Annette Works studio cleans out, turns around and prepares to open doors for Music for Bodies research project and collaborations, beginning February. Sonic Bed is installed in the studio and neighbours gratefully pass by for relaxations and feedback. Kaffe has meetings with bio-resonance practitioner, programmer, architect, author, philosopher, website engineers, waste management boss, graphic designers, BBC TV film director, sound artists, the British Council London, financier, systems analyst, neighbours, the British Council Shanghai, curators,new media artists, in preparation for Music for Bodies think tanks and research maps.

Wednesday 8th: Music for Bodies instrument team, meeting number one.
11am Annette Works. Present: Alex Haw and David Muth.

Monday 20th - March 1st. Depart to Shanghai for meetings with carpenter, upholsterer, audio consultant, car speaker supplier, audio technician and fabric market research for building of Sonic Bed_Shanghai .
Opening April 20th as part of Sound and the City, Shanghai, China. A British Council commission. See What we are making section in www.musicforbodies.net, launching May.

Monday 13th : Music for Bodies Think Tank Number Two 7pm at Annette Works.
Check events at musicforbodies.net

Friday 24th: 6 channel solo in Ex Teresa Cathedral, Mexico City, part of Radar Festival, Festival de Mexico en el Centro Historico, A.C.
Performed with a Live version of the Bed software (by David Muth) as well as LiSa and Max through the 6 speakers. Fantastic fun and an instrument with heaps of potential. First time that i could work with the 6 outs as 6 mono signals rather than 2 stereo pairs too. Performance completely different to sound check, (quite calm and chordal, the space has a 9 or so sec reverb but it's beautiful and quite handleable due to thick wooden floor) as the audience packed in thick around me and got very excited when they liked things and yelled, so of course i got excited too and we got quite noisy. They also loved watching my pretty interface in action and seemed more than moved at the end that , " something that started so strangely could become so intriguing and exciting ".

Friday14th-24th: Off to Shanghai to complete and install Sonic Bed_Shanghai, a commission from British Council,China, Sound and the City.
OPENING the XUHUI Art Museum, 1413 Mid Huai Hai Rd, 2.30pm. Exhibition continues through to 16th May, 2006. Opening hours 9am-4.30pm. call +86-21 6433 6516 for details.
Show also includes 13 code kites and projection of Making of Sonic Bed_London(2005) by KM as well as CD listening posts for the selected Favourite Sounds of Shanghai(Peter Cusack inspired) competition.
Opening event an incredible press frenzy with speeches, lucky dips and prizes for competition winners. Bed interest was based around touching and looking at it play rather than wanting to get in. Green plastic bags to put over shoes will be provied later as a potential remedy, but even when 100 students arrived, gettting in to lie down in public seemed a strange thing to do. I'd thought this might happen in London too, but there you couldn't stop folk jumping in straight away. (performance tip: Karaoake has to be the best destress activity possible. Go into a private room with your pals and some snack, dim lighting, soft leather covered furniture, a couple of reverb heavy mics plugged into a sweet sounding system and select from the extensive menu. We have this so wrong in UK

Wednesday 26th-29th: Depart to Krems, Austria for Sound Body Performance at donau festival.
Playing with 6 channels in the Minoritenkirche with David Toop(curator), Sachiko M, Ami Yoshida, Akio Suzuki, Evan Parker, Raphael Toral, Rhodri Davies, Lee Patterson, Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai. Growing summer green countryside peace, growth, bird song, and trickling water accompaniment everywhere is surely welcomed by this china jetlagged state. (London day trip was cold and grey but with a drought and a hosepipe ban and still incessantly building.)
Performances are 27th and 28th between 7 and 11pm, Klangraum Krems.

Friday 5th -7th: The Lappetites in town for rehearsal at Annette Works to perform Eliane Radigue work, ELEMENTAL II
@ CUT and SPLICE 2006, Acousmonium, ICA, London W1, UK, Sunday 7th May, 7pm. . The present:
Acousmonium is presented by Sonic Arts Network and BBC Radio 3 and runs from 5th to 7th May at the ICA.

Tuesday 30th.Rehearsals begin with Choreographer Claire Russ + CandoCo dance company to make score for Miniatora; a new work for 6 dancers and an 8 armed orange inflatable structure for Canary Wharf festivals and Trafalgar Sq summer festivals.

Monday 5th. 7pm. Music for Bodies Think Tank no.3 at Annette Works.
Please see music for bodies for further details. Launching June 14th.

Wednesday 8th. with MIMEO at the Holland Festival. 8pm, Paradiso, Amsterdam,the Netherlands.
And most of us make it, Gert Jen Prins,Cor Fuhler, Phil Durrant, Thomas Lehn, Keith Rowe, Peter Rehberg, Raphael Toral, Jerome Noetinger(with a completely new look meaning that I caught myself wondering a couple of times when looking up,' who is that new member of the band?') and Marcus Schmickler. Kjell Bjorgensson (i have known him for years through work at the Oslo Fine Art academy, so great to be able to be purely creative rather than contextualized within academia) made live visuals taking direct audio input from 6 of us, and Edwin van der Heide making a very clear and sensitive mix. Overall this produced a strong performance with some fabulous music over 50 minutes. More bookings please!
And Amsterdam was sunny and we found fantastic Turkish dinner at Levant, 200 yds along Weteringschans from the Paradiso, top tip.

