As we continue to outsource our memory processes to small pocket electronic devices, it’s nice to occasionally reflect about artists who play with the ways we remember, and how sound can shape this.

Emile Zile
Back in the twentieth century, pre-omnipresent digital cameras archiving all moments of urban life, Emile Zile was busy hustling the inner-city lanes of Melbourne, snapping photos of its vibrant graffiti scene, steadily documenting it for all to see at the now defunct cleansurface.org ( digital archiving is another whole can of worms for another time ). Everpresent in the collection were moments of humour, Emile having a keen eye for unlikely juxtapositions and everyday absurdity.

Emile’s now studying video in Amsterdam ( fresh Dutch blog action ), but the beginnings of his current video art explorations can be traced back to an appearance of his on National Australian television, where he was selected as a contestant on a game show, and proceeded to upstage the host with a series of gestures, later narrating his thoughts of the experience onto a video ( now archived alongside others ).

The video explorations continued, culminating sometime later in a phase of laptop black metal, with a much better Kiss theatrics kinda presence than that implies, with abundant fake blood, make-up, custom video and refried metal. Emile’s eclectic VJ tastes and style made it seem a natural progression when he became the band VJ for Melbourne’s infamous alt-hip hop crew, Curse Ov Dialect ( “our own sound somewhere betwwen mr bungle, public enemy and everywhere in beween sampling everything from inuit throat games to psychedelic folk—-but still straight up hip hop!” ). For last year’s European tour without their unavailable turntablist, Emile simultaneously handled sound duties – via VJ software, deftly mixing pixels while sending out the backing tracks – including pre-recorded turntablist video!

All of which is pre-amble for a recent peformance of Emile’s called ‘Post-It Kino’. Briefly back in Melbourne for the 2008 Next Wave Festival, Emile was one of 7 artists participating in ‘House Proud’ – a novel arrangement where the artists were invited to use strangers’ homes as both a gallery and the source of their inspiration, making site-specific work, that an audience would later visit and explore for one night only.

Arriving at the house in question, Emile’s audience were ushered into a lounge room that had been converted into a private cinema with surround sound ( six screenings / performances over a 3 hour period ). We faced a projector screen, Emile sitting beside it and pointing a video camera at a TV screen facing himself, a generic bouncing DVD icon moving around the screen. And then it began – a cluster of instantly recognisable movie soundtracks were loaded one by one, filling the space, and Emile scribbled words on yellow post it notes, and started sticking them onto the TV screen in various sequences. “Close up of eyes.” “Close up of holster.” “Tumbleweed blows.” Combined with the western movie soundtrack, it was surprisingly compelling cinema. The sounds of a helicopter rushed around the room. Two words : “Martin Sheen”. Then “ACID”, “a broken mirror”, etc etc. Apocalypse Now had never been so funny.

And Subsequent Krushing
Fresh after Emile’s House-Proud gig, went along to catch the touring Japanese turntable maestro, DJ Krush. Virtuoso vinyl performances inevitably involve playing with memories, in Krush’s case there’s now quite the back catalogue of treasures to trigger. Tonight though, moreso than usual, he seemed able to tease out those memories, and toy with our expectations, taking twists and turns, resplicing and reconstructing at will. A decade old classic hit is almost implied, rather than introduced, and as the crowd cheers with the recognition, the track seems to implode in on itself, somehow shuffled into an entirely new formation.

Bear with with me, but if track A was like an inflatable giraffe filled with water, walking around with orange fish swimming inside it, then this newly formed, this new track being created by the man with the decks and effects, would now be better described as an inflatable cheetah, filled with water, stealthily jogging with small inflatable giraffes swimming around inside it. Something entirely new yet based on the utterly familiar. And on it went …

Part of the arsenal to help these reconstructions are evident in the photos below, the shot by Melbourne’s Lynt showing Krush’s laptop based digital mixer interface, enabling him to load many versions or layers of a track, and the Vestax shot showcasing his PMC-20SL 10 year old mixer which features an in-built sampler and delay effect, and a bunch of sliders he was caning at the Prince of Wales gig…

What’s been happening in the world of audio subscriptions and downloads?

