Bauhaus year opening performance

March 18th, 2009

April 4th will be the opening night of the Bauhaus year in Weimar. Max Schreiner, Anke Heelemann und Stefan Kraus will create an opening performance with me doing docu-cam.

I’ve worked with Max in the past as camera man for his final project at the Bauhaus University May 2008 and for another performance at the zeitraumexit, Mannheim. Here’s a video of the first performance.

WordPress multilingual

March 11th, 2009

I created a category “en” in which i created all the english versions of my categories. I wrote two versions of the same post, in english and german, and left them in the english and german category.  Then i filtered the sidebar menu according to the language category you’re looking at. Looks more or less like this:

<li>
<?php /* Felix Language Switch */ if (is_category(50) || (in_category(50))) {
echo ‘<a href=”http://test.amphibiousthoughts.com”>german version</a>’ ;
} else {
echo ‘<a href=”http://test.amphibiousthoughts.com/news”>english version</a>’ ;
}
?>
</li>

<li>
<?php /* Felix Custom Categories */ if (is_category(50) || (in_category(50))) {

wp_list_categories(‘include=54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62&orderby=ID&show_count=1&title_li=<h2>Categories</h2>’);
} else {
wp_list_categories(‘exclude=50&orderby=ID&show_count=1&title_li=<h2>Kategorien</h2>’);
}
?>

</li>

<li>
<?php /* Tags or not */ if (is_category(50) || (in_category(50))) {

} else {
echo ‘<h2>Tags</h2> ‘;   /* Felix Custom Tags */ wp_tag_cloud(‘title_li=<h2>Tags</h2>’);
}
?>
</li>

Drawback of this solution:

Widgets like MyCaregoryOrder wont work and as you can see one language has to do without tags. I haven’t found out how to filter them out yet. Also, you really have to do everything twice. So, after spending 3 days with the wordpress reference finding out how the code works, I decided to use the QTranslate plugin. Installation and handling is as easy as you’d expect from any plugin and it has all the features I was looking for. Thanks :-)

The Relaunch!

March 11th, 2009

Ok. The new WordPress is there and ready. Its far from being beautyful, I know. But in turn its multilingual. Cosmetic changes will be made once I have time and inspiration for such a task. Stay tuned ;-)

About Last Night… Jazzanova Label Party

March 7th, 2009

Since last fall, the Centraltheater in Leipzig features a series of concert/club events with assorted acts. Last night I went there for the Jazzanova Label Night. Actually I was mainly attracted by the fact that Eva Be was DJing. The rest, the Sonar Kollektiv Orchestra, Clara Hill and Jazzanova DJs, I accepted as a sidekick :-)

It turned out that Eva Be was reduced to play as an opener in the foyer of the theatre and in between acts. What a total waste of fluffy music! A nice mixture of all kinds of styles, some I knew from my own record collection or sets played by DJ Vadim, others completely unknown to me. Hip-Hop, Reggea, Funk, whatever, but all with a certain style that put a smile on my face and had me bobbing up and down constantly. Next time she’s in town I’ll be there!

Clara Hill was first to play. I’ll keep it short: Not my kind of stuff. She shure can sing but I think she is too loud and lacks subtlety. The music didn’t convince me either. Jazz fans might enjoy some twists in harmonies and all that nerdy stuff, but thats not mine.

The Sonar Kollektiv Orchestra was impressive, to say the least. A brass and string section, drums and percussions,  bass, guitar and 3 singers together with Volker Meintz as mastermind performed songs released on the Jazzanova label. Unforgettable their performance of Âme”s “Rej”! Most songs appeared to be older releases, rather souly and acid-jazzy stuff. The sound of the band reminded me of early Pressure Drop. A friend of mine who was with me pointed out that that was mostly due to the combination of bass and trombone, producing a sub-bass that enters stomach and gonards without hesitation :-) I personally would have preferred to hear more live implementations of instrumental tracks like “Rej”. I’m not all that into soul and acid jazz and, most of all, Clara Hill didn’t fit into the arrangement. She’s too much lead singer and didn’t have the sensitivity to be a complementary part of the vocal section. Instead, she took over, which obviously pissed of the other two singer, from whom I would’ve liked to hear more.

