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It’s the afternoon of June 4, a few hours before Sol Del Rio’s performance. She’s been booked for Designer_Mix, MUTEK’s evening dedicated to the first three cities to join UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network under its “design” banner: Buenos Aires, Berlin, and Montreal. Del Rio, who is from Buenos Aires, and her labelmate, Chancha Vía Circuito, will be bookending the night with their electrified interpretations of traditional and popular South American music.

She’s running late due to some technical issues encountered during soundcheck, but as with many MUTEK artists, it’s understandable. Technology can be a fickle collaborator, and while most MUTEK artists push the state of their art, Del Rio’s evening is still particularly ambitious: first, she’ll be delivering a solo audiovisual performance from Ableton Live and VDMX, then she’ll be back at the end of the event to handle visuals for Chancha Vía Circuito.

Despite the shy persona suggested by the promo photos that show her only hooded or in silhouette, Del Rio isn’t too shy to lay vocals down in her music. A microphone stands at the ready next to her laptop. Alongside “musician,” “VJ,” and “designer,” It looks like “vocalist” could also be added to Del Rio’s calling card.

It is fitting that Del Rio is included in Designer_Mix. Trained as a graphic designer, she entered her current musical incarnation via the visual work she had created for Buenos Aires’ “Digital Cumbía” label, ZZK.

The ZZK family

Though most recognized as a record label, ZZK also functions as a meeting point for artists of various disciplines and styles. “[Graphic design] was a first introduction, but our relationship has become one of friends, of artists, of distinct points of music, audiovisuals, painting… it’s like a family of artists.”

ZZK traces its beginnings to a party started by DJ Nim, Villa Diamante, and El G. They named the night Zizek Club in homage to leftist philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and opened the doors to collaboration with artists looking to fuse electronic music with a range of Latin American music styles. Cumbía, as one of the most popular Latin American musical styles today, is of great importance to ZZK, but other styles find a home here as well, including reggaeton, dancehall, folklore, and dubstep.

Del Rio works mainly with ZZK-affiliated artists, but she works with other artists as well. “If I’m aligned with them, if I like the music, and it makes me interested in working with them, yes, definitely. The set I’m doing for Chancha Vía Circuito is a set I’ve made especially for him.”

With Chancha, she finds a unique sound that speaks to their shared origins. “He has a very unique sound that’s a fusion, a mix of electronic music and sounds that are very folkloric, and cumbía. It references something that’s ours, more of the place that we’re from.”

MonsterShine, Sol Del Rio’s audiovisual show, as premiered at MUTEK.

Mixed media

“I started creating my first visuals for Zizek Club – site-specific installations, designing for the club night, the artists, for album art. I designed masks and various pieces. After that I began jumping into all the audiovisual material.”

Album cover for Tremor.

It seems insufficient to describe Del Rio as a multitalent. In addition to music and visuals, she has exhibited visual work in traditional media, such as sculpture and painting in both watercolour and acrylic. “I really enjoy mixing different expressive media. Right now, what I’m exploring and working in is the audiovisual.”

Electronic music is a new medium for her. “I’ve been composing [electronic music] for two or three years. I’ve always made music, but in different styles, more analog styles, with instruments, with guitars, or in bands. Then I left analog music and came around to making digital music. I think what happened was I started making visuals as a VJ, and I wanted to see it more and more as an instrument, but for images.”

“It’s curious, when you’re live, working with images and modifying them with the beat, it’s like an instrument. So, I think that’s what happened, it was the step of VJing, and then I began to make my own music and combine them.”

Performing MonsterShine at MUTEK.

When it comes to her work, including MonsterShine (the show she’s premiering at MUTEK), the audio and visual come to her together. “It’s of the same hand. For MonsterShine, I composed music at the same time that I was filming. It all went mixing in my head and at the time that I made the edits, it came as if it was happening as one. It was like it was the same thought but in two distinct media – one auditory and the other visual – but it’s the same thing that I’m seeking, that I’m saying.”

“I like the moment where you see the result of the mixing of a track where, for example, you have to see it with some rocks, or volcanoes, or something like that, and what’s happening with the music at that moment – how they live together. Maybe they don’t say the same thing, or you see the result of exactly the two things, the sum of them.”

Women at MUTEK

Several MUTEK attendees I spoke to noted and lamented the absence of women from both the crowds and stages of MUTEK. “It’s strange,” she says, “I’d like there to be more women in the scene. I suppose it might have something to do with technology, or you have to be more masculine, there’s a lot of programming. But I don’t know why it is, really.”

It’s Del Rio’s first visit to Montreal, so she evades making any comparison between Canada and Argentina. She offers, though, a glimpse into the status of women in the scene she knows. “In Argentina there are several women who are VJs. More in clubs, not like visual artists who perform, like in a museum or gallery – that’s almost non-existent. But real-time work, like VJing, with music, yes. There are lots of women who make real-time visuals in clubs.”

Regardless of how well technology and the electronic music scene accommodate women, Del Rio has clearly eked out her place in their midst. Standing in front of the pulsating LED cube displaying her visuals, she takes the microphone towards the end of her set and begins to sing. There are lyrics, but the syllables are long, digitally cut and delayed to evade recognition.

They fade, as do the lights. The beat slows to a halt. Del Rio dedicates her set to the late Federico Rodríguez, a member of the ZZK family who passed away last year. Surrounded by the pulse of technology, Sol Del Rio reminds us there remains a real, beating heart at the centre of it all.

More of Sol Del Rio’s work can be seen on her site, laboratoryo.com.

Aylwin Lo is a Technical Coordinator at CFC Media Lab, providing technical and design support to many of the Media Lab’s activities. He is a graduate of Seneca College and the University of Waterloo.

The author would like to thank Margaret E. Edwards for assistance with the Spanish-language transcription of this interview.

Another amazing festival you can’t miss is coming up!

The International Startup Festival is a two-day conference on the business of startups. It brings together industry veterans and fresh faces, thought leaders and technology giants from around the world, for a series of lean, fast-paced events. It includes startup launches, inspiring keynotes, and deep-dives into hot sectors like mobility, social networking, and gaming. The festival brings a global audience together to cover the entire startup lifecycle: early-stage innovation; scaling the business; and achieving a successful exit.

Continuing our MUTEK interview series, we talk to AntiVJ artist Joanie Lemercier and producer Nicolas Boritch about their approach to mind-bending projected music visuals, their evolution from nightclub VJing to producing large-scale artistic collaborations, and their approach to working as a “visual label.”

Since 2005, AntiVJ has had a resounding influence on visuals in dance clubs, live music performance, and installations. Though they pioneered and perfected the usage of projection mapping – wherein carefully-aligned digital projections create illusions on unconventional surfaces – AntiVJ pledges allegiance to no technique, only a focus “on the use of projected light and its influence on our perception.”

AntiVJ’s 2008 collaboration at Nuit Blanche Brussels introduced the potential of projection mapping to a broad audience.

They’ve also maintained a low public profile, so while their colleague Simon Geilfus prepared for his performance with Mexican ambient electronic musician Murcof at MUTEK 2011, we were fortunate to meet with Lemercier and Boritch to talk about AntiVJ’s motivations, structure, and opinions. Both had just arrived from France, having survived three consecutive sleepless nights’ preparing their next major installation.

Lemercier, a graphic designer, started VJing in Bristol, England in 2005 using personal photography. Thanks to Bristol’s vibrant club scene, he was soon VJing at danceclubs weekly. With Boritch, he organized a monthly event, Cuisine, inviting artists from around Europe. Before long, the two found likeminded talents with ambitions to provide visuals that had a deeper impact than static projections on rectangular screens.

3Destruct, an immersive installation AntiVJ produced for Biennale d’Art contemporain in Louvain, Belgium in 2007.