The Elevator Pitch
Podcasting in a nutshell? The publishing of audio files online in a blog-like manner, which enables them to be subscribed to with podcast software ( eg getmiro.com, juice receiver or itunes ), for automated downloading, first to a computer, and then to an mp3 player if desired. Which means two things – firstly, it has become very easy to create what is effectively your very own radio station ( with global reach ), and secondly – there is a vast audio universe of delights awaiting your earbuds.

The Public Transport Pitch
Podcasts have been around for a while now though, so what has risen to the top? What’s worth listening to on that tram ride through the grey boxes? There’s a few problems finding out – so much exists, and then – the usual crap-to-gold ratios apply with podcasts just as they do in any other media, but audio is much harder to search through than text, so it’s harder to cover as much ground and find that uniquely satisfying quirky just-suited-to-you kinda thing. There’s a few audio search engines around ( eg http://audio.search.yahoo.com, woonz.com ) but not so many like podscope.com which allows searching for words inside of an audio podcast or video file. And then there’s the robots.

Useful if dizziness can be avoided, there’s also a huge range of podcast directories to allow browsing of categories :
podcastdirectory.com, podcastdirectory.com.au, podlounge.com.au, podcastdirectory.org, podfeed.net, podcastdirectory.org.uk, podcastferret.com, odeo.com. More specific directories?
Radio National’s MP3 audio and podcast service: abc.net.au/rn/podcast/default.htm
Several podcasts over at: sbs.com.au/podcasting and bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts
50 public radio stations and producers with the National Public Radio in the states: www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php – .
And there’s also the in-built podcast searching within itunes ( apple.com/podcasting ) which allows easy browsing, selecting and subscribing.

Much as giant impersonal databases are fun, actual humans are pretty useful for recommendations too. Two long lists of favourite podcasts : via Textism, and via Shannon O Neill ( Syd sound-scaper ).

Some of my recent faves :
( Podcast links below, right click to copy URL, paste into itunes or podcast software of choice )
Chasing the Tangent, fortnightly mix by Sofie Loizou, Plum Industries, fortnightly mix by Jen Teo, DJ Rupture’s Mudd Up! on WFMU, Dublab – Live sets by guest artists, Night Air – weekly collage soundscape eclectic themes, Ed Banger Records – occasional DJ mixes, Radio Lab.

Video podcasts? Find some of the Creative Cow Final Cut Tutorials, After Effects tutorials pretty useful :

And recently started pumping some video into this subscription friendly location : http://jeanpoole.blip.tv/rss/itunes

The Bedroom Pitch
Aye aye, DIY! Once audio files have been made, the trick with podcasting is just making those files published in a way that allows podcasting software can auto-detect and download them. This can be achieved with code ( adding an ‘enclosure’ to your feed ) or with simple plug-ins for a blog ( eg Podpress for the wordpress blog software ) that allow easy uploading and auto-embedding etc of mp3 files. Even simpler? Free hosts : libsyn.com, podbean.com, odeo.com and much more.

Underbelly @ Carriageworks
July 3 – 13, 245 Wilson st, Eveleigh, halfway between Macdonaldtown and Redfern stations.

While at first glance, it might seem as enticing as a community mosaic mural event or an amateur bongo night ( both great for participants but not necessarily audiences), this actually looks like a lot of fun – a public lab from 3-10 July, where a large range of artists converge to create art projects under the public gaze, with the aim of performing and presenting their work within the 2day Underbelly festival Jul 12 ( midday – 11pm ) and Jun 13 ( 2-10pm ). What makes it look interesting is the calibre and diversity of artists involved, and the range of projects they are aiming to complete. Clicking ‘artists’ at the site, reveals AV tagteams performing sets in a geodesic dome, artists trying to ‘make the narrative film process physical’, theatre groups with flying machines, an inflatable sideshow theatre, experimental tactile mixing interfaces, aerial acrobatics against video, bicycle powered projections, shadow-puppets, multimedia hiphop, a Mekanarky industrial sculpture retrospective, hanging gardens and floating sculptural speech balloons, kamikaze couture and muchos moros. People are encouraged to wander in to see the works in progress during the lead-up ( hence ‘public lab’ ), and then witness the end result on the 12th+13th.

