www.magneticmigration.net

Zoë Irvine’s Magnetic Migration Music (1998 - present) is installed in this years Alt-w exhibition in its ‘mix tape’ format, where you can explore and mix your own soundscapes from fragments of discarded audio tape. Strands have been found all over the world wherever tape players have ventured. These fragments are worn and battered but can be re-spooled, and listened to.

www.gabba.tv/blog.html

Premiering at this year’s Alt-w exhibition is the biologically networked installation World Wide Wegg (2008) by Jaygo Bloom with Ian Campell and Paul Fernihough.

Hens living in a community farm in Edinburgh are networked with the CCA so that each time an egg gets laid a signal is sent to the web enabled toaster in motion providing gallery goers with hot toast for consumption. The same egg laying response generates a single random number, after six eggs are laid a lottery ticket is purchased online.

Not only that, on the breakfast table is a peck controlled iTunes soundsystem, each peck on the piezo mic' attached to the chicken feed bowl causes the 'Cock Rock Disco' playlist to skip forward a track playing perpetual flutterings of chicken inspired songs.

Stills, 23 Cockburn St, Edinburgh
Saturday 30th August 2008, 11am - 6pm

What does an artist need to produce strong stage photography? The latest expensive camera equipment? Additional light-sources? Assistants? Actors? Set designers? No.... just your eye, a little intuition and any camera will do the rest.

Following the screening of SPAM the Musical at the Edinburgh Art Festival, this workshop will show you how to create your very own tableau vivant using a fine selection of spam emails as the starting point.

The workshop will be hosted by one of the anonymous artists behind SPAM the Musical, who has worked with no-budget staged photography for 15 years. All equipment will be provided but you are welcome to use your own camera or bring your own spam email.

This workshop is now fully booked.

1st Oct to 13th Nov 2011, Tues-Sat 10:30am-4:30pm
Bonhoga Gallery, Weisdale, Shetland ZE2 9LW

Blowup is an interactive installation that uses performers, or the audience, to bring itself alive. The real-time video projection manipulates movement and redistributes it on a large screen, distorting the size of body parts in accordance with how fast they are moving.

www.shetlandarts.org

www.twitter.com/mediascot
1st to 31st Aug 2008

"Military experiment creates intelligent snow. Icy fists smash the armies of the world. The carrot-nosed Emperor wears a coal crown."

New Media Scotland was proud to announce that its third Tweeter-in-Residence was science fiction writer Hannu Rajaniemi. He used his residency to post daily microfiction pieces which were only 140 characters long.

Perhaps the most famous example of microfiction is a six-word story by Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." He allegedly called it his favorite, and it's easy to understand why. Most of the story happens outside the frame of the six short words, in the reader's head.

Hannu stated that “Microfiction is especially appropriate for science fiction. During my tenure as New Media Scotland's Tweeter-in-Residence, I want to find out how exactly how much futureshock and sense of wonder 140 characters can deliver. My tweets will feature both one-shot microfiction, short serials with cliffhangers and hopefully a few other surprises along the way. See you over on Twitter.

Hannu Rajaniemi is an enterpreneur and science fiction writer who spends too much time thinking about the future.

He was born in Finland but has lived in Edinburgh for the last seven years. He studied mathematics in University of Oulu, Cambridge and Edinburgh University. He holds a Ph.D. in string theory and is a co-founder of ThinkTank Maths Limited, a technology consultancy.

Hannu's short fiction has featured in several Finnish magazines, the anthology NOVA SCOTIA, two Best of the Year SF anthologies, the INTERZONE magazine and in the "Postcards from Hell" series of postcard flash fiction. Hannu is currently working on a novel. He is also an active member of Writers' Bloc, an Edinburgh-based spoken word performance group.

"the mediascot twitterer-in-residence is my favourite part of twitter. love it."

45 Marchmont Crescent, Edinburgh, EH9 1 HF
August 2008 to March 2009

New Media Scotland were pleased to host the artwork 'ink' by ~in the fields. Work began retro-fitting the piece during the Edinburgh Art Festival with the artists being the inaugural users of our new Project Space in Marchmont. We were thrilled to be able to present this dazzling new installation.

www.twitter.com/mediascot
1st to 31st July 2008

Get Twitterwurk Set, Go! We were proud to announce that our second Twitter residency was Australian artist Netwurker Mez.

