AliaK's blog

Park Jam is Australia's largest all-ages music festival devoted solely to hip hop. Headlining at Park Jam will be the United States' legendary Digital Underground featuring Shock G's nasally prolific alter-ego Humpty Hump, Kool Keith and Kutmasta Kurt. Park Jam features the biggest line-up of Australian & New Zealand hip hop & rap talents ever to be assembled in one place - starting with one of Australia's hip hop forerunners Resin Dogs. Coming across from South Auckland, & fresh from the Big Day Out tour, is the four-man team Deceptikonz, appearing in full force with emcee Mareko. Then there's The Herd, ex-Herd MC turned soloist Urthboy, Good Buddha, Def Wish Cast, Hermitude, Figgkidd, Lazy Grey (Qld), Terrafirma (SA), Suburban Intellect (Vic), Morganics, Baggsmen (previously known as The Hive), Blue Juice, Fast Crew (NZ), Art of War (Vic), Hyjack n' Torcha (Vic), up-and-coming new crew Blindhoarse lead by MC Losty, & all the way from the UK, Motley with his fresh Manchestrian vibe. visit http://www.parkjam.com.au for more details

Radical Software was an important voice of the American video community in the early 70s; the only periodical devoted exclusively to independent video and video art at the time when those subjects were still being invented. Issues included contributions by Nam June Paik, Douglas Davis, Paul Ryan, Frank Gillette, Beryl Korot, Charles Bensinger, Ira Schneider, Ann Tyng, R. Buckminster Fuller, Gregory Bateson, Gene Youngblood, Parry Teasdale, Ant Farm, and many others. read more or visit their website @ http://www.radicalsoftware.org

Coalition self-titled album scheduled for March 2005 release on Nice Mics Records. Featuring DJ Affiks, Lenwun, Raman, Lazy Grey, Robby Balboa, The Fader F*ckers and Kel. visit their website @ http://www.coalition.co.nr/ to preview one of the tracks Sleepless

The 2005 Australasian Computer Music Conference will explore the current boundaries of computer music practices and ideas. Where is the edge? Where are the new ideas? What activities point toward the future for computer music? Submissions are now open for Generate + Test, the Australasian Computer Music Conference being held on 12 - 14 July 2005 at the Creative Industries Precinct, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Visit the conference website: http://acmc05.org/ for more details

Electroacoustic Music Studies Sound in Multimedia Contexts. From the advent of the first electric instruments, the phonograph, radio, telephone, and subsequent electronic and digital inventions, the approaches to technologies relevant to the art of sound have been limited only by the imagination of the musician. In recent years, there seems to have been a proliferation of studies relating to music incorporating these technologies However, the investigation of such a varied musical repertoire raises a number of issues that the EMS conferences wish to examine. The themes of the conference therefore emphasize questions of resources, discourse, and analytical tools relevant to electroacoustic musics. visit the EMS-05 website @ http://ems05.musique.umontreal.ca/index.html for more information

www.urbz.org is an online database of urban images and city scapes for and by worldwide students of the city, part of the Trading Places (http://www.tradingplaces.org) network

The satellite based Global Positioning System (GPS) allows us to record basic information about their location, direction, altitude and speed. Using small hand held devices, artists can record and interpret this data to create mapping, locative, durational and other works. GPS allows us to take back knowledge of our whereabouts, and to annotate this knowledge, or to reuse it as we wish.

Artists can use access to this locative data that forms the background to all our lives, to add another layer of information to work. Whether we want accurate information or chaotic disinformation, the gps satellites transmit unceasingly 24 hours a day, not caring whether we make use of their datastreams or not. We can anonymously take up their offering and convert it to human data. This one day live workshop will introduce the basic functioning of the GPS and demonstrate GPS devices and software along with digital cameras. Participants will be able to use GPS devices and digital cameras in the field to create their own personal mappings of the locality. These mappings will form the basis for a workshop in creating combined and annotated maps and images. We will spend the day looking at software and hardware and discussing psychogeographic and locative issues while making our own maps, playing gps games and adding to the global store of waypoints. visit http://locative.x-i.net for details

A two-day conference exploring live electronics, interactivity and sonic art. 19th-20th February 2005. Key note talk by Alejandro Vinao. Paper sessions: Saturday 9.30-5pm, Sunday 10-12.30pm. Interlace music performances are being held in conjunction with the Sonic Interactions conference. visit http://incalcando.com/interlace/ for details on Interlace and http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/music/ems/sonic-interactions.html
for details on Sonic Interactions conference

FutureScreen Mobile investigates the potential of mobile phone devices and technologies as platforms for creation, distribution and presentation of screen based and new media art. Focusing on the development of skills and knowledge, FutureScreen Mobile consists of a series of workshops and master classes and a research component. Outcomes of all FutureScreen Mobile events and research will be presented on the dLux media arts website with the aim of establishing an invaluable knowledge base for artists interested in working in the mobile domain.

Questia is an online library of books and journals. Some free books are available whilst others are accessible via subscription. visit http://www.questia.com/ for more details

Vloggercon was held late January in New York - a conference about vlogging. check out the vlogging yahoogroups mail list if you'd like more info or visit the vlogging wiki at http://www.me-tv.org, and view the photos at Flickr

Mapping New Territories sets out to survey a new landscape - the landscape of Swiss media art. This voyage of discovery is charted by an exhibition (30 January through 27 March 2005), a symposium (12 March 2005) and a publication (book and CD-Rom, forthcoming May 2005). En route, we will explore the still young history of Swiss media art, from its tentative beginnings in the 1990s to its rapid development in recent years.

hack.it.art - Hacktivism in the Context of Art and Media in Italy is being held from January 15th till February 27th 2005 at the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin. The project hack.it.art is an exhibition and event about technological, artistic and political activism in Italy. There will be workshops and events on various aspects of Hacktivism. More info on: http://www.ecn.org/aha

A wide-ranging survey of technology leaders, scholars, industry officials, and analysts finds that most internet experts expect attacks on the network infrastructure in the coming decade as the internet becomes more embedded in everyday and commercial life. They believe the dawning of the blog era will bring radical change to the news and publishing industry and they think the internet will have the least impact on religious institutions.

Until January 23rd, you can catch the Jenny Holzer exhibition at the Kukje Gallery in Seoul, Korea. visit http://www.kukjegallery.com for more details