By 2007, the yet-to-be-formed AntiVJ crew had developed a digital graffiti wall working with new members Romain Tardy (VJ Aalto), Yannick Jacquet (Lego_man), and Olivier Ratsi (emovie).  Jacquet experimented with projecting on transparent materials while Lemercier explored projection mapping. Meanwhile, Lemercier focused his Cuisine recruitment on artists with a strong, identifiable aesthetic such as Pikilipita, a French video artist who hacks gaming devices and cellphones to create visuals, and Sanch, a groundbreaking generative artist with a background in sculpture.

That same year, AntiVJ artists collaborated on a large installation at Nördik Impakt, an annual music festival in Caen, France. AntiVJ soon became an organization facilitating its artists’ collaboration, promotion, funding, and production.

Today, AntiVJ works as a visual analogue to a music label. “We’re really inspired by music labels,” says Lemercier, “it’s a structure to produce and promote some projects or some artists which all have some things in common, but each artist has his own style.”

Boritch, a former music industry professional, agrees. “I grew up with Warp, and Skam, and all those labels, with a really really strong… identity, aesthetics, attitude as well and a vision, a direction.”

The idea of a collective, in contrast, doesn’t fit AntiVJ well. “We would really not like to be a collective… having to be a set number of people always working together and having a really closed sort of structure. I think the visual label makes more sense on different levels.”

Despite the loose approach, It didn’t come automatically. “I think it took us
a while to find our way to work,” says Lemercier, ”we all do solo projects,
sometimes collaboration with one person or two persons.”

AntiVJ’s set developed for Nuits Sonores, a festival hosted in Lyon, France, in 2009.

AntiVJ’s name may seem intentionally ironic, reactionary, or even provocative. “We all come from this VJing world,” says Lemercier, “We’ve all done 8-hour VJ sets to a drum ‘n bass – or techno, or breaks, or whatever – we’d just turn up with our laptop, live, we’d have to improvise and you have to bring your own cables, your ladder, and it’s quite demanding, but we definitely come from this, we all have this background.

“I’m quite proud that I’ve done a couple of hundred gigs just playing live alongside the DJ, and you have to improvise, be good at syncing stuff, try to get good at technical mixing as well. I find it really nice, but at some point we just started doing something different. What I wanted to do was get away from the rectangular screen, so by projecting onto objects, buildings, and that kind of thing.

“People were asking, ‘What’s your job? What are you doing?’ and if we’d answer VJ, or VJing, people would think about something completely different. They would think about multicolour layers and whatever I said before, this kind of old-school video effects that are in pretty much every VJing software. It was more a bit of a joke, this AntiVJ thing.”

“It’s a bit of both,” says Boritch. “It’s a statement because it does mean something that we think and at the same time it’s just a clin d’oeil [an inside joke]… it’s a reference to the fact that all four artists from the beginning are VJs.”

AntiVJ’s focus now is to be seen as an umbrella for its artists, rather than a single entity. “The first couple of years we used this name AntiVJ without putting the artist in front,” admits Lemercier. However, that has changed in the last year. “We’re trying to be like a real label and push the artists as individuals and promote them when one project is an artist project or if one artist is the creative director for one project, we’ll push his name.”

With projection mapping hitting the mainstream – just this week, Wrigleys 5 Gum picked up an FWA award for its crowd-sourced projection mapping advertising campaign – a challenge AntiVJ faces is how to continue making an impact on audiences when their techniques have been appropriated at ever-increasing rates.

“It seems that the advertising industry is taking over video mapping,” says Lemercier, ”I’m trying to imagine what it will be like in a couple of years’ time if companies start putting video projectors in the streets to have, like, permanent 3D advertising using architecture just to sell stuff.”

Commercial work, by the way, has little appeal to AntiVJ. “We get a million emails asking us to do stage design for a beer company or to do some projection for a big brand,” continues Lemercier, ”that’s really not what we’re really interested in from the very beginning… we’re more interested in live performance and installation and things.”

Though his stance is a little more open, Boritch agrees. “We’re not against the idea of making some money, doing one-offs. But at some point you have to make a choice,” he says. “It depends on whether you want to keep your time to carry on developing, carry on experimenting, and not having any – too much pressure, or only the pressure that you decide to take. But not any pressure from big projects and big brands.”

Lemercier keeps a watchful eye on trends and technologies. “I spend about two hours a day watching stuff and reading blogs. I spend loads of time doing research about Kinect, about MIDI controllers, about tracking.”

“You can watch about 10 YouTube pieces every day and I think maybe once a month there’s something quite nice or a visual that hasn’t been done before. But yeah, it’s rare and I wish there would be more new things more often. But we’ll see what’s gonna happen. I’m not sure.”

In the meantime, Boritch is hopeful. “As the equipment and the technique is getting more around and cheaper, hopefully there will be more opportunities for artists to experiment with it and they will bring more new stuff that you didn’t see coming.

“But for the mapping technique itself – and not just for buildings, but the mapping technique – it can be applied to any object and that’s really the core of the AntiVJ label from the beginning. When Joanie was experimenting with mapping around 2006, it was just the idea to turn any object into a display. I think there’s huge potential for decades, hopefully to create new stuff.”

A promotional video of AntiVJ’s collaboration with Murcof. A review of their show at MUTEK 2011 by CFC Media Lab IAEP Guest faculty, Greg J. Smith, can be found at Creative Applications.

Aylwin Lo is a Technical Coordinator at CFC Media Lab, providing technical and design support to many of the Media Lab’s activities. He is a graduate of Seneca College and the University of Waterloo.

Note: The day after posting this interview, Boritch emailed us to clarify a
few points. We revised this post on Wednesday, July 13 to more accurately reflect
AntiVJ’s relationships with its own artists as well as artists they have
collaborated with, and their views on organizational structure.

Greetings! I’m Aylwin Lo, CFC Media Lab’s newest staff addition. As a Tech Coordinator, I provide technical and design support to many of the Media Lab’s exciting activities. Last week I took a trip out of the lab to attend the 12th edition of MUTEK, Montreal’s prestigious and groundbreaking festival for electronic music and digital art.

As in previous years, this year’s MUTEK promised an array of acts ranging from seasoned acts premiering their latest audio-visual work to up-and-comers making a break for it. One of our own current residents, Laurel McDonald, has performed at MUTEK and was recently featured on their website for her performance project combining vocals and visuals, Videovoce.

It was my privilege to be able to interview four of the acts performing at this year’s festival. We’ll be posting roughly an interview a week until they’re all up. Be sure to visit Stabletalk once a week if you aren’t already subscribed to our RSS feed or email updates.

Among the highlights at this year’s MUTEK was the world premiere of Amon Tobin’s ISAM audio-visual installation. Billed as a larger-than-life, “next-level HD” experience, the installation features a 25′ × 14′ × 8′ projection-mapped installation surrounding Tobin as he performs ISAM live.

One of the higher-profile artists carried on the well-respected Ninja Tune label, Tobin’s work has also been featured in video games (Infamous, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory) as well as film (Italian Job, 21). We sat down with Tobin a few hours before a media-only preview of ISAM’s premiere.

So, how’s the installation going for tonight? Is it complete now?

You know, thankfully it all arrived in one piece – well, not one piece. But you know, without being broken or anything. We sighed a collective sigh of relief when it got through customs as well. None of us are used to doing anything of this scale. It’s usually just me and a pair of decks or something and suddenly we’ve got crates of stuff so it was just great: “Okay, everything made it!” and everything’s working and putting it together – it’s good. It’s a nice start.

Where were you bringing it from?

From LA.

So that’s where the space that you have been developing this is.

Well, I say me, but the credit should really be going to the guys at V Squared who have been building it, literally there for hours every day, putting that shit together.

Presumably, the plan is to go on a tour with all of this?

