Hello all,

swissnex San Francisco with the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and various key partners, chief among which the good folks at VOLUME, are proud to present a very rare West Coast appearance by the Zurich-based label and electronic sound arts platform domizil, along with their research partners at the ICST Zurich (the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technologies, part of the Zurich University for the Arts).

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swissnex and VOLUME have put together three densely packed evenings of performances, taking place at the San Francisco Art Institute for two nights in a row this coming weekend, and an L.A. date next week at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions).

In addition to presenting domizil performers Marcus Maeder, Bernd Schurer, Thomas Peter and Jasch, and the tape works of the ICST’s German Toro-Perez, Daniel Bisig, Philippe Kocher and Martin Neukom, these three evening also bring a great roaster of West Coast performers together, including Steve Roden, Mem1, Kadet Kuhne, Loren Chasse, Sutekh, and Overlap’s own Christopher Willits. Best of all: these shows are all FOR FREE

Our full program (check back for updates!) is available here:

http://swissnexsanfrancisco.org/activities/events/domizilandICSTZurichTour

Read more about the events at:

SFAI website

LACE website

VOLUME website

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swissnex is also planning a series of academic presentations and workshops around the work done at the ICST, in which domizil fully participates (in fact, the label also releases quite a bit of recorded research items from ICST – all available on CD or for free downloads under a Creative Commons license on the domizil website):

- one such session will take place at SFAI next Monday, September 28, at 8pm, and is open to sound students and researchers at SFAI and at all other institutes in the Bay Area. It’s free as well, please join if you can!

- swissnex is then organizing one sessions in its own space at 730 Montgomery Street in downtown SF, on Tuesday, September 29. This session (1pm to 5pm) is a great opportunity to get together and to discuss research and tools by the ICST, in domains such as ambisonics (Ambisonics externals for Max MSP and others) and Interactive Swarm Spaces while also broaching on historic perspectives about electronic music in Switzerland and beyond.

TO SIGN UP FOR THIS ONE, PLEASE SIMPLY EMAIL SWISSNEX (luc.meier@swissnexsanfrancisco.org) TO SAVE YOUR SEAT. We aim at getting a good, focused crowd with a minimum of knowledge in the topics at hand for this one, and participants will also get free entrance to the domizil “vecherinka” party event we will be holding the night of that day (regular admission price is $7.00). Hope to see you here!!

I’ve blogged about Cantocore launching on rejon.org, mediaexperiment.org and of course, cantocore.com. Please help us by spreading the news about the project to all your friends!

Last week we did a press barrage for the upcoming Cantocore show in Guangzhou, China! I know a lot of you are spread all throughout the globe, but nonetheless, I hope that anyone in the region can make it for the big September 5th Opening! It will be fantastic.

I wrote the exhibition text, have been coordinating fabrication, and somewhere in the midst trying to finish my project for the exhibition. We are up late right now finishing some projects and the publication is coming along nicely for the last minute print deadline for tomorrow Here is a sampling of the press text which you can read in full at cantocore.com:

Today the Cantocore Project and Ping Pong Space announced the upcoming contemporary art show, Cantocore: Import/Export in Guangzhou, China during September 2008. This initial show features contemporary artists from San Francisco and Guangzhou producing artwork around the more detailed relationship between import and export of culture and materials between Guangzhou, China and San Francisco. This first part of the Cantocore exhibition, Import, begins with an opening on Friday, September 5 from 8 PM at the brand new Ping Pong Space in Guangzhou, China. The show continues until Tuesday, September 16 with gallery hours of 2:00 PM until 10:00 PM daily. The second part of the show, Export, opens Sunday, September 21 at 8 PM until 10 PM when a special video screening developed by San Francisco’s Mission 17 titled “Stardusted” will be presented at the Ping Pong Bar from 10 PM until 11PM. The second half, Export, continues daily until Saturday, October 4 with daily hours from 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM.

The Cantocore Import/Export exhibition examines, through applied art practice, the relationship between import and export of culture between Guangzhou and San Francisco by asking a simple phrase: Are you Cantocore? Guangzhou, also called Canton, is the third most populous city in China and its province, Guangdong, is a major manufacturer of textiles and electronics for export to the United States. San Francisco has the largest import of Chinese immigrants of any US city, primarily from the Guangdong province. Chinese immigrants also created the largest Chinatown in North America in San Francisco. However, understanding the conceptual framework of Cantocore is not limited to geographic divisions, nor reductive dichotomies driven by post-colonial stereotypes such as East vs. West, nor Olympic nationalism pridefully paramount in China vs. US “non-political” sports matches. Cantocore is the reality of life versus the theory set forth by jurisdictions where people live.

