Electric Fields: Electronic Music and Media Arts Festival

BUTTONS, BLINKING AND BEATS! OH MY!

Electronic music and media arts festival returns for it's third edition!

What
Electric Fields: Electronic Music and Media Arts Festival presented by Artengine includes performances, installations, screenings, web art and lots of party.

When
November 13th to the 23rd, 2008

Festival Launch November 13th at Club SAW, 67 Nicholas

Electric Fields returns for its third and biggest edition yet with over 40 artists, musicians and DJs and including partnerships with some of the regions most interesting art and music organizations. Like a snapshot of some of the most innovative creative work happening at the cross section of art and technology, Electric Fields presents artists from across the country and abroad in an exciting 10 day festival.

It is an important time for a festival like Electric Fields to bring to the foreground the amazing creative work with ones and zeros at their heart. From the new wave hip hop performers like Radio Radio and Thunderheist to the elegant installation works of Alexandre Castonguay and Sophie Bélair Clément, the festival covers as much of this very broad range of artistic ground during its ten days.

Electric Fields also marks a great step forward for one of the city's fastest growing arts organizations, Artengine. Constantly exploring the creative potential of technology, Artengine brings its programming to a new level with a unique festival that highlights the burgeoning electronic arts scene here in Canada. This addition to the festival landscape of Ottawa-Gatineau showcases important works from across the country previously unavailable to a local audience. We hope Electric Fields will bring the constantly growing music, visual and media arts community of the region to an exciting new level.

www.sonicscape.ca

Sea Organ

Just learned about the "Sea Organ" in Croatia - the world's first musical pipe organ that is played by the sea.

Check it out here: http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/om24550.html

The Clock of the Long Now

I'm in the middle of reading this book by Stewart Brand. It's more than a discussion of a clock that keeps time for 10,000 years but the impact of longer term thinking on our actions and our sense of responsibility for the conquences of those actions.

Imagine the difference between thinking "Me, Right Now!" to "All of us ... for all time."

Or understanding Herman Khan's pragmatic test .... it is not a question of whether things are getting better or worse -- But rather which viewpoint encourages better behaviour. If we think things are getting worse, we reap now and forget about sowing. Optimism - 'tragic optimism' - encourages us to invest in the future.

As John Cage said in response to Laurie Anderson, "Things are getting better -- slowwwly."

... or maybe Bill Cosby had the right idea. Whether the glass is half-empty or half-full depends on whether you're pouring or you're drinking.

How did we get here

"We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work." - Richard Feynman, physicist

[Known for debunking the cause of the Challenger space shuttle disaster and such books as "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"]

This quote is so true and one of the frustrations following my GPRC lecture. It was presented linearly for the sake of clarity and accessibility. But its very linearity distorts the actual non-linear and organic nature of the creative process. It gives the very wrong impression that it was just a simple matter of connecting the dots.

Cage's Silence lectures were non-linear ... did he trust the audience that much? or did he really not care whether he was understood?

Begin It Now

Time for a new resolve, a new title. Regroup. Press on regardless ...

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back– Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

- Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Yes, even HE had a 'day' job

"Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money."

- Edgar Degas in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Faure, contemporary art collector, 1877.


Multiple streams of revenue = Multiple job titles/roles/hats = Busy, Busy, Busy