A useful resource, especially for links to free software for converting various video formats.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Video_Production

Listed there is a piece of software I haven't tried before but looks like it could be a very handy 'swiss army knife':

http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html

I'll report back when I've given it a try. It reminds me of a free image app I've been using for years, IrfanView . If that can't open an image format then it must be very obscure. It also handles batch conversions and resizing of images.

Not sure about the legalities of this but Orb are about to release a version of their streaming client which allows you to use a MySpace account as a streaming audio server.

http://www.orb.com/myspace/

Of course the thing to bear in mind here is that the audio is being streamed up to MySpace from your PC, so the max audience size and the quality people will hear is limited by a) the upload speed your ISPi provides, and b) the maximum download bandwidth MySpace allows each useri account.

Some interesting comment including some sceptical (insightful?) remarks about 'User generated content' on The Register:

The National Open Centre has opened it's doors: http://nationalopencentre.org.uk/

Some comment by The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/26/open_source_thinking/

I see that one of the partner organisations is Open Advantage which has been doing some very useful work in the West Midlands to support businesses to explore free and open sourcei software.

Looks like it's using Drupal its contact management system.

Most open sourcei projects start with one person's vision, or a desire to scratch an itch. What happens if someone has a good idea but not the coding skills to fully realise it? Does to work to pay open source 'guns for hire'? An interesting article by Mark Shuttleworth, (founder of the Unbuntu project) on the subject:

http://mscom.rabbithole.co.za/archives/4

As technical manager for folly this blogi is obviously going to have a certain slant to it. One of the things I want to use it for is to talk about some of the tools we use or think are interesting. We have a particular interest in free and open sourcei software here (FOSS) though we do use a mix of free and proprietaryi at the moment. We're working on a number of projects to do with free software and tools, both in terms of codei and in looking at ways of making these tools more accessible. Hopefully I'll be talking a bit more about those in the coming weeks.

Fantastic - heard this on Radio 4 this morning.

This text from ICA website:

'Concerto for Voice & Machinery II is an ICA commissioned re-enactment of the infamous gig by some members of Einsturzende Neubauten and other musicians such as Genesis P Orridge and Frank 'Fad Gadget' Tovey, which took place at the ICA on 3rd January 1984 and was composed around the use of industrial machinery, destruction of raw materials and ultimately the theatre stage.'

Portraits including 13 Most Beautiful Avatars

Unusually here are some portraits conceived by Eva and Franco Mattes - all very beautiful, slick and embodying a virtuali character.

I liked the phrase within the text of the essay you can also read on their website which describes Second Life as an 'identity factory' plus a quote from Andy Warhol -

«It must be hard to be a model, because you'd want to be like the photograph of you, and you can't ever look that way. And so you start to copy the photograph»
Andy Warhol (The Philosophy of Andy Warhol 'From A to B and Back Again', 1975)

Two new websites for the digitali community:

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Digital North - www.digitalnorth.org

Ditigal Futures - www.digitalfuturesnw.com

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Digital North is to develop the media arts infrastructure across the three regions which make up the 'Greater North': The Northeast, the Northwest and Yorkshire and the Humber.

This is my first post to our new blogi. We're a bit late in the game for doing this - there are plenty of other blogs around, but I hope it will be useful to casual readers and to those more keenly following media arts activity. For myself this will be a place to collect my thoughts and archive those ephemeral things that I think are of interest.

A brief note about myself:

I am the Chief Executive for the organisation and have been formally employed here for just over 6 years, but have been less formally involved with folly since it opened its doors here in Lancaster in 1996. Then my interest was as a new media artist, gaining access to facilities, exhibiting my work and taking part in project activity.

finally we have lift off!

As Creative Director at folly I am responsible for setting our artistic vision and working with our fantastic team of specialists to bring together an ambitious and cutting edge programme of work. I would like to use this blogi to share with you my passion for this area of work, what i find interesting and why. I would also like to use it as a form of research log to record my thinking and some of my influences sharing some of my thoughts on what is unique and powerful about this area of artistic practice.