Interesting lecture coming up next month, more cinema than 'the live', but certainly bridging new media, cinema and archives.
They also offer a webcast, which of course this is no novelty these days. My problem with many physical discussion events that have an online stream is that you're denied half the engagement - if you want to join in the discussion you've got to be there in person, even 'moderated' chat streams are often not fed into the on-stage discussions. So I'm therefore delighted that these guys have offered the chance for you to post your questions to them by email after the event.
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Danube TeleLecture #4: Thursday, Nov 8, 2007 - 7pm CET
Live debate at the MUMOK in Vienna
Lev MANOVICH, internationally renowned media and art theorist (Russia/USA)
Sean CUBITT, expert in film and media theory (Great Britain/Australia)
Cinema as a visual phenomenon has accelerated increasingly over the last decades. Technical achievements at the material level like new participatory models driven by the melting of Internet, Databases, TV and Cinema are setting new standards and bringing a new dynamic to the black-box of the movie theater.
Remixing, Coding, Remapping, and Recombination of visual manifestations are revolutionizing the narrative form of film - new societal phenomena, like the VJ scene, generate immersive viewing spaces and new forms of moving image distribution. The domain of video, film, computer and net-based installations stands on the threshold of a material revolution: do they bring a new aesthetic?
Revolutionary possibilities in camera and projection techniques offer increasingly faster development cycles that also allow for innovative image languages. New historical perspectives of the cinematic revue coalesce with innovative interpretations of our visual consumer culture and foretell future developments. What can be expected ... what are the consequences?
Introduction: Oliver GRAU, Department for Image Science, Danube University
Danube TeleLecture # 4 from the MUMOK, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna
Time: Thursday, Nov 8, 2007, 7:00pm CET (Start of Streaming)
+ You can attend the event in MUMOK or in realtime over the www +
http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/dis
After the lectures the audience will have the possibility to ask the speakers questions.
Internet users may join the discussion via e-mail.
=> Sean CUBITT
Current Publications: Projection: Vanishing and Becoming, in: MediaArtHistories (2007); The Cinema Effect (2005); Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema (2002); Digital Aesthetics (1998); Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture (1993).
=> Lev MANOVICH
Publications: Abstraction and Complexity in: MediaArtHistories (2007); Black Box : White Cube (2005; Soft Cinema - Navigating the Database (2003/5); The Language of New Media (2001)
The Department for Image Science at Danube University Krems created a new format of international lecture and debates on key questions of Image Science and Media Art with high-caliber experts - the DANUBE TELELECTURES. The discussion will be recorded by several cameras and transmitted live over the www. Online viewers can participate in the discussion via email. So far the debates have included: Machiko KUSAHARA, Sarat MAHARAJ, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Christiane PAUL, Paul SERMON, Jens HAUSER...
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
literature festival performances
I've mentioned wanting to explore Festivals in this space. There are no less than four happening in Manchester this month, as well as a conference on "Urban Screens". There are not enough hours in the day to see as much as I'd like, but I have to comment on two pieces I saw yesterday from Manchester Literature Festival.David Gaffney presented a lunchtime reading performance of new work written in homage to the 1857 'Art Treasures in Manchester' exhibition, now recreated at Manchester City Art Gallery. My company published David repeatedly in the-phone-book.com, as well as commissioning him for The Burgess Project; his wit and talent shine through and it's always a real treat to see the world through his eyes. The readings at MCAG ranged from a Victorian Child bought from a website, to Pete Doherty split in half and immersed in formaldehyde having left his remains to "Art". There was no geek in sight here, but David's stories are succinct in length and vast in imagination and his reading style is certainly a considered, rehearsed performance. They're posting all his stories on the gallery website soon, I'll add the link when they do. Oh, and go buy his book.
The second piece conflicted with Urban Screen's premiere of a new piece by The Light Surgeons. I was torn, but there was something about the experimental approach that the delightful Sarah Austin at Urbis and Jane Brake from MMU's Interactive Arts course brought to the table that intrigued. Urban Myths Re-told it had to be.The premise: through an open submission process, ten short-short stories were chosen to form the basis for Interactive Arts retelling. The young students had just three weeks to read and respond to the stories, resulting in a one hour live art & installation performance through the often unknown nooks & crannies of the Urbis building.
Their confidence, and their visible ownership of the building, spoke loudly of the open and enthusiastic guidance provided by Sarah and Jane (and others too, I'm sure). I was impressed by the original stories (being an obvious fan of the short-short narrative format), but the diverse and innovative responses from each artist really blew me away. My favourite was most definitely the response to "The Clubber" by Hetty Malcolm-Smith, a realistic flash-back to heady rave culture days (or rather, nights). The narrative was delivered via a series of flyers handed out sequentially as you walked down the long, postered staircase. It could really have been The Academy, circa 1995.
