Thanks to Xiaowu for taking a nice photo of the event. We had many great wine tastings from the excellent new wine club in Chaowai Soho, a Sharism supportive business. We had a few old friends and also some cool new people who live in Beijing came out like Alan Boyd, @imcherry and many more people in attendance. I also shared my new markiting project and heard great things from local investors, the progress of Yeeyan from akid, all while sampling some amazing South African wines.

See you soon at a next Sharism Presents Beijing!

Last week, the Fabricatorz dispatched me on a three-city tour of the Netherlands to play some gigs and tour art spaces in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Rotterdam. I kicked things off with Sharism Presents Amsterdam hosted by our great friends at Kennisland on November 1st. In attendance we had Paul Keller, Nikki Timmermans, Maarten Zeinstra and Thijs van Exel (Kennisland), Alper Çuğun and Lex Slaghuis (Hack de Overheid), Jaak Vlasveld (Consortium Green IT), and Natalia Sanchez (Unfold Amsterdam); plus John Haltiwanger (dripping digital) in absentia. Maarten and Jaak deserve props for learning the Flickernoise scripting language for the Milkymist One by writing (and then performing) their first patch in under 20 minutes!

I followed that up with an appearance at the IMPAKT Festival in Utrecht (now in it's 22nd year), where I gave a talk during the Getting Rough with Media: The ‘Right to Know’ Summit, and showcased the MilkyMist video synthesizer in a live collaborative performance with Chilean noise artist elpueblodechina. I spoke alongside Sunil Abraham (Centre for Internet and Society), Tatiana Bazzichelli (Networkingart), Rui Guerra (INTK), Alejandra Perez Nuñez AKA HIMW a.k.a. elpueblodechina, Ghalia Elsrakbi and Lauren Alexander (FOUNDLAND), and Alejandro Duque. Ghalia and Lauren deserve a special shout-out for their art project on Syria, Watching revolution through a hole in the wall. Also, at the same time as the summit our friend Bjorn Wijers (Burobjorn) was participating in the A Hack a Day at IMPAKT.

The ‘Right to Know’ Summit was curated by Fabricatorz friend and collaborator Stephen Kovats. Stephen served until recently as artistic director of transmediale, where in his final year he helped sponsor the book sprint for An Open Web. Before that Stephen was chief program curator at V2_, and is now the Project Director of McLuhan in Europe 2011. I'm looking forward to what Stephen has in store for 2012!

Tonite in Shanghai Fabricatorz are hosting, along with many great friendz, the first Sharism Presents Shanghai.

From Sharism.org:

Sharism Presents are events where sharing is encouraged. Its not show and tell, but more of show and share. Sharism Presents are gifts of knowledge. Events are for all those interested in sharing and are informal. People are encouraged to introduce themselves at the beginning with what they are sharing at the meeting, and then the entire event is ad-hoc in development. If you are interested in hosting a Sharism Presents, please email the sharism team.

Sharism Presents分享会是一系列鼓励大家分享的活动。在这里，没有教训和教义，只有分享，再分享。分享会是来自常识的礼物，是来自日常生活的礼物，也是给予想要分享的人们的礼物。分享主义鼓励人们介绍自己，继而通过分享主义建立一种点对点的联系。如果您也希望举办分享会，请写信给 分享主义.

Following in the footsteps of the previous Sharism Presents Beijing, the event is the second Sharism event in Shanghai after last year's Sharism Forum. All are welcome to come out and sample Ai Mi Fan provided food and drinks. Spread the news:

Sharism Presents Shanghai, @ 新车间 (Xinchejian), 7-10 PM, Thursday, September 8, 2011

Dear Friends,
亲爱的朋友们，

You are kindly invited to "Sharism Presents Shanghai".
欢迎您前来参加分享主义在上海的最新活动。

Attendees include:
我们的演讲嘉宾包括：

Jon Phillips 王力中 *Sharism Co-founder发起人，Fabricatorz Founder创始人
David Li, *新车间Xinchejian负责人
Lucas Englehardt, *BloggerInsight CEO
Liu Yan, 刘妍 *新单位Xindanwei CEO和Co-founder创始人
Lu Rui, 卢睿 *九州生气jzsz专家Guru
Clement Renaud, *分享主义实验室负责人researching at sharismlab
Habib Belaribi, *makesense成员gangster
Yuan曲宏媛 *设计师Designer

