Stuart Childs

Art in Unusual Spaces is a recent scheme lead by Leeds City Council and partnering organisations to get more art showcased within the city centre, particularly taking advantage of disused/empty shop units that would otherwise be left dark and unnoticed.

Taking place in a number of locations across the city centre the first round of exhibitions included some ace photography and ‘curiosity’ shops pop up in the Merrion centre, photography from young people of Leeds in Lands Lane, The Woolgather Travelling Gallery in Leeds Shopping Plaza and the short shorts video projections in the 42 gallery on New Briggate.

I was lucky enough to have my video tree-window-window accepted as part of the short shorts exhibition that will run from dusk till dawn until the 27th of February 2010. If you would like to head down then take a look here for the location [google maps].

Following the success of the first wave of art in unusual space there is now an opportunity to submit proposals for work that can be shown in March 2010. Go here to find out more information [submissions must be in by 29th Jan 2010].

Do you like Latin and Cuban music?

Havana Club Rum have teamed up with Gilles Peterson and Cuban pianist Harold Lopez-Nussa on a new album project called ‘Havana Cultura‘ consisting of new contemporary Cuban music. I’ve had a chance to listen to the album and can say it’s packed full of lovely fresh music capturing the essence of the Cuban culture.

- It’s grand!

To celebrate the album launch there is a party going on at The Wardrobe in Leeds this Friday (13th Nov). I’ve got a pair of tickets up for grabs for this event – Gilles Peterson himself will be spinning discs and there will be a full Cuban band to match. Don’t miss this! Live music and DJing in the centre of Leeds for free on a Friday night!

To win, all you need to do is answer the following question as a comment on this post:

What is the name of the music studios that Gilles Peterson and the Cuban artists have been working in for this album? [You could visit the Havana Cultura website for clues...]

Good luck and happy listening

You can also find the Havana Cultura album on Amazon and iTunes

Does charging for your conference affect who attends and ultimately the quality of your event?

I went along to the Breakfast with AudioBoo event at Marshall’s Mill in Leeds – part of Digital Week 09 [Twitter: #DW09] recently and was very impressed by the material presented and the discussion that followed. A thought has since occurred to me that I thought was worth discussing with others – readers and people that stumble across my site.

I have been to plenty of techy/digital/web/art/etc. conferences in the past year – many of them free events – and often find a number of things:

- lots of name badges never collected from the main desk

- large numbers of attendees with varying degrees of interest in the topics being discussed or presented

- jam packed venues with very short Q+A / discussion time after talks

From past experience I have found this leads to relatively poor questions and discussion in the conference space, meaning you have to go and seek out the speaker at the end of their talk if you have a particular point or question to ask them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes quite difficult when a) several other people have the same idea and b) everyone else is battling for the coffee and cakes in the short break time before the conference continues.

In contrast, the DW09 event I attended (Listed ticket price £10) seemed to have a slightly different feel to it:

- small amount of people (perhaps 10-15)

- relatively intimate presentation space with opportunity for audience to ask speaker questions throughout without disrupting the flow of the presentation

- relevant and interesting Q+A session that answered many of my questions as well as providing food for thought for those present.

Now, it is hasty to come to a conlclusion after one such event but it did get me thinking – does introducing a relatively small registration fee to conferences make a difference, and if so, how and why? Another priced event I attended was the Never Dive Alone conference organised by Full Circle Arts in Manchester – £50 per ticket, a bigger crowd of attendees this time, perhaps 100 or so – but still great discussions and degree of interest and knowledge shown by all.

There are plenty of free conferences that I have really enjoyed – including the ‘Art of Digital‘ series and I have gleaned plenty of valuable information from these as well as making a whole host of contacts to work with or whom I have kept in touch since. I will definitely be attending more free conferences next year but will also make the effort to go to more paid events to see how they compare.

What are your thoughts and experiences?

On the 4th of September I went along to Budapest for the first annual meeting of the Platform 11+ theatre project, working as a partner to Pilot Theatre – a York theatre company that is based in York’s Theatre Royal.

Budapest was my first time working closely with Pilot Theatre and it was a massive privilege to have been asked to get involved in the project as part of The Jam Jar Collective. My role as visual artist for Pilot will involve working closely with the playwright Richard Hurford and director Katie Posner; designing sets and interactive scenery – weaving technology into the production.

