For reasons of transparency and completeness: While we were turned down, these projects do receive funding from sitemapping.ch:

• Symposien: «Wider die Norm – Der kreative Umgang mit Suchmaschinen» / Tweakfest, Zürich, Patrick Hofer, Johannes Gees.
• Ausstellungen/Festivals: «Colour it beautiful» Museum Liner Appenzell, Toni Stooss; «Übermorgen, [F]loriginal» / [plug.in], Basel, Annette Schindler; «Syn chron – Carsten Nicolai» / Biennale 05, Bern, Peter Kraut; «Generosa Enterprise» / Monte Generoso, Beat Signer, M.C. Norrie, Curt Walter Tannhäuser; «Neue Medien unter Dach und Fach» / Haus für Kunst Uri, Peter Stohler; «Version» / Centre pour l’image contemporaine Saint-Gervais, Genf, André Iten; «Festival di Arte Elettronica», Lugano, Fabio Besomi; «Gamehotel», Zürich, Tina Cassani, Bruno Beusch.
• Andere kuratierte Konzepte: «dorkbot.swiss», Basel, Genf, Luzern, Zürich, Mona Pletsch; «Click here!» / online, Annina Zimmermann, Villö Huszai; «Beam_On», Basel, Bettina Back, Judith Lichneckert; «Digital Art Weeks» / Zürich, Jürg Gutknecht, Arthur Clay; «Do it yourself!», Basel, Thomas Schmutz; «All Inclusive Last Minute», Zürich, Fabian Thommen, Mario Purkathofer

ArtMobs goes out and remixes the MoMa. Try it. In iTunes it's here.

Now that we know, thanks to the O'Reilly-Makezine, how to do enhanced podcasts (with images changing during the course of the show and links associated to the content etc.), I'm tempted to try it out sometime. Although it makes the production an order or two of magnitude more complicated! Imagine us taking you to interesting ateliers (just the obvious idea) and being able to "show" you what we are talking about with the artist. Well, "to show" may be exagerated, looking at the imagesize, "give an idea" comes closer. Still, when I think of it, I don't want to lose the "beauty" of audio-only. Otherwise we could do video. Not to do video, was a conscious decision. We have to choose the enhancements wisely to not fall into the "image-trap", I guess.

Today - during our summerbreak - something special: Not a new interview, but - in this form - an unpublished one out of our archives... In the year 2000 Malcolm McLaren, maybe best known for his role as mastermind behind the punk-legends Sex Pistols, had an exhibition of his artwork in the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in the german city of Karlsruhe called "Casino of Authenticity and Karaoke". At this occasion I sat down with him, together with Rene Agiugah, a reporter from the german newspaper taz.

What you'll hear McLaren saying in the interview - among many other inspiring and provocative things: "Failure is liberating! (...) I'm no less punk than i was yesterday! punk rock is basically about the noble persuit of failure! (...) Johnny Rotten became my archenemy! (...) Bury the fucking legend! (...) The Situationists were major mentors of mine! (...) Everything the Situationists said in the sixties became true. (...) When I helped put 'Good save the Queen' on number one and had it banned from the radio at the same time, Guy Debord called me up on the telephone - I've never spoken to him in my life - and he said: 'Thank you very much for getting my record to number one!' As far as he was concerned he owned that record and he owned that idea. And I thought, brilliantly audacious and truely wonderful and I never forgot it. I agree with him, it was his idea, yes! (...) The internet will define this centuries culture and politics. (...) Mr. Napster is a Saint! (...) open source software: fantastic! (...) I'd much rather see a world where things are for free, but - what's more important than that - where things are not for sale! that's the distinctive idea!"

Feedback ist always welcom to "artcast at gmail dot com". Enjoy!

In todays edition (very likely to be the last one before the summer break of some three weeks, sorry), you will follow our one hour conversation with Seamus Hughes, when we sat down with him on a nice balcony of the Warteck PP, a brewery turned atelier, restaurant, workshop, artspace etc. Jim (aka Seamus) Hughes is Founder and was Artistic Director of Western Australia's Fieldworks Performance Group. He is a choreographer, visual artist, writer and director of theatre. Trained originally in classical ballet, he has performed, taught and directed with a diverse range of dance and theatre organisations throughout Australia and the world. Jim is a trained Feldenkrais practitioner.
What he will reveal in the interview - among many other things: Seamus has 10 brothers and sisters, he started out as an apprentice to become a printer, but he switched to balletdance in Dublin, he danced on many european stages (also in Zurich with Nurejev), switched to painting in Cologne, accompanied Joseph Beuys while he was in Ireland, he tought performance in Perth, he practices Feldenkrais now in Basel. Barbara met him by chance at a performance in the Kaskadenkondensator, a space dedicated to contemporary art and performance inside the Warteck PP. His motto is:

"To inspire the creativity in people is what i believe our job is as artists!"

