Art's Birthday 2004 in Sydney

Texts

January 17th 2004, Peep Space 123 Foveaux St. Surry Hills
5pm - 12 midnight Sydney time
(and in Helsinki 11am - 8pm)

• Sydney Event
• Helsinki Event
• Exchanging weather over the internet
• What is Art's Birthday?
• The Scrambled Bytes server
• Acknowledgements

here in Sydney...

A sonic birthday party for Art, featuring a weather exchange with Helsinki. We are generating network activity relating to the local weather which will operate "solar powered" devices in Helsinki. The networked installation will be recording, cutting up and replaying party conversation to enable participants to converse with their own selves from the past. Guests are encouraged to bring and create further audio elements to add to this mix that will slowly layer through time.

...meanwhile in Helsinki at mbar

We are playing the Solar Eclipse light controlled instruments using as a source the light recieved from Sydney via the internet. We are streaming data relating to Helsinki's weather situation nearby mbar, which will activate snow and wind in Sydney keeping everyone cool at Peep space during the sonic birthday party.

Exchanging weather over the internet between Sydney and Helsinki, Finland

Finland is in the far north of europe between Sweden and Russia and reaching up into the Arctic Circle. The harsh winter lasts six months and very short days make this a dark time of year.

In the heat of Sydney's summer the cold winds of the northern winter seem more attractive then they do to the Finns who long for sunshine at this time of year. We have organised this weather exchange in recognition of these differing needs.

Due to technical constraints we are not able to bring you the chilly gusts of winter on the Baltic coasts in their entirety, but invite you to participate in this international celebration of creativity by helping us send the idea of sunshine into the Finnish winter.

What is Art's Birthday?

Art's Birthday is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou. He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no Art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born. According to Filliou, it happened when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water.

Over the last 30 years Art's Birthday has become a regular occasion for telecommunication arts events.

The Scrambled Bytes server

A group of artists at the artist's organisation Western Front in Canada have set up a data server which takes messages from all round the world and relays them to any other group requesting them from the server. We are sending output from the light sensors on the window every 5-45 seconds to the Scrambled Bytes server, our friends in helsinki are sending us the wind speed and direction from Helsinki at regular intervals.

Acknowledgements

This celebration is part of an international telecommunications art event organized by Western Front in Canada to celebrate the birthday of Art http://artsbirthday.net and is made possible through the Scrambled Bytes server http://scrambled.aaeol.ca

The Sydney celebrations have been initiated by Sophea Lerner and Andrew Burrell, with the support of Peep space http://peep.com.au

The Helsinki celebrations have been initiated by aura:la with the support of
mbar, Media Lab / University of Art and Design Helsinki, and the Centre for Music & Technology, Sibelius Academy.
http://mbar.fi, http://mlab.uiah.fi, http://cmt.siba.fi

aura:la is a Helsinki based group currently experimenting in networked sonic interactions. Sophea Lerner, Marianne Decoster-Taivalkoski, Joni Lyytik�inen, J�rgen Scheible, Koray Tahiroglu. http://aura.siba.fi

Special Thanks:
In Sydney: Kathryn Henry, Claire Corben, Carolyn Price, Martin Shields, Peep Space and Rudolf Ramsayer
In Helsinki: Jukka Ylitalo for his programming support, Santtu Valve, Centre for Music & Technology, Saana Naveri, Tapio Makela, Mika Raunio & Juho Karhunen, mbar.