Marcus Romer, Artistic Director of Pilot is a great inspiration – always keen to discuss new ideas, technology, and theories as well as being incredible fun to work with. He is excited by advances in social and web technologies and as proved at the recent Shift Happens 2.0 conference has great visions of possible developments in theatre performance and production.

Platform 11+ is a EU funded project with 13 countries involved:

Divadlo Alfa Pilsen – Czech Republic
VAT Teater Tallinn – Estonia
Oulun Kaupungin Teatteri Oulu – Finland
Theater Junge Generation Dresden – Germany
Kolibri Theater for Children and Youth Budapest – Hungary
Elsinor Teatro Stabile di Innovazione Milan, Florence, Forli – Italy
Theater de Citadel Groningen – The Netherlands
Brageteatret Drammen – Norway
Teatro O Bando Palmela – Portugal
Theatre Institute Bratislava – Slovakia
Junges Schauspielhaus / Jetzt & Co Zurich – Switzerland
Pilot Theatre Company York – United Kingdom
Emergency Exit Arts London – United Kingdom
University of Agder Kristiansand – Norway

As well as one company from South America:

ATINA Buenos Aires – Argentina

This first meeting was an introduction of all members to each other and the project’s wider intentions as a whole. The project is due to run for 4 years, with new plays being written in new collaborations between different countries.

Extracts or summaries of each play will be read or performed to audiences in all 11 countries across Europe, with summaries being provided for each in English. There are a number of phases to the project  including the chance to create an art installation linked to the theatre performances. This is planned for June 2010 and looks set to be an incredible opportunity to create an art installation.

One of the events that occurred in Budapest was Schoolyard Crossing – a multidisciplinary art and performance event that took place in a primary school’s yard. It was incredible to see 300+ young children interacting with so many different performers at the same time – what may have seemed like anarchy on the outside was in fact organised play-learning and an amazing experience for all of the children involved. As a result of this schoolyard crossing, the children will now create artworks and plays in response to what they experienced. See here for more pictures of the event.

This is the core element of the project – trying to inspire children to get involved in the art of theatre, drama and learning through their playing experiences. I certainly value the power of theatre and what profound effect is has had on my life since the first time I got on stage at school at the age of 11. The process of learning lines, developing a character, getting into that character and understanding a performance is all hugely valuable stuff to be doing as a young person; let alone the adrenaline rush of performing to an audience!

There is an official website for the project here – that gives a little more official information about the project. Marcus Romer has also set up a ning site for the participants to upload content and discuss the project as it unfolds over the next four years – keep an eye out to see the creative process in action.

Budapest was a beautiful city to host the first annual meeting with the Minister for Education and Culture in Hungary greeting us for a reception on the first night.  A great thank you goes to the hosts, Kolibri Theatre as well as all of the Platform 11+ team for putting together a great schedule for the coming years.

From 20th-24th July Full Circle Arts, a Manchester-based arts organisation is hosting Remix – a project providing a week of creative activities for young disabled people. I recently met the Full Circle Arts staff and will be at the Remix festival with our FriiSpray virtual painting interface and also covering the event on Twitter.

I am looking forward to providing FriiSpray as a creative tool for the people that come along to this event. In the past we have seen encouraging results – from club environments to school workshops and each time we take the setup to an event we gain useful feedback and feature requests. By sharing our project as open source and free to download we have seen people using the software in ways we had not considered – something that has fascinated me. It seems that being open and engaging with peers both in the online and real world has paid off for us, and many others before us.

I went down to the Holy Trinity Church, Leeds last night to see what was happening at the first Transend / Transmit meeting: a discussion about setting up the project.

Introduced by Louise Marchal and Jo Tyler, Transend / Transmit are two interlinked art schemes / projects that explore the idea of broadcasting and the relaying of information.

Transend/Transmit aim to link Leeds’ Holy Trinity Church to Sunderland’s Holy Trinity Church, both designed by the same architect, William Etty of York in the 18th century.

Streams of data transfer – physical mail, FM transmissions, digital streaming, telephone feedback loops and DIY electronics were all mentioned as potential disciplines that could be explored.