Sydney Biennale Highlights?
To be honest, whether the site is to blame or not, couldn’t find much of interest within it. There is a free collection of films screening at the National Gallery every Wednesday, 2:00pm and 7:15pm, and every Sunday, 2:00pm ( Hans Richter, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Breer, Len Lye, Dziga Vertov, Michael Snow etc etc c’mon down… ). Also notable – a free ferry shuttle to Cockatoo Island in Sydney harbour every hour, seven days a week, in aid of getting people to various art events there. Might try and coincide a free harbour ride with the Shaun Gladwell talk on Sunday. Elsewhere? A bunch of talks and performances, exhibitions as you’d expect, but not much that really jumped out. Again, maybe the website wasn’t really selling it, which seems odd given the scale of the biennale…

(* ie not this )

Surely one of the weirder news stories of late, but the first world champion chess player to ever be defeated by a computer ( the ‘Deep Blue’ machine, 1997), Russia’s Gary Kasparov, recently found himself in range of bizarre headlines after being attacked by a remote control ‘helicopter penis’. The youngest ever World Chess Champion in 1985, and ranked world no.1 almost continuously from 1986 until his retirement in 2005, Gary has been using his chess profile lately to promote the ideas of The Other Russia, a coalition opposing the administration of Vladimir Putin. He must’ve been as surprised as anyone to find a recent speech interrupted by a “large phallus-shaped helicopter started buzzing around the room.” The ‘protest’ seems related to a Second Life prank a few years ago, when a CNET interview was interrupted by a series of flying, animated penises. The Tube’d have more, keyword search at your own risk.

Likely amused by it all, is comic artist Chester Brown, who has published a range of graphic novels over the years, often detailing his attempts to grapple with his sexuality, and in one particular short story from ‘The Little Man: Short Strips 1980-1995‘, he brags to another schoolmate about how he escaped from school one day by swinging his penis around really fast and using it as a helicopter blade to jump from a rooftop. Chester is also famous however for a character being chased by cannibalistic pygmies and having the tip of his penis replaced by the head of a miniature Ronald Reagan from another universe. That’d be all for today.

(And late shout-outs to C.H.U.N.K. 666 – ain’t a welded bicycle gang with choppers meaner than theirs .. )

Visualist and 3D animator Josh Cardenas gigged 6 times in 7 days for the recent ‘Hard Sell’ tour with DJ Shadow + Cut Chemist, yet still had enough pixel gadget stamina to hook-up later with VJs in most cities too. And so..

What Went Through The Customs X-Ray Machine

2 x Edirol V4 video mixers,
1 x Pioneer SVM-1000 AV mixer for final mixing – “It was cool cause it handled both video and audio – as we had some pre-recorded animated ‘intro’ to the show that had a voice over track. With the mixer I could control the audio levels from my feed. Also, it had a nifty touch-screen to add some super effects! i used this a bit, but sparingly as they are pretty heavy handed. = ))”
2 x DVDJs ( VJs can scratch too )
Laptops ( Who’d have thought?)
Midi controllers.
Cable spaghetti, and inevitable sprawl of AV and international power adaptors.
Portable Battery the Size-Of-A-Laptop which supplies 8 hours of power.
Various tools and tech problem-solvers.

Oh – and 4 x ‘robocams’ which could be remotely controlled by midi, for panning and tilting on the dual DJ action, 1x DJ wristcam for the trainspotters and 2 x cams on mic stands.

Getting It Together
Josh met up with a few Melbourne visualists at Horse Bazaar, where we showed him the resident panoramic screen and the Dataton Watchout software which stitches together the 6 screen wide panoramics, and then he whipped out one of the robots for us ( after cycling through a range of power adaptors before settling on his ‘back-up’ 8 hours of power Size-Of-A-Laptop battery… ). Soon enough, with impressively fluid arcs of movement, the camera was swooping around via controls on the computer. Josh built the hardware himself, mounting each cam on some movable parts ( see MAKE / createdigitalmotion / instructables etc for DIY midi, motors + electronics ), then connecting that up with some patch based software ( eg VVVV, processing / max-msp / quartz composer ) which allows midi signals to control the movements.