Right, yeah, we’re gonna fly with it for the first time this week, we’re gonna take it to Berlin, which will be another “Ooh shit, how’s it gonna fly,” y’know? Hopefully they won’t lose any pieces of it.

Can you tell me a little about the team and the building process of the installation?

Of course, yeah! There’s a few different people involved: Alex Lazarus, who kind of set up – he’s overseeing the actual physical build of the thing. And Heather [Shaw], who designed the set, and then you’ve got people who are doing the actual visual content, and there’s a whole range there, being overseen by Vello [Virkhaus], who’s the creative director of the project. And he came to my studio and we spent some days going through different ideas and kind of started from the idea of using projection mapping to somehow integrate me into a visual.

I wanted to not be the visual focus of the show. I wanted it to emanate from what I’m doing, but I don’t find my presence on stage particularly visually engaging as an electronic musician. So I wanted to be part of a bigger thing and projection mapping just seemed really interesting. I could see the idea of working with dimensions, illusions, perspective, and so we storyboarded a bunch of ideas and came up with the kind of a loose narrative – and it is a loose narrative – of going into space and having those kinds of experiences and then he took that idea, that rough storyboard, and mapped it out with visual concepts, and got different groups of people to do rough renders of those concepts for each track, and then we would go back and forth and slowly developed it over 5 months.

So, that was all developed at V Squared?

That’s the collective that has been doing all this: Alex, Vello, and all these people are all affiliated.

I’ll have to find out more about them.

Well, I didn’t know much about them when we started.

I’m interested in some of your videogame and soundtrack work. As a part of the Canadian Film Centre we’re interested in narrative and also about things like transmedia, which is a buzzword, but…

I’ll have to use that one.

… well, if you’re working with Ubisoft more you may hear them talking about it! But the work that you’ve done with movies and videogames – both are storytelling, but one is more linear, one is less predictable. How do you factor storytelling and narrative into music? You were talking about a loose narrative for ISAM.

I haven’t had a huge range of experience, to be honest. I’ve only done a few small projects, a few larger ones, but really my experience has been trying to musically articulate a scene – what’s happening at a particular moment. I would probably approach it that way. Looking at the sound aesthetic of the whole project but then taking each scene as its own thing so hopefully you can link it all together through style, but often the actual cut of how things get put together will get changed even after I’ve done my part. So it’s probably not my role to tell an entire story, it’s more to feel it out with the director of the project to say, “We really need this to be emphasized here, and how can we do that with music?” It would be more like that.

And what about the stories in your own work?

I don’t really think in terms of stories or visuals, either, to be honest. When I make my own music – it’s very much that sort of vague, emotional thing really. Even though it’s electronic music I think there’s still something that’s – that’s just what it is. It’s an emotional thing. Technically, I have ideas which I’d like to try and realize and I’ll try and achieve those by trial and error. But when it comes down to the music part it’s about you’re partially there, you’re just feeling your way through it.

One of the things I was also curious about was that in the last couple of albums you’ve moved away from samples and towards having your own foley sounds and then manipulating those. Is there a point where – how do you decide when you’ve manipulated something enough or you want to leave it as it was?

I see it all as sampling in some way just because it’s all about – well, sampling to me from the beginning wasn’t really about, “I can’t get a guitar, so how can I get a guitar in my song? I’ll sample one.” It was more about trying to change the context of something. That’s what I was interested in. If I took Latin drums and put them in an electronic track, I wasn’t really interested in Latin drums. I was interested in what would happen if I took that out of its natural habitat and put it in this new musical environment and the contrast and how this creates this weird dynamic of things are pulling apart, or trying to hold together. I just find that fascinating, so to me that’s what sampling is about personally. About manipulating things.

So it’s the same thing that I’m doing. The source material is different, it’s maybe not from old dusty vinyl so much anymore or at all on this record. But it’s still about changing the roles of sounds and manipulating them into something that I’ve imagined, I guess, or as close as you can.

Back to ISAM – how much room is there in the installation for improv? How do you get that in there when you have a very complicated setup?

It’s not really – well, that’s not true, there’s some – I guess I’m going to wait to see how brave I get with that because it’s – we’ve tightly choreographed so much of what’s going on but it’s a performance and it’s not like a party, really. It’s not entertainment which maybe sounds a bit weird. It’s more of a personal presentation of what I’m doing and I hope people are entertained by it. But it’s not like I’m like, “How can I make this as fun as possible for everyone” and interacting with the audience. It’s more about, “This is really what I care about. This what I’ve been doing, I really want to share it with you. Hope you guys are really into this.” It’s more like that. So improvisation for me is about feeling what the crowd – doing where they’re going and adapting to that, riding that wave, which is interesting to do as well, but I’m much more dictatorial when I (laughs) – It’s more like this is what I really believe in.

I think that’s valid too.

I think it’s different, that’s all.

Aylwin Lo is a Technical Coordinator at CFC Media Lab, providing technical and design support to many of the Media Lab’s activities. He is a graduate of Seneca College and the University of Waterloo.

EIGHT pitchers will race the clock to win over a live Banff audience with a 30-second elevator pitch for a cross-platform branded entertainment project that fits our creative brief.

THREE finalists will go head-to-head pitching to the judges – a star panel of industry gatekeepers from across the media ecosystem.

ONE winner will be crowned the ultimate deal maker by the judges and audience taking home a VIP Deal Makers Prize Pack!

Enter Now!

Stay tuned for details about the CFC Media Lab’s involvement at Banff World Media Festival!

The Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF), the only festival of its kind in North America, is a public film festival that reaches over 1.3 million subway commuters daily. Recently named one of MovieMaker Magazine’s “20 Coolest Film Festivals,” TUFF takes place September 9 – 18, 2011 on Onestop platform screens across the Toronto subway system.

Award-winning Canadian filmmaker, Atom Egoyan, will guest judge the fifth annual Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF), selecting the top films of the festival.

Filmmakers, animators and video artists are invited to submit one-minute silent films an urban population. TUFF pays artist fees and awards thousands in cash and prizes.

Deadline for submissions to TUFF is July 15, 2011. TUFF is free to submit prior to June 1, 2011. After that date, there will be submission fees: $10 (June 1 – June 30) and $15 (July 1 – July 15). Films can be submitted through the TUFF Website.

5 Years and Still TUFF!





Citizens of the Digital Age, join the beat of Common Pulse, an art and media festival celebrating and exploring new ideas in media, technology and society.

Common Pulse: A weekend long media art extravaganza in rural Durham (June 10-12, 2011)

Immerse yourself in cutting edge performances by world music ensemble, Eccodek, Montreal’s freestyling sonic chameleon Alexis O’Hara and our own musical comedy duo Parsons & Morel (aka The Funny Ones). Engage with media art exhibitions that interact in unexpected ways, featuring CFC Media Lab alumna, Isabella Stefanescu and Steve Daniels, as well as our five artists-in-residence Ken Gregory, Laura Kikauka, Karo Szmit, Jessica Field and Andrew McPherson. (The five will be here creating new work from May 19 to June 10.  They’ll be giving talks and hosting hands-on workshops during that time.)

Participate in an ongoing, three-day dialogue with over a dozen other artists and researchers from across Canada and beyond. In the Common Pulse Symposium we’ll be looking at how media is reshaping our culture and ourselves: how consumers are being transformed into producers, how private citizens are adopting public personas, and how ideas evolve in an era of file-sharing, sampling and open source

COMMON PULSE will present a forum for presentations and discussion during a two-day symposium. Eight artists and curators including David Clark, alumnus of the CFC Media Lab, Martha Ladly, faculty at CFC Media Lab, and Michelle Kasprzak, former Research and Technology Manager at the CFC Media Lab will be invited to present their experience creating work in the context of university research.  For more details please visit their site: http://www.commonpulse.ca/symposium.php

Common Pulse is set in and around the Durham Art Gallery, only two hours from Toronto. The festival is a collaboration between the Gallery, the GIN Mill Collective and OCAD University.

