TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Monday, January 24, 2005

11:30 PM
Posted by jodi rose

hello there, I'm back after some serious immersion in the media art and experimental music world. strangely enough, after previous rants, tonight I finally came to some kind of acceptance and made my peace with being part of this crazy scene. Yes, I have become one of 'them'. And you know, it's not so bad. I really like walking into a room filled with media artists and realising that actually, I know quite a lot of the people there, quite well. and they're fun and we have great raves about disappearing and appearing technologies, or talk nonsense and drink and eat. Finally it feels like I have a place in Sydney, without having to become anything or anyone other than who and what I am. (sounding like popeye now...)

Tonight was the meeting about ozco restructure and the dissolution of new media arts and community cultural development boards. Some very eloquent and impassioned speakers talked about the sense of betrayal and disenfranchisment, anger and despair over this impending erasing of our practice and art form(s) at the funding level. The sense of regressing, suspicion of innovation and imagination, lack of committment to work that can't be easily proven to have a successful outcome, and being able to respond to the continual flux and development of new technologies and new ways of dreaming and creating using and hacking those tools and ideas. And it has been done with such a lack of consultation with arts organisations and practitioners, who are now called 'clients' apparently, as we were told following extensive research into overseas models for funding. Fee from the-phone-book-ltd.com got up and said, well actually the arts council of england didn't erase the media arts category, and hasn't abolished peer review as stated - it's now regionally based, across all artforms and stronger than ever before. Despite assurances that this was in no way politically motivated and has nothing to do with the conservative climate and government, a few people expressed feeling very strongly that there are obvious links between the current situation and this decision, and talked about living in a very small culture which doesn't value or even understand the importance of creating art, and that is why it's a political strategy to keep on making it. Also we do it for hardly any money, with no superannuation, holiday or sick pay or stability whatsoever. It's a vocation that you're really only going to continue doing if there is that drive in you that means you can't NOT do it. Lord knows it's not a particularly easy life to choose. And there is incredible power in naming and erasing names, that isn't merely semantic, it's about identity and having a voice and a place within the culture and society you live in, and try to express through whatever means possible. Good to realise that all these ideas are shared by many people and 'we are not alone'.
For a more informed debate check out anat.org or dlux or realtime.

This is the culmination of a week-long festival of media art. Started with the Finns doing their aware mobile database thing, and recording interviews with their masterclass participants. Then continued with two nights of spontaneous music at NOWnow - yes, the woman who made love to her cello, made me smile in this very serious experimental music scene. Can be kind of intimidating and difficult to engage with, but the kids were there in force and there were enough different styles to keep most people interested, at least for a while. Altho someone at work was saying he wished that he'd brought a book.

For a complete change of pace, on Sunday went out to the Campbelltown city art centre and recorded interviews with the hip hop kids doing the phone book workshop there. Some very fine rap from the 17 yr olds - afrodisiac & his twin bro from zimbabwe, romez and the other samoan boys talked really openly about growing up and the emotions that go into their lyrics and music. Watched some local crews do their thing (panic pusher, 046) and really enjoyed being out of the inner city ghetto that so easily becomes all I see of life.

Back to the ghetto now. Had a great rave with Joyce about minimal sound performances - she's had a CD released by antiopic who do mainly field recording stuff, and doing some live gigs realised she had really made her peace with 'not much happening'. I think it's vlf receivers, which she tunes to different frequencies so they beat and pulse. Then telling me about one of her students who was really into 18hz, that's what he did in performance all year, kept melting speakers with these incredible subsonic sounds - but now, she said, I really know the experience of 18hz and can identify it in all kinds of aural environments. The way your ear can be trained to pick up certain patterns and noises - like I hear bridges in various trucks going past, or certain rhythmic elements of general city noise. She told me about her and David's work in the Sao Paolo Biennale last year, a cave with all these vhf receivers, collecting and messing with tv broadcasts from brasil and australia. apparently it's the last dying breath of vhf - on the way out with digital and satellite tv. Strange how you take things for granted as always just being that way, until they disappear.
Anyway, it was very inspiring, as I'm thinking through ideas for performance, and philosophical questions of how much to intervene or manipulate what are essential raw field recordings - when does it become something else, and how can you represent it or perform it in some way that is engaging or maybe not. deep deep minimalism - and at what point does that become something almost no-one else can relate to.....

All this and more will be answered (or not) in the next installment: the adventures of particle girl. Or as I was called tonight, after meeting mystery boy with dreads who is one of the bright young things of the sound art scene [and who Damian was quite amused to hear that I'd seen gracing the sunday paper social pages - at last, sound artists are hip!] : bridge girl. Yes, have also come to terms with the fact that it's always going to be... 'you're the bridge girl.' Not that I mind at all.