+ [via: Vancouver User Guide, which is now in the side bar under "Vancouver Scene"] I caught one New Forms Festival, and I won’t miss it again:

NEW FORMS FESTIVAL 2004
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF MEDIA ARTS
Experiments with Technology to Explore Our World
OCTOBER 14 to 28, 2004
Vancouver, BC, Canada

The New Forms Festival is an international festival of contemporary media arts and technologies, featuring an Exhibition, a Performance/Events Series, and a Conference consisting of keynote addresses, panel presentations, and workshops. Showcasing emerging new media artists from across Canada and around the world, New Forms focuses on the convergence of arts and technology - providing a unique opportunity for audiences and industry professionals to interact with art forms that utilize cutting-edge media technologies.

The theme for our fourth annual festival is TECHNOGRAPHY, the inscription of culture in technology. Over two weeks, at various venues in and around Vancouver, the Festival will feature more than fifty performances and presentations by North American and international guest speakers, musicians, installation and net artists, performance and video artists, DJs, and dancers.

+ [via: Vancouver User Guide] The Drift : Art on Main Street
First Annual Open Studio Weekend

60 artists showing in 23 studios and 31 shops on and around Vancouver’s trendy Main Street from 2nd Avenue to 37th Avenue.

Opening Friday October 1st 2004
Western Front 7pm
303 E. 8th Ave

In Shops & Studios
October 2nd & 3rd 2004

+ Besides it being pleasant to look at a hot brunette’s naked body, it’s interesting to see the reaction and lack of reaction to her nude in the streets of some European town. [via: Linkswarm]

+ Great little culture jamming prank. Someone in the states edits USPS labels to state ‘USPS does not acknowledge the authority of the Bush administration.’ Link is a quicktime clip, via Darren Barefoot..via Boing Boing.

+ An interview with Phillip Roth [via: Arts & Letters Daily]. There was a time when I enjoyed Roths writing a great deal. Probably now I’d be bored. The man is a great writer just the same, and in the interview are some read-bites worth skimming for:

..how to transform life into art. “I have to have something to do that engages me totally,” he says. “Without that, life is hell for me. I can’t be idle and I don’t know what to do other than write. If I were afflicted with some illness that left me otherwise OK but stopped me writing, I’d go out of my mind. I don’t really have other interests. My interest is in solving the problems presented by writing a book. That’s what stops my brain spinning like a car wheel in the snow, obsessing about nothing. Some people do crossword puzzles to satisfy their need to keep the mind engaged. For me, the absolutely demanding mental test is the desire to get the work right. The crude cliché is that the writer is solving the problem of his life in his books. Not at all. What he’s doing is taking something that interests him in life and then solving the problem of the book - which is, How do you write about this? The engagement is with the problem that the book raises, not with the problems you borrow from living. Those aren’t solved, they are forgotten in the gigantic problem of finding a way of writing about them.”

+ And a delayed post of David’s find, a full-on 4 page technical article on telephony from the plain old telephone system (POTS) to VoIP. A lotta reading to skim, but if you want to know why, when, how, this’ll give you a good start.

+ Saw my first Vancouver Film Fest film Or (My Treasure) on Thursday. The two main characters are a prostitute mother and her daughter. I wrote Kirstie a mini-review, without the intention of sharing it with anyone else. I frequently comment about my attraction to brunettes with dark eyes, so

Or was the daughter’s name. She had wonderful breasts, verging on pendulous..hearty, a great ass, thick dark eyebrows. Her and “her mother” were spectacularly matter-of-fact about everything, leaving us practically looking through a keyhole at their lives, their cellulite, blood and pimples, and disarray. Not heart-wrenching or lusty so much as giving one a sense that Israel isn’t just the conflict and Jews being Jewish. It’s about survival, life, like anywhere else. -I couldn’t see a single flaw with the movie.

Sun, Sep 26 11:00 am Granville 7 Cinema 4 $7.00

Mon, Sep 27 9:30 pm Granville 7 Cinema 7 $9.00

+ Besides Or, there are a lot of films I’d like to see. I bought tickets for:

A Canadian film, Shipbreakers, which reminded me of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, about the work and workers in India, dismantling old ships for the metal. -Kirstie agreed about the similarities and was talking with the gallery owner that turned her onto Burtynsky’s work. It seems likely that there is a relationship between filmmaker and photogapher. -Burtynsky has a gallery under “Ships” called “Shipbreakers”.

The Machinist (Spanish) reads like it’s going to be super cool, twisted and disturbing. About a machinist who doesn’t sleep for a year and craziness ensues. I have a inkling that it might go the route of Dead Ringers..which, though it was really creepy, it looked very stylish.

Czech Dream cause it’s about consumerism, and it’s Czech. A faked opening of a discount shopping megastore mocks consumers. It’s gotta be good.

Alter Egos is a documentary of panhandler Ryan Larkin’s past life as an Oscar nominee for his work as an animator. He hasn’t done any work since 1972. He became an addict (to what is not stated..smoking? coffee? sex? gambling? christ? weed? driving? music? shopping? come on people don’t isolate one destructive addiction.) It’s probably more about Larkin’s animation than his addiction and how that destroyed his art.

Dutch Light studies what really makes the famed light of Holland so renouned, particularly due to the Dutch Masters. “Documentarian Pieter-Rim de Kroon draws the viewer into a maelstrom of ideas and theories, colours, images, landscapes and, of course, light, in an attempt to separate fact from fiction.” -sometimes I think my drawings are about light, which is energy, which is what I normally think my drawings are about.

And lastly, this film was the impetous for me joining Kirstie at the Film Fest box office to buy a bunch of tickets. Kirstie gave me a ticket to Baghdad Blogger/Salam Pax–Video Reports from Iraq. This is from a blogger in Bahgdad, video blogging the new Iraq.

+ A-Power has a wicked deal on a Transend 512mb 45x compact flash card (review), $85.00!! Yes, that’s right, 85 bucks! Man. That is chee-eap! -I almost bought two.

** see comments for an explaination of this (cropped, blurry) image:

+ This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

**wicked. it works. my camera is in the mail and I’ll be posting pics soon.

+ Pokia handsets, coming soon to a hipster near you. Read an interview of “the creative mind behind the Pokia line of vintage phone handsets,” by Daniel of IDFuel. [David sent me this eBay link which reminded me that I was amused and intrigued..]

** Please note: I will only give a gmail invite to another weblogger or a person who I believe deserves something. If you are a stranger and think you deserve an invite, tell me why or DO NOT ASK ME FOR A GMAIL INVITE!

+ anyone want a gmail account? Monica sent me an invite, but the Opera web browser isn’t supported by gmail. - the invite expires on the 14th of September so first come first serve. I’m not sure I would use the service in any case as I’m partial to my privacy.

**update: After much deliberation, I decided that I would sign up for a gmail account, and not use it until I’m comfortable with their privacy policy, and they offer POP3. - Monica had to reinvite me as the invite expired early. The original notification letter stated I had three weeks to claim an account before it would expire. It expired a day shy of two weeks.