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Talk Nice
Mimetic Starfish
Shoot Shoot Shoot
House
Trash

Experimenta Prototype

5 – 21 September 2002

BlackBox, Victorian Arts Centre, 100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne

Opening Night: 5 September, 7.30pm until late. All welcome
Opening Hours: Mon-Fri: 12 to 7pm, Sat-Sun: 10am-6pm

part of the Interact 2002 Asia Pacific Multimedia Festival

Experimenta’s major 2002 exhibition features new media installations and digital projects that explore the possibilities of invention.

Imagine if a comic book changed each time your read it, or if your voice could actually shatter glass. With new work from Australian and international artists, Prototype reimagines the way we live, think, and interact with our world.

Come to the BlackBox on Saturdays to hear participating artists discussing their work.

Sat 7 September and 14 September, 1 – 3pm

Featuring new media installations and digital projects by Australian and international artists:

Op Shop

Op Shop, Stephen Barrass, Australia, 1999-2002

Cluttered from floor to ceiling with bric-a-brac, in this 3D virtual environment you can shatter objects by singing.

Mimetic Starfish

Mimetic Starfish, Richard Brown, UK, 2000

A digital artificial life projection that looks and behaves like a real starfish, reacting to your stroke by quivering, contracting and changing colour.
See footage of this extraordinary work at www.mimetics.com

Untitled Drawing in Space

Untitled Drawing in Space, Jane Crappsley, Australia, 2001-2002

The three-dimensional sculptural installation is visible for a passing moment as white laser passes through a terrain of silicone fibres.

Talk Nice

Talk Nice , Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Canada, 1999-2000

Sweet talk these two virtual teenage girls into giving you an invite to their party.

Tonal Field Navigator

Tonal Field Navigator, Chris Henschke, Australia, 2002

An experimental scientific device that allows you to navigate a three-dimensional imagined landscape through infra-red sensors and a holographic interface.

Pet Sounds

Pet Sounds, Isobel Knowles and Haima Marriott, Australia, 2002

By squeezing these electronically altered fluffy toys mutated synthetic animal sounds emerge from their intricate circuitry.

Chicken in a Box

Chicken in a Box, Chris Mether, Australia, 2002

This moulded toy chicken and its perspex chamber are alternatively filled and emptied of, animating the vacuous animal with

Burnout 2001 – Part II The Game

Burnout 2001 – Part II The Game

Burnout 2001 – Part II The Game, Ben Morieson, Australia, 2002

Simultaneously exhibited at Timezone and BlackBox, this arcade-style game burns rubber in the name of art. Create drawings on the road with your digital tyres and then print out the results.

Play a prototype for the game at www.burnout2001.com/game.htm

Sound Mapping

Sound Mapping, Iain Mott, Marc Raszewski and Jim Sosnin, Australia, 2000

Take a stroll through the street wheeling a mobile suitcase to create sound compositions relative to the immediate surroundings.
Find out more about Sound Mapping at www.reverberant.com

Flesh Antenna

Flesh Antenna, Bruce Mowson, Australia, 2002

An installation of thirty-six hanging plastic radios each tuned to a different frequency, like the noisy flesh-pink offspring of a big black ghetto blaster.

Testimony: A Story Machine

Testimony: A Story Machine, Simon Norton, Australia, 2001

In this interactive comic strip, you determine the story as you click, causing images to be replaced, characters to animate and dialogue to change endlessly.

Check it out at www.myballoonhead.com

Over Written

Over Written, Under Written, Martin Walch, Australia, 2002

This animated mapping of the landscape of Mt Lyell on Tasmania’s West Coast is viewed through red/blue stereoscopic glasses as a three dimensional space.

Rearming the Spineless Opuntia

Rearming the Spineless Opuntia, Amy Youngs, US,

A sculptural machine designed to protect the human-engineered spineless cactus, responding to your threatening presence with ultra-sonic sensors that close its steely suit of armour.

Take your pick of new video and animation works from the DVD jukebox:

You are Here, Bull.Miletic, US, 2001
In the spectacular landscape of Death Valley’s ‘Racetrack’, heavy rocks inexplicably move as a radio-controlled robotic moon-buggy surveys the dry and desolate lake bed.

S-Crash, Lindsay Cox and Victor Holder, Australia, 2001
Let the battles commence in this split-screen comic scenario between an ambitious DJ and his irritable neighbour.

9 to 5 City Shunt, Michael Eyre, Australia, 2002
Exaggerating the drudgery of the urban environment, this animation is at the same time familiar and strange.

