One of the things I like to do is blurring the lines between what is called ‘digital’ and what went before. ‘The digital’ is no longer new, nor is it some special space separated off from ‘real life’. Everything we do now has digital or digitised content. While new technologies enable different ways of doing […]
Sunny in Denver for Supernova
It was great to see photos of the sun shining on last weekend’s Supernova Outdoor Animation Festival, rather than the torrential rain of last year. In previous years there was a section specifically for machinima, but this time it was in the ‘Experimental Zone’. This was the third year running I had work selected for […]
The art of looping and repeating
In Amelie Marcoud’s installation Hikari* stacked televisions displayed repeated images in endless loops. My latest machinima, Repeat Hikari, took the looping repetition and hesitations of the installation, and reworked them with the hesitations and jumps of video editing. Apart from being a deliberate choice, short loops reflect to the technical limitations of Second Life. Looping […]
Interview for Women CineMakers
I’m delighted that my interview for Women CineMakers has now been published in their Special Edition on Independent Cinema, Documentary, Dance Video, Experimental cinema and Video art (Women CineMakers vol. 11). The interview starts on page 52. The magazine also features the work of Glasz DeCuir, who also works in (or out of) Second Life. […]
Cleaning up the Streets
I wouldn’t call myself controversial. I don’t go out of my way to offend people, though in my typically British way, I’ll have a quiet dig at what I don’t like. And keep my thoughts to myself a lot of the time. You see, what I don’t really like is predictability and the anodyne. It’s […]
Showing or Telling?
At the current installation on the Delicatessen art sim, Meilo Minotaur asks visitors to Tell Me a Story. All the characters on the island have corresponding avatars one can pick up by the entry point. They do not have names. The scenes are separate. So how are they linked? This is the starting point. In my […]
Interface at neogallery23, Bolton
Two of my works will be showing as part of the neo: artists’ ‘Interface’ exhibition in their amazingly good exhibition space in Market Place Shopping Centre in Bolton. The opening preview (all welcome) is on Saturday 31st March, 2 – 4pm, then it runs to 20th May, open Thursday-Sunday from 11am-5pm. Admission is free and […]
Process and Property
This term I have been teaching for the first time, and there were two things that I wanted to get across. One is the immense power of the behemoths of the internet (including Google and its right arm, YouTube), and the historically contested nature of the internet. It was never quite the place of harmony […]
Mixed Realism in the Future City
Mixed realism in a future city. Archive footage and virtual world meet across time in urban space. In this machinima, I recorded some of Cica Ghost’s latest installation in Second Life, Future, and overlaid it with The City, a film from the FDR Presidential Archive on the future of the American city made in 1939. […]
The Digital Pilgrims: Rediscovery and Reinvention
Retelling a popular story is never a waste of time. It is in the rereading and retelling of stories that they are kept alive, and the reinterpretations revitalise the original. In The Digital Pilgrims, I set out to portray the travellers in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in another, very different, setting. And we do not retell […]