via atjoburg and Christo Doherty:
I’m wary of rushing to proclaim South African firsts, but the networked art event at Premises on Saturday 2 September certainly felt like an authentically new thing. Digital Artists from South Africa and different parts of Britain were collaborating in real-time to create a networked video art event.
Trinity hosted a live collaborative performance by Nathaniel Stern (on site in Johannesburg), Marc Garrett from Q Arts (in Derby, UK) and Ruth Catlow from HTTP, London. They engaged in thirty minutes of live audio-video performance by uploading, manipulating and collaging images, video clips and sound via the VisitorsStudio database.
According to VisitorsStudio, the idea behind their service is "to encourage audiences new to media arts to get actively involved in the creative process by providing an easy-to-use, experimental production space live online, which was also a playful social space." This definitely happened on Saturday. The small but enthusiastic audience watched the three headline artists interact and then sat down behind the provided laptops to experiment with the network themselves.
Fueled by the sponsored Red Bulls (look closely at the debris on the tables) even participants new to the process quickly got the hang of the VisitorsStudio interface, which is written in Flash 8. The system allows a form of participatory doodling which, at times when real interaction occurs, bursts into moments of visual delight. I hope this is just the first of such networked performancens and intercontinental collaborations through the WWW.
