@joburg | Art & Technology, johannesburg

Although it has been a while since it was released, I thought it would be worthwhile to post a link to Big Buck Bunny, a short, 3d animated film made completely in Blender, an open source 3d application.

It’s worth the watch - beautifully done, and an excellent example of what can be accomplished through open source…

Like many historic events, the meeting today between the DTI (Dept of Trade and Industry) and Animation industry representatives from Johannesburg, took place in a back room in rather unremarkable circumstances. The agenda items were also rather unremarkable, ranging from the verification of pay slips to the validation of contingency budgets; but the significance of the meeting was that the main government funding agency was, for the first time, seeking to recognise the distinctive production requirements of animated film so that it can be funded on the same basis as live-action film in South Africa.

What was also remarkable was the number of television series already in production and the number of projects, including a full-length feature, which are already in development. Clockwork Zoo, from Cape Town, revealed that they are producing an episode a week, in their  26 part  2D television series for SABC, Urbo - the adventures of Pax Afrika.  Anamazing Workshop have already produced and aired a series of 13 x 5 minute short films in 3D; while DepthFX are busy with a long form development called Tanks.  Both Cape Town and Johannesburg committed to pushing three projects each through the new DTI funding schedule before the end of 2008.  Things are looking up for  the animation industry in South Africa.

Urbo - the adventures of Pax Afrika from Clockwork Zoo.

_{Murmur.Silence.Touch by Jenna Burchell}

One of the first truly interactive art works that I’ve seen at a commercial gallery in South Africa is the installation, Murmur.Silence.Touch by Jenna Burchell in the Rainforest Project Room at the Gordart in Melville, Johannesburg.

Burchell writes of her installation:

Through building spaces that illustrate the mental "inscape" of individuals, I aim to pull down the barriers of traditional portraiture and search for new ways to portray the deeper existential core of people. In doing this the voice of the sitter is freed and a dialogue with the viewer is brought to life.

This interchange is created through computer controlled, interactive objects stripped down with bereft aesthetics, parodying the hard edged technology with organic beauty. While surrounded by such a flux the viewer can find in their mind the faces and lives of the sitter.

_{Gordart gallery owner, Gordon Froude, getting tech support from the artist
to get Jenna Burchill’s interactive work rebooted and working again on the
day after the lauch.  At present this is one of the drawbacks of computer-based installation art.
Note the audio processing boards in the box, while he feels around for the on/off switch.}

_{The work turned the back end of the installation
into a delicate tracery of patterned wires.}

_{The audio circuit of the installation with the computer,  which is driving the
system, in the background.}

_{"Put on a glove and touch the wires" The installation invited visitors to put on a specially
prepared glove with two metal foil contacts. Quite how the work was to be played
was left to the user to work out; but the long wires protruding from the middle of
the frame, like metallic Rapunzel hairs, seemed to invite touch.}

_{Robin Kelly interacting with Murmur.Silence.Touch by Jenna Burchell.
Running the glove along the paired wires produced a susurrus of
voices speaking softly.}

Slate has been running some excellent "how-to" articles on the most effective ways of writing for the Web.  Senior Editor, Michael Agger, has a  concise and somewhat tongue-in-cheek demonstration of  "readable"  writing techniques using the theory of  Web usability expert  Jakob Nielsen.  While Editor at Large, Jack Shafer,  extoles  the superb meditation by Caleb Crain entitled  How is the internet changing literary style?  Like Shafer, I have to admit, that after reading Crain’s essay, "I’ll never read the Web the same again."

The consequences of these changes in writing  (and our habits of "information retrieval" ) are explored by  Nicholas Carr in his Atlantic  essay, Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading.

The Atlantic, of course, was the magazine that published the seminal essay by Vannevar Bush in 1945 that anticipated the development of information technology, As We May Think.  It’s an essay that is worth re-reading in the context of these discussions.  Although the Memex, the mechanical contraption at the centre of the essay was not to be, Bush anticipates many of the most significant features of the new  technologised mental landscape. For instance he could have been imagining Google when he writes:

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.

But what is most striking about re-reading the essay is Bush’s urgent conviction that without these information technologies we will be swamped in the vast amount of data that is generated by new forms of science and industry. It’s perhaps worth bearing this in mind when we consider the negative implications of the new orders of thinking and recall.

There has been a lot of talk about Cai Guo-Qiang thanks to his incredible retrospective at the Guggenheim in NYC. I was fortunate enough to see it in person, and truly it is difficult to describe the awe of being in the presence of such drammatic and powerful work. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean.

Read the rest here: