machinista entry

VIDEOHOMETRAINING live (NL/US)
2-D micromusic & AV gameshow

VideoHomeTraining is a live played wacky audiovisual liveshow, played by the Videohometrainers, starring as computer animated cut-out versions of themselves they play a 2-d action adventure of shooting, jumping & kicking on screen, based on old-skool computer graphics & accompanied by electronic 8-bit sound samples. Sound and Image are being controlled live on stage where a funky mix of noisy sounds and animations will smoosh your brain cells to sweet, mouldy pudding....
Videohometraining are:

-Marieke Verbiesen (NL): visuals (http://www.marieke.nu)
has been experiencing with and giving workshops in "Low-fi animating" covering various forms of animation + diffrent techniques to work with and combine, from cartoon to stopmotion using super8- toy- web- and gameboycamera's + various software.
Marieke is head of the dutch headquarter of the online community 'Micromusic' http://www.micromusic.net

-Gijs Gieskes (NL) : sound (http://www.gieskes.nl)
Creator of playfull sound interfaces for the web, the 3V sequencer(a selfmade analogue sequencer), and organises" The art of circuitbending" workshops for making your own instruments.

-Dalas Verdugo (USA) : vocals + wicked bodymovements (http://www.allwomenaredead.com)

Videohometraining started out in the summer of 2000 in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands and are currently we are all 'artists in residence' at BEK, the Bergen Electronic Art centre in Bergen, Norway

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNITby: view.my.source.code + spoonbender (UK)
synchronised robotic biofeedback mix in 8-bit AV

A live a performance by spoonbender as a central output/input unit interfaced & re-processed by view.my.source.code.

The cabled, patched & connected body of the central performer, spoonbender behaves and imitates an output/input processing unit. It sends, receives and directs generated data as midi signals and pulses translating into 8-bit sound and a trigger to a code based textual interface.Wearing a specially created outer shell constructed to facilitate input and output connections, spoonbender will physically plug into himself to 'output' self-generated pulses and 'input' to
receive re-processed and returned feedback. The output pulse actions will trigger an automated code based visual interface which then will be reinterpreted and re-directed as midi signals back as an 'input' into spoonbenders patch-bay bodyshell to remix. This relay of pulses and signals between spoonbenders input/output shell and code interface will continue to translate and process into a sampled, mixed and remixed performance of evolving 8-bit music of repetition, beats and remixes.
http://www.samuraiskillz.myby.co.uk

IGNORANT DJs (UK)
Making music with their fingers
Fi$T, Ra and Spudd use old and new technology (Gameboy+nanoloops, effects, turntable with experimental needle contraptions) to physically remix vinyl and digitally destroy sounds.

Contributors to various Techno/electro clubs in Glasgow (Radar, Kube, Eskrima), Ignorant have also collaborated on audio-visual live sets with Pointless Creations for festival such as BREAK2.2 (Slovenia) and AVIT (Brighton)

Mr ELECTRON aka Chris Meighan(UK)
Robotic dinner party muzak

mr. electron (aka Chris Meighan) produces electronic music using otherwise redundant computer technology, principally the famous C64 computer produced between 1982 and 1993 by Commodore, inc. Mr. Electron's music is characterised by its hard, grating edge and crunching, distorted synthesised vocals (courtesy of the ZX Spectrum +3). This is what robots play as background when they hold dinner parties.

Installation: UNKNOWN PLEASuRES
Unknown Pleasures is an art system which explores the existence of a machine conciousness, and specifically the possibility that a machine may be able to develop a sense of beauty. This is accomplished through interaction with human operators, whose input is analysed and reflected upon by the machine; this results in the
machine developing a set of aesthetic values, which shall be called the PARAMETERS OF BEAUTY, through human influence but also as a product of its own
randomised idiosyncracy.
The Unknown Pleasures system was designed and built by Chris Meighan (c_meighan@hotmail.com), a final year student in the Department of Interior Design at the Glasgow School of art.

IDEALWORD by: Enrique Radigales (SP)
Copyleft ASCII image environment

IdealWord is a project hosted on the Internet the aim of which is to explore the various definitions of the written word in digital contexts and their subsequent reconversion into physical (analogical) resolutions and environments . IdealWord's graphics will be used to provide the image environment in lights as part of the Machinista friday event.