The artists in the Cantocore exhibition were tasked with creating projects which explore import and export, materially and conceptually. Practically, how can one’s artwork be actualized either through fabrication locally in Guangzhou or imported from San Francisco? Guidelines for the creation of the work were left alone since modern strategies for creating artwork such as remaking, remixing, interpreting, pirating, translating, copying, and appropriating content, already espouse the Cantocore style. After the proposals were received from invited artists, curation of works took place based upon the processes, scope, location of artists and available resources to constitute this first Cantocore dialogue.

Curation for this show has been a group effort by Deer Fang, Justin Hoover, and Jon Phillips from the Cantocore Project and Wu Jay from Ping Pong Space (PPS). Layout and Design for the show is done by Pierre Picard (PPS) while wordsmithing has been handled by Nikita Choi (PPS), Jon Phillips and Deer Fang.

Exhibition Venue

#60 Xian Lie Dong Heng Lu Ping Pong Space, Guangzhou

Cantocore Import
September 6th – 26th, 2008
Opening: Friday, September 5th, 8PM – 10 PM.
Drinks after at Ping Pong Bar.

Cantocore Export
September 22nd – October 2nd, 2008
Opening: Sunday, September 21st, 8PM – 10PM

Video Screening “Stardusted” at Ping Pong Bar

September 21st 2008, 10PM – 11PM

Regular Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday 2 PM – 10 PM
Gallery Closed on Monday

Ping Pong Bar Open Everyday

Also, we just updated some images of works for the show. Here is a sampling of the full post over at Cantocore.com.

For all you needing images out there, we have just up pushed out images for David Johnson who will be exhibiting a work titled “Made in China” and Guy Overfelt who is getting some magic smoke fabricated.

Guy Overfelt's Untitled (Up in Smoke) Sketch

Please check out the press section to help blog and promote this show!

Originally from Cantocore Guangzhou on September 5th!

I have cool wife! Check out this documentation of her project on display now at McBean Gallery at SFAI in recently sunny San Francisco. The show is totally free and interesting.

Adam has helped me document the installation in the Walter & McBean Galleries. This is part of the exhibition “We Remember the Sun”, on view from now till Sept 19th. Documentation video-taped by Adam Barczak.

This documentation footage is quite great and feels like some type of 3d model rendering or something. Speaking of which my cousin, Brad Phillips, is here this week working on pulling together his resume, doing some 3d modeling of upcoming projects, and generally hanging out. Great to have him here!

Originally from Deer Fang’s Don’t Talk About Politics Video Documentation

I’m bummed out! Due to my Creative Commons responsibilities next Wednesday, I can’t physically get to my wife’s art opening next Wednesday. So, I will try to drive as many people as possible to the show. Please do go if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area! Its free and will be great! I will get to the after-party as soon as I can physically drive back from Creative Commons “Future of CC” night event which several of you are going to attend.

Check out Lu’s big installation:

My latest project “Don’t Talk About Politic” is being installed in “We Remember the Sun” exhibition, a group show in the Walter & McBean Galleries. Opening is this coming Wednesday, exhibition on view through September.

“Don’t Talk about Politic” is a two channel video installation. Proposed plan is as image followed, as well as exhibition statement written by Mary Ellyn Johnson. I have been working on this in the past several weeks. And I found out that if you use NTSC video camera to shoot video in a lighted studio in a PAL country, then your video will be possibly have flickering all through it. What a lesson! Luckily I am able to eliminate this unexpected effect because it was shot in a blue screen studio. I am very excited to see when all is installed. And it should be an interesting show!

Some Video stills:

We Remember the Sun
Exhibition of Work by Fifteen Bay Area Artists
—Live Musical Performance at Opening Reception

Walter and McBean Galleries
San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)

800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco, CA 94133

Opening reception:  Wednesday, 18 June 2008, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Cost: Free and open to the public
Exhibition Dates:  19 June–13 September 2008
Images: High-resolution digital images available
Press Contact: Bob Gamboa, (415) 749-4507, bgamboa@sfai.edu
We Remember the Sun, an Exhibition by Fifteen California Artists,
Opens at  SFAI on 18 June 2008

Here are the directions to SFAI.

Originally from Go Check Out Lu Fang Art Show Next Wednesday at SFAI

WireTap Magazine has a great interview with my friend Rick Rinehart about being a “digital media curator.” He has this to say about Open Sourcing artowork and making an Open Museum:

Digital artifacts, unlike even film and photography, are infinitely reproducible and that reproduction does not diminish quality or authenticity. So, one can both preserve a copy of a digital artwork and at the same time provide global access to another copy from anywhere in the world at any time. In fact with digital art (or digital anything), having multiple copies helps preservation.