Get tickets and updated info at www.commonpulse.ca

For more information: info@commonpulse.ca

Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF) was just named one of MovieMaker Magazine’s “20 Coolest Film Festivals” in the Fall 2010 edition. TUFF is the only Canadian festival that made the cut this year!

Published in NYC, MovieMaker is the the USA’s leading resource on the art and business of making movies and the world’s most widely read independent movie magazine.

Check out who else is up to snuff: http://www.moviemaker.com/festivals/article/20_coolest_film_festivals_2010_20101201

For more on TUFF: www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com

All I have to say is… ICE COLD! Way to go!

Really… Was there ever any doubt? CONGRATS TEAM!
(Check out our original post here: stabletalk.cfccreates.com/2010/11/26/out-my-window-nominated-for-idfa-doc-lab-award)

More deets on the Highrise blog: highrise.nfb.ca/2010/11/omw-wins-idfa-doclab-award

Jacqueline Nuwame, Sr. Training Programs Manager at the CFC Media Lab, had the honour of speaking at last week’s HTMlles Festival of Media Art and Networked Practices 2010 in Montreal.

Founded in 1997 and produced by Studio XX, the HTMlles Festival of Media Art and Networked Practices explores various facets of digital technology and the web as a medium for the creation and exhibition of women’s digital artworks. The festival occupies the singular position of being one of the only Quebecois and Canadian events entirely dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of independent media art, its particularity also being emphasized by its feminist approach, concerns and engagements.

Also featured at the festival was First Person Digital, produced in partnership with the NFB, which featured some amazing female-only work.

Take a peek at these other great projects:

www.itschinesetome.net
www.otandayanaan.net
www.perfectplum.com

A big shout-out to Studio XX for organizing this great event!

Congrats to NFB/Interactive and Gerry Flahive, Kat Cizek, Branden Batuhin, Heather Frise, and the hundreds of photographers and researchers that made HIGHRISE: Out My Window happen! You deserve this nod!

IDFA presents a new documentary award: the IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling. The prize (Canon 5D Mark II camera, made available by Canon) is awarded to the DocLab project that uses digital technology in the most creative and effective way to tell a documentary story.

The award winner will be determined by an international jury consisting of Alexandre Brachet (Gaza-Sderot.com, Prison Valley 2009), Antoinette Hoes (Leylines) and Zach Wise (The New York Times).

Check out DocLab: the official new media program of IDFA, showcasing new forms of documentary storytelling, digital technology and media art.

The judging happens today! Best of luck, team!

Out My Window:
CFC Media Lab co-produces with NFB the installation Out My Window: Interactive Views from the Global Highrise, one of the world’s first 360 degree webdocumentaries, set to premiere at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

This co-production brings together NFB’s Out My Window team led by Katerina Cizek with Artist Priam Givord, and CFC Media Lab team David Bouchard, Galen Scorer and Ana Serrano to create a more than life size version of Out My Window.

It explores the state of our urban planet through the people who look out onto the world from highrise windows.

Out My Window features 90 minutes of documentary material from 13 cities around the world, shot in 13 languages. As the director, it’s been an honour to work on this huge global collaborative effort over the last year: we worked with over 100 photographers, journalists, architects, residents, activists, researchers around the world to bring you these incredible stories of inspiration, community and resilience.

- Katerina Cizek
Director of Out My Window

(Quote from IDFA DocLab Article by Caspar Sonnen. Read the full article here: http://blog.doclab.org/2010/10/idfa-doclab-presents-out-my-window-by-katerina-cizek)

CFC Media Lab Alumni Maggie Greyson (Writer/Producer), Kyree Fisher (Editor), and Faustine Faubert (Logo Animator) have the opportunity to introduce their short film It’s Time to Answer the Question, Does a Virus Cause Breast Cancer in Women? to the Opening Night audience of 2010 Breast Fest Short Film competition …But they need your vote!Their film has been selected by judges as one of the top films submitted to the world’s first breast cancer film festival, which is in its third year in Toronto.

The festival will run November 19-21, 2010.

PSST! Your votes will make perfect little virtual birthday gifts for Maggie! *Everyone here at The Lab wishes you a wonderful Birthday!*

Make sure InterAccess Gallery (9 Ossington Ave.) is a stop on your route for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010!

Here is a preview of what’s there to explore!

I Should Be Dreaming of Butterflies – By: Sharon Switzer
Voicings - By: Dawn Buie, Liz Gallo, David Goorevitch
DruMeBa – By: Dee Balkissoon, Cathy Chen, Orla Garriques, Conor Holler
Neighbourhoodie - By: Rose Bianchini, Kathleen Climie, David McCallum
Unit N-O14 - By: Camille Betts, Justin Ferrato

September 9, 2010

Dear Friends,

I hope this letter finds everyone well, rested from a glorious summer, eager to embrace fall, and ready to rock n’ roll through to the rest of 2010. This August I was lucky to have spent some time in the mountains of the French High Alps at a place called Les Terraces, above the small alpine village La Grave — that’s The Grave to you. The place feels totally different from Banff, — less wilderness-y, though still wild, and feels more like a portal into the 12th century.

Here’s a picture taken from one of our walks!

Now, given what you see here, you’d think the mountains would keep thoughts of work at bay. But I must admit I would often think of the Lab. Before you groan and mutter “crazyworkaholic” let me explain.

MY TOP FIVE REASONS WHY IT WAS OKAY TO THINK OF THE CFC MEDIA LAB in the FRENCH ALPS:

1. Galen Scorer, former CFC Media Lab Research & Tech Manager is sleeping on my couch as we rush to premiere our new interactive production! Alum, Patrick Dinnen is part of the team building this exciting new work.
   
   CFC Media Lab in co-production with TIFF, will be launching an installation entitled “What’s Your Essential Cinema?” on Saturday Sept. 11 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
   
   As you enter TIFF Bell Lightbox, you will encounter an interactive projection above the box office: a dynamic visualization of kinetic images from each of the Essential 100 Films. Text in “your essential cinema” — one film from the Essential 100. The system takes note of it and adds it to every other person’s choice. The projected visualization then changes as the difference between what you think and what TIFF thinks is displayed on the screen. “What’s Your Essential Cinema?” pits the general public against the experts and puts you at the center of the conversation.

   A CFC Media Lab and TIFF Production
   Creative team: Ana Serrano, Galen Scorer and Patrick Dinnen
   September 12 – October 23

2. Alumni David McCallum, Rose Bianchini, Kathleen Climie, Sharon Switzer, Angella Mackey, & Pearl Chen are currently rocking out (in spirit and in person) in California under the helm of Leonardo Dell’Anno!
   
   CFC Media Lab launches Project HoodiePlay and Let’s Build Our World Intentionally at 2010 01SJ Biennial.

   The 2010 01SJ (ZER01, San Jose) Biennial is predicated on the notion that as artists, designers, engineers, architects, marketers, corporations and citizens we have the tools to (re)build the world, conceptually and actually, virtually and physically, poorly and better, aesthetically and pragmatically, in both large and small ways.

   Under the theme “Build Your Own World,” the CFC Media Lab will be leading a series of workshops where participants can make their Hoodie “zombie-tag” ready for a widespread, participatory game. There won’t be cut throat competition. And Heidi Klum won’t show up. But you will get to make your own signature “wearable Hoodie” that enables you to play Zombie Tag during the AbsoluteZER0 street festival on Friday, September 17. Project HoodiePlay is based on a wearable game by Rose Bianchini, Kathleen Climie and David McCallum created during their residency at CFC Media Lab’s TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program.

