ArtCast

Yves Behar co-designed  One Laptop Per Child, giving access to kids most needy. The 100 Euro computer kids can use to call, draw and learn together doubles as a router thus extending the network. Available from Nigeria to Macedonia is was the baby of the Fuseproject.com team in San Fransisco, premiered at Design Miami in Basel June 14. OLPC was initiated by a former director MIT to bridge the digital divide, it is owned by kids and brought by their governments.

Listen and enjoy!

At the festival in Zurich called m4music there was a panel called "Bits and Music" which wanted to work out, what online-communities and social network platforms can do for bands and artists. Patriks questions were answered by Erin Zhu Manager, webmaster of neubauten.org and manager of Einstürzende Neubauten, Berlin u.a., Tim Renner CEO of Motor Entertainment GmbH (Motor FM / TV / .de / Music / Management / Tours, Berlin), Daniel Schneider Head of VIRUS-Radio and Member of the Executive Board DRS 3, President Steering Committee mx3.ch, Basel.Listen and enjoy!

In the middle of Ars Electronica -and therefore in the middle of our series from "Ars"- I had a conversation with Serafine Lindemann (curator, Artcircolo), representing the mobile TV project Song fuer C, a joint endeavour by M+M (Marc Weis and Martin DeMattia), Vodafone R&D and the Hochschule für Gestalung und Kunst Zürich (HGKZ), trying to develop the new format of the mobile detective story.

For once, the intro to the (german) interview should give you most of the context, so without further ado:

Listen and enjoy!

As an aside, for the technically inclined: a press release by Vodafone, plus the (free) framework in use - and yes, the device runs linux/qtopia.. :-)

After the SemaSpace interview we continue the Ars Electronica series with another little piece of music - except that it isn't that little at all this time: It's the full recording of the two Spire concerts in the Stiftskirche St.Florian, made on 2006/09/02.

Spire is an experimental organ-based project and received an Honorary Mention in the category Digital Musics at Prix Ars Electronica 2006. The performers on the famous "Brucknerorgel" are Robert Kovács (Monastery Organist in St. Florian) and Charles Matthews (Spire), they're joined by Philip Jeck (live turntables) and Christian Fennesz (live electronics).

The quality is just like what you'd expect from an amateurish bootleg recording in a very large room and a very mighty instrument such as the monastery's organs plus live electronics, which was sometimes clearly too much for my mic - but, as poor as it is, I think it might be somewhat interesting for at least some of you anyway.

So here is, in a rather abbreviated form, the listing of this artcast's content:

• Morning concert:
  • Estampie from the Robertsbridge Codex
  • Johann Sebastian Bach - Toccata and Fugue in F major
  • Liana Alexandra - Consonances III
• Evening concert:
  • Anton Bruckner - Scherzo from Symphony no.2
  • Franz Schmidt - Toccata in C major
  • Robert Schumann - Fugue no. 1 on Bach, and Study no.4
  • Francis Routh - Mystery
  • Arvo Pärt - Pari Intervallo

Note that this is in fact a rather big piece (length: 2:20:34h, size: 97M), but please:

Listen and enjoy!

The next posting is going to be an interview again - with Dr. Serafine A.I. Lindemann, representing Vodafone Research & Development and the project Song fuer C.

Continuing the Ars Electronica 2006 series, here's a conversation (in german) with Gerhard Dirmoser on SemaSpace, an amazingly fascinating network diagram browser/editor much more powerful than others - due to its (ab-) use of a video game engine as its very base - stunning computer scientists, collectors and artists alike. It's being used to visualize the clustered topics of 27 years of the Ars Electronica festival, offering new ways to visually discover new interconnections and insights into the development of media arts and its theory.

Before listening to the conversation (36 min, uncut), you'll best take a look at a short video demonstrating SemaSpace. But then: Listen and enjoy!

We're starting to release the material recorded at Ars Electronica 2006 with a relatively easy one - not an interview, but the as-is recording of Michael Nyman performing a piece of his on the bells of the augistinian monastery of St.Florian near Linz.

At the beginning there's a short austro-english greeting by the organizers (Nyman didn't want to talk that day), then there's about 15 minutes of the Nyman bell piece, mixed with the sound of people enjoying the Novizengarten (14Mb, average quality).

Listen and enjoy!

ArtCast (Hannes, with Jan as a senior expert) currently is in Linz at Ars Electronica, recording 5-8 hours of content a day: Presentations and concerts, lectures and, of course, interviews . Processing and filtering is being done constantly, expect a number of postings soon.
In the meantime, you can listen to the podcast the organizers are publishing, containing all talking done during the officially central symposia with the contest winners and celebrities.

We're now starting to put online some of the material recorded during ART Basel which ended a week ago. Obviously the publishing process is a little slow and tedious, mostly because Barbara still doesn't have a computer, but well, here's today's ArtCast: basically, it's the lecture Paul miller aka DJ Spooky gave at the ART, speaking about his book «Rhythm Science» (see MIT Press) and the the theory and musical practice of sampling in general. 28:25 minutes, 26MB, includes some pretty cool samples of his musical work.

Listen and enjoy!

ART is over again, but before we come to all the stuff recorded there, here's yet another pre-ART piece: ArtCast feat. Ilse Ermen. Dr. phil. Ilse Ermen works with language, both in her scientific career in the field of linguistics and as an artist. Barbara Strebel went to see her at her recent exhibition in Basel, if you'd like to know more: please take a look at her website at www.ilse-ermen.com.

Listen and enjoy!

Yeah, it was a very nice evening! Thanks for everybody helping and coming and dancing! You can see some images over at flickr or two short videos on youtube of DJ Spooky (one and two).