Beauty Kit, Pleix, France, 2002
A series of four seductive and shocking advertisements predict a terrifying future where plastic surgery kits for young girls are the norm.
Check it out at www.pleix.net

Plaid: Itsu, Pleix, France, 2002
A crazy corporate scenario that is a parable about consumer society and its out-of-control obsessions with sex and the bottom line.
Check it out at www.pleix.net

See Saw, David MacDowell, Australia, 2002
An animated allusion to the sense of loss of one’s bearings in the world, or loss of the ability to interpret those bearings.

Purchase Prototype Experimenta Prototype Exhibition Catalogue
  • 36 pages (12 pages full colour) ISBN 0 9581 1597
  • $10 plus postage and handling
  • Limited stock remains
To purchase a copy, email experimenta@experimenta.org

New Visions Forum

Thursday 12 September 2002

1pm – 5.30pm, to be followed by an informal drinks function
Venue: Federation Hall, Victorian College of the Arts, Grant St, Southbank
Free

Bookings are essential – email experimenta@experimenta.org

Collaborations between artists and industry, in sometimes the most unlikely of contexts, have uncovered new possibilities that neither could have dreamed up on their own. In a half-day theatre style presentation, the New Visions Forum considers collaborations in fields as diverse as computer games development, mining, robotics, optics and virtual reality to conceive models for future partnerships.

New Visions Forum imagines a future where artists are acknowledged as an essential ingredient for good business. The models will give both artists and industry a tool-kit for setting-up successful and mutually beneficial collaborations, and by launching the exciting New Visions Commissions, Experimenta will set the wheels in motion for new production models. The forum will be followed by a drinks function that will facilitate an informal networking opportunity for participants and business representatives.

Speakers include:
Terry Cutler, ICT and Innovation Consultant
Stephen Barrass Ph.D, Artist and Senior Researcher, CSIRO
Richard Brown, Artist and collaborator with Intel Corporation
Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, Symbiotica, Artists/Biologists
Jonathan Duckworth and Lawrence Harvey, Metraform, Virtual Reality
Artists and Researchers
Mike Holland, Creative Director, Act 3 Animation House
Hugo Leschen, National Cultural Liaison Manager, Australian Business
Arts Foundation
Jock McQueenie, Consultant/Broker, Arts, Industry and Community
Concepts
Nicholas Tomnay, Film Director and collaborator with Digital Pictures
Martin Walch, Artist-in-Residence, Copper Mines of Australia

Prototype and New Visions are a part of the Interact 2002 Asia Pacific Multimedia Festival, being held from 02 to– 15 September 2002. With the theme, "Technology Across Boundaries", the Festival delivers two weeks of world-class, business events, government events, education programs and new technology art events. Find out more about the Interact 2002 Festival at www.interact2002.com.au

Experimenta and Melbourne International Film Festival present

Shoot Shoot Shoot

British Avant-Garde Film 1966-1976
July 24 – July 28,
gammaSPACE, Leve1 1, 141 Flinders Lane, Melbourne and Greater Union, 131 Russell St, Melbourne.

Shoot Shoot Shoot is a retrospective of the ground-breaking achievements in ‘underground’ film pioneered by the London Film-Makers’ Cooperative.

Gallery Program
Two programs of extraordinary multi-screen films and expanded cinema events are the predessors to contemporary video installation.

Double Screen Films
Widening the visual field increased the opportunity for both spectacle and contemplation. With two 16mm projectors side-by-side, time could be frozen or fractured in a more complex way by playing one image against another and creating a magical space between them. Each screening became a unique event, accentuating the temporality of the cinematic experience.

  • William Raban & Chris Welsby, River Yar, 1971-72, colour, sound, 35m
  • Sally Potter, Play, 1971, b/w & colour, silent, 7m
  • David Parsons, Mechanical Ballet, 1975, b/w, silent, 10m
  • Chris Welsby, Wind Vane, 1972, colour, sound, 8m
  • David Crosswaite, Choke, 1971, b/w & colour, sound, 5m
  • Malcolm Le Grice, Castle Two, 1968, b/w, sound, 32m.

Expanded Cinema
British filmmakers led a drive beyond the screen and the theatre, and their innovations in expanded cinema inevitably took the work into galleries. After questioning the role of the spectator, they began to examine the light beam, its volume and presence in the room.

  • Malcolm Le Grice, Castle One, 1966, b/w, sound, 20m
  • William Raban, Take Measure, 1973, colour, silent
  • William Raban, Diagonal, 1973, colour, sound, 6m
  • Gill Eatherley, Hand Grenade, 1971, colour, sound, 8m
  • Lis Rhodes, Light Music, 1975-77, b/w, sound, 20m
  • Anthony McCall, Line Describing A Cone, 1973, b/w, silent, 30m.
David Larcher, Mare’s Tale
An extended personal odyssey which, through an accumulation of visual information, builds into a treatise on the experience of seeing. Its loose, indefinable structure explores new possibilities for perception and narrative.
  • David Larcher, Mare's Tail, 1969, colour, sound, 143m

Screenings

From underground cult classics to unknown rare gems, these five film programs have just screened at Tate Modern, London, and form a major retrospective of British experimental film from the sixties and seventies.

