#analogmeetsdigital

A head’s up to those who need a diversion from the film fest but still want their visual needs met, Iris Film Collective recommends GRILL/JECK/LEMIEUX this Saturday October 7th at the Annex on Seymour, presented by the Vancouver New Music:

Austrian video artist Michaela Grill, Canadian filmmaker Karl Lemieux, and British turntablist Philip Jeck come together in this collaborative, audio-visual improvisation. 16mm film loops, digital video, sounds and audio signals are synergistically interworven to produce an atmospherically dense amalgam of images and sounds.

“Brilliant. Grill and Lemieux worked a row of projectors beaming three square frames of Stan Brakhage-like imagery onto the screen. Turntablist Jeck constructed an intense sound collage. Throughout the set there was the recurring sound of a needle on scratchy vinyl that could have been a wildfire raging in the distance.” – Downtown International

The concept presented by the post-grads is ‘Hi-Jack’: wherein the aesthetic and key interest features of the bar come from the idea of hijacking old technology for a new purpose. They seemed to indeed have in mind a bit of the Edison bulb + wood look, and lots of plants but want to do something more clever with it by incorporating obsolete technologies/items like dial telephones, old radios and picture frames, and pumping new life into them with digital technology. I think its a great idea. 

However, as the dean and a few others pointed out: its not quite there yet. The fact that its a bar in terms of the actual functioning of a bar: the drinks, food, etc seemed to have been neglected a bit, which is funny since I was kinda worried about the opposite - that we’d be paying attention to making the serving process smoother without thinking about the rest of what a bar is! Still, there was also a big issue of WHY in terms of the interactions they proposed: why would people interact with the art etc in the bar? 

I think some of the interactivity needs to be maybe tied more intrinsically to bar functions like ordering drinks (eg via the telephone, or screens that let you make custom drinks). I did really love the mention of sensors that could tell when your drink was empty so staff would come to ask if you want more - great mix of automation with old school human interaction. Interactivity with the music sounds great too. 

I signed up for the team doing research and answering the why question. I am really interested in polishing this concept and getting it to its potential (which is clearly there! The post grads did such a fantastic job with the presentation itself too). Then once that stuff is sorted I’ll get to switch to one of the other groups anyway.