Since 1995 Enrique has developed art projects with digital media. As a co-founder of "strdub" he has created artistic projects for the research center Hangar (Barcelona, Spain), the Museum of Electrography of Cuenca (Spain), and Arco Electrónico (Madrid, Spain). In 1999 he co-founded Fiftyfifty —a cultural agitator and a production company for multimedia author products— where he stayed until year 2000. Among other tasks, Fiftyfifty organized media activities in the Centre of Contempary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB), Hangar and Sonar in Barcelona, Spain.

Solar X:
Roman Belavkin (aka Solar X) is a music composer, scientist and a founder of the Russian ArT-TeK Records label, bringing to the world some of the best artists from the post-soviet space. He has been described by The Face magazine as "a stereotypical russian genius", a statement that's hard to argue, as apart from being russia's own "Aphex without a tank" (De-Bug), he has also achieved gold medals at martial arts championships of Russia and Europe, a degree in physics and PhD in artificial intelligence. Now located in the UK, he carries on this tradition by forming new networks and transgressing existing boundaries in club culture, performing at electronic music festivals around the World as well as conducting research in cognitive science. Ptuch, the main club culture magazine in Russia, has named Solar X as the most influential person in modern Russian electronic music. http://solarx.mu.ru

Vadim Epstein a.k.a. eps
moscow media artist, vj, promoter, curator. Started his artistic career with internet media in 1996, then moved to avant-garde club culture and experimental video. Organiser of manyclub events, he collaborated on video installations and live visuals for the most of russian electronic musicians and djs. His own style usually tends towards weird aesthetics witht slight overload of the audience.
Released on vinyl video [vinylvideo.com, release #19]
other recent projects: videoprogram for kazantip beach fests [concept/cinema/vj shows], russian video program at jeune creation 2003 exhibition, supervision of 'vjs vs visualisers' category at machinista 2003 online festival and 'full screen Robovision' at machinista 2004.

The EJ Turntable is the world's only MIDI Turntable system, built for scratching and mixing music videos the same way a DJ mixes vinyl. It's used by a new generation of multimedia performers called Experience Jockeys.
The EJ Turntable allows DJs, VJs, Electronic Musicians and Video Editors to scratch, beatmatch, and remix music videos LIVE for the first time. It is a retrokit for existing DJ turntables, consisting of a patent-pending Optical Vinyl and Cartridge, MIDI Converter, and ScratchTV software (Mac / PC). ScratchTV is compatible with any QuickTime supported media, including .mov, .avi, .mp3, .aiff, .wav, and qtvr. The EJ MIDI Turntable is compatible with any MIDI hardware or software, including the Edirol DV-7PR. The EJ system has been developed and distributed independently by EJ Enterprises Worldwide.
The system is being used by a wide range of respected artists, including Emergency Broadcast Network, Coldcut, Faust & Shortee, and Honeygun Labs. For more information about the EJ MIDI Turntable, visit MixMusicVideo.

Justin Kent is the inventor of the EJ Turntable and Founder of EJ Enterprises. After earning degrees in Architecture, Computer Science, and Music at MIT, he went on to work at the popular online music service Napster until it's 2002 restructuring. Since then he has worked full time as the head of EJ Enterprises. He performs live as eJK, in addition to speaking and presenting digital art in local and international forums.

Freek Menoovers:
Glasgow's premier turntablist duo.

RICHAIR2030 by TAKE2030 (UK/US/LAT/RU/TWN/AUS)- BEAT UP THE SIGNALS
post-netcrash wireless performance by renegade rollergirls
http://richair.waag.org

RICHAIR2030 is a fictional wireless performance set in year 2030.
RICHAIR2030 incorporates ideas of freenetwork movement developed worldwide in early 21st century and proposes shared public consumption of wireless bandwidth in an " "After the Net", "After the Crash" scenario.

It is year 2030. The great wireless hope that promised mobility and connectivity has bubbled. The GPS satellite signals have lost track of its urbanites when cutting through the Ozone layers. The ocean-apart digital divide has eventually sabotaged the Net we surf in. What remains of the feeble bandwidth is held out and safeguarded by the wireless freenetworkers, whose self-organized and decentralized network maintains its data cloud in the local communal mesh-settings.
The mobile generation is grounded. The tribal gathering around freenetwork nodes is the only game in town, bringing together the signal-seeking Desparati. The self-appointed renegade roller girls, acting as the Transmitenti of free bandwidth, travel city limits in auto-powered modules. Equipped with homemade lunchbox chiputers, the roller girls pump the remaining wireless signal strength in RGB codes and sonic extravaganza for everyone's enjoyment. RICHAIR2030 mobilizes roaming nodes and calls for trans-national virtual mesh network.

