Last year at this time I was in Newcastle, Australia at the ElectroFringe festival! This year’s event, titled “Replicate, Automate, Infiltrate", is chock full of cool projects and visitors including Eric Singer’s Lemur Bots, Robert Praxmarer’s (T)error installation, and Aki Onda’s Cassette Memories which is comprised of an ongoiing collection of found audio samples and layered tracks. Also featured will be some interesting sound workshops with Ian Birse & Laura Kavanaugh who do live sampling projects in public spaces and recently worked on Instant Places which involves “locally gathered audio and video is transformed via improvisations in a created environments. Each project can be thought of as an evolving portrait or journal that is specific to the conditions surrounding it, while allowing indeterminate and personal forces a role in the outcome.” Overall the event looks great - and hopefully this year there will be wifi!