Thought I should finally get around to sending something to the list about the transmediale festival in berlin in feb, particularly with the current topic. The others who were there may want to add to my comments - I think maybe Saoirse wrote something for another list about it?
Anyway, I went for 4 days which was plenty and the programme was never that packed so I got to see most presentations, exhibitions, screenings etc and left each day with my head spinning and realising I hadn't been outside in 8 or 10 hours. The screenings and the media lounge were the best for me, not normally having so much opportunity to see an intensive blast of short films/videos and time to look at a selection of cd-rom works and web projects, although the media lounge tended to get really really busy so you had to get there early to see anything. The weakest point was the exhibition which was very uninspiring with robotics for the sake of tech, although the robot dj's were fun. I heard from one of the selectors that there were loads of robot dj's entered for the exhibition programme and that at one point they had thought about programming some sort of robot dj competition or event but that most of them weren't up to this sort of event. Most of the work on show felt very hollow and suffered from being absorbed in their own technological prowess. An exception for me was a very simple video installation by Dagmar Keller & Martin Wittwer panning a nifty combination of photos and models picturing white picket fence urbanism to create a simultaneously natural and unnatural representation. There were various lectures and panels running in programmes which I am still confused about but some of which were quite good. The curator Thomas Levin did a great talk about his show at ZKM 'Crtl Space', which included George Michael's video 'Lets go outside' so I liked him for mixing high brow and pop. He was also naturally a really good speaker so I'd recommend him for anyone who comes across him in a programme or has a programme to invite people for! I did a little 5min presentation as part of an open mic faces (mailing list) event, which was a good opportunity to put faces to names and to hear briefly about a wide range of projects. The funniest event had to have been what I thought was going to be a very historical video art presentation by Ira Schneider and Peter Weibel but the later couldn't make it and between Ira and Peter Weibel's substitute was an hour and a half or so of drivel. That sounds harsh but I don't now how else to describe it - Torsten? Video documentaries with live commentary from them like 'that's bob, that's rex and look this bits great bob falls off his chair'. I wasn't particularly interested in going to the award ceremony as these things always seem so arbitrary (and for the person who mentioned the importance of Ars Electronica for me it's because they give out big money not because the projects they show are always the most interesting) but the only performance that was on when I was there was on at the beginning of this. I was appalled to find out that you had to have an invitation to go to this and had resolutely decided I didn't give a shit anyway and was staying in the bar with the rest who didn't have one until someone rustled me up a ticket and next minute I was in with my ethics at the bar. The performance went on to win the 'interaction' prize although I couldn't figure out where the interaction was happening but supposedly it was through the dancers costumes and a computer. There were cash prizes and those good old honourable mentions (where does this tradition come from, I always think this seems very antiquated for new media/media arts - what ever you want to call it). Felt like a boys club with only two women in the prizes out of about 15 people and those were part of collectives. Talking to one group who were multiple prize winners after and in the bar on the way back to Basel (those night train bars are great - highly recommended!) they were convinced they won because one of the selectors was already strong supporter of their work. Same old story but it is a good project too. Anyway time to stop blabbing. All in all it was one of the better festivals I've been to, focused in one place so you could keep track of the programme and also get to meet people and find out what folk are up to, which as ever is often more interesting than the official programme. Documentation of the event is at http://www.transmediale.de Bev ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
