Live: Algorave @ Archspace in London

Our friend Mattr performed in the Archspace in London. Jack Chutter wrote the following review in the ATTN:Magazine:

When I initially heard about live-coding, I was quick to presume that it was beyond my technical grasp. After all, surely this music was the reserve of those who have spent their lives immersed in programming, hidden behind a wall of education and natural computer aptitude, forbidden to the layman – me, for example – who should probably stick to more tangible forms of instrumental causality (hitting a drum, pressing a key). Yet coupled with my recent interview with Belisha Beacon (who went from code novice to Algorave performer within a matter of months), my experience tonight has convinced me otherwise. That’s not to say that Algorave doesn’t regularly slip beyond my technical comprehension, folding code over itself to produce spasmodic, biomechanical bursts of light and sound, ruptured by compounded multiplications and tangled up in polymetric criss-cross. Yet with the code projected upon a large screen in front of me, I see that these transparent mechanics are often painfully easy to understand. A line of code is activated: a sample starts. An empty space is deleted: a rhythmic pattern shifts one step. I witness the preparation and execution of “sudden” bass drops; I am exposed to the application of effects and shifts in pitch. At some points at least, I totally get this.

Each set is accompanied by digital projections, most of which are live-coded by the evening’s two visual artists (Hellocatfood and Rumblesan). As I walk into Archspace, the screen is brimming with these vibrant, hyperventilating spheres, all spinning at incredible speed, expanding and contracting as though set to burst. Meanwhile, the electronic pulses of Mathr feel way overcharged, bloating beyond their own mathematical confines, bleating like the alarms that herald the opening and closing of space shuttle doors or slurred bursts of laser beam. A rhythm is present but it never walks in a straight line. It’s constantly correcting itself incorrectly, sliding and slanting between shapes that never properly fit, modulating between various flavours of imbalance.

The sounds remain very much askew for Calum Gunn, although now it’s like someone playing a breakbeat remix of a Slayer track on a scratched disc, choking on the same split-second of powerchord as the beat rolls and glitches beneath, quickly abandoning all sense of rightful rhythmic orientation. Later it’s all synth hand-claps and digital squelches, exploded into tiny fragments that whoosh dangerously close to my ears. On screen, a square cascades like a spread deck of cards, fanning outward across future and past iterations, losing outline and angle in the overlap of shifted self. Together, sound and image shed all time-space integrity, knotted and crushed by the layers of multiplication and if-then function, complicating their own evolution until they can’t possibly find its way back again.

It’s almost as though Martin Klang has witnessed this chaos and taken heed. His music is carefully and precariously built, stacked in a brittle tower of drones and ticks and pops. Hi-hats spill out like coins on a kitchen floor (whoops – not quite careful enough), as the beat tip-toes between them in a nervous waltz, accompanied by what sounds like the glugging, croaking proclamations of an emptying kitchen sink. All adjustments are patiently negotiated. The soundscape switches from a duet between drone sweeps and popping fuses, to an ensemble of water-drenched bouncy balls of various sizes. I feel tense as I watch this music unfold, as though Klang’s synth might explode with just one heavy-handed application of change.

IMG_0846

MARTIN KLANG + RUMBLESAN

This threat doesn’t lift as we move into Miri Kat’s thick, disaster prone dub, although her sound is fearless and indifferent to it: rhythms forward-roll into mists of radiation, smacking into hydraulic doors and tangling itself in the zaps of crossed electronic wires. The rhythm comes and goes in huge obelisks of volume and visceral bass frequency, announcing themselves with thundering severity and then dropping out, allowing myth and ambient chimes to pool in the stretches of absence. At its loudest her performance is incredibly visceral, the beats wracked with the noises of ripping open, or tectonic electronic rumbling, or up-ended boxes of micro-sampled ticks and trinkets. Meanwhile, the visuals come in a gush of glitch-ruptured Playstation animation and over-zealous zoom lens, plunging into pixelated colours and flicker and burst into the far corners.

Archspace is packed out by now. Contrary to my silly assumptions that Algoraves would be an elitist, ultimately cerebral affair, a vast majority of the crowd are dancing (in fact, it is me – pinned against the side wall with my head in my notebook – who could be most readily accused of forgoing visceral enjoyment in favour of lofty pontification). This interface between code and human rhythm is further explored by Canute, tasking a live drummer to find a foothold within an ever-modulating algorithmic output, with snare drums snatching at synthesisers splayed in scattershot and krautrock 4/4s ploughing forward through a hail of ping-pong delays, while micro-samples bounce off the windscreen of those thoroughly human hits. The coded output slots into a new pacing and the drummer realigns accordingly, swerving in and around those blocks of binary exactitude, tumbling across those flatulent bursts of morse code and synthetic mandolin.

