Author: media

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Human Study #1 from a Distance – Ateliers Patrick Tresset

Human Study#1, 3RNP is an installation where the human becomes an actor. In a scene reminiscent of a life drawing class, the human takes the sitter’s role to be sketched by three robots. The machines, minimal stylised artists, are only capable of drawing obsessively. Their bodies are old school desks on which the drawing paper is pinned. The drawing sessions last 20 min, during which time the human cannot see the drawings in progress. The sitter only sees the robots alternating between observing and drawing, sometimes pausing. For the spectators, the sitter is an integral part of the installation.
The robots were initially developed by Tresset to palliate a debilitating painter’s block. Even if the way the robot draws is based on Tresset’s
technique, its style is not a pastiche but rather an interpretation influenced by the robot’s characteristics.
Tresset continually works on the computational system controlling the robot’s drawing behaviour, and for each exhibition, the systems are tuned again until they produce interesting drawings. Using autonomous
robots to draw from observation enables Tresset to further his exploration of the drawing practice.

Credit: Patrick Tresset

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How to Pitch an Animated Show Idea! – Mike Scott

You have an animated show idea but aren’t sure how to go about pitching it? I can help you with that! I’ll take you through the process of putting together a show deck for your animated show idea, along with sharing my own experiences of getting my own show Moosebox picked up by Nickelodeon and onto web and TV. Having helped with putting many show decks together, I’ll explain what some TV and network execs are looking for when they see a new animated show idea, and also suggest some ways you can give you and your show the best chance of success. This is meant to be an interactive experience involving some structure but also questions and answers.

Credits: Mike Scott

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How to create Augmented Reality Artworks the Easy Way – Thuthukani Ndlovu

Thuthukani Ndlovu will be hosting a 1 day workshop which provides a hands-on introduction to Artivive App (the augmented reality tool for artists) and pinpoints the potential of AR as a new way for artists to express and differentiate themselves. Participants will be able to use the tool without any prior technical skills. They will learn how to augment photos, paintings, drawings, graffiti or tattoos as well as learning how videos and 3D objects can be overlaid onto a physical space and viewed through mobile devices. Artists will get the chance to create their own animation and they will be guided as they add an AR layer of animation to bring the artwork to life. Participants should have good access to the internet because the platform that will accommodate their work requires a strong bandwidth. Thuthukani will also share some of the work he has done as a digital artist, as well as curated work featuring AR artworks created by other artists with The Radioactive Blog (eg Giving Poetry Wings). This workshop is ideally for Digital/ visual artists, and participants have to RSVP to receive the workshop schedule and link.

Credit: Artivive

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Giving Poetry Wings 3 – The Radiaoctive Blog

Giving Poetry Wings (GPW) is an Extended Reality (XR) digital art exhibition, which showcases collaborative work between 10 selected artists (poets and digital artists based in South Africa and Malawi). The work created will be a result of online workshops hosted by Thuthukani Ndlovu (The Radioactive Blog) from the 12th to the 17th of June 2020. This is the 3rd edition of GPW, and to date, previous work curated in GPW has been featured at Fakugesi African Innovation Digital festival and Brighton Digital Festival, and the GPW program received the “2019 Word N Sound – Innovation in Poetry” award. Last year, the focus was on Digital Art, Poetry and Augmented Reality, but this year the focus will extend to virtually exhibiting the curated work through videos and spoken word. You will be able to enter the virtual exhibition online via Curat10n for the duration of the festival, or by downloading the exhibition for free to view at your own time (During and after the festival). For the best experience, we advise using a computer (and wearing earphones) to access the exhibition. The Exhibition link will be made available here from the 25th of June 2020.

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Futurabilities – Azahara Cerezo

A bot programmed to read parts of “Futurability. The age o impotence and the horizon of possibility” (2019) to other chatbots, who answer and learn from the conversation due to the successive repetitions of the text. In this book, Franco “Bifo” Berardi analyzes the global order that shapes our politics and our imagination, proposing that the key to a radical change lies in our relationship with technologies. “Futurabilities” is an online action that explores human-automatic conversational possibilities around the current context of connected solitudes. It will run during the whole festival as a virtual performance in progress.

