Amusing as the U.S. election is to watch on news channels, or terrifying if you’re watching it via the Comedy Channel’s Daily Show, just sometimes, you don’t feel like having a herd of cattle flying overhead, dumping manure on you from great heights. A few abstract video antidotes then, to counteract the visual political overload of late.

Abre Ojos
Scott Baker, aka Abre Ojos, graced Melbourne Plug N Play recently with a fine audiovisual set, blending together well richly textured drones of ebb of flow with ethereal video footage, and appropriately stylised live animations. Walking into the venue though, one of the first things noticed was his rig, as he tends to use a range custom analogue equipment, and on this occasion had an impressive modular synthesiser embedded in a suitcase, spaghetti patchwork of cables arcing out of it everywhere, flanked by a range of controllers and a laptop for controlling video. A desk microphone let him use his voice to provide raw sound for filtering, processing into a swell of buzzing insects, mid ocean waves or a distant rumbling volcano. All the while letting slow and atmospheric video drift by on screen ( or into the screen in the case of road journeys into a floating cloud of mist ), or smoothly shifting animated light patterns over time.

Nice stuff, and he has a DVD out, a compilation of 4 AV tracks – all tracks are improvised, vision and sound recorded in a single pass, no overdubs, then minimal mixing/mastering / compressing / EQ etc. Visually, he works by taking photos and video with a consumer grade digital still camera ( the growing video quality on cheap still cameras continues to amaze and surprise me ), manipulating them in photoshop / after effects / motion and then layering these with quartz composer animations that are audio responsive and midi controllable. His work is also creative commons licenced, so you can both view and remix it over at abreojos.net.

Big Square Eye
Received this impressively realised DVD compilation in the mail recently, it having been produced for the Brisbane Festival 2008 at the tail end of workshops with 15 young Queenslanders given access to a range of gear, mentors and two things that help most projects – a deadline and a budget. The end result is surprisingly sophisticated, in both conceptual and aesthetic realms, and well supported by the DVD packaging and menu interface. The clips range from shimmery plays of light to stop-motion political critique, clip art animations, absurdist puppetry and abstraced visual effects. There are few visual cliches scattered amongst it all, but on the whole an impressive effort, and more so for the ways it is being distributed and displayed across many parts of regional Queensland in various non-gallery contexts like retail displays. Clips, artist information and related essays viewable online.

Digital Fringe
Happens in Melbourne soon ( Sep 24 – Oct 12 – digitalfringe.com.au ), bringing together a range of events, a mobile projection unit ( van with projectors, solar-charged batteries, online laptops, projector and video camera ) which travels around projecting onto Melbourne walls and sends the resulting footage onto the web in real-time. Anyone wanting to have their work projected with this, and on many screens all around Melbourne during the festival, can upload video at the Digital Fringe site ( you can also view / download other submissions for remixing ).

If there’s one thing the latest wave of webbery does well, it’s keeping track of sites that keep track of sites that keep track of…

Back in the Day
Used to be simple enough – find some curious brained folk who spend too much time wandering the web, and drop into their blog from time to time. The rise of RSS readers to easily subscribe to material like this, made it a snack to quickly gather a huge range of hand-picked curators and connoiseurs to keep you in touch with news in any number of esoteric topics. And then, when it happened that there were too many curators walking the earth, along came the re-blog (software that facilitates the process of filtering and republishing relevant content from many RSS feeds – reblog.org), enabling a new breed of curators to pick out the best .. curators, which was grand for a while, apart from the problem of still being limited to the perspective of that particular curator. More brains were needed, and that’s where things get messy.

And Then
Expanding on the web curation idea, slashdot.org launched on the premise of allowing it’s readers to nominate stories, with a constantly rotating team of editors filtering these submissions and presenting the best on their frontpage. The shift to many brains was spectacularly successful, and then the founders of digg.com tried to expand on this idea by letting the audience not only nominate stories, but also become the editors themselves – by voting on the stories, the stories with the most votes being shifted to the frontpage, in turn meaning avalanches of traffic for the sites being profiled. newsvine.com and reddit.com are amongst those following the same path, both aiming to provide customised stories for you, based on what you’ve submitted or voted for over time. Popularity alone of course, isn’t necessarily a measure of quality, and acknowledging that is the latest iteration in the field, polymeme.