We will serve wine, cheese and snacks. Presentation will be followed.
主办方会准备消夏红酒，奶酪和小食。并有现场作品演示环节。

Time: 8th September, Thursday, 7pm - 10pm
时间：9月8日，周四晚7点至10点
Location: 新车间 (xinchejian), Anhua Road No.76 suite 301, Changning District, Shanghai, CHINA 200050 (near Jiangsu Road)

地址：中国上海市长宁区安化路76号301室 (靠近江苏路)

交通：我们附近的地铁与公交非常方便，建议您不要开车。地铁二、十一号线（江苏站四号出口）及公交 01, 44, 57, 62, 71, 76, 96, 127, 138, 311, 328, 323, 562, 825, 921, 923, 925, 936, 939 等均可轻松到达。

Please join us and have fun!
请即刻加入我们！

If you want to learn more about Sharism, please visit the link
如果想了解Sharism分享主义的核心理念和2010年分享主义和大声展合作的论坛成果，请移步http://sharism.org/about

Cutting edge creative tools meet free culture

May 10-13, Ecole Polytechnique Engineering School

Programmers and artists from around the world are headed to Montreal for the 6th annual Libre Graphics Meeting in May. The Libre Graphics Meeting is an annual gathering for the users and developers of free and open source creative software: artistic tools that are free for anyone to use and modify. LGM gives software developers, artists, musicians, designers and other creative professionals the opportunity to collaborate, share their work and learn from each other.

A Preview

Every year, Libre Graphics Meeting focuses on individual and group interaction, emphasizing free media and the software that produces it. This year's attendees can expect a similar format that will include workshops, presentations, demonstrations, and birds-of-a-feather (BOF) sessions. Leading up to the conference, special lab sessions bring developers and artists face-to-face to make improvements in creative software. Gaps can form when developers and their users don't meet face to face; LGM gives artists and educators a voice in the building of their tools. Both content creators and developers will present, bringing a diverse community together to advance the technologies and strategies of high-quality free creative software.

Submit a talk!

LGM's strength comes from the presenters who talk about their work and inspire others by sharing their experiences, techniques, and best practices. Whether you are a developer, an artist, or an enthusiast, you can be a part of this year's event by sharing your story and your work.

The LGM community wants to hear your proposal for a session. Submit your idea any time between now and April 1, 2011 by visiting http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Conference_2011/Submit_Talk

Topics of interest include: development of the applications, color standards and color management, designer and developer collaboration, web services, workflow, exchange between floss and artists, power-user techniques, and graphics business best practices.

• Proposals should have a title
• Describe your proposal in at most two paragraphs
• Include a short bio & contact informations
• Include any special technical setup you require other than radio-microphone, beamer, laser pointer, computer, network
• Talks are 30 minutes including Q&A and setup.
• Lightning talks are 5 minutes
• Tell us if you have specific date & time constraint to present your talk
• Tell us if your trip to LGM is already sponsored or if you need help from LGM to get to Montreal. In the last case, please evaluate your needs (cost of economy plane ticket for the round trip, for instance).

Help keep LGM free

Libre Graphics Meeting is an invaluable meeting ground for industry leaders and end users alike. It has also been free of charge since the very beginning -- but as the open source community continues to expand, attendance keeps increasing.

Your support is a vital means for the continued success of LGM, whether you are a readers, an attendee, or simply a fan of free graphics software. Click here to make a donation: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/14610

Highlights from LGM 2010

Last year's Libre Graphics Meeting, the fifth since the project's inception, took place in Brussels and was highlighted by important work on open color management systems and data interchange formats. The vector graphics standard file format, SVG, headlined many of the the discussions and interaction that took place, as it has become an integral element in communicating freely created content through websites and printed pieces. All major projects represented at LGM 2010 -- Scribus, Gimp, Inkscape, and Open Font Library -- spent time planning activities for the months and years ahead. Other hot topics in presentations and discussions included Blender, Krita, Open Web Graphics and Services, Python, Rawstudio, and many more.

Continuing with the success of recent LGM incarnations, more attention was given to the rising numbers of professional graphics users and youth attendees. In fact, of the 51 sessions held during the 4 day extravaganza, 20 were given by creative professionals. Specific workshops were organized to engage students from art and design schools around the world. [http://lwn.net/Articles/390572/ Nathan Willis] writes of one such event:

''Denis Jacquerye, widely known from his work with the DejaVu fonts, discussed font design and features for African languages, encouraging the community to build more such fonts.''

