skynoise

Review of the Resfest Short Film Festival, Nov 17-22 2005, ACMI Melbourne.( Printed in Real-Time magazine ).
( Update: added some pix and links to watch movies mentioned. )

For better or worse, Resfest comes through town like the dinosaur chase scene in King Kong, and we stumble out at the end of it – exhilarated, overwhelmed by the feast of technical delight, and yet somehow wondering why we are covered in cheese. That said, the Resfest condensed program of ‘short films, music videos, features, motion design, live music and speakers’ inevitably contains breathtaking moments – where the obsessive pursuit of novelty actually leads somewhere, where the technical wizardry transcends the sum of it’s intricate parts, where bedroom creatives kept chipping away on a piece that no-one could ever elevator pitch, where brats with a handicam nailed the perfect moment, or simply while holding your hand, where the film-maker-animator-designer gradually takes you outside of yourself, and what you thought possible.

Pink Flamingos in 1972 set a new benchmark in trash cinema, sealing a notorious reputation for director John Waters with one scene in particular – crossdressing actor Divine eating a freshly squeezed dog turd. Plenty of other outrageous films and scenes followed, with writer William Burroughs proclaiming Waters the ‘Pope of trash’, but none have outdone that early Divine moment. Most recently Waters had produced the less controversial but still highly amusing Hairspray, Cry-Baby and Serial Mom, but bounced back nearing 60 with last year’s ‘A Dirty Shame’. Featuring Tracey Ullman, Johnny Knoxville, Selma Blair, David Hasselhoff and Chris Isaak amongst others, the film peels back the suburban facade to find all the kinky fetishes that lay behind. And it’s near encyclopaedic in it’s cataloguing of deviant desires (see also, where you fit on this outrageous map).

Amongst the sexual persuasions, kinks, fetishes & esoteric practices lampooned includes of course the ‘bears’ which according to wikipedia, refers to gay males “who possess physical attributes much like a bear, such as a heavy build, abundant body hair, and commonly facial hair.” Nice to see Wikipedia includes gay bears, as well as the Grizzlies, Sloth Bears and Spectacle Bears. And via the wikipedia gay bear entry, there is also ( of course ) bearornot.com, which follows in the footsteps of hotornot.com, gothornot.com, ratemymullet.com, ratemedownunder.com, amiaminger.co.uk and afrohotornot.com in rating user contributed photos. Off you go.

tags: john waters, dirty shame, deviant+desires, kinky, gay bear

Grizzly Man (2005), is the most recent eye-opener to hit the screen from Germany’s renowned and relentless documentary maker Werner Herzog. With his trademark ability to zoom in on the most eccentric and obsessive of characters, Werner crafts a compelling tale of a Canadian bear-lover who camped in the wilderness each of 12 summers to ‘protect’ the bears. Werner’s task was helped in no small part by the 100 hours of video footage recorded by the bear-lover, up to and including the sound-only of his eventual mauling by one of the bears. One line from Werner stays ringing in my head, who in typical style, fades down our bear-lovers narration to interject with his own Germanic tones: ” … I beg to differ with him here… I do not see any kinship with the bears, only the cru-elle indifference of nature.” He continues at times to offer his own perspectives on nature, and the chaotic violence it can unleash. A thoroughly intriguing film, compiled with respect, packed with insight. And if you’ve already seen it – enjoy Werner chatting about the making of it, in a Pop Matters interview, including how he stared the original proposed director in the ye and said “No, I will direct this”, and how he made the whole thing in 29 days!

Werner’s obsessions are as noteworthy as those of his film subjects however, with a trail of over 50 features under his belt. Some highlights include Lessons of Darkness (1992) – an abstract visual exploration of the post-Kuwait oil fires after the first Gulf War, Even Dwarfs started Small ( 1970 ) – an entire cast of dwarfs running riot, Heart of Glass (1976) – an entire cast hypnotised while being filmed, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980) – where Herzog cooks and eats his shoe after losing a bet with then fledgling director Errol Morris, Wheel of Time (2003) – a meditation on the Tibetan buddhist creation of sand mandalas, The White Diamond (2004) – a mad scientist exploring the Guyana rainforest canopy with a novel flying device-the helium-filled ‘Jungle Airship’, Incident at Loch Ness (2004) – a mocumentary exploring the myth of the Loch Ness monster, and The Wild Blue Yonder (2005) – a cine-poetic sci-fi collage of outer space imagery and scuba divers under the ice-sheet of Antarctica. Werner is currently in post-production on Rescue Dawn (2006) (post-production) – a US Fighter pilot epic struggle of survival after being shot down on a mission over Laos during the Vietnam War. Busy boy. And watch out for Werner’s hilarious cameo in Harmony Korine’s ‘Julien Donkey Boy’. Werner @ imdb.com