"Mez does for code poetry as jodi and Vuk Cosic have done for ASCII Art: Turning a great, but naively executed concept into something brilliant, paving the ground for a whole generation of digital artists." Florian Cramer

www.e-flux.com/projects/library
1st August to 9th November 2008

With digital technology and camera phones putting the realms of movie making within everyone's grasp, the pocket movie has come of age. These are short films, often less than a minute in length shot on mobile devices. The results are easy to share, easy to cause a storm and could even end up on the news.

Pocket movies are intimate and engaging, and because the technology can go anywhere you get licence to roam free and take risks. The picture quality is often very rough and ready, but work within your equipment’s capacity and if you’ve got a good idea, you’ll hook your audience and pack a punch.

Kicking off during the Edinburgh Arts Festival, Stills gallery has undergone a radical transformation. An open reference library with an eclectic array of over 7,700 books from the personal collection of the prolific artist, writer and political agitator, Martha Rosler will fill the space. Stills will be choosing a selection of titles from her book collection to act as inspiration for your pocket movies. It could be a volume on photography, political science or perhaps a comic book. The library is a repository of knowledge and ideas, it settles, breathes and lives again as new readers arrive, new discussions begin and in our case movie moments are made. Drop by the library and see what they have chosen for you.

Stills, 23 Cockburn St, Edinburgh

How to make your movie...

1. Get an idea and get filming

The ability to film on your feet means that the traditional process of movie-making has been turned on its head. The pocket movie making motto is "shoot first, ask questions later". You don't need to create the classic movie storyboard or even organise any aspect of the filming beforehand. Just look for a little inspiration, nail the idea in your head and get out fliming. Get plenty of footage. You can get to grips with what you’ve got in the edit. That's how a pocket movie is constructed. Now upload the raw footage.

2. Editing

You can edit your pocket movie on your computer using Windows Movie Maker, iMovie and Open Movie Editor, or you may have software on your mobile phone.

To keep the movie under a minute in length, look at your average shot length for each take, edit them so they are around five seconds in length unless of course it’s a single take movie. Mix and match your takes, get a rough cut together.

Keep your transitions simple, often the small size of screen renders them redundant. Titles and credits add polish, but what really makes a pocket movie sparkle is good sound. Make the most of the pre-loaded sound effects in your editing software, and don’t be afraid to add some music.

3. Distribution

The distribution of the final movie is completely in the hands of it’s creator. Use Bluetooth to send it between your friend’s mobiles, attach it to a MMS message, burn a DVD hard copy, fire off a good ol’ email, upload it onto the plethora of free online video sharing platforms such as YouTube or embed them in social networking applications such as FunWall on Facebook. Just check the file types required, and optimise the quality of your movie for your chosen platform in your editing software when you come to export.

4. Let us know how you got on

edinburgh.murmur.info
2007-2009, various locations in Leith.

After two years on the streets of Leith, the little green ears had to come down. We're presently updating the content to compliment the original [murmur] website but you can still explore the project by downloading all the stories from our SoundCloud page onto your mobile device for a self guided audio exploration of the area.

CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow
2nd Aug to 13th Sept 2008 / Tues to Sat 11am - 6pm

"Interesting, interactive. Excellent in comparison to other new media exhibitions across Europe"

Alt-w: New Directions in Scottish Digital Culture, presents a selection of work from Scottish based artists whose practice has been supported by the Alt-w Fund. These works have been brought together for the first time in an exhibition curated by New Media Scotland in collaboration with CCA.

Simon Biggs & Sue Hawksley / Nicky Bird / Jaygo Bloom / Alison Clifford / Henry Cruickshank / Gregor Dewar & Mark Vernon / Gair Dunlop / Simon Fildes & Katrina McPhersonn / Beverley Wood / Matt Hulse / Zoe Irvine / Nigel Johnson / Kapwani Kiwanga & Alan Brown / Torsten Lauschmann / Donna Leishman / Mandy McIntosh / Holger Mohaupt / Iain Morrison / Jason Nelson / Dan Norton / Andy Rice & Bill Duncan / Simon Richardson / Chris Rowland / Mel Woods / Simon Yuill