Peter Purg's blog

After the rather optimistic kickoff on 12.12.12. at 12:12:12 and -12 Centigrades, the baffling "online month" began. We were all more/less trying to make "joint online preparation of international workshop participants" actually happen. For what? For the "LOGOS - Multitude Manifestations of Rog" short mobility run within our bravely piloting "Media Arts and Practices" programme. What for?

From Brussels, indeed things seem very different -- problems we think are unbearably big get shared in "therapeutic groups" (called workshops) realizing that, well, we are not alone. It is nice to know that there are many others with doubts on how to ensure financial sustainability of projects, and especially jointly run programmes, assure concrete exploitation, manage motley and manifold consortia... There are 200 of us here

students just came in with a bag of booze -- sa(i)d it's for the "after rajko party". while rajko grlic, il professore maggiore a.k.a. the doge of hilovv, is just having his fourth round of mentoring sessions in the splendid isolation of our venerable villa herion, the tide of expectations is getting ever higher -- both sides! good so, as night after night students are honestly dripping audiovisual blood in preparations for that reality check -- as much as they sincerely try to transfer those intricate craft processes of venetian shoe- violin-, grafitti-, pizza- and glassbeads-makers into the language of film, and also the non-film students seem to be enjoying being sunk ankle >> knee >> deep>>er into it all..

The second day of Visioneca was paced somewhat differently than the strict 50-film staccato of the day before, with host-of-the-day Bob Cotton's very own fluxus manner. Still I wonder, how do the English manage to get things done quite precisely on time, but looking as if punctuality or schedules were the last thing they cared about. So again, I shall mention only the most memorable: Kavi, a sunrising graduate student from Bournemouth, presented her BA project "cerebral interface" and even though it didn't work live on Paul's head, it left a convincing impression (and optimism) of the things to come -- visualizing states of mind,  the wild dream of many a media artist of the last century. 

What to say at the end of the day -- when 50 experimental films were thrown your way? Well I'll go for the creme the la creme that was left drooling from my image-tormented brain (enhanced by an original northern-wind cold), so:

The morning session left all the children quite happy, amused by Lizzie Oxby-the-prodigy's supershort extravaganzas and topically opened with Giovanni Bucci's "The Last Dream", reminiscent roughly of what most of us must have had last night -- concerning the fact that full moon is coming up those chilly skies. Lucky we were inside --

The exceptional inquisitiveness with photography as the then "new medium" is what makes Julia Margaret Cameron worth of Trust -- and we are humbled to be hosted by her trustees: Bob and Mary, while staying at Gail's superfab Room with a View (over the Freshwater bay and the "House", the venue of Visioneca, c. f. early morning pic from our window below). All this in a circle of hundred yards -- including Dimbola, where yesternight (after a hyperyummie fish pie + cake ++ by Mary) we attended a vernissage of local children's black&white photography workshop. Bob made a short speech, so much more to the point: how will they ever do anything important, and understand the importance of what they did, if they do not learn what was there before -- analog photography

The Media Arts and Practices master programme has started -- today in full-formal, and -frontal interaction, at the University of Nova Gorica, School of Arts in Gorizia, taking off as a bold pilot, into the great wide open of promising productions and intriguing collaborations. We have been together for two weeks now, for a gradual tune-in, on the prodigy wings of our Alvarez-the-Flying-Fortress (to open ceremoniously on Tuesday - come in!), with open windows and doors for all the fresh ADRIAiR influx..

A rude awakening after long but pleasant walk home, when London streetlights were conquered by moonlight, for a change. At least in my tempranillo-biased inward eye. No place to pee unfined, all potential shady corners occupied by homeless people, heads resting on unpadded concrete. Will they ever use ipads. For Learning.

Woke up through a nice stroll from Bloomsbury to Holborn, post-gentrified but (therefore?) inspiring with all those swarms of cyclists and runners. The (para)olympics must have hit hard the 21st century commodified consciusness. But behold the (neo)millenials don't run or cycle -- while pinching into their ipads, they don't look where they are going..

Getting digitally dressed up for the "Designs on eLearning" 2012 conference at the University of The Arts London (Sep 5-7, 2012) under the motto of "Crowd and cloud: towards a collaborative future":