TRENCH is screening athttp://www.movementonscreen.org.uk/moves returns to Manchester and the UK from 23 to 28 April 2009.Now in its 5th year, moves is established as the largest exhibition platform in the UK for experimental short film and new media with a unique focus on movement on screen, exploring new ways of telling stories through films, installations and screen-based works.2008 was the year of music, questioning the interaction of sound and movement on screen; moves09 will be looking at stories beyond movement, exploring the narrative possibilities of movement on screen through screenings, installations, live events, open-source forums…moves is the largest exhibition platform in the UK for experimental short film and new media with a unique focus on movement on screen, exploring new ways of telling stories through films, installations and screen-based works.Wherever you live, you can catch moves:in Manchester and the North West with a 6-day festival exploring movement on screen through screenings, installations, workshops and open-space forums;in the UK on the BBC Big Screens and in selected venues such as Sadler's Wells and Glasgow CCA;worldwide with a year-round tour taking moves' favourites as far as Hungary, Russia and Brazil.
Moves08www.movementonscreen.org.ukThe Movement on Screen Festival (short moves08) took place in Manchester and Lancaster from 22nd to 26th April 2008. Here is my little summary of the event for anyone who – unfortunately - could not make it because you really missed something. It was simply awesome! Pascale Moyse, Festival Director of Moves08, pulled together a well-organized, interesting and elite-level string of events and although the festival was filled with high profile and international input; it still remained very personal and offered a great opportunity to network and to gain real insight into the contemporary world of video dance.Due to work commitment (I was filming TRENCH with Anthony Missen and Kevin Turner) I had to miss the first two days of the festival but joined in on Thursday and that’s where this blog starts:Thursday, 24th April 200810am – 11:25am Brigitta Hosea at RNCMForum 6Brigitta Hosea spoke about sound drawings and performance drawings and demonstrated various ways to great stunning imagery purely with her voice. She also mentioned how she uses PWM, light sensors and motors in her work and her interest in motion sensitive toys like the ones that can be found in an Argos catalogue. For example, there is a Barbie head that is able to learn a song and sing it with its lips in sync. From here on the discussion was opened up and the “Modified Toy Orchestra” by Brian Duffy from Birmingham was brought up as well as French emotional toys. More physically active gadgets like a Wii or GPS can get literally our bodies involved in an interactive way, e.g. in a project based in London a drawing was created matching the tracks tagged mobilephone carries have taken. And then we wondered how Maurice Merleau-Ponty would have viewed those new aspects of technology and knowledge of sense-data in his philosophy on perception.USEFUL:www.arduino.ccwww.tinker.itb.hosea@csm.arts.ac.uk11:45am – 1pm Alex Reuben at RNCMForum 7Alex Reuben was once a DJ who moved his passion for dance to filmmaking. His quest to find out why he loves dance and why especially certain styles of music make him dance led him to travel America and documented personal journeys of the roots of dance in “Routes”. It is a sound-led work for cinema that shows an anthropological side of music and dance and was commissioned by Capture/ English Arts Council.Reuben’s own artistic roots lie in Fine Art which is still reflected in his video work like Que Pasa bringing together painting, sound and ethnic dance. He says that as a DJ, he was able to ‘sculpt’ a room with his music and that he sees similar physical responses created by American artists like Jackson Pollock.2:30pm – 4pm Donald Glowinsky at RNCMForum 8, Keynote speakerDonald Glowinsky is based at the InfoMus Lab at Casa Paganini at University of Genova, Italy. His research focuses on activity analysis of music and dance performance to develop novel techniques and computational models for understanding non-verbal communication. The interactive software Eyesweb derives from the concept of animacy: kinematics (speed), form (shape) and dynamics (force) to give information of intention. 12 dots are sufficient enough for the human eye to recognize a human being in motion and its emotion, possibly even with as little as 3 dots (GEMEP Corpus).USEFULwww.nime.org (festival in June)Mr Gurk effect 1970www.infomus.orgwww.casapaganini.orgwww.eyesweb.org4pm – 5pm Conference Wrap Up6pm – 9pm Dance for Camera Night at Sandbar with South East DanceMy friend Christopher Perkins, a photographer and filmmaker based in Manchester wrote a blog about this particular Thursday night’s eventhttp://snapztalks.blogspot.comFriday 25th April 200810am – 4pm Eyesweb Masterclass with Donald Glowinsky at MMU CheshireThis workshop gave a hands-on experience with the Eyesweb software which has a straightforward layout resembling a mix of an email inbox and Apple Motion. The icons are kept simple: a camera represents the camera input, a TV is the connection to a monitor; this makes it very easy to achieve interactive results with little start-up help.Eyesweb is a free software and is currently utilized by about 10,000 users6:30pm – 8pm Visions d’aillieurs, screening at RNCMThis screening