Sayeth Polymeme:

“We have a database of about 25,000 leading blogs covering specific topics — economics, architecture, media, and so on. Every few hours our unique buzz-detection system analyzes each topical cluster and determines what are some of the “hottest” articles — be they from the traditional media or other blogs — discussed by the blogs in our cluster. We then republish the most interesting of them on Polymeme.com, displaying the sources that are talking about each “hot” news article or blog post. We believe that relying on this “wisdom of clusters” and not just “wisdom of crowds” provides for superior buzz detection than most regular buzz-aggregators, which usually give preference to most popular stories across all topics, and not most interesting ones in specific areas.”

Sample Polymemes?
The Poly-feed offers about 50 headlines or so a day, eg ‘the decline of the american empire’ which offers an article about recent economic, financial and geopolitical events that suggest the above, but also shows how this theme is something that has been recently covered by many people and offers all the links to these. The extra contextualisation is really nice, and so for the time being am enjoying the feed quite well.

Face is The Place
Of course, the ease of publishing and reading links – and importantly, having access to a more direct group of peers ( for both reading and writing ), inside the walled garden that is Facebook, means many people are now filtering their web through their facebook account. Within most groups of friends, are a few who take with glee to the chance to spread the word about what they’ve been reading / viewing / listening to / thinking, and for a particular few, this extends to the compressing as much links, juice or wit into their ‘account status’ messages as possible. Which is exactly the premise and promise ( or threat ) behind the popular twitter.com service. While Twitter sounds maddening to many, the core idea of being able to send a short SMS sized message from phone or computer at any time, and have this be published on a site, be picked up by others subscribing, and responded to, is obviously compelling for many.

Too many accounts, too little time? Ping.fm updates your facebook, myspace, twitter etc etc accounts in one go. Tubemogul.com publishes your video to many different accounts at once ( youtube, blip.tv etc etc ) and Friendfeed.com gathers your updates, comments, bookmarks etc from a large range of sites in one place, and allows subscribing to the collected updates of friends – which actually provides a pretty useful service – being able to comment on and develop conversations with friends about their broader web travels, all from the one location.

“Where are we when on the phone?”

On a rooftop it turns out. International no-budget short film made around 2003, based on the idea that if a few people around the world were able to film themselves doing something with a phone on a rooftop, this might be a fruitful plot device, or at least provide some kind of continuity and fun for editing later on. And so, a request was sent out through the networks, that pretty much said :

“Can you make 30 seconds of video that starts with you answering a phone, and ends with you dialling a call?”

Many months later ( imagine – a time before youtube! ), had compiled a diverse range of contributions from Sadie Plant, Neotropic, Scanner, Howard Bloom, a Colombian rooftop party, Rebecca Cannon, Captain Frodo, Anna Sagaponic and many more – and massaged these together into one ‘continuous’ tale linked by rooftop phone action.

Ended up on a Neopoetry DVD compilation, and subsequently screened at Straight Out Of Brisbane, Electrofringe & other festivals and exhibitions internationally. Came with a companion essay. And in the endless Melb-Winter-Of_Productivity 2008, it’s finally online.

.. one might think, lurks a Turkish Batwoman. Turkish Batman has been found. However, despite my best attempts before, during and after 6 months in Istanbul last year, Turkish Batwoman remains elusive. Batboy in the comments of a previous post about this search, located the internet movie database listing for Turkish Batwoman, but these aren’t the only steps closer…

Was aware of Mexican Batwoman ( pic above), (La Mujer Murcielago aka Batwoman ( 1968, Mexico ) : “pretty ambitious for what is in essence a Mexican wrestling film” ), but recently discovered a torrent download for that and The Wild World of Batwoman (1966 US), as well as learning the existence of Batwoman and Robin (1972, Philippines), and Batwoman and Robin Meet the Queen of the Vampires (1972, Philippines), Super Mario Nazi Batman, and then … Bathman dal pianeta Eros ( Bathman On The Planet Of Pleasure – 1982 Italy ) :
“Sexually-obsessed Bathman (Mark Shannon) and Klito-Bell arrive from the planet Eros and fight perverted criminals on Earth, such as prostitutes and rapists, in this outrageous Batman spoof. Holy lawsuit!”