Once the software was launched, camera movement was a simple task, gliding the mouse this way or that way to swing the camera’s focus around the room. More impressively, software based control also allows a range of audio analysis or sine wave oscillators to steer the camera movement – eg letting the bass levels control the tilt of the camera, or setting an oscillator to swing the pan back and forth at a preferred speed or frequency. Save a few of these movements as presets, map these to be triggered a midi controller, multiply by 9 cameras, and Dr.Versatile is in.the.house. Kinda handy when VJing for highly improvisational DJs. Josh showed the setlist which featured extensive cues where he was supposed to trigger various video clips, but said inevitably the shows were different each night as the DJs extended out various sections on a whim, keeping Josh on his toes at all times. And with his 3D background, Josh has plenty of ideas for spatial exploration with camera rigs, expect to hear more in the future.

Hollywood Bowling
For those who missed the show, it’s already a disc on the shelf of indie DVD distributors, microcinema.com. Whereas the “Freeze” and “Product Placement” shows were also recorded for DVD, the Bowl setting inspired a less spartan treatment for this disc – with a full behind-the-scenes story of how the show came to be, the live performance, visuals, a gazillion camera angles, more interviews and a 40-page booklet.

(( + hat-tip to Jaymis from CDM + Plug N Play Brisbane for hooking up Josh with the Melb video peeps.. anddddd UPDATE: vidi-yo interview just posted by Jaymis over at the CDM Brisvegas ranch))

The descent into Melbourne’s winter also means there’s a whole bunch of festivals on their way, kicking off right about now.

( May 15-31 http://2008.nextwave.org.au ).

By virtue of preferring to spread it’s grant money in smaller doses to a wider array of artists, this bi-annual festival for emerging artists tends to be a sprawling beast of quirks and charms, a never ending array of performances, exhibitions and installations in shopfront windows, hidden alleyways, underground tunnels, catwalks, nightclubs and occasionally, within art galleries. There’s a festival club this year at the Mercant Hotel near the Victoria Markets, where people can wander to each night, but other than that, it’s pin the dot on the map of inner-city Melbourne and browse the calendar on their ( well designed ) to see a long list of events jostling for attention. Some favourites below :

Yelling At Stars, a transmission into space

On the closing night, a performance at the Myer Music bowl will be recorded, filmed and streamed directly to Deep Space Communications Network in Florida, where it will be converted into radiowaves and become Australia’s first interstellar broadcast, travelling light-years into outer space. As the artist behind it, Willow S. Weiland notes, maybe the reason we haven’t received any transmissions back from outer space yet is something to do with the messages we’ve been sending out :

“It’s time for some honesty. The fastest way to make contact with others is to expose something about ourselves, our own frailty and vulnerability. We’re a beautiful yet destructive stressed-out plague of people destroying our habitat who feel in so many ways personally, culturally and geographically alone.”

House Proud – seven artists get to reinvent 7 homes. Aye, 7 sets of brave home dwellers have agreed to let artists develop site specific installations in their homes. They leave the house, the artists set to work, remixing their interior lives, and a few days later the homes are open for a short exhibition launch, the general public free to wander through these freshly intimate spaces.

Esky? A ‘moving architectural intervention’ – or a large inflatable venue doubling as a pop-up performance space and bar, appearing at various locations around Melbourne during the course of the festival. Need to know where it is? SMS the word ‘esky’ to 0428 477128 for location of the venue each night.

The Telepathy project – artists in 2 adjoining windows try to communicate with via telepathy, recording their messages every 15 minutes on time-coded post-it notes. Later to be published as a book.

The Movement Movement – Funny project where the general public is encouraged to run alongside artists inside museums in something that sounds like a cross between an obstacle course, comedy routine and aerobics class. Apparently they had 250+ people running a 5km course through a Canadian museum. Witness the fitness!

Paradise City – dance performance with BMX, skater, acrobat breakdancer and a fallen diva.

More? Survivalism in tents, handprinted wallpaper on Melbourne’s laneways, art performances in ‘Men’s Galleries’, Workshops – develop your own personal dancing style… learn about how to inject interactivity into new media installations… ( by Jon Pak of lightmatrixinterface.com ). Forums – on virtual communities, artist interventions in public spaces, recycling pop culture imagery, theatre in non-traditional spaces. Abundances more – website is very well organised and makes exploring and finding events very smooth and easy, well worth the browse.

