In the past few months esc.rec. an productiehuis ON have been steadily working on the release of ON’s Poke 20 project. Poke 20 is the sequel of the C64 Orchestra project in which a classical orchestra played newly arranged C64 game music, such as International Karate, Monty On The Run and Myth. In Poke 20 we re-returned the C64 Orchestra version of the Monty On The Run track to contemporary electronic composers and musicians to create their own remix version.

And now it’s finally here! Poke 20 actually became quite the novelty in on-line music distribution; a free download album combined with a physical art project. Ontwerpatelier designed a Poke 20 poster. This poster serves as packaging for a blank CD-r. Poster and blank CD-r are both silk-screened and together they make a nice piece of art in a limited (and numbered) edition of 200 copies. You can order your limited edition poster and blank cd here (for only 10 euro ex. shipping) and burn your Poke 20 downloaded tracks on it to complete your own personal piece of art. Click here for the making of and here for more pictures of the finished product.

The collaboration with productiehuis ON went very smooth and pleasant so far (thanks Bas, Rob and Mano!). Although we did run into some obstacles along the way, temporarily slowing us down, collabs like this seriously improve my possibilities as a small independant label owner.

Some time ago, Restore I was part of the Platform 21=Repairing project in Amsterdam. I was pleasantly surprised when a good photo of my chair somehow became a popular illustration for this project and started popping up everywhere in magazines, newspapers and on the internet. In addition it was widely used to promote the Premsela design forum about repairing in Milan. The kind people of Platform 21 just sent me their extensive clippings. Here are some of them…

The city of Deventer is close to the completion of it’s fiberglass network and claims to be the first city in Europe to do so. In order to get (inter)national attention, a manifestation named ‘Het geheim van licht’ (The Secret of Light) is being organized on Vogeleiland, a small park in Deventer. It should open on November 28, 2009.

For this event, me and several other artists were asked to come up with ideas for interactive art installations, able to stand outside, in public space for about a month. However, the city of Deventer decided not to spend enough money to be able to grab their desired national attention. A crucial mistake, I thought then and know now.

In order to tackle the lack of sufficient funding, the organization of ‘Het geheim van licht’ tried to forge alliances between artists with proposals and companies with facilities, hoping that would bring down developing and production costs. A sound theory, but due to the tight schedule (two months time from start to finish) it didn’t work out that great. At least, not for my plan.

I had an interesting idea for an interactive installation that deals with the conversion and transportation of signals (just like a fiberglass network). In short, a webcam image gets converted into a few seconds of sound in realtime. This sound is then amplified, transported through air, received by a microphone and converted back to an image on a screen. This kind of signal transport (sound waves through open air) unavoidably gets corrupted by ambient sounds. The audience can play with the input through the webcam, to influence (or even compose!) the emitted sounds. Or they can deliberately add sounds to control the final image on the screen.

I discussed my idea with a selection of companies and they all liked it, so I worked out a detailed description, a sketch design and a budget for this proposal. Software development is already very close to being usable for this installation.

Unfortunately, it became clear that the approached companies were somehow unable to put their money where their mouth was… and there wasn’t enough time left for me to find and negotiate alternative partners. My proposal was then also denied by the organization of ‘Het geheim van licht’, because they felt it was too expensive. From their tight budget point of view they may be right. But 6500 euro for a specially designed and developed, innovative, interactive piece of art, able to hold it’s ground in outdoor public space, to be delivered on a very tight time schedule, isn’t exactly overpriced I think…

Due to positive thinking on my part (some would call that naivety), I have now invested a lot of time in a project that’s not going to happen. I’m not getting paid for my work either. But, it was a valuable lesson.

I still very much want to see this installation in action though. And I bet you want that to, because it sounds like a lot of fun playing with this… right? Anybody out there willing to commission or sponsor?

Yesterday me and my Rockin’ Chair were guests at Blog-art in Theater aan het Spui,The Hague. A festival by and for bloggers. Although organizers Marco Raaphorts and Karin Ramaker obviously worked hard to pull this off and got plenty of well deserved media attention, it still wasn’t quite what I expected… First of all there were less people than I had imagined and secondly many of the lecturers sometimes didn’t seem to realize they were dealing with an internet savvy audience or just weren’t conveying there ideas all that well. Or maybe I’m spoiled, could be.

One other thing I should have realized beforehand (but didn’t), was the nerd factor. Blog-art sometimes felt like entering another world. Physical and virtual weren’t that far apart. Weird (but not unpleasant).

Having said that, especially for a first edition it had a good variety of things to offer. Like John Dear Mowing Club. Even in the late afternoon, in front of a blogging/twittering audience, they still managed to impress me. Even though Erwin Blom said basically nothing new, his enthousiasm and rhetouric is extremely infectious. After a pleasant talk with Miriam Reeders and Eva Meijer, I know I should have taken more time to work through their entire blog-wall. I didn’t. I’ll probably have to go see their next performance to make up for that.

And than there was Matt Harris playing my Rockin’ Chair. He did good. Although he himself concluded that his half hour rehearsal went better. But I guess that’s inherent to the unpredictable nature of the Rockin’ Chair’s effect bank. Matt suggested I should make a more mobile version of it, like a cajón. Could be a good idea.

I also met some online aquaintances in the flesh and was treated to a tasty Chinese take-out. I left before Blog-art was over (having to drive all the way back to Deventer), so I can’t say if more personal highlights would have emerged later on…

All the way during my long drive back I somehow got me an uncontrollable craving for this song (despite the abundance of other good music in my van). There’s something magical about this song… anyway, here it is.

My label esc.rec. just released it’s 24th. A compilation of tracks that Transfolmer has made together with (or inspired by) artists he met online. A collection of remixes if you will. And a fine collection at that. Melancholy oozes out of every song (again). The new influences, sounds and voices on this release enrich and replenish Transfolmer’s sound. Leaving you with a warm (and free) soundtrack for the fall.

Liesbeth Kok made the artwork and I designed the cover.

Download at will!