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Forgetting and Memory – Vangile Gantsho, Vusumzi Ngxande & Toni Giselle Stuart

This is how the forgetting begins. A child hears a song the adults of the daytime do not know, because the adults do not know it, they tell a child she is singing it wrong. So the child who can still hear the songs in The Great Symphony without needing to say the prayer folds the song away, deep in the back of her throat.

*

We are sick. We cannot undo what has made us sick. We cannot stay the same.
*
There is an old woman across the river.
She is made of sand and fire, carrying a child on her back.
I cannot reach her she has burned the river dry.
The mud is buried turned angry swallows rocks
and children who still believe in water.
*
This interactive meditation is an urgent search for the song folded in the throat of the child. Poets Vangile Gantsho and Toni Giselle Stuart, and filmmaker Vusumzi Ngxande present a 60-minute poetry and film performance, in the form of meditation, ritual and conversation. Working with the four elements, they explore our relationship to the past, asking, what must be remembered, in order to create new futures for us, especially in this moment of global uncertainty and change? The performance will include an interactive component.

Original Script – vangile gantsho & Toni Giselle Stuart

 Poetry Performance – vangile gantsho & Toni Giselle Stuart

Videography – Vusumzi Ngxande

 Sound Design – Vusumzi Ngxande

 Film Directing, Editing & Producing – Vusumzi Ngxande

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433 Eros – Deep Spacer

433 Eros is the latest album by Johannesburg based experimental trio Deep Spacer – featuring Jonathan Crossley on guitars, electronics, closed Ableton ecology and video manipulation, Cesare Cassarino on bass and electronics and Etienne Oosthuysen on drums and tempo manipulations.
433 Eros represents the culmination of two+ years of testing, rehearsals and unhinged excessive bouts of technological tweaking. The Spacer’s are zealous about non-composition – the band room is viscus, chasing the goal of free-improvisation within the realm of tempo based contemporary music. As such rehearsals are relentless systems interrogations, with the technological framework yielding contemporary musical invention.
Jonathan Crossley: guitars, electronics, closed Ableton ecology and video manipulation
Cesare Cassarino: bass and electronics
Etienne Oosthuysen: drums and tempo manipulations.
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Verdi: Messa da Requiem; Elgar Serenade in E minor; Dvorak Serenade in D minor; Mozart: Divertimento K. 136; Mendelssohn: Octet; Schubert: Quintet “Trout” – Cape Town Phihrmonic Orchestra

 

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Bru & Boegie: The Movie – Mike Scott

Bru & Boegie – 2 best friends from South Africa who only wear underpants – need to think big to get people to watch their online shorts so they make South Africa’s first full-length 2D animated movie

Writer, Director, Storyboards, Animator, Voices, Audio – Mike Scott 

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The Bach Suites – Peter Martens

Bach wrote six suites for unaccompanied cello and these remain the pinnacle of all solo cello repertoire today. South African cellist, Peter Martens, received rave reviews in amongst others, The Strad magazine for his 2011 SAMA nominated CD set of these works. Martens, currently principal cellist of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, also enjoys an international career as soloist and chamber musician. He says, “These works have occupied me since the age of eight, when I learned the prelude of the first Bach Suite. They are sublime and profound works, and it is a privilege to have lived with them through performance for the last 40 years.” Each suite is a set of dance inspired movements in the form of a Baroque Dance Suite. The first is optimistic, elegant and simple. A musical journey through the suites takes one through  increasingly  complex and deeply emotive music, until the sixth suite which epitomises a grand cathedral in the music of J.S. Bach. Martens will present one suite each morning as part of the Virtual National Arts Festival.

Composer – J.S. Bach (1685 – 1750)
Artist – Peter Martens (cello)
Producer – Dirkie van der Merwe
Video Engineer – Pierre-Arnold Theron
Sound Engineer – Gerhard Roux
Filmed on location: La Motte – Historic Wine Cellar