Cage Day In Cork

I just had a great weekend down in Cork shooting the Cage Day celebrations, orchestrated by John Godfrey, director of the Quiet Music Ensemble. There were three events in total. What follow are shots from the first of these, "Inlets" at the Glucksman Gallery, on University College Cork, 27 January 2012. The four members of the QME teamed up with the similarly named Quiet Club (Danny McCarthy and Mick O'Shea), their numbers further augmented by guests Katie O'Looney and Derek Foott.

Tank Performance In Cork

Now this is a great way to kick off the year! I will be performing with Ed Devane, John Daly, Harry Moore and Mick O'Shea at Triskel Christchurch, that hub of artistic activities in downtown Cork.

Join us at the entirely civilised time of 2pm, 14 January 2012. Even if you need a coach back out of the city, you will still have time for a pint with us afterwards.

Record Sleeves Designed For Charity Competition

This is a single cover for a design contest TalentHouse is organising for the Teenage Cancer Trust. Secret 7" involves inviting regular folk like myself to show off their artwork. A number of winning entries will be exhibited and one cover chosen to house the actual record on release. There are seven participating bands. I ended up making covers for four of them. (What can I say -- not all were equally inspiring.)

Vote for each entry by clicking on the link I provide, which will take you to the corresponding page at TalentHouse. Then click the "Support Robin" button. It costs nothing and helps me out!

Vote for my take on The Cure's classic "Friday I'm In Love"
here. I tried to evoke a nice sunny, but at the same time nostalgic, feeling.

Strange Attractor Catalogue Launch

My post about the Just Listening CD release reminded me that I was in Cork not so long ago for another launch event, also celebrating a sound art publication by Farpoint Recordings. Until now I've neglected to write about it here, likely because of that annoying Facebook entity. (Items I write about there I might forget to write about here.)

It is a timely matter again, since Saturday saw the Dublin launch of Strange Attractor at the RHA Gallery. Since I couldn't be in two places at the same time I missed out on Dublin, so these photos here of the Cork launch (Saturday 12 November 2011 in the Crawford Art Gallery) must suffice. Read on for an overview of the book and DVD.

Just Listening - Ireland Calling CD Now Available

Despite the fact that I am one of the participants included on this CD, it has suddenly become one of my favourite releases of recent years. Just Listening - Ireland Calling has a cumbersome title, but is in all other ways an effortlessly pleasing release. Recorded live in Limerick this past April, this disc documents the Just Listen showcase of contemporary Irish experimental improvisation. And it is a rich scene indeed!

Organised by The National Sculpture Factory, the concert invited curators from across Europe (and beyond) to check out the best in local talent. Though the bulk of the festival was in Cork, the concert itself took place in the Church Gallery at the Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD).

LaTeX Tip: TeXstudio

I have spent the last few days designing documents with LaTeX, using the XeTeX engine. The process has produced some great results, but a good amount of digging was required to find out rather obvious things. This series of articles will hopefully save you this time.

I will assume you've installed TeX Live in the default location, which is C:\texlive on Windows 7. There are two distributions that use XeTeX and only this one worked for me, as I wrote previously. Of course you don't have to use Windows; these are cross-platform open source applications.

And The Winner Is... TeX Live

Well, after all that rubbish I went through earlier in the day, finally some results! TeX Live installed correctly the second time. Of course it decided to place itself in the root of C: drive, not where nice-behaving apps should go. But I'll see if I can re-locate it later.

Right now, it's down to the business of laying out equations. In this follow-up article I will compare renderings of two LaTeX engines and three typefaces.

Reasons To Despair, Or, Installing And Using LaTeX

Shake me or something but it's 2011. I'm not sure why software is getting more complicated and more broken instead of the opposite. I suppose I "ask for it" by expecting to install a geek-level text-based document layout package like LaTeX and have it work like it should.

I recently decided (tardy by a couple of decades) to have a look at LaTeX, since I often need to produce different printer-ready output in an easy and powerful fashion. The various WYSIWYG packages designed for this purpose are either a) rubbish, or b) expensive. I'm getting tired of laying out basic files by mouse when a keyboard is more efficient. After many years of HTML I am quite used to tag-based layouts. I coded for an awful long time, so this approach doesn't scare me.

The final straw is that I've had to lay out some math formulae recently, and that is a horrible process in a graphical editor. LaTeX has been performing this task for three decades. It's open and free, so why not?

General Strike in Oakland

Tomorrow, 2 November 2011, in Oakland there will be a General Strike. The stated purpose is to shut down the usual flow of goods and money that signify a system dominated by capital in its most oppressive forms. This is in direct response to the attempted dispersal of the Oscar Grant Plaza occupation. Among other things the police brutality on this occasion resulted in critical injuries to a an American veteran of Iraq. I will not attempt here to justify or document any of these activities, since the Occupy movement is far too complicated and diffuse to be summarised simply.

Sonic Vigil 6 (2011)

Where can you hear 14 of the finest improvising sonic art performers play for over seven hours for only a fiver? Only at Sonic Vigil, Cork's annual mega-festival of everything that is loud, delicate, ferocious, quiet, expressive, innovative and down-right thrilling!

I am especially pleased to announce that I am on the bill this Saturday 22 October at Triskel Christchurch in Cork City.