re-measuring the plinth... The touchsreen doesn't fit in the console bay. We need to frame the exterior of the screen to ensure people don't mess with the controls quite accessible from the front.

Also, the angle of the plinth is too low. We do need a reasonable angle to ensure people don't spend their whole experience of the interactive staring at the touch screen.

See the base? That's a tile from the gallery floor. The plinth will be bolted to it, all cables running down the central column and into the floor I suspect.

D3: In Tow

Since late January we've (Toy Satellite/c2o) been producing an interactive installation piece for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Technically challenging, philosophically uncompromising, sonically engaging... yeh, you can throw all the cool terms and arts speak at it and it won't fall down. That's cause it's build with lerve...

This photo was taken about four weeks or so ago during the tail end of Andrew Thomas's last visit to Melbourne (our interface designer). He made two trips to work on-site with us, at his own expense, which is remarkable given the budget and timeline we had to work with.

We've tackled what many would not have tackled, we've wrestled with Flash and survived, dealing with undocumented features and others that have not been implemented in new versions of PHP... We've built a custom version of the WOK to manage the vast resources populated throughout the interactive and the works people will create with it.

d3 is an interactive work inspired by the Situationist Internationale, enabling the creation of unique video assemblages representing a personal dérive through Melbourne's CBD. d3 will go public mid-July.

Wok 'n' Woll!

Look, everyone tells me the web is saturated with content management systems... Well, let me tell you... when we started out on the long road to automation, there was nuthin!

To cut a long story short, we started off with the Big Pipe, developed by Jary Nemo... from there we built a content management system for Avantcard (still in use), then one thing led to another... we wound up with the WOK, or Web Origami Kit.

That's Bobby... He loves the WOK, open source, linux, GPS, his wife and his son... oh, and he loves beer too. He lives in the Philippines and if we're nice to him, he might help us develop the WOK for colleagues in his beautiful country.

New tech at c2o

Since 1997 I've been a Director of Community Communications Online (c2o), an organisation that grew from the ashes of Pegasus Networks. More on Pegasus later. In about 98, Justina became a Director as well and in 2000 Toy Satellite was absorbed into c2o.

More recently, the third Director and co-founder, Bruce Morrisson, resigned taking with him a vast body of intuative knowledge... he basically setup c2o, it's hosting services and all things server orientated.

A few weeks ago we were fortunate to appoint a new Tech Director, Grant McHerron, a person we had known for some years. Here's Grant in work mode... Yes, he's fast! And enthusiastic...

Not only does Grant come with a lot of energy, he's keen to help us build c2o so it can truly sustain itself... and he loves talking to clients too!

As we move into this new phase with c2o I'll spend a few moments each week documenting what it is taking to re-establish an online service provider given the risks, market saturation and a host of missed opportunities...

Friends of AudioMulch

Monday 03.03.03 we hosted Friends of AudioMulch at our regular Monday evening gathering at Lambsgo Barrr. Lambsgo has supported countless events of ours, all informal, all challenging in one respect or another. Well worth supporting them... besides, they have one of the best beer fridges in the area.

Sarge preparing Mulch.

Andrew Sargeant colliding samples of George Bush telling it how it is. Deadly serious!

We've worked together in the past, both as Toy Satellite people and with Secession, releasing MP3s and performing under the name Dark Ambient Operators. We plan to release his first solo album/CD quite soon I hope.

First met Sean in Newcastle... had no idea he was hanging out in Melbourne! Kathleen, a dear friend of ours in Brisbane, calls him Naughty Sean... he's a curious chap with a unique eye for video. When I'd met him he was one of the coordinators of the This is Not Art Festival... very supportive of our work and a refreshing aesthetic.

Ross Bencina, author of AudioMulch, performing his subtle, but entirely engaging piece. The bar staff loved it!

The last time we invited Ross to perform, it was at the EXP series we ran at Centriphugal. He commenced with a shakuhachi sample which he proceeded to smear apart, like a palette knife, then fold it back to its original sound over a remarkable 30 or so minutes.

Friends of Mulch hunched over laptop by candle-light. I think that's Evan, his mate and Andrew, Ross Bencina's brother.

A lovely ambient dub patch.

Detail of my theremin patch.

The theremin patch projected with oil-lamp overlays. Thanks to Eogoxa for their excellent suite of plugins.

Am mad keen on multiple projections on single screens - layered projections.

We started organising the night via the Mulch list. Evan's now in Germany...

Theremin + Mulch. One of the reasons I got into Mulch was for the use of creating deeper, more poignent sounds for my theremin. Works really well on my workstation in the studio, but on the road the VAIO is mimited by the lack of line level input.

As such, the piece I did was fraught with red-lining levels and noise from the dodgy mic input on the laptop. The piece worked though, Justina describing it as "spooky mulch".

Who am I?

I work at Toy Satellite as Artistic Director and presently I am contracted out to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image where I am Interactive Media Producer for ACMI Public Programs.

I conceive of projects, develop collaborative content management tools for the Web, design generative sound environments and produce short experimental video works.

I thoroughly enjoy my work as I am often drawn to work with people in the Asia region and more recently, rural Australia.

I am, what could be considered, a hybrid media artist, having initiated, developed and produced a vast body of independent and collaborative artworks since the early 80s. Since 1995, I have produced online interactive works, installations and performances under the auspices of the not-for-profit media arts group, Toy Satellite. I am specifically interested in the communication of socially relevant and culturally significant narratives through hybrid arts practice, particularly via mixed media performance works and collaborations with artists from significantly different cultural backgrounds and disciplines.

What's going on here?

This is an attempt at writing in amidst hectic schedules, travelling and widely dispersed collegues towards a personal history of my life with computers.

Each entry will be riddled with errors. But that's just part of the process... and so it should be. At this stage I'm not sure whether I'll update each chapter as I come across errors, or re-post them individually, thereby keeping a record of drafts. This is part of the process too, coming to terms with online writing and the software that makes it possible.

Writing on the Web is a whole lot different to email. I found myself drawing flowcharts of this project well before the writing started. Structuring the content management process was a little tricky, but the beauty of applications like MovableType (which this project utilises) one can change the dynamics of how and where content appears quite easily.