About the Libre Graphics Meeting

The Libre Graphics Meeting exists to unite and accelerate the efforts behind Free, Libre and Open Source creative software. Organised by volunteers from the international Libre Graphics Community since 2006, this annual meeting is the premiere conference for developers, users and supporters of projects such as GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/), Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/), Blender (http://www.blender.org/), Krita (http://koffice.org/krita/), Scribus (http://www.scribus.net/), Hugin (http://hugin.sourceforge.net/), the Open Clipart Library (http://www.openclipart.org/), and the Open Font Library (http://www.openfontlibrary.org/). At LGM, teams gather to work on interoperability, shared standards, and new ideas. Work at prior LGMs has pushed the state of the art in important areas such as color management, cross-application sharing of assets, and common formats.

For More Information

For more information, visit http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org

Get involved by joining the Create mailinglist (http://create.freedesktop.org) or propose a talk via http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Conference_2011/Submit_Talk

----

''LGM 2011 is hosted by the [http://create.freedesktop.org Libre Graphics Community] and Polytechnique''

Press Contact

• Sponsoring Organization: Libre Graphics Meeting and Create Project.
• Contact: Jon Phillips
• Contact email: jon@fabricatorz.com
• Phone (USA): +1.415.830.3884
• Website: http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/
• Pledgie campaign: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/14610
• Photos: http://ur1.ca/a34y

Organization Contact

• Contact: Louis Desjardins
• Contact email: louis.desjardins@gmail.com
• Phone (MONTREAL): +1.514.994.9351

Laoban Soundsystem Infinite Baffle with its face off

Over on my personal blog,I posted some comments about the Laoban Infinite Baffle:

The latest soundsystem, Laoban Infinite Baffle, that Matt Hope and myself have built, is now on display as part of Kunsthalle Kowloon organized, and Fabricatorz supported, Border Show 2011. There have already been write-ups by CNN and The New York Times, some in print, with more coming soon. Thanks to all who came out to the opening and supported the show. Next up is that we want to ship this work to other art spaces, shows and events around the world. It would take about a month to ship anywhere in the world, and you have a great news-getter for live events in front of your favorite gallery, space, or show. Contact us.

Matt Hope, Robin Peckham, Venus Lau and I worked super hard last week to make the Laoban Soundsystem Infinite Baffle reali-D (that’s the 2.0.11 realidad for kind readers of this reBlog).

Robin and Matt Framed

Also, Robin sent us some PDFs of discussion about the pieces from press outlets CNNGo review, CNNGo Chinese, SCMP Preview, and NYT Preview.

Infinite Baffle Bare, Picture by Matt Hope

There will be more, surely :)

UPDATE: Here are some interview questions about the system via Matt:

1. Where did you get the inspiration for your artpiece and how does it echoes the theme of Border Crossing?

The inspiration for The Infinite baffle came from the idea that a standard shipping container could be transformed into a simple acoustical device by blocking the open mouth with a wall of speakers. Within the field of audio engineering the 'Infinite baffle' is a form of speaker cabinet design in which the driver unit is completely enclosed- cut off from the surrounding space, this differs from the 'open baffle' or 'bass reflex' ( speaker boxes with holes and vents whereby tuned air is allowed to pass more easily). The primary purpose of ALL speaker boxes is to separate the in phase and out of phase sound waves with some kind of barrier or enclosure- essentially a wall. The innards of the shipping container that usually house consumer goods is transformed into pressurised audio container. . . quarter of a wave length of out phase with the surrounding output. . .

2. What is (are) the challenge(s) of turning a cargo container into a giant speaker?

The first challenge was to research and establish the exact ISO dimensions of a standard shipping container, these parameters are regulated by an international body that all countries are supposed to adhere in order for global trade to function. The Infinite baffle must fit inside any standard container regardless of it place or manufacture. Upon installation a temporary seal or gland will be applied to join the two structures in order to separate the in phase and out of phase sound waves. Incidentally the length of the container will tune the output , the infinite baffle will have an acoustic cut-off frequency of 57 hertz. Thus the volumetric capacity of the container will determine its sonic range. . . The audio fidelity of this device will not be hi fi, large metal boxes do not make the ideal acoustic space. Shipping containers were designed to keep out the elements and thieves, prior to containerisation in 1968 nearly one 3rd of all goods were 'lifted' . lost or stolen in transit

