I have produced series of stills from my 'City People' video (also used for The Buoys track 'Balance'). The stills and the video form the first set of visual materials for my MA project.

I went to see alt-folk harpist Joanna Newsom and hew band at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday. Despite not having the best view (it's a big venue!) the sound was excellent and the performance flawless. She's a very talented musician indeed.

I'm about to head back from a bit of a 'study break' in Bulgaria. That means I've done a bit of studying on my MA, whilst mostly having a break.

A few things are worthy of commenting on. Firstly, my horse-drawn cart and electric moped incident has gone down well with the locals.

Next, I have been getting in to 'Lost' at long last. I missed the first couple of episodes when it first started and decided not to watch it until I was able to see the start - three years and three seasons later I finally bought the first series from the iTunes store and am now hooked. It was certainly helped by the fact that I've been watching it on my laptop in the evenings in the garden with a bonfire burning. Stories of island castaways with the smell of woodsmoke and strange insect noises. Now, that's what I call a multimedia experience.

Finally, I've made some progress on a research essay I need to write for the MA. Well, I have the framework for the paper. I now just need to fill in the gaps...

PS. The chap in the picture is in his 70s. Apparently he lives with his even more aged mother who won't let him buy cigarettes. Every time he sees a foreigner he tries to blag a few fags so he can have a secret puff while he's herding his goats. I don't smoke, but luckily for him the person I was with at the time does. I decided not to attempt to lecture him on the evils of smoking - with his mother telling him what to do at his age I feel he has enough on his plate!

I'm in Bulgaria for a week and have been zipping around on my electric moped. I'd just been on a 20km journey and on the way back the juice ran out about 6kms from home. The scooter is meant to be able to to 40km+ on one charge, but the hills must have used up more power that I expected. Anyway, just as I was resigned to having to push the scooter for the rest of the journey. what should turn up but a horse and cart I'd overtaken about 4km back. The driver then rigged up a tow rope and pulled me back to the village - much to the amusement of everyone involved. A modern fable surely worthy of Aesop himself.

I'm just back from the Shambala Festival in Northamptonshire. I was invited to do some work with the Modulate group as part of their 'Modulate Garden in the Night' in the woods on the festival site.

My contributions to the event included sound responsive lasers projected in to the trees (based on my laser experiments reported earlier in this blog) and improvised video projections on the Saturday and Sunday nights. The work went down well and was great fun to do.

It was my first Shambala festival and I have to say I was really impressed with the whole event. Great music, stalls, lots of creative activities going on and a really friendly atmosphere. I've posted assorted pictures to my page on Flickr.

I've found some more pictures on Flickr of the Low show at Summer Sundae. They show my visuals quite well. Follow the link to ukpeewee's pictures of low on Flickr.

This year's Summer Sundae was another great weekend of music, entertainment and fine weather(!). With my "punter" hat on, highlights included Modified Toy Orchestra, Spiritualized and Low. With my "performer" hat on, I enjoyed doing visuals for The Buoys, swooned in fandom when given the opportunity to do visuals for the aforementioned Low (photographed above by dexter_mixwith during the show) and was able to enjoy lots of positive feedback following the Cuttlefish/Pineapster-produced Fringe Festival. I feel summer is definitely here now!

Thanks to Arts Council funding and the enthusiasm of Pineapster member Andy Black and Summer Sundae organiser Richard Haswell, Cuttlefish Digital Arts was able to run the first Summer Sundae Fringe festival. Gigs were organised on the Thursday prior to the festival weekend at four key venues around Leicester - The Charlotte, The Firebug, The Musician and the Comedy Stage at DeMontford Hall. I think the night was a great success and (I'll find out tomorrow for sure!) pretty much a sell-out. A great result for the Pineapster music community.

I went to this year's Supersonic festival at the Custard Factory in Birmingham. It was my first visit to the festival for a few years and it (and the Custard Factory) seemed to have grown over the years. I normally associate Supersonic with electronica and maybe alt-folk, but this year had a interesting 'heavy rock' feel to it.

This made for a varied line-up, with Chrome Hoof something of a highlight, as were Shit and Shine and Qui. Modified Toy Orchestra (pictured) were great and even finished with a rock number - well it was played on electronic toy guitars! Finally, Mogwai were majestic.

Check out my pictures on Flickr.

As part of my summer holidays I went over to General Toshevo in Bulgaria. My house there is now quite habitable (after a couple of years of stop-start renovations!) and it's a good place to unwind and get through my book pile.

My main topic of reading on this trip was the book 'Linked' by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. This is both an introduction to network theory and the fascinating story of how the author's research in to the subject has progressed over the years.

An awareness of the networks and interconnected systems around us - both in nature and in the human world - is a key element of my digital arts work and this book reinforces this world view. Barabasi's book also shows that different types of networks often contain similar features and topologies. Again, this is something I have been looking to explore in my creative work.

As well as 'Linked', I also started to read 'The Prehistory of the Mind' by Steven Mithen. This is an attempt to understand how the human mind has evolved and when those things we regard as particularly human, such as art and language, first emerged. So far so good, but I didn't get to finish it. Hopefully I'll still be able to find time to do some reading now that I'm back...