Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/videojackstudios/sets/72157622644479364
Event: Future Places FestivalPlace: Maus Hábitos, Porto
Date: 15/10/2009
Video Jack presented the AV project Master and Margarita on the 15th October 2009, at Future Places festival, Maus Hábitos, Porto. This was our third full Master and Margarita presentation, and the first time we showed it in Portugal.
Despite a couple of slight glitches during the performance, we consider this to have been the best Master and Margarita performance so far. For the first time, I was using a hardware pad to launch the sound clips, which increased the fluency of the music performance. Post-performance feedback from members of the audience was very positive. Audience members were intrigued by the musical style and the narrative approach.
Honorable Mention Award
Video Jack won a 1st Honorable Mention award at Future Places 2009 festival, (Porto, Portugal), for this performance.
What the jury said:
The first honorable is Master and Margarita by André Carrilho and Nuno Correia of Video Jack. Their performance piece mixes music, video, and digital technology to give a fresh interpretation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic book about Stalinist Russia. This ever-evolving piece reinforces our understanding of how narratives change every time they are performed and every time they are re-visited.
http://colab.ic2.utexas.edu/futureplaces/2009/10/and-the-winner-is/
The jury was comprised of Hught Forrest (South by Southwest festival), Karen Kocher (University of Texas at Austin) and Cristina Sá (Universidade Católica Portuguesa).
About the Festival
Curated by Heitor Alvelos and Karen Gustafson, FUTURE PLACES 2009 is a meeting of people with one question in mind: if digital media can do so much for global communication, knowledge and creativity, how can it contribute to local cultural development? October 2008 marks the start of this challenge. After the success of the first edition in 2008, where we surveyed current successful projects from very diverse backgrounds and fields of knowledge, FUTURE PLACES will dedicate its 2009 edition to strategic approaches.
http://colab.ic2.utexas.edu/futureplaces/
First and second prize winners were, respectively “Outhouse” and “Oporto-Brooklyn Bridge”. “Wonderland” won the 2nd honorable mention.
The main venue for the festival was Maus Hábitos, a “space for cultural intervention” situated in the last floor of a beautiful garage building in the center of Porto: http://www.maushabitos.com/
This was the second time we performed at Maus Hábitos, following the launch of our Heat Seeker CD/DVD in 2006.
Festival Attendance
Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nunocorreia/sets/72157622646001780/
My highlights of the festival attendance were the presentation by Golan Levin of the outcomes of his computer vision workshop, and Jon Wozencroft’s sound seminar, “The Future Will Go Backwards”.
Golan Levin (http://www.golanlevin.com/) justified his choice of Processing as a tool for the 2 day workshop, and compared it with 2 other tools within the same field: Flash and Open Frameworks. He picked Processing as it was less complex than Open Frameworks, and still it is an open source tool.
He then showcased some of his work, with a special emphasis on Messa id Voce. He also showed other works within the field of computer vision, such as of his regular collaborator Zachary Lieberman.
Before showing the outcomes of the course, he listed the techniques and building blocks for the projects: brightness detection; color detection; frame differencing; background differencing; face detection.
Jon Wozencroft ‘s sound seminar felt like a live radio show, mixed with his thoughts on the theme of “future”, and related sound track (http://www.touchmusic.org.uk/Biographies/jonwozencroft.html).