Even though the dancefloor behind the stage is a promising party location, the party afterwards didn’t quite rock. Jazzanova DJs couldn’t convince me and I think the location hasn’t established itsself for parties yet.

Quäkmonster on Tour

March 5th, 2009

The Quäkmonster was presented in an exhibition at the Designskolen Kolding, Denmark, last week. My friend Harv Stanic held a lecture there and used it as an example. Heres a short video of the exhibition.

quaeckmonster_exhib

Walpurgisnacht! 30.4.2009

February 21st, 2009

So far it has been confirmed:

see DJ Le Frog Sportif at the E-Werk, Weimar!

VVVV – Meine ersten Schritte

February 19th, 2009

Ich habe mir in den letzten 6 Wochen mit viel Mühe und nur mit einem (guten!) Tutorial und der HLSL-Reference von Microsoft ein paar Shader-Grundlagen beigebracht. Angesichts meiner mangelnden (Schrift-)Programmierkenntnisse war das ungefähr so, als würde man versuchen, eine fremde Sprache anhand einer deutschen Bibel und deren Kommentar in fremder Sprache zu lernen…  Das vorläufige Ergebnis ist ein Median-Filter mit einer 3×3 Matrix.

Im Laufe meiner Arbeit in den letzten Wochen habe ich ein paar Erfahrungen gemacht:

more… »

Vollmond Party Weimar

February 10th, 2009

Party at the E-Werk yesterday was mostly chillout. Sunfish is two girls doing spherical live loop effects with voice and a fender rhodes. If I hadn’t been so stressed by the fact that i forgot half my equipment at home I probably could have appreciated them more. Anyway, Who-Be once again did a great job lighting the location. Who-Be also iniciated the Vollmond series. Actually part of the theater in Weimar it hosts all kinds of experimental events. Entry is free, which leads to a very mixed audience from Bauhaus and Franz Liszt students to old unempoyed folks you wouldn’t normally expect there. Sadly enough the theater itsself treats such initiatives rather like a step-child…

After the concert there wasn’t much energy in the room to set up a dancing crowd, but in the end I got the remaining people dancing.

And earned my next date for Walpurgisnacht at the E-Werk which is bound to be a party in the real sense of the word :-)

Dancehall ADD

February 8th, 2009

Just returned from a Dancehall party.

I SIMPLY DON’T GET IT!!!!
What the hell is it with these people? Theres two DJs, a sound engineer and one MC. Sounds promising if you ask me. The music they play is mostly nice, actually I’d like to know the names of some tunes I heard tonight. I’ve seen the MC on other occaasions and I know he can sing (and is a nice guy by the way).

!!!BUT!!!

What the fuck? Why the hell can’t I get rid of the feeling that somebody is zapping through channels here? As if they took a dancehall jukebox and gave the remote to some kid with a serious case of attention deficit disorder.
The djs can’t keep a song longer than 45 seconds. That takes us maybe 10 seconds past the intro, which has to be played at least twice (REEWIIIIND!). AT WHAT POINT SHOULD I ACTUALLY START DANCING???
All this accompanied by the continuous comments of the MC, whose eloquence is as limited as the content of his speech. 99% of his statements are requests for boody-shaking or lighter-showing, spoken fast but without rhythm or rhyme. Major turnoff…

Somehow it seems to be about Jamaican tradition, but honestly: I don’t care. I just don’t get what’s so fun about this constantly interrupted medley-playing. Theres no flow in it!
It’s just frustrating, because I like the music, but I can’t dance. I just don’t get it.  Maybe I’m just too old…

Good night.

Re-Release of this page

February 5th, 2009

I changed this page to a wordpress blog. That doesn’t actually change much in sense of design (if there ever was any), I rather hope, the easier handling will have me use it more frequently.  Keep your fingers crossed ;-)