Update: Check this Grizzly Man movie parody ( 37mb, via WFMU ).

tags: werner herzog, grizzly+man, documentary

“He is to science what Gandhi was to politics. And his central notion, that the planet behaves as a living organism, is as radical, profound, and far-reaching in its impact as any of Gandhi’s ideas.”

– New scientist.

James Lovelock, the scientist behind the above Gaia theory has just published a controversial article in the Independent (UK) – which argues that, as a result of global warming, “billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable” by the end of the Twenty First century. He also suggests that “we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can.”

It’s a bleak read that packs a certain punch, coming from a scientist with Lovelock’s status. With a projected population of 9 billion people by 2050, it’s clear we have our work cut out to provide food and energy for all whilst retaining as much biodiversity and quality of life as we can. In some ways Lovelock’s argument ( a prelude to his upcoming book : Revenge of Gaia ), global warming and the recent ‘Peak Oil’ movement, merely provide a convenient framework for helping us to understand the scope and scale of the overarching sustainability challenge we face as civilisation in the 21st century.

Some however, are disappointed with what they deem as Lovelock’s pessimistic approach, preferring to frame our situation in terms of what we can and should be doing now to alter our destiny. Lovelock’s sobering article is well worth a read though, and contextualised by the heated debate over at the slashdot trenches ( in betwween the usual mac-pc-linux flamewars ), and the constructive rebuttals over at World Changing. Maybe it’s time to run some data through Sim Earth and figure it out once and for all.

Now Listening to: It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)-REM

Mood : ‘Need Some Shopping Therapy’

tags: apocalypse, lovelock, peak oil, 21C

Threaded amongst the various art projects of New Yorker Alyce Santoro, is a deep(sea) fascination with the interplay of sound, technology and nature. Where these interests meet especially well, and where she one-ups her conceptual cousins, notorious UK collage artists >> CassetteBoy, is her project Sonic Fabric which makes clothes from textiles woven out of recycled audio cassette tape. Which you can play out loud. And she does, by running an exposed tape head over her clothes / fabrics / textiles.

- What drew you to ‘Sonic Fabrics’?
Originally, the idea came from tell-tails (wind indicators) made from little strands of cassette tape sometimes used on sailboats.

Am gathering a list of good & intriguing video/experimental moving image/ media festivals around the globe. Not feature film festivals as such, just gatherings trying to push the form in some way.
Will add a few lines explaining each, and continue adding more links, recommendations welcomed.

If your new year’s resolution revolved around watching less television, this list of online video portals should save you switching on the box until we’re 2007 times around the sun.

If Mp3 = the new radio, what else can Mp4 be, but the new TeeVee? In actual fact, no one video codec or format dominates the online landscape the way the audio Mp3 codec dominates, but the rapid upsurge of video being distributed online is what’s worth watching. Where we once chuckled over backyard fences, or in the schoolyard or workplace about a moment from last night’s TeeVee, more and more we’re now referring to some kind of video that ended up in our inbox, that we stumbled across on some blog, or that popped out of our peer to peer software. Like so, the decentralised universe grows. Mmmmmm, mmmmm. Where the Wild Video Things Are.

“You seen the one about those two Chinese kids miming along to Backstreet Boys ?”
“Yeah, yeah seen that one ages ago. Apparently some shampoo company is getting them to ads for them now.”

“What about that Chronicles of Narnia rap? That’s pretty funny shee-yat…”
“Word. Those guys‘r da bomb. Seen their piss-take of that whispering porno song? By the Ying-Yang Twins? That was the shizzle.”
“Pho real~! Is there anything funnier than white guys butchering their way through ghetto rap slang?”
“I don’t think so.”