Here are some answers to the same interviewer I put together, so mix up the two answers :)

1. Where did you get the inspiration for your artpiece and how does it echoes the theme of Border Crossing?

Matt Hope (http://matthope.org) and I (http://rejon.org) did previous work using a trash compactor as a temporary space to make events, but also to serve as an instant readymade:

http://rejon.org/projects/compaction/

We have many battle plans ready, both individually and together, and we have done several projects with shipping containers. So we responded to the creative constraints of the shipping container
context Robin and Venus provided and combined that with our interest in manufacturing in China and making sound systems. The last big system we made is the Laoban Soundsystem used as part of Get It Louder in Beijing: http://laoban-soundsystem.com

You can't get much more literal about shipping than a shipping container, right? hahaha.

There is also something humorous about border shows to us. When we were in grad school at UC San Diego there always seemed to be tension between the wealthy San Diego side of the border and the poor, seemingly dangerous side of the border, Tijuana. The tension between the border in Hong Kong and Shenzhen is way less than the paranoid one-way valve of the USA/Mexico border in San Diego. Hong Kong and Shenzhen are optimized for business and the Chinese government is allowing an increase in economic and human throughput whereas with the USA/Mexico border, the US is building crazy electrified fences and keeping big guns on people who try to illegally cross. Its an interesting comparison to do see the social activist art work being created by Ruben Ortiz and others in San Diego/Tijuana versus the more economic/shipping-minded themes in this show, although you could make some similar claims if you wanted to go there.

So, the main front of the container is a piece Matt designed up and we had fabricated in the south of china. It will be delivered on-site and we will attach it to the front of the speaker for use next week. No
shipping containers will be hurt with our project. Rather, the shipping container is being augmented and put into the service of sound production rather than using its normal function of shipping goods across the border.

3. How different will the experience be when your soundsystem is fabricated in a cargo container?

Well, its actually attached to the entrance of the container. Its really empty. So, we are converting the shipping container into what is normally considered a speaker box, which has a function in tuning
the bass and providing a resonance chamber for the sound. The front baffle we are manufacturing has 40 speakers, and the empty space will resonate from that sound. The doors are movable so we can shape where the sound will project out of the front entrance of the container.

We originally wanted to build the entire sound system into the shipping container and make it so the sides are removable. We can do that project later and with more money. In some ways, its better that
we are not changing the shipping container at all, which the entire container holding a traditional soundsystem, would do. This is just bolt-on, turn-on.

The interesting thing for Matt and I is that we haven't actually seen the fabricated piece other than mediated pictures and renderings. So, always when you build a new system, its a new experience to hear how it *really* sounds and make sure it all fits together.

Matt in particular has a lot of experience manufacturing things in China, so we are pretty confident it will work well and make some thunderous bass.

2. What is(are) the challenge(s) of turning a cargo container into a giant speaker?

Matt can speak more to this, but now when we make sound systems, we design them with computer software and Autocad, then have a manufacturer make them in Guangdong. The speaker makers have a lot of experience with this type of production. For this project, we are having a metal fabricator make the front of the speaker with all the parts ready for assembly. They will deliver to the shipping container and we will complete the installation and test it all out.

It always takes a lot of work making sure everything fits in really well, coordinating the fabrication and then getting Matt and I to Hong Kong to complete the project.

Its just a lot of coordination, not to mention getting lots of people to the event and music to play through it. We really want to ship it to other cities around the world. If you have a space, email us! info@laoban-soundsystem.com

3. What will be played during the show and why?

We treat these projects as vessels for sound. Matt and I will DJ on them, and we have some other guests from the PRD lined up to give them a go. Art shows are always different from throwing parties because often people want to talk more, have some drinks, swoop in and out. However, Matt and I like to throw parties and see what can unfold. The other side of that is hiring DJs who are often in it for the check and not the love. We always want people who love to play and have a go on the system to get a chance on it.

Also, in line with our Laoban Soundsystem project, all the plans will be given away on our site and we will capture as much as we can about the event. We want to do more events with this system all over the planet.

For this event, we will treat the earlier time in the night as art event and transition to more fun later on.

We have been calling this project the Laoban Container or Laoban Infinite Baffle. If you are a DJ or make music, come check out the show and plugin to our new soundsystem! http://laoban-soundsystem.com