AVIT05::It has started with philosophy
Just a little short report from AVIT. A lot of well known faces have already arrived and the spirit is high over here in Birminghams Custard Factory. After toby spark put me right into narrative lab after my arrival - which I couldnīt scope with right away I refreshed myself in one of the strangest hotels I have ever been to (totally automatic check in with pin numbers - airplane like toilets and breakfast empty at 10 am) and went straight back to the custard factory.
There was a session Peter Maxavision going on. Peter is the oldest among us and the video mix artist with the longest experience of all. He hates the commercialization of the scene and the fixation on tools and toys of most of the younger vjīs. He misses the content in the screenings and he misses communication.
The session was the philosophical prelude to the week and was very promising to raise awareness to the issue of content, communication and the real world.
This morning I was in the narrative lab session with - o shit I canīt remember his name will put it in when I found it - anyway it put some perspective on philosophical concepts of Deleuze in a narrative moving image context.
So a form of causality/narrative which feeds back on the material events on the floor and takes data from the outside world could produce a narrative of the social unconscious, more like a dream than a TV show.
Recommended books:
Deleuze and Cinema
The Aesthetics of Sensation
Barbara M. Kennedy
On AN(ARCHY) and Schizoanalysis
Roland Perez
He showed us a work where he stitched together multiple CCTV surveillance cameras in portugal to a panorama and explains why this is narrative. The afternoon lab session was a big "narrative in surveillance cameras" try out and it worked quite well with "hidden actors" that made people react.
An inbetween session has been with Charles Kriel - the BBC VJ. He showed off the capabilities of the Pioneer DVJ X1 and I must say that I am a little more impressed with the machine now then after my short interlude with it last weekend at the Maria. The capabilities are enough to make a DJ and a VJ happy. The big grief is its price. You get a powerbook for the same price and I would always opt for a new powerbook.
Tonight I will have my first session - it will be together with Michael about the vjblog in the old Library/Custard Factory around 8 p.m.