And sure, the Festival has only just started, but has already run into controversy, the Melbourne City Council ruling that a Swedish artist’s works that feature male nudes must have the genitalia covered up. The work in question featured a stoned, naked Mickey Mouse character ‘dreaming of becoming as famous as Damien Hirst’ , and was looking to critique the whole art supermarket from an artist’s perspective… but naked male genitalia are best on stone statues it seems. ( see http://platformartistsgroup.blogspot.com, and the artists site : ceciliafogelberg.com )

Also Coming Up :

Melbourne International Animation Festival 2008 June 16-22
Melbourne International Film Festival 2008 – July 25 – August 10

Like a continuously expanding themepark emerging sprouting towers through a forest floor, audiovisual tools – they keep developing at a cracking pace. Here’s a quick scan of the recent* topography. ( *well, actually, it was April Snippets, but then there was this minor issue of a spamwar and entire blog rebuild to deal with… still some pixel-juicy links below though.. )

(above Melb VJ Keith Deverell + DFUSE in last minute preparation mode )

Live Audiovisual Performance

Kids’ve been busy in the Northern hemisphere it seems. The Euro-experimental-media festival circuit has been charging ahead, much of it documented at createdigitalmotion.com by by 1 x Toby *spark, wolverine UK VJ of note, who trampled his way through the AV Social at London – an event which featured performances and discussions, but also a fantastic compilation of VJ narrative works, cream of the crop, each complete with a URL to explore. Next stop was the Node 08 festival in Frankfurt, exploring the VVVV software and the gazillions of projects spawned by it. Then the Mapping Festival in Geneva, put together by people connected to the VJ software Modul8, another smorgasbord of sublime AV performances and installations. Dizzy yet? Then the Vision’r festival in Paris, where Toby observed “a strong culture of innovative live performance, which brings visualism and a/v trickery with it, but through a very different lens”, and a new release of Resolume, the long dominant PC VJ software now becoming available natively on OS X as well. Coming soon Visual Berlin and Live Performer’s Meeting in Rome.

Elsewhere in the North, Vague Terrain offer up a fantastic cross-section of VJ + AV related articles in a recent journal, including an interview with VJ Solu ( Finland / Barcelona ). And the consistent DVblog offers up this fascinating performance / video event where the screen is made up of large white cubes which are continually deconstructed during the event, playfully changing the nature of the projections ( Event by myspace.com/pixelbirds )

Video Hardware

The much hyped 4K resolution RED camera gets plenty of mentioned over at the EDIT blog, but the blog is worth checking out for it’s general tips about editing and hardware, software etc. Having a 4000 pixel wide image isn’t necessary for most people though, and some have even been shying away from HD cameras for all the extra headaches and hard drive space the extra image size needs. Seeing the UK’s DFUSE preparing for a performance in Melbourne recently though, opened my eyes to some of the more creative options that HD allows. Even if you still choose to work with smaller resolutions, having that extra width and height to play with can prove useful in all kinds of complicated zooming, panning, tilting and multi-screen scenarios.

Video Software

Yes, a new version of resolume is out ( now for mac + pc), and along with it a new version of the popular freeframe effects, now optimised to take advantage of graphics card acceleration. If needing some clips to play in that, youtube has started including much higher resolution clips and the Google Operating System blog notes a useful hack to access and save these videos as mp4 files ( allowing editing and much easier use for VJing ). On the Quartz Composer front, Machines Don’t Care has been kicking many goals with lots of experiments building all sorts of effects, plugins and real-time graphic mutations – all of which can be then inserted into various OS X VJ software.

Video on the Interwebs

Yes there are over 200 video uploading services now, yes there are a key dozen or so with better options than youtube ( including payment options, higher resolution, better interfaces, browser based remixing, better social functions etc, but no, none of them have a fraction of the eyeballs of youtube. Which makes the recent extension of youtube’s partnership scheme into Australia significant. This means if you have original clips you own the copyright to, you can enter into an agreement to share part of the ad revenue these clips generate on youtube.

Popular photo sharing site flickr recently made a splash too, adding the ability to add video or what they call ‘long photos’ to their site. There’s something appealing about the way they have implemented this, and the outlet for shorter clips amongst the well defined flickr community. After a splash of motion graphics? Try flickr.com/groups/vdmx/ or flickr.com/groups/cdmo/pool.

audio-surf.com – this one intrigues – a music adapting ( PC only ) puzzle racer where you upload your own music to create your own game parameters. “The shape, the speed, and the mood of each ride is determined by the song you choose. Earn points for clustering together blocks of the same color on the highway, and compete with others on the internet for the high score on your favourite songs.

