I went to the 'Faster Than Sound' event at Bentwaters Airbase, Suffolk. I was attending the event with Bathysphere and was showing one of my short films in the Nanoplex. It was a really good evening with a mixture of sound installations, live music and assorted multimedia pieces - all in the somewhat otherworldly location of an ex-cold war airbase. See more pictures on my Flickr page.

What an amazing weekend of music it was. All Tomorrow's Parties at Minehead was curated by the Dirty Three and featured Brokeback, Low, Spiritualised, Nick Cave, Grinderman, Einstürzende Neubauten, Papa M, Dirty Three, Cat Power, Bill Callahan, Joanna Newsom, and more! See some more pictures on my Flickr page.

I've managed to do a fair bit of travel recently. Last week I spent three days in Berlin with the family. Although I've been to Germany many times before, this was my first visit to the capital and I thought it was a really friendly and creative place. It made for a nice break and was also an opportunity for me to think more about the 'cities' strand of my MA project. More about this soon...

I've just finished reading 'The Story of Crass' the biography of the anarcho-punk band 'Crass' by George Berger.

I've had a long-time interest in the band (and would regard them as influential in my own work) and this book tells their story in what seems to be a well-researched way, with plenty of interviews with the ex-members of the band and people who knew them.

Even if you don't particularly appreciate the aesthetic of the band, the totality of how they communicated their message deserves attention. As a group of artists they were true 'multimediaists', making use of music, sound, video montage, visual art, the printed word and more.

As well as reminding me just how important Crass were, this book also made me regret never having the opportunity to see them play live (they stopped playing in 1984). The nearest I came was the 'Crass Collective' event at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London on 8th November 2002 in which various ex-members appeared individually - but not as Crass...

I've spent the last two weeks in the country in Bulgaria doing a mixture of commercial work, creative work and relaxing.

Armed with a decent Internet connection and a Skype phone it's possible to work just as effectively from here as it is in the UK. The Internet really is an amazing thing. As well as giving me low-cost phone calls, I can listen to UK radio on the BBC site, watch UK TV (via my Slingbox), chat on-line with family and work colleagues over MSN, edit Web sites and even play the odd game of 'Mario Kart' on the Nintendo DS with my 12 year-old son.

It's not all been sitting in front of the computer though. I've had some good days out collecting images and sounds to use in my creative work - in in particular for use in my 'Autopoiesis' MA project at Camberwell.

P.S. The horse was in my garden when I got back from town one day!

I went on a 'day trip' to Istanbul. Well, it was a day from my place in Bulgaria. Nine hours overnight to get there, fifteen hours in Istanbul and ten hours back. It was my first time there and I focussed on the more 'touristy' areas around the Blue Mosque and the Grand Bazaar.

While I was there I made quite a few audio recordings, such as this one of the midday call to prayer in Bayazit. It sounds noisy because I was sitting next to a fountain when I recorded it!

I recorded some good soundscapes though, including the sounds of boats at the harbour at 7am, people going to work through a busy park and a walk through the Grand Bazaar. These will be used in future projects I'm sure.

I've also posted a set of pictures to my Flickr page.

I was invited by the Modulate group in Birmingham to show some work I have been doing with Max/MSP/DMX controllable lasers.

It was great to be able to use their Green Street space to experiment and we came up with some really interesting visuals.

I plan to add to my laser set-up and hope to use them in a future visual set with one of the bands I work with (The Buoys maybe?).

Keep an eye on my blog for further information. I have posted some pictures from the Green Street evening on my Flickr page.

I've updated the section of my site that deals with DMX lighting. It contains information and example Max patches for the lights I have been experimenting with in my studio. More will follow soon.

I went to see 0° of Separation at the Roundhouse in Camden last night. The show featured musicians Adem, Juana Molina, Vashti Bunyan and Vetiver playing a selection of their songs.

Adem and Juana Molina have be favourites of mine for a fair while, Vashti Bunyan is a fairly recent discovery for me and Vetiver are a band I've heard of (mostly through last.fm connections) but had not listened to.

At times they played individually, for other songs they played together - with up to 11 musicians on stage at once. Adem had a great stage presence and demonstrated a multi-instrumental virtuosity that included playing a set of toy bells whilst singing a page from a children's story! Juana Molina was also a great live performer, playing guitar, live percussion and keyboards/sampler. Vashti Bunyan played guitar and sang material from her original 1970 album as well as her 2005 release. She (as did Adem) also brought some very talented co-musicians with her. Vetiver's sound was spacious folky/country Americana with plenty of stringed instruments played by a five-piece.

For two hours the revolving line-up played spellbinding music. Familiar songs saw expanded arrangements, others were stripped down to basics and played with a new freshness, and new tunes (well, new to me) blended in seamlessly. The artists were clearly enjoying themselves (especially Adem) and there was a lot of mutual respect going on for each others' music.

The tour now continues at venues around the country and I'd recommend going along if you can. It's not often you get to hear live music as good as this!

I was lucky enough to go and see a performance of the BBC programme Blue Planet last night in Nottingham. The show featured a live orchestra playing to a specially-produced two-hour edit of the BBC's amazing series about life in the Earth's oceans.

It was a spectacular night with the music from the TV show being conducted by its composer George Fenton and the video being shown on a 15m protection screen.

As someone with a 'professional' interest in shows of this type, I felt that the projector could have been a bit brighter and maybe with an even bigger screen. I was also aware of the visual difference between the High Definition (HD) video footage and the standard definition footage - perhaps a bit more work in post-production would have helped. I imagine that camera technology changed quite a bit over the years spent filming the series.

But hey, I'm being pedantic, the show was awesome and if you get a chance to see it then I suggest you jump at the chance. The scary thing is that it might not be too long before many of the animals shown will *only* be found on video :-(

The BBC excels at natural history programming and it would be great to see more shows of this type.