On Sunday afternoon the high-speed Internet connection at home suddenly stopped. I checked and it just wasn't working. So I called the phone company to see if they could fix it. We ran through the usual troubleshooting stuff and then they said that they'd have to have someone come over to fix it. But the earliest appointment was December 23rd! A day without access at home went by. You don't realize how dependent you become on something until it's gone... no Internet radio, movie trailers, news and information...
Then I think... hey, maybe I should switch ISPs... so I research that a bit and then I think, maybe I should try to use the modem in a different plug. So I unplug both ends and then notice that the phone cord is chewed through. Then I realized that the rabbit was out and hid behind the desk for a while... a bit later the Internet wasn't working. I quickly put two and two together and realized what had happened... so I don't think that the rabbit should be out in the house very much anymore.
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I love it when people use technology for creative things that are outside of the uses that were originally intended. I was reading BoingBoing and saw a mention of the project Amsterdam Real Time by the Waag Society. It's a cool project where volunteers carry around GPS devices that trace their movements around the city. The traces look neat. The Waag Society has also developed a Multimedia Cross Media Synthesizer programming language called Keystroke that I have to investigate sometime.
Other people are doing similar things. The GPS Drawing Project lets people draw on the surface of the earth with the tracing of their movements.
If you use any electronic devices such as bank cards or phone cards you leave your own electronic traces where you go. I'm fascinated with this stuff.
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Today is World AIDS Day. I'm participating in the "Link and Think" project that encourages 'bloggers to link to resources and stories related to the fight against HIV/AIDS. AIDS has been around for a while now and while much more is known about HIV/AIDS, there is still a lot of work to do. I'm afraid that many younger people don't realize how important an issue it is unless they know someone who is HIV positive or who has died. The most unreported story related to HIV/AIDS is the growing pandemic and the unimaginable toll that it is taking on Africa. While I had heard mentions of the problem, it wasn't until I saw an interview and heard a speech by Steven Lewis, the UN Envoy on AIDS in Africa about the crisis. It's a massive problem that is destroying a generation of Africans with death rates so high that the educational system is losing teachers at a rate so high that they cannot be replaced. Find out more about World Aids Day 2002 at the UNAIDS site. The Link and Think project has a collection of links to those who are participating in the project.
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Steven Soderberg has created an amazing version of Stanislaw Lem's novel "Solaris" (also a 1972 Russian film by Andrei Tarkovsky)that will probably be discussed for a long time. Soderberg wrote the script, directed, served as cinematographer(pseudonymously) and (possibly via a pseudonym) as editor. The new "Solaris" is gorgeous and technically superb and is a bold statement that frustrated members of the audience who were there when I saw it last night. It's being marketed as a love story, which is part of it, but what it really does is return to the big-budget art-house science fiction film that uses sf to explore philosophical and emotional issues. It combines Tarkovskian elements with a dollop of Kubrick and hints of "Wings of Desire" and a stylized soundtrack, look and editing style that I slid into like a warm bath. While I'm thinking of Wim Wenders, it's in the same territory as "Until The End of The World" which also used the future as a way to explore the relationships between characters. One last cinematic link would be to Truffaut's "Fahrenheit 451" which put the emphasis on the ideas and not the science.
Soderberg's "The Limey" is one of my favourite films with brooding pacing and a distinctive style of editing that fragments the story and structures it emotionally as opposed to chronologically. It slowly works its way into your consciousness and keeps bumping around there, making you look at the world in a different way. I definitely want to see it again in a theatre.
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Yet another film that I saw this weekend was Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding" which is the somewhat loose, but gorgeous tale of a wedding in India with all of the excitement and stress of a wedding. A great cast and complex plot all weaves together well and it became surprisingly moving for me. In Bermuda it played in the theatre along with "When Voices Rise..." but I didn't catch it when it was playing then. Another thing I realized in Bermuda when I was looking at the poster for the film was that the Cinematographer was Declan Quinn, who won acclaim for "Leaving Los Vegas" but I actually met him in New Brunswick when I was doing Video Assist on an Eaton's ad. He was a very nice guy who is a great DP as well. It was cool since the next show he was working on was "Leaving Los Vegas" which he was very excited about. The look of "Monsoon Wedding" was amazing as well.
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In keeping with my catching up theme I finally saw "Run Lola Run" this weekend and I really enjoyed it. Amazing energy, technically superb with a wonderful premise that makes you think about fate and trying to change it. Writer / Director / Musician Tom Tykwer is someone to watch...and now I want to see his latest film which is "Heaven" which has a script cowritten by Krzysztof Kieslowski
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It has been too long since I've seen any classic films so I went and rented Truffaut's "The Bride Wore Black". I loved it. Come to think of it, I've loved every Truffaut film that I've seen so it wasn't really that much of a surprise that I loved it. Released in 1967, it's the tale of a woman (Jean Moreau) whose husband is shot as they are leaving the church after being married. She vows to hunt down the 5 men responsible. It's lots of fun with plenty of nods to Hollywood film noir as well as Hitchcock.
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I'm very happy to report that my favourite Internet radio station, SomaFM is back on the air. Their "Secret Agent" channel was my constant companion as I scanned hundreds of photos and documents in the early stages of the editing of "When Voices Rise..." Yay! The Web now sounds a little bit better.
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Usually a safe thing to discuss amongst strangers is the weather...for some reason I've had a bit too much weather lately. We've had heavy rain in Nova Scotia for the past couple of days and I just found out that our basement is now flooded! A week ago we were without power for a day due to a snow storm, now it's rain! Who says that the jury is out on climate change...
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I just arrived home from the second annual Tidal Wave Film Festival in Fredericton. I had a great time last year and I had a great time this year as well. The festival has grown quite fast in a year, but the big highlight was seeing the short NB films where all the filmmakers who were present lined up on the stage. It was great to see a new generation of filmmakers who are part of the NB Filmmakers Coop. Some of the other highlights were seeing Deborah Day's film "Expecting" starring Valerie Buhagiar. "Expecting" tells the story of an expectant woman (with Valerie Buhagiar actually near the end of her own pregnancy) who goes through labour surrounded by her friends. The film was improvised by the great cast which also featured Angela Gei, Derwin Jordan, Debra McGrath, Tom Melissis, Colin Mochrie, Karl Pruner, and Barbara Radecki. One of the cool things was being able to talk with Bruce McDonald who was around for a screening of Hard Core Logo last night. He's working on the DVD release which I'm looking forward to picking up when it comes out soon. It was neat to see "Hard Core Logo" in the theatre where I was going to kick off a season of the UNB Film Society years ago with McDonald's "Roadkill" years ago. But it didn't end up screening in that room, but that's a whole other story.
The whole thing wrapped up with a great party in the former provincial jail. I was able to do a lot of catching up with friends and saw some great films too...I'm just really tired now.
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I'm at my Mom and Dad's house now... I drove up this afternoon to start attending the Tidal Wave Film Festival in Fredericton. Yesterday was a very long day. On Wednesday night it snowed and snowed... the heavy snow and the leaves that were remaining on the trees resulted in lots of downed power lines and power outages. The power was out all day Thursday... 26 hours without power! That also meant no Internet. Yikes. No email, no surfing the Web. I don't fill my days with surfing and email, but it's completely different when you don't have a choice!
