Salon Mazal was established in 2001, in Tel Aviv, Israel, by a group of social-environmental activists. Salon Mazal is a non-for-profit registered charity that serves as an information distribution center for social, environmental and political change The place functions as a store (including books, magazines and fair-trade products), a lending library, an artist gallery, a vegetarian bar and a community center where movie screenings, lectures, workshops and meetings take place.

The place is run in line with anarchist ideology and values, which encourage an egalitarian, non-hierarchical community. Salon Mazal is run by a group of volunteers. Consensus decision-making is used to promote the expression of individual voices within the group in daily meetings.

click here or on the image to play the quicktime movie

music is Indian Summer by Big Bud

I went along to the Sarai Independent Fellows 2006 workshops last weekend (26-27/08) @ Sarai, CSDS, New Delhi. I missed the first two days sessions, but here is a slideshow video of some of the saturday & sunday sessions. it was really interesting - both the presentations and the discussions afterwards. some sessions were in Hindi so I couldn't follow as easily. there were a wide range of projects though - art, music, urban issues. hopefully they'll link to some of the full papers on the sarai.net website. it was a great way to get another insight into life and goings on in India and related places.

photos @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliak_com/tags/saraiifellows2006

http://ifellows2006.wordpress.com

http://www.sarai.net

The Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society (KEAMS) was founded for the development of electro-acoustic music and computer music in 1993.

The Seoul International Computer Music Festival (SICMF) held annually since 1993 is one of the biggest electro-acoustic music festivals in Asia, and also internationally well-known.

Every year over 100 composers from various countries submit their works for the festival, and about 20 pieces among them are chosen and performed at the festival. We also have invited special composers or performers for the festival such as DEGEM, CCRMA and Meta Duo.

Celebrate the opening night of the 4th SOOB Festival with the knowledge that a public holiday is the next day! Below are some of the highlights of the SOOB 2006 program for Tuesday, August 15. For more information, visit the website @ http://www.straightoutofbrisbane.com

PUKAR is an innovative and experimental initiative that aims to contribute to a global debate about urbanization and globalization. It takes Mumbai as its conceptual base and laboratory for cross-disciplinary research projects. PUKAR also organizes seminars, workshops, talks and film screenings in English, Marathi and occasionally other Mumbai languages, and focuses specifically on producing a new space for critical engagement. Its goal is to generate new urban knowledge by encouraging maximum participation of Mumbai's citizens in this process, thus also contributing to the city's dynamism and sustainability. PUKAR's team consists of a group of scholars, social and cultural activists and professionals in the fields of art, journalism, film, architecture, urban planning and social sciences. The group was founded in 2001 by Professor Arjun Appadurai (Provost & Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs, New School University, New York, USA), who serves as the President of its Board of Trustees.

Founded in 1995, Studio XX is Montreal's foremost women's digital resource centre. Through a variety of creative activities and initiatives, the Studio works with women to demystify digital technologies, to critically examine their social aspects, to facilitate women's access to technology, and to create and exhibit women's new digital art.

There's a couple of conferences coming up which I wouldn't mind checking out.. don't think I'll have a chance in person as I'm still in Delhi for work, but I think they'll have video / audio recordings of them so I can check out later.

Vloggercon 2006 is being held in San Francisco this year. Here's the blurb from their site:
"VLOGGERCON 2006 is the intersection between media-makers and technology. A space for dialog and interaction. Of creation and collaboration. A media village born on the internet, and making camp for one weekend in San Francisco.

In the past year, videoblogging has grown into a myriad of forms with a worldwide voice. And your voice is needed at Vloggercon– after all, the media is being made by you so it’s your voice that we want to hear! Vloggercon is a two-day collection of roundtable discussions about the emergence and the future of this new medium; not a series of lec-tures. This conference is created for meeting and learning from each other, so be ready to share your thoughts!

Vloggercon 2006 will be held June 10 & 11 at the Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market Street, San Francisco CA 94114. "
http://www.vloggercon.com/ - tickets are available online.

Where 2.0
This one's about locative and GIS / Google Earth, Second Life / Electric Sheep & similar web apps. Would be good to see what's happening on this front at the moment. Here's the blurb from their site :

" Everything happens somewhere. With open source and free web mapping tools like Ka-Map and Google Maps, we finally have a way to display location information. At last year's Where 2.0, we put the spotlight on the grassroots developers building mash-ups on platforms from Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google. This year we'll look at the latest developments in those platforms as well as the latest startups, civic projects, and labs experiments built on them.

In addition you'll find source mapping tools, open standards for data and location web services, and sensors for obtaining location data. We'll learn how the established geo industry is reacting to the first businesses making money from their grassroots geospatial projects. There's no better place to meet the people behind the mash-ups, the people behind the platforms, and the people looking ahead to the future of geospatial. "
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/where2006/

Not Still Art, a forum for artists working in abstract and non-narrative electronic motion imaging with music/sound design, disseminates artists' work via international screenings, live performances, conferences, publications, and hard and virtual media. Not Still Art produces historic and contemporary programs in collaboration with art institutions, broadcasters, publishers, and internet organizations.

Vade's blog has max patches and tutorials for creating glitch videos and other cool stuff.

Copyright in the Digital Age seminars - http://www.copyright.com.au/seminars_events.htm

Following the success of last year's Copyright in the Digital Age seminars, we will be holding a second free series in venues across Australia in May 2006.

Copyright in the Digital Age covers what you need to know when offering and protecting your work online.

