People walking past my window carrying ladders, Justin next door putting the finishing touches to his basketball court (made of pallets with built-in holes for the trees) and getting ready to go install it in the forest (with the permission of the forestry commission, even their hands-on help!)

It's all go! go! go! here this morning...

I'm not really coherent yet - rainy melancholic mood, a little zoned out after zen yoga.

Waking up the synapses to get cracking on those myths - or maybe I need to stay drifty. Thinking of cycling down to the beach again, taking shelter under the little shack and watching the waves for a while to rethink my stories. Heard a wonderful creation legend last night, told by Aiste, who joins us for a week from Vilnius - interesting young sound artist, she took part in migrating art academies and the herbologies foraging network - gave a beautiful introductory presentation:

Anyway, I told her about the work I'm making and how being on the Curonian Spit is fascinating as there are NO BRIDGES - she was looking through a book about Lithuania at the time and pointed to the map of this land, and said - but this whole place is a bridge. The story is that in old times, all the sailors were dying because there was no protection from the wind, and the open sea came straight to the coast. So this very big woman (a giant) collected a lot of sand in her apron and brought it here, making the Curonian spit and keeping the sailors safe.

Intriguing how much information you can give about a place and people through such a simple story. Two sentences, that's the kind of thing I'm aiming for - keeping it mythic...

We also met Gwenn who is making an olfactory map of the island (maybe we can join forces: with sound map and have a 'peripheral sensory map' or peripherical sensorical suggested Aiste) and also taking workshops to create gestures for the tea ceremony/ritual, he's out investigating the possibilities of birch bark tea even as we speak - using local ingredients.

Marjolein introduced us to her work with sociological explorations of place and photography, Gintara stayed silent about her bean-planting in the reading room to create a 'slow reading' space - but I'm curious to see how it grows, and very happy to become part of the installation.

Went outside to explore the small shed installation by Natalia - singing scrap metal - beautiful.

This morning is already a melting pot of places and people, only half-way through my inbox:

Gorgeous Singing Tree in Lithuania on Radio Aporee Maps by alas23/sala and this very nice recording of water under the bridge...

The fabulous Shu Lea Cheang invites noise artists to perform on a live code live jam for the release of her second film, a follow-up to the cyberpunk cult movie IKU. UKI Viral Performance.

"UKI live performance LIVE CODE LIVE SPAM (70:00) At LPM 2011

OPEN CALL for NOISE sound artists to join UKI live performance at Videntity
(curated by Francesco Macarone Palmieri aka Warbear), of LPM, Live Performance Meeting (Location: Nuovo Cinema Aquila // ROMA - Date: May 19-22- Day: Tba)

UKI live performance invites local (Rome/Italy) and LPM participants of >noise sound /free software genre to join us on a LIVE CODE LIVE SPAM viral trip!!! As a sequel to Shu Lea Cheang's cyberpunk cult movie IKU , the replicants of UKI trades sex for codes, code sexing code in noise blast out, a virus is born and multiplied to eventually infect a city! This 70 minute non-stop hyper-jam session is joined by Martin Howse(sound scheme grand mix) and Diana Pornoterrorista (vocal). We ask noise sound artists to plug in with own laptops/devices!!
We aim for orgasmic high as we set Rome under UKI viral attack!!

background reading:

AIZPUTE 2011 HOMEBREW MEETING Latvian and Baltic Hom Brewers: Several parallel brewing sessions both indoors and outdoors in the residency centre of the interdisciplinary art group SERDE are planned, as well as the first Baltic homebrew competition 7th May 2011.

Alus meistardarbnīcas jebkuram interesantam būs atvērtas sestdien, 7. maijā no plkst. 11.00 - 15.00. (Rezidenču centra Serde pagalmā, Aizputē, Atmodas ielā 9).

Fascinating workshop (call for proposals now over) well worth a visit if you're in the area:

1 – 14 August 2011, at SERDE workshop and residency centre in Aizpute, Latvia.

AIZ – artists residency (AIZ in the Latvian means behind, beyond, over... across) is an artists-run, non-profit-making initiative unique in the Latvia that provides a creative arena for artists who are ambitious for their work and open to the challenges of an environment that demands experiment, co-operation and exchange. Artists can work in a variety of disciplines and media: installation, land art, performance, video, painting and sculpture, ceramics, time-based, photographic, etc. The attention to the daily life and its spatial and social implications is what characterizes the project AIZ from its debut, with the invitation to artists to work on the city’s elements and it’s social and relational dynamics. The workshop's results will be presented in the public places of Aizpute. We are planning to have 10 artists in the workshop.

European Association of Folklore Festivals: came up randomly on the link to Aizpute. BEHIND US ARE THE MEMORIES OF OUR FATHERS, IN FRONT OF US ARE THE EYES OF OUR CHILDREN!

National Regional Arts Broadband Forum: A Game Changer for Regional Arts - news from OZ and Arts Hub: The NBN will transform arts in regional Australia and in Australia as a whole,’ Mr Crean said. It will give nearly all communities in Australia access to both local and global networks. ‘This is a game changer for Australian regional communities.’

It is in regional Australia that the opportunities of the NBN will first be felt. Twenty-two of the first 29 roll outs will be in regional areas, Mr Crean said. It will change how health and financial services are delivered, education and local government and provide exciting opportunities for arts organisations and venues, indigenous cultural centres and locally based designers, film producers and writers.

As part of the round table participants expressed their thoughts on how the arts will fare in a broadband world. What emerged was cautiously optimistic.

Inside Job: Interview with documentary maker Charles Ferguson about the film a friend described as: "Brilliant, confrontational scathing documentary about the market crash. Unbelievable. An unlikely gunslinger. Has a quiet, almost nebbishy look which probably helped him during his interviews. Also he once ran a software company that Microsoft bought. So he's a millionaire capitalist nebbishy looking gunslinger. Very intriguing."

Get your beard on! Bearding Workshop: Justin Tyler Tate Nida Art Colony Open Studio, April 16

Started the day with this piece of dance insanity to RUN DMC via a friend - made me smile!

A little more info on Videntity for anyone not using fb:

Coordinator: Francesco Macarone Palmieri aka Warbear (IT)

Since more and more time the language of video performance deals with the issues related to gender and sexual orientation, intersecting with gender studies, queer theory and contemporary art. Both in the community L.g.b.t. and the Queer circuits the trajectories taken by such language range from Vjng to Performance Art and conferences and their ground lays in the representation of the body. The interest of LPM 2011 is: understand how the vision of the body can be decentralized, fractured and multiplied; how the theme of sexual identity is disconnected from its universalization heterocentric and stereotyping of LGBT, how the video language becomes an instrument of gender empowerment, which languages intersect with the video (music, spoken word, body art) and what is the role of an independent and libertarian pornography within this framework.LPM calls to the video performance as a seduction strategy of organs and thoughts.

but wait, there's more!

Hackney Hear: An Interactive GPS-triggered audio tour of Hackney - Follow your phone into a new audio adventure. Hackney Hear uses your smartphone to play interviews, features, poetry, music and new writing depending on your location.

Your movements will trigger audio clips as you walk, creating your own soundscape. 400 stories will be tagged over one of London’s coolest areas, swathing the Olympic borough in glorious sound wherever you go all via GPS.

London Sound Artists Working Group: The primary aim of this project is discursive - to create a real-world forum where people can meet, try out ideas, and enhance our understanding of what a contemporary 'sound art' might involve.