   Special shout out goes to Kate Hartman, CFC Media Lab guest faculty for helping us design the workshop!

   CFC Media Lab and Art for Commuters founder, Sharon Switzer will also present the “Best Of” works from the Art For Commuters library that speak to the theme of conscious creation. Screenings will happen during 01SJ as part of the Future Films program.

3. Nuit Blanche is almost upon us and we have a launch to prepare for Oct. 2nd! CFC Media Lab IAEP Coordinator Kimberly Dean, while not running stabletalk, is helping fearless leader Jacqueline Nuwame make this happen at our new venue partner InterAccess!
   
   At this year’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche the CFC Media Lab will present Close Encounters, an annual exhibition of work by residents of the TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program. These interactive media projects run the gamut from interactive sound pieces to iPhone wearable gaming systems. From those which explore notions of first contact, to others which invite us to reimagine play. Regardless of technology platform or theme, each of these projects makes us look at things a different way. Shaving cream, pillows, mud – they can all become vehicles for our persistent visions. The gallery will be transformed into a space for inquisitive discovery and play. Created by: Dee Balkissoon, Camille Betts, Rose Bianchini, Dawn Buie, Cathy Chen, Kathleen Climie, Justin Ferrato, Liz Gallo, Orla Garriques, David Goorevitch, Conor Holler, David McCallum and featured Alumni Artist, Sharon Switzer.

   Location: InterAccess Gallery (9 Ossington Ave. Toronto)
   VIP Launch (Invite Only): September 30 from 7-10pm
   Open to Public: October 2 from 7pm-7am

4. Prototype Launch? Hell ya, we can do more!  So, CFC Media Lab Digital Production Manager, Steve Ferguson and our new Research and Technology Manager, Dave Kretz are working alongside our new partners the Royal Conservatory of Music to create a whole new work for Nuit Blanche.
   
   Commissioned by TELUS, Musical Rumble: Jazz vs Classical, is an interactive experience where larger-than-life musicians are projected onto the TELUS Centre windows while audiences use their smartphones to play a virtual game where jazz and classical musicians battle for your vote. Stop by the Bloor Street courtyard of the TELUS Centre (273 Bloor Street West, Toronto) on October 2nd from 7pm-7am to see, hear and interact with the projected performances!

   and last, but not least,

5. Jacqueline Nuwame, CFC Media Lab Senior Programs Manager, has redefined multitasking as she helps me keep all of the above running smoothly while ushering a new group of residents for the Fall 2010 TELUS IAEP session!
   
   The average age of this group is sweet-thirty and boasts the following stellar individuals:
   
   Ryan Bigge is a Toronto-based freelance journalist and content strategist with a focus on technology and cultural trends. His publication credits include the New York Times Magazine and the Toronto Star.
   
   Edwin Lara is a digital artist whose recent work was on display at the Launch Projects art gallery for the “Do Artist Dream of Electric Easels” exhibition. Edwin’s studies include everything from graphic design, marketing to art history.

   Dylan Reibling hails from a small rural community in southwestern Ontario. He makes documentaries, narrratives, and experimental films and organizes events and art installations.

   Vanessa Shaver is an award-winning writer and filmmaker who possesses a passion for story well-told, character well-wrought and concept well-formed. Vanessa has worked with Shaftesbury Films, Henry Less Productions, ImagiNation Film and Television, marblemedia and Big Studios.

   Bobie Taffe is an independent interactive cross platform Producer. Her production company, Taffe Entertainment, produces feature films/documentaries/dramatic series/lifestyle programs that focus on exploring issues of race, sexuality, self-image, multiculturalism and social justice. Bobie has been actively working in the Canadian Film and Television Industry for a little more than a decade.

   Ron Wild worked in traditional Civil / Structural disciplines before earning an MBA from the University of Western Ontario. Ron managed small hi-tech venture companies for over 15 years before transitioning into creating and exhibiting digital art.

   Tsu-Ching Yu with a Bachelor’s degree in computer science and diploma in digital media at the Recording Arts Canada Digital Arts College, is a lyric coloratura soprano. She is also an ACTRA stunt performer for film and television who trains in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

I was thinking of listing my Top 10 Reasons…but got tired after five. (Now I see why I may have needed to climb almost 15,782 ft to get away from it all.) But the reality is that I wasn’t letting thoughts of work destroy my zen mountain moments: I thought about the team of staff, alumni, faculty and former colleagues of CFC Media Lab because I was in awe of how much amazing work they are doing. (Notice I didn’t even mention any of the other work our esteemed community has been building within their own corporations and practice! Way to go Caitlin! Woo hoo Gorbets for the San Jose Airport! Congrats, Martha, on finishing up your comprehensives! Dare I go on?)

And as many of you know, there are another five projects lurking around the corner ready to be announced after we get through the 01SJ/TIFF/NUIT Blanche triage.

So here I am sitting in a dusty hallway of the new Bell Lightbox, high from sleep-deprivation, copying and pasting text into the Max Patch for Galen.  The plug behind me does not work, my black skirt is now drywall white, and sure I miss the mountains. But I’m really excited about this Fall and seeing everyone this weekend for our annual BBQ.

Namaste to all,

Ana

Calling all talented femmes!

The HTMlles Festival of Media Art + Digital Culture 2010 (htmlles.net) is currently seeking proposals for its 9^th edition, to be held in Montreal, under the theme of <home></land>.

Initiated by Studio XX (www.studioxx.org) in 1997, and evolving as quickly as technology itself, the HTMlles Festival is an international platform dedicated to the presentation of women’s independent media artworks from all facets of contemporary technological creation, including but not limited to:

• digital storytelling
• cyber art
• short film and video art
• audio and electronic art
• installation
• locative media
• 3D animation
• game art
• virtual reality
• electronic publishing
• design
• performance
• interdisciplinary practices

As a meeting place at the crossroads of creativity, technology and a wide spectrum of feminist perspectives, the HTMlles Festival focuses on the public presentation of innovative media artworks, panel discussions and workshops, creating dynamic connections between audiences, artists, cultural practitioners, curators, producers, educators, scholars, students and technophiles.

nextMEDIA+Banff2010 will be chock-full of inspiring conversations and exciting keynotes!
Still trying to decide when to be where and where to be when? Check out the CFC Media Lab’s top picks!

To register for Banff2010, visit: https://registration.achillesmedia.com/delegate_registration/list_products?event_id=19

To check out the full schedule, visit: http://www.banff2010.com/schedule.dynamic.php?

On.Fire (onfire2010.ca) is the national media arts conference and festival of the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA), a non-profit organization representing over 80 artist-run media arts centres serving more than 12,000 artists and cultural workers across Canada.

On.Fire 2010 will run June 15-19, 2010. Highlights include Opening Keynote with Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller on June 15th at 6:30pm, and Closing Keynote with Rafael Lozano Hemmer on June 19th at 6:30pm.

Check out the full schedule here: onfire2010.ca/?page_id=236

To register for On.Fire 2010, visit: onfire2010.ca/?page_id=3

Saturday is the perfect day to catch a symposium or two!

Non Linear Storytelling: Designing Interactive Narratives
Victoria University: 140 Charles Street West, Room 215, Toronto

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
As the shift toward interactive screens continues, designing narratives for the digital landscape is a skill that’s increasingly in demand. This master class session will bust creative thinking out of old models and introduce you to multi-plot structures, current forms of transmedia and interactive digital narratives.

Moderator:
Siobhan O’Flynn – Transmedia Storytelling Consultant; CFC Media Lab Faculty

Shifting Landscapes: Successful Transmedia & Multiplatform Projects
Victoria University: 140 Charles Street West, Room 215, Toronto

1:30 PM – 3:00 PM
Through examining a variety of case studies, this panel will explore how approaches to content delivery and use of technology relate to audience consumption habits, and fan participation. Discussion will highlight the realities of how these trends are causing shifts in the way audiences, creators and funders are approaching media.