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The VHS and DVD versions of "When Voices Rise..." were officially launched last Saturday night at the B.I.U. in Hamilton, Bermuda with Errol present. I wasn't present, but was given an account by Mr. Williams himself. He said that it was a wonderful event that was well attended by a range of wonderful people. I wish that I could have been there. So if you want to see the film and won't be at the Tidal Wave Film Festival in Fredericton, NB on November 10, you can order the film for yourself. It was a lot of fun to work on the film and it was great to be able to add some extra scenes for the DVD along with some of the amazing photography of the late Hilton G. Hill, MBE.
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Sometimes you see something that triggers a memory of a place that you haven't visited in a while. I saw a link and then revisted the {fray} which collects great stories that are personal. It's a great place to find personal writing in the setting of great (and appropriate) Web design. I think that it's the first place that I ever posted something on a Web site. I'd started my own site, but it was the first time that I contributed a personal story to someone else's site. It takes a lot to make me do that I've realized. Now the {fray} is over half a decade old and has extended into the real world with cafes and meetings and also with stuff to buy. It was started by Derek M. Powazek whose story about working at Wired in the good old days prompted me to write about a new job that I was excited about.
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I was in Yarmouth this morning and last night I enjoyed an amazing meal prepared by the students in the Hospitality program. I actually had two days of wonderful meals. With a base of great food I had an amazing, energizing, and fulfilling couple of days of workshops, friendship and discussions with other NSCC Faculty. We were at the Burridge Campus which is an amazing facility filled with great people. One of the benefits of working at NSCC is the training provided by Organizational Learning. One of the things we did yesterday was take a bus tour around Yarmouth with a stop at the Cape Forchu lighthouse which is pictured here. I'm tired, but happy today.
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Sometimes I'm amazed at how the world seems so small. I'm in Yarmouth now, which is the left side of the map of Nova Scotia. I drove 300 kms West from Halifax earlier today to come here for a followup session to the NSCC Faculty Orientation that I attended in Truro in the summer. It was a great drive down along the southern shore of NS and I'm also looking forward to the drive home up and along the top side of the province. By Monday I'll have gone from Wolfville this morning all around the province and back to Halifax...kind of neat when I look at the map. But a 700 km round trip isn't the small world part. I checked in to the motel and then wandered over to the mall to get some air and a snack. A minute into the mall I see one of my former students from Fredericton, Bill McBride. I recognize him, but I suddenly get confused as he's supposed to be in Fredericton and I'm... where am I now? It turns out that he's just in Yarmouth for the day, but what are the odds of seeing someone in a place where I've never been before? Pretty good, I guess and a very pleasant surprise. To top it off I went online and I received an email from a neat person I met at the Atlantic Film Festival who I was thinking had maybe lost my address. A small and wonderful world indeed!
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One of the great things about OS X (aside from all of the Unix goodness underneath it and the gorgeous surface) is the cool software that is being produced for it. A great little application is NetNewsWire Lite. It is a freeware RSS reader from Brent Simmons of Ranchero Software and it's one of the tools that I've added to my dock. One of the neat things about it is that it works in a similar way to Mail.app in that new articles show up with a little red square with the number of updated articles. So now instead of going back to sites to see when things are updated I just have to look in the dock. The upcoming Pro version will feature some editing capabilities... that could be cool.
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Every now and then something happens that you don't know about...well I guess that more often than not things would happen that everybody wouldn't know about...anyway...Samuel Beckett was an amazing playwright and while surfing around channels last month I saw a visually stunning adaptation of "Act Without Words II" that featured a mime in a sack within a film frame. I was transfixed and then realized that I was watching "Beckett on Film" and I later found out that the project adapted all of Beckett's plays to the screen with strict adherence to Beckett's scripts. The other highlight was "What Where", directed by Damien O'Donnell which made me want to see the rest of the series. It is available on DVD, but it's a bit pricey... but someday it will be mine. Even more interesting was to find out that there were a series of directors chosen to direct the pieces with names such as David Mamet, Atom Egoyan, Patricia Rozema, Neil Jordan, and Anthony Minghella.
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There's a new documentary about Jerry Seinfeld that will (hopefully) be appearing in theatres soon. Documentaries tend not to get wide theatrical release, but Mr. Seinfeld is quite popular and I still watch the show just about every day. The trailer for "Comedian" is a brilliant parody of the whole trailer thing. It's similar to a bit that Janeane Garofalo did in her standup HBO special about movie trailers, but with the "Comedian" trailer it seems like they actually got one of the guys who really does the voice-overs for the trailers.
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I'm reading a book now that I absolutely love. "The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film" is a series of conversations between author Michael Ondaatje and editor Walter Murch. It's an amazing glimpse into the creative processes of both men and jam-packed with insights into editing. Every single time I open the book I learn something new. Both of them love telling stories and sharing them. Ondaatje is probably my favourite author with an ability to craft sentences and paragraphs that I just read over and over again. Murch is the editor who crafted the Godfather films, created the soundscapes in "Apocalypse Now" (and edited "Apocalypse Now Redux") and "The Conversation" as well as many others with Francis Ford Coppola. One of my favourite overlooked films is "Romeo is Bleeding" and I just found out that he cut that as well! I could go on and on about the book, but it would be faster for you to just get it and read it.
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The Museum of Modern Art in New York is an amazing place. While working on Echoes in the Rink: The Willie O'Ree Story we shot in New York and I was able to spend an hour or so quickly going through the MOMA. It was overwhelming and not enough time to absorb the massive quantity of material there. One thing that was particularly fascinating was a collection of Russian Revolution photographic prints. I've always loved that period in terms of writing and art and it was neat to see prints. I just recently found the Flash-based supporting Web site for an exhibition that took place from March to May of this year. "The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910 - 1934" collects together books from that period. But how do you display physical artifacts such as books on a Web site using Flash? They have pages for view, but the neatest thing is the "Reading Room" where you can go through a series of images of a person wearing white gloves turning the pages of the books. It shows off the construction of the books. A great use of Flash and it gives me ideas for how to organize a large quantity of material efficiently.
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I finally was able to see the film "CQ" by purchasing the DVD. I've been anticipating it for a while as the trailer looked great. There is always the danger that a film won't live up to the trailer, but this time it surpassed my expectations. I loved the film. Roman Coppola's feature debut tells the story of an American film editor (which is close to my heart) in Paris in 1969 who is working on a French-Italian Sci-Fi film called "Codename: Dragonfly" while making his own personal documentary. It's a gorgeous film to look at with the Sci-Fi film in glorious colour and the personal documentary in beautiful black and white. The film-about-a-film genre can be extremely narcissistic, but it can also result in some great work such as Truffaut's "La Nuit Américane" ("Day for Night") or "CQ." Both films have a deep love for filmmaking and it shows on the screen.
The film stars Jeremy Davies who I first saw in David O. Russell's "Spanking the Monkey," a twisted little film that I saw back in 1994, where Davies stole the show as a frustrated college student forced to take care of his mother during the summer. Angela Lindvall is Dragonfly and Valentine (the actress who plays Dragonfly) and she's great in both roles. The film expertly shows the difference between an actor and character as it mixes film and reality together. Élodie Bouchez plays the editor's French girlfriend and she seems to be the only person who give some perspective in the whole thing when comments on his personal documentary by saying, "What if it's boring?"
