I'm thrilled to announce that Vague Terrain has once again been invited to assist in programming the X Avant festival in Toronto. We co-curated a show with the Music Gallery last fall as part of the inaugural edition of their festival and built a night around the Toronto premiere of Jan Jelinek. I am completely confident that our event this coming Friday September the 14th will be equally provocative.

X Avant will feature the Toronto premiere of Marc Leclair's 5mm project. Marc is quite famous for the work he's recorded under his Akufen pseudonym and his 2002 album My Way is probably one of the most influential techno albums of the last decade. For X Avant, Marc will present a project he premiered at Mutek 2006 which marries the sleek introspective minimalism of his Musique pour 3 Femmes Enceintes project with the video of Gabriel Coutu-Dumont. We will also be welcoming one of our favourite artists back to Toronto, Montreal's Des Cailloux et du Carbone. Neil Wiernik and I have been championing this ultra-talented producer for about two years now. He has released two EP's worth of material for Vague Terrain and his lush, gorgeous production can be spoke about in the same breath as that of Vladislav Delay and Ezekiel Honig.

We will also be featuring an appearance by drone music pioneer Pauline Oliveros, who will perform One Long Piece in collaboration with Anne Bourne. Pauline was one of the original members of the seminal San Francisco Tape Music Centre, a hotbed of electronic music innovation in the 1960s and also founded the Deep Listening Institute in the 1980s. Last but not least, CONTACT Contemporary Music, who will be performing a suite of acoustic chamber versions of "classic" electronic music by artists like Aphex Twin and Brian Eno.

In addition to this amazing roster of musicians, Noir and Patricia Rodriguez will be performing live video to accompany the first three acts of the evening. Noir is a filmmaker and developer for Derivative's Touch software and performed alongside Peter Mettler and Monolake at the Pusher show earlier this summer. Patricia Rodriguez is a frequent collaborator and like Des Cailloux et du Carbone, has contributed to Vague Terrain on numerous occasions. I know both of these talented visual artists quite well and I'm curious to see what evolves out of this collaboration

In planning this event with the Music Gallery we really wanted to blur the boundaries between 21st century classical and contemporary electronic music. I think this show is destined to be something very special and I'm thrilled to be involved with it. Official event info and ticket information is available at the event page at the Music Gallery's site.

[image: 5mm at mutek 2006 - image courtesy of basic_sounds]

If it's not rain it's germs. The weekend before last I missed the Hoxton Whores [for the second time in as many months] due some nasty gastric flu nonsense. I tried to put a brave face on it for a BBQ at the Happy Valley Country Club the next day, but had to bail out after 2 beers and a sausage. All seemed back to normal on Sunday and we managed to get expensively pissed in the Rosendale.

Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007

If you haven't yet, now is the time to pay homage. Watch them all. Persona, Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, Hour Of the Wolf, The Virgin Spring and everything else this true film hero has made. I am falling asleep tonight to The Magician.

Promising things from Pitchfork: a new mix section with song-by-song roundup/ interview kicked off by none other than JD Twitch. Check it here.

S. Forest Swartout and J. Brent Large visited me in my small apartment in Nob Hill after the Fort Mason show. They had invited me to do a project in their Little Tree gallery (3412 22nd St, SF) during the Summer. This past week for the project I have been posting call for Asian American female on craigslist. Following text is what I wrote to reply to responses from the call. The casting will take place July 31 and shooting date is Aug 6th in the gallery. Let me know if you or your friend will be interested in being in the video. After the shoot, video will be available for viewing from the gallery window untill Aug 19th.

(Also I am looking for a TV monitor and two small speakers for the two weeks to be used in the gallery. If anyone have something I can borrow I will be really appreciated.)

About the project: “Show Some Color (Part 1)” project is a conversational video of three Asian American females talking about who are their ideal boy friends in America. The video will be produced and shown in Little Tree Gallery and other future art venues.

Casting Date: July 31, Tuesday. (please let me know if this day does not work for you)

During the casting, you will describe who you are and who is your ideal boyfriend. Remember this can be based on your real life or has nothing to do with it. You can tell us your true story, make up an interesting one, or an imaginary version of yourself and your boyfriend. The interview will be recorded.

