Video Vortex exhibition at Montevideo, Amsterdam

Two works made an impression on me in the video vortex exhibition, I saw on January 17th.

This image is a detail of P.T.S. (Public Television Sculpture),
the time-based installation of 8 videos seen distorted through 32 prism-like spheres in a circular cabinet by Dutch artist, Jaap de Jonge (www.jaapdejonge.nl)

Beneath these balls, which function as lenses, are eight hidden monitors. The video material was taken from 32 broadcasts, which were made for Park 4DTV (Amsterdam cable television) in 1996. New images and image combinations are created by the 32 prisms, all of which distort the image in some way or other. By pressing a button, the viewer can trigger the sound that accompanies each image.


The other memorable work was the film Flat Earth a film by Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead (view some stills here). It is a journey around the globe using visuals and material found on the internet.

music link of the week: Dave Thorpe Fantastic slide guitar! London folkie.
art link of the week: Simone de Jong Leiden artist who's website I came across

performances in The Hague

24th November, The Hague
I saw two performances that were part of the 5 event festival POW Reflections 2.

Theatre-maker and performance artist, Peter Zegveld, created a half hour of sounds, explosions and fleeting images.

Then the POW ensemble (a Dutch-based computer music group) gave us their Noise of the Loudspeaker performance of sound + image conducted mainly via various loudspeaker constructions. See: www.powensemble.nl)


Above: POW: Luc, Robert, Horst, Han

October :: Study in Leiden

Busy these past few weeks with some studies at Leiden University plus a sound course held in the interactive media department of the Royal Academy of Arts in the Hague. The sound course is run by Geert Oddens + Robert Pravda and I'm re-vamping the soundpiece/s for the Cross Pollination sculpture, partly as an experiment to see how much I can do in the open source programme: Audacity and partly to see if the work might be interesting with various sounds (via 9 speakers) as well as the composite of sounds from the 'beehive'. If I'm happy with it, I'll post the stuff on my myspace.

I took this photo during the performance Man in e.space by the French dance group, Res Publica + the Belgian designers, Lab[au] at the Today's Art Festival on September 22nd in the Hague Atrium.

The two other studies I'm doing are one in the Literature dept on image/beeld and one in the Arts dept on festivals in europe. Also Joris and I made a start on an interactive imaging project/thing we want to make together. Toroa is in Rome this week for a school trip and so we are currently a one teenager family. Yesterday we bought a massage chair (on special for 49 Euros) to go with Nandor (the computer Tama is often at and which often sends these blogs). Sen is working on a new Persian translation project with a lecturer at the university for a book.

music link of the week: POW Ensemble Hague based experimental folk / jazz / electronic
art link of the week: Clare Carswell a friend and Oxford-based artist