The DVD is a real treat with 9 personal filmmaking documentaries. These aren't your usually EPK puff pieces thrown together, but a series of films by filmmakers about the film itself all with different points of view and different techniques. Other neat features are the two different versions of "Codename: Dragonfly" as the trailer for the film within a film. The trailer (supposedly from 1969) is a clever homage to the trailer for "Dr. Strangelove" which I recently saw for the first time in the special features on the "Dr. Strangelove" DVD.
"CQ" is one of those films that reminds me why I love films and filmmaking.
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The most exciting part of the Atlantic Film Festival a couple of weeks ago was the North American premiere of "When Voices Rise..." on Friday, October 20th. Errol was around for the premiere (and the Festival) and it was great to be able to spend time with him. There was a good turnout for the film during a very competitive evening. Errol did his usual fine job at the intro and Q&A after the screening. Even though I know the film fairly well from editing it, it's always great to go to a screening and see the reactions of a new audience. This was the first time that I was able to watch the film with an audience outside of Bermuda, so it was interesting to see what people reacted to in a different context. The highlight of this screening was the revelation during the Q&A that two of the audience members were related to Dr. E.F. Gordon, who is mentioned in the film. His daughter and granddaughter came out for the film and chatted a bit afterwards. Several of the audience members stayed around to discuss the film which was great. All in all a great night!
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One of the challenges of a film festival is trying to pick out what film to see when there are two films playing at the same time. On the Thursday of the Atlantic Film Festival I went to three industry events that took up the whole day. Then I really wanted to see a film and the choice I had to make was between David Cronenberg's "Spider" or Shunji Iwai's "All About Lily Chou-Chou" ("Riri Shushu no subete"). I figure that I will be able to see "Spider" either in the theatre or on DVD so I went for the Japanese film. A gorgeous, ambitious film that combines music, chat, and teen angst together in a series of interlocking lives and stories built around students in Japan. The film is visually stunning with the best approximation of the intimate (but obliquely anonymous) connection that chatting via text provides. The official Web site provides a good approximation of the technique that is used with the text chat. While the film is long (2 1/2 hours) it develops a distinctive rhythm that is at times hypnotic. Images and stories from the film are haunting...and I'm still thinking about parts of the film over a week later. From the site I found out more and it makes the film even more fascinating. It grew out of another (uncompleted) film about a Hong Kong pop singer which then evolved into an online novel built with people over the Web via a BBS. A serialized electronic novel changed as Iwai posted under various names to the BBS and interacted with and incorporated into the novel which was finally serialized in a magazine over three months. Then Iwai wrote the screenplay and decided to shoot the film with a 24p (progressive scan) video camera. I would have swore that the film was originated on film stock, but it is an example of the gorgeous images that are possible now with high-end video. But in a lot of ways the technology doesn't matter. It's an amazing film that I'm very glad that I've seen.
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The Atlantic Film Festival is made up of three major areas: the films, parties and the Industry Series which features a great array or panels and workshops. A great panel was the one hosted by writer, curator, and film critic Cameron Bailey, "The Critics Take on Bowling for Columbine." The panel was comprised of Liam Lacey of the Globe and Mail, Eugene Hernandez of Indiewire and Harry Knowles of Ain't it Cool News. So they know what they're talking about when it comes to the world of indie films. Michael Moore's documentary "Bowling for Columbine" kicked off the festival and it sparked much debate. The panel provided a great discussion of the issues, themes and techniques covered by the film. It's a challenging film that raises questions about ethics, responsibility and making a film about an issue that you care deeply about. A great panel filled with insight.
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If you have to come up with a one-liner it's obvious: "Trainspotting for real..." but it doesn't really do justice to the film. "Little Criminals" is a first-person documentary by David G. Scott that examines the lives of several heroin addicts in Scotland. Intensely personal and relentlessly honest the film moves toward an understanding of addiction and the lifestyle that goes with it. A rare look into a world that most people would never see.
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One of the documentaries that I was really looking forward to was Sam Jones' film about the band Wilco called "I am Trying to Break Your Heart." It follows the band from the recording of their CD "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," to a member leaving, to the record company not releasing the CD to the CD finally being released. The film is gorgeously shot in black and white, but lags at times. The part of the film that shows the tensions in the band and the departure of one of the members reminded me of "This is Spinal Tap" but oddly enough there is more poignancy in the mockumentary than the documentary. Definitely worth seeing if you are a fan of Wilco, and nice to look at and listen to even if you're not a fan. I'd just tighten it up a bit by cutting a scene or two out...
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The most unexpected treat of the Atlantic Film Festival so far (aside from the wonderful staff and volunteers) was the French film "8 Femmes" ("8 Women"), directed by François Ozon. It's hard to describe the film as it has a 50s look and feel combined with a murder-mystery and musical. There is also an amazing cast of French actresses: Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier, and Firmine Richard. It's darkly funny, surprising and gorgeous to look at and listen to. The film also has a neat bilingual Web site that uses Flash and features the trailer, photos, music, and information about the cast and crew as well as the production design.
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Miramichi of the summer of 1973 was evoked in the tragic tale of "The Bay of Love and Sorrows" which is based on the David Adams Richards novel of the same name. The film, directed by Tim Southam from a script by Southam and Richards, features great performances in New Brunswick locations. Since the CBC is sponsoring the Gala for the film it should be on tv at some point...ideally you could see it in a local movie theatre, but I'm not going to get started on the problems of seeing Canadian films on Canadian screens right now.
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The first film that I saw at the Atlantic Film Festival was Michael Moore's latest, "Bowling for Columbine." A entertaining, at times funny, at times chilling examination of gun culture. It features a great opening sequence at a bank in northern Michigan where you get a free gun when you open an account. Other parts aren't as effective, but Moore seems to strike just about the right balance between the funny and the serious to look at things outside of the mainstream view. Worth seeing and discussing.
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One of the highlights of my day today was seeing the finished CD-ROM of "TheShipsList" which is the product of a lot of hard work. It's cool to see a finished product at the end of a lot of sweat and love. Seeing something great develop is always wonderful and making friends along the way is a special bonus. Congratulations Gery and Sue! Now everybody go out and buy the CDs when they are available!
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It's here again. The 22nd Annual Atlantic Film Festival. With an almost overwhelming lineup of films this time, I'm going to be using my pass to get to see as much great stuff as possible. I've seen a bunch already and will hopefully be able to squeeze some time in to put some reflections and maybe some images up here. The highlight so far has been seeing my friends Tony, Cathie and Tim from the NB Filmmakers' Cooperative who are down for the screening of "Natural Remedy" (directed by Tony and Tim) on Wednesday night. The North American premiere of "When Voices Rise..." on Friday night is something I'm looking forward to as well. Lots of great people around and not much time for sleep. See you at the movies!
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One of my favourite musical artists is Billy Bragg. He's got a new CD out with the Blokes called "England, Half-English." I've been listening to it a lot and especially love the title track as well as "Take Down the Union Jack" and "Saint Monday." He's touring around and will be in Canada, but not very close to Nova Scotia... maybe someday. He keeps doing great stuff and I keep listening to it.
