Workshop approach
This workshop aims for every participant to create a prototype of an interactive audio-visual project that either runs on mobile phones; that exists online, or that uses a combination of platforms and channels (a cross media project). Project development is supported by lectures on current media practices by outstanding makers, by practical and technical lessons, and by critical discussions. The content and genre of the workshop projects is up to the participants to decide, and intense research is done into appropriate combinations of content and project format.
Participants
The target group of this workshop consists of media professionals from the EU; authors, directors, educators and artists in the field of film, video, online content, radio, television, mobile phone content and cross-medial content.
Participants preferably have done the content research for their project, but are still researching on the right media format. Participant need not to be skilled in any specific new media technology, but should be skilled as media makers in their own work area.
Materials and tools
The Korsakow System can be used to create online interactive, databased film projects of very different kinds, and can also be used at a more basic level: as a handy content management system for any video project.
AnyMeta, Mediamatic’s content management system that offers all relevant social web functionality, and that is also a blog- and documentation tool. Furthermore participants will be introduced to uses of Ning, GoogleMaps and other Web2.0 tools.
All necessary equipment and software will be available at the workshop.
Let's work
Kicking off
Monday morning in a cosy, woodpaneled workspace ('it has a dutch feel to it' said Marc, but nobody agreed), in the building of the illustrious BAFTA academy Florian Thalhofer, Sascha Pohflepp and Klaas Kuitenbrouwer together kicked-off the Moving Image Lab 2008.
Florian argued that non-linear stories are actually better at capturing peoples experiences than linear ones, and he showed how his web documentaries are closer to being a narrator, than to being a story.
Klaas tried to convince the participants that when you make an audiovisual projects in these days of mobile screens, laptop screens, urban screens and what have you (next to the tv and the cinema) you should treat the users' viewing context as content of your project. There is an immense ever increasing richness of potential media experiences to be explored, and makers should try to create content that does not only function between the four corners of the screen.
Sascha, currently studying at the RCA, then showed his own work in which networked and virtual content strikes new and fascinating alliances with physical environments: Blinks and Buttons the networked photo camera that takes other peoples pictures, and Export to World in which life-size models of objects from Second Life are placed in the real world.
In the afternoon, over at B3 in the pleasant and very work-supportive studio, we digested the conceptual input so far and had a gorgeous lunch on top. Participants were familiarized with the possibilities of the tools, and they all outlined their workshop project ideas.
Fleshing out (Tuesday, Wednesday)
Throughout the next two days, contours of projects appear - first ideas are being tested and discarded or elaborated.
Kevin Logan worked on his (in)audible cities project - a sonic take on Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Ross Cairns makes him a little flash cms. Tonight everybody will record a sound with their mobile phones, and send it to inaudible cities [at] yahoo.com
Karen Palmer (maker of Mental Block, prizewinning short on the mental state of a parkour runner) did an amazing first attempt at an interactive film project on parkour. (she's a freerunner herself, currently out of action due to a jumping accident) the skill of parkour, she claims, is mental more than physical, it's about overcoming fear, and recognizing the moment at which you are able to do an action. a freerunner has to be able to visualize his coming action completely, and if his visualization is complete, if the physical map of the action entirely exists in his mind, the jump is no longer difficult, actually no longer even a challenge, because it already happened - the process in entirely mental. the physcial is just an effect of that.
Roshini Kempadoo thinks through and plays with various ways in which the game of dominoes could be used to interface with non-linear film story about two characters from Trinidad, where dominoes is the number one passtime.
Interesting is that the way domino stones are allowed to connect, (through matching numbers) is not too different from the way film clips connect in the Korsakow System (through matching keywords)
Annie Bungeroth worked with very moving footage that she made of her father who has age dementia, but is actually happier person than he was.
Leonie Casteleins and Stefan da Costa Gomez, make steady progress in designing cross-medial approaches to a unique unknown world they found to exist at the sixth floor roofs and higher in NYC... (wait and see...)
Dami recorded her trip to Brazil where she was following the trail of Avon, the cosmetics brand that is only sold door to door by so-called Avon consultants. Brazil is now the major market for Avon, and becoming an Avon consultant is a very self-empowering possible way out of poverty for a large group of Brazilian women. She is creating simultaneous multi-threaded scenes that allow viewers to experience various facets of Avon, Brazil and of Brazilian Avon consultants at the same time.
Alana Kakoyiannis came with some striking footage of Cyprus dwellings that were abandoned during the violent political struggles of the recent past. She works on a fictionalized, circular story of a man traveling through the present and recent past of Cyprus.
Photographer Marcella Haddad works on an interactive documentary of The Joy of Sound project, that brings together disabled people, carers, musicians, children, parents, with a very organic and inclusive proposal: that of playing music together.
Triny Prada worked on a interactive representation of [[trinyprada.wordpress.com/franco-colombian-artist-triny-prada-arrested-for-taking-photos-of-her-friends L'Affaire Triny Prada]], her recent experience of French police brutality, probably related to her previous visit to Columbia where she was supporting relatives of the hostages taken by the Colombian rebel group FARC.
Swiss Army Knife
Lisa Roberts of BlinkMedia joined the workshop on Wednesday and discussed the uses of the 'swiss army knife' for media makers: the current mobile phone, with its capabilities to shoot and edit footage, to compose and add a soundtrack, to title movies, to distribute and watch clips, and fairly soon also to project. She offered some hard earned advice on what to take into account when make content for mobile screens. Being experienced in cross-media projects, she offered indispensable knowledge and support to those participants working for various platforms.
Like a glove
A major new feature of the Korsakow System (and one that has been requested a lot) is the so-called interfacer: authors can now create their totally own screen layout.
One development in using the Korsakow System, in relation to this new feature is that what is called 'the main movie' or the SNU in technical terms, is used less and less as the prime container for content. Since the preview movies can be resized and added at will, on screen there is no necessary visual difference between preview and main movie. Previews start running when scrolled over, thus enticing a kind of play in the user. Together this makes that one screen, with all its previews, can now contain a complete narrative, timed and edited and playable, clicking then takes the user to the next scene, rather than to the next movie.
Through these new possibilities, very heterogeneous projects and concepts managed to find a brand new application of the Korsakow System that 'fitted like a glove' the requirements of the content. And with a new web based version of the Korsakow System on the (far) horizon, it looks like the future is bright for Korsakow films.
