Date : Dec 01 07 :
So after the Jonathan Levine show we headed back to Eyebeam for the live music segment of Blip Festival. I didn’t have enough money to buy any of the cool merch but I figured most of the music would be available for free online anyway since the artist love file sharing.

Got there late, so by the time we got to the front of the stage The Depreciation Guild was all set to start playing.
They are a Brooklyn based band that , according to their myspace, are “two boys and a Famicom.” You can download their entire album for free here, which is what I’m doing as I type this post.

Got some great pics of their set up and really enjoyed their set, plus the stage was so terrific that it made it all the more epic.

Next up: Tree Wave: Tree Wave : Tree Wave:

He was great, a really amazing artist and musician. Reid was telling me all about his hacking abilities. I was specially impressed by his use of printers to make music. You can read more about this project here.

From his site:

Epson LQ500
dot matrix printer (1985)

the printer has been converted into a music machine by reprogramming its internal firmware EPROM with my own software and music data. Sound is generated by the print head pins striking the paper and the sound is picked up by a tie-clip mic on the print head. By adjusting the frequency of the printing process in software, different pitches can be played (with about a two octave range.) I manually synchronize the printer to the Atari and 286. When the original EPROM is replaced this printer is still fully functional

Look at all the cameras! at one point there were like 6 of them all on him. Funny thing is that we were all upfront and once they release the DVD maybe our faces will be all over it…..
His visuals are amazing, he played them straight from a Atari 2600
video game console (1977), each song had a companion video that he selected from the main game screen, each individual video being like a level from the cartridge that, after being selected, would just play on until the song ended.
Pure genius.
people rocking out.

And then!!!! Bit Shifter!!!!! who I went on to call BIT CRUSHER !! cuse he rules so much!

At this point I was running low on memory and was only able to snap a couple of pics of him :<
Bit Shifter makes live music by using Nintendo Gameboys and Little Sound DJ cartridges. He had 3 of them set up on a table right in front of us and kept shifting from one Gameboy to the next. All the while he pumped up the crowd with his awesome hand gestures and emotive booty shaking. This is the very grandiose finale, when two people picked him up and threw him into the crowd for a great bit of crowd-surfing. Jamie Bruno got even better pics of the show and was actually asked by Bit Shifter for one so he could use it as his MySpace profile picture, which you can see here.
And this is some video of that last climatic song:

P.S.
Also Jen Sohn-Park and I bought hats at a very expensive/trendy/chelsea store, but were able to get two for cheap by buying them together, and then we took a picture:

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Date: Dec 01 07 : @ Jonathan Levine Gallery

I love Space Invaders and their new Rubik’s cube sculptures, but Blu really blew my mind!
His drawings and animation/installation was by far my favorite room at the gallery. I was first introduced to Blu by Marissa Paternoster, and I can definitely see why she likes him. Not only are his drawings beautiful and socially poignant, but they offer a level of intimacy that makes you feel like you are looking a slide show of someones subconscious.

The drawing above is my favorite. Blu not only has immense control over subject matter and application but hes is also a master of scale and is very busy expanding the definition of drawing as the simples of artistic actions.

Along with the drawings being displayed the installation consisted of Blu painting on the walls of the room and photographing the process to make an animation that was then projected onto one of the walls.
The animation itself was great, hes so not afraid of going from a small busy accumulation of lines to just making a drawing that is the size of the wall and then moving the drawing across and entire wall to come back to a small, intimate, psychologically charged drawing of heads and type that loops back to the beginning of the drawing both literally and conceptually.
Really loved his stuff.

Then we went to the roof to smoke . The place was full of people from all over, they were speaking Italian , French , Spanish and accented English which was great cuse I fit right into that . Then Larry McAllister II and I took pictures of the cityscape.


Then someone pulled the fire alarm and we had to get out of the building a.s.a.p. We took the stairs and before leaving the roof I tagged it with a red oil marker.

I tried tagging this metal thing outside the building but since I wasn’t so sober I totally wrote the wrong address! it should read: http://courtlandtlanddotcom.blogspot.com/. So if you are walking around W 20th St in the Chelsea area and see this just..
…… don’t worry about it.
Thanks to Cassandra Gabriella for inviting me to the opening and for getting us into the after party! xoxoxo

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Date: Dec 01 07:
This is the beginning of the lecture by gwEm, he was such an awesome fellow and I loved his sense of humor. The lecture was titled “Break the Circle and Become an Atari DJ”, he showed the BlipFest audience how to DJ using an Atari. His site’s got a Gameboy Camera blog!

The price for the lecture was $ 5.

Look at him rocking out!! Hes such a RockStar!

And this is the Sci-Fi channel interviewing him about all things Atari/DJ/and Rad. Talked to the camera guy and he filmed a lot of the action at the fest, including me and Jamie putting together the Minty Boost device. I’m not sure if they aired the piece or if it is an online only show, tried Google but did not find anything. Anyway on to Minty Boost V1.2 : a device that lets you power any USB gadget using 2 AA batteries.

This is ladyada A.k.a Limor Fried:
Check out her site for a perfect step-by-step Minty Boost tutorial, a store and lots of other projects. My favorite so far is the Game Grrl.
The project table and the participants

The finished product:The cost of the workshop was $20 per person and it was well worth it. Limor Fried was a blast and under her tutelage and evident wisdom of all things genius I had nothing but a great time.
Alexander B. Conner tells me that shes very well known in Hacktivismo circles and also very respected. She was so nice, pleasant and cute.

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