here are some links I was talking about -
to see the music videos of Cat Power& Sonic Youth
(there are some oher trailers etc) go here
Some webpages with a design that i like-
* maching the notebook i showed you today - here is the website of this project
* another project of that association: a project called FOR. It is for young managers of culture. The 5 words under the main title mean- przestrzen-space, czas-time, dzwiek-sound, slowo-word, obraz-picture. I like the colors a lot and the general design. It's very simple, but very clear and it looks good.
* another project of the association: young menagers of culture. the name suggests its pyrpose. The page is even mre simple then the other one, but I again like the colours and the design plus the picture of the girl and the guy is also a poster.
* another project of the association: inspiration-activation. to give ideas to yound ppl, to activate, to motivate the youth workes to work with them and to make them motivate the youth later on. Its hard to get a hang of it if you dont spea polsh, but just look at the design, the ways the menus are made etc.
http://www.inspiracja-aktywacja.org.pl/
* You can also check the general webside of the assocation:
http://www.e.org.pl/
I guess it's all in a sort of the same style.
* There is also a nice independent music festival, which has a simple but cool webpage-
Thats it for now.
If ill come upwith something new again ill put it here,
see you thusday,
m.
http://www.die-print-profis.de/preise.htm
I started looking into the organizational part of the festival already a bit and I sent an email and posted an entry on our blog about the funding possibilities. I'll put it here too, keep all important material on my own weblog too.
Funding Options
We could try "UM Stimuleringsfonds". Contact person is Karin Makkinga. Her e-mail address is: karin.makkinga@ssc.unimaas.nl
We could also try Gemeente Maastricht, department "Kunst en Cultuur" (Art and Culture). Tel. 350 5447 (or the operator 350 4000).
Another option is the Province of Limburg. Tel. 389 9999.
I wrote in the email that I will have a look into the first possibility and this is what I found out-
Promotion Fund
New organizations or special, unforeseen activities sometimes fail to meet (as yet) the criteria and conditions to qualify for structural funding. To prevent promising initiatives from failing to come to fruition because of lack of funds, the UM Promotion Fund was set up.
The objectives of the UM Promotion Fund include supporting initiatives which:
are of importance for all UM students;
constitute a positive contribution to student life in Maastricht;
have a positive effect on the image of the UM;
promote active participation by students
cannot make use of other internal or external funding:
are open to both UE and HVE students;
are not aimed at students of one discipline;
do not overlap with existing activities;
are supported by sufficient publicity;
are internationally orientated.
An application should agree with more than one of the abovementioned conditions.
Applications
Applications may be submitted 8 weeks before the start of the activity, by UM students, student organizations or student associations.
Each application must include the following data:
identification of the applicant or organization (name, address, telephone number, e-mail address and bank/giro account, contact person);
a description of the activity or the project (objective, content, target group, publicity plan, timetable);
a thorough budget.
Acceptance
In principle, each application may qualify for funding from the UM Promotion Fund for up to €1815 on an annual basis. For the same kind of activity an application may be submitted for maximally three successive years.Subsidies may be granted as a guarantee, which means that in the case of loss, the amount of subsidies is paid back in part or in full after the end of the activity.
Procedure
Applications for funding from the UM Promotion Fund must be submitted in writing - undersigned by the applicant - to Student Services, attention of the Secretary of the UM Promotion Fund Committee, P.O.Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht.
The UM Promotion Fund Committee shall take a decision with respect to the application within 6 weeks after receipt. The Promotion Fund Committee consists of a student and the Director of Student Services.
The applicant is obliged to report in writing within 3 months after completion of the activity as to the effects of the activity and the use made of the means provided.
More information: 043 - 3885263.
Here are some pictures by Paulina:
Flo and Arne deciding their tactics
The guys are enjoying, Jelena is trying out the xylophone :)
Jasiu taking a brake, he passed the mic to me ('Sing bitch!!-Jelena P.' :)) ) Arne trying to figure out the crazy keyboard :)
Jasiu preparing the trumpet, blurry me on the run.
what's so funny?? :))
give me the beat guys and ill hit this drum right on!!!
If I were Hawaian, yabidibidibi.....
But men, where the hell IS Boston?
]]>We will deal with the emerge of the new public spheres created in the new media like Internet. Public Sphere is a space between the state, the market and the private life where a discussion on the common good is led or at least should be. The final product of this module will be an article of 5000-6000 words on a public controversy on the Internet. I will soon post the outline.