It’s a dizzy experience, and Heavy Lifting only nurtures the nausea further. Her set is like having a surreal dream while travel sick, head slumped out of the window of a gigantic cruise-liner, with the excitable voices of in-boat entertainment in one ear and the churn of the sea in the other. Spoken samples and revved motors whirl over beats that throb like an insistent headache, as samples eat themselves and fold over one another, blurred by the waves of sickness or sliced up into phonetic digital chirps. The beat throbs at ever-louder volumes. My heartbeat lodges itself in my head. Somewhere in the mixture of slur and abrasion – the precise combination of ambient wave and brash attack – Heavy Lifting strikes upon a strange form of ecstasy, as a dense rhythm rises from beneath and pushes the quease and wooze aside. It’s wonderful.

Due to a route closure and lengthy diversion affecting my journey home to Cheltenham, my own Algorave concludes tonight with a set from Belisha Beacon (my apologies to tonight’s final act, Luuma, who I had to miss as a result). Her improvisation builds itself, deconstructs itself, reshapes itself. There are no foundations, there is no final form. Raw samples (digital woodwind, dry synthetic percussion) enter one at a time and slide into place, methodically adding new angles and asymmetries to the overall shape, compounding individual decisions into a network of intersecting pulses and chimes. The 4/4 clicks into place as the rhythm shunts into a continuous stomp, finding momentary alignment before Belisha Beacon starts to pick apart the shape all over again. This methodical transparency is what sold me on the accessibility and open possibilities of live-coding. While some of tonight’s performances explore the potential of enacting numerous ideas simultaneously, splaying the code like projected firework embers, others explode the software mechanics into a series of singular steps. It’s like witnessing a film and its “making of” simultaneously, with my enjoyment of each beat enriched by the ability to share in the very spell that brought it to be.

Realignment

The app is now available! Please download and install for Android phones and tablets.

During the recent dash to pretotype the Anchorholds app for Creeknet, we have been chopping up html and processing images to retrofit our fork of Open University project Salsa.

This requires rewriting of the templates to build the first 16 sets of pages with matching images etc. I can’t say it’s been easy collaborative process, even with great services at hand from Sandstorm and Google, so thanks to all concerned for their tireless support and patience.

Overall we were getting on fine with Sandstorm until some gremlins in the Davros share, made the files read only! With time lapping at our heels we made a swtich to Google Drive to complete the task but got into a synchronisation battle with one another. In the end we have resolved to build a staging server from where future versions of the app html will be tested. This could all have been handled better, so lessons learned!

During the last 12 months SPC has been working with individuals and groups based along Deptford Creek who are invested in local, social and technological networks. Some are resolutely off grid, harvesting energy and resisting normalisation pressures. Others take their time to make changes and take on new ideas but almost all have an investment in networks of one sort or another that they strive to build, maintain and protect.

This fantastic pictogram map of Creeknet was drawn by the Minesweeper Collective interns, working out of Deckspace media lab over the summer. It’s their impression of the people and spaces of the area as they have experienced them, where did all those bats come from ?

As a whole it has been a very interesting, complex and sometimes confusing process of exchange that we have been careful to nurture rather than project into, with insensitive and inappropriate energy. Rather we have attempted a participatory engagement in local activities, supporting initiatives and sharing trust, listening to needs of those we meet and working to understand the changing conditions.

It’s also been an opportunity to revisit some of the great relationships established in earlier network projects the most recent of which OWN had fallen out of use in recent years. New mesh network equipment has been installed along the length of the Creek in support of the Mazizones some have already begun cutomising to meet their specific network needs.

The current version of the resulting Anchorholds app will be available for download in time for the first day of Creeknet Symposium 20th June. For now it works only with Android smartphones and tablets. Once installed and running it will push location specific information to your screen when in proximity to a trail of Bluetooth beacon responders along Deptford Creek.

Today there is just sprinkling of information preloaded in the app but it is intended as one mechanism to promote public awareness of DIY networks of Deptford Creek. We hope to extend it’s scope to list local resources and report on collected data that may be critical to future well being of all those who live and work in the area, cross it’s bridges and moor on its shores.

How much of this is fiction?

