There was one hick-up when the connection dropped, but on the whole the link worked very well and the audience was treated to an interesting, experimental, and very personal performance.

It was the result of a number of workshops and rehearsals led by Ximena Alarcón as part of her Networked Migrations project. Pictures and video from the project can be found on the Interact Gallery website at http://interactgallery.co.uk/networkedmigrations.html.

When you arrive you are greeted by a large pink 'shamanic' figure. I saw this being made when I tuned in to the live broadcast and he looks even more impressive in the flesh/plaster. There are then assorted props and detritus (or rather 'archival materials') from the event, plus video and projections.

Make of it what you will. I rather enjoyed it. I particularly like the fact that emerging local artists have taken the initiative to create a space like this. 'The News' is on for a week. Go to the 2queens.com for more information and directions. Here are some pictures from the show.

For those who don't know, the Computer Arts Society was established in 1968 and can list many illustrious past and present artists and theorists amongst it's members.

Talks are normally held in London, but I have been keen on running events under the CAS banner in Leicester. To this end we have two talks at Phoenix Square coming up - one next week by Genetic Moo about their work and another towards the end of May by Dr Nick Lambert, current chair of the society.

Information about the society and the forthcoming talks can be found on the new Computer Arts Society website at http://www.computer-arts-society.com/. Membership of the society is free and basically involves joining the CAS email list.

At 9pm things moved to The Interact Gallery where an exhibition of Simon's recent drawings will be running for the next six weeks. Then at 9:30pm Muted Fnord played downstairs at Fabrika with visuals by myself.

I hope to upload a video of Simon's talk towards the end of the week. Pictures from the Muted Fnord performance be found here.

23rd April 2012
An Expanding Atlas of Subjectivity
Simon Faithfull
Phoenix Square, 6pm FREE
www.simonfaithfull.org
http://www.facebook.com/events/119318501533942/

Simon Faithfull currently has an exhibition at Phoenix Square and The Interact Gallery. Learn more about his work and his exhibition at Phoenix Square in this fascinating talk from the internationally renowned artist. During the talk, Faithfull will discuss the development of his iPhone app and web based artwork Limbo and take part in a Q & A with members of the audience.

Muted Fnord
The Interact Gallery, Fabrika. 9pm FREE
http://www.facebook.com/events/308985445836589/

The talk will be followed by a visit to The Interact Gallery (2 minutes walk away) to view Simon's most recent drawings plus a performance by local musicians Muted Fnord.

9th May 2012
Genetic Moo
Nicola Schauerman and Tim Pickup
Phoenix Square, 7pm FREE
www.geneticmoo.com
http://www.facebook.com/events/407917592554209/

Genetic Moo's Nicola Schauerman and Tim Pickup will discuss their interactive video installations where mutated human-sea-life forms both disgust and delight audiences. They will explain their inspirations, the technologies used, and possible future directions. To contextualise their practice, the talk will start with an introduction to computer-driven interactive art work, identifying a number of key works and concepts.

Genetic Moo have been creating interactive art since 2006. Virtual creatures are constructed from choreographed video clips, combining elements of the human and the animal. They respond in a variety of life-like ways to audience motion, sound and touch and vary in size from the tiny Animacules to the all encompassing Mother. The works are driven using Open Source and Flash Software utilizing a variety of interactive interfaces. The programming behind the work is just complex enough to make the creature appear more believable. The audience should be unaware and unencumbered by the technology. The audience asks "What am I looking at?", not "How is this working?". They ask "Is it Real?"

29nd May 2012
The Computer Arts Society From 1969 to the Present
Dr Nick Lambert
Phoenix Square, 7pm FREE
http://www.facebook.com/events/357604224280650/

Although digital art is considered to be a recent phenomenon, it has its roots in the 1960s with Art and Technology and Cybernetics. The Computer Arts Society, founded in early 1969, acted as a catalyst for British and international artists experimenting with computers and set up several exhibitions of its own. It also fostered collaborations, discussed new developments and hosted heated arguments in its magazine PAGE. The CAS is still active today and its current Chair, Nick Lambert, will review its history and explain its current mission to develop a new appreciation for the digital arts in Britain.

