ISEA

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 : )