All the Suns coming out at Visioneca (day 2)

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. Real student spirit flared further up, when Marcus Harland & Alex Madge then presented their "Albion, a pilot webisode" -- a bold lo-no budget exploratory short shot naturally with DSLRs only and involving a computer-generated troll, of course they've "always wanted to have a monster in the film", so now they can stand tall in front of it:

Liam Birtles' presentation of "Glowing Pathfinder Bugs" by Squidsoup, the cult collective practitioners, got me thinking how important high(tech)media art can be for small children, and without all the conceptual blair -- just fair, to the senses, and the human sensibility. I'd so much enjoy to meet these guys -- possibly in a workshop with our students... Afterwards, my "theoretical video performance" then went quite well, in the best naive manner of  "video trouve" (as derived from Dadaist "object trouve", the found object)", it connected well to student-profile documentary of Kavi's done by here colleague at college (Gina Tratt, Arts University Bournemouth), and to the many interesting historical exposes of Bob's at the sessions start. But before I edit-in the video shot from my headcam during presentation, you might want to guess how it will look this time by looking at the London version of it from 2 months ago.

We should not have missed Zack's "Projection Mapping" and  Julian Konczak's "Telenesia" -- among the many interesting appearances of the day unmentioned here -- if it wasn't for the delicious lunch at Dimbola, all to then placidly reflect with Bob upon the history of the experimental approach to motion picture often forgotten, from "The Love of Zero" (1927) by Robert Florey, Kuleshov's experimental video from as early as 1917 that influenced Eisenstein & co. we all know better in both practical editing and the theory of montage, not to forget Popeye came avant-grade before Mickey Mouse, just in time to "photosynth" via MS live labs  research to the infamous "Powers of ten" (1977) viral vertigo, all fulx-texted together quite nicely:

After Bob's "closing sandwich" of the hidden pearls of the video-art history (all was obviously invented, or at least attempted, much before we would ever have thought of course!) Visioneca day 2 finished off, how timely, with a live presentation of "KickiT VisioSonic" applications of Kinect, where Russel Richards brought me back a couple of years when we were, as a band, dreaming of (and tinkering on) having perfect, and non-biased visuals to our music -- or indeed vice versa! Yes, this is the time, finally, of motion-captures without silly things having to be worn on the body, and even in the dark -- perfect for a performing band..

..but (all)together much too imperfect visualizations than what sometimes is done by mother nature -- as caught this early morning through analog post-victorian windows, onto a digital chip (see you visioneca under those same suns again):