Other topics included:

The nature of radio content, and it’s evolution through the introduction of the digital radio platform.
How does podcasting affect the idea of ‘broadcasting’ in a traditional sense: if you listen to a ‘breakfast show’ in the evening; is it still a breakfast show?
Using DIY technology to transmit information – homebrew electronics?
Possible collaboration with local broadcasters / organisations
Using FaceBook as a promotional / info network
Running a series of ‘workshops’, or ‘media labs’ to encourage participation from other artists / creators

All in all, a very interesting discussion that shows the beginnings of a potentially very interesting long term project for both Leeds and Sunderland.

Thanks to Bruce Davies + the Arts@Trinity group for hosting the evening, I look forward to more of these! If you are interested in taking part in these upcoming projects get in touch.

Last night I attended the private view launch party of Samenhang – an international exhibition of contemporary art from artists that are alumni of the EEA – the European Exchange Academy – that has been running since 2003.

Once I found the gallery [it is a tad out of the way, tucked away on the outskirts of Leeds city centre] I entered into a crazy atmosphere of inflatable sculptures hanging from the ceiling and numerous video screens showing a host of different visual pieces.

Of particular interest to me was Marguerite Leudet’s sonic art piece, ‘Speakers‘ consisting of batteries + small piezo speakers. I liked the simplicity of the physical elements that contrasted with a mysteriously undulating rhythm of the sound produced.

Another notable piece was two photographs by Stefan Ruitenbeek – it took me a little while to adjust to these and stomach them, well worth seeing!

The evening proved to be a great success and kick started a very interesting exhibition. Samenhang will be running until Friday the 13th – I advise that you check it out before then. See http://www.novgorod.co.uk/ for more information.

MAP Gallery: Hope House, 65 Mabgate, Leeds LS9 7DR.

EDIT – I have blurred the screen grabs in this post as it’s prohibited to post ’screen dumps’ by the Beta Agreement. You’ll have to give the service a go if you want to be able to see the features properly…

According to their website, “Spotify is a new way to enjoy music.”

Spotify is currently in public beta stage [since Oct 08], works on Mac OSX [10.4.0 on], Windows XP/Vista, Linux under Wine and currently has three levels of service:

- Free: if you have an invite from another user [with audio + visual adverts]

- 0.99p / day: if you have already been invited to use Spotify and would like an advert-free service

- £9.99 / month: If you want to use the service without an invitation and without adverts

Using Spotify

I was invited to use Spotify by The Hodge and was a little unsure what to expect – was this internet radio? Not quite. Would it replace iTunes as a music player? Not sure. I guess the closest comparison I can make to Spotify is Last.fm and similar streaming websites. One of the first things I noticed about Spotify was it’s speed – it is almost as good as just using a normal mp3 player such as iTunes or Winamp if you are on a cable / DSL connection. Spotify’s FAQ section recommends at least 256kbps speed.

Spotify seems fairly robust – I have seen the audio stream drop out a couple of times during use but not enough to annoy me / want me to stop using the program. I have been listening to it whilst working at my desk and it is a great way of finding out about new music / listening to fresh content without having to download the files / update your mp3 collection.

Adverts, you say?

I was intrigued at Spotify’s business model at first and impressed that they have managed to gain support from major record labels such as EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG amongst others. Spotify’s site describes the service as “an unparalleled user experience and a compelling legal alternative to piracy.” I was apprehensive about how intrusive the adverts would be and was pleasantly surprised – it’s nowhere near as bad as commercial radio stations in the UK.

I made a log of the adverts I heard during the course of a full day and found that for roughly every 30 mins of listening Spotify played one advert of approx. 30 seconds in length. As you may expect, you can’t skip through these adverts as you can the music [you can stop them but have to play in full before listening to more music]. These adverts are for all sorts of things from direct.gov talking about tax returns to travel agents and film promo trailers.

These adverts are a very small price to pay for what is essentially a very good service – if you have a decent net conneciton it really can be comparable to using iTunes. I’m not sure that I would pay for the ad-free services yet as they don’t quite annoy me enough to do so.

The Music

Don’t expect to find every single artist you’ve ever heard of on Spotify. Searching for more obscure artists will sometimes return zero results. However – I am very impressed with the amount of content that is up there [and still growing]. I have found electronica and dance music producers that I wouldn’t consider ‘mainstream’ on there, as well as a whole host of new artists and music that I haven’t heard of before.

I guess that is the killer feature of Spotify for me – it’s like when Napster first came around and suddenly I had access to all sorts of music that I might not have otherwise experienced. Only with Spotify it’s legal and less hassle – it’s not like trying to fish for high quality downloads in amongst all the rubbish people tend to have in their shared folders.