Waiting for Benoit in Cafe roi de Belges in Brussels. 18.12.2005, 15.05
Interview with Benoît Dobbelstein in Brussels, 18.12.2005, 15.30
Interview with Ronald Vanhuffel in Gent, 18.12.2005, 19.05
Ronald Vanhuffel's home studio.
Tired but happy, 18.12.2005 23.30
Serhan Berberoglu before his interview. 19.12.2005, 16.45
Jan Smeets, AKA Jasiu in his natural environment ( interviewed on 7.12.2005)
Jasiu with his 'group buddy', Flo, Sven and me on a Sint Nicolas Evening at his new place (picture by Paulina).
]]>As we want to include the principle of DIY in the theoretical part of our final assesment here is a description of DIY ethics. See more or read related links here.
The DIY ethic refers to the idea of 'doing it yourself', i.e., of making and promoting music without major record label backing, and without any great level of "selling out". A popular slogan of the DIY movement is "DIY not EMI", an explicit rejection of the major label of that name.
Many DIY artists argue that a DIY-style career is not only an alternative to mainstream success; it is preferable. DIY artists share much more in common with and are thus more able to reach out to their audience than "arena rockers".
Many punk bands have embraced the DIY ethic, promoting self-organised gigs in small halls and setting up small independent record labels and distribution networks such as Dischord Records (a renowned D.C. DIY label), Flat Earth Records (based in Leeds, UK), Loony Tunes Records (set up by the Scarborough, UK band Active Minds), Sudden Death Records (started by the Vancouver band D.O.A.), Slampt (influential and now defunct punk label from Newcastle, UK), and Profane Existence [1] (http://www.profaneexistence.com/) (a fanzine, record label and anarchist collective based in Minneapolis, USA). In England from the late 1970s to the early 1980s labels such as Falling A Records expanded the DIY idea into a movement that used the cassette tape medium as a cheaper and more easily accessible alternative to vinyl (although vinyl was still used by them at times), a trend referred to as the DIY cassette movement or cassette culture.
Such labels and collectives tend to have relatively small outputs and sales, although there are groups who have been able to achieve levels of mainstream success while maintaining a fiercely independent and uncompromising stance. Notable examples include the UK band Crass and US singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco. Dischord's Fugazi rarely charged more than $5-10 admission to their live (all-ages) shows, and have kept their album prices at about $10, as with other bands on the label.
The DIY punk ethic also extends to how any group or individual applies DIY political stances to daily life—especially how they avoid contributing to institutions they see as exploitive. These efforts include converting cars to run on biodiesel or greasel (http://www.greasel.com/), learning bicycle repair, starting gardens, dumpster diving, etc. To a certain extent, DIY is simply a way of finding ad hoc solutions to problems that are otherwise usually solved with wealth or corporate support.
check an extended definition and sound samples here
Three international UM students play in a band Très.B
It's all about the music
All three have the same passion and seem inseparable. When one of them moved from Denmark to Maastricht, the others came along. Last September, Misia Furtak, Thomas Pettit, and Olivier Heim started their studies in Maastricht. At the beginning of November, as Très.B, they won the jury's and the public's award at the annual student song festival in the Kumulus Theatre.
The student song festival was the second performance in Maastricht for Misia Furtak (23, Poland), Thomas Pettit (19, Luxembourg) and Olivier Heim (19, Luxembourg). It provided them with three hundred euros in prize money as well as participation in the Dutch national student song festival in Enschede in May 2006. "It was really cool," says Misia, Masters student of media culture. "The audience felt that we made difficult music accessible." Difficult music? "It sounds eclectic: we use different styles mixed together. Anything from trip hop (a combination of dance, rock and hip hop, ed.) to jazzy." Four numbers can be downloaded from their website, www.meettresb.co.nr, and it is true that the songs are difficult to place in any particular category.
The three met last year in Denmark, at the School of Music. Misia had just completed her Bachelors in journalism in Poland and decided that before she started on her Masters she would spend a year doing her favourite hobby: singing. Thomas and Olivier (both first-year students at the University College) have known each other since their first year in secondary school in Luxembourg and did not want to go straight into university. Thomas (half British, half Danish) knew about the Danish School of Music and because he and Olivier have been "jamming" regularly since they were thirteen (Thomas on drums, Olivier on guitar), the decision to go to Denmark together was an easy one to make.
