2003 Florida Film Festival

PROVOCATIONS:
DIGITAL ART TAKES ON THE WORLD
Digital Art/Media Installations
Location: Festival Headquarters
Thursday, March 13: 2:00 PM to 9:00 PM
March 14, 15, 16: Noon to 9:00pm
Open to the public

Artists and their art have always been provocative. Think Guernica, the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial and Tongues Untied. Digital technologies add a powerful and often unpredictable ingredient to the artistic stew: the chance to break out of the producer/consumer relationship and enlist the audience as active agents who can add something of themselves to the mix -- and sometimes even affect the outcome. What pressing issues are the new digital artists exploring and how are they exploiting and expanding the potential of a medium still in its infancy?

Marc N. Weiss is the founder and executive producer of Web Lab (www.WebLab.org), an online laboratory that develops, supports, and champions innovative uses of the Web to enhance public understanding of - and participation in - the issues of our times. Weiss is best known for P.O.V., the celebrated public TV series that he created in 1987. During his eight-year tenure as executive producer, P.O.V. programs won six Peabody Awards, five DuPont-Columbia Awards, and six Emmy Awards. Weiss recently moderated a dialogue between video game experts, filmmakers, and enthusiasts at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival's Digital Center entitled Emergent Narratives and Computer Games.

Suzanne Seggerman's background in interactive media includes community-oriented art projects and the design of non-traditional games, earning her awards from New Voices New Visions and Communications Arts. As a documentary filmmaker, her work includes co-producer of Race For Life, a humanitarian aid project and documentary film about Eastern Europe, which was broadcast in Europe and the U.S.

FERAL ROBOTIC DOGS
Created by BIT -- the Bureau of Inverse Technology: Natalie Jeremijenko and team
Out there, in happy family homes, in the offices of corporate executives, in toy stores throughout the globe, is an army of robotic dogs. These semi-autonomous robotic creatures, though currently programmed to perform inane or entertaining tasks--begging for plastic bones; barking to the tune of national anthems; walking in circles--are actually fully motile and AWAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS." BIT "reprograms" commercially available remote-controlled toy dogs so they will "sniff out" toxins (e.g. air or water pollution, radioactivity, etc) in a given environment. In the "feral dog pack release," a group of dogs are put into a real-world environment where contamination is suspected. If one dog gets a particularly strong signal, the other dogs converge, creating a "mediagenic" event. Video at 11.

BANG!BANG!
Created by BIT -- the Bureau of Inverse Technology: Natalie Jeremijenko and team
A set of automated video cameras are installed in places like Kosovo, East Timor, and Los Angeles. Each time there's a gunshot, an explosion, or another "event of interest," the cameras turn on to collect a few seconds of video, which is then stored in a media database. The viewer can see an assembly of these events by selecting a time span and one or more locations.

TERMINAL TIME
Created by Michael Mateas, Steffi Domike, Paul Vanouse, Patrick Lichty
Terminal Time is a cutting-edge, audience-powered history engine, combining mass-participation, real-time documentary graphics and artificial intelligence to bring you the history you deserve. Each half-hour cinematic experience is custom made to YOUR values, biases and desires and covers one thousand years of human history. Through an audience response-measuring device (applause-meter) connected to a computer, viewing audiences respond to periodic questions reminiscent of marketing polls. The questions occur every 6 minutes during the story and the loudest applause determines the winning answer. This way, history is in your hands!

BEYOND MANZANAR
Created by Tamiko Thiel & Zara Houshmand
Beyond Manzanar is a virtual reality piece that explores the parallel experiences of Japanese Americans imprisoned at the Manzanar Internment Camp during World War II, and
Iranian Americans threatened with a similar fate during the hostage crisis of '79 - '80. Combining techniques of computer games and theater design, the artists Tamiko Thiel and Zara Houshmand have created a vivid and immersive 3-D environment the user navigates with a joystick. This simple interface engenders in the user a sense of freedom of choice and movement, yet, like the prisoners at the internment camp, the users are ultimately constrained by barbed-wire fences, the walls of barracks, and by closing doors. Users are subtly coerced into the role of prisoner, where virtual constraints mirror historical ones.

WEB RESISTANCE
From dot.com to dot.bust, the web has seen the rise and fall of many a commercial enterprise. Yet some sectors of the Internet have seen only growth and opportunity--grass roots activists, anti-war protesters, student subversives--have taken the web by storm. Using the Internet as a tool for social change, these groups have addressed such issues as corporate power-mongering, political corruption, and environmental destruction.

MOD STATION
Everyone knows -- computer games are violent. What most people don't know is that there are hundreds of people -- fans, artists, and activists -- actively engaged in creating "alternative" experiences of these games. With game modifications or "Mods," "patches," and "skins," games can be altered either structurally, or by individual elements, to change the experience and in some cases the meaning of the game itself. This station will feature "feminist game patches," antiwar mods, and other subversive ways games have been changed to make a statement.

In addition to on-site editing, there will be a web "blog" diary updated daily, plus contact links for all participants. Visit www.floridafilmfestival.com and select the "Trailer-A-Go-Go" link. Mike, Johnny, and Anthony would like to thank the following individuals for their musical contributions to the Trailer-A-Go-Go project:

Sean Cusick (q6@nyc.rr.com), Aaron Jarvis, Joseph Martens
The Hindu Cowboys (www.hinducowboys.com): George Dimitrov, lead guitar; Marc Lewis, drums; Joseph Martens, lead vocals, acoustic guitar; Craig Roy, upright string bass, accordion
The Delusionaires (www.delusionaires.com): Aaron Jarvis, Nadeem Khan, Jim Ivy, Brian Maguire
Big thanks to anyone not on this list due to deadlines. Super-size thanks to the staff and volunteers of the 2003 Florida Film Festival for giving us enough rope.

MEDIA TOOLS SHOWCASE
Location: Festival Headquarters
Free and open to the Public

Touch, test, and interact with the latest in digital media hardware and software under the guidance of company representatives from Adobe (Premiere 6.5 and AfterEffects 5.5), Apple (Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, imovie), Discreet (3D Studio Max and Combustion Engine), Panasonic and others.

Thursday, March 13:
10:00 AM: Adobe 11:30 AM: Discreet
1:30 PM: Adobe 3:00 PM: Discreet

Friday, March 14
10:00 AM: Apple 11:30 AM: Panasonic
1:30 PM: Apple 3:00 PM: Panasonic