Radio, search or browse

I began using Spotify by searching for specific artists which worked fine and led to finding other music in a similar vein / style to the stuff I was searching for. I then tried out the ‘radio’ stations – you can choose from a number of ‘genres’ to include in the random radio playlist and just let it play. I found the results to be good – despite a few rogue genres slipping through the net – [Got some country coming through the 'techno' genre...]. You can also define a time frame in decades from which to search.

Spotify allows you to click through links to find new music – the artist / title / album all lead to more information. In this way it is possible to find similar music styles, compilation albums that artists appear on, cover art, album reviews and so on.

You can also share the music you are listening to with other Spotify users – simply right click the track you are listening to and you can either send them a link to that particular track, or create a playlist for sharing later. This is all very easy and intuitive within the pleasant interface. There is a ‘Buy From’ option that is greyed out  in the above screenshot – apparently the option is available on some tracks and will become more widespread as Spotify arrange deals with more retailers.

Conclusion

I spoke to Zia George from Spotify today and asked her a few questions about the service. According to her, “it’s about access rather than ownership” – and that appeals to me. Why do we feel the need to acquire as much data as possible when many of us have access to a high speed data connection that can feed our needs on demand? In a similar fashion to the concept of cloud computing, Spotify is evidence of a shift in data trends where we use more steamlined terminals to access data from a remote source.

I have found Spotify very easy to use and definitely something I will continue to use every day:

Good points:

- The software integrates with my MacBook’s Play/Pause/Next+Prev Track buttons – this is a big thing for me + usability.

- The service is relatively bug-free and easy to use.

- I have found out about new artists that I might not have otherwise come across.

- I have been able to listen to music I haven’t heard in ages / used to own + have since lost.

Bad points:

- It would be nice if I could make the player smaller, akin to the iTunes player.

- There are [very occasional] dropouts in the audio – sometimes particular tracks get stuck / can’t play properly but I must emphasise that this is only for the minority of tracks I have come across during my use of Spotify and isn’t a massive down point for me – just something that comes with streaming audio services.

-

Spotify have made a really great service that will no doubt improve over time as uptake increases. I expect to see it appearing on more people’s computers this year – mainstream media is starting to pick up on it with reviews in the Guardian and the Independent. Spotify has certainly been spread around Twitter: check out the screenshot above to see it ranking in between iPhone + Gaza as a search term! Distribution is limited at the moment and I think that can only be a good thing whilst they iron out any issues with the service and work on developments.

Word is that a mobile service is on the cards.. although I reckon you’d have to have a fairly hefty data allowance + good signal strength for it to be worth it. For now, my iPod is fine when I’m on the move, and Spotify suits my desk work.

I do wonder how many people will subscribe to the £9.99 per month ‘Premium’ service though – it seems a little steep to me for now. Then again, I guess it depends on how annoying or frequent the adverts on the free service become.

Yesterday I went to Oldroyd’s Rhubarb farm in Carlton, West Yorkshire with Chris and Jay to record the noise of it growing. That’s right – rhubarb makes a noise when force grown in warm, dark sheds due to the speed at which it is ‘forced’ to grow. I first heard about this here on the BBC news website a while ago, and we had been in contact with Oldroyd’s since the start of last year about going to record the rhubarb in their nursery sheds.  This forced rhubarb is apparently a lot sweeter than outdoor rhubarb, and Oldroyd’s were keen to show us around their farm [although we forgot to ask if we could sample any of their crop].

We took along some condenser mics to capture the ambience of the sheds, as well as contact mics to record the creaking and the popping of the rhubarb stems. We got a lot of decent sounds that now need editing in preparation for some rhubarb inspired composition. I also need to clean the mud off my laptop and microphone stands!

Thanks to Janet and Neil for their understanding and letting us into their sheds with our microphones.

Following development over the christmas / new year’s / festive break, I am pleased to say that we now have a title for the install – ‘FriiSpray’.

This is because we want the project to be open source, or ‘frii’, and tell others how we went about it so that they may recreate / build on what we have done. there’s a new site dedicated to the FriiSpray project:

http://friispray.co.uk

that will be filled with info in the coming few days.

We also have confirmed booking for the install at Raise the Roof event in Leeds, on Friday March 6th at the West Indian Centre. Exciting stuff! Now to build more IR spray cans…