Moderator:
Anthea Foyer – Co-Founder & Director, The Labs; former CFC Media Lab Staff

Panelists:
Alex Mayhew – Trans-media Creative Consultant; CFC Media Lab Guest Faculty
Howard Rosen – Business Affairs Manager, Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund
Victoria Ha – Partner, Stitch Media; CFC Media Lab Alumnus

Atmosphere Industries (atmosphereindustries.com), comprised of CFC Media Lab Alumnus and recent addition to our Guest Faculty roster, Kate Raynes-Goldie, Luke Walker, David Fono and Alex Raynes-Goldie, has created Gentrification: The Game!

In Gentrification: The Game!, small teams of players compete to collect properties and transform the neighbourhood. As developers, they’ll develop swanky lofts, erect coffee shops, and raise property values. As locals, they’ll form BIAs, build community centres, and try to thwart the developers.

With Gentrification: The Game!, anybody can enjoy the thrills and spills of urban renewal, without being directly exposed to hipsters, Starbucks, or a feeling of security mixed with vague unease… Along the way there will be art, vicious debates, and possibly an Apple Store.

Gentrification: The Game! has been selected for the “Come Out and Play Festival” in New York (the sole Canadian selection featured!), June 4-6, 2010. Kate and David will present their game to Toronto’s Kensington crowd as part of the Pedestrian Sundays program starting July 25, 2010.

comeoutandplay.org/2010_gentrification

Also, be sure to catch Kate Raynes-Goldie on the NXNEi panel “Can Social Games Do Social Good?” http://www.nxne.com/interactive/nxnei-presentations/#sgames

Regent Park Film Festival

The 8th Annual Regent Park Film Festival (RPFF) happening November 4-7, offers films from around the world to a neighborhood of people rarely exposed to independent, foreign, animation, shorts, experimental, documentary, or even Canadian films.

RPFF seeks works made by filmmakers from multi-cultural background and/or celebrate differences and solidarity, immigrant experiences, urbanization, inner city issues, cultural identity and multicultural relationships.

Submissions deadline: May 3, 2010 June 4, 2010
NO ENTRY FEE

For more details dowload guidelines and entry form here: www.regentparkfilmfestival.com/submissions.html

401 Richmond Street West, #354
Toronto, Ontario  M5V 3A8
416.599.RPFF (7733)
director@regentparkfilmfestival.com

www.regentparkfilmfestival.com
www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26624117559
twitter.com/rpff

CFC WORLDWIDE SHORT FILM FESTIVAL NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS 2010
Send us your shorts now!

Now in its 16th year, the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival (WSFF) is the premier venue for the exhibition and promotion of short film in North America. The WSFF offers one of the largest prize packages for short film in the world, presenting over $60 000 in cash and prizes.

As one of only three festivals in Canada accredited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences®, winners of the Best Live-Action Short and Best Animated Short are eligible for the Academy Awards®; while the WSFF’s Canadian award winners are eligible for the Genie® Awards. (UK filmmakers take note: we are also an accredited qualifying festival for the BAFTAs.)

In addition to screenings, the WSFF draws buyers, distributors, industry delegates and filmmakers together from across the globe. The Short Films BIG IDEAS Symposium, offers essential professional development opportunities in a series of seminars, panels and workshops on the art and commerce of short filmmaking. Boasting the largest marketplace for the sale and acquisition of short films in North America, which is attended by buyers, distributors, and programmers, the Festival Business Centre offers an unparalleled opportunity for filmmakers to advance their careers.

Online Entry is available through www.withoutabox.com
For a downloadable entry forms, visit http://www.worldwideshortfilmfest.com/festival_info/to_enter.html

For more information, please contact us at shortfilmfest@cfccreates.com
Phone: 416-445-1446 x405 | Fax: 416-445-9481
2489 Bayview Ave. Toronto, ON, Canada, M2L 1A8
cfccreates.com
www.worldwideshortfilmfest.com

TORONTO URBAN FILM FESTIVAL
Silent 1-Minute Films on the TTC

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: JULY 15, 2009
Trinity Square Video Pitch Deadline: June 15, 2009

Share your film with an audience of 1.3 million daily commuters. Finalists selected by a stellar panel of guest jurors, with top prizes awarded by this year’s guest judge, writer/director/actor Don McKellar.

ABOUT TUFF:
The Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF) is the only film festival of its kind in North America, and one of the largest in the world with an average daily viewing audience of over 1 million. The 3rd annual TUFF is programmed on the Onestop Network of 270 subway platforms screens throughout the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). We accept all genres of film, video, and animation from both professional and amateur filmmakers. All films screened are silent and 1-minute in length. TUFF is free to enter and open to both Canadian and international submissions.

2009 SUBMISSION CATEGORIES: Urban Diversity – Urban Encounters – Urban Ideas – Urban Imaginary – Urban Journeys – Urban Natural – Urban Secrets

AWARDS:
1ST PLACE – 4.5 star trip for two to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
2nd/3rd  PLACE – TBA

NAISH MCHUGH AWARD FOR EMERGING FILMMAKERS
$2,500 given to the film that best captures the unique qualities of Toronto, created by an emerging filmmaker living and/or working within the Greater Toronto Area (416/905 area code). Sponsored by the City of Toronto through the TFTO.

TRINITY SQUARE VIDEO PITCH AWARD:
NEW DEADLINE: JUNE 15, 2009
Looking for production help to make your TUFF film? Send a one or two paragraph pitch that describes your 1-minute film idea. The seven submissions that best capture the spirit of this year’s TUFF themes will receive a full TSV membership and up to $600 of in-kind support towards both the production and post-production of their TUFF movie. Send your pitch with CV and contact info to: A4C@torontourbanfilmfestival.com.

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO SUBMIT YOUR FILM ONLINE: www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com

anthea.xo

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=78538076429&ref=mf

www.initlive.com

Our Subtle Technologies Early Bird Special has been extended!

We are pleased to continue to offer the fantastic discount for our Full Festival Pass for 10 more days!

The deal expires on May 22nd, so get your tickets today!

Did you know you could make art out of bacteria? What artifacts will time traveling future-archaeologists bring back from tomorrow?  How does a compelling story unfold through social networks?  Did you know that bacteria, our nervous systems and social groups all network in the same way? The answers to these questions and others are waiting to be discovered at the Subtle Technologies Festival, this summer in Toronto.

Come join us for workshops, symposium, galleries, performances, and social events inspired by Networks of all kinds – neural, biological, genetic, dynamic information, virtual, social and even a visit to our ubiquitously networked future.

Come to the place where Art and Science meet!

June 10-14 2009

For more information and to get your tickets please visit our website:

http://www.subtletechnologies.com
Sincerely,

Star C. Spider
Festival Production Manager
Subtle Technologies Festival
star@subtletechnologies.com
www.subtletechnologies.com
Twitter:  @SubtleTech

http://arexistence.blogspot.com
www.alternaterealityevents.com

Piksel [1] is an international event for artists and developers working with Free/Libre and Open Source technologies in artistic practice. Part workshop, part festival, it is organised in Bergen, Norway,and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of FLOSS & art.

This years event – Piksel09 – continues the exploration of free/libre and open source technologies and it’s myriad of expressions within the arts.

Piksel09 is organised in collaboration with Gallery 3,14 [2] and Lydgalleriet [3] which will host this years exhibitions, Bergen Kunstmuseum [4] hosting the presentations and panels, and Bergen Kunsthall/Landmark [5] hosting the evening events.

[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

** open CALL for PROJECTS

For the exhibitions and other parts of the programme we currently seek projects in the following categories:

1. Installations

Projects to be included in the exhibitions at Galleri 3,14 and Lydgalleriet. The works must be programmed by and running on free and open source software and/or open/DIY hardware.

