Spent the morning writing my article and submitting it. The afternoon was presentations of digital musics and interactive art. the interactive art stuff was brilliant. Maywa Denki again and Blast Theory from the UK, an amazing game of real world runners chasing online players in the real streets of Sheffield using GPS, WiFi and a handheld. The three real-world runners have walkie-talkies and the people online can hear them.
More digital music in the evening, way too avant-garde, walls of sound. Then a shuttle to a place 16km from town to a bizarre but well-done performance called MARX in a rubble-mover construction factory (I’m serious) with four men performing with iBooks, hand-held speakerphone mikes, 80s keyboards and old tech like overhead projectors. Quotes from Das Kapital are interspersed with digital squawks and strange interviews about whether you really need a rubble mover and folk songs in German. It seems like the bastard mutant offspring of Kurt Weil and Metallica.
Back on the shuttle to Stadtwerkstadt where DJ Spooky is on the decks. Gotta love a club where the DJ is against a green screen… the mixed visuals are wild (only in Austria coulld they mix Leni Riefenstahl films in with DJ Spooky; it’s one kind of tribute to her death), the music is unbelievable, the deck chair I can collapse into later is even better. Oops, 3.30am. Is that really the time?