Tomorrow we celebrate the end of an era. Our studio and creative share house of 7 years is being sold to make way for urban progress. The house dates from the 1930s and is surrounded by endless blocks of apartments. The large block is ripe for redevelopment. Who needs to hold onto history, right?
Our home has hosted a steady stream of musicians, artists and eccentrics. Not to mention the recording of albums, singles, demos, videos, rehearsals and jams. Good-bye Coogee house!
Cables, old hard drives, discs, dusty old instruments everywhere. Clearing space in one corner only to have it filled with chaos the next second. It's a new chapter for us - the relocation of our studio. While no-one can say moving is fun, the cat's certainly been enjoying the re-assembly of the mixing desk.
Life seems strangely empty now that the Underbelly Festival + Public Arts Lab is over. No more sleepless nights in a playground filled with eccentric creative artists. Now we're adjusting to life back in the studio, the desire for collaboration stronger than ever.
We hope to work with the REJENR8 Productions dome crew again, as it takes our performance way further than any standard pub/club stage and PA could ever do. There's also a lot of work to do on the tactile mixing surface. More development is needed to make it a stable system that can rival traditional mixing methods. At least we can see the possibilities now.
We're pushing ahead, trying to get our Underbelly project finished by tomorrow. I'm now able to manipulate my vocal effects using gloves and the visual output is projected onto the geodesic dome as smoke. The result is a far more expressive performance, as I can use my hands to 'draw' the sound rather than sit behind a laptop mumbling into a microphone.
Now we just need to finish the mixing surface so that Nick can mix individual tracks during the performance. We are all severely sleep deprived by the two weeks of intense experimentation but also buoyed by all the exciting projects going on during Underbelly.
We appeared as part of a story on the festival on ABC News last night, and also got a mention in this Herald article:
Our first week at Underbelly has been an inspiring work in progress. Our idea is unfolding in unpredictable ways, and we still have a lot of technical hurdles to overcome, but we're getting there. It's been fun working with other digital artists in Bay 17 and also watch installations morph and grow in the foyer.
Nick and I are taking a breather today but Dave will be selling Deprogram CDs, T-shirts, posters and his own Black Tees prints and artwork at the Twilight Markets from 4-11pm this evening. The market brings Sydney designers and emerging artists together to sell their wares.
Tomorrow we celebrate the end of an era. Our studio and creative share house of 7 years is being sold to make way for urban progress. The house dates from the 1930s and is surrounded by endless blocks of apartments. The large block is ripe for redevelopment. Who needs to hold onto history, right?
