WIRED Lab DIY Wires Workshop, Web Launch & WIRED EAR Scheme

Over Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th July The WIRED Lab will be hosting its annual in situ DIY Wires: Construction & Recording Workshop. This workshop is your chance to learn how to build your own æolian instrument and custom recording techniques. The weekend will also include an evening of performances by Alan Lamb & WIRED Lab members, and the launch of our new website.

The WIRED Lab is located on a farm in regional NSW (between Gundagai and Cootamundra). The WIRED Lab is the site of the latest 'Wire' instruments built by Alan Lamb, along with collaborators Sarah Last, Dave Burraston, Garry Bradbury and Robin Fox.

WORKSHOP DETAILS
Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th July
The workshop is offered for free to 25 lucky participants and will give you the DIY skills to build your own wires and pickups, held over two days, the workshop will include:
* Alan Lamb, Dave Burraston & Sarah Last will teach people how to build their own wire system and demonstrate ways to interact with the wires (eg. bowing and singing into polystyrene boxes, which work as reverberant amplifiers!).
* Permanent WIRED Lab resident & electronics wizard Dave Burraston will discuss his observations of The Wires when recording and will demonstrate how to custom build and attach piezo pickups.
* Alan Lamb will demonstrate percussion, bowing and techniques with the wires.
* Opportunity to interact with and record the wires.

NOTE: workshop places are strictly limited, with a maximum capacity of 25 people. Places will need to be reserved ASAP, with bookings on a 1st come 1st served basis.

WIRED EARS (EMERGING ARTISTS RESIDENCY SCHEME)
The WIRED EAR Scheme will provide financial assistance for NSW based young and emerging artists to attend selected WIRED Lab workshops. For our annual DIY Wires workshop we will be offering $150 to assist 8 emerging artists with the costs to attend the workshop. Artists who consider themselves to be ‘young and emerging’ are invited to submit a brief (1 page maximum) expression of interest detailing their arts practice and how they feel they will benefit from being a WIRED EARS participant. WIRED EARS expressions of interest are due on Monday 28th June.

PERFORMANCE EVENING & WIRED LAB .ORG LAUNCH
On Saturday evening WIRED Lab will launch its new website wiredlab.org, with Alan Lamb, Dave Burraston and Special Guests presenting a concert open to the general public in Cootamundra's Creative Arts & Cultural Centre (CCACC). The CCACC is a new facility; it is the 1st time Cootamundra has had a dedicated Arts infrastructure, the Centre was initiated by local volunteers and is located in what once was an Ugg boot factory!

ABOUT ALAN LAMB
You may already be familiar with Alan's work, he has been working with wires since the 70's. He originally started with disused spans of telegraph wires and evolved into building his own that spanned hundreds of metres across the desert and the open landscapes. During this time he developed a technique of attaching stereo contact microphones to record and listen to The Wires. These recordings expose an infinite and amplified universe of sound that sonically reflects the environment and things we cannot see. The Wires sonically reproduces environmental and human interactions with an enormous dynamic range of harmonics and frequencies, often to visceral effect. Whilst having traditional sonic qualities such as pitch, timbre, rhythm and key, the sounds produced are perhaps best described as a deep space atmosphere with earth hums and electro-pings, even insects can be heard as they collide or crawl up and down the wire.

ABOUT WIRED LAB
A primary objective of The WIRED Lab is to consolidate Alan's work and create a permanent site for his instrument to be further developed by other artists, and for Alan to devolve his skills and knowledge to as many people as possible. Since its 2007 establishment The WIRED Lab has presented workshops, concerts, an open day and various publications documenting Alan Lamb and WIRED Lab collaborators.

Thus far The WIRED Lab has built several sets of wires, spanning kilometres across the landscape. We have been recording the wires with piezo pickups and we plan on setting the wires up so we can record visiting artists and their interactions. You will find some recordings and info here: http://wiredlab.ning.com/

------------------------------

Further logistical details about the workshop can be found HERE
REMEMBER: this workshop has ***limited availability***
This is primarily for logistical reasons; BUT NOTE we plan on hosting more workshops and an open day, so if you miss out this time there will be opportunity for many more people to get WIRED in the future.

Any further questions?
Please email Sarah at: info@wiredlab.org
The WIRED LabW I R E D : Wire Integrative Research Education & Development
http://wiredlab.ning.com/

Thanks to SMD volunteers at NIME2010++

Thank you to all the SMD students who helped out volunteering for New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference Sydney held at UTS, in the concerts, stage setting, paper sessions, etc. I hope you learned a heap from Jos and the experience in general. Many people said how well organised the was and I was really impressed with how you all took responsibility for challenging new tasks. I am looking forward to hearing the recordings, and of course a huge thank you to Jos, Andrew and Sam who also put in a great amount of time and expertise in the setup. As volunteers, you are eligible for a copy of the proceedings if you want to follow up on  some of the interfaces, instruments and paper presentations in detail. Papers in the proceedings cover both presentations and demos. If you didn't already pick up your copy, please contact Debbie Pryor or me next week. Have a well-earned relaxing weekend! Thank you. Kirsty

FBI

Thanks to Monk fly and FBI Sydney has a great Wobbly future beats show on thursday nights. I was privileged last week to do a DJ set for the show, here is a link to the future face blog which has a podcast of the set I did.

Cheers
James

Last Lecture - Jam Session

As this will be our last Contemporary Music lecture, we thought we would go out with a bang and dedicate the last couple of hours of to exploring improvisation in all its facets. We have a mixing desk and plenty of inputs so bring along your instrument, laptop or voice to join the mix !