Upcoming shows:

Tuesday, January 31, 2006
I/O Media
at The Ambient Ping, at Hacienda
Bloor and Bathurst, Toronto
21h30
Pay what you can

This show is a maybe, contingent on whether or not the I/O guys are comfortable enough letting me play with them (I haven't really met any of them yet).


Saturday, February 04, 2006
Leark - An Electronic Zen Garden
at The Music Gallery
St. George the Martyr Anglican Church
197 John St., Toronto
20h00
$15 / $10 member / $5 senior/student/poor

I'll be joining my old LEARK posse with their new Electronic Zen Garden show. It should prove to be very... calm.

Another belated event roundup. At the end of November I gave a talk about my thesis project, the Warbike. Somehow it's the project I've spent the most time on in recent years, but documented the least. That is to say, I've written a huge paper on it, but I don't consider the paper sufficient to encapsulate and document why this is important. It was too academic, and not enough art. But that's what you get for taking a masters.

The talk dealt with the ideological precursors of the project, mostly things like psychogeography and the Situationists, as well as hacking and that whole movement.

The thesis is attached to this post, and you can see the pictures of the talk here, in all its bearded glory.

The photo above is my thesis advisor, Palle.

Another belated event roundup. On October 29, 2005 Alex Berman, Lalya Gaye, and I did the fourth installment of Alex's Random Access Memory series, further documenting the inanity of his everyday life.

At Göteborgs arbetareteater, the locale of a Klubb Koloni event, we taped PC speakers and tape players underneath benches outside of the venue. People could sit on the benches and listen to messages left on Alex's answering machine. If you've ever heard Alex's audio blog, you know he's got some weird friends that leave weird messages.

The installation was a success because every single thing was stolen by the end of the evening. If people stealing your art isn't success, I don't know what is!

In the summer of 2005 I was briefly interviewed for an article on the future of video on cell phones (presumably related to my Warbike project and familiarity with mobile media, or something).

My old site said I'd have a copy of the article up, for months. Well, here it is. View this post for a scan of the article.   more »

I have been incommunicado lately, getting my life back up to speed.

I went back to Gothenburg from September-December 2005 to finish my masters thesis (Art and Technology at Chalmers University in Gbg).

In the beginning of December I was hired by Musicworks Magazine to work as Associate Editor under the venerable Gayle Young, the driving force behind the magazine for almost 20 years. I'm really excited about the job. I've been reading the magazine for years and never thought I'd actually be working there.

Because of all the upheaval I haven't spent any time developing new works, or performing, or even applying for festivals. Especially relocating back to TO and getting used to a non-school schedule really takes energy out. But I'm really looking forward to getting back to creating.

I'm also figuring out this blog system as the front page for my site, which should be easier for me to update.

So keep an eye out for new works and new events and new performances, of course. And if you want Musicworks to know about anything you're doing, pass it by me.

Alex (my regular accomplice, Nim) and I played at Gothenburg's night of culture, Kulturnatta on my birthday a few weeks ago. <some poor photos are up, thanks to Lalye Gaye>

The show was at the yuppie lounge venue Respekt. Any of you aware of Gbg's cultural lore will probably have heard of the infamous v/vm show for the 2005 film festival. Essentially v/vm and the opener for the show, Pistol Disco, were screamy noise bands. Why were they billed for this yuppie lounge? who knows.

After Pistol Disco, from Gbg, screamed their set, everyone in the audience stood around wondering what was going to happen next, unaware that the management had actually refused to allow v/vm, who came all the way from the UK, to play. And that was it. Be wary of Respekt.

Alex and I were a little worried because our set was not exactly, um, melodic. Everything turned out to be okay. We played on old tape-recorders that controlled filmstrip-like projections behind us of photos of our family, etc. (The flyer up top is Alex's niece and an old photo of my father.) At the end we stormed off like prissy rockstars while the projection said "Vi har inte glömt v/vm på filmfestivalen" (we haven't forgotten v/vm at the film festival). We didn't plan to do that, I swear!