The Turkish remakes keep popping out of the woodwork too – Turkish Bruce Lee, Turkish Zorro, Turkish Conan, and even Turkish Mad Max, but for now, Turkish Batwoman remains on the prowl…

Broadcast media organisations are slowly adapting to the idea that their audiences can produce and distribute media too, shifting the top down one-to-many model of media to one of many-to-many. Representing part of an adaptive strategy over at the ABC, pool.org.au is about to launch, a site where anyone can upload and publish material – or remix some of what is there already. John Jacobs ( Video Subvertigo, Indymedia, ABC’s Night Air ) was happy to be interviewed about the site’s aims.

The pool site is about to launch – what would you like to imagine it being in 2010?
By 2010 I’d hope that media professionals and consumers had used the live web to blur each others boundaries and used spaces like Pool to build the new public media forms and platforms. So maybe Pool 2010 is some kind of aggregated media tagzine.

To what extent are ABC radio and TV archives available now, and what kind of plans are there for increased future availability?
Opening up the ABC archives is an important goal for many people.  Like the BBC, the ABC recognizes the huge potential of digital access to its back catalogue. There’s a balancing act to be played out between intellectual property rights and public interest. Public media is shifting roles from broadcasting media units to hosting a digital connection cloud. Right now ABC TV’s iView (abc.net.au/tv/iview ) is one avenue for directly accessing popular current productions. I can see a future where less high profile ABC output is delivered to the pubic domain directly. Pool is modeling this with its use of Creative Commons licensing.

What ABC media would you especially enjoy seeing remixed by it’s audience?
In the night garden it’s one of my favorite shows. Like Telly Tubbies and Mr Squiggle before that, kids programming always has the most open agenda and abstract language that naturally welcomes remix or re interpretation. Just add a bit of ABC news actuality and you are in VJ heaven.

What contributions have surprised you so far?
I liked hearing Holy’s story of her squat but it was so great hearing Dan turn it into a song!

What limitations of current Pool system are you looking to transcend?
Pool is a space to rethink public media, there are plenty of limitations but also many possibilities. I invite you all to log in and start to co-create. Once media objects are free of ownership many options open up.

Examples of forward-thinking broadcast media projects online?
Engagemedia.org is a great homegrown example of direct video publishing. And viddler.com okay it’s like just another You tube competitor but check out it’s time line annotation feature. Soon social media will aggregate tags like “silly” into a channel and then I will have found a home.
 
Other video remix sites that inspire?
The “Related to” side bar on Youtube, I love browsing have you watched http://play.blogger.com?

Blame it on the Melbourne winter, but recently I’ve embarked on the task of republishing a few hundred odd articles from my former blog, the now defunct octapod.org/jeanpoole, which covered live video, electronic art and music, tasmanian tigers, gangsta rapping physicists and other odds and ends from 2001-2005. Though some are less relevant today, there’s plenty of still interesting interviews amongst it all, and figured if these files already exist on a hard-drive somewhere, that may as well be on a publically accessible one.

The archives has the full list of what has been transferred so far, and I’ll add another post when the process is finished, highlighting some of my favourites over the years ( though I’ve published the embarrassing ones too.. ). For now though, here are a few of the live video and VJ related posts which now live on skynoise..

Artist interviews…
A Brief History of VJing in Australia ( longgg interview heavy piece focussed around late 90s onwards), The Light Surgeons (UK), VJ Honeygun Labs(US), Jasch (Switzerland), Eye-Fi(Sydney), John De Kron ( Germany), Falk (Germany), Lalila (Sydney), Semi-Conductor (UK), Rawbone ( Perth ), DJ Spooky on cutting film ( US ), Falk on VJ blogging (Germany), Solu ( Finland/Spain), Runwrake (yes he VJs sometimes as well as being an amazing animator)(UK), DJ Yoda (UK), Neotropic on music and film (UK), audiovisualizers.com interview, meta, QBert on Wave Twisters (US), and Addictive TV ( UK) and 242 Pilots ( US/Europe) both of which slipped through as ‘recent’ posts.