Dr Nick Lambert is Lecturer in Digital Art and Culture at the VASARI Research Centre, School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London.

i went back to a visual style that I used to use when I did live visuals for Zion Train ten or so years ago - that is, mixing line drawings and schematics with live and processed video. It always appealed to me aesthetically, and it still seems relevant to my current work, which is often about the different ways we can see the world - be it in a reductionist way (where everything is broken down in to parts and labled) or in a system-like way (where the world is seen a unified whole of interacting parts).

The raw materials I used included a sequence of video clips I recorded at Leicester market, slowed down and abstracted until only the colours and rhythms of the movement remain, plus botanical drawings of plants, anatomical drawings of the human skeleton and schematics of machines. I then added an image of the Emperor Julian II that I scanned from a 1,500 year-old roman coin and a quote about the world being "one living thing" that came from a translation his writings. The whole lot was then mixed live using one of my sound responsive Max/MSP/Jitter patches.

Of course, I didn't expect anyone at the show to pick up on all of these elements, but I think it make for an interesting visual mix and the feedback seemed positive.

I think that the next versions of my Memory Mirror artworks will include some of these elements, indeed I've already been surreptitious placing the image of Julian around Leicester so that when I come to use it in a installation piece it will have a subtle familiarity! Get a free badge from here if you like.

A collection of stills can be found here on Flickr and there is a 15 minute video clip of Muted Fnord playing accompanied by the visuals here on YouTube.

At the moment it features the Hijacked III exhibition (on until the 6th May 2012). Using QR codes around the exhibition you can trigger audio, video, see text and additional images. You can download the app for free from the Apple App store here or by searching for "Derby Quad Exhibition".

Simon will also be giving a talk about his work at Phoenix Square on 23rd April 2012 at 6pm that will be followed by a live at event at Interact from 9pm to 11pm.

You can download Simon's iPhone App via his Limbo website at limbo.simonfaithfull.org. You can also subscribe to his drawings via Twitter and Facebook.

Amongst the tributes to Alan Turing in this centenary year is a touring exhibition of artwork inspired by his life and works. The most recent destination of the exhibition was the Workstation in Sheffield as part of the LoveBytes festival. I managed to make it up and spent a couple of hours looking at the work on display.

It was an interesting collection that included interactive and responsive work, robotics, sound art and prints. A robotic "artist" that made drawings of visitors seemed to get particular interest from the general public. I personally enjoyed seeing three of Roman Verostko's prints at close quarters - the level of detail is amazing.

I took quite a few pictures and have uploaded them to my Flickr page. I'm hoping to bring the exhibition to Leicester later in the year. I'll announce this on my website as soon as everything is confirmed. For more information about the exhibition visit the website at http://turingcentenaryarts.eu/.

The exhibition itself contains various mixed-media pieces that make use of light, water, projections and screens. There are some interesting ideas on show and it's a good statement of intent I think. It certainly places the gallery in a clear contemporary art context.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what the artist-led groups behind the space (CUSP and Vanilla Galleries) do with it. I'm sure it will become a valuable addition to the Leicester arts scene. You can find out more about the gallery at their website http://2queens.com/ and follow them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/twoqueensleicester.

In 2010 Cuttlefish got involved and produced an iPhone app for the festival. Last year we took over the festival website and produced an Android as well as iPhone app. I also ran an Interact Gallery off-site exhibition of Memory Mirror at the 2011 event.

This year we will have a similar level of involvement, with the website already being updated regularly with new announcements and a new version of the iPhone app appearing in the Apple App store a couple of weeks ago.

We've also added a few extra things to the festival's web infrastructure for 2012: there's now a Podcast series showcasing music from last and this year's line-up; we've also added a custom page/App to the Facebook site to promote ticket sales; and we plan to make a mobile web version of the line-up available to people who don't have iPhones or Android phones at the festival.

It's always interesting coming up with new ideas for how we can use the internet to help promote the festival. Technology is constantly developing and you sometimes have to make a real effort to keep pace with it. The big bonus with Summer Sundae, though, is that after the work's done you get to relax and have fun at the festival itself!

During the workshop we successfully used the software to make an audio connection with Columbia and are feeling quite confident that it will deliver what we need in the future. The plan is to use Jacktrip to create a high quality audio session between Leicester and Mexico for the Networked Migrations performance later in the month.

