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!!

On Monday of this week, myself, Lu, Mitu Hopu, and our friend Lu Jia visited the closest point of desertification near Beijing, Tian Mo. It took alot of turns to get there to the point our off-license taxi looked ready to give up on this pursuit. We prevailed to find our beloved sand dunes with 2 camels out front and a Chinese park troll trying to charge us all 25 RMB per person to enter the park, which semi-sadly consisted of only two massive sand dunes. Regardless the size of the dunes, we had an amazing experience with the strangest set of characters also seeking out these bald spots forming in the landscape.

View Larger Map

Lu and I took the photos, and she has some chinese text to go along with at her blog.

We traveled over 200 Kilometers to get to this location. So did two different couples to get their photos taken by a jesus-like art figure carrying a frame as burden for us all! So did a couple whose car got stuck in the desert sand. So did about 50 young Chinese soldiers who apparently get to goof off all day.

Of course, China has many vast desert deserts:

Even where we live. Cao Chang Di, is under assault from the desert helping to breed ideas and research like Cao Chang Mo (ah, a project waiting to be completed).

The Chinese government is not doing enough to combat desertification as “the desert is sweeping into China’s valleys, choking rivers and consuming precious farm land. Beijing has responded with massive tree-planting campaigns, but the Great Green Walls may not be able to buffer the sand, which could cover the capital in a few years.”

While this is a problem for some, others like our troll gatekeeper friend are setting up businesses around the desert, brining in camels, and offering horse rides for 20 RMB an hour.

Pick a side! Are you for the desert or against it!

Originally from Desertification Beijing Style

Originally from Giant Trees Last Weekend

Events like Mutek remind me of the rip-roaring delight of being young, traveling to exotic locations (like Canada!), and indulging in sights and sounds from the outer fringe. Some festival highlights:

Morgan Packard and Josh Ott opened the week with ambient techno shavings, helix-like visual permutations, accordian drifts and bird whistles:

Barem and Chic Miniature warmed up the crowd on Friday evening at SAT, while artists worked on a large mural:

Half Hawaii shook the packed midnight down at Metropolis:

And Onur Özer unleashed horns onto the crowd on Sunday’s Piknic set. It started to rain, but who could stop dancing?

I also enjoyed a side visit to the Canadian Center for Architecture, where I caught an exhibition on residential case studies by SANAA partner Ryue Nishizawa:

 

 

Originally from Mutek 2008 Recap

AhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHhhhhhh! Our time in Guangzhou is nearing an end for this spell. I have not adequately covered what Lu and I have been up to. Here are some immediate photos taken of Guangzhou which illustrate the dynamism of where we live right now.

Photos below by Lu Fang under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

We discovered this village a couple of blocks from our house was being destroyed to make way for new housing and skyscrapers which you’ll see at the end of this.

Also, a few of my colleagues will be happy to note that a W hotel and Ritz-Carlton are being built on these grounds — ironies abound. The other day as well, helped my wife’s parents plant some plants. They wanted me to help dig out this huge *rock* in the ground. That rock happened to be a big multi-colored chunk of rubble from the village that lays under where we live — some kind of rock!

I need to get into photo dumping online. What is the linux workflow that others use to get photos from camera, to desktop, to flickr, Internet Archive, etc? I just took a hard look at just uploading all my photos to Internet Archive, but the interfaces are not there for photo fun nor conversion to other formats, and the biggest part is lack of active community. Any thoughts?

Originally from Photos from Guangzhou China Town Demolitions and Linux Photo Sharing Question

This year’s wedding season has kept things busy at the shop, been crankin’ out letterpress invitations and working on an extraordinary save-the-date projects too. A sweet break is in sight: just booked tickets for Mutek in late May. Tim Hecker, Onur Ozer, Murcof and more will be headlining the festival… hooray!

Originally from Montreal, here we come…

We visited Hangzhou last weekend in a perfect time. 18 hours train ride from Guangzhou on Friday afternoon, we arrived in Hangzhou on a Saturday morning. It was rainy the first day but for me that’s the Hangzhou weather you got to have. The next day was bright and sunny and all the flower paddles, seeds, leaves that got loose from the rain were flying in the wind. It’s quite impressive that the city planning of Hangzhou is formed as an infinite park around the west lake. There are amazing amount of public space for people to spend time out door.

The reason of this Hangzhou trip is the art show in Hangzhou Art Academy (aka China Art Academy). My friend Huang Xiaopeng is in the show and also with works from his students in the lab in Guangzhou Art Academy. There are two parts of the exhibitions: Unpack and 18 Cases studies of experimental art. The goal was to present and include Chinese contemporary art in Chinese art colleges. From the opening speech, it’s also an attempt to raise the status of Chinese contemporary art from “amateurism” to “academic”.

Hangzhou has the best spring I have ever seen.

One of the most interesting piece in the show, Huang Xiaopeng’s installation: “CCTV is in operation. Please keep your smile”.

Building in the Hangzhou art academy Xiaoshan campus uses very old tiles to make eaves of new buildings.

Originally from Spring time and shows in Hangzhou