The book, Voices of British Columbia by Robert Budd, captures the oral histories of B.C. pioneers. The digital edition is formatted to read like a printed book, but it features enhancements that mimic the experience of using the web. The electronic version, for example, includes links to audio files so readers can hear pioneers’ voices as they read about them. While the print version of the book comes with three CDs, the digital edition condenses the media into one package, catering to readers’ web-influenced predilection for sifting through an assortment of multimedia sources to enrich their knowledge.

“Our strategy is to enhance the existing book that you have,” Finkelstein told the Georgia Straight at a nearby coffee shop.

Submissions by Nicole Duquette of Richmond and Sterling Pache of Vancouver are among the 125 shortlisted videos for the YouTube Play exhibit on Oct. 21.

Duquette’s video is a three-minute animated short titled Dreamscape, about a young girl in hospital who has a dreamlike experience populated by a winged cat and a flaming passageway. Duquette, 20, made the video while taking the classical animation program at the Vancouver Film School.

“It’s been a really amazing experience,” she said by phone. “I hope it furthers my career in the arts field.”

She has been entertaining children and families in the area for more than 12 years after her alter ego, Bobbi Kurtz moved to the Island from Calgary in 1992.

As both Kurtz and Aunti Bobbi, she has worked extensively in the performing arts industry for young audiences beginning with the VI International Children’s Festival for 10 years.

And for the past four years she has been working with the Vancouver Island Symphony as their education and community outreach co-ordinator.

“I always wanted to do a TV show for youth,” says Kurtz. “I wanted to do a show that was fun and educational.”

Creative Tech Summer Camps are a fun way for young people to participate in art making, learning new skills, creating the future, and making new friends. All workshops are taught by professional Vancouver artists, and are offered at affordable rates. *additional subsidies available.

W2 is located in the historic Storyeum building across the street from the new Woodward’s complex, in the heart of Vancouver. W2’s partnership with Simon Fraser University School for Contemporary Arts equips our media lab with the most current technology.

Daily details: All camps run from 9:30am – 4pm, at W2 Storyeum, 151 West Cordova. Healthy lunches are included in the summer camp fees.

Registration Info: Register at http://www.creativetechnology.org/page/camp-registration. Pay fees at:http://w2summercamps2010.eventbrite.com/

“Booooooom.com gets about two million hits a month now – it’s pretty crazy,” the 27-year-old Vancouverite says of the blog he started only a year and a half ago. In a virtual world clogged with endless art sites, Hamada has found a way to stand out, and now quietly exerts major power over creative communities, not only in Vancouver but also around the world.

Booooooom.com features art, photography, film and music, as well as a variety of other projects that Hamada initiates and curates. He works alone from his home in Richmond, B.C., near the Vancouver airport. Each day, Hamada personally publishes around five new posts on different artists, photographers or designers whose work he admires, with the occasional musician or filmmaker garnering a mention. Though he finds it difficult to describe the qualities that will get an image on the site, Hamada admits that he has preference for work that is “imperfect or hand-drawn” over “really slick Photoshopped stuff.”

Art and technology are ancient partners. Our ancestors created an amazing new technology more than 40,000 years ago when they first drilled holes in hollow bones to sound musical intervals. Manufactured oil paints in tubes freed 19th-century painters to take their easels outside and seize upon natural light and colour, giving us Impressionism. Without the elevator, there would be no skyscrapers and no modern city architecture – who wants to climb 89 flights of stairs?

The Okanagan’s vibrant tech and multimedia community, known as the “Silicon Vineyard,” has never been stronger. With large-scale investment by industry giants Disney, the infrastructure of the Okanagan Film Commission, and education offered by the Centre for Arts and Technology, Media Button is well positioned to make an immediate contribution to this growing community, offering a combination of talented in-house expertise and a premiere production facility that will allow organizations to shop local.

He watches The Simpsons, King of the Hill and Futurama.

For the last decade or so, he’s spent more time than he says he cares to admit playing video games like Final Fantasy, Suikoden and Metal Gear Solid series.

And for the first time in his life, he’s stoked about the symphony.

LaRoche and his girlfriend will take their seats among the sold-out audience at tonight’s Vancouver Symphony Orchestra performance of Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy, a rendition of the music from the 22-year-old video game composed by Nobuo Uematsu.

He’s excited about the date. But for those who oversee the city’s cultural institutions, what’s more important is where the Denholm LaRoches of the city will go the next day.