Bathysphere took their Nanoplex cinema-in-a-caravan to the Supersonic festival in Birmingham this evening for it's first outing.

Having had a preview of the venue on Wednesday I have to say I'm impressed with the work they've done on the venue. It's got a great surround sound system and super sharp video screen. It accommodates 6 to 8 people quite comfortably.

Amongst the work being shown in the Nanoplex is the Confluence film I have been working on.

This film combines the photography of George Harris and Candice Moule with music by Steve Gibbs.

The video was generated through aMax/MSP/Jitterpatch that was synchronised with the music.

It's being touted as the Internet's 'next big thing' and it's set to 'revolutionise' how we listen to radio.

OK, this might be yet more Internet hype, but there is still something quite interesting about 'podcasting'.

The idea is that people publish their own radio shows as mp3 files on the Web as 'podcast feeds'. Listeners then subscribe to these feeds have them automatically downloaded to their computers, or portable mp3 players (such as an iPod), whenever the author updates them.

In many ways (including the technology used) this is the audio equivalent of 'blogging' and, like blogs, podcasts put those with something to say directly in touch with those who want to listen.

Our first podcast is, naturally, related to Pineapster. If you have a podcast client (such as Apple's iTunes) you can now subscribe to a feed of the latest music that's been uploaded to Pineapster by clicking on the 'podcast' link on the Pineapster Home Page.

I attended the launch of the Three Cities project in Leicester today. I was there helping to provide audiovisual 'ambiance' during the event, as well as finding out a bit more about the project myself.

Three Cities is organising a series of arts events and festivals in Derby, Leicester and Nottingham with a particular focus on the 'cultural quarters' of each city.

The launch event seemed to go well, with various live performances, presentations, talks taking place during the afternoon and evening. You can get information about all of the activities planned from the Three Cities Create And Connect Website.

One of the projects being funded is Bathysphere's 'Nanoplex' cinema-in-a-caravan. This will provide a mobile digital arts venue that will travel around the three cities during this year and next. It's a great idea and something I'll definitely be writing about in the future.

Cuttlefish Digital Arts has been working on a directory of arts groups and activities in Leicester and Leicestershire since the beginning of the year.

We're now starting to let other people use the directory and add additional items to it. If you want to have a look then go to xxx. Let us know what you think.

Our ultimate goal with the directory is to display it on an 'interactive map' of the area, showing people where creative things are happening in their area.

We are also looking to distribute the contents of the directory via customisable 'RSS Feeds'. We hope to have this ready in time for the new RSS-friendly version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer due later in the year (allegedly). P.S. This is now going to be part of the new Pineapster.

What a scorcher! I'm just back from a flying visit to the Sonar festival in Barcelona with my Bathysphere chums.

It was my first visit to the annual festival of electronic music and digital arts and, despite only being able to attend part of the event, I saw plenty of interesting work.

In particular, the Internet-based work on display in the exhibition area was very thought provoking. It demonstrated that the Internet is not just a place to simply *show* work created predominantly off-line, but is capable of being something with it's own unique art forms, based around the nature of interactivity or information architectures.

For example, there was a nice piece of work that drew 'trees' of Web site structures and their links - this site was a veritable forest! Another couple of pieces of work explored the structures and interconnections in the flickr picture sharing Web site.

I'll research some of the pieces of work further and post any links I find here.

I managed to post a few pictures to the pLog while I was in Barcelona. The greenish looking one is actually the 'tree' constructed from the Cuttlefish Digital Arts site.

Finally, there was also the social side of Sonar. But that's really another story. I'll simply say that Bathysphere sure know how to party...

On Thursday and Friday I ran a two day digital arts workshop with interactive media artist Ricard Gras. It formed part of a series of workshops being run by Leicester Council as part of their 'Pogo' series of events.

During the two-day session we created a simple, but effective piece of work based around the faces of the 7 workshop participants.

A Max/MSP/Jitter patch was created that allows a composite image of their faces to be animated by moving in front of a video camera. As this animation runs a soundtrack of the workshop participants talking about faces is played. It works well.

The work can be seen at an exhibition of all Pogo projects on Wednesday 22nd June at DeMontfort Hall from 4pm to 9pm.

Raman and I had a good working session at the weekend. The Choreographer's Cartography project is coming together nicely with most of the sound and video now recorded and the 'shape' of the installation starting to appear.

We have another working session planned for the 27th June where we will get a change to install a rough version of the project in the City Gallery in order to test the video projections and motion tracking.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the work 'in situ' and, in particular, hearing the sound quality in the exhibition space - it is sounding good in the studio. I'll probably post some initial extracts from the work on the new Choreographer's Cartography page in a couple of weeks.

In the mid and late 1990s I worked with the band The Shamen on a Web site called Nemeton. The Web site ran for many years, but sometime after the band split the server that hosted the site was seriously hacked and the site ceased to be.

Just recently I found some old pictures and graphics from the site and was reminded of how good Nemeton was. Lots of content, regular live events and a thriving on-line community.

It made me wonder if there would be interest in putting some of this content back on-line and maybe looking for a new post-Shamen focus for the site.

If you were a Nemeton user and want to suggest how the site could work in the future then visit the new forums at www.nemeton.com and post a message. If nothing else it should be interesting to see if "re-opening" the site in this way will lead to a new on-line community growing up around it...

The first Pineapster "Communion" gig happened in Loughborough on Friday night at the Swan. Despite some issues with running times, I think it was an excellent night. Good music, decent crowd and no technical problems.

We plan to run monthly gigs there starting in September. Keep an eye on this site for details. Some pictures of the first show have been posted to the Pineapster Picture Log.

What a place! Cheap food, cheap travel, cheap accommodation, friendly people and some amazing scenery.

As you can see, the Picture Log worked. The mobile network wasn't quite what I had hoped. Voice coverage was excellent, but GRPS (mobile Internet/e-mail) was patchy. This meant that I had to queue pictures and send them in batches when I had the coverage. I also found a MacDonald's(!) with WiFi and used my PDA to send a few pictures from there.

Despite the occasional connectivity problems, I remain convinced that camera phones and similar devices have huge creative potential (especially in places where the mobile networks are fully developed). Watch out in the future for projects from Cuttlefish that will make use of them.

As for Bulgaria, it's most definitely a rewarding country to visit. Very European, yet with an exotic element you get from being so near the boundary with Asia. It's already got me thinking about a return trip and maybe using it as a base to explore the rest of the Balkans.