implicit art

What a great day yesterday! Above, we’ve got a bunch of my “students” (ranging from PhDs in fine arts, to electronic musicians, video artists, analog VJs and graphic designers - even the Head of the Wits Digital Arts Department himself, Christo Doherty) in the Interactive Video workshop I’m currently offering at the Wits School of Arts. I kept promising how easy this stuff was going to be, even tho we blazed through it at lightning speed, which may have been a recipe for disaster in some people’s minds. But at the end of the day, all the groups managed to whip up some really interesting experiments!

Here’s a pic of everyone interacting with - and in awe of - a quick project that made the participants in a live video feed disappear (fade out to the same room, but empty!), depending on how much noise they created. It was thrown together by Kai Lossgott, Templar Wales and Christo (shown working together, right to left, in the top picture of this post) during the last 45 minutes of day 2. Seen and not heard, scene and not herd….

Today is the last day of the workshop; we’re going to learn a handful of more advanced features, then spend the rest of the day working on a few collaborative projects; I’m looking forward to seeing what these guys come up with! Here’s hoping this is the beginning of a great new community of media producers in Johannesburg.