BEAT UP THE SIGNALS
PUMP UP THE VOLUME
RESTART THE SYSTEM
SHARE AND CONSUME

Soundscape by Supermodem.org [sneha solanki & kate rich]
Rollergirl dresses by MissChina, Paris
Server Tech support: Waag Society, Amsterdam
Funding: Arts Council England
Mobile connections live - New edition for futuresonic04

The feeble wireless signal strength and network pingtime relay tranmitted from the roaming roller girls carrying lunchboxes are captured live and rendered into sound notes. Derived from these basic incoming bytes, supermodem's two sound artists collaborate on stage, on rollers, on mixers to beat up the signals that synchronizes with their logical-dynamic local wireless network environment. Not to be left out, the signal searching Desparati will be invited to make their last mobile calls, only to hear the feeble incoming signals crushed and recycled into the mix.

Supermodem.org orchestrates a communications signal sonic zoo by further incorporating archive of communications signals - species traditional, extinct, fictional and prescient -radio+ mobile +GPS +modem+wireless filed, flattened and transformed into dance beats. The artefact signals of the receding century preserved and performed as a nostagia tribute, a golden-oldies archive of beeps, dialtones, pings, bandwidth reports and network sound effects.
RICHAIR2030 is presented by TAKE2030, a Transmitenti media society that operates in Parallel Net media scheme and shifts the social media mission into hypermedia playing fields.

TAKE2030 derives its year 2030 from the legacy of Kazakhstan2030, the year that Kazakhstan strives to take over Asian Tiger’s famed economic miracle and claims itself a Central-Asian Snow Leopard. TAKE2030 functions as research+development+action media-working units
with its cross-everything-everywhere Transmitenti members. TAKE2030’s plans its strategic media practice in commons societies, launches RICHAIR2030 as a touring performance in 2004, upcoming projects include MARKETPLACE2030 (alternative market trading models) and LOVEME2030 (rendezvous love hotel incorporated).

machinista entry

AVATAR BODY COLLISION (UK/ NZ/ FIN/ SER)present DTN2
globally dispersed cybertheatre demo

DTN2 is a new work-in-progress created in UpStage by international cyberformance troupe Avatar Body Collision.

Synopsis: 12 months after their anti-war cyberformance, 'Dress the Nation' a group of virtual performers attempt to restage their show. But times have changed and what was once a satirical inditment of war-mongering, is now seen as an unpatriotic act. In a society on an elevated terrorist attack code, playing with make-believe bombs is no longer tenable, especially online, where interaction quickly devolves into invasion. DTN2 conjures up a paranoid world where the metaphors and methods of theatre become indistinguishable from the political games that are being played out on the world stage. In such an environment what weapons do we choose? Do we act?
UpStage: a completely new approach to online/virtual performance, theatre and storytelling. UpStage is an open source software that combines the various elements of cyberformance -web cams, audio, graphical avatars, text chat - into a single web page. UpStage provides an web-based venue and tool for artists to compile multiple digital media for textual and audiovisual communication into a live performance, in real time, for online audiences, and combinations of online and proximal participants: www.upstage.org.nz. UpStage was created by Avatar Body Collision & Douglas Bagnall. Development funded by Creative New Zealand & the New Zealand Ministry of Research, Science & Technology
Avatar Body Collision : Karla Ptacek (UK), Leena Saarinen (FINLAND), Vicki Smith (AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND), Helen Varley Jamieson (SERBIA). For further details: www.avatarbodycollision.org

The ABC Experiment has been initiated by cybeperformer Helen Varley Jamieson, who is engaged in an ongoing exploration of the collision between theatre and the internet. The ABC Experiment has been commissioned by BATS Theatre (Wellington, New Zealand) and is being undertaken by Helen in collaboration with performer Paolo Grippa, visual artist Vicki Smith, digital performance researcher Karla Ptacek, producer Angela Main and chatterbot expert Leena Saarinen.

For the DTN2 performance at The Arches, Karla Ptacek will be installing and performing with the upstage software in the venue, and interacting with the other ABC members and audience members throught the web.

Karla Ptacek -
Karla's early career spans two decades as performer and playwright in New York City, predominantly as a member of the collaborative multimedia performance group, Creation Production Company, resident at La Mama ETC. Since October 2000, she has been pursuing practice-based doctoral research into digital performance, supported by an award from the Arts & Humanities Research Board, in London, UK.

