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Interactive Screen: Digital art dispatches from Banff
Written by Nichole McGill.
The opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Canadian Heritage. Digital art, live art and theory converge at this year's Interactive Screen 0.6 think tank hosted by the Banff New Media Institute from August 13 to 18. Read regular dispatches about the Canadian art premieres and the key thinkers featured on Culturescope.ca. |
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Cultural Policy Dispatches...>>Friday, August 18, 2006Interactive Dance, Video & Games IS 0.6 boasted several Canadian premieres of interactive art. One was Can You See Me Now?, a chase game played live online and on the streets of the Banff Centre by UK’s Blast Theory. On Friday, Blast Theory members gave a workshop on designing mobile games while giving a preview of their latest work, Day of the Figurines, a game played using text messaging that will debut in Berlin in September 2006. Another debut was Nicole Mion’s That Thing Between Us, a stunning three-channel video installation that captures the energy of a heated exchange between two dancers - Holy Body Tattoo’s Noam Gagnon and Dreamwalker Productions’s Andrea Nann - at a dinner table where bodies - and cutlery – are both offerings and weapons. Pitch winners On Friday, the peer jury was unanimous in naming Kelly Andres of Lethbridge, Alberta the winner for her Songbike project, a mobile sound lab for bicycles. She’ll receive 10 days of partnership and development with the BNMI. Montréal’s Mathew Donnelly and Ghassan Fayad got the nod from the audience for their concept for a site that aggregates personal video reflections on news events. Thursday, August 17, 2006 The Pitch This year’s Interactive Screen featured 12 scholarship participants who pitched 10 interactive new media projects to the BNMI. Nine of them were from Canada and one was from Argentina. In addition to having received coverage for travel, accommodation and tuition, the recipients had worked intensively over five days to develop and refine their pitches with senior peer advisors. Thursday, it was show time as the 12 gave formal pitches to the audience in seven-minute public presentations. On Friday, a jury will announce a “People’s Choice” and as official winner. The latter will receive 10 days of partnership and development with the Banff New Media Institute (BNMI). Stay tuned… Scholarship recipients: Peer Advisors: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 Film out of the cinema If you’re a filmmaker, you’ve likely heard the hype: the future is mobile, mobile, mobile. Or is it? In the “pocket cinema” section of the morning, Judy Gladstone, Executive Director of the Bravo!FACT fund, discussed the Shorts in Motion program. In 2005, Bravo!FACT commissioned Sook-Yin Lee, Sudz Sutherland, Mark McKinney and Don McKellar to each produce two two-minute films for mobile which were available for download in mid-2005. Based on that success, in mid-2006, Bravo!FACT along with the National Film Board and Toronto’s marblemedia, are launching an expanded Shorts in Motion: Part II that will feature the interactive work of 10 Canadian filmmakers including rapper k-os, Ann Marie Fleming, Denis Villeneuve and Guy Maddin. But despite being chosen for this program and having produced mobile video for CBC, Toronto filmmakers Adam Brodie and Dave Derewlany conceded that most filmmakers haven’t yet figured out how to make money from the mobile model. And the types of mobile short-as-little-gem that Bravo!FACT commissions seem, for the moment, to be in the minority. Film outside mobile Speaking of gems, for more than a decade, Toronto artist Peter Horvath has been using the web to create evocative films that make use of multiple pop-up windows; of note, Tenderly Yours (2005) that tracks the elusive Montréalaise Joséphine. Tuesday, August 15, 2006 Nature, culture & technology On Tuesday afternoon, Interactive Screen participants rejoiced: after days in a conference room, we went for a “mobile” walk and talk along the teal-blue waters of the Bow River-Hoodoo Trail to experience a new ecotourism mobile project hosted by the BNMI’s Mobile Lab, part of the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN) and supported by the Department of Canadian Heritage. Tracklines is a trail-based mobile media installation: a guide walk in indescribably beautiful Banff National Park in which hikers can use GPS smartphones to navigate a mountain trail seeded with stories including the work of nature poets such as Don McKay. Hikers are made aware of story “hot spots” by ambient sounds made from their cellphones indicating they can stop and listen to a story related to that place. The project should be ready for implementation by spring 2007. Other sites of interest Toronto filmmaker Randy Knott gave an overview of his digital work notably the international award-winning A is For Apple, an Atlantic Canadian net.art project. Finnish media artist Mia Makela (aka SOLU) pointed to some interesting online audio tools such as Soundtoys.net and Create Digital Music. Monday, August 14, 2006 Monday morning began in a similar fashion as Sunday’s: with a rousing song by artist Cheryl l‘Hirondelle. The difference was today’s was a wake up song. Apt as art activism was the focus for most of the morning. Montreal writer and Web artist J.R. Carpenter discussed how forms such as letter writing and zine production inform her Internet work including a piece inspired by Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood commissioned by Oboro. Vancouver writer and artist Kate Armstrong introduced us to IN[ ]EX, a distributed audio sculpture in which thousands of wooden blocks with embedded technology were released into Vancouver, BC and San Jose, CA. L’Hirondelle and Fiddian Warman of London, UK’s Soda Creative tackled the topic of using Web technologies to encourage social change. In her work, L’Hirondelle engages Aboriginal communities in projects such as Spider Language, Treaty Card and Drum Bytes. She also encourages elders to document their stories so the younger generations can access them and curated the Banff Centre’s Horizon Zero issue on this topic. Warman talked about using collaborative authoring tools such as Flickr to foster understanding between differing cultures. Nahnou Together encourages the youth of London and Damascus to get to know each other through individual generated content in both English and Arabic, while Btween2cultures has similar aims with the youth of China and England. Sunday, August 13, 2006 Digital art and performance are converging with discussions and debate about the evolving nature of new media at the Banff New Media Institute’s (BNMI) Interactive Screen 0.6. From August 13 to August 18, 2006, panels will be interspersed with performances and presentations from theatre, dance, literary and gaming artists. In addition, participants get a chance to showcase their work in daily sessions. Show & Tell Marc Beaudet of Turbulent Média presented the innovative multimedia site Anamorphoses which gives visitors an experiential view of the creative process that led to the creation of the Robert Lepage film possible Worlds. Beaudet also presented the site for Mission Antarctique which follows the voyages of the oceanographic sailing vessel Sedna IV. Both sites are also included in Culture.ca’s cultural link collection. Producer Katherine Lee gave us a preview of a Virtual Museum of Canada exhibit on the Dane-zaa prophets who have provided spiritual and practical guidance for Dane-zaa people. High-Definition On Sunday evening, participants were treated to Definition 2006, a screening showcasing of award-winning fictions and documentaries filmed in high-definition (HD). These included the McCloskey Productions short Heartbeats of Denali, the Rhombus Media comedic opera Burnt Toast and the NFB and NHK co-produced documentary War Hospital. |
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