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The latest version of Rael Dornfest's simple, yet powerful 'blogging tool Blosxom is out and I've updated the site. It was a very simple transition from version 0+4i to 0+5i. Just a few tweaks to the story template and my customized style sheet and it's working perfectly. Now you'll notice that categories are showing up in the 'blog... I'll be migrating and rearranging things slightly to fall in to different categories. The yummy new flavour feature will have to wait...but the content is syndicated through the RSS flavour.
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Today I'm leaving Truro after a week of Faculty Orientation to the NS Community College. It's hard to believe that it's over and that so much seems to have happened. The College is an amazing institution filled with people absolutely committed to helping people make a better life and to change the world. Teaching can be difficult at times, but the rewards make all of the challenges that we face fade away when we hear that someone that we influenced is working or has improved their life. To get new faculty prepared for the challenges ahead the Office of Organizational Learning hosts a week of Faculty Orientation just before the new teaching year begins. New faculty from throughout the 13 sites of the College assemble in Truro and share, learn and bond together. It starts building a network of personal resources that we can draw upon in the days and weeks ahead. One of the most enjoyable parts (aside from hearing everyone's story...that's how we make sense of the world, isn't it?) of the week was a trip to Gitten's Lodge where we tried to solve a murder mystery. I took some pictures of the fun where members of the group role-played. I'm tired and happy and proud to be in the company of this incredible group of people. It's a great start to life at the College and I can't wait to catch up with everyone a few months from now to see what they're doing.
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I'm in Truro, Nova Scotia now at the beginning of a week-long course that I am taking at the NS Community College campus. The participants are from all over the provincial college system and I think that it's going to be a fun week where I'll learn a lot and meet even more cool people. Everybody gets to stay in the residence here, which is a bit warm in the summer. In looking around the building (which has a neat, retro style which made me want to take pictures of it) I found a room that has a phone in it, but "incinerator" is written on the door. I'm afraid to pick up the phone...maybe that's how the incinerator works...
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While the site hasn't been updated the past few weeks, there is a reason. I've started working full-time as a faculty member of the Nova Scotia Community College in the Screen Arts program at the Halifax campus. It's a very exciting opportunity to actually, officially, full-time teach film production. With a great group of people and a bunch of gear to play with I'm very happy.
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Páll Thayer is an Icelandic artist who has launched his Intercontinental Spontaneous Jam Session on the Web. I saw a version of the ISJS at the Atlantic Cultural Space Conference in Moncton in May, but now the project is up and working on the Web. It's a cool project that combines randomly changing patterns and an mp3 audio synthesised stream. When you connect to the site you can change the parameters of the music and that changes what you see and hear. The neat thing is that everyone else who is connected sees (and hears) it too. Don't forget to click on "listen" to get the mp3 playlist started to hear the beautiful sounds.
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It's Stanley Kubrick's birthday today. I was trying to rewatch all the Kubrick films that I could before today, but I only managed to get through some of the black and white ones. "The Killing" is an amazing film to watch as it seems that Kubrick's style is just emerging. It's very much film noir with great, rapid-fire dialogue and the whole thing just rolls along and then it's over. "Paths of Glory" is striking and moving. Kubrick's unblinking eye and amazing compositions create a moving film that stands out from the other films at the time. "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" is hilarious and still relevant. The obsessive details, meticulous compositions and the amazing performances by the entire cast (especially Peter Sellers). I bought the DVD of "Dr. Strangelove" and one of the fascinating features on the disk are split-screen interviews with Sellers and George C. Scott where they answer questions that will later be asked by the local host and edited in. I also found the "Barry Lyndon" DVD on sale, but I haven't watched that disk yet...it's one of my favourite Kubrick films. Beautifully shot with natural light every frame looks like a painting. Tonight I'm watching "Lolita". Jan Harlan's documentary "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures" is one of my favourite documentaries. It served as inspiration for Errol and I when we started discussing the editing of "When Voices Rise..." and got me into the right frame of mind for editing the material that we had. With Kubrick's films there is a perfection that is sometimes shocking. Every frame, every glance, every edit is just right. There is the official Kubrick site from Warner Brothers, an unofficial non-profit resource site, the Kubrick Multimedia Film Archive, and an intriguing site, kubrick.org that features Web artists reinterpreting Kubrick's work for the Web.
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For people who use Macs the year seems to be punctuated with the Macworld shows that are spread out around the world. They are generally the places where new stuff gets introduced and where Steve Jobs gives his keynote speeches. This time in New York the iPod line was revised (maybe I'll replace my Palm Pilot with an iPod), a new 17-inch wider screen G4 iMac was introduced, iTunes 3 was announced and released, OS X 10.2 was officially announced, and iTools was changed to .Mac. I love iTunes and iTunes 3 adds "Smart Playlists" which are rule-based playlists that are generated from the music that you have in your library or the music that you listen to. If you have an iPod it can let you listen to the music that you like to listen to more or it can also let you collect your favourite songs into a playlist for a compilation CD for driving in the car. .Mac adds some neat stuff like iCal for scheduling and Backup for...backing up files, but the controversial aspect is that unlike the late iTools, .Mac costs US$99 a year (with former iTools users given a US$50 break on the first year). I like the new features, but I don't know if it is worth US$99 a year... and there is a lot of anger about it too out there. OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) is also going to cost more money (US$129) and that's controversial as well. Many neat new features, but will people spend the money to have a few more features? It will be interesting to see how Apple responds to it.
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Finally, officially QuickTime 6 is released. I have been playing with the beta on my PowerBook and the MPEG-4 video is very nice and the AAC Audio is amazing. Apple has examples of the video and audio possibilities. The only down side is that you have to upgrade your QuickTime Pro key for QT6...but you can still export things with the new capabilities from whatever programs you use to do QuickTime stuff so it isn't a huge issue.
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In my almost obsessive collecting of DVDs I carefully look at the DVDs and their packaging and content, interface, etc. One that I had been waiting a long time to see (the film primarily) was Wes Anderson's "The Royal Tenenbaums". I loved the film. Quirky and meticulous, Anderson creates an amazing visually stunning world that is built around the characters. The Web site uses Flash quite well and also features commentary by Owen Wilson. The only other Anderson film that I've seen is "Rushmore", which I equally loved. Anderson (who cowrote this film as well as "Rushmore" with Owen Wilson) constructs worlds and characters that are wildly funny, but also with a sadness and poignancy that is rare for comedy. I haven't worked my way through all of the extra material on the second DVD, but what I've seen is great. This was my first Criterion Collection DVD, but not my last.
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Is it important to follow Web standards when it seems that Microsoft has an overwhelming market share? Why yes! I moved away from table-based layouts as much as possible a couple of years ago...the CSS standard is from 1996! Style sheets are the way to go, but many people still don't use them even though they are widely supported now. In 1998 things were pretty bad when it came to support in browsers for the standards that make the Web work and the Web Standards Project was born. Recently reinvigorated, they still fight the good fight and try to convince us all to do the right thing. Unfortunately my page here doesn't meet the standard...I'm working to make it standards compliant...honest.
