Banff Vs. Online Film

Sara Diamond ran an online documentary workshop @ the Adelaide fringe this year, which seemed on the money. Trapeze-boy missed it tho, but I did at least nail an email address for Sara, who also runs the Media and Visual Arts program at the Banff Centre, works with documentary production, and makes software at www.codezebra.net.

((Interview previously posted on the now defunct octapod.org/jeanpoole, in May 2002 ))

What attracted u to the online film-making?
The net allows levels of dialogue between a group of filmmakers, and it’s an ideal form to engage audiences in testimonials and debate around questions in their lives. The interactive qualities of on-line video and media are particularly appealing.

Important issues for writers / filmmakers tackling interactive media?
This is a form that incorporates what we know and demands we take risks to explore what we don’t know. We need to remember the elegance and power of documentary photography and its history of montage. We need to pay attention to what kind of bandwidth our audiences have, what technology knowledge they have, how can we create an ease of experience for them. For exemplary sites, www.360degrees.org really use the form of interactive media and the web to communicate development over time, complexity, and relationship.

Nobody watches films online. Too small / pixelated, is computer not TV. Response?
Well broadband may change that with on demand services. Millions of people download illegally from the net, so they do gather films online. But this isn’t what interests me as much as what’s possible with interactive media and on-line communication. People crave communication, a sense of identification, ease of relationship, fast information, the ability to change the image, to quote and consider. These qualities demand film-making as immediate, brief and powerful experiences, to kick off debate or emotion, this is the ideal use of the on-line environment.

What new possibilities and creative processes are opening up?
Lightweight cameras that are unobtrusive place the documentary maker right into the scene. This also raises ethical questions around surveillance. You can shoot at a high ratio because of high quality small format. Working in short sequences has it’s own logic and can allow you to remix digital objects or film elements. Making work over distances and without being in the same space is greatly enhanced.

Some online documentaries you respect?
www.madmundo.com lets everyday people can ask investigative journalists to help them understand a political issue, solve a crisis or take on an authority.
www.globalarcade.org/home.html is a site about militarism created through gaming.
www.blasttheory.easynet.co.uk/group.html creates situations where players or participants move between the web, mobile technologies and actual physical or v.r. locations. They’ve enacted a kidnap scenario, made a virtual reality work about The Gulf War and developed a large scale urban game played out on actual streets, on PDAs and on-line.
www.bignoisefilms.com have films about the G8 protests, and of course, www.indymedia.org.

How are the net and interactive media transforming documentaries made for traditional media?
The web cam helped to inspire Big Brother and a 24/7 relationship to documentary subjects. The proliferation of digital media has opened some avenues for low budget thoughtful documentary from alternate sources to find a space on television.

Your thoughts on film-making potential of real-time video software?
I like events where there are mixes of multiple live streams, whether in clubs, or perhaps theatres or on-line. I like spectacle on occasion and look forward to the ways that the power of presence and actuality can become a better quality experience on the web.

by Sean Healy, May 12, 2002 0 comments

erikthedog.com

Bearded lady walks up to a rubber man contortionist at a bar and asks where his swordswallowing friend might be. Needs a trim. Tom Waits and Les Claypool from Primus are drinking each other under the table tennis being played by a juggler and comedian. Tonights caravan of gypsies is full of gadgets, and like a metal detector a robotic dog probes the crowd for spare change and belly laughs. Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve never seen rave-lasers through smoke, til you’ve seen them triggered alongside bangin beats by a guy juggling flourescent balls. Joel Slalom is that juggler, and Erik is his robotic dog.

((Interview previously posted on the now defunct octapod.org/jeanpoole, in May 2002 ))

Do android dogs dream of electric sheep or what?
Erik : I have no idea what sort of sicko things other android dogs fantasies about but I certainly don’t have any attraction to electric sheep! How do you feel about sheep? Mind you, a bit of electric pussy… know what I mean?

Your Gadget show in a quick blurb?
Erik : A fusion of obsessive behavours, music, electronica, physical discipline and failure.

How did the juggling midi suit evolve?
Joel : Juggling to music… hang on what if? midi triggers in the balls… no,no… midi triggers on hands… and on fore arms… spend lots of money… annoying Jeff Lungren, a music producer here in Sydney, with endless questions and favours… borrow a chunk of money, spend a chunk… build protoype… sounds shit for a long time… eventually get head around sampling.. get a set of 120 bpm samples sounding wicked… 160 bpm a lot more challenging.. meet laserman called Glen Turner at a gig… hook lasers up to sampler. This took four or five years.