Please come to the casting with the clothes you will like to dress for final taping. (Be special! be sexy!)

3-4 participants will be selected for the final shoot.

Shooting Date: August 6, Tuesday. (1-5PM)

Based on the casting interview, I will organize a scene of conversation of you and two other females. Three of you will be sitting together and have girl-talk. You will be telling your story that you told in the casting day, listen and discuss with other girls. There is no script for you to remember and you will need to improvise.

After the shoot, the project will be shown in the gallery. Final participants will have a copy of DVD and $80 compensation for your time. If I don’t get to work with you on this project I will keep your contact for my future projects. Potentially the project will continue as series and I will need more participants.

Location: Little Tree Gallery, 3412 22nd St. @ Guerrero Street, San Francisco

My Contact Info
email: andrewb [at] cycling74 [dot] com
AIM screen-name: cloudmachine99

Course Outline:::
Jitter Night School 2007
Instructor: Andrew Benson

Course Outline:::

Day 1 :: Intro to Jitter, the Matrix, and Interaction
- Intro to Jitter features
- What is a matrix?
- Using the Jitter documentation (html ref-pages, help files, etc.)
- Jitter data flow
- Matrix as data container
- Audio/Max interaction with Jitter
- Brief intro to Quicktime

Day 2 :: Focus on Video
- Quicktime in Jitter
- Playing QT movies
- Real-time editing in Jitter
- Grabbing input from external video devices
- Recording to disk
- Compression
- Compositing/Blending
- Crossfades
- Keying/Alpha-channels
- jit.op for mathematical blends (additive,subtractive,difference, etc.)
- Filtering, Blurring, and Feedback
- temporal vs. spatial filters
- creating bit maps from images
- convolution
- intro to feedback (named matrices, jit.wake, etc.)

Day 3 :: OpenGL, Slabs, and other advanced topics
- OpenGL lesson
- Deconstructing an OpenGL patch
- the OpenGL matrix format
- applying textures
- blending, layering, and depthbuffering
- Using Slabs for Optimized Video Processing
- What is a slab? What is a shader?
- Optimized transfer of video using UYVY color
- Intro to the provided shaders
- Quick look at a shader program?
- Performance and Live-video concerns
- Using a second display (projector)
- Preloading, RAM vs. Disk-access
- Basic Optimization strategies

Class Patches:::
Day 1 patches
Day 2 patches
Day 3 patches
Jitter Demo Patches

Jitter Recipes:::
Jitter Recipes-Book1
Jitter Recipes-Book2
Jitter Recipes-Book3

Third-Party CV externals:::
Jean-Marc Pelletier’s CV.JIT
David Rokeby’s SoftVNS
Wesley Smith’s Misc. Jitter Externals

Other Awesome Jitter Users:::
Anton Marini - AKA vade.
Joshua Goldberg
Randy Jones
Sue Costabile

Video Downloads:::
Video-Tracking Test Footage
Archive.org- Ephemeral Films,Open-source Video,etc.
VJ Forums Content Finding Forum- Browse the threads here for links to all sorts of short clips in every theme.

—-Not Jitter-specific, but some useful info and inspirations:—-

Traditional Authors:
Giuseppe Arcimboldo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Arcimboldo
Giacomo Balla: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Balla
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciurlionis
Theo van Doesburg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Doesburg
Marcel Duchamp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp
Wassily Kandinsky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky
František Kupka: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/František_Kupka
Paul Klee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Klee
Étienne-Jules Marey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Étienne-Jules_Marey
László Moholy-Nagy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/László_Moholy-Nagy
Piet Mondrian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian
Eadweard Muybridge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge
Georgia O’Keeffe: http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/indexflash.php
Alexander Rodchenko: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandr_Rodchenko
Arnold Schönberg: http://www.schoenberg.at/default_e.htm
Alexander Scriabin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Scriabin
Alfred Stieglitz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Stieglitz
Synchromism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchromism

