Me & Nam June Paik in Copenhagen he he he

Nov 30, 2012 |

Somehow I ended up in a very fancy line-up tonight at Black Box Gallery in Copenhagen. There’s über-oldskool data-artists like:

Nam June Paik
Vera Molnar
Eduardo Kac
Manfred Mohr

Respect, gangstaz! And also

Tristan Perich
Raquel Meyers
Jacob Sikker Remin

And plenty more!

My Academic Paper on ASCII Art

Nov 26, 2012 |

Today A. Bill Miller is at CAC3 in Paris to present a paper we wrote together. It’s called The Future Potentials of ASCII Art. Dunno if you have to pay to read it or sth, lol, but here is the abstract:

ASCII art is a text-based expression that traditionally is concerned with remediating images, words and objects. The paper describes its historical connections to poetry, programming, literature and hacking and defines ASCII art as a genre, consisting of several categories.

The authors identify a number of movements towards novel forms of ASCII art that explore medium specific characteristics for drawing, design, advertising and conceptual art. The authors also argue that the popularity of digital media, which for example leads to scarcity in URLs, increases the potential for ASCII art to play a more active role in human communication.

The Ferret Show: A Musical With Uwe Schenk Band

Nov 21, 2012 | , ,

This is a 20-minute musical performed by me, 4 musicians and Raquel Meyers. Uwe Schenk rearranged my songs for bass, saxophone, harpsichord (spinet) and drums. Raquel animated the story with text graphics, and sequenced it live.

Most of the songs are tightly arranged, but others are quite improvised. I used a tracker to change some songs on the fly, and also played the C64 as a piano using Cynthcart. Quite a challenge to be as pro as the Uwe Schenk Band!

The videos are available in better quality at Uwe Schenks website. The original songs are either unreleased, from here or Cherry CD or perhaps lurking around on internet2008.

Big up to Uwe Schenk and Dragan Expensiveshit for making this happen!

Hardsync – New C64 Dance Pad Game

Nov 5, 2012 |

If you have a dance pad for C64 you can now dance to my music, thanks to Hardsync by the data-maestro lft.

There’s not so many songs in this first version, but my song Blox is in “pretty good” company. It’s in 188 bpm, so bring out that gabber footwork and make a happy dance!

The faxbook is here!

Nov 2, 2012 |

This book won’t eat itself! A book with faxes from our fax performance. More than 60 pages of crunchy fax graphix with plenty of Raquel’s new text images — this is the christmas present all your friends will thank you for! More here and here.

Get your copy here – it’s $15 and the quality is sehr güt!

Stuttgart – Stockholm – Stuttgart

Oct 18, 2012 |

Some events coming up:

> 27 October: a very special live performance in Stuttgart. Together with Uwe Schenk and his band I’ll perform along with text visuals by Raquel Meyers. Both songs and improvisations. Don’t miss out! Read more.

> 10 November: live gig at Nalen (Klubb Escape) in Stockholm, with visuals by Raquel Meyers. Also performances by Dunderpatrullen and Djurpark.

> 14 November: Talk at the public library in Stuttgart, as part of the series Do You Believe In Users?. The point is to talk about the 8-bit underground from the perspective of the user, and explain why ideas like nostalgia, limitations and appropriation just doesn’t cut it anymore.

My Own Teletext Channel!

Sep 25, 2012 |

Yeah, this could obviously be faked. But don’t worry – you will see soon enough that it’s not. Me and Raquel Meyers are now able to produce our own teletext signal. So now we don’t need a video mixer anymore!

We’ve started to mix teletext with trackers and PETSCII graphics. Check out the first tests at Flickr. There’s also some teletext printouts there, using a TV with a built-in dot matrix printer. Check out text-mode.tumblr.com if you’re hungry for more text graphics.