Saturday, February 24, 2007
Pleasure Dome's New Toronto Works screening
Latvian House
419 College St, Toronto
2000h
cover?

I'll be starting off Pleasure Dome's New Toronto Works show with a performance of i swallow, this thing that I've done several times and shown to friends but not yet documented on my site. There's a screenshot to the right—yes, that's my mouth.

Come on out and support local Toronto artists!

Friday, January 19, 2006
I/O Media Aboveground with special guests Smash and Teeny
at Interacess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
2100h sharp!
pwyc

I've just put a new net art piece online that I've been sitting on for a while. Arse Feck is a greasemonkey script to correct euphemisms for cursing in dove.org film reviews. For an idea of what it does, see this pic. To try it out for yourself, check out its documentation page.

Hark! I'm doing an installation at the Tranzac with Dafydd Hughes for New Year's Eve in Toronto! Wish I had the time for more information, but I'm working on it.

Drumheller will be playing. $10 pwyc. uh… we've just wired up a turntable to play at whatever speed we want in whatever direction. Be prepared!

My netart piece, Dear Diary, Dear World is online again, for now. Consult the oracle.

So I apparently lost track of time, and Making Room is this weekend! I'll be giving a talk about the Warbike for the Dorkbot presentations. Have I mentioned how grateful we all are to Kristin Trethewey for running Dorkbot?

Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
Making Room
Dorkbot Talk
224 Wallace Ave., 2nd Floor
Toronto
1330h
Free?!

Friday, December 1, 2006
I/O Media
at Interacess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
2000h
Free!

The theme this time is solo. So come to make some effin' noise.

My article about the Warbike, Geeks don't know it's psychogeography, is up in the latest issue of Glowlab's online magazine.

Friday, November 17, 2006
I/O Media Aboveground
at Interacess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
2100h

Friday, November 3, 2006
I/O Media
at Interacess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
1930h
Free!

The theme is "found speech samples," as Rob Cruickshank brings a reel-to-reel tape with someone practicing as a flight attendant, and I bring a recording of my neighbours acting like fucking children and screaming at each other.

And… what's that…? they're doing it again. Time to get my recorder!

It's out!

vague terrain 06: locative
Call for work
http://www.vagueterrain.net
guest curated by David McCallum

Not only are our lives being interwoven with technology, but technology that has an understanding of where it is. Locative technology can be described as the connection of information to geography. It is evident in microphones, cameras, RFID, GPS, wireless communications protocols, and a host of other sensors and technologies that are allowing devices to understand their places among people, within space, and among other devices. This technology, as proxy, allows us to better understand our place within, and our relationships to the spaces which we inhabit. This issue of vague terrain will allow us to better understand these technologies.   more »

The illustrious Dafydd Hughes and I will be conducting a workshop on Pure Data, the absolutely amazing do-everything programming environment for making music, video, physical computing, and whatever else you could possibly think of (it's true!).

We'll do our best to try to tailor the content of the workshop towards the needs of the participants (you!).

Information can be found at Interaccess' workshop page.

This is in Toronto at the end of November, by the way.

One of the things that my site has been sorely lacking is any documentation of my work. (If an undocumented work is made in the forest, is it art? No!)

I'd had a nifty dynamic documenting page going about a year ago, and then differing versions of PHP and server problems killed that. But after much headscratching, and rewriting in Python, it's back!

I'm still working out the kinks and filling in current information, but take a gander at my body of work thus far.

Friday, October 13, 2006
I/O Media
at Interacess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
1930h
Free!

Same kinda deal as last week. Leslie Spit samples, etc.

The added bonus is that my birthday is the 14th, so maybe we have an obligation to get hammered.

Friday, September 22, 2006
I/O Media
at Interacess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
1930h
Free!

We'll be using the samples from the Leslie Spit that we recorded last weekend. Remix TO!

I recently did a little e-mail interview with Australian body-themed artist Stelarc for the fourth installment of Vague Terrain, the quarterly online media arts journal by Greg Smith and Neil Wiernik. Mr. Stelarc was incredible receptive and I was very grateful to pick his brain. Take some time to check out this great resource.

Cancelled!

Well, the event's not cancelled, I just got too sick to travel to New York. But you can still go see the show; Nim is awesome!

Sunday, August 27, 2006
Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway - Bushwick, Brooklyn
9 p.m.
cover?

Playing with nim (Alex Berman), on the same bill as Brian House, both old Flexing Swine band mates.

Will you be in New York City? Come see me in New York City! I'll be playing in New York City, the city that loves to be New York City!

Friday, July 21, 2006
I/O Media
at Interacess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
2030h
Free!

Yes! I'm apparently performing at the ToToGo Placard in Gothenburg, Sweden on Saturday at 2pm EST!

For more info, check out ToToGo.

Oh... Now I get it... To(ronto)To(kyo)Go(thenburg). Smrt.

Lineup is:

       17:30 Svante Hermansson
       18:00 Kanta Horio/Tetsuya Umeda (Tokyo, JP)
       18:30 Johan Agebjörn
       19:00 Sonatique Deluxe (Geneva, CH)
       19:30 tystnad
       20:00 Sin(theta) (Toronto, CA)
       20:30 Nim
       21:00 Husky Nose (Berlin, DE)
       21:30 Sushi Brother
       22:00 Miss cmy (Amsterdam, NL)
       22:30 goto80

I'll be giving a talk at Dorkbot Toronto, probably talking about the warbike, and the backpack should be there if you want to try it out. Come on down!

Thursday, June 8, 2006
Dorkbot Toronto
Interaccess
9 Ossington Avenue, Toronto
7 p.m.
free!