VJ related Software reviews :
Comprehensive overview of VJ Software in 2004 with screenshots, interviews, smaller VJ software round-up in 2005, vdmx 2, VDMXX 4.0, Grid Pro Vs Arnold Schwarzenegger, v-track, Arkaos video sampler, Arkaos VJ 3, Wildform Flix, Isadora, Livid 1.1

Wheeeeeeeeee~!

(( Update : this interview was done in 2003, and is part of large import of writing from the now defunct octapod.org/jeanpoole, which covered live video and electronic art from 2001-2005. Mostly I’ve been publishing the posts with their original date, but this slipped through and has been linked to already. See the archives for more. ))

Satellites these days get so micro, you can practically zoom in on someone moving house and tell whether they’ve packed their underwear or not. Graham lost a nice pair of commodore 64 boxers once. You get this though, when relentlessly travelling around Europe to promote your UK-based audiovisual label, vj & TV production crew, Addictive TV. Coincidentally, they’ve released a DVD, ‘Spaced Out’ which has the likes of Cold Cut and EBN remixing 40 years of NASA space footage. They’d love some Aussie content for their acclaimed Mixmasters audiovisual DVD series, and some of this will be screened in a few months on SBS. Will review ‘Spaced Out’ next week, and leave www.addictive.com 2u.

What was a turning point for your understanding of how audio and vision relate?
Lots really. As a kid, I watched a lot of musicals. Check out, say, old Fred Astaire movies and often the music and film action is completely synched. Even Fiddler on the Roof or the total trippyness of Bedknobs & Broomsticks have very musical audiovisual scenes – where the sound from the action you see is incorporated in the music. But with our own work, I remember watching people’s faces when we had a screening of Transambient back in ‘98, they were completely fixated – that was a turning moment.

What’s the difference between your TV and club work?
With TV & DVD work, things have to work far more on a one-to-one basis between viewer and the TV. Repetition and loops can last much longer in a club than on TV, simply because people are maybe more focused on the music and experiencing the images in a less direct way. Similarly, some images work well on TV but look naff in a club. Also, a live performance is a one-off; so tends to be more spontaneous, which can also mean it’s less polished than recorded work, which has to stand up to being watched over and over.

What TV projects are you working on now?
Series 3 of Mixmasters for ITV1 over here – just started talking to labels, VJs, animators etc. As the series’ have gone on, they’re really reflecting the expanding global visuals scene, it’s great to see the really different work that comes out of say, Tokyo or Berlin. Mixmasters has always been a mixture of original audiovisual work and DJ/VJ mixes, but more AV artists are cropping up now so we’ll be seeing more of that. Should say by the way, that series 1 is on SBS this Spring.

How can aspiring OZ-VJs or audiovisualists submit for the Mixmasters series?
Send us examples – not just live mix tapes, but recorded work, promos, AV mixes, stuff they’ve put into festivals etc. Mixmasters is much more about VJs being visual recording artists than a “live DJ/VJ mix” project. Our postal address is on www.addictive.com and we’ll be all finished around July.

What bores you to tears about live video or videoclips?
Cameras on the DJ. The same short clips fired off a laptop all night. Old clips of breakdancers. Flying down tunnels. Endless spinning 3D objects.

What have you noticed about the evolution of the Mixmasters series?
How we’ve still got a long way to go in terms of AV and visuals being accepted globally, and how closed-minded so many broadcasters are around the world. It’s clear though that more and more people are getting into visuals – it’s really growing quite quickly. In some ways the whole thing might be growing too quickly. There aren’t enough media outlets for this and right now the entertainment industries (clubs, music, television and the wider media etc) aren’t supporting the whole ‘AV thang’ in all its guises enough to sustain a rapidly growing VJ / AV scene. Hopefully that’ll change in the coming years.