2. Audiovisual performance

Live art realised by the use of free and open source software. We specially encourage live coding and open/DIY hardware projects to apply.

3. Presentations

Innovative DIY hardware and audiovisual software tools or software art released under an open licence. (Also includes presentations of artistic projects realised using these technologies.)

4. Workshops

Hands on workshops utilising free software and/or open/DIY hardware for artistic use.

!!!!!!!!!!  Deadline – july 15. 2009 !!!!!!!!!!

Please use the online submit form at: http://piksel.no/ocs

or send documentation material – preferably as a URL to online documentation with images/video to piksel09 [AT] piksel [DOT] no

[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

Contact:

Piksel
att: Gisle Fr0ysland
Georgernes Verft 12
5011 Bergen
Norway

More info: http://www.piksel.no

Piksel09 is supported by Arts Council Norway, City of Bergen Cultural Office, Hordaland County Cultural Office and others.

links:

[1] http://www.piksel.no
[2] http://www.stiftelsen314.com
[3] http://www.lydgalleriet.no
[4] http://www.bergenartmuseum.no
[5] http://www.kunsthall.no/default.asp?k=6

CODE Live Bridging Art, Music, Performance and the Audience in a Digital World

Invitation for applications This notice is an invitation for Canadian artists and arts organizations to submit applications to CODE Live , a 17 day event during the 2010 Cultural Olympiad that will engage audiences with eye-catching and inspiring interactive digital media in music, the visual and performing arts. The exhibitions and performances will showcase leading-edge works from local, national and international artists.

As part of its programming, CODE Live is interested in existing works from emerging artists, works that are interactive and reflect the theme of : Bridging.

(Please see below) The recommended budget range for submitted applications is $2 to $10,000 CAD.

CODE Live is a premiere event of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad and will be the finale for CODE, the Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition. CODE is a suite of programs designed so people can connect, create and collaborate in the digital space leading up to and during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. CODE launches in early May 2009 at vancouver2010.com/code.

Theme of CODE Live : Bridging Art often reflects life: the times we live in, the changes to our world, the trends and the values people hold on to. Using the theme of Bridging, CODE Live will explore how we experience technology, our planet, its ecology and the people living within it. As the world becomes more closely intertwined, so too does the art world. People are creating bridges not only in reality, but in the virtual world as well. Technology has altered how the Earth is seen, from both a cultural and ecological perspective. Works of art selected for CODE Live will explore how people interact with art, how they physically respond to a piece or how it challenges them to become part of the piece and the greater process. In today’s art world we see how interdisciplinary works crossing mediums are creating new messages for their audiences. Bridging aims to reflect this world, looking at these messages through the multiplicity of disciplines that have merged with new technologies. Submissions regarding the above artistic forms and the festival theme are encouraged. APPLICATION DEADLINE: all submissions must be received by May 31, 2009.

CODE Live A Festival Bridging Art, Music and Audiences in a Digital World Submission requirements Please send all inquiries and submissions to code@vancouver2010.com. (Please note all submissions much include the attached information and will not be processed otherwise.) Item One: Name, address, phone, e-mail and other pertinent contact information. Item Two: Artist CV of existing work for all participants in the application (twopage maximum per CV) Item Three: Three- to five-page synopsis of art. Item Four: Technical information, including: a. length of piece b. dimensions and size of the installation c. technical requirements for the installation of the proposed piece d. images/video or links to the current work and previous work e. proposed budget for exhibition installation (NB. If the proposed piece is for a performance or an outdoor installation, please put in any detail needed for the specific installation).

Important: Please e-mail the document below as a compressed itemized folder to code@vancouver2010.com. Please address each e-mail with the title: CODE Live Submission Call: (Artist/Org Name) APPLICATION DEADLINE: all submissions must be received by May 31, 2009. Applications can be also be mailed to: CODE Live Cultural Olympiad 3585 Graveley Street, Vancouver, BC V5K 5J5

Super Hero, Smoky Mountain, 2008

CFC Media Lab Alumni Andrew Mallis has created a street level installation that allows viewers to have Mateo Guez’ images delivered virtually to their mobile phones.

STEPHEN BULGER GALLERY & CAMERA present:
OFF WORLD     Mateo Guez

Please join us for the opening reception for “Off World”, an installation of images and videos by Mateo Guez part of the 2009 Contact Toronto Photography Festival.

Mateo Guez eloquently captures the lives of children who live, work and play in Smoky Mountain. One of the world’s worst slums, where entire families scavenge to survive, Smoky Mountain is a mound of refuse outside of Manila, in the central Philippines, named after the methane-heavy mist hovering over it.

Guez shows us children whose wonderment and joy transcend a backdrop of extreme adversity. We cannot help but re-examine our quest for meaning in objects faced with the reality of those who have less than nothing and live off the excess of others.

Our view of the world changed with the invention of the camera, and with each new technological advancement in photography our relationship to the observable world is redefined. Kodak’s Brownie changed the way we photograph by bringing the camera into the homes of everyday people; the Polaroid camera gave us the near-instantaneous image; the digital camera engendered infinitely manipulable multiples, re-broadcasted and shared. Guez challenges our preconceptions of the camera by using his Motorola Z10 mobile phone as an extension of his body to frame his direct experience.

In a street-level installation designed by Andrew Mallis, viewers can engage in a unique forum with Guez’s video wall while stills are delivered virtually to their mobile phones. The gallery is immaterial and the image, though multiple, is personal; both exist in the intimate, yet social, spaces now extended by mobile media.
Curated by Sanaz Mazinani.

MAY 1 – 31
Opening Reception MAY 2, 2 – 5PM

1028 Queen Street West, Toronto  M6J 1H6
24-hour street-level installation
(416) 504-0575
info@bulgergallery.com

For more information please visit:

http://offworld.bulgergallery.com/

http://theofilms.blogspot.com/

http://andrewmallis.com <http://andrewmallis.com/>

http://www.contactphoto.com <http://www.contactphoto.com/>

Come to Toronto’s HarbourFront Centre for the HarbourKIDS Festival this Victoria Day Weekend!

The interactive artwork ShadowD
- imagined and prototyped in the CFC Media Lab 2008 -
will be installed in the famous Enwave Theatre!

Growing from the artwork “shh aah ohh”
created in the 2008 TELUS interactive Art and Entertainment Program
by Nicholas Longstaff and Rea McNamara

ShadowD puts YOU in the spotlight, and plays in ways a normal shadow could never imagine.  This delightfully devious digital shadow can do everything that you can – and MORE!

Whether young or old, short or tall, professional dancer, novice or wheelchair rider, you will love the way ShadowD make you move… for every move you make in this magical light-and-shade environment gets mimicked by your digital shadow-twin.  Soon though, your twin decides to take the lead and you discover that you can grow and shrink, twist and melt, change colour and even disappear!

You’ve never heard a shadow speak before?  Well ShadowD can, by borrowing the voice talents of renowned sound poets a.rawlings, Lillian Allen and Rob Read it sings, giggles, gulps and responds to the shapes you make on its giant screen.  You’ll be laughing along too, as kids convince parents to wiggle and shake, and to play out little scenes in light and dark for friends to watch and enjoy.

Play solo, in pairs, groups or gangs; this one-of-a-kind installation will change the way you move, expand the way you think about the dark, and light up your imagination for years to come!

