I’ve been invited to present and perform at the New Media Meeting May 28-31 09 in Norrköping Sweden.  I’ll play on Thursday the 28th and present on Sat the 30th.  See the program.

robotcowboy will be performing at the Altavoz Festival in Venice, Italy on May 16th 2009.

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On April 25th 09, I presented the robotcowboy project at the LiWoli FLOSS Hacklab 09 at the Kunst Uni in Linz.

Liwoli 2009 is a three day long Hacklab and an open invitation to all who would like to discover more about and participate in an active process of learning, producing and sharing around the areas of Free/Libre Open Source Software.

robotcowboy  performed  on Apr 4th 09 at the STRP Festival in Eindhoven, NL.

Starting with one festival weekend with a world-class programme presenting more than 150 acts, artists and artworks at one location. This edition STRP will expand the festival by extending the art exhibition for one more week, with special performances, films, interviews, masterclasses, workshops and more!

robotcowboy is playing at the STEIM Micromusic Jamboree 2 in Amsterdam NL.

STEIM is hosting it’s 2nd Micro Jamboree this December 8-11, 2008. Featuring 4 days of creativity and excellence in todays electronic music through a wealth of presentations, discussions, and performances. An intense 7 sessions of lectures, demos, and discussions held by the most innovative artists, musicians, and instrument designers in the field will be hosted in STEIM’s studios. An intellectual jam on creative musical software, modern sensor interfaces, alternative energy sources for electronic music, rhythm and sequencing for live performances, and more!

I will be playing Jamboree Concert 2 in the evening of Thr Dec 11th at the Smart Project Space.

See the Schedule for more details.

Hope to see you there!

Boogle House Show
Bring your Boogle

Aug 16 11pm-?
(after THE SCHOLNG GONG SHOW! @ The Flying Monkey)
At Rita’s Speak Easy

Players:

robotcowboy (moon)
the cast-outs (hsv-delta,al)
the devil’s hollow band (kentucky)

Well, on a lighter note after the last 2 posts … I have a new demo and I’m working on a few more.  I’m also learning the automake and configure system so I can distribute my project source code so others can run their own version of robotcowboy.  Look forward to an ep in the near future with awesome, polished versions of my songs so far!

FloatingFarther (featuring my new carbon throat mic)

robotcowboy will appear at the new media art/music Signal + Noise Festival 08 in Vancouver, CA April 17-19.

I’m set to play after 10:30 pm on Sat April 19th at the VIVO Media Arts Center.

UPDATE: 4/21

I just want everyone involved with the Signal+Noise 08 festival that I let you all down and I’m sorry. I’m used to dealing with technical problems on my own but, as was pointed out to me in this case, it also reflects upon the festival. It was bad end to an otherwise awesome 3 days. If I seemed indifferent to what was going on I’m sorry, that is what my mom calls my notorious “cavalier attitude”.

What follows is a short breakdown of what happened:

• I was late to my sound check
• The software midi connection somehow stopped working and I did not have midi in from the guitar. That was why I was fiddling with it at the beginning.
• Upon rebooting my computer, the wireless card refused to connect to the wireless network. Without that connection, my wearable cannot send data to the laptop which was running the projection.
• Two songs stopped prematurely, I do not know why. This is a software problem.
• Before the second to last song, I accidentally hit the tune-up button on the guitar which put it out of tune. I had to restart the song.
• I lost stereo out on the last song.

Everything was working perfectly during my sound check. I wore the belt, plugged in all of my gear, and ran through all the songs with no problems. My jumpsuit is just a suit, there are no integrated electronics or sensors, so it made no difference if I wore it during the sound check or not. If anything, I simply should have rebooted the computer before performing, instead of leaving it on after the sound check.

There were not any hardware issues on Saturday. I have spent a great deal of time making sure the cables and physical connections are solid and reliable. Apart from one usb port that I have repaired and strengthened, I have not had any recent hardware problems. My gear is rugged and meant to be pulled upon.

My project is experimental in the practical as well as aesthetic sense. The problems that occurred during my Signal+Noise performance stems from my need to constantly tinker with and add new elements to my software and lack of a solid testing regimen. For the last few weeks I was updating and reworking several aspects of the system. In fact I was adding a few things Saturday at the last minute and was late to the sound check as a consequence. I simply did not test my setup as I should have and we all paid the price.

robotcowboy went on tour for 2 month back in Jan and Feb and, aside from a few small issues, worked reliably for nearly 40 shows. After this stress-test, I made the erroneous assumption that my system had become solid and reliable … until I added new things to it. If I had left well enough alone, there would not have been any problems on Saturday. I did not take my preparation as seriously as I should and I am sorry.

My problems were in the vein of a computer presentation: no matter how much time is spent in preparation, something invariable goes wrong with the computer or software resulting in an awkward moment. But in this case, I should have spent more time in my preparation. I just wish my awkward moment had not been so important.

– Dan Wilcox 4/21/08

It has come to light in past few days that the electronic music released by Brandon Harrod under the name Laromlab was in fact stolen from chiptune musicians in Europe, namely members of the YM Rockerz. He has been dropped from Mushpot Records and all copies of the album have been taken offline. His apology. Mushpot Apology.

One of the affected artists, Crazy-Q, has compiled a complete list of plagiarized songs.

I do not condone such flagrant plagiarism and I did not knowingly support his acts throughout my association with him and while on the Consoles Afire tour (ironic name now).

This is my official statement regarding the matter:

My name is Dan Wilcox and I accompanied Brandon Harrod, known as Laromlab, on the Consoles Afire Tour from Jan – Mar 08. This news is shocking to me. I had no idea Brandon’s latest self-titled album was stolen from the chiptunes and demo scene in Europe. They have graciously shared their music and software and he decided to pass it off as his own. I will never condone such flagrant plagiarism. I call for him to make a public apology so as not to taint the reputations of his label and associated musicians such as myself and to acknowledge the work of the original artists. Laromlab

As I distance my reputation from Brandon, I would also like state that I do not distance my friendship. He has made a very bad decision and he will deal with its just consequences. I feel no anger, only disappointment in my friend. He is a good human being with a kind heart and he is better then this. I hope that Brandon will do the right thing and come to terms with whatever demons drove him to plagiarize the works of others. I also hope that all parties involved would seek a peaceful resolution to this matter.

Thank You,
Dan Wilcox
danomatika[at]gmail[dot]com
robotcowboy.com

3/31/08

I finally sat down and put together all of the info from the tour, including 2 live albums and the photo gallery.