Art Research Communication

Dorkbot Alba 2

The second Dorkbot Alba event will take place on 11th December, part of The Futurity, a three day party in the Forest Café, Edinburgh.

The speakers/presenters are Jon Rogers, and Mark Carr a.k.a. Lockjaw. Music and visuals will be performed by Ella, Louis Minaar, Mansi Mar, Neuromax, Operator, Pablo Veitia, Peter Pan, Pixel Mechanic, and Xhadrez.

Dorkbot Alba is the Scottish branch of Dorkbot, a global movement of small, autonomous gatherings with a similar goal: offering a platform to artists, designers, scientists, nerds, students and others who let themselves be inspired by technology.

Unsleeper by Chris Byrne

A preview of Chris Byrne’s latest web montage work, Unsleeper. Due to be featured soon in Egobürger, an art webzine edited by Torsten Lauschmann.

“There were others on the train, but they were all strangers, and mostly caught up in their own private reveries. I was trying to capture the atmosphere of the sleeper lounge car in the wee small hours, when most of the passengers are sleeping (or trying). The group having a conversation are the cabin attendants, taking a coffee break. A strange breed, the people who work on night trains. The movie and the photos were shot on a cameraphone (Sony Ericsson K700i).”

The work was recently featured in The Thing and Rhizome.

Dial-a-diva sound poems

Today Chris Byrne made a modest contribution to Zoë Irine’s global telephony concert Dial-a-diva. Chris recited four sound poems by Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla, Dada artist Kurt Schwitters, and beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The piece by Ginsberg was originally part of an earlier project, Dial-a-poem, which ran from 1968 in New York.

Chris’s performance was live, and though no recording is available just now, recordings of earlier performances (some performed by the artists themselves) can be heard at the UBUWEB sound archive. The scores for the early poems can also be viewed. It would not have been possible to recite the poems faithfully without access to this tremendous resource. Here are links to the recordings (in MP3 format), and the scores.

Giacomo Balla – Canzone di Maggio, 1914: recording I score
Giacomo Balla – Paesaggio + Temporale, 1914: recording I score
Kurt Schwitters – Ursonate, 1932: recording I score
Allen Ginsberg – Vajra Mantra, 1972: recording

The Dial-a-diva telephone concert continues through Saturday 3rd December, until 0800 GMT on Sunday. You can see the schedule here. To listen to the concert live, telephone +44 (0) 1452 583 087.