EVENT DATA:
MAY  16,  17,  18 – 11:00 to 5:00
HarbourKIDS Festival 2009: Impact! at The Harbourfront Centre – Toronto
FREE events all weekend for the whole family!
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto, ON M5J 2G8
(416) 973-4000

Visit the HarbourFront Centre’s events guide at:

http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/harbourkids/events.cfm?festival_id=29

<http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/harbourkids/events.cfm?festival_id=29>
See MORE about ShadowD at:

http://NicholasLongstaff.ca

The subtle technologies festival is at a very important point in our evolution and we are excited to announce that we are hiring a general manager! this is an interesting, sky is the limit position for a capable manager who wants to work with progressive ideas driving new artistic practices. please  send this out to your networks!
–
Camille Turner

Download the job posting here.

Women in Film Festival in Vancouver seeks interactive projects for their New Media Day on March 4th, 2009.

The women in film festival is a four day event that showcases national and international female projects in screen based media. The first day of the festival is dedicated to new media production and its a full day of panels discussions, networking events, pitches of new applications, and best of all- a new media exhibit that would transform vancity theatre into a great interactive space. This day would bring together content creators, visual artists and technology groups, and encourage discussions about new forms of interactivity and storytelling.

I am looking for projects that push the boundaries of traditional story telling and use interactive methods to engage the audience in the piece. Anything from an art installation, non linear films to mobile games and interactive performances. We are presenting projects from the digital media centre, Vancouver art galleries, mobile groups, national and international companies.

Selected artists will receive 2 festival passes with access to all the film screening, galas, panels and network events. They would also have a great opportunity to present their work to key personals in the new media industry in Canada. Out of town artists can also receive assistance in accommodation and travel expenses during their stay.

If interested please send a link to your work with a short synopsis and what equipment would you need to present it at the theatre. For more information about women in film and the  festival program please visit:
http://www.womeninfilm.ca/

Sincerely,

Maayan Cohen
New Media Curator
Women in Film Vancouver
maayanco AT gmail.com
778.990.1735

Stop Them in Their Tracks
Final Submissions Call for TUFF

DEADLINE EXTENDED – JULY 7, 2008

Next MONDAY is the final day for submissions to the 2008 Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF).

Share your work with an audience of over 1 million people who ride the rails and another 50,000 who visit our Website and YouTube channel.

Now in its second year, TUFF is the only festival of its kind in North America. TUFF runs concurrent with TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) when Toronto — and the TTC — play host to thousands of film fans and film professionals alike.

Professional and first-time filmmakers are encouraged to submit their films, videos and animations to one of 7 urban themed categories. All submissions must be silent and exactly 60 seconds in length.

Filmmakers retain all rights, and will receive an honorarium of $150 per selected film. Prizes include a trip for 2 to Aruba from Belair Travel; a Sony HD Camcorder with accessories; Sony Digital Cameras; MP3 Players; dinner at the Drake Hotel with a notable filmmaker.

Submit your film now at: www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com <http://www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com/>

TUFF is co-produced by Art for Commuters (A4C) and Onestop Media Group.

Contact: Sharon Switzer, TUFF Executive Director, at A4C at torontourbanfilmfestival.com

Working alongside renowned architectural firm KPMB on SILENT DANCE PARTY at Younge-Dundas Square this piece is:

“Inspired in part by a concept from noted set designer Michael Levine, the square’s temporary overhaul will see a canopy of sorts raised over the plaza, in the form of 250 illuminated industrial-strength balloons hung from cables that span the square. Each balloon will be lit from inside with an LED light, the same kind that are used to light up the CN Tower by night. And, much like the tower, the balloons will be putting on their owncomputer-controlled light show. Not only can they be programmed to provide a variety of different ambiences for the square, but they will respond in real time to sounds picked up by microphones placed around the square.”

Described as a ” hybrid between installation art and a stage set, at an epic scale” this piece will be up from Friday June 6th until Wednesday June 11th. They are also part of a special event on Friday from 12:00am-2:00am with music by DJ AC Slater and Interactive lighting design by Gabe Sawhney, Patrick Dinnen and David McCallum. With the help of some of the city’s top architects and designers, the plaza is about to be transformed into a surreal dancehall.

For more info please see:
Globe article
Schedule for the square

An 8-day long public film festival on the TTC – the only one of its kind in North America – featuring a different urban-themed program of 1-minute films each day.

Submission Deadline: July 1st, 2008

6 Weeks is plenty of time to make a 1-minute film! Take part in the citizen’s film festival and share your work with an audience of over 1 million people.

We encourage all genres of film, video, and animation, from both professional and first-time filmmakers. All submissions must be silent and exactly 60 seconds. Filmmakers retain all rights, and will receive an honorarium of $150 per selected film.

Our 2008 guest jurors are Richard Fung, Judy Gladstone, Michelle Jacques, Deirdre Logue, Brenda Longfellow, Robert Ouellette and Jason St-Laurent.

The films selected by our jurors for each thematic category play on the network of 250 TTC subway platform screens repeatedly during one day of the festival. The 8th day of TUFF is programmed based on audience votes.

Award winning actor, writer, director and comedian Mark McKinney, is our 2008 guest judge. Mark will select the top 3 films of the festival, and each guest juror will choose the best in their category. Audience votes determine the winner of the TUFF Choice award.

Prizes include: Sony HD Camcorder with accessories; Sony Digital Cameras; MP3 Players; a ‘Creative Retreat’ from Belair Travel; dinner at the Drake Hotel with a notable filmmaker.

Filmmakers must submit to one of the following thematic categories:
* Urban Encounters – the moments that make city-living worthwhile
* Urban Fears – the darker side of living in a metropolis
* Urban Growth – from skyscrapers to suburban sprawl
* Urban Imaginary – hopes for the future of big cities
* Urban Natural – the living city, both nurtured and oppressed
* Urban Secrets – stories about the hidden or forgotten city
* Urban Travels – from public transit to Parkour

Submit films online by July 1st: www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com <http://www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com>

TUFF is co-produced by Art for Commuters (A4C) and Onestop Media Group.
Contact: Sharon Switzer, TUFF Executive Director, at A4C@torontourbanfilmfestival.com

We acknowledge the support the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $11.8 million in media arts throughout Canada.

• Advertising
• Animation
• Business TV / Inhouse TV
• Children’s
• Corporate Communications
• Corporate TV
• Documentaries
• Education
• Internal Communications
• News
• Public Relations
• Sales Promotions
• Training
• WWWEB

plus sub-categories

Closing date for festival entries is January 31, 2008

http://www.worldmediafestival.org
Please visit our websites for online information and registration

Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF)
Cinema by Citizens Celebrating the City
September 8 – 14, 2007

Attention: filmmakers, video artists, animators, and urbanites with video cellphones.

We’re looking for 1-minute, silent videos that address the following urban themes: My TOwn; Urban Ennui; 905 to the 416; The Imaginary City; Big Smoke, Big Dreams; Forgotten Places, Uncommon Spaces.

Genie award-winning director Jeremy Podeswa will be awarding prizes for the top 3 videos in the Festival. The TUFF Choice award will also be given to the video with the most online votes.

Prizes include: Camcorder with tripod; Wireless devices; Digital cameras; iPods; Retailer giftcards, and a trip for 2 to Jamaica from Bel-Air Travel!

TUFF Programmers John Greyson, Steve Reinke, Heather Keung, Jon Davies, Kim Simon and Jacqueline Nuwame will select films from submissions to the six thematic categories. Not all submissions will be accepted to TUFF.

Each day of TUFF will feature a different thematic programme on the network of TTC subway screens, with individual films cycling throughout the day. Films will also be available online for viewing and voting.

Format: 60 seconds (exactly), no sound, 720x480dpi (4:3), 30 fps. Quicktime, AVI, MPEG and SWF formats accepted.
TUFF is open to local, national and international submissions. It’s free to enter, but all submissions must be uploaded or postmarked by Aug. 20th. International submissions must be postmarked by August 13th. Selected films will be listed on the website by September 1st.

For more information, or to submit films: www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com
Contact: A4C@torontourbanfilmfestival.com