Well, the first thing you notice is that it's cheap - very cheap. For just £25 it aims to provide you with a fully-fedged computer that will run a real operating system.

Part of this cost saving is down to the fact that you can plug it in to your TV instead of buying a monitor. You'll also need to provide your own USB keyboard and mouse since these are not included. What's more it doesn't come with a hard drive - instead you'll need to use a cheap SD card to give the computer some storage. RAM is limited to 256Mb and the processor is more like the one you find in your smartphone rather than a desktop PC. In fact, the whole device has more in common with mobile phone hardware than the typical home computer.

You may be thinking that the device sounds is rather limited. Well yes it is (remember, it only costs £25!), but Smartphone level computers are actually pretty powerful devices these days. If you run a efficient operating system on them (such as Raspberry Pi's Debian Linux) and include a decent graphics chip (like the Raspberry Pi has) you will indeed have a computer that will do most of the things we use current desktop computers for - web browsing, email, document editing and - within reason - gaming.

However, despite being capable enough, the Raspberry Pi is not really intended to be a cheap way of doing these sorts of things. Instead, the goal of the project is to ignite interest in computer programming and computer hardware development.

People my age who became interested in computers did so using the equivalent of stripped-down simple computers like the Raspberry Pi. The Acorn and Sinclair computers of my youth had only a fraction of the power of 'professional' computers of the time, but there were relatively cheap and most important of all they were straightforward to program. They were also very hackable. I remember soldering wires directly on the the board of my beloved ZX80 and building my own hardware voice synthesiser!

With the industry focus on ever increasing processing power to support ever larger operating systems and games, and young people being taught how to use applications rather than programming, the makers of the Raspberry Pi believe computing has lost something since those days.

Raspberry Pi hope that their device will get people doing real computing again. It's priced at the level of a textbook and hopefully every school pupil will one day have access to one.

A community is already starting to develop around the device and there seems to be a huge demand for the hardware. I've been lucky enough to get my order in and when it arrives I look forward to getting coding on it. I'll no doubt report back here once I have.

The film made even more sense second time around around, but the highlight was hearing Nora Bateson talking about her father's ideas and the making of the film. Her enthusiasm was infectious. The panel was less interesting for me - basically a series of monologues rather than a discussion.

More screenings are planned (check the website for details) and there was even talk of a sequel to the film. I hope this was a serious suggestion!

All radio frequencies exist in the same place simultaneously, their waves travel around our world almost instantly and we can't see or touch them. Yet we not only managed to not only discover them in the first place, but are able to control them in such a way that within decades of discovery their use became essential to the modern world.

For a while I've been thinking about a project that would look to visualise the radio spectrum around you in a creative way - letting you see, hear and 'feel' the waves around you. Making the invisible, visible. I'll report back when I've made some progress.

In this film, named "An Ecology of Mind" after one of Gregory Bateson's best known books, Bateson's daughter Nora presents a portrait of the man and his work. It contains many interviews with people influenced by his ideas, plus plenty of archive footage of Gregory Bateson from his lectures, as well as home movies. Fritjof Capra, who I have spent time with at Schumacher College, makes a number of insightful contributions.

It makes for fascinating viewing. It certainly helps you understand what Gregory Bateson's ideas were about, but just as interesting is the backdrop of his relationship with daughter Nora Bateson. She clearly adored him, although he was aged 64 at the time of her birth and died when she was only 12.

Gregory Bateson's writings can be hard to make sense of (at least by me!) and this film makes for a great introduction to his work. The film is currently on tour around the UK, although I purchased it from Amazon in Germany. See www.anecologyofmind.com for more information.

In the film he presents many of the ideas that can be found in his book of the same name. He introduces the nature of the ecological crisis we are currently experiencing, discusses Goethe's approach to science (which is very much the basis for his teaching at Schumacher), explains Gaia Theory and illustrates it all with a detailed look at the long-term carbon cycle (albeit without the amusing personifications of the elements involved that I have heard him use before!).

The film is an impassioned plea for a more holistic view of the world around us in order to come up with long-term solutions to ecological problems. It's a film that needs to be seen and I encourage you to try and see it.

See www.animateearth.com for more information about the film. You can find the book on Amazon here or simply search for "Animate Earth".