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What does it mean to be Canadian? Or more to the point, how does it feel to be Canadian? In general I think that Canadians have a difficult time defining themselves--and that causes a lot of anxiety in Canadians. How can we explain ourselves to other people...we're different! Canadians seem to spend a lot of time struggling with the definition of Canadian identity...there is the usual listing of famous (usually in the U.S.) Canadians who most people (outside of Canada) don't realize that are Canadian. There are the statistics, but just before Canada Day (July 1) I bought the new book, Souvenir of Canada by Douglas Coupland (the Canadian and author of "Generation X") and it really clicks. As Coupland writes on the back of the book I wanted to give people a book that explains what it feels like to be Canadian. And I wanted to find a new way of doing this... If you look at the pictures on the site from the book and they mean something to you, well, you must be Canadian.
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Just saw "Minority Report" tonight. I have to say that I really enjoyed it. While "A.I." was creepy and unsatisfying to me (I kept thinking that Kubrick would have done things differently and better) I found that Spielberg has made his most fully realized and rounded film in a long time. Philip K. Dick wrote some amazing stories and they make you question reality, destiny and institutions...stuff that makes you look at the world in a different way. The film seems particularly timely now with the emerging police state, surveillance and targeted advertising. I just love stuff that questions reality, chronology and truth. The title of this post is my absolute favourite line from a movie in a long time...a woman who can see the future asks, "Is it now?"
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Sometimes when you surf around you find the strangest connections and then at some point you almost wind up looking at yourself in the mirror or at least seeing your own footprints. Sometimes you find a link between the electronic and virtual and physical and personal spaces. Here's one that happened today. I was thinking that I should print out the book "Keep Focus" that Gair Dunlop wrote for Liquid Geographies and cut it and assemble it. But I wanted to stay in the virtual world and I popped over to Meerkat to see if anything interesting had aggregated. The first thing that I saw was an entry by Cory Doctorow on "Boing Boing" about "Warchalking Runes" and that linked to the coolest idea for marking a symbol (related to Hobo language) on the sidewalk wherever you find WiFi (you know, like Airport) access in a city. I posted an entry a while ago in this very 'blog using WiFi at a cafe, so it's been on my mind. The idea of chalked symbols around the sidewalks mapping out entry nodes to the Internet is such a cool combination of real space and cyberspace that it made me smile...what a great idea! Then moving back from Warchalk, I find out that it was made by Matt Jones, who has lots of cool ideas such as Web Dogme. The whole Dogme idea in relation to film is a better theoretical concept than method of constructing compelling film in practice (when you come from a world where you work on films using limited equipment and crew, the idea of having a set of rules and voluntarily giving up stuff to be more pure is a bit contrived...but that's another topic), but I think that Matt's onto something with the Web and I think that I've been an unwitting subscriber to his manifesto which is kind of cool as well. Now, I'll wrap it up a bit with the connections that seems strange and wonderful. Earlier in the day I looked at an entry in Doc Searls Weblog about a cool application that recognises songs through a cell phone and identifies them...Matt Jones is in the picture... the other connection is that Gair's book is connected with SoMa (Social Matrices (a think tank for culture)) which is hosting PRIVATE REVERIES, PUBLIC SPACES tomorrow where Matt mentions he wants to bring this Warchalking stuff up. If I wanted to I could bring in even more connections, but I think that you get the idea. Sometimes don't you feel like you are in your own "Truman Show" with everything arranged so you find stuff at just the right time?
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I'm the proud owner of the new DVD of the first and second seasons of Mr. Show. Pretty much impossible to describe, Mr. Show is the brainchild of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. If I'd arrange my favourite sketch comedy shows it would go like this: Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Kids in the Hall, and Mr. Show. What links them together and makes them all last is that they don't necessarily parody specific celebrities or movies, but work on a broader level by poking fun at attitudes or genres. Or maybe they just all make me laugh. Mr. Show never pulled a punch and has a great structure similar to Python where all of the sketches are linked together. Bob and David tried to get the shows released on tape and dvd for years, and finally HBO figured that they could make some money and brought out the first two seasons... I hope that more will follow. They regularly contribute to their own Bob and David site with writing that can give you an idea of the sensibility of Mr. Show. The other thing to look for from the guys is "Run Ronnie Run" which is the Mr. Show movie that was completed a while ago and premiered at Sundance, but has yet to have a release date scheduled...it's not about convincing Mr. Reagan to enter politics (someone else has to make that comedy)... but it's about the most arrested man do people make deals with Bob and David to make sure that they're stuff doesn't get seen?
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On June 20, 2002 my favourite Internet radio station, SomaFM went off the air. I'd first found them through iTunes in the Radio section. Their station "Secret Agent" played cool ambient music interspersed with clips from spy movies. I loved it and listened to it often. I also listened to their other stations. But in the US the Library of Congress made a decision that would mean stations would have to pay retroactive royalties for the past two years in addition to what they already pay to ASCAP and BMI. The Recording Industry Association of America are trying to squeeze as much revenue as possible as people seek out alternatives to the flavour-of-the-week backed by massive marketing budgets and cross-owned media giants.
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I finally took the plunge and updated my copy of BBEdit to the latest version. I'd been procrastinating the update since when I first bought the full version (after using the free BBEdit Lite for years) I missed the next major free upgrade by a week or two. I did get a cool t-shirt, but still... I thought that I'd wait, but I finally took the plunge. I've taught Dreamweaver and GoLive and used both, but now I'm firmly back with BBEdit. For pretty much all the text I write it's my program of choice. It is simple, clean, fast and always works. I even use it to update these entries to this site. Thanks Bare Bones Software!
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One of the cool things about having a PowerBook with AirPort is that you can wirelessly connect to networks... right now I'm sitting in a cafe in downtown Halifax writing this. A nice little cafe with internet access, good food, company and service.It's great to be able to post and update completely wirelessly. This type of thing will only expand and it will be great to finally reduce and eliminate the proliferation of blue cables everywhere.... which makes me wonder... why don't more people use differently coloured ethernet cabling?
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What ultimately convinced me to go to Moncton for the conference was finding out that Brigitte was the facilitator of the e-lounge. I first met Brigitte a few years ago when I was teaching a Digital Media course in Fredericton. She wanted to start in a program that had already been underway for a few months. At first I wasn't sure as there was a lot that had been covered -- the foundation of the courses. She convinced me that she could catch up and she did and then kept going and ended up at the top of the class. Both creative and technically solid, she's an amazing person and I love any chance to work with her or see her. The other half of the support team in the e-lounge was Rodrigo who solved the problems and kept things running smoothly smiling all the time. All this while his very pregnant wife was within weeks of giving birth. Talk about managing pressure and stress well! The comments that I heard from the other artists were all positive about the amazing support that Rodrigo and Brigitte provided and they gave a welcome sense of comfort, stability and fun to the e-lounge. Hats off for a job well done!
