this is way too good...



courtesy of failblog.org

New blog for work and amsterdam

Hi there all!

I know there are many of you back in the US that are still checking this blog. If it weren't for facebook, you would probably think i am dead. such is not the case. i was consumed by work, and then moved, switched to a new project, and am still trying to keep all of my balls that i am juggling in life off the ground. as you can imagine, this does not always work for me and this ball of a blogsite dropped for a bit.

I have just created a new blogsite that is really for my work and for events here in the city of Amsterdam. over the past several months, I continue to get invites to openings, parties, events, etc. that are great to connect others to. in fact, this has become kind of a thing for me and i am becoming known for doing this. so i decided that rather than fill up people's email boxes, that it would be best for me to create another blog (dear lord) that i can put all of this information that i receive from people asking me to put it out to my network. yay!

here is the site: embellish amsterdam

it will inevitably become linked to my website, so that will be fun and i will let you know when that happens. what is great about this is that people are really contributing and making a community out of this! it is really exciting to see the art community underground really wanting more connectivity, and those outside the community, wanting to be a part of it! I hope you check it at least once just to get an idea of what is going on here all the time and what i end up spending my days and nights doing and who i am connected with.

thanks for your support and for putting up with my lack of posting!

ps - here is the site that i was working on with mediamatic that i posted ages ago...
travel.mediamatic.net
if you want to travel, look no further - this is becoming the best site to use for just such a situation!

this is the new project that i am working on at the moment with the infamous Mediamatic - great project, great people and more to come.... i am writing the actual trips that people will be subscribing to and taking! just finished working on Naples and onto Budapest... check it out, join the Mediamatic website and become a fan!

http://www.mediamatic.net/index.php?lang=en

Mediamatic Travel

Trips to the cultural underground

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  Nile River Cruise

Next year Mediamatic will release the new 2009 Mediamatic Travel Guide. Mediamatic will help you travel the world and see the best contemporary art while you do it. Mediamatic will facilitate trips to the cultural scene in the less accessible places of the world.

The travel agency will operate from Mediamatic’s new location on the Vijzelstraat and facilitates real trips. It has an international website where locals can introduce themselves to you. All participating artists and travellers will help with providing content and keeping the website up to date. This way Mediamatic travel does not only work for Dutch travellers, but will become a global sensor network for cultural development.

The printed travel guide will show that there is more than pyramids, the big five, old temples, camels and folklore. Contemporary art is around the world. And around the world there are people who want to share it with you.

The international network will become the start of the first DIY travel agency in the world. The site will be compiled and edited by travels and artists together. Travellers can make their own dates with artists and cultural institutions. Unlike a normal travel site, Mediamatic Travel is focussed on discovering, promoting and financially supporting artistic destinations.

Sustainability

The travel agency and the website are based on the idea that cultural groups and individual artists who will receive the travellers will receive a decent salary. This seems obvious, but somehow is still far from common practice in cultural travel.

With Mediamatic Travel we would like to contact a broad audience and make them aware of the contemporary cultural production in post-conflict areas, politically or economically sensitive areas or developing nations. We would like to stimulate and support this production. Furthermore, Mediamatic Travel will aim for worldwide cultural engagement. We envision the development of a sustainable model, which will be a self-renewing digital network for international cultural exchange.

Destinations

The unconfirmed list of destinations: Cairo, Damascus, Novosibirsk, Tbilisi, Beirut, Durban, Dubai, Nairobi, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Budapest, Mexico City, Gaza, Istanbul, Tirana, Prague, Kyoto, Rio, Cape Town, Iran, Argentina, Naples

Partizan Publik

Mediamatic Travel is being developed in collaboration with Partizan Publik

Girlfriend Experience follow up

Here are the pictures from the Girlfriend Experience that took place on Friday and Saturday evenings in Nova Gorica, Slovenia for the pixxelpoint New Media Festival last weekend -
http://picasaweb.google.com/aliwats/TheGirlfriendExperienceDoesSlovenia#

the 'experience' went very well! Thanks to all of you that helped spread the word and came to play while we were online! The Dutch Embassy in Slovenia (our sponsor) and the people curating and putting the festival on were very happy as well. It was really fun to see the people there figure out that they could mess with their friends in the room through the avatars! I am sure that we will do the experience again this next year and I will keep you posted so that you can play too!


Check out the other works that were featured at this as well....

The exhibition, distributed between Nova Gorica and Mostovna, is the result of a difficult process of selection of the more than 110 applications arrived this year; a selection that should take into account not just the quality of the proposals, but also their ability to embody the suggested theme in a different way, and to integrate effectively the projects shown by the invited artists. The exhibition consists of 30 works by 30 different artists. Among them, etoy’s Mission Eternity project, described as a “digital cult of the dead”; the network of meditating computers set up by the German artists Ute Hörner & Mathias Antlfinger; the Empathy Box by the Italian collective Io/cose, which helps building a spiritual community based on the sharing of pain; the anti-institutional, new media rituality suggested by Otherehto; Martin Conrads and Ingo Gerken’s conceptual work, an
interrogation on the ritual use of communication technologies; and then Gazira Babeli and Patrick Lichty’s video-installation 7UP, a research on the meaning of an avatar life, and Janez Jansˇa’s remake of Koyaanisqatsi, which uses Google Earth as a source. The video screening, situated in the Galerija Tir in Mostovna, collects all the videos on show at the festival, putting together some brand new works with recent “classics” such as Negativland’s The Mashin’ of the Christ (2004) and Eddo Stern’s Deathstar (2004) , an exploration of the relationship between religion and violence.

'The Girlfriend Experience' is coming to Slovenia!

Martin Butler's project 'The Girlfriend Experience' has been invited to the For God's Sake/Pixxelpoint Festival in Nova Gorica, Slovenia this Friday and Saturday!!! The G-F Experience is produced in partnership with Mediamatic and is sponsored for the festival in Slovenia by the Dutch Embassy!

Click on the Mediamatic link here for all the information you need to watch it from the comfort of your own computer! This is going to be big, and we have emailed and notified people from all over the world to log on Friday and Saturday to 'play' with the avatars that will be performing for this event!

yes, please take a couple of minutes out of your day (you know, a break from checking the Superficial or bbc - whatever time-wasters you usually check when you need a mental break from work...) and play on the Girlfriend Experience!

Martin has invited me to work production for this event and I am very honored and excited to have been brought along on this excursion! Check it out and there will be little updates along the way of the trip, the festival and other new, if not cheeky, developments!

Shoes garage sale for another week

The sale at the Shoes Garage is going on for another week! If you haven't had the chance to come by and check out what we have, come by this week! We still have many models left and want you to give them good homes!
Thanks and see you this week!

the turkey that ate thanksgiving

i hope your Thanksgiving was amazing and spectacular! ben and geraldine were kind enough to host a large Thanksgiving feast at their home this year and we had the great pleasure of having this feast with 15+ people, most of whim were enjoying their first Thanksgiving!

here is the turkey that caused the household to shake..
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10 kilo!!!!! seriously almost broke my bike
and this is the end result

and then more of the festivities...