Dec

26

Amanda Payne and Evie Carter

Artist Interviews / Podcast
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Amanda Payne and Evie Carter came into the station to talk about the upcoming exhibition, “Meeting of the Minds!” at the Felix Kulpa Gallery. The opening is January 6, 2012 at 7pm.

There are four artists that will be showing their work: Derek Pratt, Nick Vargas, Ron Hendricks, Hudge and Amanda Payne.  All the artists are involved and/or tattoo artists at the local F U Tattoo at 1355 Capitola Road in Santa Cruz.

Along with the great paintings and drawings, there will be a guest DJ, Rock and Roll Vato.

We talked about how the idea of the exhibition came to be with the Felix Kulpa Gallery over a year ago and how each artist was contributing.  Evie Carter is a publicist at Carter Inked Publicity and PR and huge fan of F U Tattoo.

To hear our broadcast in its entirety, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/aoa122611.mp3″ title=”Amanda Payne & Evie Carter” graphical=”true”]

Here’s a video of our interview:

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Dec

19

Phoenix Toews with Evita Huapaya

Artist Interviews / Gamers on Game / Podcast
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Artists Phoenix Toews and Evita Huapaya came into the KZSC studio to talk with Nada Miljkovic on December 17, 2011. We had an insightful conversation concerning augmented reality and live streaming.

This is the third time that Phoenix has been on the sister shows, Artist on Art and Gamers on Game. It is hard to know which show to put him on. He is the perfect cross-disciplinary artist that can speak to both art and game making. Among his many talents, he is an augmented reality guru having worked in the field a decade before smart phone technology came into being. As an artist, he thinks conceptually. If there is not a platform or container to actualize his idea, he invents the media. For instance, Phoenix invented the augmented reality friendly and open source programming language, Palimsest, to create  his MFA graduating project, Palimpsest.

Phoenix graduated from the UCSC’s Digital Arts and New Media program this past June 2011. His graduating piece entitled, “Palimpsest: Augmented Reality Theater,” is an open-source augmented-reality browser capable of layering media over specific landscapes viewed through the iPhone. By employing a simple, yet powerful, scripting engine, the browser enables the creation of socially mediated narratives contextualized by geographic location, games that interact with the physical environment, and artistic performances and installations that are virtually attached to a real-world physical space. A participant may explore one of several experiences and narratives, and may navigate and interact with virtual objects such as images, 3D models, and sounds which are located at physical gps coordinates.

Since graduating, Phoenix has created several other projects, so as Pyrite which is a fully immersive and reactive AR environment that lets you transform your world into unique, photographic sculptures. He built Pyrite through the new company Augmented Mountain that was co-created with two other recent UCSC graduates, Meredith Drum and Mitch Miller. Pyrite is an application for the iPhone and iPad available at the Apple App Store. Pyrite is currently being used at the Scope Art Festival in Miami.

Joining in on our conversation was Evita Huapaya.  Evita is a artist, designer and videographer currently involved with live streaming technologies. You can see her work at EvitaHuapaya.com and SandSpitMedia on UStream.

To hear our broadcast in its entirety, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/aoa121911a.mp3″ title=”Phoenix Toews w/ Evita Haupaya” graphical=”true”]

Here are two excerpts of the interview that will not be broadcast.

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Dec

12

Jazz-Elle

Artist Interviews / Podcast
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Local dancer, singer, electronica musician, videographer, producer and editor Jazz-Elle came into UCSC’s KZSC radio station December 12, 2011 to talk about her upcoming event Deckin the Holidaze Party. Jazz-Elle is also a UCSC alum having graduated from the Community Studies program with her Master in Arts in 2008.

This show will be at the Coasters Lounge, Santa Cruz Boardwalk Bowl, December 16th beginning at 9pm with three acts. Come out to this happening dancing and live music event created as a means to de-stress with partying from all the holiday pressure. It’s a free event.

Jazz-elle Lasiuk is an educator, editor and producer at Community Television of Santa Cruz. She has a show on the station called, Planet of Dreamz. You can find all ten episodes at Jazz-elle’s Youtube Channel, JazzElleMusic.

Her website,  is full of her musical and video work at Jazz-Elle.com. Her Electro Wave music can be heard here at listn.to/jazz-elle. playing “in the heat” in Sacramento. She has a full length cd album, Test Your Taste Buds. By cross pollinating the sounds of Bjork’s “Big Time Sensuality”, with Joan Baez’s “Blowing in the Wind”, while dancing in a “Love Shack” with the B-52’s, and then “Stepping Out” to DJ Kaskade, you get a better understanding of the influences that helped to produce the Jazz-elle vibe.

To hear our broadcast in its entirety, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/aoa121211.mp3″ title=”Jazz-Elle” graphical=”true”]

This video is from alive performance of Jazz-elle’s song “Don’t Doubt It” at the Cypress Lounge 2010. Used here to promote the Deckin the Holidaze Party Dec 16th, 2011. 9 pm at the Coasters Lounge, Santa Cruz Boardwalk Bowl.

This is my daughter’s new song obsession:

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Dec

07

Nina Simon

Artist Interviews / Podcast
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Local scientist, curator, writer, educator, Nina Simon came into the KZSC studio to talk with Nada about her fairly new position at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH).

In May of 2011, Nina was named Executive Director of the MAH. Prior to that, Nina spent her time writing, consulting, and designing interactive exhibits for museums and galleries all over the world out of her home in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She launched her blog, Museum 2.0, in late 2006 and has received over 600,000 visits.

Nina is a wonderful addition to our community and the Museum. She is one of the industry’s most prominent outside-the-gallery thinkers. We talked about her goal to remake the MAH as the primary cultural touchstone of the Santa Cruz community that best embodies our unique cultural vibe.

