reports

& so nancy arrived, which was very exciting - we hadn't seen each other since isea in belfast, where we had many an adventure ... but that's another story! (nancy was also in haiti a couple of weeks ago at the ghetto biennale, so last week's earthquake has had a direct personal impact - more here and sign the petition to drop haiti's debt).

after lunch, the audience has shrunk by almost half, & it seems to be mostly men who have left. so we now have something like 90% female audience, & the talks are also becoming more overtly feminist.

first up after lunch was lana brindley, who gave an entertaining talk about the importance of good technical documentation. she was followed by angie byron, who works with drupal & spoke about getting involved as an open source contributor. (i had been feeling slightly conspicuous having a mac at a linux conference, so i was a bit relieved to see angie also has a mac - & she doesn't even cover her apple sign ... !!!)

i'm at the haeksen miniconf at the australian linux conference, being conveniently held this year in wellington, where i conveniently happen to be at the moment. everyone has rushed outside at lunchtime, because there's the first sunshine in about a week of appallingly bad weather. but in the foyer there are quite a few people lurking around, either chatting in groups or hunched over laptops attached to the powerboards that have been generously placed around. there's an open wireless network which doesn't seem to need any log-in, despite signs displaying the password, and a cafenet token in the conference bag. but an open network is what there should be, at an open source conference.

outside ISEA

now that it's over, & i'm in istanbul, it's hard to put my brain back into last week & the end of ISEA - but i'll try, in an attempt to give some kind of conclusion to my ISEA blogging.

i have the feeling i'm in new zealand; this icy wellington wind is surely blowing off antarcica, pushing a diverse flock of clouds across a south pacific sky. the hills i can see between the copper-domed victorian gothic buildings are surely the hills around dunedin ... but no; there's a whole different undercurrent here - altho at the conference we're almost completely insulated from it.

i'm so disappointed!!! the pure:dyne live boot (cd or usb) doesn't work on ppc macs!!! : ( i was so looking forward to being able to really explore linux & the many great open source artist-led applications that are now available. but so far it's not to be. back in 2003 when i got hold of a dynebolic cd, it didn't work on any macs at all. now with pure:dyne, it hasn't been worth making it work on ppc as well as intel macs. my little g4 iBook may be 3 years old now but i'm hoping it's going to last me a while longer - i don't like this constant forced hardware obsolence; so i guess i'll have to wait, or borrow someone else's computer, to explore pure:dyne.

i began my day with artists' presentations in the bar, where floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides rendered the flat-screens more reflections than anything else. this made it difficult for the first presentation, "ribbons - a live cinema instrument" by tomas laurenzo. ribbons is an application is based on VJ tools but with the intention to combine more of the narrative possibilities of cinema with typical image-based club VJing. tomas talked about the "composing" of tools - where the creation of the tool has a strong impact on the artistic output, & the needs of both performer & public are integrated into the process of creating the tool.

as predicted, it's raining in belfast for the opening of ISEA2009, but i don't mind because i've got an umbrella : ) & anyway we're inside today. yesterday was a lovely day & i wandered belfast's central streets, orienting myself & finding some of the venues. i'm here to present a paper (friday afternoon at 3.30pm) & also as a volunteer intern, which means i get to invigilate - this involves controlling the doors for a couple of sessions & making sure i know where the fire exits are. apparently we inviligators get to have walkie-talkies, which i'm looking forward to : )

iranian presidential election 2009 subjective and incomplete report by seda naiumadIran
https://un.poivron.org/~tasche/index.php?page=index

tue, june 23, 3.32 am, today i suddenly lost my fear in the midst of streetfightings. it is so weird which rollercoster of emotions one experiences in these past weeks, days, hours, minutes. on saturday the presence of raging militia plus the expectation of gunfire made me scared shitless. it also created this feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness. today i hadn't planned to go to any demonstrations. i was invited for dinner and i decided to go earlier to not get into any trouble on the street. they were saying that there is a demonstration at ferdowsi and i wanted to go to karim khan which is further up. my friends told me that hafte tir is calm. i got on a taxi to hafte tir at parkway. we got stuck in thick traffic and the driver choose to go through the little alleys instead. but we got stuck there too. slowly getting closer to hafte tir suddenly people were running towards us. they ran in the middle of the street between the cars and on the sidewalk. after them came black motorbikes with men in camouflage and black with batons and paintball guns. they were big guys, their faces distorted from the wish to destroy. they looked like they were on cocain. with high speed they drove on the sidewalk trying to single out individuals to catch them. the men on the backseats were shooting with orange paintballs.