Dear ADA
So the Electrosmog festival is over.... I'm really happy with all of
the projects and events we organised here, and then I have
reservations about the broader festival, and especially our interface
with it. I should probably work through those more coherently before
trying to say them out loud in public, but these are my initial
thoughts anyway...
I think we did great projects, but in the future it would be more
productive for us to do things like this (networked festivally things)
on our own terms, with more ownership of the discussion, themes,
structure, aesthetic and timezones(!).
This didn't end up being quite the distributed global festival I first
thought, and there was an uncomfortable centre-periphery relationship
inherent in the whole thing. Mostly this is because it was initiated
and coordinated by Eric Kluitenberg at De Balie in Amsterdam, and he
has a lot of experience at organising big ambitious festivals. I was
on the production / editorial email list, but few people on there
really contributed to the overall discussion + planning, and my focus
was on trying to work out the timezone issues. It seemed like everyone
was really doing their own things, and it managed to be both too
centralised to take ownership of, and too distributed to really have a
coherent focus.
There were a few particularly tricky problems, mostly technical issues
(ie their stream dropping out after the first day so we couldn't even
watch it except in occasional bursts of quicktime), and the fact that
the organisers in Amsterdam were juggling a huge number of
contributors across different platforms and only just keeping on top
of it (a pretty amazing feat it must be said). Most problematic for me
were the cultural differences that became apparent - especially in the
way Julian's contribution from the waka was handled in the Deep Local
session, when Eric and Gerbrand got flustered and talked over the
Karakia to try to get them to stop and start it again (and then they
couldn't manage to show Trudy's photos and then I was so grumpy about
all that I lost track of my notes and didn't say any of the things I
meant to say).
Culturally too perhaps, the themes themselves were hard to get a
handle on from here, and most simply didn't feel relevant, to me at
least...
Still, some great things happened here, and we now need to make sure
we have documentation of it all on the ADA website, especially:
- Becca Woods' Backyard Dances
(There is a recording of the video stream here:
http://suzonfuks.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/backyard-public_stream.mov)
- Sean Kerr's M4RI Ping Pong Pop, with Clinton Watkins, Adam Willetts
and Nathan Thompson (this is a still of the visual output, but I
should be able to get more documentation from De Balie - http://www.seankerr.auckland.ac.nz/PINGPONGPOP/)
- The Teletrust performances coordinated by Su in Dunedin (which
should be documented here - http://teletrustlab.net/)
- The Access Grid mini-symposium 'What is the Perfect Network' (which
Su and I will compile documentation of this week if possible)
- Julian's Waka.Wireless (http://greenbench.org/project/waka-wireless)
- Trudy's great presentation to the Deep Local session
Some of the projects we launched are ongoing / permanent:
- The Korawiki:
http://korawiki.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/wiki/doku.php/kora:home
- Luke Munn and Sam Hamilton's lovely (with a really cool interface)
Klanggang / Soundwalk:
http://www.lukemunn.com/2010/02/klanggang-soundwalk.html
- Helen Varley Jamieson and Vicki Smith's 'X Marks the Spot', which
will develop between now and their 10/10/10 festival: http://upstage.org.nz/blog
This was a huge project, and took a lot of planning and figuring out
over a really long period (it's over a year now since I first met with
Eric in Amsterdam about it). It was a network effort, coordinated by
the ADA trust electrosmog 'subcommittee' (myself, Su Ballard, and
Julian Priest) with James Charlton, and a lot of input from a lot of
other people.
Thanks, then, to everyone who spoke, performed, organised, negotiated,
commented, and generally made things happen technically, socially, and
creatively:
Su Ballard
Julian Priest
James Charlton
The Waka.Wireless crew: Mike Poa, Jonah Marinovich, Don Hunter, Te
Wainuiarua Poa, Sue James
The Dunedin TeleTrust team
Trudy Lane
Becca Wood
+ the Backyard Dancers (who I'm afraid I don't know the names of)
Sean Kerr
+ the M4RI Ping Pong Pop performers: Sean Kerr, Adam Willetts, Nathan
Thompson, Clinton Watkins)
Helen Varley Jamieson
Vicki Smith
Luke Munn
Sam Hamilton
The participants in the Access Grid 'What is the Perfect Network'
session
James' students who made projects responding to the themes of
Electrosmog
Everyone who has contributed to the Korawiki so far
Everyone who listened / watched / wrote comments + responses to the
list and in whatever channels were available over the weekend
Stella Brennan
Douglas Bagnall
Honor Harger
(I'm sure I'm forgetting people! my apologies if so...)
best,
Zita
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