Instantly right up there on my weirdest gig ever list, was the label showcase gig for Dual Plover at Electrofringe. A gig where Melbourne’s freak-hop sideshow – Curse of Dialect – looked fun but ordinary. How? The Zombie masks and genitals of ‘Suicidal Rap Orgy’, Brisbane’s Team Plastique in full theatrical mode, Rank Sinatra & Gary Bradbury, the Von-Trapp family sawing through guitars while playing them, their 8 year old son ‘playing’ a pair of chattering false teeth on a snare drum while his mum smashed rekkids, and AC/3P in fine gold silk and star wars robot mask – belting out updated vocals to many a fine classic accadacca tune, tastefully mashed and remixed. Plover-Phonic! Respex overdue : www.dualplover.com.
More Electro-Respex
Pixel Bleeder and beat manipulator for Briz-goth hoppaz, Ghosthype, Luke Illet outdid himself with his Nestune – a circuit bent nintendo graphics remixer that mashes up games on the fly – ‘controllably’ distorts and destroys game graphics. Luke also records damn fine electro as Collapsicon ( see www.ghosthype.net ). While you’re in browser land, check the sites of fest-veteran and prolific Melb pixel masher, Emile Zile – cleansurface.org / bubotic.net. In particular his Quicktime appearance on The Price is Right with Larry Edmur is damn hilarious. www.schizophonia.com by Alex Davies from Sydz also features many a strange interactive and installation, well worth a peek.
Drill N Browse
Missed his sessions, but his site alone is chock full of interesting projects that blur the virtual, physical and networked. The one that got everyone talking was where he set up a drill to a web counter. Every hit the site takes, drills another hole in a wall, takes it closer to collapsing. Hats off to Jonah Brucker-Cohen & his interactive projex>> www.coin-operated.com/projects.
Silly Scope – Surround Sound
The inimitable Robin Fox from Melb has just completed a history of experimental music making in Melbourne during the period 1975-79 and is doing PhD research in exploration of space as structure in electroacoustic and interactive environments. He has recently released Coagulate, produced with Anthony Pateras, available through Synaesthesia records ( www.synrecords.com ) Going solo up North, he wowed many with a sterling multichannel sound effort, finely hooked up to some very visually effective oscilliscopes.
Rock Operatics
Only one winner in this category – the Ladies of the Skipping League, who pulled out many a best move during their epic outdoors pop cultural marathon(g). Unfolding dramas and skipping rope tension. More conflict and resolution than an episode of Home and Away, and all choreographed with 20 or so uniformed dancing, rhyming skippers – with even a ‘touching’ tribute to the recently shuffled away, Robert Palmer.
Joining The Dots
If you’ve already grown bored mapping connections with www.friendster.com, there’s quite a few ‘social softwarez’ still poppin up for you to wear your mouse down with. www.tribe.net offers a lot wider functionality though seems to be mostly populated by San Fransisco heads. www.enemyster.com is obvious enough, as is www.fiendster.com (The new way to hate people) but www.fakester.com offers a bit more fun – being inspired by the idea that by being a fake you reveal more about your personality than with a stereotyped profile. Maybe the most on the money though is STD-ster – an online community that connects people through networks of sexual partners for tracking STD contraction.
“You can use STD-ster to: Meet new people to infect, through your friends and their friends, Figure out where that awful rash came from. Motivate yourself to practice abstinence rather than just keep talking about it. Create your own personal and private community, where you can interact with vectors who are connected to you through networks of mutual sexual partners. It’s sleazy and fun! ”
When the Planet Hit the Sun
Berlin’s Zeiss Gross Planetarium sounds like a pretty good place to catch Monolake presenting material from his new album “Momentum” – the planetarium’s projector will light up the sphere with meteroites, stars and galaxies while a special multichannel journey thru the sonic world of Monolake will move the 89 speakers of the venue. See http://www.monolake.de or catch him in Australia come December.
Dec 13th 2003, Positronic, outdoor party @ Bellthorpe near Brisbane, Australia
Dec 19th 2003, location to be announced, Sydney, Australia (to be confirmed)
Dec 20th 2003, location to be announced, Melbourne, Australia
Dec 21st 2003, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia (to be confirmed)