We took our students to FACT Liverpool to see the How much of this is fiction exhibition, where !Mediengruppe Bitnik has been exhibiting Delivery for Mr. Assange (2013).

Julian Assange has been living at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012. In early 2013, !Mediengruppe Bitnik sent a parcel to the WikiLeaks founder, in a work entitled Delivery for Mr. Assange. The parcel contained a camera which broadcast its entire journey through the postal system live on the
Internet. Delivery for Mr Assange is presented here in three parts, including an X-Ray of the original package sent to the Embassy during the mail-art performance, and a text written by Daniel Ryser in 2014, which captures the extraordinary delivery and the uproar that followed on the Internet.
The largest element is Assange’s Room: a striking, sculptural 1:1 reproduction of Assange’s office at the embassy. The room is meticulously constructed entirely from memory (photography is not allowed in embassy rooms) after several visits made by the artists to the office. The disparity between Assange’s
lack of freedom is emphasised by the visitors freedom to walk in and out of the uncannily normal space. The physical restrictions placed on a seeker of political asylum stand in stark contrast to the reach offered by Wikileaks, and the Internet, as a platform designed for free speech.

Accompanying the installation is digital work Skylift (VO.2) by Adam Harvey, a geolocation spoofing device that virtually relocates visitors to Assange’s residence at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

How much of this is fiction.is a touring exhibition, programme of events, and media campaign exploring the art and activist movement, Tactical Media, which emerged in the late 90s. Specifically, the project investigates the ways in which one of the key legacies of Tactical Media (namely, the politically inspired
media hoax) exploits the boundary between fiction and reality. How much of this is fiction. examines the role, and social purpose, of the artist as Trickster.

This exhibition looks at the legacy of the initial projects, moments and acts within Tactical Media’s ‘history’, as well as how these approaches have altered in today’s era of mass self-mediation through the widespread availability of social media and other decentralised communication platforms. It also presents new works by contemporary artists who are working within the areas of politically engaged (media disseminated) art, using approaches which resonate with the ethos of Tactical Media, shifting public perception and awareness of issues through artistic experimentation and a call to the imagination.

Creeknet XF Symposium

Its been a very hectic few weeks at SPC as we bring focus onto DIY networks of Deptford Creek at the first Creeknet Symposium on 20th and 21st June.

The poster here for you to print and put up in your window, outlines event details which can be found in full on the SPC event listings and at http://deptfordcreek.net

The Creeknet friends have been meeting regularly at venues up and down the creek. We have been exploring the fast changing environment and revisiting access points onto the river, crossing bridges and improving an understanding of local concerns and ambitions. The last of these before summer takes hold is on Monday 12th June at noon, in the Undercurrents gallery inside the Birdsnest pub on Deptford Church Street. We will be collecting together images and stories to publish at the local network Anchorholds, a trail of information points along the creek, so please do come along to contribute your experiences !

Rapid progress was made by the very energetic Hoy Steps clear-up group on Monday 5th June. The huge overgrowth of Buddleia clogging views, was cut down and disposed of in a flurry of action and enthusiasm. The vigorous roots of this plant have got deep into and have damaged the sea wall and will continue to regrow unless more drastic measures to remove remnants are adopted soon, even then they are likely to return!

Wooden pallets stored at street level have been sorted and stacked ready for re-use or removal and the rubbish sheet materials, plastic wrappers and polystyrene are bagged ready for disposal. We return early on Tuesday 13th to complete the clean-up process in preparation for a public viewing during Creeknet Symposium the following week.

Friends of Deptford Creek is a community group set up to support, represent and protect the human, natural and built environment of Deptford Creek, London. How do these two different groups work together? How does the changing landscape affect them? What technologies can help?

Find out by joining us over an exciting two days of public meet ups and workshops to exchange ideas and explore the DIY networks of Deptford Creek<http://deptfordcreek.net/>.

Meet MAZI<http://mazizone.eu/> partners from around Europe, Chat to local community groups, and play with our technology that support local networks and discuss what’s next for Deptford. You can attend all or parts of these events over the two days by registering with Eventbrite here:

Tuesday 21st June 2017
Wednesday 22nd June 2017

For further information please visit this website.