Enjoy the summer (on the northern hemisphere)! Feedback is always welcome to "artcast at gmail dot com".

We almost doubled our circulation now that the new iTunes is out. And we are nr. 69 among the top 100 podcasts today. This is so exciting! Thank you very much out there, dear audience! This is so much encouragement to go on and improve. Although I have to say that we will do a little summer break for the first weeks of july. But we'll talk about that in our next show, coming up before the end of this week!

Abonnieren braucht genau 2 Clicks. Den ersten hier drauf, den zweiten auf den "ABONNIEREN"-Button in iTunes, welches nach dem ersten automatisch startet! Merci Mr. Jobs, merci Mr. Curry!

Das neue iTunes wartet darauf, dass Du es abholst. Wichtigste Neuerung: Es ist jetzt auch ein Podcast-Client!

The new iTunes 4.9 is out! The most significant change: it is now a podcatcher / podcastclient too.

Imagine you'd have a box that receives everything. SW, AM, FM, DAB, DRM: all modes, traditional, "timebased" radio transmits on between 300kHz and 5GHz. It's coming this year: british RadioScape just announced, it would start producing the central element for this. Now add ethernet / WLAN to the box, which is just a minor problem, and it could even handle podcasts...

There's always something new to learn! Today Barbara pointed me to a piece in the International Herald Tribune, where I learned that in french-speaking Quebec they call "baladodiffusion" what most of the rest of the world understands as "podcasting". "se balader" means "to go for a walk". Funny and acurate. Thanks to Quebec for this enrichment! And the IHT recognized that "even Switzerland (is) now boasting at least one 'indie' podcaster." And I mean, when "even Switzerland" has one, then really the last netizen on the world must have heard of it ;-) May we consider ourselves as this "indie podcaster"? Well, maybe this would be asking too much. Our fellowpodcasters over at "StarFrosch" in Bern are little more likely to be the ones who have found the attention of the IHT. But who knows...

In todays edition you will meet the ukrainian born, Paris based artist Kristina Solomoukha (one of her works on the net). She has had many exhibitions in France and Germany. She showed her work at Art Basel in the context of the so called "Art statements", where young, emerging galleries are. She was one of the "featured artists" in the "Art Lobby". In this ArtCast she will talk about the method of "cadavre exquis" she uses for some of her work.

In todays edition, lasting about 20 minutes, you'll hear the conversation of Barbara with architect Urs Primas of urbjects. She met him at the vernissage of the Eidgenössischer Wettbewerb für Kunst (swiss art award) and they talked about his submission for the competition in the architecture section, which revolves all around highspeed trains in europe. That's some background about him:

Because of their awardwinning competition project „Underground“, the architects Martijn van den Ban (NL), Valéry Didelon (F), Christelle Gualdi (F), Urs Primas (CH) and Ed Ravensbergen (NL) were invited to join the Dutch exhibition „Groepsportretten 2000“. Together, they started „Le Zoom“, a label for urban projects. Le Zoom organized two exhibitions about questions of urban development, „Imagine Den Bosch“ and „Hilverzoom 2030“. In the Dutch architecture boom of the late nineties, young architects were expected to create fast, fresh and funny projects. A critical attitude had become utterly unfashionable. “Does that mean that we have to quit worrying, quit thinking altogether?” Le Zoom asked itself. Would this not be the ideal moment for a critique of the seductive image, similar to the one attempted in advertisement by Oliviero Toscani’s work for Benetton? 2002 was the end of Le Zoom - at least for the time being. Valéry Didelon and Christelle Gualdi left the Netherlands and returned to France. „Boba Fett“, a competition project designed by Urs Primas together with colleagues from Bosch Architects in Amsterdam proposed new concepts for housing in Switzerland and caused a bit of a stir in Zurich. Together with Proplaning AG and the general services contractor Batigroup AG, Urs won a competition for the renovation of a housing estate - „Three is a Crowd“- and returned to Zurich to create UP in the beginning of 2003. UP is an architecture firm: they design housing buildings, schools, offices or interiors. Their starting point is often an opinionated interpretation of the program – as for example with the project „Svalutation“ where they designed, together with Jens Studer, special apartments for the ageing generation of 1968. Another field of activity are urban studies, plans and scenarios like for example „Agglo Agro“, a project dealing with the future of agricultural areas in Switzerland. For this kind of assignment in the fringe area of communication and urban planning they tie in with the methods developed by Le Zoom and try to put them to use for their client.