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One of the highlights of my time in Moncton (those 4 nights and 5 days last month) was meeting some of the people from the place and going to an event outside of the conference. Moncton has a great arts community and a great cultural centre in the Centre Culturel Aberdeen. On Friday night they featured a screening, "Transe Atlantique" as part of "Vidéo Cité" which consisted of a workshop on one day and the screenings on the following evening. It was a great event in a great facility. The event was generally coordinated by Tam-ca Vo-van and Jason St-Laurent with the screening curated by Stefan St-Laurent. It gave me a second chance to see Andrea Cooper's "Starring" TV commercial and "Starring Part 2" again. The neatest new thing in the screening was a video called "Dreaming" by Donna Wawzonek (of Struts Gallery). It consisted of visuals of scratching lottery tickets while dreams were recounted... one involving the Kids in the Hall... I identified with that one. Donna's video was produced as part of the first annual "In Like a Lion Video Marathon". The other cool thing was that I got to chat with Jason, who I'd first met in Ottawa at the IFVA AGM last year. Sometimes it seems like the world is getting smaller. I stayed there chatting with Jason, Tam-ca, Véronique Couillard, Páll, and Arnfinnur until the place closed down. That's why I was very, very tired on Saturday morning... but it was a great time.
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One of the briefest meetings that I had in Moncton was with Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel Dugas. They arrived near the end of the conference as they were working on a project called "We are getting closer" that is all about location, location, location. With a grueling travel schedule they went across the country from Alberta to New Brunswick with a wireless webcam connecting people in different regions as they went. Using wireless technology they would connect to the internet somewhere inside a building and then be able to wander around outside with camera and microphone and send the video and sound across the country and around the world. On the site you can see archived stuff, but there is something very cool about a live connection. A great use of technology and a tiring learning experience, it's the type of project that will hopefully happen more and more as we connect and share stories and experiences. The thing that stands out with this project is how generous and helpful people can be and that art doesn't just exist inside and in galleries...let's use the Web to get closer!
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I met Jan at conference in Moncton as she was on the panel hosted by Zenon and also featuring Valérie and myself. The embarrassing part is that she lives and works in Wolfville a few blocks away from me and although I've lived here for two years I've yet to meet most of the cool people in my own neighbourhood. The picture (with Jan on the far right) is from the panel which was entitled, "Curatorial and Archival Processes: Art and the Web" and initially I wasn't sure if we'd all fit together, but it ended up working wonderfully. Jan, who's in the Sociology department at Acadia, talked about preserving art created in variable media...how do you save something when the technologies are changing so quickly. The time seemed to go quite quickly and it felt more like the beginning of a discussion.
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One of the last persons that I met at the Moncton conference was Gair Dunlop from Scotland (and now I'm back to where are your from, etc, etc, etc, but place is significant with Gair and his work). Gair presented a range of his work that featured filmmaking, text, photographs and QuickTime VR. I have to spend some more time going through his stuff, but the Gagarin project was particularly interesting to me. I was lucky enough to be able to spend some time with Gair after the conference as he had a whirlwind tour around New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. He gave workshops at Struts Gallery in Sackville, the NB Filmmakers' Co-operative in Fredericton, and (thanks to the work of Jan Marontate) at Acadia University. I had a lot of fun and hopefully Gair with be back over for future projects or maybe I can get over to Scotland...
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Arnfinnur is the last of the Icelandic artists who came to the Atlantic Cultural Space conference in Moncton that I'll talk about. We were roommates at the residence of Johanne LeBreton who graciously accommodated us during the conference. A tall, quiet man, Arnfinnur showed a range of work, but the most amazing things to me were his beautiful video works "Trace Music" which use the video camera almost like a brush. Almost hypnotic, they are like dances that combine the music with the motion of the camera...beautiful. Another one of those things that makes me think about creating images in different ways.
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Dawn is an artist from New Brunswick who I met at the conference in Moncton. She presented and talked about an installation recently exhibited at UNB called "Cyborgasm." For the presentation she had a camera focussed on her mouth with that image projected onto the two large screens of the e-lounge. It created a strangely intimate, but mediated experience as she described the installation and the thinking behind it. On another day (the days start to blend together after a while) she showed her electronic portfolio featuring her photography (along with some harrowing stories of going into abandoned buildings) and a Flash-based version of "Cyborgasm" that was enhanced by allowing a number of people to interact with it on the iBooks in the e-lounge. Friday night Dawn is part of an opening at Gallery Connexion in Fredericton where "Works in Progress" will be shown.
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Yay! It's official and Mozilla is now done. The open source browser born from the ashes of Netscape is finally released. It works well and I've been using it for a lot of my browsing as it evolved and was polished. Mozilla works on all the major platforms and could be the basis of some amazing things for the Web. I'm also using Chimera, which is based on the mozilla codebase. Chimera is an offshoot that is built for OS X and is small and fast.
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David Johnston, also known as Jhave, is a very neat guy who thinks in amazing ways. Part of the Year Zero One online artist-run centre, his presentation at the Atlantic Cultural Space Conference in Moncton was one of those perspective-changing experiences that make you look at the world and the tools that you use to create work in a different way. A poet with a strong neurobiological theoretical approach (it's hard to describe something that's truly original) he has created great work that I have to spend more time exploring and absorbing. Nomad Lingo, (Flash required to view) "an experimental poetic playground" is a great combination of poetry and Flash to create something more. With a firm grounding in (but not limited by) text. It's all about the content. Lots to explore and absorb.
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Randy and Ron were presented some of their work at the Moncton conference. Two amazingly talented and nice guys who were based in Halifax, but were moving to London, Ontario as the conference was going on. Masters of Flash, they are exploring the possibilities of storytelling using that tool in amazing ways. With a great combination of sound and image, interactivity and a refreshing linearity at times they know the difference between Flash for Flash's sake and exploring a medium. I had a great chat with Ron about aspect ratios and the Coen brothers in a bar in Moncton as "The Big Lebowski" played on the tv in the bar. Doesn't everyone love the Coen brothers and a wide, letterboxed aspect ratio? Ron and Randy have an online art gallery called iamstatic that is filled with thought-provoking and solid work.
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I've always been a big fan of QuickTime. It is arguably the greatest contribution that Apple has made to computing outside of the hardware. Often misunderstood as simply a way to show video, it's so much more. QuickTime holds all sorts of rich media content from stills to video to sound to panoramas to all sorts of interactive possibilities. While the official, full release of QuickTime 6 is still being delayed due to licensing issues related to MPEG-4, the preview release is out and from the little bit of playing that I've been able to do I'm very impressed. Streaming audio and video are fast and the quality is great...and it follows standards. The other thing that is out in preview is QuickTime Broadcaster, which allows you to broadcast MPEG-4 video and audio with any machine running OS X with a FireWire device for input. Combine that with the free QuickTime Streaming Server and you've got a pretty cheap internet broadcasting solution. I'll have a better idea of how it will work for me when I compress some files and see how it looks and sounds.
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One of the cool artists who came over from Iceland for the Moncton conference was Páll. He's doing some very cool stuff with sound and images that evolve and interact with people over time. At the conference he showed "Choirpiece for Four Computers." Using some iBooks and an Airport base station one iBook lead the "choir" of 4 networked computers by sending notes for them to sing. The notes have to fit within a certain scale and when they are sent the image of a mouth on the screen of the computer opens and the note is played. Very neat. The coolest thing was "Intercontinental Spontaneous Jam Session" which allows multiple people to change the parameters of sound and images that play from a server and are sent out to whoever is connected to the site. The photo has the interface for the ISJS and Páll's silhouette It's a very cool combination of a server where sounds are generated using PureData along with PHP and Javascript to do some processing and Flash for the visuals. I can't wait for it to launch so more people can see and experience this.
