A little invitro (invite-intro = invitation to a scene party) was just released with my music in it. It’s for Baroque Floppy People in Helltown in August. I made the music, and I think Frantic remixed it a little and there’s fresh PETSCII graphics by the old master Jucke. I recommend you to go and visit, if you dare!
After being commissioned by Click Festival and awarded by F.A.T, my book Computer Rooms is finally available to order! It’s a collection of photos of people’s computer rooms. Both from geeks other people. From the book:
“This is what computer culture really looks like. A collection of photos that show the messy reality behind the shiny online facade. Where we make our living and spend our free time. And try to be creative. Or maybe even worse.”
The book has 36 pages of full colour photographs that the owners of the rooms have sent to me. The design was made by Raquel Meyers. So what did I do? Except for text, I collected photos like this for 4 years and sorted out the gems for you. So go and get it! It’s only 15 american dollarez.
Btw, don’t mind the bad picture at lulu. It looks a lot better printed (for once). Oh, and all the photos here were taked by Geraldine Juarez.
> Info & order
> Article at nerdcore.de (German)
> Post on Prosthetic Knowledge
OMG I won an award for my book – and it hasn’t even been released yet! The book is called Computer Rooms and contains photos that people have taken of their computer rooms. If you want to see it as gear-pr0n you can, obviously, but it’s more about the context of it. The messy IRLity, that very few people get to see. The material context of computer culture, if you will.
And now, Geraldine Juarez of the fresh F.A.T. Lab gave me an award for the book. And what an award! It’s the F.A.T NIKA – “the fake Gucci of the fame economy” and “a 3D modelled object statuette, copied from Wikipedia images of the Greek Nike of Samothrace and Ars Electronica’s Golden Nica”. Hooray!
The book was released and exhibited at CLICK Festival last weekend, and it will be available to order in a few days. Some minor errors that need to be fixed first. E-mail me if you want to be reminded. In the meantime:
> More about the NIKA at F.A.T.
> More about the book at CLICK
A story with pirates, sloths and sex told completely in text graphics and chipmusic. A blocky and brutal visual aesthetic synchronized with explosives, drunken funk and computer screams. All made in 44 kilobytes, to be executed by a Commodore 64 and its colourful ASCII-alternative called PETSCII.
Shown at UCLA Game Art Festival, competed at the Datastorm demoparty and is available as C64 executable here.
Visuals by Raquel Meyers, audio by Goto80 and coding by Johan Kotlinski.
Datagården is a teletext cemetary with obituaries of people’s online lives. Some of the information is actually taken from the internet but some of it is fictional. As speculations about how auto-generated and unauthorized obituaries can look like in the future. (only without the ads!)
It was built (mostly) during Art Hack Day Stockholm at Bonniers Konsthall by me, Raquel Meyers and Possan. We used tools developed beforehand by Peter Kwan. Possan managed to stream video in real-time to teletext the so called DIYobituary. I did music, text and ideas.
We also added video feedback by filming the screen and sending the signal back to the TV, while showing teletext in transparent mode.
This connected to the theme Larger Than Life in several ways. Most obviously by the semi-fake use of the collective consciousness of the internet. But also by using an ambiguous medium like teletext. While often described as dead, it is in fact the largest single mass medium in Sweden with 2 million daily users (20% of the population).
And on a more philosophical note, teletext exists somewhere inbetween digital and analogue, text and graphics, video and data, screen and stream. You can’t record teletext because it’s inbetween everything. Just like death. Uh, or life?
More:
> Article in Computer Sweden (in Swedish)
> Photos/pictures by Raquel Meyers
> Photos by Possan
Excerpts of 30-minute performance by me & Raquel Meyers. Made with two C64s, a videomixer and a delay pedal. The music was composed completely from scratch, live infront of the audience, and all the visuals are text graphics.
Filmed by Psilodump at Art Hack Day, Bonniers Konsthall, April 2013.
> Also see article in Fria Tidningen
Together with Raquel Meyers I will be at Art Hack Day in Stockholm this weekend. It’s an event for art/hacking where people work for a day and present it at Bonniers künsthall 13 april. Come on over!
It’s like a demoparty? Yes exactly but not at all. // We will probably make something about graveyards and teletext.
I recorded myself making some beats from scratch on the C64. Acid funk skweee something? Nothing fancy, but gives you a peek into how it works. Or not. But just copy all my moves and then you have a C64-song!
Obviously there’s lots of boring parts, because this wasn’t supposed to be a live jam like 2SLEEP1 or sth. Skip and be happy.
The Sydney-based Thematics Radio ran a tracker special again, and featured some of my Amiga songs. Behind the show are people like Hedonist, who released Amiga music on vinyl already in 1996. (Bloody Fist = Amiga gabba empire)
In the radio show there’s also a ‘speedcomp’. That means you get half an hour to make a song with the same samples as anyone else. Radio is cool!
> Listen here
> U know there are about 100 vinyls with Amiga gabber?
I made the music and sound effects for Rent-a-Cop, a C64-game by Achim Volkers. The whole game is 16 kilobytes. Here’s a lowsy pic of the cartridge version of the game. Not sure if it’s for sale anywhere, but it’s free for download here.
The 66-minute long ambient textmode piece 2SLEEP1 by me and Raquel Meyers is now showing at DECENTER in New York until 7 April. It’s a group exhibition with new forms of cubism, including people like Rafael Rozendaal, Cory Archangel, Alexander Peverett, Douglas Coupland, Marius Watz, Jeremy Bailey, Andrew Benson, Anthony Antonellis, Nicolas Sassoon, James Bridle, Ulrike Mohr and many more.