]]> Album
The idea of a band came about when an open stage evening was announced. "Why not? we thought." Olivier: "We called ourselves B in the first instance. We wanted our music to sound rough and not commercial, just B. Later on, we added Très to the name. That refers to the fact that there are three of us, but it's also the French translation of the word 'very'. When we create a song that really suits our style, we always say 'this is Très.B'." They do not have their own album yet (six songs are finished, another nine are being worked on), but with the prize money from the student song festival they have come a step closer. In a year's time, when they have saved up enough, they hope to be able to complete their first CD on their own.
Two-room apartment
The new band disrupted all their private plans. At the end of the course in Denmark, Misia was supposed to go and live with her brother in Copenhagen, because she was going to study at Roskilde University: "It is close by and is just like the UM, internationally orientated and works with a Problem-Based Learning system." Thomas and Olivier were thinking about a trip to some far-off country, the exact destination still had to be determined. Now they wanted to continue with their music and so together they moved to Copenhagen. For six months the three shared a two-roomed apartment with two other students. Thomas: "We had no privacy whatsoever, but it was a good test to see how well we got on. We did well."
Misia was turned down for Roskilde University (RU) because of a mistake in the registration procedure. Thomas (both he and Olivier enrolled at the RU) did not receive a reaction to his enrolment. So they went looking for an alternative: Olivier (both of his parents are from the Netherlands) knew Maastricht and knew that the UM had the same education system. Misia immediately registered for the Masters course in media culture, Olivier and Thomas for the Bachelors at the UCM. So again, all three packed their bags and moved from Copenhagen to Maastricht. The first two months they stayed with friends of Olivier's, sleeping in the living room.
Since then, they have found their own accommodation in Maastricht, the garage being converted into a soundproof practice area. Does it not get to be too much, spending so much time together? The answer is No, "we really like each other; and it is handy if we live together because we can spend all our free time making music." Misia: "I have sung in lots of bands, but it has never felt as right as it does with these two."
Irene Smeets
]]>
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/Wenz/30-Juni-99-C/english/narrativ.html
]]> 
I'm not sure I will write my final essay on Blade Runner though, cause I'm not a fantasy fan and maybe I will find and example that will suit me more. I'll look more in the area of interactivity, self-reflexivity and metafiction. Let's see what happens:)
This has been a surprisingly interesting module. I would never like to study medicine but I’ve enjoyed reading the texts for our tutorial group meetings and I’ve also very much liked the skills trainings where we really got a “hands-on” experience of what we were reading and learning about. The difficulty was to connect the module with our curriculum. Without seeing the reader and knowing what is the contents of this course you may think it refers to computer games – body as a computer game’s character therefore an interface. As soon as you get to the literature for the first assignment you have no doubts that it is not at all the theme of the course. You will lean about representations of human body, history of anatomy. Suddenly it looks like this module has nothing to do with Media Culture but after a few classes you realize that it has a lot to do with Media Culture indeed. There are other media then television radio and the ones you usually consider popular media, the problem of real and virtual does not only consider abstract objects and people but also your very own and very concrete body and so on. I think that if you deal with something as concrete as the body you get a better understanding of what you’re learning about cause we all have a body and we can all refer to it.
Digital technology of creating representations is a very interesting subject to think about. It promises judgment free representations, just as mechanical objectivity did. But as soon as you really get to know the pictures you ask yourself a question - what is it? is it really a human? how can I use these picture for a betterment of the knowledge of my body? My answer for these questions was - I don't know. Without certain explanations I wouldn't know if the MRI scan shows a brain or a knee slice and surely I don't know how the fact that I've seen the slices can build up the knowledge of my own body. Maybe the fact that I got a lot of explanations makes it better but if it weren’t for that I’m not sure how useful it would be.
I have started thinking more about the body, as a side effect I guess, but it is weird I must say, because body is something we don’t really know and things we don’t know are often scary. Scientist have been working on explanations for all the questions we have for ages but even now, with all the amazing, new technologies they can’t solve the mystery of human body. This is what the name of this entry refers to, not that body became a mystery to me after this module. Not at all. I've learned a lot but even though we learn more and more, we discover new functions and we work on new tools to help us to work out the body, it still stays a mystery.
Our surface, our interface- unsolvable.