TakeAway Festival

An attempt to summarise the issues and questions that the Takeaway Festival is bringing up. Mainly from the lectures but also from the individual parts and the DIY culture of the event. They are similar to issues that have been raised through the development of Node.London.

What roles are there for Artists in a capitalist system? Clearly this isn't a new question but some developments can re-invigorate it:

How can the development of increasingly networked culture provide new opportunities and challenges? and what responsibilities does this bring?

How does the development of new tools and technologies effect (or even determine) this?

Do we need to develop a manual for Do It Yourself Culture and for collaboration? If so how can we do this - Collaboratively?

Can the development of free and open source software / practices (and culture) provide models?

Day one:

Throughout Node London I have continued to be amazed by the motivation of a number of really intelligent, alternative people with very clear, and persuassive ideas about life, politics, digital culture (amongst other things). Takeaway has only served to emphasise my opinions in this sense.

If we could see a live streamed google map of London right now, I'm sure Dana Centre would be glowing, with so much energy bursting out of the walls from Takeaway.

I've now run 2 out of our 3 workshops at the Takeaway Festival which is all going by in a bit of a blur, especially after a stimulating but exhausting evening of lectures and discussions - some of which happened over a pint or two of lager. The discussions in the workshops have been really useful - I didn't know what to expect at all before hand. They've confirmed that there's a growing interest in blogging and the possibilities of new (user generated) media generally and that this comes from lots of (sometimes conflicting) perspectives.

I'm presenting my work at the Takeaway show, and been working on taking Corrugation Street further. This is the latest version, hastily done in time for the show. So far I've worked on:
- improving the code, making it more efficient and sturdy
- adding new episodes

During the first day I had a lot of feedback which is proving useful in helping me work out future directions for the project. This is actually the first chance I've had to collect proper feedback, and it's good feedback as well.

With the long awaited Takeaway festival due to commence tomorrow, this is in many ways the culmination of Node London events. Its been fun but I cannot possibly spend another minute on Node London after Friday because I need to concentrate 100 per cent on my project (otherwise its not going to get finished in time for PG dip presentations!)

Having spent some time at the Dana centre today, in some ways I find this 'node' an unusual choice of exhibition space. Of course these things come down to personal taste but I just find the Dana Centre thing a little too pretentious, polished, and generally OTT. I intend to question the organisers (Rave tutors) more about why this 'space' was chosen over any other.

While creativity continues to flourish in workshops across the Rave campus, an exchange student from IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences, Japan) prepares for a unique live electronic improvisational music performance (with DIY wiring)...

Its 1pm. Shoesei Oishi set's up his rig in a classroom, unbeknown to the student community that he will soon be broadcasting audio to a Yokohama. This broadcast will be in collaboration with his fellow Breadboard Band members, who are now also setting up their rig at an exhibition space in Yokohama. Shosei will be contributing his world known scratch techniques to the live mix through his hacked ipod interface.