What a fantastic night guys, the mix of live art, visuals, soundscapes, beats and general sonic happenings worked a treat.

Thanks to everyone who took part in whatever capacity that was, it made the night a real success. We have lots of photos due to hit the net real soon so keep an eye out for them.

The artwork from the night will be on display at Staffordshire University on the 21st March as part of the Talking shop celebration, you are all invited to come along and celebrate the range of creative learning projects that are currently happening.

Keep an eye out for another Antsartjam in the future!

Digital Love…

We are pleased to announce tonight’s ‘live drawing’ artists. Tonight’s special bITjAM, Antsartjam has been made possible through the Talking Shop programme set of events and projects, so thanks to all involved in making this a reality.

Antonio Roberts

“Antonio Roberts graduated from Staffordshire University in 2004 where
he studied Multimedia Graphics.  Since graduating he has explored his
practice as an experimental software artist and in 2009 formed the
Birmingham based hackerspace called fizzPOP where he continues to
explore creative uses of technology in a collaborative environment.”

Iona Makiola

I view my role as an artist as one of instigator and facilitator; providing a platform for participants to not only actively engage in but create works themselves.

Martyn Yates

Fine Artist. In my work I use video, light and sound to create an abstract representation the containment of emotion within the self. Investigating the moods and feelings generally kept from others.

We also have special audio performances from synth man Philsy (he travels to Europe to have extra digits surgically added, he’s now on 18!), also Pete C who has a dark side to his audio set and of course we will focus on an improvised audio/visual installation throughout the evening.

Oh and it’s FREE

g-han:

Creative Learning Network’s live art event— AntsArtJam is happening this Thursday at the Rigger (ST5 1BT), performing live drawing/painting featuring artist:

EightBit, Iona Makiola, Martyn Yates, Antonio from “hellowcatfood.com”, and more…

Find out more about the event via:  http://creativelearningstaffs.wordpress.com/

Here’s a one off bITjAM special, it’s a free evening to chill to the sound and visual installation while getting creative yourselves! Thanks to theseants for the chance to collaborate!

We are pleased to announce we are creating the ambient sounds for the 2nd Pecha Kucha night at Fat Cats Hanley SOT on 11th March 2010. We are also doing our own special mashed up 20/20 presentation.

Watch this space for details.

The bITjAM are involved in a collaborative celebration of World Community Arts Day.

We want you to be part of a special event involving collaboration, experimentation and creativity. With sound and vision we invite you to explore the concept of ‘community’ - globally and locally.

Stage 1 – Image Generation

On Friday 29th January 6pm - 8pm

This month’s Friday Night Surgery session will be dedicated to creating images that represent the worlds community to us. Using various methods, what ever that rocks your world - drawing , photography, action and movement.

Stage 2 – Splicing and Dicing

These images will be spliced and diced during the week that follows to create a short film / digital backdrop / VJ experiment.

Stage 3 – Music Making

On the evening of World Community Arts Day, there will be music specially created by a group of young people from across North Staffordshire and Shropshire who are part of the SoundProof project with Make Some Noise and B Arts.

All participants at stages 1, 2, 3 will receive a copy of our audiovisual experiment to keep.

Stage 4 - Going Online

WCAD ( 17th Feb) at 8.30pm, the participants of stage 1 & 2 will comeback to the venue and witness their film projected into the space, with the music. It will all be streamed live online to the World!

Stage 5 - Responding

All participants and people from around the world will be invited to leave further creative responses to our work with text, comment and feedback.

If you want to be part of this collaborative experiment please contact us :

* · Call B Arts on 01782 638775
* · Email info@pandaemonium.biz
* · Come along the image collection session at 6pm on Friday 29th January

Venue: B Arts,19 Barracks Square, Barracks Rd ,Newcastle under Lyme, ST5 1LG

World Community Arts Day is Wednesday 17th February 2010.

If you can’t make it to the venue at 8.30pm on 17th February, get yourself nice and comfy in front of your computer and witness the gathering online. Try to link up with us just before 9pm and get yourself ready ….Visit creating communities special page for our event now to see how you can link up on the night

Ok on the 25th March we hope to join hundreds of cities from around the world in hosting charity events called twestival. Each city will raise money for a specific cause, details can be found on twestival.com.

We hope to book the skyroom at the top of the YMCA in Stoke on Trent. We will have live music, interactive activities such as remixing music and video. We will also have a live sketch and  draw to get creative juices flowing.

The event will be broadcasted over the Internet possibly using Twitter, YouTube and a few other social media channels.

Free entrance, fun, all ages welcome.

For more details check out twestival.com

Hello, just wanted to update folks on a number of on going projects and ideas for the bITjAM 2010.

We’re currently developing a funding bid for the bITjAM ‘lab’. We hope to find a physical space to run workshops and research into using dance, digital arts, programming and all things experimental. The bITjAM ‘lab’ will also have a strong digital infrastructure, linking into the web as well as a strong digital network within the space.

The Remix Cinema project is in the process of pulling together a range of ideas and collaborators

We are also currently developing ideas for the Leave No Trace, Erasing with digital media exhibition to be held at the Potteries Museum and Art gallery in 2011. We hope to bring together programming, digital arts and dance in a live performance. We also hope to develop participatory elements to this project with a number of informative workshops beforehand to develop content for the exhibition. More on this later.

We also have a live draw in the March bITjAM, we plan to give people the chance to draw a huge visual piece as the audio and video artists do their improvised pieces.

On March the 25th we have Twestival where we will be live mashing on the web from our twestival base somewhere in Stoke on Trent.

Oh and we’re presenting at the second Pecha Kucha on March 11th!

Phew…

All collaborations are very welcome…

Hello folks, we have been busy in the bITjAM towers looking for ways of pushing the creative boundaries in this Creative County of Staffordshire. We are very excited about the coming developments of the bITjAM project and look forward to the next year and beyond. In the meantime we have been looking at developing side projects based on the same principles of bITjAM however with the aim of connecting the arts world to wider world of community development, citizen journalism and the moving image.

So…drum roll….we are planning a remix cinema!!

What we plan to do is set up a venue (maybe somewhere like Fat Cats in Hanley) and invite people to showcase video documentaries, open source video, digital stories etc, however with the bITjAM ingredient of remixing, mashing and improvising the video material. We are also hoping to bring in audio artists/DJ’s etc to provide a soundtrack.

There is a lot to plan with this project including organising a venue, finding video material, finding people willing to showcase or remix the video, finding audio artists and running a one off pilot evening…oh and importantly coming up with a name for the project. The project will be non profit and free to enter however we shall be looking for small funds to give the project resources to develop. As always all ideas, support and digital love welcomed.

This coming BiTjAM we have been approached by the arts company I work for (B arts) if we could use the Dec’s BiTjAM as a testing ground to try out some toy related instruments and even toys in order to create some soundscapes that will be used in a show at the end of Dec.

I (Big urn) have said yeah. I hope this is ok. What It means for us is that if we have any toys that look great, make noise, circuit bent toys, things that flash etc can we bring them down and have a massive jam using them?

At the mo there isn’t any solo performances form anyone form out of town so it will be just the usual crew. I understand that we will probably need some sort of beat related generation, so someone should bring a lappy.

I am hopping that we will get some funding to pay for some advertising, leaflets and mebs even some toys etc.

We will then have a big celebration (mebs Star wars themed as discussed with Lee) in the Jan or Feb one when everyone is in needing of cheering up.