From online search engines, e-book readers to digital rights management, we review what's happening with new technology and policy which affects all aspects of publishing. View the full program here.

The seminar will include a panel session, held in association with the Australian Society of Authors and featuring authors, publishers and copyright experts. They will review some of the key issues, challenges and opportunities facing Australian creators in the digital age.

All seminars run from 4.00pm - 6.00pm, followed by refreshments. Dates and venues are shown below:

* Perth: Tuesday 2 May, Art Gallery of Western Australia
* Adelaide: Wednesday 3 May, State Library of South Australia
* Sydney: Thursday 11 May, CAL offices
* Brisbane: Tuesday 16 May, Brisbane Council City Hall
* Canberra: Wednesday 17 May, National Library of Australia
* Melbourne: Wednesday 24 May, State Library of Victoria

To register

Register online or phone 02 9394 7600 for more information or to book your place.

This is a unique opportunity for practicing camera artists, senior level photography students, teachers, recent graduates and those with an established body of camera based work to gain first hand insight into up to the minute international currents in the art and project based photography world. The exhibition and workshop will be held at AUT University, School of Art and Design, January 19, 20, 21st 2006

At this session, Film Victoria's Documentary Manager, Steve Warne, will provide up to date information on documentary funding available from Film Victoria, how the fund operates and how to apply. The session will also include case-studies presented by documentary filmmakers who have previously received Film Victoria funding. Documentary filmmakers Jasmin Tarasin McGee (Pure Pictures Pty Ltd) and Sharyn Prentice (Flaming Star Films Pty Ltd) will present a case study of their documentary projects and their experience in submitting a successful funding application. visit http://www.openchannel.org.au for more info

South Western Sydney Institute of TAFE, Outreach Unit, Granville College, Hype-in-Ackshun & Information & Cultural Exchange (ICE) present "scratch sessions with sarah love". All the way from London, Sarah Love has worked as a DJ for the past four years, setting new standards for aspiring DJ's, female or otherwise! Her musical accomplishments include composition, arranging, song writing, engineering and production. She has supported some of the best UK hip-hop acts, including JEHST, THE EXTENDED PLAYERS, MYSTRO and ROOTS MANUVA. She is an official 'MTV SOUNDSYSTEM' DJ, with whom she has toured across Europe. Sarah Love is making waves in the British music scene and internationally. She is taking time out of her music tour to run some workshops with young people. Visit www.ice.org.au for details

http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/music/ems/index.html

max/msp course notes
day 1
19 March 2005
Goldsmiths College, London

bang & toggle -> easy way to see what's going on in the patch; test; use it to print values

apple m = status window
number box passes on info when it receives the bang

toggle
- off when 0 (int)
- on for any other int value
- if it gets a float, it truncates the decimal to give 0 or 1 eg 1.57 would give 1; 0.73 would give 0

This workshop provides a 3 hour introduction to the latest the latest audio software available on Gnu/Linux. It's a hands-on course for women as part of Sheilafest. 2:00pm Thursday 24 March at SoundHouse @ the Powerhouse Museum. act] visit http://www.deprogram.net/blogger/blogger.html or http://lists.cat.org.au/cgi-bin/m/listinfo/sydney-calendar for more details on this event + more

GPS for Artists
Theatre, Quay Arts, Sea Street, Newport Harbour, Isle of Wight PO30 5BD

Saturday 19th Februrary 2005 10am - 5pm

Ivan Pope presents A Locative Day Out

The satellite based Global Positioning System (GPS) allows us to record
basic information about our location, direction, altitude and speed.
Using small hand held devices, artists can record and interpret this
data to create mapping, locative, durational and other works. GPS allows

Visual artists, sound artists, installation artists, new media artists, web designers, photographers, engineers, architects, painters, djs, vjs, activists, hackers, writers, poets, performers, musicians, philosophers, theorists, film makers, bloggers, designers and any one else interested in art and its role in public space are invited to participate in SECRETS OF THE CITY - GUMBRAMORRA SWAMP THING! Secrets of the City - Gumbramorra Swamp Thing! is a series of free community workshops where participants will create innovative site specific public artworks and ephemeral installations that will map and interpret unique sites of social, cultural, and ecological resonance within the footprint of the former Gumbramorra Swamp that extended across the suburbs of Marrickville, Sydenham, Tempe, St. Peters, and Newtown. The project will celebrate and respond to this convergence between land and water, ecology and settlement. read more for details

The 2005 Australasian Computer Music Conference will explore the current boundaries of computer music practices and ideas. Where is the edge? Where are the new ideas? What activities point toward the future for computer music? Submissions are now open for Generate + Test, the Australasian Computer Music Conference being held on 12 - 14 July 2005 at the Creative Industries Precinct, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Visit the conference website: http://acmc05.org/ for more details

Electroacoustic Music Studies Sound in Multimedia Contexts. From the advent of the first electric instruments, the phonograph, radio, telephone, and subsequent electronic and digital inventions, the approaches to technologies relevant to the art of sound have been limited only by the imagination of the musician. In recent years, there seems to have been a proliferation of studies relating to music incorporating these technologies However, the investigation of such a varied musical repertoire raises a number of issues that the EMS conferences wish to examine. The themes of the conference therefore emphasize questions of resources, discourse, and analytical tools relevant to electroacoustic musics. visit the EMS-05 website @ http://ems05.musique.umontreal.ca/index.html for more information