The Bucky-Gandhi Design Institution

Robert Neuwirth on the Global Slums

Just watch this.

If you want to know what my world looks like, what the hexayurt is **really** about, watch this video.

Gus Gus

New album, opening concert thingee in a couple of weeks, and this long interview in the Reykjavik Grapevine

The iconography and the ideas… very familiar.

Snowing in Reykjavik

(above, a short movie, below, a still.)

This is why the Pentax Optio WPI was a good idea. Showerproof cameras make a lot of sense.

No Limits 90s additional bits and pieces

Set up.

Lights.

Camera

Action!

MP4 video of… well… they did say 90s.

I had a good time anyway!

Emilie Simon & Thor @ Sirkus

Well, one things leads to another, and some new friends (Thor and Unnur of Cocktail Vomit and Smari McCarthy) went to see one Emilie Simon. It was an odd show - lots of extremely random midi gear and a fellow who looked a lot like Willy Wonka set around an impish french girl with a highly improbable range of expression. The flow from acoustic to electronic, and the integration of the genres was smoother than I’ve seen before and quite groundbreaking, although the show was in some way a bit high art and less a gig. The glitter of french conceptualism?

But the music was good!

is an audio clip (low res audio off my digital camera) that gives some flavor of what was going on,

is (excuse the black key frame) a video clip of one song (MP4, about four meg)
After which we collectively retired to Sirkus where Thor spun an extremely compelling set. It’s pretty remarkable to hear a set of that quality in what amounts to a tiny dive bar on a large, mostly empty island in the middle of nowhere. The musical culture here is incredible: tight knit community, high standards of both professionalism and presentation expected in even small venues… I think the Icelandic music phenomena is just starting and that set was pretty good evidence of it. Never mind that he’s a really nice man

ANARCHY IN… well…. Kaffi Hljomalind

Went down to the opening of the bookstore below the cafe today. Quite a fun event. Shot a lot of video of but, duh! I had the camera in portrait rather than landscape orientation. OOps. If I can’t rotate it, you’re going to get the video wrong side up.

(Ah! Quicktime Pro can do this, Jonathan tells me.)

Video compresses slowly in the background… (click the image for the video! please excuse it being in a zip file, I’m having problems with MIME types on the server)

On the way home, the sky was performing.

Gus Gus video

Gus Gus video showing - well, see the club at the end with the semi-circular bar? That’s where I saw Bloodgroup last night.

One way of conceptualizing this place is that it’s 170,000 people. Subtract those who’ve left the scene, and you’re left with a musically / artistically active population around that of Burning Man (either now or 15 years ago, depending on your count.) And, although people travel, this is home base.

It’s like an art incubator.

Thank you, whoever you are… (a great show at Sirkus)

Sirkus (their website seems to be down) is a nifty little bar. I saw a set there tonight which, as the invaluable Inside Reykjavik predicts, I may simply never know the name of because the band was either known to everybody in the bar - personally - or just never announced their name in English for muggins here.

It was however, a bloody marvelous show, and I’ve taken the liberty of putting one of the tracks here (off my camera, low res mono audio.)

If you can identify, please do me the honor of letting me know who this was!

(and, yeah, I should have asked somebody at Sirkus but it wasn’t that sort of night for me.)

Identified! They were Bloodgroup.

The best damn apple pie of my life… in Iceland

from Hressingarskálinn (aka Hresso).

Looking for work in Reykjavik, Iceland

So I’m now officially looking for work in Iceland. I’m still not sure of how long I’m going to stay - I’ve rented a place, so it’s measured in “months” but the question is “months… or years?”

So far the environment is appealing. Butt-cold but not much worse than New York, and certainly nothing compared to Colorado (which I loved dearly) or Boston (meh.)

People are great - a lot like west coast Scots which isn’t all that surprising when you consider the history of the nation.

So this leaves the question of “what do I do?” Having been advising a friend on their web site I’m pretty sure that going back to tech even just for the money would be a serious hardship - the distance I have from the tech game having done hexayurts for six months full time really makes me see that it’s all a series of horribly glitchy work arounds for some really broken fundamental concepts. Rebuilding the web around RSYNC or SUBVERSION or some sensible protocol, say, and much more use of hashes for rapid content synchronization.

I wonder if IPV6 will provide a place to make that fix. Probably not
So if it’s not tech, what is it? Hexayurts, yes. Environmental consulting? Possibly, although I don’t have a degree. I’m wondering about “polish” translation - taking texts which have been translated by non-English speakers and adding the flair and detail which a good native speaker can add, but which is profoundly difficult for a non-Native speaker to add. Don’t know if it would pay, but realistically I think that international consulting on the ‘yurt is likely to be what really pays the bills. I think that I’m basically looking for a post for immigration reasons and basic expenses.

If you’re reading this and you think you might have work of some kind for me, please get in touch.