eat, jitter, cindy

Ah, there is so much going on these days; so much to do, so little time (to blog about it).

First off, I’m not sure how many webland folks out there remember a little video installation I did out in Pretoria a few months ago, called eat. It was a video poetry installation, in a kind of slam style, which questioned consumer society’s active role in identity politics – mos def humorous.

Anyhow, Mr Nerf, my co-conspirator (along with Kathryn Smith) over at city+suburban studios, decided it was time to iterate; he stole the track and brought it round for a few friends to play with ‘in the studio’. This is the result (mp3 file, about 4.3MB). I have been asked to invite countertexts, more beats and music, responsive mp3s, whatever, for the next iteration of the remix. The final version (or perhaps several versions) will be included in the indy film, that guy, which is somewhere between a comedy and a documentary about Christian Nerf, by a few local filmmakers. The track is at 138 BPM – have a ball and contact me if you’ve got something you want to send our way.

In other news, yesterday was the start of Wits’ first Interactive Video Workshop – props to Christo for running with the ball on this one. It was about 7 months ago that we had our first workshop – which was open to Wits students/staff and outsiders alike – where Ralph Borland flew up from Cape Town to facilitate building ADC boxes, for everyone to make sensors speak serially to their computers. Since then, Christo – head of digital media at Wits – has organized 2 sound workshops, a stop-frame animation workshop, and now this workshop I’m leading, as an introduction to Jitter. We’ve got about 13 people signed up, and the first night showed some pretty excited cats. I’ll post some pix of the first hands-on day, tomorrow (er, today; having trouble sleeping).

And finally, above left we’ve got (clockwise from bottom left) Andrew – who has got the best print studio in Joburg, where this picture was taken – Ann Marie and Dora (I’m leaving out surnames cuz I can’t remember all of them, and I’m nothing if not consistent). Those two ladies are the current, international artists in residence at the bag factory (from England and Brazil, respectively); they’ve been holding workshops with local artists for the last few months, and will have an exhibition opening this Wednesday at the bag.

Last night, they did a screening of Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer, starring Carol Kane, Molly Ringwald and Jeanne Tripplehorn (Molly on the right; sooooo 16 candles). It’s a purposefully B-grade cheezball film with so many Ed Wood (etc) references it hurt. Circa 1994, and hilarious – I think it may have been the best film ever. That’s hot.