Interesting article on ‘booming sand’ or how sand makes sound:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/04-recipe.html
I lurked an MP3 of a squeaky sand sound, kinda like the one you make when you walk across a beach. I think I’ll experiment with this and add it to my ‘sand’ flash movie.

Started the Dreamweaver tutorial and have solved my remote server problems. Linked this blog from the homepage. I plan to expand my site to include my portfolio and new work. I’ve never made a web site before so the learning curve is huge. Coming from broadcast, it’s very strange having a variable frame size.
http://www.phoebejeebe.com

On Wednesday we had a group class with all Digital Arts students. Everyone introduced themselves and discussed their projects. Such a bunch of interesting people with a wide range of ideas. There are some concurrent themes that run through many of the works. The loudest of these I guess is INTERACTIVITY, the topic of Thursday’s symposium. It seems that there is often an assumption of interactivity in digital art. I think this is ridiculous. To me, ‘digital art’ is the most wide ranging of all art forms as it can use any creation method as well any format of transmission/broadcast/exhibition. But it can still be a ‘closed’ work.

The feedback and suggestions I received from the class about my project made reference to Wolfgang Goethe and John Gage’s work on colour theory and Norman McLaren’s film work where he scratches into the audio track of analogue film.

The interactivity symposium was fantastic. The definition needed to be thrashed out early on as all communication can be thought of as interactive. I thought about when art started to incorporate interactivity and came up with Bertold Brecht ‘Radio Theory’ from the 1920’s in which he proposed the use of the new radio technology for (2 way) communication rather than (1 way) distribution. The 1960’s happenings and the Fluxus movement changed the relationship between artist and audience by pushing the boundaries of ‘what/where is the art?’.
We discussed the value of instructions in digital art. Some strongly opposed opinions. Things keep coming back to language, where there is an assumed level of computer language, there’s no need for instructions.

I spent an exciting show and tell afternoon in the lab with Lousia. I’ve been wrestling with making this blog in html in dreamweaver because I’m determined to learn. But I’m constantly offended by my inability to layout my page tastefully so I’m going to use a pre-formatted blogger page and learn to make websites with flash for something else, like my portfolio and new work. Why reinvent the wheel?

Discussions about Mashcinema (sic) new forms of cinema using non-linear narratives with Seb Chan of Subase Snarl and The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
Interview in the Guardian 24/09/05 with Edward Castronova about ‘Synthetic Worlds’, multi player online role-playing games and emotive AI.

Visited Open Systems: Rethinking Art c.1970 at the Tate Modern. I felt that the works were absent of the feeling of freedom and new mediums that they would have been created in. Perhaps to do with the curating, or maybe the ‘Tate Modern Experience’ where the space is so heavily loaded with the feeling of 2005. It all felt mixed up and crowded in together. Marcel Broodthaers ‘Boat Painting’ 1973 was an interesting use of rotating slides of close up sections of an old oil painting. It had a similar effect to my flash work Sand 2004. I enjoyed Bruce Nauman ‘Around the Corner Piece’ in which, as the viewer, you are an essential performer in the work.
Open Sound Systems: Alvin Lucier concert at the Tate Modern. Fantastic! Really interesting approach to sound as art / space / science. My favourite was first, by Alvin Lucier ‘In Memoriam of Jon Higgins’ where a constantly ascending synthesised tone was played. A clarinet player would hold constant notes, closely tuned to the tone which would create beat frequencies as the tones collide.

First day.
Dominance of the visual apparent immediately. MA group refers to art as ‘an image’.
Interesting idea from Andy about a sound only website with no visuals. I would like to explore a website for sound where audio is triggered by colour, not text.
ITRDU are doing research into use of colour.