Stench ran an event at the OXJAM festival this weekend. Artists performing included Neal Unreal, Annelie Nederberg, Myoptik, James Kelly and Peter Wyeth. See the event's Pineapster page for pictures and video.

We hosted our first Pineapster event at The Art Organisation / Independent Arts Centre on Saturday 24th October. The event was part of the FD2D weekender - which saw events all around the Cultural Quarter in Leicester. Attendees were treated to some great music from Loughborough bands Penfold Gate and 40 Horses (pictured), plus an outside fire show. Pictures can be found on Flickr.

Today I start my PhD in the School of Art and Design at De Montfort University in Leicester. My supervisor will be Professor Martin Rieser and the subject is broadly the application of system theory to digital arts practice. It sort of takes off where my Masters work finished and will also be documented at www.autopoiesis.org.uk.

I arrived in Bulgaria again earlier in the week. I'm here for about 18 days, sorting out the house, reading in preparation for the start of my PhD, watching films and generally feeding my head! As an aside, I'm also doing some filming for a friend's band. The aim is to make a couple of videos while I'm here.

Today's filming took place in an old Bulgarian theatre in Dobrich. Maybe a 200 capacity place with velvet seats and classic wooden stage.

Apparently the next location lined up is a gypsy barbershop in General Toshevo. Should be an interesting place to shoot to say the least!

Looking through my pictures of Shambala this year I was reminded of the best random thing I saw. On Sunday afternoon we were walking past the Hurley Burley cafe (above) when all the cafe staff stopped serving and performed a great dance routine to "One Day Like This" by Elbow. It was very, very, good :-)

I always enjoy the Shambala Festival. It's relatively close (just south of Market Harborough), it's just the right size (Glasto's to big for me these days!), and I always bump in to plenty of people I know there.

This year I worked again with Modulate doing laser projections in the woodlands area. Modulate produced an amazing lighting installation using 40 light-fulled water containers and a multi-speaker sound system. My lasers slotted in nicely at the back to add some height to the lighting.

An added bonus was getting to catch-up with Zion Train who were playing on the main stage on Saturday. I hadn't seen them properly since around 2002/3 when I finished doing shows with them as their projection guy. It was a great opportunity for a bit of a reunion.

See my pictures from the event on my Flickr page.

We relaunched the Stench 'innovative performance' community in March 2009 with a show at The Phoenix in Leicester. This was followed by another Phoenix event in June.As part of the Summer Sundae Fringe we thought it would be good to host a 'mini-festival' at The Great Central gallery in Leicester.

'Stenchival' took place on 7th and 8th August. The first night was curated by Bathysphere and the second by PVC. Audience sizes were small but reasonable and all of those involved gave good feedback.

Both events were broadcast live on the Internet via Ustream and have been well-documented on Flickr and YouTube. See the past events page on the Stench website for details.

Another year and another Summer Sundae Fringe! In just 4 years we've managed to grow the event from a one night 'warm-up party' to a two-week celebration of Leicester's music and arts, culminating in 'Fringe Thursday' - a nine venue party on the Thursday night before the main Summer Sundae festival.

The growth of the event is down to a number of things. Firstly, the enthusiasm of commitment of the organising team - in particular Andy Black and Steve Jones from the Pineapster community, and Vicky Watts who came to Cuttlefish for a one-month placement and carried on helping with the festival even after she had finished! Secondly, the involvement of the vibrant Leicester music scene - the artists, promotors, venues, the fans and, of course, Pineapster. And finally, the support of the main Summer Sundae Festival, who have encouraged the development of the fringe since Andy Black first came up with the idea of doing the warm-up party in 2005.

Now we have established the format of the event, I think we can pretty much guarantee that we'll be doing one in 2010. I'll be the firth, which should be worthy of a celebration in its own right. Check out pictures and video from the event on the fringe web site.

Cuttlefish is involved in two events in August. The first is the two-week Summer Sundae Fringe Festival. This a celebration of music in Leicester that will be held at various venues in the city between the 2nd and the 13th August.

The next is Stenchival - a mini festival in a festival before a festival. From the people behind the stench.org.uk community, Stenchival runs over two nights at the Great Central Galleries in Leicester on the 7th and 8th August.

See the Summer Sundae Fringe and Stench web sites for more information.

I popped up to Derbyshire this weekend with my friend Geoff. The weather was perfect - even up on the moors. We managed to visit a couple of stone circles while we were there. Firstly, Arbor Low, the 'stonehenge of the north' and then over to Nine Ladies on Stanton Moor.

Arbor Low was as magnificant as ever and I'm pleased to say that Nine Ladies was looking good too. At times I've found Nine Ladies looking quite shabby, with rubbish scattered nearby and signs of fires having been lit in the circle itself. After 4,000 years I think it deserves a bit more respect than that!

See some pics here.