As promised before in the blog post “An Unexpected Honour”, I would like to introduce you to my fellow artists of the project what if? Today,I will start with Cathy van Eck:

Cathy is a composer, performance and sound artist who often works with gestures, loudspeakers and live-electronics. When I saw her performance of Song No 3 at the Mittersill Composers Forum, I instantly fell in love with her work. In Song No 3, Cathy features typical arm and hand gestures used by singers during their performances as a means of additional expression. Cathy isolates those gestures and reframes them beautifully in such a way that they become a means to control her expressive electronic sounds.

I am not making any noises with my voice. Instead, the input volume of the microphone is controlling the sound processing done by the computer. This sound is then diffused through the loudspeaker (with a white paper glued on the membrane) on my head. [Cathy van Eck]

I am happy and honoured that Cathy is part of the arts team of what if? Please, have a look at her blog posts What if.. we had wings? and An Interactive Radio Drama: “A. wie Albertine” by Leo Hofmann. (Featured image © Silvana Torrhina: Cathy van Eck performing Song No 3)

Back to the Most Influential Blogger Award: I am pleased to recommend four more bloggers for the award. Today, I will concentrate on blogs that feature participatory culture or DIY-projects or support artist through profound advice:

1. Make:

A great blog where you will find tutorials for Electronics (Arduino, Computers&Mobile, Rasberry Pi, Robotics), Workshops (3D Printing, Machining, Woodworking), Craft (Crotchet, Knitting, Paper Craft, Sewing), Science (Energy and Health) and Art&Design (Photography & Video, Music). Enjoy!

2. The Arduino Blog:

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. [http://arduino.cc/]

At the blog arduino-users share their projects (including project description and construction-instructions) with the Arduino community.

3. The Sampler Blog from Sound and Music:

“Comprising a mix of composers, curators and Sound and Music staff, each blog post is aimed at offering something new to the new music community. From compositional practice to collaboration with other art forms, The Sampler blog provides a voice for composers.” [The Sampler Blog]

4. The audience development hub from Sound and Music that is especially interesting for each kind of sound artists/composer.

“At Sound and Music we believe in keeping things simple and sharing what we do. All of our audience development boils down to three simple areas:

• Ask: What are the questions you want to know about your audience? Who has access to this data?
• Test: How can we use the insight and data we have to test new ideas?
• Share: What data and/or insight can we share with each other to develop new ideas?” [soundandmusic.org]

Happy tinkering, developing, exploring of the hacker-, arts-, design- and music-scene.

Here are the guidelines for acceptance: To accept this award, the awardees must do the following:

1. Display the Award on your Blog.
2. Announce your win with a blog post and thank the Blogger who awarded you.
3. Present 10 deserving Bloggers with the Award.
4. Link your awardees in the post and let them know of their being awarded with a comment (or a pingback).
5. Include an embedded video or a SoundCloud track of your current favorite song/music/art work.

Let us know, if you have suggestions for another influential blogger!