ecopolis

Primal Source (video documentation) from haque d+r.

Specially commissioned by the City of Santa Monica, California, for Glow 08, Primal Source was an all-night performance/installation brought to life through the active participation of festival-goers (estimated at approx. 200,000 over the course of the night).

Located on the beach near the Pier in an area that had been specifically landscaped over the course of several days, and making use of a large-scale outdoor waterscreen/mist projection system, the mirage-like installation glowed with colours and ebullient patterns created in response to the competing and collaborative voices, music and screams of people nearby.

Responding to sounds emanating from the crowd, the system’s modes changed every few minutes depending on how active the crowd participation was (more quickly when there was more noise). Each mode responded in a slightly different way to the individual voices and sounds picked up by 8 microphones distributed towards the front.

Some modes created “creatures” whose colour, shape and movement followed the frequency and amplitude dynamics of individual syllables and sentences picked up; other modes responded to wider collective phenomena, e.g. distorting a grid in response to the crowd volume, or creating a rush of wind through a wheat-field landscape.

Going out in a trendy club and feel good because you contribute to positive environmental processes, such as generating electricity by dancing and upcycling of waste into decoration. This idea forms the basis for the Sustainable Dance Club. The Sustainable Dance Club is a creative concept of Rotterdam based organizations Enviu – innovators in sustainability and Döll – Atelier voor Bouwkunst.

The Sustainable Dance Club incorporates innovations in the field of sustainable design and applied techniques with social responsibilities in attractive club surroundings. No more counter culturists and moralizing attitudes but sustainability as a positive, young and profitable alternative for a broad target group. The Sustainable Dance Floor will generate electricity from the movements of dancing people. This human powered floor is now being developed in cooperation with the Technical University in Delft and will most likely be the projects’ piece de résistance.

Site:

The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web’s infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities.

OH, BY THE WAY!

The Webby Awards presents two honors in every category — The Webby Award and The People’s Voice Award — in each of its four entry types: Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video and Mobile. Members of The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences select the nominees for both awards in each category, as well as the winners of the Webby Awards. Winner’s Announced May 6!

Check the Nominees

This year, World Water Day coincides with the International Year of Sanitation, challenging us to spur action on a crisis affecting more than one out of three people on the planet.

Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of the abysmal sanitation conditions endured by some 2.6 billion people globally. That adds up to an unconscionable 1.5 million young lives cut short by a cause we know well how to prevent.

Poor sanitation combines with a lack of safe drinking water and inadequate hygiene to contribute to the terrible global death toll. Those who survive face diminished chances of living a healthy and productive existence. Children, especially girls, are forced to stay out of school, while hygiene-related diseases keep adults from engaging in productive work.

Leaders who adopted the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 envisioned halving the proportion of people living without access to basic sanitation by the year 2015 — but we are nowhere near on pace to achieve that Goal. Experts predict that, by 2015, 2.1 billion people will still lack basic sanitation. At the present rate, sub-Saharan Africa will not reach the target until 2076.

While there have been advances, progress is hampered by population growth, widespread poverty, insufficient investments to address the problem and the biggest culprit: a lack of political will.

With the right resolve, there are many steps that members of the international community can take. World Water Day offers a chance to spotlight these issues, but this year, let us go beyond raising awareness — let us press for action to make a measurable difference in people’s lives.

Curated by the celebrated artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien, the Derek Jarman exhibition presents a selection of work by the leading British film-maker of his generation; it highlights Jarman’s work in film and painting, including his pioneering presentation of the moving image within the gallery context.

Jarman was arguably the single most crucial figure of British independent cinema in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. He struggled for Gay Liberation and with the impact of AIDS and lived as a participant observer, recording all that passed before him, from punk to Thatcher, Hampstead Heath to film premiere.

This exhibition is a timely reappraisal of Jarman’s work, conceived as an immersive environment by Julien, featuring rarely seen films from the Derek Jarman Super-8 archive, an installation of his film Blue, 1993, as well as a selection of his paintings.

Julien has also created a series of photographic lightboxes documenting Jarman’s cottage and garden in Dungeness.
The exhibition will mark the premiere of Julien’s new film about Jarman, Derek, the centre of which is a day-long interview Jarman recorded.

Derek Jarman Curated by Isaac Julien
23 February – 13 April 2008

Performance For Blue
Friday 14 March
7 pm
by Simon Fisher Turner
with Black Sifichi

For Blue is a new reworking of the film’s music and sound with narration by poet and musician Black Sifichi presented live in the Serpentine Gallery.

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/

15,000 women marched through New York City in 1908 demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/about.asp

100 years on, the pertinence of this event is honored through IWD’s 2008 global theme ‘Shaping Progress’.

Around the world, websites link to this site. Add your own IWD events and news.
There are currently 612 IWD 2008 events listed from 52 different countries

Overheated Symphony is all-women directed interactive mobile phone film. This cinematic symphony of women’s voices from around the world is part of the Birds Eye View film festival taking place in London next month which showcases the work of female film-makers.

Women across the world are being asked to make a short film -a “quick flick” – between 40 seconds and four minutes long on a mobile phone and then send it via the internet to a London-based film director who will edit all together.

“If it’s hot, we’d like to see it,” the project’s Web site declares: “Ladies, wherever you are, whoever you are, we want you to join in.”

The inspiration for “Overheated Symphony” was the 1927 film by German filmmaker Walter Ruttmann called “Berlin – Symphony of a Great City,” which used a montage of still pictures from many sources to document city life.

Rachel Millward, director of the Birds Eye View festival, which is now in its third year, says via Reuters the film is as much about new technology as it is about women and heat … Making a film from all these female voices around the world is quite a beautiful thing, but also it’s about shooting down the idea that women are not up to date with technology.”

Contributors are being asked on www.birds-eye-view.co.uk to upload their cinematic efforts onto the festival’s own YouTube channel to be edited.

LIVE EDIT

On Sunday March 9th, between 12noon and 5pm, celebrated artist and film director Sarah Turner (see also her feature screening of Ecology at the festival) and sound designer Annabelle Pangborn will use the structure of a symphony to edit your work. Films submitted by women from around the world will be sampled into one fiery flick, LIVE in London, in the ICA bar, and later published on this website and on youtube.

DEADLINE

Films must be submitted by Sunday 2nd March.

UPLOAD

Once you’ve completed your phone-film please follow instructions (here) and upload it to www.youtube.com with the tag: OVERHEATED SYMPHONY, being sure to put your name and contact information in the descriptions box so that we can credit you and keep in touch.