09 AM | 05 Sep

Window Haikus

In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with Haiku poetry messages.

Haiku has strict construction rules.

Each poem has only 17 syllables: 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third.

They are used to communicate timeless messages, often achieving a wistful, yearning and powerful insight through extreme brevity.

Instead of making you want to throw your computer out the window, they have a calming effect.

For example:

Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.

The Web site you seek Cannot be located, but Countless more exist.

Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.

Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on. You ask far too much.

Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams.

Your file was so big. It must have been quite useful. But now it is gone.

Stay the patient course. Of little worth is your ire. The network is down.

A crash reduces Your expensive computer To a simple stone.

Three things are certain: Death, taxes and lost data. Ask which has occurred.

You step in the stream, But the water has moved on. This page is not here.

Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, But we never will.

Having been erased, The document you’re seeking Must now be retyped.

Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. All is blank.

08 AM | 04 Sep

She’s Geeky

She’s Geeky  (http://www.shesgeeky.org) A Women’s Tech (un)Conference

October 22-23 Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA. USA Start Noon Monday end 6pm Tuesday.

Cost $125 until Sept 30 after that $175.

The She’s Geeky (un)conference will provide an agenda-free and friendly environment for women who not only care about building technology that is useful for people, but who also want to encourage more women to get involved.

It is designed to provide women who self-identify as geeky and who are engaged in various technology-focused disciplines with a gathering space in which they can exchange skills and discuss ideas and form community across and within disciplines.

Our goal is to create an open space forum for women in tech to come together to

1. Exchanging skills and learning from women from diverse fields of technology. 2. Discussing topics about women and technology. 3. Connecting the diverse range of women in technology, computing, entrepreneurship, funding, hardware, open source, nonprofit and any other technical geeky field.

This is an unconference (http://www.unconference.net) so it will have an agenda created by the people who attend.

Sheesgeeky will include women working in:

* Open Source * Web 2.0 * Biotech * Hardware companies * Enterprise IT * The Nonprofit Technology Sector * Portals * Search Engines * Social Networking Sites * Research for and about technology/people * Startups generally * Product building/management in large organizations * Robotics * Gaming * Mobile * Technical Writing * Your definition of geekiness (if you don’t see it here add it)

Sponsorship packages are available – if you are interested in learning more please e-mail  shesgeeky@gmail.com .

08 AM | 04 Sep

CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS

Tarab, Jim Denley, Gail Priest

Circadian Rhythms is a sound-cycle exploring the phases, phrases and songs of a city and its inhabitants. Sampling Sydney across a 24-hour period, the artists will use augmented field recordings to create live compositions reflecting a six hour section of a day (night, morning, afternoon) and work together to create the final piece, evening. Approached as a clamorous organism, the artists will tap into the city’s biorhythms revealing both its dynamic, complex patterns and quiet, simple secrets.

Tarab examines the interplay of field recordings and sounds generated from found objects. He explores the possibilities of personal chartings and reactions to the urban environment reveling in the decay and detritus to be found there. He attempts to sonically trigger, form, and recreate the interior environments occurring through our interaction with the commonplace, often overlooked. http://www.23five.org/

Jim Denley places an emphasis on spontaneity, site-specific work and collaboration. He sees no clear distinctions between his roles as instrumentalist, improviser and composer. In recent years he has been working with computer- processed input from throat and contact mikes manipulating this material live via a foot pedal, avoiding the one-to-one relationship that characterises much live processing of instruments. http://www.newmusicnetwork.com.au/machine/

Gail Priest is interested in releasing the hidden melodies and broken beats found in raw sonic material. By stretching, looping and manipulating samples augmented by instrumental and vocal improvisations she creates soundscapes that aim to capture the atmospheric essences of places, dreams and memories. http://www.snagglepussy.net

Friday 14 September 2007 7:30pm, $10/8 ARTSPACE 43 – 51 Cowper Wharf Road Woolloomooloo, Sydney T: 02 9356 0555 artspace@artspace.org.au

08 AM | 04 Sep

Rotterdam VHS Festival

F O O T S C R A Y   A U D I O – V I S U A L S O C I A L   C L U B ————————————————–

Rotterdam VHS Festival (NETHERLANDS)

4 September 6-8pm Basement Theatre, Footscray Arts, Melbourne

Punky shorts from Tulip-world’s industrial heartland to delight and annoy.

The best of recent years’ submissions to the Rotterdam VHS Festival, a provocative video and animation event held regularly at Het Wilde Weten studios, Rotterdam. Playful, satirical, scratchy and exuberant, the videos in this collection dispel the recent rumour that video art is a boring universe of slow-motion, gallery-based, under-developed guff.

Melbourne artist and one-time Footscray Arts workshop tutor Cassandra Tytler is the latest Melbournite to have her work screened in the Festival. We are proud to present the Rotterdam VHS Festival for the first time in Australia.

Special thanks to Niels Post and the Rotterdam VHS Festival team

http://www.vhs.hetwildeweten.com