How does it work, and what did it cost to build?
I juggle three balls, the balls bounce off 6 triggers on my arms, 1 in each palm, 1 on the back of each wrist and 1 on each fore arm. A trigger to midi convertor on my back and then midi to Sampler and then midi to laser system. I’ve been juggling for 18 years, I had to re-learn juggling to make this work. What did it cost… Jesus Mary Mother of God! I reckon over all I would have spent around $10,000 getting it right.

Where would you like to take it from here?
Triggering video images has always been the picture that I’d like to achieve eventually, but next is intelligent lights, pyros and then maybe video.

What other music-tech do u use in the show or busking?
I work with Erik the Dog, a cocky 6 channel remote controlled robot dog.

Where did u find Erik the Dog?
I made him out of radio controlled gear and old bits of junk from around the house.

Where does Erik want to go next?
Erik has endless ambitions, after having a taste of television in 2000 with 22 episodes on ABC’s The James O’Loughlin Show he’s keen for more of that. At the end of day Erik just wants to perform, sexually and on stage.

See erikthedog.com for more.

by Sean Healy, May 11, 2002 0 comments

Steev Hise Interview

Spooky thing about sunrise on a Tasmanian mountaintop, isn’t that you’re viewing the same rugged coastline that faced the boat people round 1788. Nor is it the swarms of electronic insects, or the absence of tassie tiger DNA. Tis that the mountains here have voices, that whirl around the sleep deprived with otherwordly tales. To the bone cut the groans, the echoes still here fresh, from 200 brutal years. And tis spooky to wonder where we’ve come in that time. Thanks to email, Steev Hise was somewhere completely different (San Francisco) and thinking about something completely different (burritos).

((Interview previously posted on the now defunct octapod.org/jeanpoole, in May 2002 ))

The low-down on your ‘recycled culture’ site, Detritus.net?
Detritus.net exists to document, preserve, support, and shelter the kind of cultural activity that uses pre-existing cultural artefacts as raw material. We offer help to artists doing that sort of work, who need internet resources. We make available works that’ve been made rare because of copyright litigation. We provide bibliographic references to works of cultural recycling, and a place for people to discuss related issues and current events.

Key inspirations that lead you to sound collage and creative sampling?
I was a DJ and engineer at a student radio station and had access to the production studio and learned how to make tape loops on the reel-to-reel tape machines. Discovering that it sounded interesting to play 2 or 3 records at the same time. Some artists got me interested early on: The Tape-beatles, John Oswald, Negativland. Burroughs, Cage, Christian Marclay.

What’s your attraction to sampling?
Sampling can be a tool for revealing the hidden, secret meanings, or potential meanings, of texts. The power to take an utterance, of any kind, and show it has interpretations or consequences that were not made clear by those who originally uttered it.

As a copyright explorer, how do u see artists getting an income?
By selling their time and skill and knowledge and related atom-based products rather than bit-based products. This can include live performances, teaching, consulting, commissions, apparel and other souvenirs, and more. The open source software movement basically says don’t sell the software, give it away and sell technical support, consulting, custom configurations, and t-shirts.

I think ideally everyone would be an artist but would also do other things to support themselves. Why should artists get special treatment? Why is it that just because you have some great idea and you execute it, once, you get paid for it till you die? A plumber fixes your sink, you pay him, he goes away. You don’t pay him every time you use the sink for 25 years. Why should art be any different?

What do you think about ‘ogg vorbis’, the open source audio compression format trying to replace mp3s?
The tools to encode and decode them seem to be still not quite mature, so I’ve been holding off on switching over, but eventually I’d like to offer all my mp3s as ogg files. Projects like that are essential to the survival of grassroots digital culture. People need to make these things and use them, we can’t just sit back and wait for Sony and Micro$oft to give us our culture in little locked boxes.

Tell us about your Syntagm engine?
The Syntagm Engine is the software that I use as a live instrument when I perform. Basically it’s a search engine that can query a database of samples based on various criteria.

I’m always interested in how performance can be improvisational, because it’s what I believe makes performance truly live. But as a collage artist I’m also focused on doing work that is critical, that has meaning and makes intelligent comments on things. The Syntagm Engine is a way to try to do both. With the search parameters I can sort of choose an intelligent relationship between sounds. I’m doing this in realtime so it’s still a very loose, fluid process, not like pressing ‘start’ on a sequencer.