Audiovisual software & hardware stepping forward at the moment?
It’s good to see companies like Pioneer and Roland developing or making off-the-shelf gear now aimed at VJs. With software, there seems to be new stuff appearing every week! Also, I know someone creating work for some VJ gaming software for one of the games consuls, so someone thinks “there’s money in them there hills!”.

What’s Addictive.TV doing in 2010?
Running it’s own 24 hour channel – presuming the world’s not been reduced to a Mad Max style smallpox ridden wasteland by then, in which case we’ll be running an audiovisual club for mutants that still have eyes and ears.

See also : another addictive interview for ministry mag and
addictive tv DVD reviews

For mating purposes the South Australian Lyre bird has developed wonderful song and signal capacities. It can even mimick urban sounds such as a camera lens zoom and click or a car alarm. The fine feathered 242.Pilots on the other hand, are a video performance trio whose signal processing and improvisation often has them compared to a freejazz ensemble. Not sure how their recently released DVD fits into their mating strategies, but it’s a great showcase for their capacity to improvise.

(( Update : this interview was done in 2003, and is part of large import of writing from the now defunct octapod.org/jeanpoole, which covered live video and electronic art from 2001-2005. Mostly I’ve been publishing the posts with their original date, but this slipped through and has been linked to already. See the archives for more. ))

DVD: – Live @ Bruxelles
Distributed through Carpark Records, this DVD allows the chance to see and hear a live recording of the 242.Pilots performance at a Belgian festival in 2002, three solo pieces and an interview which illuminates their processes and interactions. Under the pilots bonnet, lies custom made software – video components for the max/msp programming environment. Having built their own software with this, the pilots can freely improvise in real-time, layering and transforming imagery in real-time. Effects are also layered in real-time, and the customised effects are often foregrounded more than the actual content itself. The end result is at times haunting, beautiful and fantastically elastic. For the most part they maintain a level of visual interest, if not surprise, and interplay with sound. The occasional lapses you would expect within a long improvisation, I found were related to the saturation and predictability of certain effects. Even their own customised software has it’s certain aesthetic trademarks and glitches. Fascinating DVD though, available through http://242pilots.org. While you’re there, click along to www.nervousvision.com, the site of Berliner HC Gilje, who answered these questions:

What are the challenges of building a video ‘instrument’ ?
Our instruments are a combination of software and hardware, and must be built in a way to encourage/stimulate our visual dialogue. The challenge is to make a interface, maybe a mix of hardware controllers and video software, which is very flexible, responsive and which gives room for unexpected things to happen. The biggest problem is balancing features with an intuitive interface: if you end up having to think too much while you perform you have a problem.

What is liberating / limiting about customising your own software?
Achieving results not possible with available commercial software, and also to make mistakes which creates interesting results. The limitation with using an environment like max is that you spend hours and hours on your interface, and continually keep implementing and changing the program which makes it less intuitive. In max based work you tend to get bored with your patch when you know it too well. With programs like imagine, you can learn to master the features to a certain degree.

How much do u consider the audience & their perception of ‘liveness’ when composing a video work?
242.pilots wants the focus of the audience to be on the audiovisual output of the performance, not us as performers. For us the interesting thing is to create experimental video in a live setting, which gives a complete different energy and dynamic than to make a prepared video and screen it in front of an audience. The presence of the audience and the other players, as well as the space, our mood++ totally effects what we create, as it is always completely improvised.

Have you noticed with your live work with dancers, that the audience is more receptive to the live-video?
In my recent work with dancers I use no recorded source material, only the dancers as input for my video. It is then obviously easier for the audience to understand the “liveness” of the video than in an impro-setting like 242.pilots.

Live video-art is often criticised for not feeling worthwhile, unless you know how it is was made. How do you feel about this?
At our performance in Bruxelles upon which the dvd is based, a large part of the audience didnt understand that it was created live, but looked at it as an experimental film. From my experience with improvisation there will always be uninteresting parts but usually there are those magic moments which makes the whole jamsession worthwhile, just as in a music jam. If the total experience of a performance is negative, then it’s a bad show, and not related to the genre itself.

What are the difficulties with live video compared to audio?
It demands more attention, as people aren’t so used to watching longer stretches of non-narrative video. Compared to laptop audio performance, at least you don’t have to watch the boring guys behind their laptops as you are supposed to look at the video.

