5 September 2005
Screening of Botborg films in Sydney, Australia.
Camera Obscura
| | | | |||| C A M E R A O B S C U R A |||| | | | |
film + video screenings
https://obscura.lanfranchis.com
First Monday of every month at Lanfranchi’s Memorial Discoteque.
Level 2. 144 Cleveland St. Chippendale. Free. 7:30 pm.
Monthly screenings with a simple goal of showing interesting and
experimental film and video works in an appropriate setting,
comfortable seating – 5.1audio – large scale projection – free
Month of September (05.09.05)
At the risk of breaking everyone’s brain, this month we are taking a
participatory journey through the “…unavoidable future of entertainment..”
as we peruse the history of, and highlights from, Channel101 -a strange beast.
Every month, in an old theatre in LA, a crop of ~5min show pilots appear along
side the shows that have survived from the previous month. At the end of the
show the audience votes on those who will return, but more on that later.
In keeping with the Channel101 ethos, the Camera Obscura audience “drunk on
the blood of lowly artists” will vote our way through the various shows.
We’re going to preface this with some new content from Brisbane’s Botborg,
something short and sweet from Spike Jonez and, as always when I’m in charge,
something remixed from archive.org called We Edit Life.
This is the last Camera Obscura for 2 months, as we’ll be in Newcastle for
electrofringe next month doing a screening, (check:
http://www.thisisnotart.org/Program/EventDetails/tabid/783/xmid/244/Default.aspx )
So if you are going to be at electrofringe and you’d like your work screened
by us in the future, send me an email, or ring me on 0401 922 997 during the
festival.
We’ve also have a Camera Obscura program winging it’s way to Indonesia for the
first ever internation C_O screening, which is pretty cool.
We Edit Life
Vicki Bennett (people like us) (10min, USA, 2002)
“Experimenters in visual perception are using computers to create weird and
random patterns that never occur in real life to find out what and how people
see when these patterns are shown to them. The art of computer graphics is
only in its infancy yet it is already stimulating creative thought in far out
areas where research is likely to get complex and unwieldy. If offers not only
the means to quicken the pace of discovery but an ideal of communicating what
we may discover”
– We Edit Life.
How They Get There
Spike Jonez & Mark Gonzales (3min, USA, 1996)
A sharp and clean idea, that gets driven over the top.
you must render the pleasure of holding the superfine
Joe Musgrove & Scott Sinclair (Botborg) (12min, AUS, 2005)
“Botborg present live audio-visual performances using a complex feedback web,
consisting of audio and video mixers, screens and camera. In this web, sound
and vision fuse into a self perpetuating synaesthesia of colour & rhythm,
generated (in real time) entirely by device feedback through electronic
circuits and the performance space. Assisted in performance by Scott Sinclair
& Joe Musgrove, the human elements of Botborg can influence, but never
completely control this web once set in motion. These performances provide an
equally disorienting and joyous but deeply organic experience as the
‘operators’ of the web attempt to ‘converse’ with (rather than control) the
internal logic of the feedback system.”
– https://www.halftheory.com/botborg/
Channel101 (https://www.channel101.com)
Channel101 is a “living, autonomous, untelevised TV network, powered not by
promise of reward to the artist, but by the artist’s desire to reward the
audience.”
“For the audiences that attend the live screenings, Channel 101 is a chance to
sit in the worn-out chair of the fat network exec, drunk on the blood of lowly
artists whose right to exist is given in exchange for their ability to
nourish. If there are 10 shows in the screening and 7 of them are good, that
means 2 good shows aren’t coming back and the power of life and death is in
your hands. Base your decision on whatever you want. You run the network. You
pick the programming. Then come back in a month and see the next episodes of
the shows you picked- plus a healthy crop of new pilots. Dump the whole lineup
and start fresh, or keep your favorite show running all year. Unlike “real”
television, at Channel 101, what you want is what you get more of, and the day
you stop wanting something is the day it stops.”
– https://www.channel101.com/about/index.php
In keeping with the Channel101 ethos, I have collected all of the episodes
from a number of the more popular shows. We are going to watch them one by
one, and you “drunk on the blood of lowly artists” will be able to choose if
we continue with each show or move to the next one. I have no idea of how
long this part of the screening will take, but we’ve got a bunch of episodes
from “House of Cosbys”, “Laser Fart”, “Gregory Shitcock, P.I.”, “Adventurous
und Magick Haus” and more so we could be there all night.
House of Cosbys
The first Channel 101 series ever to go three consecutive months at #1, House
of Cosbys was one of those rare 101 breakouts that went on to satisfy the
world. In the show, the real Bill Cosby never came along and destroyed his own
clones, but in real life, creator Justin Roiland and channel101.com site
administrator Dan Harmon received “cease and desist” orders from Cosby’s
attorney in June 2005. The legal questions ground HOC’s intensive animation
process to a halt and House of Cosbys became Channel 101’s first show to be
killed not by the audience or by its own creator, but by lawyers. However, due
to outcry and outrage, Channel 101 will continue to carry the first four
episodes for your enjoyment.
Laser Fart
Laser Fart began as a joke submission during a light month in 2004. Creator
Dan Harmon was able to keep it alive with a Jack Black cameo in episode 2. On
the third episode, Harmon teamed up with samurai lensman David Hartman and
Channel 101 history was made. Laser Fart delighted audiences with its
ironically epic feel and came breathtakingly close to breaking The ‘Bu’s
record for longest running show.
Gregory Shitcock, P.I.
Gregory Shitcock, P.I., was one of the first signs that 2005 was going to be a
very different year at Channel 101. Hancock and Randolph, who had come humbly
sniffing around with their pilot Man to Man, became just confident enough to
make this show’s brilliant first episode and the audience immediately snatched
them up. Like Laser Fart before it, Shitcock evolved on its third episode,
taking a slight step behind the fourth wall and ratcheting up its
cinematography. It was the first show to shoot a three-episode arc all at
once, and the strategy did pay off in that the trilogy of episodes 4-6 was
allowed to come to its touching conclusion.
Adventurous und Magick Haus
Dave Hartman’s second Prime Time show’s unspoken premise was simple: Vote for
me, and every month, I will bust my ass on mind-blowing visuals, channeling
the resultant sleep-deprived schizophrenic breakdown into the story and
characters. The result was a truly magickal blend of refined technical
expertise and stream of conscious mythology.
https://obscura.lanfranchis.com