Hella Solutions blog: "Document. Share. Inspire."

When I was growing up in the 1980s - for those of us who were in bands - one of the coolest places to play was the all-ages spot called the Gilman Street Project. And you know what? The place has survived all this time; giving young people a safe and ‘clean’ place to play music, hang out and meet friends.

But the landlord has recently increased the rent so high that the future of this amazing resource is in immediate danger of being killed off. Do you want to make an immediate impact in the lives of young people? Donate to the Gilman Street Project! Today!!! I did…

www.924gilman.org

This Bay Area Women in Film & Media event sounds like it could be interesting. It appears to be geared to people newer to sound work but worth your time none-the-less.

THE MAGIC OF SOUND:
Creating & Using Sound for
Film, Video and All Other Media Projects

(THIS EVENT IS OPEN TO BOTH MEN & WOMEN)
A Rare Look at the Various
Elements of Sound

What technology and methods are involved in creating sound?
Why is audio such a key component to a great media project?
What technology is used in both major motion pictures and smaller projects?
What does it take to get any type of music (legally & in budget!) into your project?
What should media makers know about sound before they start shooting – the do’s and don’t’s of audio in filmmaking.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21st
at Z Space/Theater Artaud
450 Florida Street, San Francisco from 7 – 9:30 pm

Check it out HERE.

I’ve got a couple of events that might be of interest for those in the SF Bay Area. One is audio focused (music) and the other is a little less but I think it’s very applicable for anybody working in the art or media field.

Switchboard Music Festival 2010: The third annual Switchboard Music Festival is an 8-hour, non- stop music spectacle presenting composers and musicians who push the boundaries of their respective genres. No other Bay Area music festival or concert series offers such an eclectic, genre-crossing, convention-breaking, bastardizing group of experimentalists, innovators, and musical omnivores in a single event.

Sunday, 28 March, 2010
02:00 PM – 11:00 PM

Cost:
$10 – $40 sliding scale

Venue:
Dance Mission
3316 24th Street at Mission
San Francisco, CA

Artist Talk: Right Here Right Now: [NOT HAPPENING - SEE COMMENT] How do we engage with art in an immediate, unmediated way? Through choreography and composition, 2009 AIRs Kara Davis and Aaron Ximm both work toward the specific goal of creating immediate experiences that absorb, capture and immerse their audiences. Davis is a dancer and choreographer who pushes the possibilities of improvisation and ignores the traditional boundaries between audience and performer. Ximm creates intimate, site-specific sound installations that translate fleeting moments captured by field recordings into present experiences. This program is a unique opportunity to engage with performance and experiential installation created by Davis and Ximm in response to their surroundings at Headlands.

Sunday, 29 August, 2010
07:30 PM – 09:00 PM

Cost:
Free

Venue:
Headlands Center for the Arts
944 Fort Barry
Sausalito, CA 94965

This happening sounded interesting. If you’re in the area, give it a go:

Red Bull 45s

Red Bull 45s – an event that takes a piece of record history and remixes in into an innovative evolution of the traditional DJ set. The unique event pays tribute to yesteryear by tasking four DJs with creating an interactive group performance using only the 7-inch 45 rpm records popular in the 1950s and 1960s. The event format places four DJs in four opposite corners of the venue, with the crowd in the middle. Each DJ spins for no more than four minutes on 45 rpm records, with each subsequent DJ attempting to match the last beat of the previous DJ – without the help of any beat-matching programs (instead each DJ has to go “digging” through his stack of 45 rpm records). The event’s goal is to revive the once revered 45 rpm record while tasking DJs to use all their imagination and expertise to create a seamless and continuous flow of music.

Thursday, 21 May, 2009
Starts at 06:00 PM

Venue:
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Drive
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA

[click HERE for more info]

Keep Listening!

Noah

I’m currently transferring the soundboard ‘tape’ I got from the “Stop the Circus. Stop Arpaio” hip-hop show I covered in Tempe, Arizona this week. I’m happy with the sound; it ain’t perfect but there are some very usable pieces to post. So, stay tuned as I’ll be posting some awesome sh*t from show for your listening pleasure. Sheriff Joe’s guys say he’s not concerned but Arizona’s young people showed a strong and positive force this week and I recommend that Joe start looking for a new job because the people coming up in AZ aren’t going to stand for his racist ways. Serious!

http://www.verbalkent.com/
http://www.myspace.com/wordsworth
http://www.myspace.com/onebelo

There is a very interesting sound installation coming to San Francisco in February (2/12-5/8 to be specific). It is by S.F.-based sound artist Bill Fontana and it will be housed at the S.F. City Hall building.

Fontana’s sound installation, Spiraling Echoes, will employ an acoustic phenomenon common to bats, dolphins and whales known as echolocation, in which high-frequency sounds produce an acute directional beam of ultrasound. Eight transducers will be mounted in City Hall high above the floor around the circular colonnade within the Rotunda’s dome. These transducers will send out ultrasonic beams that function as carrier waves for this project’s original soundtrack. The soundtrack, which will include a range of sounds from music to spoken word to wildlife, will bring the sounds of San Francisco past and present into the building. When the transducers are moving, the sound beams will travel downward in space, playing off of and moving through the various surfaces of the rotunda.

You can find the full description at sfacgallery.org

Looks like only one somewhat audio focused event this week but an interesting one none-the-less. Check out Scrap-Soup ‘an audio/visual kinetic performance’ Friday/Saturday December 19 & 20:

How has technology changed what is important to us in conveying information? What content gets preserved and why? How do texts, both the timeless and the ephemeral, shape our cultural- and self-identities? Scrap-Soup explores these thematic questions, generating a live audio-visual-kinetic text on stage with evolving installation, 3D video, live painting, an electronic and acoustic soundscape, and dance.

WWW: http://avykproductions.com/default.aspx