I’ve got a lot of fond memories of Vancouver’s New Forms Festival, a special highlight was seeing Kinski a few years back. As I recall, it was my first social outing after Harry was born, which may have been a factor in declaring it my most ecstatic music experience of 2002: “Soaring, spacious songs, often driven by relatively straight-ahead rock arrangements, Kinski filled the acoustic expanse of St. Andrew Wesley’s Cathedral with a roar that warmed every cell in my body, pure sonic bliss.”
If you’re curious, I recommend the live set they played on Scott William’s WFMU show back in 2000 (RealAudio scroll to 2:02).
This Thursday will mark my first time as a participant, one of the multitude taking part in ArtCamp:
An un-conference operates on concepts that connect to the internet, such as wikis and open source culture, but the event happens in physical space. It is an open, self-organizing event geared toward sharing practices and ideas on art, media, networks and culture. The idea is to create an event in which conference structures are overturned in favour of collective, self-organizational models. ArtCamp is an experiment in bringing these principles into action in the context of art discourse, production and practice.
Moose Camp aside, this will be my first time taking part in one of these open space technology events. A key principle is “no Spectators, only Participants,” a wee bit intimidating given my natural artistic skills. So as a starting point I’m going to hook up with Jason Toal’s ‘makin mixtapes then and now’ concept… Hopefully James Phillips will show up with some of his hot vintage decks. And I hope to add some found sound flavour, digging through the depths of anonymous unknown and unknowable amateur cassette recordings, mining some of the same territory as The Professor’s wonderful Audio Kitchen program.
Jason is the mastermind, but my understanding (admittedly hazy, as it was constructed with ample doses of lager and tequila) is that we will work towards creating a mixtape by and for the participants of ArtCamp, playing around with friction points between digital music media and an analog technology on the verge of obsolescence. Not sure I get it, but I know it’s gonna be fun. And if you have ideas or worthy sound files, please do pass them on.
fun is right brian… and prizes! (at least one)
can i put images in here?
link
Lucky dog! So I’ve been listening to that old WMFU broadcast all morning – cool stuff even without the DJ-recommended bong hits (for some unfathomable reason they object to that around the office). Keep it up – each WMFU-related post you do is like your own one-man funding drive, and I am edging closer and closer to parting with some of my scant entertainment dollars next funding drive.
Jason — love that cassette generator, I intend to use it elsewhere.
Scott — Bong hits are pretty much mandatory at UBC. Scott Williams’s shows are almost always worth a listen, and that one is really cool. I love that Julian Cope song about Space Rock.
And I’m pleased my WFMU zealotry is having some semblance of the desired effect.