Friday, May 26, 2006
I/O Media
at Interacess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
2030h
Free!

Open media jam. Come one, come all! Yes yes yes!

In a surprise show, I'll be opening for Derek Holzer and Sara Kolster and their resonanCITY performance at the SAW Gallery in Ottawa tonight.

May 6, 2006
SAW Gallery
67 Nicholas Street, Ottawa
8pm ?
$4

Man, does Derek look serious in that photo or what?

I'll be going to Ottawa for the next week to participate in the Cultures in Transit exhibition. I'd love to give a link as to where you can find more information about it, but, scarily, there doesn't seem to be anything---I even googled it, to no avail.

The Warbike will be available to try out throughout the week, so come and listen to Ottawa's WiFi networks!

May 1-5, 2006
Cultures in Transit
Gallery 115
100 Laurier Ave E., room 115, University of Ottawa
11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

---

Update:

Apparently there'll be an exhibition discussion led by Alex Castonguay on Friday. I assume that it'll be at the gallery. I'd like to stick around for that, but we'll see if I can find enough stuff to do in Ottawa for that length of time. At any rate, it should be a good discussion centered on mobility in art, and you can ask me and the other artists any questions about our work --- I'm just guessing, actually, I haven't been told exactly what's going on.

Friday, May 5, 2006
Cultures in Transit: exhibition discussion
11:45 a.m.
Gallery 115

This coming Sunday is the CD launch for the new Musicworks CD timefields and maritides. It was compiled and edited by Jon Oswald, and is a collection of recordings from several of the old Musicworks issues. The CD also has PDFs of those issues.

There'll be some live performances, and I might even play (we still have to see about that, I'm not so sure about pushing myself on the Toronto new music scene).

The event is pay what you can, and a cheap price with the CD (probably $15).

Carl Wilson has even double-starred the event, so you know we're hip!

Sunday, April 23, 2006. 2:30 pm
Edward Day Gallery
952 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON
PWYC (special price with CD)
Snacks and drinks available   more »

Well, I'm still waiting on some photos from the cricket performance. But I did manage to just encode the recording of the show.

It's only an hour and a half of the three hour or so performance, but I think it gives you a good impression of how the thing sounded --- although, actually being there and seeing the crickets in the room is a bit of a different experience.

It was only recorded on the internal mic of my MP3 player sitting right beside the cricket terrarium. You'll hear some girls yelling in the recording. Them girls were doing some performance art in the room beside me. You could get upset that they're muddying the performance and the recording, but I think in some sense it makes the performance and the recording a little more authentic. The performance was supposed to be just the recording of the crickets, but I found that the terrarium resonated when the girls shrieked, pulling them into the mix. They added a different dimension to the sounds, giving me a broader palette to work with. We focus too much on trying to get things sounding "perfect" that we forget that the live experience is far from perfect.

Friday, April 21, 2006
I/O Media
at Interacess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
2030h
Free!

Open media jam. Come one, come all!

Well, the cricket show was kind of a odd. I mean, it was great. Because it wasn't set up in a traditional performance environment --- that is, there was no performer/audience division, no stage, and no defined set time --- it was a completely different experience from what I was used to.

I find that during performances I can get kind of antsy, wondering if the audience might be bored. This is a bad thing if you make minimal music. But because I had all this time to myself, and patrons came in and out of the space, I didn't feel any pressure to keep anyone happy: if I wanted to keep one loop running for an hour, that was my choice.

I was asked exactly what I was doing that night, and I came up with the term "performative installation." Maybe it was just performance, who knows.

Except, by the end of the performance some of the crickets had started eating each other. I felt a little bad about that. But hey, at least they died for art.

One event I forgot to mention, and another I'm catching just in time. Upcoming:

Saturday, March 25, 2006
Arthaus
at the DeLeon White Gallery
1096 Queen West at Dovercourt, Toronto
1930h - 22h
Free!

An all-encompassing performance night organized by Rahim Ladha. I think I have a room to myself on the second floor. Expect music involving live crickets.

Previous event:

Friday, March 10, 2006
I/O Media
at Interacess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
21h
Free!

Open media jam, like the Hugs events I did in Gbg.

Just a little update regarding what I have been / will be working on. I can't specify any dates or locations yet, but it looks like I will be showing the Warbike in Toronto and Ottawa this summer--which means that I may actually get some documentation together! I'll have more information about this when things get finalised.

Documentation is proving to be a problem, as I'm thinking about applying to Ars Electronica and realising that I don't think I have anything to give them other than words. I mean, the interactive art section requires video documentation. I've never even done video documentation. Sometimes I feel out of my element participanting in the "art" world and I should just stick to making noises and playing them at poorly-attended clubs.

This photo was stolen from some highwheel website that I cannot quite remember.

It doesn't seem so long ago
when I loved you, my radio
you promised me so much but now
you've changed

You always played my favourite songs
those robot-disco marathons
inspired me to buy my first machines

You've changed and I don't know why
so strange - you never said goodbye

I felt betrayed and so I turned
to television, yet I've yearned
for you, my radio - you complete me

You used to play my favourite tracks
those basslines and synthetic claps
oh radio I miss those sounds the most

You've changed...   more »

Events acomin'.

Friday, February 17, 2006
I/O Media
at Interaccess
Queen and Ossington, Toronto
20h30
Free!

Open media jam, like the Hugs events I did in Gbg. Same people involved in the Ambient Ping show last time.

In other news, I've started playing Capoeira, and my school is having a fundraising Valentine's party this Saturday, Feb. 18. 8pm, 1222A Bloor (just west of Dufferin), Toronto. So come on out and see people spinning and kicking and stuff.

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!