Feed Me?

Brian Kane of the seminal AV act EBN has too many projects and provocations happening now.

UK’s United Visual Artists now have blog, and apparently did a great presentation of works at a recent Melbourne design conference.

Tutorial sites are multiplying fast which is great, found Embryo recently.

Art of title sequences? Sure : www.artofthetitle.com

Gathering links for a visitor makes you realise it’s quite the city for eyeballs, old Melbourne town.

Australian Centre of Moving Image
: Usually has a few exhibitions / screenings, the free Christian Marclay exhibit currently exhibiting is available until February 3 and has several cool AV collages worth checking out. The nearby Federation Square public screen often hosts interesting public screenings too.

City Lights Project

Across the road from ACMI, is Hosier lane, ever drenched in graffiti and stencils, and host to a monthly laneway exhibit hung high and illuminated in light boxes. Also located in another CBD lane, Centre Place.

Stream Collective : live A-V performances, adventurous sound, screenings and installations.

Stencil Graffiti Capital Hearts Melbourne. More stencilly stuff.

Pecha Kucha Melbourne : Series of rapid-fire design and graphics presentations by wide range of melbourne visualists.. with big audiences, big design social event..( next event mar 19 ).

Forepaw : Shopfront in Northcote transformed into gallery, venue, comic + illustration jam nights and much more.
Just missed ‘Trails’ http://forepaw.org/trails.php group drawing jam night ( Tue Jan 29). ( “Bring pens. And beer”).

Sticky Institute : Zine store and seller of much lo-fi and rad print stuff.

Is Not Magazine : Maybe you’ve seen that giant one sheet magazine that gets printed in colour XXXL and pasted up on walls around the city? This is it.

Comic’s Lifestyle : Lots of the Melbourne comic making massive live here.

Breakdown Press : Local independent publishers of provocative visual material.

Engage Media : Local makers of software for self-publishing video online

Dorkbot Melbourne : Local tweakers of electricity and odd projects.

Footscray AudioVisual Social Club : Regular show and tell events @ Footscray Community Arts Centre.

Tape Projects : a collective of young and emerging artists who champion provocative, temporal, audio-visual works and site-specific performances by our peers in and around Melbourne. ( Also release a quarterly DVD ).

Horse Bazaar : Club with a really, really long video screen that wraps around a corner, and regularly features visual artists.

Loop : Another club with many dedicated video walls and regular visual arts bits & vj projections.

Plug N Play Melbourne : Pixellists and live visual experimenters every 2nd thursday of every month… 201 Smith st, Kent st Cafe, Fitzroy, 8-11pm + free.

Art Galleries? Melbourne has those too. ( 150+ here for starters )

Film Festivals / Open Air Cinemas / Cult film Societies? Try….

Popcorn Taxi, Melbourne Cinematheque, Silver Screen Sundays, The Astor Theatre, Melbourne Underground Film Festival, Italian Film Festival, The Other Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, Bicycle Film Festival, Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Antimatter Underground Film Festival, Rooftop Cinema, Moonlight Cinema, Junkyard Cinema, St Kilda Openair Cinema, Melbourne International Animation Festival etc etc and film festivals every second weekend or so for just about every clump of people big enough to call themselves a nation.

MISSED ANYTHING ?? Throw it in the comments, and I’ll add it on…

UPDATE :

Outpost / Share : last Wednesday of every month at Horse Bazaar. A/V jam night with feat. guests. ( thanks, Boz )

Time Capsules: ‘Screen Gems in Strange Territories’ every Friday 8.45, 127 Campbell St, Collingwood

(found via ‘i flips me lid’ )

AudioVisual Melbourne is a mailing list with frequently posted items about interesting (audio+) visual events in Melbs.