Classic Audiovisual Authors:
Wladimir Baranoff-Rossiné: http://www.baranoffrossine.com/museum/index.cfm?SelectLang=English
Jordan Belson: http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Belson
Mary Ellen Bute: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ellen_Bute
Stan Brakhage: http://www.iotacenter.org/visualmusic/profiles/brakhagestan
Louis-Betrand Castel: http://www.iotacenter.org/visualmusic/profiles/castellouis
Larry Cuba: http://www.well.com/~cuba/index.html
Tom DeWitt: http://people.wcsu.edu/mccarneyh/fva/D/Tom_Dewitt.html
Charles Dockum: http://www.iotacenter.org/visualmusic/profiles/dockumcharles
Viking Eggeling: http://www.iotacenter.org/visualmusic/profiles/eggelingviking
Oskar Fischinger: http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Fischinger
Mary Hallock-Greenewalt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Hallock-Greenewalt
Hi Hirsh: http://www.iotacenter.org/visualmusic/profiles/hirshhyfolder
Len Lye: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Lye
Norman McLaren: http://www.nfb.ca/portraits/fiche.php?id=285&v=h&lg=en
Nam June Paik: http://www.paikstudios.com/
Hans Richter: http://www.iotacenter.org/visualmusic/profiles/richterhans
Alexander Wallace Rimington: http://www.iotacenter.org/visualmusic/profiles/rimingtona
Walter Ruttmann: http://www.iotacenter.org/visualmusic/profiles/ruttmannwalter
Daniel Sandin: http://www.audiovisualizers.com/toolshak/vidsynth/sandin/sandin.htm
Harry Smith: http://www.harrysmitharchives.com/
Léopold Survage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léopold_Survage
Edgard Varèse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgard_Varèse
Bill Viola: http://www.billviola.com/
James Whitney: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Whitney_(filmmaker)
John Whitney Sr.: http://www.siggraph.org/artdesign/profile/whitney/nobio_intro.html
Thomas Wilfred: http://www.lumia-wilfred.org/
Iannis Xenakis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iannis_Xenakis

Contemporary Animations:
J. Walt Adamczyk: http://www.johnadamczyk.com/filmvideo.html xvid
Bill Alves: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/
Bret Battey: http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~bbattey/
Michael Betancourt: http://www.michaelbetancourt.com/art/telemetry/
Liubo Borissov: http://www.music.columbia.edu/~liubo/bohor05/index2.html
Peter Bosch & Simone Simmons: http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/vida/paginas/v6/eaguas.html
Chris Casady: http://www.naptime.com/flash/artexercises/
Robert Darroll: http://www.iotacenter.org/visualmusic/profiles/darrollrobertfolder/statements
Jeffers Egan: http://www.jeffersegan.com/
Jim Ellis: http://emsh.calarts.edu/~jim/
Robin Fox: http://www.synrecords.com/label.html
Francesco Gaffuri: http://www.francescogaffuri.com/
Andrew Garton: http://www.toysatellite.org/agarton/2004/01/floating_point.html
André Gonçalves: http://www.ctrl.tk/
Robert Hodgin: http://www.flight404.com/blog/
Rumi Humphrey: http://refresh.vu/primera.htm
Samantha Krukowski: http://www.cm.aces.utexas.edu/faculty/skrukowski/
Stefanie Ku: http://www.dioskouroi.org
Anne-Sarah LeMeur: http://aslemeur.free.fr/
José Lopez-Montes: http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/cgi-bin/user_page.pl?url=lopezmontes
Andrew Lyons: http://www.users.bigpond.com/tstex/
Stephanie Maxwell: http://www.rit.edu/~sampph/Works.html
Dennis Miller: http://www.dennismiller.neu.edu/
Bärbel Neubauer: http://www.spiralsmorphs.de/
Scott Nyerges: http://www.nyerges.com/
Richard Reeves: http://www.awn.com/qas/profiles/richard.htm
Joost Rekveld: http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld/wp/index.php
Aaron Ross: http://www.dr-yo.com/
Jøran Rudi: http://www.notam02.no/~joranru/wtca/index.html
Michael Scroggins: http://emsh.calarts.edu/~aka/papers/Absolute_Animation_and_Immersive_VR.html
Robert Seidel: http://www.2minds.de/
Semiconductor: http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/root/soundfilms.htm
John Stehura: http://cyberanimation.tripod.com/index.htm
David Stout: http://nfold.csf.edu/
Rob Switzer: http://www.archive.org/details/Study_One
Ying Tan: http://www.uoregon.edu/~tanying/index.html
Telcosystems: http://www.telcosystems.net/
Shawn Towne: http://web.mac.com/towne/iWeb/shawn/towne.html
Edward Zajec: http://www.dam.org/zajec/