One minor complaint I have was the use of the word 'interactive' in one piece, the re-telling of "Jenny Greenteeth" by Steve Jackson. I have a real issue with the way the word 'interactive' is used. I'm not going to break this down in detail here, but, in brief and purely from my point of view, if you do not affect the work in a way that changes another participant's experience of that piece, it isn't interactive. Call it an installation and I'll be happy (and I loved the home-made lollipops so it certainly wasn't all bad).
Our narrator wore a back-pack throughout, which instantly made me wonder, why? You don't wear a backpack in a performance unless you need to carry something, so at the end I grabbed the young man, applauded his performance, and questioned it's purpose... "backpackcam" was revealed and I'm now looking forwards to seeing further remixes of re-tellings through the MMU. How very open source, I wonder if they've applied a Creative Commons license.
I didn't realise at the time, but one of the Jury for the selections of stories was the delectable David Gaffney - had to be good really. Congratulations to all for a truly successful experiment. This type of project is exactly the right approach for MLF's "Freeplay" strand, where Literature, Technology and Media collide.
I look forwards to more of the same from all concerned.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
where to start
We are in a period of transition caused by a dramatic rise in digital technologies such as the internet and mobile phones, and the shared spaces that they occupy. Corporations are watching nervously as niche becomes the new black. Traditional models of content production, distribution and revenue generation tumble precariously into an open source culture of shared ownership, content management systems and audience participation.
Theatre, once a device to manage the masses, is now challenging the public with invisible interventions in physical and virtual spaces, far removed from the fourth wall or black box. Grammars of film have evolved from the one-to-one of the zoetrope, the one-to-many of the cinema screen, the one-to-few of television and more recently the one-to-one-to-one viral nature of internet and mobile phone platforms.
This blog aims to explore interdisciplinary creative practice, particularly theatre and performance art, cinema and digital video production & dissemination, new media arts (specifically the internet and mobile phones), open source technologies and collaborative experiences. My foraging will drift across shared and live events, from Festivals through to the Theatre of Sport, celebrating the best and worst examples I have stumbled upon, and the input and feedback of others.
My aim is that this will become a shared space where practitioners and researchers can contribute to the discussion, with invited guest bloggers to quietly whisper their own voices in this burgeoning world of noise. I do not aim to provide solutions, merely document the world I see changing around me. Or is that perhaps a world that I am changing around me?
My Background.
It might help if you know why I care about all this. I went to my first show at Manchester's Royal Exchange when I was thirteen, spending the majority of it watching the crew with their swift and subtle set changes, and the slow cross fading of lighting and sound cues. I was hooked and worked solidly at every Theatre that would have me, but never even contemplated being able to actually study something that was just so fun. Fortunately I was wrong, and found the perfect course, embedded in a sculpture park, with some inspirationally wild playmates.
My first degree was in Theatre Design & Technology where I was introduced to the work of performance artist Roselee Goldberg, the scenographer Josef Svoboda, the costume extrovert Oskar Schlemmer and the mask work of the Commedia dell'arte. My college multimedia performances were criticised for "containing too many media", resulting in a "minimalistic mixed media" final show; and so I was introduced to the dichotomy of education and production.
My Masters was in Interactive Multimedia Production, the first course of it's type in the UK, associated to the School of Computing and Mathematics and not the Design School where it currently resides. When my final project (a 'Media Virus' driven online community with a live multimedia, performance art, dj/vj, UK book launch for Douglas Rushkoff's "Ecstasy Club") was presented, the lecturers had no idea how to mark me. How could anyone know if my experimental approaches were right, or wrong? What questions were being asked or answered within this crazed online/offline shared social network performance? Did it matter that many of our audiences thought they were simply attending a rave? Somehow I graduated regardless, and moved into the world of new media through my first job as Projects Assistant for the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Liverpool & Manchester.
My company's first project, the-phone-book.com, was an experiment in the world of online publishing (now called "User Generated Content") under the constraints of the technical limitations of mobile internet (then WAP1.0). This quickly lead to questioning the commercial opportunities for artistic ringtones and logos, artones.net. Both projects demonstrated the need to educate not only the creators of mobile content but also their potential future audiences, and so the-sketch-book.com was born.
Several projects and education programmes later, we have returned to our performance roots with a promenade piece, The Burgess Project. This was an experiment in the generation of new work, delivered in old and new medias, large and small screens, live and virtual contexts, with linear and non linear narratives and interactive experiences from two-way text messaging and bluetooth broadcasting, to a large scale public sing-along.
The energy and stimulation that The Burgess Project reignited naturally clashed with the constraints Business places on Creativity, leading us to make the decision to break ourselves in two. the-phone-book Limited will continue to produce & deliver train the trainer masterclasses, bespoke learning, production environments and consultation on emerging technologies for creative practice. A new company, honeycomb, will celebrate "the messy space" through research and experimentation, and all things process.
honeycomb demonstrates a real need to return to my passion for 'the live', particularly inspired by the work of Quebecois' Robert Lepage, his innovative use of technology within dynamic theatricality, and his brave use of the collaborative process for his global ambitions.