Furthermore, this access need not be limited to just an image of the artwork, or a presentation version, but one could provide access to the full artwork, all the materials (code) and everything under the hood. This kind of “open-source” access would only further both research and spur new artistic creation and it’s a kind of mashing up of the raw materials that is not possible with traditional art forms.

My idea is to create the OpenMuseum; a repository for both preserving and providing access to digital art in this broadest possible sense. Of course there are other concerns, artworks are not just technical objects, but also social, economic, and legal artifacts, so the OpenMuseum is a prototype to experiment with those issues and provide a new model for access to the world’s digital culture.

I’m involved with these efforts as part of the Berkeley Museum’s Vanguard including some notable individuals from the area led by Jane Metcalfe (co-founder of wired) and Rick Rinehart, as well as Larissa Mann, aka, DJ Ripley who I blogged about previously:

Larisa Mann writes about technology, media and law for WireTap, studies Jurisprudence and Social Policy at U.C. Berkeley and djs under the name Ripley. She is a resident DJ at Surya Dub, San Francisco, and collaborates with the Riddim Method blog-DJ-academic crew, Havocsound sound system, and various other cross-fertilizing organisms in the Bay Area and worldwide.

If you are in the SF/Berkeley area tomorrow (Monday, June 2nd, 2008) and Tuesday, then come check out the Berkeley Big Bang 08 which will include all the above participants on the topics of digital culture and art. I’ll be there for part of the day tomorrow and also onto 01sj festival later in the week June 4 – 8 in San Jose.

Originally from The Latest with Open Source Art and Berkeley Big Bang 08 this Week

I think this new ongoing Overlap Salon that we are putting on through Overlap.org is going to be nice and fun. If you are into cutting edge music, audio performance, and the technologies related with these, I urge you to come out to this new regular event. Christopher posted more on Overlap.org about this:

This first Overlap Salon event brings together users of Cycling 74′s legendary “build-it-yourself” software universe Max/MSP/Jitter. Cool Max/MSP/Jitter nerds will be able to meet, exchange knowledge, advice, and software patches. Max/MSP/Jitter patches covered in the Salon will also be shared on Overlap.org following the event. All participants are required to bring your their own laptop, beer (if u want) and thinking cap. WIFI provided.

I will bring beer. I wonder if we have any more free beer at Creative Commons actually Anyone interested in coming to this and/or presenting? Let us/me know! If I talk about anything, it will be the anti-max/msp/jitter called PD which I used to hack on back in the UCSD-aze. Also, if you show up, maybe I will talk more about why Lil Wayne is so brilliant and use my Eeepc as an awesome DJ’ing platform.

Originally from Audio Junkies: Overlap Salon 01 Max/MSP/Jitter Wednesday May 21 2008 – San Francisco

Jose speaking about Knowledge Hub at the Open Ed conference in Dalian, China, Photo by Tom Caswell

I just arrived back home in Guangzhou, China from the OpenCourseWare Conference in Dalian, China last weekend and met many great people (but don’t have the tolerance to write out the contents of my thoughts , had many fruitful discussions, and rocked out a good slide deck for ccLearn (and you!). Check out my presentation (or any of my presentations and here), “OER XinXai (NOW!)“:

OER XinXai (NOW)! Dalian OCWC Conference 2008 – Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: OER XinXai (NOW)! Dalian OCWC Conference 2008

The most fruitful part of the conference for me was interacting with Philip Schmidt, Victor from Hewlett Foundation, Chunyan Wang from CC Mainland China, and Stewart Cheifet from Internet Archive. Also, hearing about sustain-o-bility in all its forms as a major consideration for projects, and mentions of CC+, made me quite happy. It also served as a nice place to test out my Mandarin skills for the good or worse of things. Hopefully at the next conference there will be more time for discussion during the conference days.

I jumped up on stage to give a final call for participation to the ccLearn and OER regional meeting at iSummit July 29 – August 1 in order to increase participation by principals in the region. Let’s hope it worked!

After this conference, I directly headed to Beijing where I worked with CC Mainland China team on accelerating business development and assessing great projects which would be great to integrate Creative Commons licensing. If you have an organization in China or any jurisdiction and want to help in this process, check out the page CC Web Integration.

The next stop for me is to head to celebrate Lu’s 27th birthday on May 4th, then onto Japan to meet up Joi, Catharina, Fumi and more (ken!). Then back to Guangzhou, Beijing, then back to Guangzhou, then back in San Francisco May 21 through at least end of July as homebase. Cheers!

Originally from OCWC Conference in Dalian 2008 and Beijing