Abstract cinema? Graphic design in motion? What are you aiming for with your improvisations?
People always look for some sort of story no matter how abstract and non-narrative the video is, and I find it interesting this dialogue between us and the audience in terms of creating meaning. Our improvisations are like taking a walk in some unknown landscape, and depending on the curiosity/attentiveness of each indivual in the audience, they will all walk out of the space with their own unique experience.

Future projects? ( any longer narrative live-cinematic aspirations? )
A collaboration with contemporary music composer Yannis Kyriakides, a 20 minute piece which will tour with an ensemble and be performed live, and my Tokyoproject, which will be a 4 channel video installation, a live video-audio piece and DVD with Jazzkammer. The live Tokyopiece would be something like a longer narrative cinema. Am also continuing collaborations with the sound artist Kelly, in our impro duo BLIND.

Snapshot of recent audiovisual developments.

First Up
3 of the most exciting things of late? Previews of the upcoming Resolume 3 Avenue, an inter-application video routing piece of ( mac only ) software released by Vade. and the new 3L real-time 3D program.

Resolume 3 Avenue will be available for both Mac and PC in September and already looks something like the holy grail of live audiovisual applications. Some of it’s key features : – VST audio plug-ins can be used ( in a live video application! ) and easily sync-ed with visual effects to create custom audiovisual effects. – Lots of beat and loop controls. – Drag and drop audio files onto video clips and have them play in sync. – Heavy integration of graphics card and 3D capabilities – and much more in the demo video at their site.

Vade’s great new app is a patch built in Quartz Composer which allows the user to isolate whichever part of the screen they want, then re-route this as a live source in another application such as VDMX. Which means photoshop painting or game playing, or other weird video glitch apps etc can be running in one spot and that output can then become one video channel in a video mixing program. Live grafitti, or rotoscoping on top of videos, mixing games with other clips and more – all on one machine with no need for a mixer. Works super fast too.

3L by http://artificialeyes.tv/, recently ended a long beta development phase, and has arrived as a very sophisticated 3D real-time application with several
unique features : – individual rgb fx wet/dry mix controls – built in DMX control for the VMS moving mirror projectors. – Interpolated presets ( slide between complex presets easily )

Available now, jump in while it’s hot.

Web-Video?
No great leaps recently in technical terms, but have been enjoying some of the new flickr.com video groups ( eg the Kite Aerial Video group, various underwater and abstract video groups) created since they opened their doors to videos – or as they put it, ‘long photos’ up tp 90 seconds long Playback on the site is nice, but a shame clips can’t be downloaded in an editable format. Blip.tv and vimeo.com seem to be staying ahead of the video pack at the moment. Locally, Australia’s ABC have launched a hosting site that encourages the remixing of its audio and video content : pool.org.au.

For those who prefer to have a vimeo account for quality and youtube account as well for the hits, noticed that tubemogul.com enables easy simultaneous upload to many sites at once.

Visual Blogs
Some various additions to the RSS reader of late :
Code And Form : Computational Aesthetics – http://workshop.evolutionzone.com/
http://mograph.net – well populated motion graphics forum where people throw around problems and solutions.
http://aefreemart.com – various after effects tips and tutorials noted here.
http://advancedbeauty.org/blog – Ongoing audiovisual projects.
www.eurodisney.biz – Latvian axe in the world of aesthetics.
vvork.com – Themed curation and daily flood of artprojects, presented simply.
http://lightsurgeons.com – Documenting projects for the UK AV crew.

Video of the Week
This has been doing the rounds a lot ( 5 million + views at last watch ), but there’s a good reason for that. Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch passed away recently (Oct. 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008), and recorded a one hour lecture last year, some time after being told he only had a short time to live. With that in mind, his last lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, takes on all the more meaning and resonance, and well worth the viewing.

May 08 Video Snippets
April Video Snippets 08
Eyeball Snippets for July 07

Movie star guests and a huge roster of great films is fine, but it’s exciting to see Melbourne’s International Film Festival embracing some live cinema experiments this year.

