Blogs

This is produced by the Someth;ng people. You play with the stalks to generate sound. Press a button to change the sound mood. Good to play with and also aesthetically pleasing - quite beautiful, you get both visual and tactile pleasures. We thought this would work well in a dentist's waiting room, or even in cafe's. They are considering marketing this as a product.

There are many talented artists present interesting works in Cybersonica. Why don't they target specific audience? With fantastic programming skills, they have got to make something could approach more realistic rather than stuff stuck in a gallery.

I just had a play with Orbe whilst chatting to the creators of this kinestheic synthesiser for group musical improvisation, Amjad Chaudry and Vikesh Bhatt.

They describe this prototype as "a synthesiser designed for simultaneous multiple user participation." We hugged 5 translucent globes, from the floor to just above our heads, jiggled them about on their vertical pole, pressed buttons and listened to the pitch and tone warp as we talked about bringing "the funk back into jamming".

Amjad referred to it as an antidote to the Kraftwerk performance aesthetic: moody, eyes down on knobs and dials. He wants to bring our attention back not only to our ears but also to the other performers as we play- to the romance of human ensemble playing. And this was when I realised how close I was standing to them both. Less than a foot away, attention divided between the conversation and the sounds of the orbs and feeling pretty OK about it.

I just check out the artists page on the Cybersonica website.
http://www.cybersonica.org/artists/

Why are there no/so few women represented?

answers on an epostcard please.

I caught a short talk By Chris O'Shea and chatted to him afterwards because I found the ideas behind his work explained some of the things that bother me about lots of Interactive work. He talked about how important open source ideas are to him.

He started out aiming to make an interactive music controller and explore how tactile controls enhance how we use sound but became increasingly frustrated because there was little shared knowledge about how things like this are made.

He says that most producers have their own approach and there's a lot that's not compatible. It's like most other developers want to preserve their ownership and just show things in galleries not really including others in their work.

So a big part of his work is to share the developments he makes and possibly to develop standards for communication between elements. "There's nothing new needed for what I'm doing, things like camera tracking and mapping properties but if everyone has to start afresh we keep getting stuck at the technology then it takes a long time for a new user to move beyond the most basic sounds."

In this space visitors and participants at the Cybersonica festival are invited to contribute to a multi-blog to review events and performances and provide up to date coverage of the 'feeling on the ground' at Cybersonica.

Those unable to visit the Festival will still be able to get a strong sense of what's going on and add their own observations and content. This project goes live from our launch space at the Dana Centre on the 28th April 05.

Why am I doing this blog?

I feel large corporations should be held under more public scrutiny and supermarkets are not given enough attention in mass media.

Electronic media has the potential to hold these large corporations to account, in way that mainstream media doesn’t always achieve. Blogs can focus on special issues in ways that newspapers can’t afford.

I want this blog to present the bigger picture of what Tescos are doing, and their effects on our society.

What have I got against Tesco?

I am alarmed by Tesco’s recent annual profit announcements: more than £2 billion, and a 29% share of the UK food market.