Had any dreams that’ve used sampling techniques?
I often think how similar all dreams are to collages, filled with samples of your recent experiences. A few years ago I was having dreams about huge mixing boards. They were so big that each fader was larger than I was, and I was running around the board desperately trying to push the faders with my body. I don’t remember the resulting music.

What are the exciting areas of net (culture) 4U at the moment?
Alternative, grassroots information distribution (like the Independent Media Centres), and distributed, collaboratory “open source” development – which I mean in a wider sense, not just software but art as well.

3 pieces of technology you’d like to use or invent?
1. A handheld device that scan product codes and tells you where the product was made and by whom; what’s in it; the chain of ownership? An original idea of capitalism is that both sides in a transaction are well-informed. But we now live in a time when the real facts about the things we consume are largely hidden from us. Consumer activism could really take off with a gadget like this.

2. Reputation Servers – What if your status and power in society was based not on how much money you had, but on stored “ratings” that others have given your previous actions? Bruce Sterling explored this in his novel “Distraction” and I think it’s a great idea, though immensely complicated to actually achieve.

3. Some kind of force field that makes nuclear explosions impossible all over the world.

www.deitritus.net
Park at this recycled culture depot, for a wide range of links, movies, mp3s, references…
and home to a range of recycling artists such as Steev Hise and People Like Us.

www.vorbis.net
Ogg Vorbis hopes to outdo the mp3 format with better compression, sound quality and open source developed code.

www.indymedia.org
Largest collection of open-publishing online. Awesome project, though suffers a lack of diversity. Maybe you need to publish a few articles there, it’s free for anyone to publish on.

by Sean Healy, May 10, 2002 0 comments

Neotropic On Music Vs Film

neotropicKubrick saw it too. That Ultra Freaky Orange you get when zooming in 15 Levels of Magnification at a Small Fish with Spine. While it set off a Strawberry Alarm Clock for Stanley, helping visualize the light travel sequence for 2001, it signalled for Riz Mazlen, that it was time to nail a film to a resume already bulging with 3 CDs on NinjaTune. Her job interview with Jean Poole:

((Interview previously posted on the now defunct octapod.org/jeanpoole, in May 2002 ))

What was the seed that started ‘La Prochaine Fois’? (neo’s latest CD & film)
I’d been reading Kerouac”s ‘On The Road’ and found so many parallels with his accounts of travelling across the vast USA. It was an inspired read and got me on the road to making the album/ film. I’d also been a big fan of films like Baraka and Koyaanisqatsi.

What’s the film about to you?
It just started as another facet to my live shows as I’ve been incorporating my slides/ film for some time. I’ve always been a bit of a bedroom film maker and over the years had quite a lot of interesting footage, so I decided to edit the best moments. It’s very personal to me, the places included in the film have a special place in my heart whether it’s the people I met there or just the great experiences I had visiting.

How did the process of making the film and soundtrack relate?
I made the film a few months prior to really getting down to writing the music. Some of the tracks were sketches and needed finishing. Once I had the film it gave me the inspiration to finish the soundtrack. I wanted it to been seen as one piece rather than separate entities.

How has making the film changed the ways you approach music?
My film making is very much produced in the same way as my music, I guess with film you have to have some solid foundations in place, but I feel a lot of my previous music is very much influenced by film. It’s inspired me perhaps to further pursue a soundtrack career.

What soft/ hard-ware r.u enjoying at the moment?
Just got a new i-book, which I call my handbag, it changes my live set up considerably. Reason is a great programme, and works with cubase vst, which I can recommend now, as it has so many great improvements, with the likes of virtual instruments/samplers etc. I’m also learning to work with lisa, a live sampling/processing software and great for live improv stuff. Still like to mix through my analogue mixer just to keep that warmth.

What director would you like to work with?
David Lynch, an incredible personality and a great director. Twin peaks is classic and I’d love to get inside his head to find out where on earth he gets his ideas from, and I imagine him to be completely off the wall too.

What is the last dream you can vividly remember?
Too scary to print, but it was about me beingin a car and going extremely fast with my dad at the wheel, driving like a maniac and i was shouting at him to slow down, I think we crashed, but then I woke up!

Last music that made you cry?
The theme from sparticus, every time I hear this music I just well up, also another fave film of mine.

What peeps are pressing audiovisual buttons for Riz at the mo?
3 guys I’ve done shows with called Khoutek, who have a conscious approach to film making. They have fresh ideas, and use a lot of political agendas like prague/seattle/ may day protests, but not in a pompous way, more of a down to earth approach. I’ve also been working with a female director Melonie Poole, and have scored a short film of hers which is currently doing the rounds. She writes touching stuff, beautiful to watch.

