We’re starting to recover from last weekend’s escapades at the New Media Meeting in Norrköping. Lectures, film screenings, music, people, interesting meetings, a new interface, new friends, finish VJs, norwegian VJs, discussions about new co-operations, after parties at Kraftcentralen… It has been an inspiring weekend. Some highlights:

Golan Levin (US) held the first lecture on friday morning. A quick tour of 10 year of work making loads of interactive new media art, if we even could place his interdisciplinary work in any categories.
Andrew Vande Moere (AU), the author of the blog infosthetics.com was speaking about visualization of information graphics, or “sexy data” as he referred to and gave many beautiful examples of application.

Andrew Vande Moere (AU), författaren till bloggen infosthetics.com, talade om visualisering av informationsgrafik, eller “sexy data” som han kallade det och gav många vackra exempel på tillämpning.

Adrian Bowyer continued with a lecture on RepRap, the robot that can produce itself. Impressive!

One of the first nights highlights was the finish VJ group Xploitec who were doing a black and white set to tunes of the grind core artist Huoratron.

The after parties at Kraftcentralen was suffering from a total lack of alcohol an toilettes. Fortunately they had awesome music and visuals, which helped a bit.

Rickard Lindell held a lecture on his audio-video performance program C3, ConCentric CRAFT. He has been working together with the artists Håkan Lidbo, Sophie Rimheden and Måns Nyman who also made two performances with C3.

The veteran Bertrand Gondouin was performing with his own software and a Wii-remote. Kristoffer Karlsson from fLiM was playing the music.

Norwegian For*Your*Eyes*Truly did most of the VJing on the main floor on saturday night. Earlier that night Ernst from F*Y*E*T gave us a demo of the latest version of VDMX. It’s still a messy interface but thre are many technical goodies. Especially the control of Quartz Composer objects which is superb. And thanks for the Whiskey that added splendour to the last after party.

Finally our own set on from friday night. Joel+Micke+Morrsken back to back, back on back and back to the future.
A big up to everybody who made New Media Meeting 3 possible!

As a finnish, a picture from the beautiful Kraftcentralen, that Linnea was mentioning in the comments.

Som avrundning, en bild av den vackra Kraftcentralen, som Linnea nämnde.

Yesterday iTouch Midi released some updates in their range of midi applications for the iPod and iPod Touch. They have improved the xy-pad app and changed the name to iTM Pad and they have also released a new app called iTM Tilt that is using the gyro.

I tried iTM Tilt together with Modul8 but I thought it resulted in jerky motions. iTM Pad, on the other hand, works perfectly. It has preset functions where you can set different start points. It has a spring function that will let the object return to the start point when you stop dragging it around. Finally, there are tree function keys that also sends MIDI to your computer. They are good for switching graphics in your VJ software.

VJ Union @ New Media Meeting
In the last moment it was finalized that VJ Union will be represented at this year’s edition of the New Media Meeting. Mikael Wehner (Instructions), Linnea Forslund a.k.a. Morrsken and Joel Dittrich (Svaj, I <3 AG Studios) are the ones who will be VJing back to back on friday september 19 11pm – 3 am on the main floor.

From newmediameeting.se

NEW MEDIA MEETING is an annual international media art festival taking place in Norrköping, Sweden. The festival premiered in 2006 and is devoted to innovative works and projects in electronic art, media, music and visualization. In only two years NMM has become one of the most important media festivals in the Nordic Region – attracting an impressive line-up of renowned and upcoming international artists on the Media art and electronic music scene.

NEW MEDIA MEETING invites to a dialogue between a wide range of artists, media activists and academics working within the realms of digital art and culture. With a focus on current trends, research and technologies, the festival encourages interdisciplinary discussion and participation.

NEW MEDIA MEETING visualizes the current state of arts and media during 2 days and 2 nights. The days are crammed with inspiring lectures, seminars, workshops and talks. The nights are a celebration of performing arts with VJing, DJing, installations, performances, showcases and hands on DIYing. NMM presents an extraordinary assembly of international artists, media workers and a broad public attendance, all in a dynamic and intimate atmosphere.

NEW MEDIA MEETING is arranged by the non-profit organization Resistans in collaboration with Interactive Institute, Citilab and Norrköping Science Park. The festival is also promoted and sponsored by the Municipality of Norrköping, Regional Development Council Östsam and Destination Norrköping.

THEME

This years lucid thematic focal point PLAY is originated from the idea that when work isn’t fun the results often tends to be minimal. By focusing on the process of play, New Media Meeting 3 analyzes the very idea that playful creativity and meaningful work can be combined, not only to improve development but also to obtain superior results.

The naive but sincere thesis was put to the test by the curators of NMM 3. The work, or play if you prefer, of the topics 2008 was executed in an extremely playful fashion. A stack of scribbled notes with names, places, beliefs, thoughts, personal favourites, public information, statistics, wishes and even other wanted curators written on each one became the foundation of NMM 3. Channelized in an array of discussion, negotiation, bargaining and elimination, the consequence of these actions resulted in these semi-themes:

Interactive architecture, socio-digital marketing, surveillance, artificial emotions, future fashion and the digital playground today.

These topics are to guide, or misguide, the guests, participants and audience in the jungle of threads at New Media Meeting 2008, but above all to celebrate the concept of PLAY in method, style and idea. New Media Meeting 2008 will commemorate the differences and similarities to deliver another standard of excellence, composing a platform for creative exercises that pushes beyond the boundaries for all local, national and international practitioners of all ages alike.

Lets play!

New Media Meeting 2008 har ett screeningrum där Joel Dittrich och Max Sokoleski deltar med en dokumenterande film:

“(Non)Time will tell/In 3.5 D”

Joel Dittrich [Svaj, VJ Union, I <3 AG Studios]
Max Sokoleski [Smuts, Maxxal]

Research in the now and there, here and then. How do one experience the (re)mediation of space and time during a live cinema/VJ-ing or live audio visual performance? For example, is it possible to take the media into the room, instead of the opposite?

This film is the documentation of a live audio visual performance by Joel Dittrich and Max Sokoleski, which took place at Konstfack 23.05-2008. Their collaboration started with this project and what you see is an outcome of the artistic part in the research for Dittrichs diploma work, at the Department of Art Education at Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design.

It all emerged out of the theories on remediation [Bolter and Grusin 2000] and thoughts on synesthetic experiences. [Asplund 2003]

The article is beeing published late 2008, until then, take 13 minutes to sit back and enjoy your self!

http://newmediameeting.se

This is the headline on DJ Mags yearly spectacle. You can vote for your 5 favorite VJs and at on your favorite hard and software. The poll stops on september 24. Go there and vote for yourself. And while you’re at it, give me a vote. Top 20 DJs Vote 2008.