How does one go about “remaking” a museum and what is involved? In her blog, Museum 2.0, Nina explains that to remake the museum experience, one must get more active participation. This is in alignement with contemporary art theory. We talked about how her ideas relate and were inspired by Tim O’Reilly’s definition of Web 2.0. Without getting into the nitty gritty,  Nina explained that the core her work is the simple idea that more participation creates a better cultural institution and/or art piece.

From these ideas, in 2010, Nina published, The Participatory Museum. This book is a comprehensive, practical guide to visitor and staff participation in cultural institutions. This is how she and MAH staff are remaking of our Museum.

Lastly, we discussed the whole slew of upcoming events happening at the museum: STARS,  to the newly instituted Third Friday events. and the four new exhibitions going up December 17th; the Rydell Winners, the Espresso Police, Futzie Nutzle, the Butterfly Effect.

December 10th is the Museum’s 20th annual fundraising gala, STARS. This event features an art auction, culinary fare and dancing. All proceeds support the Museum’s exhibitions, collections, events and educational programs throughout the year. This year’s them is the “Roaring 20s” so get out your flapper dresses and Zoot suits. Get your tickets fast, this event always sells out.

To hear our broadcast in its entirety, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/aoa120511.mp3″ title=”Nina Simon” graphical=”true”]

Here’s the video taken during our show with an iPad2:

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Dec

07

Rupa Dhillon on Gamers on Game

Gamers on Game / Podcast

On December 5, 2011, digital artist, programmer, musician, inventor, educator and DANM alum, Rupa Dhillon, came onto Gamers on Game to talk about her current project, Rock Vibe. Rock Vibe is a Rock Band-like game that can be played by sighted and blind gamers. Instead of using a screen to deliver information, it uses vibrations. When a player feels a vibration on a certain spot, such as the index finger, she must press a certain button on a Rock Band instrument, computer keyboard or MIDI instrument to increase her score.

Rupa created Rock Vibe with two other colleagues as a school project for the Human Computer Interactive class at UC Santa Cruz. The original game allowed blind gamers to play a version of Rock Band on their PCs by responding to vibrations on their arms. Game testers and people who’ve experienced Rock Vibe  say that they would like to see the game fully developed. Rock Vibe was recently launched on Kickstarter which is a new founding platform focused on a broad spectrum of creative projects.  There are quite a few rewards available to people who donate to the project. Check out Rock Vibe on Kickstarter and help this project happen.

We also talked about her previous work particularly her 2009 piece, Listen. This immersive listening space in which sound is experienced by the body, ears, and eyes was exhibited at the Santa Cruz MAH. The installation’s purpose was to redefine the term “listening” by calling attention to the multisensory nature of sound by allowing it to be heard, felt, and seen. At the core of the installation was a ten-channel speaker system consisting of six subwoofers placed inside a purpose-built bed, with four additional speakers surrounding the space. This large bed allowed visitors to feel the sounds through their bodies and a visualization of the soundscape is projected directly above it. The effect was that of a full body surround sound experience. It is one of my all-time favorite museum installations.

To hear our broadcast in its entirety, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/gog12511.mp3″ title=”Rupa Dhillon” graphical=”true”]

Here’s the video of our broadcast:

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Dec

01

Thad Nodine

Artist Interviews / Podcast
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Local writer and author, Thad Nodine came into the KZSC studio, November 28, 2011, to talk about the publication of his first novel, Touch and Go,  and his upcoming book reading at the Capitola Book Cafe, December 5th. Touch and Go was published by Unbridled Books.

Along with winning the Dana Award, Thad has received excellent reviews from quite a few different sources. The story is a journey of a family driving from California to Florida. Told in a tradition of Southern Writers, Touch and Go harkens to Faulkner’s As I lay dying as well as Twain’s Huck Finn. Jonathan Franzen calls it a “high-velocity vision quest.” Publisher’s Weekly called it “One of the year’s finest fiction debuts.”

The word cinematic was used in quite a few of the reviews which is very interesting considering that the main protagonist, Kevin, of the novel is blind. He, along with the two other adults in this muli-cultural “family”, Isa and Patrick are young recovering addicts.

The story begins in Burbank, with the three adults living together after successfully completing rehab. Patrick and Isa have recently taken on two foster children, 16-year-old Devon and 10-year-old Ray. The family is getting ready for a journey to Florida that is fueled by Isa’s need to see her dying father in Florida. They end up going on a wild ride full of unexpected plot twists involving, reunions, memories, natural disasters with characters behaving both badly and heroically.

During our interview, we talked about the five main characters that make up this family. Thad explained when he started writing he thought that each character would tell part of the story. But, as the story unfolded, the character of Kevin became the voice most needing to be heard.

I asked what inspired Thad to write from the point of view of a blind man, something rarely if ever done in literature. He explained that he has had very close relationships with blind people throughout his life. He told a particularly poignant story about how his grandfather loved to take him and his siblings for walks blind-folded. Ironically, his grandfather became blind himself. Then the roles reversed and Thad took his grandfather for walks. His grandfather’s blindness may have also been an influence in Thad’s choice of profession. Because of his grandfather’s love of books and words, Thad read to him.

Thad will reading from his novel, Touch and Go,Monday, December 5th at 7:30pm at the Capitola Book Cafe in California. He will be joined at the Reading, Q&A  and Booksigning with, Katherine Kindred, author An Accidental Mother, and Claudia Sternbach, author of Reading Lips: A Memoire of Kisses. The Capitola Book Cafe is located at 1475 41st Ave, Capitola, CA 95010.

To hear our broadcast in its entirety, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/aoa112811.mp3″ title=”Thad Nodine” graphical=”true”]

Here’s a movie our interview. The video begins 1 minute and 40 seconds in:

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