The Fabricatorz recently capped off an exciting and eventful week at the 6th annual Libre Graphics Meeting, in Montreal. The 4-day Conference was packed with developers and users of free software including Inkscape, Scribus, Gimp, Blender, DeviantArt, and many more. Developer Brad Phillips closed out the Day One talks with a guide to making our unique avatars, as well as announcing the Release of Open Clip Art Library 3.0.

As the talks rolled into Day Two, Christopher Adams revealed the highly-anticipated, refreshed Open Font Library, to much adulation.

The hits kept coming through Day Four, when Fabricatorz Founder, Jon Phillips, unveiled the Milkymist video synthesizer, alongside a vision of an open hardware future for LGM.

The Fabricatorz want to send out a big thanks to all involved in organizing and hosting events for this year's Libre Graphics Meeting. More great events and Releases lay ahead, as we look forward to the rest of 2011!

Montreal, May 13, 2011- More than 200 active developers, artists, and attendees of the 6th Libre Graphics Meeting 2011 in Montreal were able to see the Milkymist One video synthesizer (http://milkymist.org) live for the first time, to entertain and surprise them between talks and during breaks. Real-time video synthesis with audio and video input had been available before in proprietary packages combining multiple devices and costing several thousand USD. Milkymist One combines this into a small form factor, and uses only free software and free hardware acceleration.

"The Milkymist One is the future of live performance and is the real freedom box, available now. Without a truly open hardware architecture, developers working on free and open software are going to be locked out from the future of development," said Jon Phillips, Fabricatorz Founder and Qi Hardware Co-founder. "I am extremely proud to use the Milkymist One live at the event, and explain why its so important for the future of Libre Graphics."

Phillips is giving a final keynote presentation at LGM2011 where he is presenting the future of Libre Graphics, moving from developers on desktop systems they control, to network services outward towards embedded hardware for making graphics.

Later that night, Milkymist One will be featured during the Libre Graphics Meeting 2011 closing ceremony in Montreal at an event called Geepsters.

The Milkymist project is an informal organization of people and companies who develop, manufacture and sell a comprehensive open source solutions (http://qi-hardware.com) for the live synthesis of interactive visual effects for video performance artists, clubs and musicians. The project goes great lengths to apply the open source principles at every level possible, and is best known for the Milkymist system-on-chip (SoC) which is among the first commercialized system-on-chip designs with free HDL source code. Several Milkymist technologies have been reused in applications unrelated to video synthesis, such as NASA's Communication Navigation and Networking Reconfigurable Testbed (CoNNeCT).

Milkymist One is currently available in limited quantities to early adopters, and will be available later this summer for general use, at a target price of 499 USD.

The Fabricatorz are on the road this week, kicking off 2011 the right way. Founder, Jon Phillips will be teaming up with Matt Hope to bring the Laoban Soundsystem to The Border Show. The exhibition, organized by The Society for Experimental Cultural Production, features recent art concerning border mechanisms of the Pearl River Delta:

Taking place inside a set of shipping containers placed amid the hulking post-industrial buildings of the New Territories halfway between the urban cores of Hong Kong and Shenzhen, this exhibition proposes a new relationship between these two cities and the wider region by approaching the ontology of the border crossing.

The event kicks off on January 8 (running through the 28th of the month). Laoban will be providing the musical backdrop for the entire opening evening!

In the coming weeks, Laoban Soundsystem will be releasing new plans, photos, and even more media through it's homepage. For more details on The Border Show, check out the event page, and look check this space again soon for recaps and photos from Hong Kong!

Fabricatorz Developer & Creator of Aiki Framework, Bassel Safadi has spearheaded a new Version of his open source website-generating platform. The official press release speaks of some of the upgrades that can be found in Aiki Framework 0.5:

The administration panel has seen the benefit of Event Listeners logging changes made and more intuitive and real-time widget modification. File handling is also becoming friendlier, as ZIP files can now be uploaded to a server, stored, and unzipped, all through Aiki Framework 0.5.

The Librarians at The Open Clip Art Library have also been working hard to bring the Community it's latest: Version 2.6. Boasting a collection of work that now eclipses 35,000 unique and remixed images, OCAL remains a dominant force in free and transparent digital art and design.

Profile Management, an often requested feature, finally returns in OCAL 2.6, thanks to cgbug. Users now have control of their displayed name, e-mail, and homepage details. Also, avatars are back! New and returning users can now associate their profile with their favorite uploaded graphic.

For more detailed information about the progress of Aiki Framework and Open Clip Art Library, have a look at the official press release

Recent visitors to The Open Clip Art Library may have noticed a new addition to the home page. Fabricatorz Developer Brad Phillips has spearheaded an initiative to implement an Activities section that aims to alert the Community to the most recent incentives for content submission. These incentives can take many forms, including contests and Community-created packages.

The latest Community Activity, a Fall 2010 Themed Clip Art Package is actively accepting new and remixed work from artists, through the rest of August. Users wishing to contribute to this new Seasonal package should upload their work, tagged with the key term "fall2010."

The Librarians are also beginning to round up elements for a larger Halloween themed package that will run through the month of September. Contributing artists should be sure to tag each item accordingly ("halloween2010" for the Holiday theme).

The Fabricatorz Team congratulates The Open Clip Art Library for these exciting new efforts to extend user contributions and Community involvement!