This week starting Monday 12 June, we have a busy schedule to install equipment, complete work and do last minute promotion. (really!). Today we are meeting at the Undercurrents Gallery in the Birdsnest pub to update the mazizone prototype there and meet with local mariners and artists to discuss their network systems. On Tuesday it’s an early Lowtide and 10AM return to the Hoysteps to complete clearup work and prepare for a visit the following week, refreshments provided. After lunch we will be installing bluetooth beacons along the creek to mark out the Anchorhold locations

Wireless Wednesday at http://bit.spc.org this week is dedicated to preparation of print materials for distribution during the Creeknet Symposium so please come along and help out, but please hold off on the broken PC’s for a couple of weeks! On Thursday and Friday, We will be testing the Creeknet Anchoholds app, a guide to the DIY networks of Deptford Creek. If you would like to help out please call for more details as we will be working along the length of the tidal creek from Brookmill Park to the Swing bridge.

http://friends.deptfordcreek.net

Don’t forget to tell us you are attending Creeknet Symposium, not least so we can arrange catering! Please register.

Creeknet meet-up @ Hoy

The MAZI Project is working on an alternative technology, Do-It-Yourself networking, a combination of wireless technology, low-cost hardware, and free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) applications, for building local networks, known as community wireless networks.

The Wireless Battle Mesh v10

==========================================================
The Wireless Battle Mesh v10
5th – 11th of June 2017, Vienna, Austria
==========================================================

The next ‘Wireless Battle of the Mesh’ will take place from Mon 5th – Sun 11th of June in the Austrian Museum of Folk Life And Folk Art (http://www.volkskundemuseum.at) in Vienna.

The event aims to bring together all people from across the globe that are interested in wireless mesh network technologies and community networks in general. 6 days full of expert presentations, late night hacking sessions, measurement campaigns, protocol discussions, and a whole lotta other meshy things.

So if you are a mesh networking enthusiast, community networking activist, or have an interest in mesh networks in general, you have to check this out!

Continuously updated information about the event:
http://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV10

 

Location
========

We are located in the upper floor of very nice historical museum in the middle of Vienna. One large conference room and two adjacent hacking areas are at our full disposal there. The whole area offers nice atmosphere and plenty of room to deploy measurement testbeds. The adjacent park is a beautiful analog distraction, especially in this time of the year. The metalab – a very active local hackerspace – is only 5 minutes away.

 

Accommodation Offering
======================

For those of you who are looking for a convenient and low cost accommodation option: we have made block reservation for 40 people in a nice hostel 10-15min walking distance from the Museum. The packages include 6 nights in a four-bed room incl. breakfast – for a mere €100. Follow the simple instructions below to get one of these hot deals 😉 a first come first serve scheduler is used.

 

Registration
============

The event is *free of charge* and registration is optional – but it makes the organisation much easier if you tell us in advance that you plan to come.

Please send a mail to v10@battlemesh.org that looks somewhat like this:

 

########
Subject: Registration

Name and/or Nick = …
Interested in accommodation package = [Yes/No]
T-Shirt Size = [S/M/L/none]
Other details you want to share: …
(e.g. community, country, URLs, twitter handle, dietary restrictions, …)
########

 

We will then put your name on the public participants list: http://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV10/Participants
And we will answer with payment instructions for the accommodation package to those that are interested in one.

 

Travel Scholarships
===================

If you want to apply for a travel scholarship (compensating the costs of a long distance flight to Vienna and back) please explicitly tell us so in the registration mail. We will then ask you to prepare a short video message in which you are giving a brief introduction to yourself and your interests.

 

Spread the Word
===============

Please help us spreading the word by forwarding this to all lists and people that might be interested. Blogging about it is also very appreciated, and if you do so, please add a ping-back to the wiki page:

http://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV10

 

The Local Infrastructure Core Team
==================================

Albert Rafetseder (albert.rafetseder at univie.ac.at, key ID 0x90382EC8)
Clemens Hopfer (datacop at wireloss.net, key ID 0x5EBA9D09)
Paul Fuxjaeger (paul.fuxjaeger at gmx.at, key ID 0xB5BB47E7)

 

Contact
=======

* Web: http://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV10
* Email: http://ml.ninux.org/mailman/listinfo/battlemesh
* IRC: irc.freenode.net #battlemesh
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/battlemesh/

Surrender to Surveillance

Our friend Heath Bunting gives a talk @virtualfutures:

Virtual Futures presents a discussion on technologies of surveillance, the infringements on privacy by the state, restrictions of individual freedom and the mutation of identity. Underlying the platforms that make digital communication possible are massive stealth efforts in social profiling. This reality has become passively accepted by a user base who are sold the promise of personalisation and customisation in exchange for allowing increased data extraction and analysis.
Corporations target social life itself, aiming to monitor their users ever more effectively and regulate certain types of action. As identity, social interaction and profit overlap it threatens core human values such as freedom and privacy, as well as posing new ontological questions concerning what constitutes identity. Join an artist who has been described as ‘a disciplined advocate of a transgressive social and political anarchy’ a professor who is exploring the impact of digital media on society and politics, a journalist who specialises in privacy, and others to discover how we might develop a toolset for escaping the ever-intensifying surveillance and monitoring of our society.

