yesterday i was one of four artists who collaborated in an improvised sound piece, initiated & coordinated/directed by annie abrahams as part of her current exhibition "if not you not me" at HTPP gallery in london.

Initially, I didn't even want to know about the climate summit in Copenhagen in December. I felt that it was inevitably going to be so hopeless and futile that I didn't even want to watch, and discussions weeks ahead of time on various mailing lists about the Danish police being given special powers only suggested that too many idealistic and caring people were likely to get hurt.

& so nancy arrived, which was very exciting - we hadn't seen each other since isea in belfast, where we had many an adventure ... but that's another story! (nancy was also in haiti a couple of weeks ago at the ghetto biennale, so last week's earthquake has had a direct personal impact - more here and sign the petition to drop haiti's debt).

after lunch, the audience has shrunk by almost half, & it seems to be mostly men who have left. so we now have something like 90% female audience, & the talks are also becoming more overtly feminist.

i'm at the haeksen miniconf at the australian linux conference, being conveniently held this year in wellington, where i conveniently happen to be at the moment. everyone has rushed outside at lunchtime, because there's the first sunshine in about a week of appallingly bad weather. but in the foyer there are quite a few people lurking around, either chatting in groups or hunched over laptops attached to the powerboards that have been generously placed around.

Trending Culture: You Can't Do it All
I was thinking about waves of expansion of creative discourse in parallel with the exponential increase of the production of information in media (Internet, etc). While I do not have quantitative data, my observations seem to sugggest we are undergoing another burst in the development of technological tools of production that challenges practitioners to keep up. Let me illustrate what I'm trying to get at through a historical observation.

This is a sort of non-essay, capturing of thoughts, I had one night, after having the question “What's your definition of art, though?” posed at me by Netwurker Mez, on Twitter. It was asked in response to my posting something about wanting to believe art mattered. I'm not sure if these notes get anywhere near that, but in writing them, I got nearer to remembering why art can be interesting, and worth sharing.

friday night at fred's

fred's is a sort of unofficial music venue in a little old church in one of the forgotten bits of inner-city wellington. this week, it's been host to fredstock - a festival of experimental music - & on friday night i braved wellington's gentle breeze to check out the sounds.

Trying to find your way through the myriad ‘performance spaces’ of the web continues to challenge and excite me. It’s interesting, using social media spaces like FaceBook and Twitter and blogging, to develop different aspects of personality or practice. Even in my most trivial moments I’m aware of how the web is used and what the demands and prejudices of it are. Or, more precisely, let me qualify that statement: I’m still learning what those demands and prejudices are.

This is one square mile in South Shanghai, close to Shanghai South Railway Station and Bus Station. There are other artists in other countries working with their own square miles in India, Bangladesh, UK, Teheran and South Africa. This one's mine. There's also a local sound artist involved, Yin Yi, and Shanghai eArts. They're my host organisation. They're based in this square mile and they chose it, before I arrived.

We're all "mapping the biodiversity, cultural diversity, and aesthetic diversity of our local neighbourhoods."