Was speaking to a friend about 8-bit music - via Gameboys - and thought I’d share this clip from last week. Had the chance to meet Josh aka BitShifter when he was playing at Sidecar in Barcelona for the International Chiptune Resistance Tour. Fantastic guy - tons of energy - and you really can’t go wrong with playing this kind of music SUPER loud in a crammed venue. Definitely check out his stuff and buy some of his music! I did.
It’s been a little slow getting back in gear after the whirlwind that was OFFF. Got a chance to sit down and have lunch with Carlos (from OFFF) in sunny Plaza Orwell. It was the first time to just be able to have a conversation with him as he was running around like a mad man making sure things went off without a hitch during the festival.
Spent the rest of my day working on some Visual tools I am planning on using for an upcoming little VJ stint I am doing at Club Apolo. Some interesting ideas and found myself experimenting and having fun with code which was refreshing. Got a call from Erik who was still in town and he and Tobey dropped by Plaza Real to see the studio. We then headed off to El Borne where we had drinks on a terraza. Note to self - not always a good idea to try and keep up the drinking pace with someone who can lift you over their head.
Headed out to one of my favourite little restaurants in Borne - La Fianna. Nice chilled vibes, dark and cozy and the food is wonderful. I think in this pic Erik is extremely jovial from my continued attempts at keeping up with him. Back out into the streets - we ran into a famous Barcelona Monument.
Bumped into a couple of locals who were celebrating Barcelona’s football victory. Makes one wonder what this video might have been had they lost.Hmmm
Once that was out of our system it was time for the nightcap and we headed over to Pitin Bar. Another favorite of mine where we just whiled away the last hours before it shut it’s doors.
Was great to spend some quality time hanging and talking outside of the conference circuit. Had some interesting conversations on physical computing and - funny enough - some ideas on how to improve and make interactive the bar experience with intelligent bar surfaces. Good stuff.
the Death Machine!! This beast was found in the backroom of the studio and was there - i believe - for a very good reason. However, I decided to breathe new life into it courtesy of a new wheel and I now officially have death on wheels. If there is something most likely to be my demise - you are looking at it. My very first trip up a curb pretty much sent me into orbit - going full on wheelie and nearly cracking the back of my head open. Riding up inclines takes the front wheel off the ground.
With a little music I can almost laugh about the fact this thing actually hasn’t fallen to pieces when in use.
After what seems a week of non-stop carousing, woke up (after coming home with the sun rising) at 11 to start preparing for what may very well become the first annual post OFFF BBQ. : )
Was a beautifully fantastic day - which of course is the first ingredient to keeping everyone on the roof drinking for longer than a work shift. Stocked up on all the necessary items : kilo of jamon, pounds of olives, tortilla, chips, salad, hamburguesas, sausage, pollo y mucha mucha cerveza y vino tinto. Everyone that was left over, and not on some crazy morning flight home, was invited to drop by. Was great. Ronin, State of Emergence bruthas, the Toca-Me family, Markus, Jonathan, local homeboys Lloyd, Carlos and Teo and Fernando from Dvein were among those who swung by. We went strong for almost 12 hours straight.Pictures to follow
I’d just like to say - looking back over a fantastic festival experience - what an absolutely terrific job Hector, Aimee, Carlos and the entire OFFF family did. I know, quite well, the difficulties involved in putting this together. Still - this remains one of the best “conferences” in the world and somehow at under 50euros. It’s insane - the value this festival holds. So a big congrats and massive thanks to the inOFFFensive team!!!
Amazingly was able to get up at a decent hour and catch Dr.Woohoo present his Brushes, Paints and Stencils work. Not only is this guy doing wicked interactive stuff, but one of the most down to earth people I have met. There must be something in the water in New Mexico cause Jared is drinking it too. Once again hours were spent on the patio nursing cervezas and chatting it up with everyone. The afternoon on the last day of the festival was really inspiring. Got a chance to see some of the new work that Rob was working on and seeing his development as a motion graphics artist. Totally humble guy with nothing but passion for what he does. Next up was one of my personal faves in the Flash World ; Senor Natzke. The man never ceases to inspire and push things to the next level. Corporate work never looked so good, and the energy and time put into shaping his presentation is proof of the hard-work and attention to detail that is seen in all he does. It was especially cool to see Erik working on some new experimental work. Combining his previous ribbon experiments with the new pixel level control in Flash 8 has led to some wonderful new ideas. Really looking forward to seeing where he goes with this.
The rest of the evening was for the Processing gang to knock people’s socks off. Ben and Casey began with an introduction to the language and some insight into their own personal work. Marius Watz was up next showcasing his work - some of which made it’s way (along with Casey’s) into a previous Flux event I curated in Amsterdam. Finally Golan and Zachary wowed everyone with their work in creating performance based pieces utilizing the physical and software. Great stuff.
As the event closed it was a good hour or so of everyone relaxing in the court yard and coasting off the energy from the day. Got a chance to see the new tat work Josh had done. Lovely stuff - Truth, Beauty & Chaos. We finally broke down into groups (economy and first-class hehe) and headed out for dinner. Had a wonderful patio dinner with Erik, Tobie, Ben, Casey, Zach, Golan, Marius, Jose Luis and some Sonar folk. As dinner wound down everyone re-united and it was off to La Paloma. This is my personal favorite venue in the city - a truly special place. Live music until 2am with people of all ages out dancing, then slowly the DJ’s take over and it’s dancing until dawn.