“Except maybe the long-lost-but-re-found video of today’s Governor of 33 million Californians. That clip showing him running around at Rio Carnivale, all knuckles dragging on the ground and 15 year old libido.”
“Heh. Like the bit where he tries to persuade the Brazilian dancer to have oral sex with his carrot.”
“America’s gonna implode, I tells ya.”

“Oh and you check that recent Gorillaz concert video? Looks mad – like a hologram of the band playing on stage. Apparently they made it with some smoke, projectors and mirrors from the side of the stage…”
“Yeah, seen that.“

Sourcing Some of Those Pixel Feeds?
Video Blogs make available an overwhelming daily precious. Of moving imagery. Whether they’re called video blogs, video podcasts, vlogs, or vodcasts, the end result is still the same – essentially a wide range of subscribable ‘channels’. Try some of these ( RSS) feeds on for size, see which pixels tickle your fancy.

Music Videos @ Antville :
Avalanche of music video links and stills, uploaded by the hour. Throw ‘Hasselhoff’ into their search for his almost criminally bad video : ‘hooked on a feeling’, or ‘gorillaz’ or ‘Robertson’ for some cool retro-game style animated videos by Melbournite Paul Robertson.

Short Clips & Ads @ Shortsville :
More meta-pixels from the Antville team / collective conscious posse…

Cliptip :
Mo Music videos. Like lots.

DVBlog :
Short films, music video clips, animations, weird arty video experiments, wanderings. Constant, updating temptations.

Bedazzled :
Old-time music videos, including clips from the rare scopiotone ( film jukebox) machines – made by a company Francis Ford Coppola bought a long time ago, the company inevitably dying because there were too many moving parts needing endless repair – like the amount of times you see photocopy technicians returning to fix machines in busy offices. Anyways, endless clips – think kooky, think lounge, think 60s sci-fi & think Barbarella & Frank Sinatra.

Octopus Drop Kick :
How can diverse and quirky Japanese TV grabs, ads and weird moments ever fail? Fun-ny.

ScreenHead :
Odds n ends often updated, which is just as well, because it’s a commercial venture. If there exists a funny visual gag or twisted animation that hasn’t been mentioned here or at ifilm.com, then give it 2 weeks.

Human Dog Productions:
Buncha folk making their own feeds, their own following, their own back catalogue of great pixel hits.

Vlogmap:
World map with a few hundred video bloggers pumping out video in all manner of styles.

Del.icio.us : ( http://del.icio.us/tag/system:media:video )
Aye, the quite wonderful ‘social bookmarking’ del.icio.us site constantly feeds video from the hive mind – endlessly listing the videos that anyone finds interesting enough to bookmark. Well worth diving into delicious if you haven’t already, if only to store your bookmarks in a way you can easily find them with any online computer. Being able to browse ( and subscribe to ) everyone else’s bookmarks is an ever insightful bonus.

Google Video, YouTube & iFilm : ( http://javimoya.com/blog/download-videos )
Cool site which allows direct downloading of videos from Youtube ( hyper-popular free video storage site ), Google Video and iFilm. Site facilitates downloading to your computer, and shows how to convert those .flv files to other more editing/remix friendly formats. Simply enter the youtube or google video URL for the video you wanted, and down it comes~!

Tape it Off The Internet :
How you might be downloading and uploading video feeds in the future.

Broadcast Machine:
How you will probably be downloading and uploading video feeds in the future.

TV, if you insist : ( TV calendar & TV torrent subscriptions ( via torrentfreak )

And while Watching People Become Famous is arguably much more fun than Watching Famous People, it will be fun to see what ex-skate-brat videoclip maker turned feature director, Spike Jonze, will do with his upcoming screen adaptation of the classic kids book : ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ ( screenplay co-scripted with Dave Egger ).

( And if you’re feeling a bit gluttonous after all that, will be posting a round-up of video UPLOAD places soon )

( On the other hand, if you know of other quality video blog links, send ‘em along, and I’ll add to the list… )

tags: viral video, backstreet boys, arnold in brazil, gorillaz video, ying yang twins, whisper song, bing bong bros, video podcast, vlog, video blog, vodcast ( eeuw )

Recently bought a cracklebox for a birthday present, and sometime later stumbled across this great mutant music machine blog ( musicthing ), which featured some cracklebox samples, an orgasmic blaster beam from Star Trek, this dork-tastic vintage – keyboard – radio – drummachine – tapedeck(!), and a lovingly crafted round-up of the stories behind the most famous ‘music jingles’ in the world : including the mac and microsoft start-up sounds, the THX deep-note sound, the intel-inside sound and the Channel 4 jingle ( which was the only one where the composer had the foresight to keep their copyright ). Nice work musicthing~!

