FEMINISTA

I saw Ladyhawke at The Fillmore in San Francisco, awesome concert. Amazing vibe and she was super excited to be where her heroes and pop history had been born...Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix...all the greats of music through the ages. Then she comes back to NZ and wins heaps of awards for the year. Go Ladyhawke! The work of Sarah Larnach, the artist who did the drawings for her album and the cool music video Delirium is from NZ too, but lives in Sydney. Check out more of her work on her blog .

I did a lecture this week up at the English Department with Brian Opie and James Meffan. It was pretty interesting stepping back into academia and I think I quite like it. While I've been working on a PhD proposal this year, I've had second thoughts about my topic so am putting it on hold for a bit while I do some more research. Also, I've been away for several weeks in Europe - went to the Venice Biennale and have loaded up a little film featuring the sculpture garden of Peggy Guggenheim. Check it out Gogo Media.

Well, Helen has finally signed off and good luck to her. The media still couldn't resist one last dig as Guyon Espiner worked up an Ice Queen headline to attract people to his blog...it's a pity they couldn't for once just honour this amazingly intelligent woman who has done so much to raise the profile of NZ internationally as well as be an incredible role model for women in this country. She will do an excellent job at the U.N. although I'm sure it will be challenging for her to shift into a new mode of living. Anyway, despite the misogyny and homophobia of the NZ media, she got to where she was heading and noone can ever take that away from her. I ordered a copy of the full video speech from the Parliamentary library for free... it is supposed to be on the government website but takes a week because of the Easter break! Good luck and Kia Kaha Helen...we'll be watching.... Photo of Helen from The Dom Post...

A most awesome concert.

I went to Mighty Mighty last night and outside the venue was a robotic drumber, The Drumber. This was put together by local Wellingtonian, Rupert... The gig began with the robotic drummer, then was followed by Doteyes and then The Trons , an awesome robotic music experience. Check them out on Myspace.

I spent the day at ANIMFX 08 today listening to amazing artists and technologists talking about everything from creating light within computer games to puppeteering for the feature film Waterhorse. Local and international speakers sat together on panels discussing future trends in film, animation, sfx and games and the recurring theme was the effect of social networking, user generated content and new forms of digital cinema and distribution. Last year I interviewed Warren Franklin , Producer and founder of Rainmaker Productions. He was also involved in the early days of animation and sfx at Industrial Light & Magic and worked with George Lucas for many years. In the meantime its back out into the fray to party at the Sidhe Interactive party.