brought together an international selection of various video dance genres. The possibly all-over favourite was Pork by Gido Leytens from Netherlands: a guy is watching TV when a woman on the screen starts speaking, this causes him to have a fit and flashbacks of being treated like a dog explode in. This might not sound too exciting, yet, the way it was shoot, directed, edited and acted worked really well. Personally, I enjoyed Tango Finlandia by Hannu Lajunen because it used animation in an original way and the story of two guys trying to dance/wrestle was very amusing. In Andy Wood’s Three is a Crowd the audience can sense how Wood actually dances with his camera in this uncut version with the improvising, tango-dancing couple. Analog Brother by German Falk Peplinski applies stop-motion animation technique to the dancers/actors with a fantastic overall bluish grade. It throws you back to the 80’s and I couldn’t help thinking of Petshop Boys and Kraftwerk.8:15pm – 9:45pm Alex Reuben’s Now that’s what I call Modern Disco Dancing Classics Vol 1 at RNCMReuben ingeniously mixed together video works he created between 1999 and 2007; a natural flow run throw the varying imagery and proves his djing skills can also be applied to editing and vjing. It blended together hand-held documentary shoots with scripted studio shoots to motion capture animations. The Q & A afterwards offered the opportunity to get some background information about the works.Saturday 26th April 200811am – 1pm Industry Brunch at SandbarApologies if any names are misspelled!Tamsin Durie from LANWest (Live Art North West) brought to attention the various opportunities that are around in the area of Manchester:- Emgerency is an Open Performance platform happening in September/October- 3 yr funding scheme with In-Transit- LANWest collaborates together with the GreenRoom in Manchester but also with Leeds, Klucol, Carlisle, University of Lancashire, Neville in Lancaster to create a network for producing work and promotion- Panda-Arts focuses on support for stage, street theatre, live art, film, networking and business development. They offer mentoring and show-starter seminars for graduates and students.Werner Moebius and Mariella Greil are part of the Sound Networks which affiliates with the Open Source City, an autonomous village and is shaped by its members. On 3rd and 4th May 2008 a Contact Theatre is taking place.Lesley Ann Rose runs the Northern Film Maker Network which have been established since 2000; it is a dynamic creative non-profit agency helping uprising filmmakers to find funding and crews. The Northern Film Maker newsletter offers members to add in their own call-outs. The programme of events spans from opportunities with Channel 4 and Dazzle Films to networking events…and works together with the Cornerhouse (Manchester) and FACT.USEFULwww.panda-arts.org.ukwww.lanwest.orgwww.soundnetwork.org.ukinfo@northernfilmnetwork.comBrigitta Hosea contributed to the discussion on Funding & Comprising the fact that in Spain digital artists are not given any support and therefore set up Technearte in Asturias and Bilbao. This organization offers residencies for digital artists in professional companies that e.g. specialize in alarms and mobile phones and welcome the artists’ innovative creative approach.4pm – 5:30pm Outside the Box, Screening at RNCMOutside the Box screened my video A_WAY_AWAY which is a mix of live action and animation and can be view on my website www.creationeditor.co.uk. Pan Y Cebollas by Ramona Poenaru plays with the notion living on your object of desire alone; in a raw animalistic way two beautiful women “eat” a naked man laid out on a wooden table. The most inventive film was Kitchen by Francois Vogel from France; a special lens was created to for this video to give the illusion of a spinning room viewed through a fish-eye.6pm – 7pm Transcended, Screening at RNCMPhilippa Thomas’ Electric Desert brought together footage filmed form a limo in Las Vegas and shoots of a male dancer recreating Loie Fuller’s butterfly. An enigmatic visual mix intensified by music by 7Hertz. Suspension by Nicolas Provost from Belgium draws the audience into hyper-realistic psychedelic exploding clouds and I imaged it would be wonderful to see them in a looping installation or as an interactive backdrop of a performance.from 8pm Closing Night with Filmmaking Lab Screening at SandbarTo round up the festival, the screening of videos created over the duration of the festival was just the perfect way. Fantastic innovative ideas with hand-puppets, animation and live shoots accompanied by live music by Tony proved that performance can happen anywhere, anytime and anyway. My personal favourite was Mark Pilkington’s video of the ballerina in a black tutu filmed in the back of a driving car.The Closing Night also offered another great opportunity to meet more interesting people from the field of video dance and to have time to talk.To sum up: it simply was a fantastic festival which I thoroughly enjoyed and found very inspiring. It cannot be neglected how warmly we were all welcomed and how comfortable it was to be all in the same hotel around the corner. Many Thanks to Pascale Moyse for bringing us all together for an events-packed festival!NOTE: ALL THE ABOVE MENTIONED INFORMATION CAME FROM MY OWN PERSONAL NOTES AND SORRY BUT I CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT THEY ARE 100% CORRECT!
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