“I like to say that the THX sound is the most widely-recognized piece of computer-generated music in the world,” says Andy Moorer. “This may or may not be true, but it sounds cool!”

“Turning the Mac on is one thing, but being forced to reboot from a crash is a totally different experience. I wanted to avoid a sound that would be associated with the crash. I wanted it to sound more like a “palette cleanser”. – Jim Reekes, and first used on the Quadra 700, which launched in 1991 costing $7,000.

“Mp3 is the new radio,”

• Chuck D, Public Enemy.

Step 1: Visit a few of these Mp3 Blog directory sites, browse the cacophony of debauched and delirious sounds available. eg the stupendous collections ( categorised into genres ) @ Monkey Filter , Kitty Spit ( crazy links also categorised ), The Hype Machine Mp3 Blog Aggregator & DJ Martian.

Step 2: Subscribe to the Mp3 Blogs you like, using their feeds ( RSS or XML or RDF or atom etc etc ).( Read about Feeds )
Step 3: Adjust your hammock, and watch the tunes roll in.

Some of My Faves of Late?
20 Jazz Funk Greats – Rips it.
Gabba.cc – Electronica & obscure pop uploads by diverse music-heads.
Radio Babylon - “Dematerializing anti-materialism.”

OCRemix, Micromusic & VGMusic all specialise in revamped retro computer game music.

WFMU - mp3 blog for the Ever-Eclectic New York radio station.
Mono211 – cool netlabel.
Mudd Up – Dj Rupture, great words & sounds, aye~!
Fat Planet – also broadcasting live every sunday on Sydney’s FBi 94.5fm, 3pm (Aus est).

To rolling your own music charts~! [ clink of pina colada jug from hammock ]

tags: mp3blogs, mp3, feeds, rss

“Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.”

• Chris Anderson ( Wired magazine boy, currently authoring The Long Tail about the above phenomenon ).

Mp3 Blogs live in virtually every ecosystem on earth including the most extreme hot springs, freezing cold ice, deep beneath the earth’s surface, and at altitudes only reachable by aircraft. Mp3 Blogs even live in such hostile environments as pure salt, petroleum, and gas. These creatures vary greatly in size. The smallest Mp3 Blogs are smaller than some single-celled protozoa. Others are as large as small species of mammals. They are gifted with strength far greater than one would expect given their size. Some are capable of shifting units 50 to 300 times their weight.

The success of the Mp3 Blogs as a whole is due to their having many major assets in the endless struggle for survival. Here are just a few:
1) High mobility- allowing them to actively seek favorable environments, food, mates as well as to escape from their enemies.
2) Adaptability- the ability to survive extreme living conditions, and to get nourishment from a wide variety of sources.
3) Durability- an external skeleton, the strongest possible construction for so small an amount of material.
4) Small size- their demands of on given environment are meager, and they occupy many niches deemed unusable by other creatures of the earth.
5) Metamorphosis- this allows immature Mp3 Blogs to exploit completely different food supplies than the adults as well as to develop a multitude of other adaptations for survival.
6) Proliferation- by producing huge numbers of offspring more will survive to breed, thus ensuring the future of the species.

Small wonder then, that the flocks of oversized flapping flesh-beasts want a piece of this action. Alas, those mountains of record-company meat won’t last for long in the heat of the 21C, but there are already swarms of the tiny winged zapping ahead. And before we dance – sink your teeth into a piece of recent research by Chris Anderson, into the top 100 best-selling albums of all-time. Turns out 30 of them came from 1976-85, more than 20 came from 91-95, 20 came from 96-2000, and less than 5 came from 2001-05. Oh No~! Less mega-mega-mega rich musicians in the world. Does that mean David Hasselhoff won’t be coming back to sing Carols By Candlelight to Australia again in 2006? Swoon..

tags: mp3blogs, mp3, podcast, longtail, p2p