On a rainy morning in Amsterdam (that demanded lots of coffee!), the Video Vortex - Responses to YouTube Conference was kicked off at Club 11. I will be blogging on the conference for movingweb, but I was also there because I have been involved with the project through my work at the Netherlands Media Art Institute where we made an exhibition with the same title and related topics. Well, the program of the conference is quite extensive, and I was very disappointed by some of the presentations today (that seemed unprepared, unfocused, had nothing new to say…a total contrast with the first Video Vortex conference in Brussels!). So I will focus on the gems of today’s presentations!
Bruce McDonald launched Re-Fragmented, a re-editing initiative surrounding the release of his latest award-winning feature film The Tracey Fragments. Featuring a stand-out performance from Ellen Page as a 15-year-old girl who has lost her little brother and sets out on a desperate journey to find him, The Tracey Fragments is a daring portrayal of teenage angst, told in a dazzling style. The film, which opens in limited release Friday, employs multi-frame editing to breathtaking effect, pushing the boundaries of cinematic language to get inside the heart and mind of Tracey.
Tracey: Re-Fragmented makes available at www.thetraceyfragments.com all the footage from the shoot of the film for users to download and re-edit their own related projects including music videos, new trailers or to re-edit the entire movie themselves. The Creative Commons licensed initiative also makes available the score of the movie by Indie Collective Broken Social Scene.
Passing By is a NetArt project by James Tindall, using YouTube content and good coding. The theme of journey seems to become quite popular lately. (also here)
“Passing By presents two films that piece together brief segments from many different journeys into ever growing sequences of sights-seen-along-the-way, while looking out of the window of a car, a train, a plane or even just pushing a shopping trolley around the local super market.”
via Hi-Res!
“Cimatics, Brussels International Platform for Live A/V, presents a Masterclass Live Audiovisual Art, within the framework of the studio-program Experimental Media-art provided by the VAF (the Flemish Audiovisual Fund).
12 internationally renowned and specifically chosen artists and theoreticians from within the field of Live A/V engage to conduct these workshops.
Cimatics is looking for 10 participants for these workshops and addresses young artists from within the fields of visual arts, music, media arts or performance arts.
The Masterclass exists of several workshops in which the different aspects of the phenomenon Live A/V will be highlighted. Technical initiation, content contextualisation and specific hands-on experiments will be the key elements of these workshops.”
Video Remixes are all over the web right now. Therefore Sony gets it’s own Remix-Website to promote three new Vaio models. You can record yourself via your webcam and the recut the material on the website. Problem is that all three example videos are quite akward. It’s not really getting better that they label these remixes as “a sophisticated mix of intelligence and elegance.”
Question is, if the theme of the Remix matches the idea of the product or if they are just following a trend?
“Perpetual Art Machine is a community for video artists, curators, writers, therorist, educators, collectors, and enthusiasts.
Perpetual Art Machine is an on line gallery and database of video art.
Perpetual Art Machine is a traveling video installation.
The website feeds our installation machines. Both the database and video content work together at exhibition venues displaying works simultaneously and individually. The works play off each other, informing each other by association or differenciation, highlighting through the display system their individual qualities.”
Vague Terrain is digital arts quarterly and the current issue reflects on the culture of sampling.
“Specific fragments are foregrounded and implicit in that selection is the exclusion of countless other memories and moments. The endgame in the act of sampling, whether reconsidering the familiar or resurrecting the forgotten, is to create an arena for discourse.”
The contributions range from experimental short films, text, images to music. I especially liked the piece “Driving” of video artist Chrsitan Marc Schmidt and IPODecosystems of dNASAb.