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I've known about Valérie's work before, but I met her for the first time in person at the conference in Moncton and we were on a panel together. She's one of those multiplying hats people where she's an artist and a curator. Not just any curator (not to disparage curators as I haven't known very many), but one of the very few curators of net.art in Canada. As an artist she's responsible for the neat and useful Advice Bunny.
Curatorially she also was a major part of Location/Dislocation which is just amazing. On the panel she talked about location and space and seeing the work and MobileGaze which presents and contextualizes work online. Based on talking with her and listening to her on the panel I figure I have a couple of books to read and a ton of stuff to check out online. To see the latest thing she's involved with as a curator you should experience Matter + Memory which is launching tonight at Oboro in Montréal. If I was in Montréal now I'd be going, but I'll have to be content with exploring things here at home in Wolfville.
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The first person that I met on my way to the ACS Conference in Moncton was Mathieu. He was driving the van to the airport in Halifax to pick up me along with 3 artists from Iceland, one from Newfoundland and one from Ireland, who happens to be Saoirse. Mathieu's a cool interdisciplinary artist based in Moncton and Saoirse is a cool new mediator from Ireland but currently living in Scotland. (Again with the where were you born, where are you living, where have you lived...) They had a joint performance piece that unfolded over 3 days at the conference. It was based on the works of Samuel Beckett and combined live performance with recorded video. The pictures show Mathieu performing and Saoirse editing. A very neat combination of old media (the human voice and body) with new media.
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On the first night of the Atlantic Cultural Space conference in Moncton Andrea Cooper wrapped up the "Nymphs of the Night" show with a great presentation about her real-world and virtual project "Starring". It's a great intervention in St. John's that featured a huge billboard with a picture and the URL of the site. Postcards and a television commercial also sent people to the site to see the work. The picture beside this article is Andrea before her presentation, trying to get her site to show up... it dropped off the Web just before she started. She remained cool and calm and the site went back up just in time so she could show it off. The video "Starring: Part 2" shows off more of the world of the 50 foot women in and around St. John's. "Starring: Part 2" is showing at Eastern Edge in St. John's as part of "Private Constructs" until June 8, so if you're there and you haven't seen it...go now. Andrea is not 50 feet tall.
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The second person I met on my way to the Atlantic Cultural Space Conference was Birgitta. She's an artist from Iceland (location seems to determine so much...at least when you meet people... "Hi, where are you from?" starts off the conversation so often at conferences... it usually implies where were you born, where did you live, where are you living... but I digress) and she read some poetry, showed some of her printed work and work online. She talked about a project she's involved with that is producing two books "The Book of Hope" and "The World Healing Book." It's a way to foster a dialogue and positive response to the violence and sorrow in the world. Her site, seen in the picture along with her showing it off, is called Womb of Creation. She was fighting a cold at the time but has the great quality of being unable to tell a lie. It was neat to see and talk with someone who does a similar thing with moving away from more complex and flashy sites and focussing on the content.
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To coincide with the two new CDs that are out, the AV Club of The Onion features an interview with Tom Waits. He's got an amazing way with words as when asked to describe his collaborative process with Kathleen Brennan: Well, you know, "You wash, I'll dry."
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Still tired from the conference in Moncton I received a call from Brian White, a filmmaker who was about to go up North to shoot a documentary about how Mike Stevens is taking donated instruments up to Labrador to help the kids there end their substance abuse. Errol Williams is letting Brian use his camera, which Brian picked up last week. But the power supply used to charge the batteries is still sitting in the editing room here. Brian's flight to St. John's was scheduled to leave something like 15 hours or so from the call, so I had to declare a "Cultural Emergency" (a term coined by Paul Pope) and we formed a hasty plan. Brian and I met at the Tim Horton's in Windsor so both of us would have only half the distance to drive. When Brian and Jessi arrived I find out that it was their Wedding Anniversary! So they got to spend the last hour of their special day driving around because Errol, Brian and I forgot an important piece of gear. Happy Anniversary!
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Whew! I'm completely knackered as they say...I'm at the point where it just starts to get overwhelming and you're running on adrenaline while staying up too late talking with amazing people from around the world. My intention was to have lots of updates during the conference, but I've been running around too much to do much with the site. The updates will therefore happen probably in reverse order. I had a great time on the panel yesterday with Zenon, Valerie, and Jan with a followup definitely to follow.
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They've become a preoccupation of mine, especially after I moved to Nova Scotia from New Brunswick.
With family and friends still in Fredericton, I'll often drive from Wolfville to Fredericton and I'll always notice the shortwave transmission towers of RCI in Sackville, New Brunswick. I also like signs, so this image captures some of both.
Luckily as I was driving in a van filled with interesting artists from Iceland, Ireland, Newfoundland, and Canada we stopped for a break beside the towers. After a few minutes a security guard came out and asked if we would like a tour, but we needed to get to Moncton for the conference that begins today.
And now, through the magic of Airport I'm able to post this article from the e-lounge at the conference. I think that it's going to be fun here!
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I have an article in the New Brunswick Filmmakers' Co-operative newsletter this month. On the eve of travelling up to Moncton for the conference I thought I'd post the article. Here's a teaser:
I have a theory about filmmaking and more specifically, filmmakers. Deep within those who feel compelled to tell stories visually I believe there is a recessive gene. The filmmaking gene. Some people have it and unless you have it, it's hard to explain the drive to fill a screen with a story that moves you.
more...
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by Chris Campbell
I have a theory about filmmaking and more specifically, filmmakers. Deep within those who feel compelled to tell stories visually I believe there is a recessive gene. The filmmaking gene. Some people have it and unless you have it, it's hard to explain the drive to fill a screen with a story that moves you.
Errol Williams has that recessive gene, and I think that it's wrapped up into my DNA too. Since you're reading this, you probably have it as well.
I had known Errol casually through being a member of the Film Co-op, but had never really worked him. Documentarian Ron Mann gave a workshop at the coop and it was great. At one point he asked people about their ideas for films and Errol told everyone about Willie O'Ree, who broke the colour bar in the National Hockey League. I was hooked. During a break I talked with Errol in the doorway of the equipment room and I told him that I really wanted to help him with it. I didn't know exactly what I could do on the project, I just wanted to be involved.
The short version of the story is that 6 years later I had moved up from doing sound, some research and some editing to being a coproducer along with Tony Merzetti. The other thing that happened during that period is that I got to work a lot with Errol and Tony to do some of the most enjoyable work I've ever had the opportunity to do. I also made a couple of life long friends.
After "Echoes in the Rink: The Willie O'Ree" story was completed I didn't really get to work with Errol much at all as he was in Bermuda and in 2000 I moved to Nova Scotia. My work there was wrapping up in November of 2001 which I casually mentioned to Errol in an email. I didn't receive an message back, but a phone call. Errol was finishing up production of a documentary about social protest movements in Bermuda and he needed an editor. I, of course, said "yes!"