PROMETHEUS by: Yiannis Melanitis, Marianna Ranis (GR)
suspended body ritual and sonically-controlled hexapod robot

A male and a female body (Yiannis Melanitis, Marianna Ranis), are suspended from the ground facing each other. An electronic device (a hexapod robot) is attached to the woman's belly pointing towards the abdomen of the male body with its sharp endings. The robot is activated by the woman's scream. The scream is transported via a microphone to the computer, which, in turn activates the sharp endings of the robot in an incidental way. A second computer processes the same scream via the program MAX MSP and responds with a synthetic scream in real-time. The man's body 'responds' with a synthetic scream to the blows that it receives from the peaks of the robot's spikes.

The machine- the robotic mechanism- functions as a extension of the body, as his anatomic continuity. The female scream constitutes the base of the rhythmical sequence of the performance. The reactions of the robot as well as the musical program are derived from her vocal characteristics. Via the technology it is converted into energy which activates the peaks of the robot's spikes against the man's body. As an antipode to this blow, the befalling synthetic cry uses the particular characteristics of the natural scream.

concept:Yiannis Melanitis/ realization: Yiannis Melanitis, Marianna Ranis /Robot programming : Yiannis Skoulidas/Music composing with MAX MSP: Vassilios Kokkas.

Z LAB Transported by: Paul Granjon (FR)
multilingual cybernetic presentation showcasing miniature DIY-robots

Electronic artist Paul Granjon presents in an entertaining and informative fashion the latest developments of the research and development program conducted in his Z Lab. Z Lab Transported is a unique performance comprising an illustrated presentation about hair and technology, live cybernetic music with multilingual lyrics and exclusive wearable robots in a condensed DIY format.

Visual artist working with electronics, robotics, video and programming, Paul Granjon's subject matter is the respective status, and relation, of human being and technological artefact. He applies a playful, hands-on approach to the production of machines for videos, installations and performances.
Often presenting the work in a humorous fashion, he questions and comments on the effects of exposure to an exponentially growing and more capable technological environment, feeding the work with my equal feelings of attraction and concern.
His work has been shown regularly both in the UK and abroad since 1992, he is also a part time lecturer in the School of Fine Art in Cardiff.
website: www.zprod.org

"The strength of Granjon's deceptively playful creations is that they lead us to more complex and worrying territories, uncanny places that we recognise but simultaneously feel uncomfortable with. Esoteric worlds of technology and science, which we experience as outsiders but do not
fully inhabit or understand. Darker thoughts about humans and machines, the irreversibility of technological progress, scientific experimentation, access to technology, life science, power and accountability creep into our consciousness."
Karen MacKinnon, 2001 in "Z Lab 2001" catalogue.

"The venerable art of automata has ranged form the sublime to the ridiculous, from the great Jean Tinguely's self destructive machines to clockwork tweetybirds in your local shopping arcade. Paul Granjon's Z Lab, the ficticious research centre of his company Z Productions, is a
decidedly absurdist, tongue in cheek cake on the whole business of life, art, freewill, predestination and the nightmare of unfeeling silliness."
RC, The Guardian Guide, August 3rd 2001

ABLAB live (UK)
one-fingered musician generating florid labyrinths of sound and color

ablab.org
a website for office workers without a window.
developed on night shifts using NHS computers, the invisible architecture is a learnable event of not knowing. it is a pattern to be cracked for the over-heated and the twitchy. store yourself away in the machine, over and over again.

 BOORKOPBREAKS by: Feedback Society (NL)
realtime video vortex-generation from drill mounted wireless camera

"positive feedback is a key ecosystems concept where the system reacts to change in such a way as to reinforce it"
In 2002 we started a project called Feedback society. In this open society we explore audiovisual techniques to react to the enviorement of where we are performing at that time.
FBS members are Arno Scheper, Willem Witte & Renzo van Steenbergen, audiovisual artists based in the Hague, the Netherlands. We made an audiovisual performance arround the invention of a camera on a drilling machine, rotating up to 1450 rpm.

 THE INNER MACHINE (UK)
Homemade obsolete lab equipment audio-visual performance

A Live Laboratory where the operation of lab equipment becomes an audiovisual performance. Hand-made, hand-powered machines which resemble the display panels of oscilloscopes, radars and obsolete NASA technology. These machines are designed solely for the purpose of live performance.
1 video/machine performer (Ian Clutterbuck) +2 noise-track performers (Dan Powell+Will Seelig). Credits include founders of the Onega sound System and Dub Circus Experiment playing at Glastonbury, visuals for Zion Train and many many more projects.