I’m keeping it local this summer.  Usually I do things everywhere but where I actually live, but over June and July I’ve a few things on close to home.  We’ve been living in Frome for a few years now - it’s quite a little town in deepest Somerset, but there’s a surprising amount going on and a surprising number of interesting and creative people around.  This year, as well as the long(ish)-running Frome Festival (9-18 July), there’s a new event - the beinghuman weekend (18-20 June) - which looks very promising indeed.  It’s in a great new venue too, the beinghuman warehouse (pictured).  I’m doing bits and bobs in both - the Contraption club night and the live music film in the festival, and a visual music debate and a programme of some of my work in the beinghuman weekend.  Both events look great if you happen to be in Somerset (which is not such a bad place to be now summer’s finally here, I must say).

I’ve made a few revisions for the new sound/video piece I made for CCRMA for my ‘retrospective’ (that word makes me feel a bit old) at the CCRMA stage last month (see Feb post below).  I think it’s finished now.  You can take a look at it here.

I haven’t posted anything for a while - about time I did! I’ve just been to California for a couple of weeks, which was fantastic.  The first part of my trip was to Los Angeles – here I spent a few days at the Center for Visual Music, who have recently been bequeathed the archives of Oskar Fischinger, a pioneer in early abstract cinema and visual music.  I was looking at scores, diagrams, sketches and writings, most of which have been unseen for decades.  I also visited Fischinger’s house in Long Beach to talk to Barbara, his surviving daughter, and her dogs.  This research is towards a large-scale project examining Fischinger’s creative process.

The second part of my stay was spent at Stanford University, where I gave several talks; in the Music Department, CCRMA – amazing place; met John Chowning and Max Matthews(!), and the Intermedia Lab – a new institute devoted to interdisciplinary and multimedia work.  I also presented a retrospective of my work, including a new sound and video piece, soon to appear here!

Possibly a strange picture to choose for this post - this is from the Musee Mecanique, an arcade full of ancient seaside entertainments (everything from old ‘what the butler saw’ stereograms to very very early video games machines), which I found entirely by accident in San Francisco and absolutely LOVED.