Contemporary Installations/Performances:
Actop: http://www.actop.net/
Richard Bailey: http://www.imagesavant.com/
Benton-C Bainbridge: http://www.benton-c.com/
Steve Beck: http://www.stevebeck.tv/
Coldcut: http://www.coldcut.net/coldcut/
Dienststelle: http://www.dienststelle.de/
D-Fuse: http://www.dfuse.com/
Scott Draves: http://draves.org/
Granular Synthesis: http://www.granularsynthesis.info/
Peter Greenaway: http://petergreenaway.co.uk/
Edwin van der Heide: http://www.evdh.net/
Kurt Hentschlager: http://www.hentschlager.info/
Chika Iijima - Zach Layton: http://www.imagima.com/
Hfr-Lab: http://www.hfr-lab.com/
Speedy J: http://www.speedyj.com/newsite/index.html
Randy Jones: http://2uptech.com/
Skoltz Kolgen: http://www.skoltzkolgen.com/
Ryoichi Kurokawa: http://www.ryoichikurokawa.com/
Ulf Langheinrich: http://www.epidemic.net/geogb/art/gs/ulf/indexgb.html
Golan Levin: http://www.flong.com/
The Light Surgeons: http://www.thelightsurgeons.co.uk/
Jarryd Lowder: http://jarrydlowder.com/
Glenn McKay: http://www.glennmckay.to/
MELA Foundation: http://melafoundation.org/main.htm
Finn & Robin McNicholas: http://ultre.co.uk/
Nokami: http://www.nokami.com/htm_en/01_0.htm
Alva Noto: http://www.alvanoto.com/
otolab: http://www.otolab.net/
Jack Ox: http://www.bway.net/~jackox/
Scott Pagano: http://www.neither-field.com/index.php?page=bio
Power Graphixx: http://www.power-graphixx.com/
Reactable: http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/
Curtis Roads: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~clang/
Ben Sheppee: http://www.eoptica.com/sheppee/
George Stadnik: http://www.photonlightguitars.com/index.html
Jennifer Steinkamp: http://jsteinkamp.com/
UVA: http://www.uva.co.uk/
The Vasulkas Inc.: http://www.vasulka.org/
Leo Villareal: http://www.villareal.net/

Resources:
Center for Visual Music: http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/
The iotaCenter: http://www.iotacenter.org/

Other Links:
arika: http://www.arika.org.uk/
Ars Electronica: http://www.aec.at/en/index.asp
Center for Brain and Cognition: http://psy.ucsd.edu/chip/CBC2.html
Ernest Chladni: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Chladni
Experimental Television Center: http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/
Fred Collopy: http://rhythmiclight.com/
Color organ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_organ
Richard Cytowic: http://cytowic.net/
Dissonanze: http://www.dissonanze.it/home/home.php
EMAF: http://www.emaf.de/
The Fischinger Archive: http://www.oskarfischinger.org/
International Congress Synaesthesia, Science & art: http://www.sinestesia2007.info/
Lumia manuscripts: http://mssa.library.yale.edu/madid/showthumb.php?id=mss&msrg=1375&msrgext=0&pg=1
Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst, Montevideo/Time Based Arts: http://www.montevideo.nl/en/index.html
The New York Digital Salon - Abstract Visual Music: http://www.nydigitalsalon.org/11/index.htm
NOT STILL ART Festival: http://www.improvart.com/nsa/
NOTV: http://www.notv.com/
Optronica: http://www.optronica.org/
Piano Optofonique: http://optophoniqueeng.heatherodonnell.info/
Prometheus Institute: http://prometheus.kai.ru/
Oliver Sacks: http://www.oliversacks.com/
Sonar: http://www.sonar.es/portal/eng/home.cfm
Sons & Lumières: http://www.centrepompidou.fr/Pompidou/Manifs.nsf/AllExpositions/E4B6AD56B6DA4B2FC1256DD600561C77?OpenDocument
Transmediale: http://www.transmediale.de/site/
V2-Institute for the Unstable Media: http://www.v2.nl/
Video Synthesizers: http://www.audiovisualizers.com/toolshak/vsynths.htm
Visual music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_music
Visual Music: http://www.hirshhorn.si.edu/visualmusic/
Visual Music Marathon: http://www.music.neu.edu/vmm/
What Sound Does a Color Make?: http://www.ici-exhibitions.org/exhibitions/whatsound/what_sound.htm
White Noise: http://www.acmi.net.au/wn_white_noise.jsp