Virtual Futures presents a discussion on technologies of surveillance, the infringements on privacy by the state, restrictions of individual freedom and the mutation of identity.

Underlying the platforms that make digital communication possible are massive stealth efforts in social profiling. This reality has become passively accepted by a user base who are sold the promise of personalisation and customisation in exchange for allowing increased data extraction and analysis.

Corporations target social life itself, aiming to monitor their users ever more effectively and regulate certain types of action. As identity, social interaction and profit overlap it threatens core human values such as freedom and privacy, as well as posing new ontological questions concerning what constitutes identity.

Join an artist who has been described as ‘a disciplined advocate of a transgressive social and political anarchy,’ a professor who is exploring the impact of digital media on society and politics, a journalist who specialises in privacy, and an expert on corporate data monopolies to discover how we might develop a toolset for escaping the ever-intensifying surveillance and monitoring of our society.

Fireside Chat

Heath Bunting, Artist

Heath Bunting is known as an early practitioner of the net.art movement. As his online biography reports, “He is banned for life from entering the USA for his anti-genetic and border crossing work. He has had multiple works of art censored and permanently deleted (including all copies and backups) by the UK security services.

He has had an artwork exploded by the SAS and is prevented from talking about this in public. He has been detained, arrested multiple times and classified as a terrorist by UK security services for his art projects. He is subject to constant global state and corporate hostile interventions. He is denied full access to the internet and is almost constantly unemployed as a result of being politically blacklisted. In an environment where the UK Ministry of Defence can publicly state that their primary global adversary is the non-state individual artist, he now produces his art projects securely and in secret.

He has been approached by both state and corporate security organisations on several occasions, but mostly declined these offers of work, especially when it involved the assassination of social justice activists. His main work, The Status Project, involves using artificial intelligence to search for artificial life in societal systems. Aside from this, he is currently training artists in security and survival techniques so they can out-live organised crime networks in the forest during the final crisis.

Panelists

Prof. David Berry, Co-Director of the Sussex Humanities Lab and the Research Centre for Digital Materiality, University of Sussex (@BerryDM)

Prof. Berry researches the theoretical and medium-specific challenges of understanding digital and computational media, particularly algorithms, software and code. His work draws on critical theory, political economy, medium theory, software studies, and the philosophy of technology.

Heath Bunting, Artist

Early practitioner of the net.art movement.

Wendy M. Grossman, Technology Journalist (@wendyg)

Freelance technology writer specializing in computers, freedom, and privacy. She has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, Scientific American, New Scientist, Infosecurity Magazine, and Wired, and was the 2013 winner of the Enigma award for lifetime achievements.

Roger Taylor, Chair, Open Public Services Network (@RTaylorOpenData)

Roger Taylor is an entrepreneur, regulator and writer. He is chair of Ofqual, the qualifications regulator, and works with The Careers & Enterprise Company on the use of technology and data in career decisions. He has written two books: God Bless the NHS (Faber & Faber 2014); and Transparency and the Open Society (Policy Press 2016) which outlines the dangers of government and corporate data monopolies. He founded and chairs the Open Public Services Network at the Royal Society of Arts; he is a trustee of SafeLives, the domestic abuse charity; and he sits on the advisory board to HM Inspectorate of Probation. He has worked with governments, NGOs and leading media organisations globally on the use of open data and public reporting. Roger began his career as a journalist working as a correspondent for the Financial Times in the UK and the US and, before that, as a researcher for the Consumers’ Association.

Dicussion moderated by:

Luke Robert Mason, Director of Virtual Futures (Moderator) (@LukeRobertMason)

Schedule

06:30pm – 07:00pm: Registration & Drinks

07:00pm – 07:30pm: Fireside chat with artist Heath Bunting on ‘The Staus Project.’

07:30pm – 08:30pm: Panel Dicussion on ‘Surrender to Survailance’ with Prof. David Berry, Heath Bunting, Wendy M. Grossman & Others (TBC)

8:30pm – Late: Audience Q&A, Drinks & Networking