Summer Sundae has been and gone for another year. As per last year, my involvement was helping organise the Fringe Festival (put together by Pineapster's Andy Black) and doing visuals for Bathysphere on both their stage and the indoor stage. Both activities went well, with me already thinking about how the Fringe could be expanded next year, and my ears still humming from the Bathy-stage. Leicester is lucky to have such a well-organised, nationally-recognised festival. Long may DMH keep on running it!

I'm just back from the Summer Sundae Fringe in Leicester. We held six events, but I only actually managed to get to two! Both were packed so fingers crossed that we have sold a decent number of tickets (money will go to LOROS). I'm already thinking that we should go something bigger and better next year. I'll get some ideas together after the main festival this weekend. Remember to post your fringe pictures to our Flickr group.

I'm working on an 8 channel live video sampler Max patch for my visual sets at Summer Sundae this year. The idea of the patch is to allow me to build up a bank of live video footage that I can remix and regenerate during a performance.

I plan to use my HD video camera during the shows to grab video of the artists and audience which I then sequence live in response to the music.

In some ways it is an extension of my Autopoiesis artwork, but optimised for live work. It's also the basis of a project I have in mind called "Polyp.TV" which I hope to start in the autumn.

I'll post more information about the Max patch here when I've finished it, together with images from the shows in the Bathysphere stage at Summer Sundae.

Cuttlefish Digital Arts is supporting the Summer Sundae Fringe Festival again this year. Through the hard work of Pineapster members, and in particular Andy Black, the fringe is now in its third year and will take place at various venues around Leicester on Thursday 7th August. We have produced a fringe website at www.summersundaefringe.com which is promoting and documenting the event.

Many entries in this blog are a testament to my love of traveling. My recent trip was a family visit to Tunisia which combined a fair amount of seeing new places with some general relaxing. I've posted a gallery of pictures on my Flickr page, many of which are geotagged (ie. they have GPS coordinates) courtesy of my new Nokia N95 8Mb phone. I also found a Roman mosaic depicting a cuttlefish (eee above)! This has made me wonder what the earliest image of a cuttlefish (or other cephalopods) might be. Any suggestions?

I've uploaded a whole bunch of articles and cover scans from my magazine work in the mid-1990s. It includes articles about The Shamen, William Latham, Virtual Reality, art on the net, mobile Internet, education and more. In most cases these topics are still things I've remained interested and it's fun to see just how far things have come on over the years - or not in some cases.

You can find the scans at:
http://www.cuttlefish.org/netuserinternettoday1995-1996.html

I've just heard that I have passed my final MA module with a respectable 77%. I'm very happy. I now plan to have a summer break form my creative research before starting it again under (hopefully) the guise of a part-time PhD.

I set-up my 'Autopoiesis I' installation at the Camberwell MA08 Summer Show yesterday. The show is open for internal assessment next week, and then to the public the week after. Visit the MA08 Summer Show Web site. for more information. Pictures of my piece can be found in this Flickr picture set.

After setting up my MA exhibition yesterday, I spent today making sure that my MA Website (www.autopoiesis.org.uk) is fully up-to-date. It now has links to all of the video, audio, pictures, blog posts and documents I have produced during this year's "MADA3" module.

I went on a bus journey yesterday. Well, I was supposed to. Buses in Bulgaria are a rather ad hoc affair. They only rarely arrive on time and are not always that recognisable as buses.

The bus was due at midday. Come five past there was still no sign, but then a white van-like vehicle appear over the brow of the hill. Surely this must be the bus, so I waved it down.

The driver beckoned me over and wanted me to sit in the front. Odd, but not that odd. I offered him a few Levs. "No problem", he gestured. Again, not that odd. Some of these rural buses are more of a service than a money making affair.

It wasn't until a minute or so later I realised that I had actually hitchhiked. I wasn't sitting in a bus. This was a brick delivery van.

The driver was really friendly. He couldn't speak English, and my Bulgarian is still poor. But as his heavily laden van squealed around the corners, seemingly on the verge of tipping, he smiled and said "Mr Bean". I knew what he meant and laughed. This was followed by "Mr Pipkin". I looked confused. "Norman Wisdom", he said. Ah, of course, that's what he's known as in the Balkans. He was very big in Albania during the cold war apparently.

Anyway, I soon reached my destination and thanked the driver. As I climbed out of the van I couldn't help thinking that Norman would have appreciated my accidental hitchhike.

Time to come home now.