Also by the Atak label, the nicely chopped intro to this, positions 4 different video artists and crews against each other in a battle of AV sampling skills. Quite varied styles on the disc and a bunch of interesting extras to wander through. Worth a look.

fame fame ( toronto )

The Fame Fame disc portion showcases clips from another label who exist for the ‘production and promotion of the aggressive, intense and volatile..’. So when Elvis & James Dean appear, it’s not long before they are whipped and sliced into an AV frenzy. Actutally works well, and followed by a more splattery stroboscopic piece by – cheerfully titled ‘i die u die’ by Jubal Brown. ‘In the eye’ by Tasman Richardson plays with surveillance cameras, mirror effects, layering of extreme close ups, tv glitches, all nicely composed then blending Robert De Niro in with rapid-fire micro-samples. Tasman follows this by remixing vintage guitar concert footage with white stripes drums, Ice cube, Public Enemy video samples..

eclectic method ( london )

Bill themselves as DVJs… “mixing music video and film snips like a DJ mixes records…”. Funny thing is – add together music videos by Blur, Prince, Snoop Dog, Beastie Boys, Aphex Twin, Metallica & Britney Spears etc etc all beat-matched and mashed together in a glossy high value production style, and you end up with a glossy, banal jukebox. Some cool moments, but they should be able to use their talents for far more interesting things than this.

madame chao ( new york )

“Everything is illegal’ – proclaims the intro by madame chao to a video described as ‘Violent slapstick’ best watched with a sword in one hand a drink in the other…’. The title sequence is quickly followed by a fast flickering density of hyper-speed collages, kaleidoscope warping, asian tv edits, and a text announcement that ‘copyright infringement is your patriotic duty’. Some genuinely inventive parts, bit relentless for myself though.

atak ( paris )
The label releasing the DVD leave a quarter of it for themselves, being a ‘hybrid mix of Vjs, movie makers and musicians’. Thusly, we get fed an initially sophisticated blend of medical experiments, horror movie special effects, motion graphics… with film sound bleeding through layered on a bed of industrial beats. Soon becomes a barrage, and a couple of high-speed carnage clips by Rko continue that pace.

Atak hails out of Paris, an audiovisual label with a quite a few releases under their gallic belt by now. ‘Meat’ features a series of clips by 3 artists on their roster, on a DVD boasting to be ‘DVJ ready’ – ready for looping and scratching by those with access to DVD turntables. The disc’s cover is a good clue to the content within, an eye-popping collage of photoshopped flesh in various states of life, augmented by various bolted on bits of electronic technology.

Cinemassaker start off with various close up screen textures, layers of surveillance cameras and jolts of colourised tv news, punctuated by beeps and glitches. It’s nicely done, with mostly restrained palettes, and quite hypnotically edited, up to and including the introduction of footage from John Carpenter’s legendary ‘They Live’ movie, where the main characters discover special sunglasses which enable them a capacity to decode all public advertisements ( put the glasses on and a billboard for a car now reads in stark black and white : ‘work, consume, die’ ). Overlaid barcodes and pixelated animations, along with burnt colours help their editing condense the film’s samples down to a bare repetitive essence, and they manage to lock into some kind of ambient audiovisual groove. Next track follows the same recipe, gradually introducing a film I didn’t know and paring it down over time, and the final track is a sequence of ever bloodying hi-speed martial arts chops.

Mutation continue the gore with a chicken killing scene that comes off as some weird voodoo circus scene the way they’ve colorised and framed it. Some wasted human dominates the next clip in eerie close up, and their final clip plays with highway panoramas and nicely overlaid motion graphics with sound on top of footage of overhead power lines sweeping by.

Lifesteak start off in a much more ambient vein, overlaid layers of light streaked plant close-ups, building up in slow intensity, the next clip musically editing and layering the squawks of birds flying from clifffaces. Factory machine close-ups are sequenced in the next clip, getting denser over time and it closes with butcher footage interlaced with motion graphics and some lab hand analysing a human brain.

Not for the squeamish then, but some worthwhile moments on the disc.

Aside from it’s wii-like accelerametor ( movement gestures as data for controlling software ), the iPhone’s touchscreen interface and hard-drive with internal operating system, makes it a potentially awesome device for manipulating software. Say hello then, to the i3L MIDI BRIDGE for the iPhone by artificialeyes.tv, software developed to work with their upcoming 3D software 3L (‘thrill’). Software that translates the sliding and pressing on the touchscreen into midi information, which is sent wirelessly to a small piece of software on the desktop, which in turn can be routed to the software application of your choice. In my case below, this was VDMX. Is it fun to use? Hell yeah!

Though they developed it to work on their upcoming app, full credit to artificialeyes.tv for releasing it as freeware to work with any software. More details and download over at artificialeyes.tv.