Wednesday 14th 5pm musicforbodies.net launches.
a site that welcomes your contributions
go tune in.

Saturday 17th June. noon to 6pm, music for bodies Open Day at y space and Annette Works, unit 61, regents Studios, 8 Andrews Rd, London.
Sonic Armchairs and Sonic Bed wired up and ready for your visits, as well as a public forum at 4pm presenting what we are doing and inviting your comments. You can also book for future music for bodies workshops. Free refreshments available.

Saturday 24th June. Premiére of MINIATORA at the Docklands Dance Festival, Canary Wharf, a collaboration between Christophe Egret(architect),Claire Russ(choreographer) and Kaffe Matthews.
Performed by 6 members of CandoCo Dance company.
1.30, 2,30 and 3.30pm at the Canada Water plaza outside entrance to Jubilee Line station.
The structure was superb. The first time we had seen it fully inflated as rehearsal spaces had been too low ceilinged to accomodate its 12m height. And those inflation fans reallly worked. The Alphaville setting of Canary Wharf also helped to set off its bright orange a treat and with the dominating glass steel straight lined structures all around, it looked like something just landed. Handles up the structure however give the impression that dancers can run all over it, but this would collapse it, so more strengthening work still needed. It also meant that we couldn't internally install the 8 speakers for the installation piece, so I had to fast make a replacement stereo piece, played through the PA. This worked fine but also still to be resolved. Crowds gathered in the hot sun and were intrigued.
One guy to another, " blimey mate, what did you make of that?" "
" dunno, but that was the weirdest thing I've ever seen and that suits me just fine."

Thursday 29th to Monday July 3rd Keynote Speaker at Connection Barents.
A research laboratory and symposium, forming a platform in Kirkenes, Norway, for cultural negotiations across national, traditional and artistic borders, exploring new strategies for interrogations between contemporary artistic creativity and everyday life.
3 days of meeting, listening and talking with artists, makers, thinkers and producers from the locality, Scandinavia, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as Fins and Samis. Directed by Singaporean performance director and curator Ong Keng Sen, the other key notes were Akram Zaatari (video artist+curator) Beirut, Tadashi Kawamata (visual artist) Tokyo, and Ayu Utami (writer and activist), Jakarta.
It was also time of the midnight sun, so sleep was short and the days were packed. Even took a day trip to Nikel, just over the border into Russia. A landscape decimated by copious sulphur dioxide output from its nickel mine, presenting some kind of moonscape desert, a marked contrast to the fertility of the neigbouring Norwegian forests and lakes, and waters stuffed with fat wild salmon and King Crabs. Yes, these massive critters are quite an ecological disaster as they are ferociously taking over underwater, eating flat fish stocks and anything else. Gastronomically they are quite the opposite, bring 'em on ~ Many thanks PC for sending me home so well stocked up. My neighbours have never been so well looked after.

Thursday 20th: Sonic Armchair (1997) opens at Instrument, in FutureSonic 2006, 10th anniversary, Manchester, UK.
Exhibition is at the Museum of Science and Industry, 20th -29th July. Admission free.
An exhibition of artist-made instruments, noise generators, audio-visual manipulators, and recordings. Featuring sound artists, experimental composers, noise-makers and other audio creators from the UK, Austria, France, Germany, Portugal, Japan, and the USA, each exploring what we understand to be an instrument through a mix of high and low tech,live installations, concert performances, and abstract busking.
Curated by Colin Fallows and Drew Hemment.

Monday 24th : talk presenting 'Creative Collaborations' at Creative Industries Network Event (CINE),
Watermans Arts Centre Theatre, Brentford, London.
7.15pm to 8.30pm, with drinks and canapes and discussion to 10pm. a free event.
Fastest travel from Central London, mainline train Waterloo to Kew Bridge, right out of station and 10 mins down the road.
Further info contact Suman Bhuchar.
Presented 3 collaborations, the Syzygy project and Weather Made (1999), , Weightless Animals(2004) and the ongoing Music for Bodies(2006).

Saturday 5th : presentation at FOLDBACK festival, Hackney, London. 5.15pm.
“People are finding their machine code for escape, diversion, switching over to the other thing- away from life….. toward a change in the program, and
therefore their experience of time.”
Foldback will bring together a cross section of sound practitioners to present a diverse range of works.
This three day sound festival and affiliated exhibition will be held between Reception Space and Meals & SUVs in August.
The event will include themed seminars and gallery show, both exploring the work of international sound practitioners.Curated by Matt Lewis, Sebastian Lexer, Tom Richards, Bern Roche Farrelly
Reception Space, 17-25 Cremer St, between Kingsland High Road and Hackney Rd, London E2.

Thursday 31st: Sonic Bed_London opens at Simplicity Interactive, OK Centrum, ARS Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria.

Awarded a Distinction in Digital Musics category, Prix ARS 2006. Open until September 7th.

Tuesday 11th: