chris sugrue (us)
delicate boundaries
actually i really enjoyed this installation, maybe it was the still little child in me that likes to roam around in backyards, pick up worms and try to get them moving on my arms.
in this installation you can have this feeling in a clean digital way, if you touch the screen the litle creatures are starting to cross the border of the screen and crawl along your hands…so cute!
first step :-|
by axolotl and ka
it was quite easy to be reminded to organize everything in time because of huge smiley posters all over town.
the smiley symbol seems to be the main merchandising source this year. we have a number of different theories about the use of this icon. for one it is a trademark and we were wondering if there is a connection involving loads of money. also it was widely used as a symbol for the 80ies acid house movement. an this brings us directly to the last reason: (as you might remember) there were a huge amount of xtc pills that had exactly this symbol engraved 8-)
also we had to discover that now this festival is as far from underground as vienna is from the sea.
not that it is only the fault of sonar, as we had a big phantasy of this cool festival that it can surely not fit. and partly because, well, only one phrase: SELL OUT! :(
almost immediately after the “your payment was recieved” mail the follow-up message told us about the wonderful world of SONAR merchandising this year. the flagship item is the somewhat boboesque adidas-SONAR-vinyl bag “free” for acreditation holders (of which finally we are proud owners) yupiiieeee.
and in good old bobo attitude the guy next to us (of course he was viennese) stated that the vinyl bag really is quite small (we estimate a maximum of 8 discs fit into the bag – good for minimal techno or style but bad for turntabelists)
we found out that the sum of 3500€ buys you a place in the bag for your own commercial insert. the bag exists in a limited edition of 4000 pieces. that’s nearly 1 euro per bag, man *:D
as you can see from the picture, they could’ve spent more thoughts or money on the design.
for the notes, check out the flickr site
after our first contact with the festival (so far we only picked up our bags) we as tagr.tv members officially tag the smiley logo as “not be used again in the next ten years”. we are quite pessimistic concerning the future of our sms conversations.
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
as an endless number of smileys pass by, the capitalist character of the festival becomes more and more evident.
with the price of almost 50€ per night for entering (if you buy single tickets), we were wondering how expensive drinks will be on the inside. so we are already making plans how to smuggle in huge amounts of beer, but no worry, we have our super special SONAR bags and are allowed using the super special “accreditations only” entrance. :)
%*[] (as you might not know this particular one stands for “super toasted”)
these are our first impressions. more when we report from the inside tomorrow when the festival actually begins.
barcelona
is famous for a lot of things, for the lovely beaches, palmtree avenues, interior design shops on every corner, parties, pakistanis selling beer and samosas on every plaza all night long, its modernistic and contemporary architecture, its fashion victims and their bad taste for glasses, all those fucking “guiris” and last but no t least the great number of festivals (i daresay each weekend one)
one of them is the OFFF festival that features current movements in multimedia design. it takes place at the CCCB (curios all thes triple letter words for festivals and museums here).
but it seems to be a quite barcelonian problem that for locals its hard to manage to buy tickets on time because of the maniac number of foreigners who want to connect with all the lovely advantages that this city has to offer.
so it results that the tickets were sold out one whole month before the fesival actually took place. even our guest (erasmus paid holiday) university BAU didn’t manage to get tickets for their studens (us).
so the only thing that we ended up being able to do is stroll around the festival chillout area, which was outside, and find out when and how the people got their tickets and if there were any freebies.
how you might have figured out already this article not really treats the art that took place at the festival, no, its about the art of getting a ticket.
so find out for yourself how the people did it:
actually it was quite interesting to talk to all those people visiting the festival because we found out a few interesting things: first of all few people paid the tickets themselves. lesser people really are from barcelona [!?$], you better get up earlier to buy your tickets (or get your fabulous press acreditation), this is the best way to get in touch with the creative lot, and the feeling in this city is like a “piefkesaga” in disneyland with people who talk catalan instead of tyrolean.
in the end we felt like outcasts because we were the only ones without those shiny glowing neon unreachable bracelets.
we didnt catch OFFF here in barcelona but we just might make it half way round the globe to OFFF in mexico…
if you like to know more about offf, read some résumés:
*h2omagazine (spanisch)
*ntmy (english)
and some slasher:
*otro blog más (spanisch)
*tink (english)
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