TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Thursday, October 6, 2005

12:26 AM
Posted by jodi rose

survived 5 days in newcastle for electrofringe.
mostly running around preparing or recovering from all those workshops panels performances, but managed to hear some stimulating talks and interesting sounds - in particular the classically trained noise artists which generated heated discussion; cross cultural exchange in art was relevant and thought provoking; the radio panel seemed to keep the audience engaged and maybe even entertained.
I ran around at the launch party doing guerilla voxpops with the question - who are you and what are you doing here? - which may or may not make it into the night air program this week, and was the name of my friday night show on tin radio. played a mix of soundscape, field recording based works, electronica and gypsy balkan music. lots of fun, even had a few punters come in off the street to say how much they enjoyed the music.
the festival also featured crazy gigs with everything from heavy metal guitar band, to japanese/jamaican beatboxing, disco/dsico, electronic noise and much much more. had a lovely family of girls to hang out with as roommates, met and debriefed, had baths and late night chats, then bonded on the long train ride home. unexpected highlight watching 'dude where's my car' with the lovely tech boys (who are all so much more than that) at 1am sunday morning - just couldn't take any more high art intellectual sound stimulation. discovered newcastle beach, on the Indigenous local landmarks tour, with Ray Kelly very charming and articulate tour guide who gave a sense of the connections between contemporary and traditional lifestyle, then finally got in the water monday morning for a well earned swim.