Robot Action Boy

james voges(the stationary) and luke fischbeck(lucky dragons) were recently interviewed by pots magazine:

“I think it’s something electronic music really needs, to put something organic back into it and not just telling a computer what to do,” said Luke Fischbeck, who plays under the name Lucky Dragons.

One of the things Fischbeck does, especially in his stage shows, is connect wires to his hands, face, and the bodies of others to form circuits that feed back into the laptop computers he uses to perform. Different kinds of circuits affect the sounds that come out and also frees him from simply sitting on stage and staring at his computer screen. The result is a combination of noise, as in the Japanese specialty, and esoteric beats sourced from natural sounds.

Voges has likewise experimented with human circuitry. When he and Fischbeck met POTS earlier this week, he said he’s spent a great deal of time using his fingers to play the circuit board of a dismantled keyboard.

ah, now i understand what luke was holding to his face during the show at the wall.

collage kids. a flickr group devoted to the art of collage. if i had more time i’d love to get involved with a group like this. via pcl linkdump.

the people over at toycamera.com are at it again. first it was that wonderful book, but now they are all set with a calendar for 2005. it’s been years since i bought a calendar, but i may just buy this one. there’s no info about ordering up on the page yet, but apparently they’ll retail for $17.50.

a follow up to yesterday’s post. it looks like the lomo event in taipei was an exhibition at taipei film house. and last night an expert was awarding the pictures in the show or something.

as for the concert it was a lot of fun. there were some technical glitches so james had some problems during his set, but still cool. this was the first time i’d seen a laptop performance unless you count seeing steve fisk over ten years ago, and that wasn’t a laptop but a regular computer.

lucky dragons was more like performance art than just music. his performance reminded me a bit of jeff greinke. perhaps a bit more erratic than jeff though. in between the two laptop performances was a local taiwanese band – nylas. they won a competition at fnac to put out their ep(which as a result is only available at fnac). they are pretty much in the downbeat vein, and a bit influenced by portishead. they’re a nice change from the abundance of bland pop music here, but i tend to want to like them more than i do.

after the show lucky dragons were selling copies of their new album faults(really cheap too at 150 nt!). two taiwanese kids came over to buy some copies. i don’t know why this made me happy, but since most of the taiwanese people i have met have rather conservative tastes, it can only be a good thing. i bought one too, and it’s excellent.

the one drawback to the show was that there was a sound or a frequency that started to cause a pain in my right ear. it happened both during lucky dragons and during the stationary. the pain didn’t feel like it was in my ear, but just outside it. really odd. maybe i’m just getting too old for these kinds of things.

it looks like there are two lomo events going on in taiwan right now. down in taichung fnac has a show of lomo work, and in taipei is the conclusion of some event that started on the 19th. my chinese is pretty bad so i can’t quite figure out what the event is. maybe the results of the party on the 19th? it hardly matters anyway, as it looks like it starts at 8 pm, and tonight i’ve already got plans to see this show my friend james is involved with. it’s been ages since i’ve seen live music, so this should be fun.

today i went to the film festival and saw a shorts program called beyond. i wanted to see this because it featured a brothers quay film i’d not seen before. the film was on betacam and not the greatest quality unfortunately. on this same bill was destino, the film that dali and disney collaborated on, but wasn’t finished until long after both had passed on. it’s an interesting idea, but i found some of it just too cartoonish and it didn’t quite match some of the more surreal imagery. there were scenes that were really nice, but often they’d fly by a bit too fast. the highlight of this series of shorts for me was something called the final solution(intolerance III) which was pretty wonderful. one of my favourite scenes was when as punishment people were tortured with thinly disguised disney cartoons.

the art of peter horvath. is it collage? is it a photograph? or is it photoshop? via collagemania.

the 100 greatest tv theme songs according to retrocrush. they are only up to 77 so far, but some nifty tunes in there. i’m amazed when people can do this. i’d just leave too much out. i’ll be curious to see if any of my favourite sid and marty krofft themes make it into the top 100. via scrubbles. speaking of scrubbles he has his own top 50.

kitsch itch. a flickr group devoted to pictures of kitsch. i may just have to join this group. via pcl linkdump.

speaking of pictures, i got my first roll i shot on the lomo smena symbol back. some i like – others i’m not so sure about. a few snaphots below. larger and better quality holga and smena symbol shots are slowly being posted over on photo action boy.

it’s secret santa time again:

“Beep beep!” goes the Yule alarm and from his deep robotic slumber, Secret Santa awakes once more!

Santa is a member of the “Holy Sprocket Church of the Sprained Clutch” – but don’t worry, you don’t have to convert. You can give and receive presents to celebrate Hannukah, Kwanza, Christmas or “secret holiday gift-giving robot day”…

your wishlist has to have some things priced at 15 bucks or below, so your secret santa has something affordable to choose from. i did this last year and it was a lot of fun. and i got a buzzcocks cd out of the deal to boot!