Monthly Archive for November, 2004

HorizonZero Remix Issue

Published on November 30, 2004 in Hypertext literature and Research Methods. Closed

HorizonZero Issue 08 : REMIX

HorizonZero is a Canadian online digital art and culture journal produced as a collaboration between The Banff Centre‘s New Media Institute and Culture.ca. This remix issue is from April/May 2003 and features a number of interesting articles.

On Bricolage by Anne-Marie Boisvert (translated by Timothy Barnard) is particularly interesting.

“The remix depends, above all, on the way the artist interacts with his or her machinery; on the “samples” chosen and the way they are related; and on the relationship between the work (which is always a work in progress) and the audience.”

The journal itself consists of both traditional, written articles and interactive flash pieces.

The Sporting Gentleman’s Guide to the Semantic Web

Published on November 22, 2004 in Web. Closed

I recently came across a copy of Ben Hammersley’s presentation on the ‘Semantic Web’. I’d heard the term a few times but never really looked into it. This was an excellent introduction to the concept. Also impressive is the Quicktime movie itself which features a small view of Ben giving the presentation, along with a larger view of the slides he is referring to. Here is Ben’s comment on the presentation: The Sporting Gentleman’s Guide to the Semantic Web and other such Technological Marvels of the Modern Age – remixed. from Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent

And here is the file: Quicktime (38Mb)

Straight Out of Brisbane, crazy mofo named dpwolf

Published on November 22, 2004 in Gigs and Note to self. Closed

Just found out my proposal was accepted and I’m presenting a session on Vidgets at the Straight Out of Brisbane Festival. I’ll be in the games-hacklab part of the festival, I can’t wait! It should be lots of fun, I hope I manage to get to lots of the other sessions.

From the site:

Straight Out of Brisbane

A festival of independent and emerging arts, culture and ideas

Brisbane, December 2nd – 12th, 2004 Presents: the hacklab and GAMEs selection …..

in the words of allegra geller, legendary games designer and radical realist in cronenberg’s film eXistenZe, the world of games in in a trance. people are programmed to accept so little but the possibilities are so great.

the SOOB games and hacklab program invites you to workshops, event and a few rants, the odd frag fest and some retro delight – trance breaking a speciality!

Karlheinz Stockhousen: Advice to clever children…

Published on November 20, 2004 in Music. Closed

K. Stockhausen – Advice To Clever Children

…frame rate

Published on November 16, 2004 in Gigs, Note to self and Video. Closed

For the past few months Tim Webster and I have been organising a monthly forum where VJs, video artists, experimental filmmakers and developers present their respective bodies of work and we all have a good chat. So far we have had an amazing line up of Melbourne based artists (follow the links or google the names for hours of interesting information):

jean p00le (Sean Healy) and Tim Parish

Dale Nason and John Power

Kirsten Bradley and Anna Helme

Kim Bounds and Steve Middleton

Troy Innocent and Olaf Meyer

Marcus Lyall (interview) and Paul Rodgers

… and last night Tim and I spoke about our works and ideas.

This was the last …frame rate for this year but next year we plan to increase the promotion a bit and set up a dedicated site. We’ve been documenting the presentations and chats as we go so we currently have at least 16hrs of footage to watch through. I’d really like to produce some kind of online documentary with some of the content and imagery down the track.

24 mo-vid

Published on November 12, 2004 in Modes of analyzing new media, The role of the user, Video and Web. Closed

As a follow up to the TV series “24″, Fox is releasing a series of one minute ‘Mobisodes’ dubbed “24: Conspiracy”. These new micro-episodes are to be distributed (sold?) to Vodafone customers’ phones. I didn’t really get into the show when it was on TV but I think the subject matter would be ideal for an alternate reality style game.

I think the key to making this cooler would be using the fact that the playback device is a phone. This means ‘Mobisodes’ could be broadcast at any time of day or night with a 100% chance the audience will see them (even if they check their messages the next day). Users/viewers could send information back to the producers and/or to each other to select a character or plot thread to follow or just to comment.

I doubt that this will happen, but still, its is an interesting move for a major studio to start producing content for 3G capable phones.

More info:

MSNBC – Fox to create TV series for cell phones

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | 24 being made for mobile phones

24weblog.com – Vodafone lures 3G customers with 24-inspired drama

Yahoo! News – Fox to Create Series for Wireless Phones

via SG and Boing Boing

Inspiration

Published on November 5, 2004 in Design, Note to self, Tech, Video, Vidget - Discussion, Vidget - Download and Web. Closed

I recently completed work on an experimental internet radio program with Hannah Miller and Kate Eccles. Hannah and Kate are final year Media students at RMIT majoring in Radio and TV production. My role in the production was to take various pieces of audio, video, still images and text, and create an interface which would allow the user to mix and match the elements in an exploratory, non-linear way.

The result of this work is a program called “Inspiration”, which features interviews, live footage, sound recordings and lyrics from Reset://0 a Japanese influenced Melbourne band.

The program was authored in LiveStage Pro and is a Quicktime file that consists of a sprite track, several movie tracks and a text track which features lyrics. The above image shows the partially completed work as I was assigning sounds to various non-square shaped roll-over buttons. The idea was that rather than presenting the user with a list of options, or even a grid of non-labelled options, the work should encourage the user to explore the screen space with the cursor, almost like they are feeling their way in the dark. To give the users some feedback, and a little direction as to where may be a good place to explore, I used Hanna’s fire twirling image as a guide. I placed invisible sprites over the background image which reacted to the “MouseEnter” event, triggering sounds which played in specific movie tracks, and changing the sprite image for the background so that different parts of the fire twirling would be illuminated and hi-lighted.

You can view the completed work in context on the interadio site. Or, to go straight to Inspiration(requires Quicktime, a fairly recent computer and a decent broadband connection – 15Mb)

Over Under: The Art of Cable Wrapping

Published on November 3, 2004 in Tech. Closed

I found a link to this useful little video tutorial deep in an otherwise uninteresting thread on Slashdot

Stagecraft: Over/Under Cable Wrapping shows how to wrap cables like a roadie so they don’t tangle.

Segmentation Fault

Published on November 2, 2004 in Gigs and Music. Closed

Its on again.

Audiovisual Experiments.

8:00PM Tuesday 2nd of November.

Loop 23 Meyers Place in the city.

This month SegFault regulars Dale Nason, dpwolf and Doktorb Robotnik will be joined by Jean p00le and Future Eater.

Also joining us is Kim Bounds who will be providing the before, after and in between music and Steve Huon who will be keeping the visuals playing between acts.

Due to the date of the gig (the date of the US presidential election) we are presenting a loosely war/nasty based theme.

Things will lighten up towards the end of the night as TestPatN will be facilitating a series of experiments in the field of fun single-serve collaborations between guest artists involving microwave cookery, video and sound.

Gold coin donations were super handy last time (I covered the cost of photocopying the fliers!) so thank you and remember to bring your change this time.