I have just returned from the Next Wave 2004 Festival in Melbourne and it was fantastic. The highlight for me was hearing a presentation and meeting up with Brody Condon an artist who works in with and around digital games. His work is a fascinating exmination of the materiality and content of games. Brody described how he strips away the narrative of the game to reveal a single aspect of the text which he then accentuates in some way through his own manipulation and subsequent recontextualisation of the material form (I love the language of critique...basically he twists the thing which twists the viewers mind). He showed his piece Worship (2001) and the stunning Waco:Resurrection (2003). This is an artist I will investigate further.
I made my own presentation on Saturday and it seemed to go pretty well, speaking for about an hour on building in Adobe Atmosphere 1.0 to groups of people as the passed through the strange hall we were given as The Demo Room....I also got to spend 48 hours in Melbourne which really impressed me as a city as it has been 8 years since I was there. An open enthusiastic atmosphere, a lot of culture, wide streets lined with autumnal trees, cafes filled with happy people,and the good company I was with.
Tomorrow I'll look around Brisbane and then catch a bus back to Toowoomba. My plan for next week is to spend time with my family and record some music with some friends. We have been speaking about starting a record label between Sweden and Australia and we are very close to it actually happening it seems as I heard part of the first release a few days ago and it sounded great...details to follow....