Following some email exchanges with the outline of the story, Errol came up from Bermuda and dropped off a stack of photographs and newspaper articles in December. I began scanning the material and learning more about the story. In January Errol moved into the house and brought 40 or so tapes of interviews, cutaways and archival footage.
The film tells the story of the Theatre Boycott of 1959, in Hamilton, Bermuda. The two main movie theatres had segregated seating with the balcony and centre section reserved for those whose skin was white and the rest of the theatre was open to those whose skin was darker. Segregation ran throughout Bermudian society and an anonymous group decided to organize a boycott of the theatres. Two weeks after the boycott began the hotels, restaurants and movie theatres all were desegregating. You'll have to see the film for more detail.
We dove in and started logging and digitizing the footage into Final Cut Pro 3, running on my G3 PowerBook running under OS X. With an external 80 G FireWire hard drive and Final Cut's OfflineRT mode we were able to digitize something like 35 hours of footage with the drive only half full (or half empty depending on your point of view). With the transcripts that Errol read every night we were able to quickly view and assemble any shot from all of the footage. It made a huge difference and sped things up a lot.
By mid-February we had the rough cut and started integrating the visuals into the film. We moved over to one of the new flat-panel G4 iMacs to speed up rendering. Initially I thought that we would do some of the animation and compositing in AfterEffects, but we were able to do everything that we wanted to do in Final Cut. Another handy addition was a collection of shareware filters for Final Cut called Joe's Filters. They helped tweak the look of the film.
The film was scheduled to premiere in Bermuda on April 13 and we'd finished off the cut for the festival just before midnight on April 12th. We needed to make two BetaSP copies for the festival so that began just after midnight. With nerves of steel we dumped it out to tape twice... with a 73 minute documentary it takes a while to make a copy! At 3:15am the last copy finished and 15 minutes later we were on our way to the airport so Errol could catch a 6:05am flight. My flight was a few hours later.
Errol arrived at 12:30, just 3 1/2 hours before the first screening and I arrived an hour later on a separate flight. We each had a copy of the film in BetaSP, miniDV, and VHS versions just in case. We quickly drove around to the two theatres and made it to the premiere with 10 minutes to spare. The screening started on time and went over very well with a standing ovation for Errol at the end. It was a huge relief as this was the first audience that had seen the film. It also was an audience made up of most of the people who were interviewed in the film and they liked it as well.
With the editing out of the way the only thing left for Errol to do was screen the film and answer questions. It was show 6 times during the festival and won the Audience Choice award at the closing gala. The day after the festival it began screening in the Liberty Theatre in Hamilton.
The reaction to the film reminded me of the Tidal Wave Festival last November in how people love to see and hear stories that they recognize. While this film wasn't an NB Filmmakers' Cooperative production it wouldn't have been possible without the coop. With the experience, support, and friendship over our years at the coop we honed our skills and discovered that we too had the recessive gene that compels us to fill the screen with stories. It makes you realized that a coop isn't made up of a collection of equipment but a group of friends and colleagues who help each other tell their stories.
You can find out more about the film at the Web site www.whenvoicesrise.com
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The new trailer for the two Matrix sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions are up. The first one is out in 53 weeks, the second sequel in November 2003. Two films that I'm looking forward to. While many people talk about the online marketing campaign for the Blair Witch Project, around the same time or maybe a bit earlier, www.whatisthematrix.com went up and had a neat online teaser. You had to register to get a password which was emailed to you. Then you could see stuff once you logged in. It think that it really tapped in to the whole computer geek thing without condescending. They had a series of online comics that explored the world of the film without the actors. It established the context and didn't take away from the experience of the film. It enhanced it. They still have more comics coming, but for the new films they will also have the Animatrix, which are a series of short Anime films set in the world of the Matrix. As Mr. Reeves says, "Whoa."
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It seems like a fantastic conference...but I'm not there, just following the blog trail and O'Reillynet's coverage coming out of it. Even without being there I really am enjoying seeing what is happening. I've always believed that the best way that online communication and connection works is if there has been a physical, real, human connection at some point.
The experience of meeting someone physically after communicating with them electronically can really solidify bonds. There also can be the dissonance of the person you constructed in your head vs. the person in the world. My pal Sheila was short and tiny and a bit shy to me electronically--in person she was over 6 feet tall and quite imposing.
Back to the ETech conference...the keynote by Steven Johnson would have been something to see...I've got to get his books... Rael excellently summarized "City of Blogs" and one thing that jumps out is that blogs aren't challenging the news media, they're challenging Google. A neat perspective shift for me.
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Shift Japan (not to be confused with the Canadian Shift Magazine)is an e-zine that is a good place to find out about cool digital content. Every issue features a digital work that serves as the cover and it is filled with interviews and links that will keep you exploring for a while. They also publish the Gasbook series of CD-ROMs, DVDs and t-shirts that I really want to get someday...
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Rael revved up Blosxom... now at version 0+4i. More info added to the RSS feed and a nifty little "Google This" link that the letter G at the bottom of each entry activates. It took me a couple of minutes to install the updates--gotta love efficient code.
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I'll be speaking at a conference in Moncton, New Brunswick on May 24. The conference is called "The Atlantic Cultural Space: New Directions in Heritage and the Arts." I'm on a panel named "Curatorial Processes & Art Dissemination on the Web" and my part is called "Filmmaking Without the Chemistry: Who is the Artist Online?" I'll have more about the conference as it approaches.
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If you don't know about Mozilla, you should. It's the child of Netscape, born back in the days when there was competition for Web browsers and standards and all that. It's also the basis of the current release of Netscape Navigator...or is it just Netscape now? You can find out more news about Mozilla and related stuff at Mozillazine. Now it's at Release Candidate 2, which means that it's very close to release. The other reason to use it, aside from it being fast and cool is that you can turn off unrequested pop-up windows...and that includes the annoying pop-under ads as well. Lovely!
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I've been looking at the site and trailer for the film CQ. A good use of Flash as well. Roman Coppola's film premiered nearly a year ago at Cannes. It looks amazing and seems to have captured that late 60s French cinematic feeling. I love the look of the site and there's even a downloadable pdf book that looks like it was produced in the 60s. The title refers to the Morse code "CQ" which means "seek you." Unfortunately the film will be another DVD viewing for me since the screens around here in Nova Scotia will probably be filled with the big summer movies for the summer.
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I'm the proud owner of not one, but two new CDs from Tom Waits. Alice and Blood Money are more great additions to the library of one of the most unique and talented artists around. The packaging and photography of the CDs are gorgeous as well. But you shouldn't judge a book by the cover and the lyrics by Tom and Kathleen Brennan crawl into your soul, settle down and spend some time in there. As Tom says about Blood Money on the Anti label's site:
I like a beautiful song that tells you terrible things.
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Chris Campbell here. I'm finally starting a proper 'blog. While I've had a presence on the Web for the while it hasn't been incredibly personalized. But this time, it's personal. Hmm... sounds like a trailer blurb.
This is made with Rael Dornfest's Blosxom to run this. It's a nifty, tiny Perl script that takes text files and makes them into a 'blog. I could have used something more elaborate and powerful such as the system that my lovely wife Carolyn made, Grapevine, but for now I'll keep it simple and pretty much text-based since that how I usually work.
So welcome again and I hope you enjoy this!
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