Clever thingymajigs from Sonarmatica

Sonar - the Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art - came and went in Barcelona this June. To conform to the recent Dare mandate that all staff holidays must involve intense immersion in current client brand experiences, two planners spent 3 days consuming this Vodafone sponsored event.

Sonarmatica - the Multimedia element of Sonar - was entitled "Always On" and focussed on mobile culture and location projects. The tastiest morsels, as shown in the Dare session, are listed below. Plus there is a tantalising dash of some of the advanced music to add a whiff of off topic excitement.

Sonar 2006
http://www.sonar.es

Blast Theory - The Day of the Figurines
www.blasttheory.co.uk
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/008663.php
SMS driven community game set in a universe parallel to the 3 day festival.

Michelle Teran - Life: A user's manual
http://www.ubermatic.org/life/index.html
Strange Canadian lady who uses home-made radio receiver equipment to discover the hidden world of private wireless CCTV streams that surround us.

Yellow Arrow project
http://yellowarrow.net
Linking personal messages to physical locations using the power of sticky yellow arrows. When the pack I've ordered arrives, I'll update here with the locations for you to visit.

GPS drawing
http://www.gpsdrawing.com
The spatially intriguing art of drawing using your location.

G-Player
http://www.jensbrand.com
Discover the mad Germanic practice of using the Earth's topography as a vinyl record to produce sounds. It won't chart quite yet.

Zapped!
http://www.zapped-it.net/
Immerse yourself in the increasingly Orwellian world of RFID ubiquity.

Bio mapping
http://www.biomapping.net/
Mapping "arousal" against geographic location. George Michael peaked on the Heath.

Tactical Sound Garden
http://www.andinc.org/
Plant your own sound garden. Black Hole Sun optional.

Interpretive Engine for Various Places on Earth
http://34n118w.net/
I'm not sure of the use of this, unless you live in California. Well for the moment anyway.

reacTable*
http://mtg.upf.es/reactable
The reacTable is an electronic multi-user musical instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Erm. Yes.

And now for a musical interlude:



Birdy Namnam
http://www.birdynamnam.com
French DMC Technics team championship winning DJs make music with decks.

Doravideo
http://tubech.com/test/read.cgi/DIHsuUgQeGo/tag/jitter/l50
Fat Japanese man with a drum kit connected to his VHS. Hero.

And some pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sonarfestival/