Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 03:06:09 -0400 Subject: Adventures in Oz, Report 4: last day down under Hi all, I never did get caught up with my relating my earlier exploits, and now it's my last full day in Australia. I've been quite busy since I last wrote, especially since the festival started on Wednesday. I will have to write more to fill in the 3-day gap later, after i'm back in the States. This is just a quick check-in overview of the festival and such. Since my last report I drove back down to Newcastle from Port Macquarie. On my way it rained quite a bit, my first sign of ugly weather in oz. Also on the way I got to see wild kangaroos up close for the first time! It was great. I glimpsed them in a field next to the highway and quickly pulled off to a side road, got out and took a bunch of pictures. They were the smaller, grey ones, some with joeys (babies! in pouches and out!). They are weird, funny-looking creatures all right. They looked at me carefully. Kind of like cattle do when you get too close. They were munching on grass or something. I got within 20 feet of one before it hopped a little ways away. Anyway, my drive was pleasant and I eventually arrived at the hotel in Newcastle where I was to stay, just as Mark Gunderson of the Evolution Control Committee, my roommate for the next few days, was getting there. It turned out we got a wonderful room that looks right out on the beach, with a balcony. The only problem with the room is that it's a bit small for 2 musicians with lots of gear and CDs, but we have managed. Vicki of People Like Us and Irene Moon, another performer from Athens, Georgia, arrived in Newcastle on the same train from Sydney with Mark, but they were in a different hotel. So after dropping off our luggage we walked over there and had lunch with them. I have not see Vicki since because she got food poisoning that night, and has been recovering ever since. Poor girl!Hopefully she will feel well enough to play at the big show tonite. The This is Not Art festival is a bit of a sensory overload, and I guess it is planned that way. It's actually 4 simultaneous festivals, with many many different performances and workshops and discussions all happening at once in a dozen or so different venues around town. There's so much I'm missing. But it's been great fun too. It's the highest concentration of strange freaky people that I've yet seen in Australia, and probably the most that Newcastle sees all year. I've met lots of great people, some of whom i've known via the Net or heard of and am very pleased to meet face to face. Today is the big climactic day, for me, at least. The copyright infringement section of Electrofringe sort of reaches a peak tonite, and I have 3 appearances to make today. The first one was a talk I just delivered a couple hours ago, entitled "Cultural Recycling as Cultural Activism". I was pleasantly suprised at the turnout and the response and the number of interested, intelligent questions and comments afterwards during the Q&A. In my talk I basically described Detritus and it's history and then talked about the different "phases" of collage/sample-based/recycled art work practice. Now there's a bit of a break but at 6:00 pm, in about an hour, is a "Copyright Showdown" panel discussion, which will be led by Douglas Kahn. Kahn was the one who did the famous Reagan cut-up piece back in the early 80s, and he appeared in the film "Sonic Outlaws". He is a professor at the Sydney University of Technology now, and has written a couple books about the history of sound in modern art. Also on the panel with me will be a couple lawyers from Australia who represent the "other side", and I'm not sure who else. It will be interesting, to say the least. Next, at about 8:00 tonite, is the beginning of a series of performances all centered around sampling, sound collage, etc Upstairs at the Mission Theatre will be, in order, Spanky (AUS), Irene Moon (US), me, the ECC (US) and People Like Us (UK). Downstairs is another room called "the bunker" where other mostly local acts will be playing, like Wake Up and Listen. We only have 1 hour to soundcheck 5 acts upstairs, so that should be interesting. I hope no serious tech glitches occur.. At about 1 am it will be done and then tommorrow early in the morning I will have to catch the 6am train to Sydney, so that I can get to the airport by 9 or so, so I can catch my 11:20 am flight, so that I can arrive at SFO at 7am Saturday (yes, before I leave), so that I can catch another flight to Minneapolis for another festival there, Sound Unseen. So, the next 30 hours or so are going to be.... full. Wish me luck. The next time I write will probably be from Minnesota. But I will attempt to go back and explain what i've left out of my travels here.... By the way, midwest update: It looks like I'll be in another show on October 10 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with the Tape-beatles. This in addition to the other gigs lined up and listed on my page, detritus.net/steev/ well, thanx for listening, i better get going. i still have some samples to tweak, believe it or not..... best, smh