How has the acceptance of women in electronica changed over the last 5 years?
We’re still very much in the minority, but there are a lot of us out here, it’s just harder for some woman to get the press they deserve. I have many contemporaries more involved in the avant garde scene, but this gets so little coverage in the music press.

What’ve u noticed about Australia & it’s music in your last few visits?
I have a great love affair with Australia – it has a wealth of original talent and I’ve met some great people, Creative Vibes, Earwax, Seb and Luke, Ebony, Maya too many to mention. Like the UK, there’s far too many house/trance techno clubs and not enough alternative events, but even so, it’s always encouraging to see people out there trying to educate and spread the word.

Whose voice would you love to have conjured up in a musical seance?
Nick Drake, just for his sense of melody and his words, such a great poet, I’d expect him to be extremely shy and maybe a little hesitant in doing some tracks with me, but you never know!

& your next film will.b on?
I’m researching a documentary based on my grandmothers life, she unfortunately died this year aged 94. She spent a lot of time in Burma before the war and had to flee after the Japanese, her father was an engineer on the Burma railway, they went back to India where she’s from and she came to Britain soon after. An appropriate film I think in view of our current media attention to asylum seekers here, and how they must feel like my grandmother must have felt when she came to a strange country and had to deal with its rules on immigration. (and a timely film in OZ, 2 eh? – jp)

(( neotropic contributed at one point to a collaborative rooftop film I organised, sky noise polaroids ))

by Sean Healy, May 7, 2002 4 Comments

Reaktor 3 Review (4u)

This week’s technoscape has been customised just 4u. Cute boy across the table is reading a technoscape about amphibious violins, and the cute girl reading 3D on the bus had one about sounds systems for mountain bikes. The column decided most suitable for you right now, based on your current needs / excitements / fetishes / data profile, was a review of the fat new Reaktor synthesis and sampling software.

Why You Will Love Reaktor 3
a) It’s modular structure allows a breathtaking array of sheer possibilities for creation of musical instruments and sound effects.
b) It has a ridiculous amounts of presets and a thriving community of people swapping their Reaktor made ‘instruments’.
c) It’s easy to get under the bonnet and add or subtract to any of these existing Reaktor instruments, or just to customise your own piece of sound manipulation.
d) It can run as a stand alone app, or supports the following formats: VST 2, DXi, ASIO, DirectSound and MME meaning you can run reaktor within other applications easily.
e) It comes in a nice box.

How It Works
In a nutshell Reaktor is modular real-time software for synthesis, sampling and effects processing. This means you can use the ‘instruments’ provided to perform a huge range of tasks, and it does each of there really well – but what makes Reaktor really shine is it’s ability to mix and match any combination of these existing instruments or capacities, or of course also build your own instrument from scratch. Each instrument comes with a neat rebirth styled interface, but different to that application Reaktor also offers a window showing the sound principles underneath. This allows you to chop and change the arrangements, or add elements to the chain o f sound processing events under the interface, then to switch back and enjoy the interface to process you sounds with your customisation built in.

What’s New in Version 3
Reaktor 3 features an optimized audio engine optimized for Pentium II and 4 chips on PCs and for G4 altivec on Mac. It has a smoother interface, with new layout options, easy drag and drop of audio files into modules you’ve built, plus great X/Y controls – by moving the mouse within the XY control area, you can control two parameters at once, while an oscilloscope, waveform, or pattern is displayed underneath. You can also draw your own envelopes, sequences and waveforms with the Audio/Event array. New modules including the granular synthesis module, which allows extreme sample manipulation, and one called ‘event storage’, which enhances sequencing support and some modules that support graphical editing of waveforms and shapes. There’s also several new filter types and a new communication protocol that is based on OSC, which allows high-speed data transmission between separate computers.

Overall
If you’re at all interested in digital manipulation of sound, or in developing a customised sound or approach, Reaktor has a powerful range of tools to play with, but more importantly, offers a powerful range of tools to build your own tools with. Well wicked~!

What you Need
Mac – 128Mbram, and ideally a G4, min 300mhz, but still ran well on my g3/333, although it’s capacity to develop instrumetns as complicated as you like means that eventually you run into limitations of your machine on either platform.
PC – Net reviews recommend at least a pIII, preferably p4 with quite strong performance of the app as a VST plug in within other apps such as Cubase or Fruity Loops.
Money: $US 499.
Website: http://www.native-instruments.com

by Sean Healy, May 5, 2002 0 comments