Had an absolutely wonderful time hanging out with Neville Brody, Aral, Dr.Woohoo, Marius, Markos, Ben, Erik, Tobie, Andreas, Thorsten, Nina, Jonas, Guy, Tink, Folkert, Lloyd, Joost, Paula, Rob, Leif and everyone else who made it out. Pictures do the evening more justice than my words ever could.
Another beautiful day. Full on sun and thinking how great it is to be at a conference that realizes getting up for 9AM sessions is just plain silly. This gave lots of time to just completely enjoy the day. In traditional spanish fashion spent 2 1/2 hours on a terazza having lunch with Florian and Andreas from Hi-Res!/Nanika, the Ronin himself and Jonas who definitely took the top partier award this conference.
Spent the day enjoying the Showcase section of the conference looking at work and playing with a number of installations. Drawn, an installation by Zach Lieberman was a fun experience in working with the physical act of painting and translating it to a physical interface you could interact with as well as generate sounds. Josh was there collaborating with attendees using his hand-crafted automata art machine to create compositions as well as flipping me one of his very own hand-crafted birds. ; )
Outside of the conference we had Hektor and their physical graffitti machine. Working with the physical is something that is of extreme interest to me and it was great to see so many works heading in the direction of interfacing with non-standard devices.
The evening was chock full of inspiring and entertaining sessions from Ze Frank, Hi-Res! and Kyle Cooper. Ze’s humour was a welcome treat, more physical and experimental work from Nanika was of particular interest to me and hearing Kyle speak again was a highlight. It’s so wonderful to listen to someone that has such a massive volume of incredible work who is soundly based in concept, passion and dedication to the form. I also got the chance to catch a set by my sonic cohort Kenneth Kirschner busting out his ambient charms.
After the conference I was off to a fabulous dinner with the OFFF crew and Kyle Cooper. Collaboratively we are working on a truly innovative concept called the Untitled Film Project. This is one year collaborative film project aims to produce a full length film that is written, directed and filmed by artists all over the world. Participants include Hillman Curtis, Iamstatic, InkSurge, Rob Chiu, GrupoW, Umeric and others. Sort of an Exquisite Video Corpse. Looking forward to working with such wonderful people on this project.
After inhaling a Tiramasu I should have just left plain alone it was time to call in the troops for some further debauchery. We met up with Rob, Ze, Joost, Paula, Andrew, Rory, Andreas and the Unit 9 boys for drinks at Rubi in El Borne. We had the top floor to ourselves and pretty much acted that way. Another night till closing and stumbly guided tours to everyone’s apartments.
What a wonderful couple of days it’s been. With today being the onset of another edition of OFFF, the city has been opening it’s arms to weary travelers seeking creative inspiration and memorable times. I had the privilege of not only participating this year, but of being the opening speaker for the event. Although this equates to being the technical guinea pig going through a live tech check, I tried to think of it as an opportunity to set a tone for the following 3 days.
My talk was entitled Interactive Imagination and the focus was to talk not only about a number of interesting experiments I have been working on recently, but to talk about the important role of happiness in work and play. Taking risks and trusting ourselves. Pushing ourselves past the comfort zone and not getting tripped up with the Law of Familiarity. I feel it’s important to be constantly growing; creatively, spiritually, emotionally, socially. Pushing ourselves into unfamiliar territory.Stranger in a strange land. Packing my bags and heading to a country where I didn’t speak the language has been one of the most rewarding life lessons I’ve had.
Feedback following my talk was wonderful and it was great to have complete strangers thanking you for expressing things they felt or were thinking. good energy. It was nice though to be finished and be able to spend some quality time with friends who came into town. Got a chance to get some face time in with Kenneth Kirschner who I first met two years ago at OFFF:Valencia who was at OFFF this year for a couple of performances. We’ve been working in a series of collaborations working towards a CD release later this year that is completely generative and indeterminate.
As the first day of the festival winded down groups began to splinter off to explore Barcelona by night. We had a group of 20+, and well that’s generally a scene most restaurants here aren’t overly interested in serving - especially when foreigners. We eventually re-splintered and ended up hitting an outside terrace for some traditional tapas.
Had the pleasure of meeting and feasting with the lovely Toca-Me family and friends :Thorsten, Nina, Jonas, Ben and Johan as well as old-time conference pals Rob Chiu, Mr.Davis and Erik (with fabulous fiance Tobie) and newcomer Jonathan Harris.
Good food and conversation was followed by further wanders in the Gothic quarter where we ended up at a great little bar called Shanghai - and proceeded to shut her down.
At around 3:30 I took on role of local guide and escorted everyone to their respective barrios. Sure enough, as Rob and I were walking by Arc de Triomfe,we bumped into Mike Cina and Gretta on their way back from some late night meanderings of their own.
It was a fantastic day full of energy and smiling faces. The start of a memorable OFFF experience.