It is therefore with Monsieur Lepage that I will start my core research, with generous input from colleague (and hopefully one day PhD mentor), Aleksandar Dundjerovic, who has already published two books about Lepage, one on his Cinema and one on his Theatricality.
I'm not sure where this journey will end, but if I am able to continue to learn from the many people with whom I have shared a passion for theatre, technology, wine and life, then I will count myself most fortunate. If it does indeed lead to a PhD, then I will most unfortunately risk becoming "Professor Plum"...
Theatre, once a device to manage the masses, is now challenging the public with invisible interventions in physical and virtual spaces, far removed from the fourth wall or black box. Grammars of film have evolved from the one-to-one of the zoetrope, the one-to-many of the cinema screen, the one-to-few of television and more recently the one-to-one-to-one viral nature of internet and mobile phone platforms.
This blog aims to explore interdisciplinary creative practice, particularly theatre and performance art, cinema and digital video production & dissemination, new media arts (specifically the internet and mobile phones), open source technologies and collaborative experiences. My foraging will drift across shared and live events, from Festivals through to the Theatre of Sport, celebrating the best and worst examples I have stumbled upon, and the input and feedback of others.
My aim is that this will become a shared space where practitioners and researchers can contribute to the discussion, with invited guest bloggers to quietly whisper their own voices in this burgeoning world of noise. I do not aim to provide solutions, merely document the world I see changing around me. Or is that perhaps a world that I am changing around me?
My Background.
It might help if you know why I care about all this. I went to my first show at Manchester's Royal Exchange when I was thirteen, spending the majority of it watching the crew with their swift and subtle set changes, and the slow cross fading of lighting and sound cues. I was hooked and worked solidly at every Theatre that would have me, but never even contemplated being able to actually study something that was just so fun. Fortunately I was wrong, and found the perfect course, embedded in a sculpture park, with some inspirationally wild playmates.
My first degree was in Theatre Design & Technology where I was introduced to the work of performance artist Roselee Goldberg, the scenographer Josef Svoboda, the costume extrovert Oskar Schlemmer and the mask work of the Commedia dell'arte. My college multimedia performances were criticised for "containing too many media", resulting in a "minimalistic mixed media" final show; and so I was introduced to the dichotomy of education and production.
My Masters was in Interactive Multimedia Production, the first course of it's type in the UK, associated to the School of Computing and Mathematics and not the Design School where it currently resides. When my final project (a 'Media Virus' driven online community with a live multimedia, performance art, dj/vj, UK book launch for Douglas Rushkoff's "Ecstasy Club") was presented, the lecturers had no idea how to mark me. How could anyone know if my experimental approaches were right, or wrong? What questions were being asked or answered within this crazed online/offline shared social network performance? Did it matter that many of our audiences thought they were simply attending a rave? Somehow I graduated regardless, and moved into the world of new media through my first job as Projects Assistant for the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Liverpool & Manchester.
My company's first project, the-phone-book.com, was an experiment in the world of online publishing (now called "User Generated Content") under the constraints of the technical limitations of mobile internet (then WAP1.0). This quickly lead to questioning the commercial opportunities for artistic ringtones and logos, artones.net. Both projects demonstrated the need to educate not only the creators of mobile content but also their potential future audiences, and so the-sketch-book.com was born.
Several projects and education programmes later, we have returned to our performance roots with a promenade piece, The Burgess Project. This was an experiment in the generation of new work, delivered in old and new medias, large and small screens, live and virtual contexts, with linear and non linear narratives and interactive experiences from two-way text messaging and bluetooth broadcasting, to a large scale public sing-along.
The energy and stimulation that The Burgess Project reignited naturally clashed with the constraints Business places on Creativity, leading us to make the decision to break ourselves in two. the-phone-book Limited will continue to produce & deliver train the trainer masterclasses, bespoke learning, production environments and consultation on emerging technologies for creative practice. A new company, honeycomb, will celebrate "the messy space" through research and experimentation, and all things process.
honeycomb demonstrates a real need to return to my passion for 'the live', particularly inspired by the work of Quebecois' Robert Lepage, his innovative use of technology within dynamic theatricality, and his brave use of the collaborative process for his global ambitions.
It is therefore with Monsieur Lepage that I will start my core research, with generous input from colleague (and hopefully one day PhD mentor), Aleksandar Dundjerovic, who has already published two books about Lepage, one on his Cinema and one on his Theatricality.
I'm not sure where this journey will end, but if I am able to continue to learn from the many people with whom I have shared a passion for theatre, technology, wine and life, then I will count myself most fortunate. If it does indeed lead to a PhD, then I will most unfortunately risk becoming "Professor Plum"...
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