Books:
Expanded Cinema, Youngblood, P. Dutton & Co., 1970, http://www.ubu.com/historical/youngblood/expanded_cinema.pdf
Experimental Animation, Russett - Starr, Da Capo Press, 1976, ISBN 0-306-80314-2
The Sound of Painting, von Maur, Prestel, 1999, ISBN 3-7913-2082-3

Sons & Lumières, von Maur - Rousseau - Cooper - Levin - Lista - Kahn - Duplaix - Kihm - Szendy, Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2004, ISBN 2-84426-244-9
Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900, Brougher - Strick - Wiseman - Zilczer, Thames and Hudson, 2005, ISBN 0-500-51217-5
audio-visual art + vj culture, Faulkner/D-FUSE, Laurence King Publishing Ltd., 2006, ISBN 1-85669-490-9

I rented one of Lars Von Tiers 2005 film “Manderlay” yesterday. The film formally continues from his 2003 film Dogville, accomplished the whole film on a minimum stage like setting with symbolic lines or gesture and sound to give context for the story. After seeing Dogvillge of course this strategy is no surprise, and I started to worry the ideal female character in the film was to repeat her story in Dogvillge. But using the same structure Manderlay is a evern sharper criticism on the American notion of democracy. Racial differences and the problematic history of black slavery can not be erased by a simply idealism of liberation. Many issues that presents by “Manderlay” perhaps no one will like to touch in America. For example, stereotyping people is unacceptable in America. Because we all believe in “freedom” society everyone are free to be different and should never be judged by certain perception. But is that really an ideal for different races to coexist or it is still only an white ideal?

Main character Grace is an white female, who has the passion to establish a “freedom” community in a black town which had carried on slavery for 70 years after slavery was abolished. Grace feels she had the power and responsibility to help this group of people because “white people made them”. In the end Grace’s effort and education did not create a autonomous and democratic community as she had initiated. Ironically she had found out the “law book” of their previous slave owner was created by one of the senior slave to ensure slavery system was substainable. In the end the town even used what Grace had taught them about democratic decision making and voted Grace should be hold by force to stay in town as their master.

Des invités prestigieux sont venus colaboré à cette album, le fameux bassiste Rico da Halvarez est venu possé cette chaleur si particuliere a de nombreux morceaux de cette album, Life Vest, lui, est venu toaster sur l' offensif "Corn", quand a Jambula

It woke up at 5 am today with a complete list of outside-in and inside-out emotions. It was so clear on my mind, that I decided to write it down.
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Joy may look like outside-in, but only happens if the inside-out allows it.
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Horniness is easily triggered by outside-in. After that, the inside-out sets the tone.

Time happens simultaneously: subatomic particles pulse in sync, and can only be disrupted, creating pockets of time.
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Karma is a rapid feedback from inside-outside. Backpropagation.
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Trauma is an inside-out reaction to previous outside-in events. It pulses and triggers karma to relive personal dramas. Understanding how trauma irradiates and negotiates events to happen - because it looks so outside-in - is one of the greatest mysteries: just watching its flow delivers great insights.
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Backpropagation is kinda like a system self-regulation.
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Stress, like horniness, is easily triggered by outside-in, activating a chain of events inside-out. Easily addictive, at least in our society.
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Peace of mind is a time/karma disruptor, a constant inside-out force. Triggered by acceptance.
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Acceptance is a complete inside-out program, triggered when the outside-in transmits signs of a safe/stable environment. It may the be opposite of stress: although you may have none, acceptance can’t flourish in a stressful environment, and stress’ chain of events is hindered by acceptance’s time disruptors.
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Beauty is when outside ressonates and gives form to an inside process. Outside-in and heavily sought, because it brings acceptance.