London Underground
As equipment became available for little cost, avant-garde film flourished in mid-60s counter-culture. Early screenings at Better Books and the Arts Lab provided a vital focus for a new movement that infused Swinging London with a new subversive edge.

  • Anthony Balch, Towers Open Fire, 1963, b/w, sound, 16m
  • Jonathan Langran, Gloucester Road Groove, 1968, b/w, silent, 2m
  • Jeff Keen, Marvo Movie, 1967, colour, sound, 5m
  • John Latham, Speak, 1962, colour, sound, 11m
  • Stephen Dwoskin, Dirty, 1965-67, b/w, sound, 10m
  • Stuart Pound, Clocktime Trailer, 1972, colour, sound, 7m
  • Simon Hartog, Soul In A White Room, 1968, colour, sound, 3.5m
  • Peter Gidal, Hall, 1968-69, b/w, sound, 10m
  • Malcolm Le Grice, Reign Of The Vampire, 1970, b/w, sound, 11m

Structural/Materialist
The enquiry into the material of film as film itself was an essential characteristic of the Co-op's output. These non- and anti- narrative concerns were fundamentally argued by the group's principal practising theorists Malcolm Le Grice and Peter Gidal.

  • Roger Hammond, Window Box, 1971, b/w, silent, 3m (18fps)
  • Mike Leggett, Shepherd's Bush, 1971, b/w, sound, 15m
  • David Crosswaite, Film No. 1, 1971, colour, sound, 10m
  • Mike Dunford, Tautology, 1973, b/w, silent, 5m
  • Peter Gidal, Key, 1968, colour, sound, 10m
  • John Du Cane, Zoom Lapse, 1975, colour, silent, 15m
  • Malcolm Le Grice, Little Dog For Roger, 1967, b/w, sound, 13m
  • Gill Eatherley, Deck, 1971, colour, sound, 13m.

Intervention and Processing
The workshop was an integral part of the LFMC and provided almost unlimited access to hands-on printing and processing. Within this supportive environment, artists were free to experiment with technique and engage directly with the filmstrips in an artisan manner.

  • Annabel Nicolson, Slides, 1970, colour, silent, 12m (18fps)
  • Fred Drummond, Shower Proof, 1968, b/w, silent, 10m (18fps)
  • Guy Sherwin, At The Academy, 1974, b/w, sound, 5m
  • David Crosswaite, The Man With The Movie Camera, 1973, b/w, silent, 8m
  • Mike Dunford, Silver Surfer, 1972, b/w, sound, 15m
  • Jenny Okun, Still Life, 1976, colour, silent, 6m
  • Lis Rhodes, Dresden Dynamo, 1971, colour, sound, 5m
  • Chris Garratt, Versailles I & II, 1976, b/w, sound, 11m
  • Roger Hewins, Windowframe, 1976, colour, sound, 6m.

Diversifications
From personal montage through to exploration of the cinematic process, the work was sensuous and playful. As a creative group, the Coop covered vital aesthetic ground and resisted categorisation.

  • Annabel Nicolson, Shapes, 1970, colour, silent, 7m (18fps)
  • Marilyn Halford, Footsteps, 1974, b/w, sound, 6m
  • Malcolm Le Grice, Talla, 1968, b/w, silent, 20m,
  • Jeff Keen, White Lite, 1968, b/w, silent, 2.5m
  • Anne Rees-Mogg, Muybridge Film, 1975, b/w, silent, 5m
  • Stephen Dwoskin, Moment, 1968, colour, sound, 12m
  • Chris Welsby, Windmill II, 1973, colour, sound, 10m
  • John Smith, The Girl Chewing Gum, 1976, b/w, sound, 12m
  • Ian Kerr, Persisting , 1975, colour, sound, 10m

Location: Duration
Film is a unique tool for the investigation of time and space. The subjective time of the photographed image may be measured against the objective time of projection through the use of time-lapse, editing and duration.

  • John Smith, Leading Light, 1975, colour, sound, 11m
  • Peter Gidal, Focus, 1971, b/w, sound, 7m
  • Ian Breakwell & Mike Leggett, Sheet, 1970, b/w, sound, 21m
  • Malcolm Le Grice, Whitchurch Down (Duration), 1972, colour, sound, 8m
  • Chris Welsby, Forest Bay II, 1973, colour, silent, 5m
  • William Raban, Broadwalk, 1972, colour, sound, 12m
  • David Hall, Phased Time 2, 1974, colour, sound, 15m

Forum

Mark Webber, curator of Shoot Shoot Shoot and guitarist from pop group Pulp, was joined by a panel to re-examine the emergence of the underground movement, its international significance, and the relations between avant-garde film and mainstream cinema.