“If I’ve learned anything from big budget action movies it’s that complicated global problems are best solved by one lonely guy.” – So sayeth the cheeseburger chumping Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me). Morgan will be chatting with John Safran about his latest film, ‘Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?‘, Sat 2 Aug 4:00 PM, Cooper’s Festival Lounge, 154 Flinders St. Those two’d be stars, yes. Stallone and Schwarzenegger can finally pass the baton to the new generation of action hero pranksters out to save the world.

Not to forget Eric Bana – who will be presenting a screening of George Miller’s Mad Max II ( Tue 5 Aug 7:00PM @ Forum Theatre ), and talking after it about Peak Oil, Climate Change and the need to curb our addiction to fossil fuels ( or maybe the Hulk or Chopper etc ).

Five Lines, Five Films? 
I’ll be @ these, holler if you’re heading along…
DaiNipponjin Sat 26 Jul 11:15 PM Greater Union 5 : Japanese comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto tries his hand as director and mega-sized superhero.
PERSEPOLIS Sat 9 Aug 7:00 PM Greater Union 6 : Feature length animation telling the story of a girl growing up in Iran. 
WALTZ WITH BASHIR  Sun 10 Aug 1:00 PM Greater Union 4 : How many compelling Middle Eastern feature length animations can one festival have?
THREE MONKEYS  Sat 2 Aug 5:00 PM Capitol : Turkish thriller that untwists interior worlds and recent Cannes festival winner.
PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED, THE  Sun 27 Jul 9:15 PM Greater Union 4 : Quirky daydreamer of a film featuring road trips, lots of theft and a polar bear.

( + have seen, but highly recommend MAN ON WIRE!)
( Films listed in A-Z on one page )

Intermission: Who is Miss Roder?
Located in an old Flinders lane warehouse ( Fri 1, Sat 2 Aug ), this series will feature a series of performance film events from international guests and some of Australia’s leading exponents of ‘expanded cinema’ and video art. With quite an engaging mix of digital and analogue experimenters on hand, this should be quite a treat. Amongst the highlights – experimental animator Dirk de Bruyn, Abject Leader’s photochemically milked sonics, Guy Sherwin with Lynn Loo, Ben Russell, long time Melbourne visualist Steven Ball returning to the city, and a chunky, descriptive program. 

Jon Pak (pictured above), experimental composer, designer of the http://lightmatrixinterface.com hardware, one of Melbourne’s dorkbot organisers, and recent deliverer of a very popular Next Wave festival soft/hardware performance workshop ( aye he’s busy ), had this to say about the Miss Roder event he’s involved with:

What’s ‘the Feast’ ?
A performance piece that examines ritual and the subtleties of human interaction through sound within the context of a fine dining setting? Or a couple of ill-mannered restaurant patrons making a ruckus in the name of art.

What was your role within that?
Concept, sound design, video, broken glasses, soiled tablecloths and much soldering.

What’d you find challenging / surprising about the development process?
Working with the thespian types. It’s something I don’t have much experience with and also from the actors’ perspective, they were not used to working with sound. So the process has been a challenge, but to their credit they are doing a marvellous job.

Intriguing software in 2008?
Quartz Composer. Not exactly new in ‘08 but recent additions in late 2007 have opened up some exciting possibilities in the areas of video processing and interactivity.

Hardware?
The iPhone. Again, not so 2008 but the potent mix of accelerated graphics, multi-touch capabilities and network facilities make for an intriguing development platform with many exciting possibilities. I want one.

What are the joys and limitations of your Light Matrix interface?
Its got lots of blinking lights and it looks cool on stage. The downside is that it is difficult to play and a nightmare to set up. It’s something I still haven’t worked out: do we become a more proficient player or make the instrument easier to play?

What plans do you have for developing it further? 
Making it a permanent installation but I don’t want to give too much away yet. Future versions may include new form factors, force feedback and better software integration.

MIFF 08 film you’re looking forward to?
To be honest I haven’t had the chance to look at the program yet. I’m always a sucker for animation.

MIFF 2006 Review
MIFF 2005 Review
MIFF 2004 Review
MIFF 2003 Review