Experimenta and St Kilda Film Festival present

Fusion

Wednesday 29th May - Friday 31st May 2002
The Palace, Lower Esplanade, St Kilda
Programs at 7.00pm and 9.15pm each evening

Fusion reveals the future of experimental film and interactive media with a range of innovative performances and artists' presentations.

As part of the St Kilda Film Festival, Fusion features two new media performance programs showcasing extraordinary work from Australian and international artists, as well as two programs of stimulating artists' presentations in which digital artists will present their groundbreaking work on the big screen.

Performance Programs

Time Lapsed, Dylan Volkhardt and Tony Yap
Time Lapsed is a new media performance work that experiments with narrative structures. Rooted in the Japanese performance style of dance known as Butoh, it incorporates DVD, time lapse photography and surround sound technologies to create a unique three dimensional cinematic performance space. Sound: James Cecil. Music: Nic Kraft.

House, Cazerine Barry
House is a digital media performance presentation musing on elastic truths. The electric magnetism of the suburbs collide in discontinuous dimension. Housing is a primary need. It is used thematically here as a metaphor for protection from the inconsistency of life, existing outside a known and defined space. The performance evolves through many sequences but is essentially driven by one characters quest for a solo home.

Ubique, Massimo Magrini (Italy)
Pioneering Italian digital artist, Massimo Magrini uses self-built sound and video graphic devices to explore the possibility of extending digital technologies to the range of human senses beyond the boundaries of mind and body. Where are you when you are online? Do you have the perception of a growing super-organism as the result of networked minds? In Ubique, Massimo Magrini will create a unique performance where this new distributed "being" is explored using devices to generate 3D spatial shapes, control sound-walls and multi-located noises recorded in Europe and Australia.

D.A.V.E. (digital amplified video engine) by Chris Haring and Klaus Obermaier (Austria)
D.A.V.E explores the interaction of the human body when it meets technology and virtual reality, dealing with the potential future removal of limitations on the body. This is personified by a performer whose body is simultaneously the stage and the mediator of a utopia, and proclaims that, thanks to futuristic technologies and implantation, mankind will be in a position to eliminate the restrictions of the natural body. Complex computer processing and the development of special movement sequences for the dancer make it possible to exactly position projections on to the moving body. Video projection, physical presence and acoustic environment thus blend into a symbiosis and create their own new reality. D.A.V.E has played more than thirty performances in eight countries.

New Media Artists Presentations: Interactive Funny Bone

Unearthed - UFO's over Bendigo, Michael Buckley
This interactive CD-Rom mines the contemporary obsession with the mysteries of outer space, asking Bendigo residents to talk about their own close encounters of the third kind.

Testimony: A Story Machine, Simon Norton
An interactive comic strip designed to be played with. The user can animate and change the position of characters, causing the narrative to change and even to advance to a new setting.

Haiku dada - Having fun with Japanese culture!, Felix Hude
This early interactive investigates the cultural contradictions of Japan. It features Ichi, the Sumo wrestler, and his girlfriend, the highly talented and beautiful Miss Kokono.

New Media Artists Presentations: New Works on Show

of day, of night, Megan Heyward
of day, of night is an experimental new media work that is part game, part narrative, part memory and dream. It explores the intersections of narrative, interactivity and the unexpected collisions of everyday life into dream experience.

Shocked, Danielle Karalus
In this work you are taken on a psychological journey with new mother Jessica, and asked to determine her future. The increasing pace and often chaotic nature of the interface and soundscape matches her chaotic world.

Constructing Cyburbia, Emma Byrnes
Constructing Cyburbia draws inspiration from cyburbia - online suburbia - and tracks the sociological phenomenon of the personal homepage. Presented as a documentary-style interactive and using interviews with Australian homepage owners and a range of home-experts it guides us through the cyburban sprawl, ensuring that we are "keeping up with the joneses" in the electronic medium.

Experimenta presents

trashTrash Website Launch
Thursday 16th May 2002
Public Office, Top Floor, 100 Adderley Street, West Melbourne
6.00 PM

Trash is an interactive web project featuring text, visual and sound works by Australian and international artists exploring themes of waste and cultural residue.

What is considered trash? What is considered worthy of retention and remembering? Trash examines the excesses of contemporary culture in an engaging and meaningful way to reveal that you can learn a lot about a society from the products and ideas it discards.

www.experimenta.org/trash