Space Switch

Dell and I are running a weekend workshop series in June at Signal, City of Melbourne's amazing workshop space for 13-20 year old creative people. You can enrol now: details below. 

Space Switch 

Ever wanted to transform the world around you? Or transport yourself into an alternate reality? In this series of weekend workshops you will use traditional stop motion animation to create an animated version of yourself in a world of your own creation. 

Will the world be as you see it or the world as you want it to be?

You’ll build your background with collage elements and paper cuts using a multi-layered, traditional animation set up. Your old school motion graphics will be exhibited on the Signal screens after dark.

Dates: Saturday 8 June, Sunday 9 June, Saturday 15 June and Sunday 16 June
Time: 11am to 4pm
Cost: Free
Bookings essential: book online 

Open 2 Study

Open 2 Study is a new program from Open Universities Australia. You can enrol and study a range of courses online via high quality video lectures.  Excitingly, these courses are being offered for free.

I spent some time earlier in the year working in the camera team on the first round of lectures. My personal favourite was Professor Greg Downey from Macquarie University talking about Anthropology in his 'Becoming Human' subject. His work is fascinating!! 

Chutney Club Preserves Challenge @ Bikefest

The Inter-Suburb Chutney Club is hosting a Preserves Challenge at the Bikefest Village Picnic on 9 March at the Abbotsford Convent.

Enter your home-made preserves between 12 and 2.30pm - we will announce a Champion Preserver at 3pm. 

Imagine the glory! The fame! 

Should be fun, anyway. Come on down. 

Digital Media Month at Colourbox Studios

Galaxy of Love and my video works for Rachel Hooper's Task Masters exhibition are having a second screening as part of Digital Media Month at Colourbox Studio in Footscray, in an exhibition curated by William Head of Yay Tractor Media Projects

You can see the program details here and the exhibition opens tomorrow night, 16 Jan: 6-8:30PM, 236 Nicholson Street, Footscray.

ACMI Hothouse

For the second time I'm coordinating the Hothouse program for talented Year 10-12 students at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. This 4 year state-funded program offers 10 talented students the chance to collaborate with their peers in a fast paced production studio at ACMI, with mentoring from industry professionals. Each year there is a different focus in screen culture.

The 2013 program has just opened for entries and the focus is narrative film-making.

I caught up with our 2012 Hothouse students again recently to look back on the program (you can check that out here on the ACMI blog) and they confirmed what a fantastic experience it was for them. You can also see their interviews during the Hothouse workshop in the video below (the 2012 focus was game making).

So if you know any aspiring student film-makers, urge them to apply! They can download the application kit here.

Galaxy of LOVE!

Dell Stewart and I ran a cut-out animation workshop with a group of girls from the Flemington Housing Estate as part of the fabulous She.Can.Create project. Here's their blurb (you can also read something here about how this project got started):

"She Can Create is a program which facilitates access to a range of creative workshops over an eight week period. Every Saturday, She Can Create takes a group of young, bright and culturally diverse girls to a different area of Melbourne to learn from a creative professional. Design, dj-ing, sewing, aerosol stenciling, hip hop and photography are among the creative outlets that will be covered."

It was a fun day, thanks to the group being a really great bunch of girls, and I absolutely love the animation they came up with. 

We started with an eclectic selection of collage materials and the simple rule that everything had to move from screen left to screen right. It evolved into imagining what you might see out the window of a space shuttle. Here's what the girls conjured, the Galaxy of LOVE (who knew all that was out there!).  Below that, some photos of the workshop in action. 

Arnhem Land Workshops: Videos

Here is the animation from my workshops in Yirrkala (see my previous post for more info).

Three ocean scenes from the Grade 5s and a forest scene from Ranydjupi Yunupingu and Ishmael Marika of the Mulka Project. The forest scene uses offcuts from the bark canvases Yirrkala's amazing bark artists use for their paintings.

Arnhem Land Workshops

I ran a couple of stop motion animation sessions at the fantastic Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala, Arnhem Land. An amazing and beautiful place that's home to a powerhouse creative community. My friend Donald Russell the Carpenter built a great setup for me out of scrap materials from around the art centre.

I had a morning session with a group of Grade 5s from the local school and an afternoon session with Ranydjupi Yunupingu and Ishmael Marika, staff members at the Mulka Project. The Mulka project is a media production and archiving project whose "mission is to sustain and protect Yolngu cultural knowledge in Northeast Arnhem Land under the leadership of community members." Check it out.

Here are some snaps from the morning session. Animations to follow.

Craft Cubed Festival

I'm running an animation workshop on 11 August with Dell Stewart as part of the Craft Cubed 2012 Development Series at Craft Victoria. In 'Bits and Pieces' animation we will introduce you to the basics of stop-motion animation. You'll contribute to a group project, using 'bits and pieces' from around the studio, animated on multi-layered glass. Should be fun! More information here.

Also, Dell has posted some photos from the current Taskmasters exhibition at C3 on her blog.

UPDATE: It was a fun day! You can now see what people made in the workshop here and Dell has posted some pics from the day here.

Two Things

I have some small things in the current annual West Space fundraiser show and in Rachael Hooper's The Taskmasters exhibition, opening tonight at C3. 

 

Since last time...

I've been working regularly at ACMI on many different jobs, including video editing, teaching video and green screen workshops and event coordination. Events-wise, in January I helped deliver a bunch of events as part of the Melbourne Indigenous Arts Festival, including Shadowlife, curated by Djon Mundine and Natalie King, Remembered By by Reko Rennie and the National Indigenous Photo-media Forum in partnership with the Centre for Contemporary Photography. In March I worked with William Kentridge to help deliver his 'In-Conversation' and Anti-Entropy, a pretty amazing lecture including performative elements and a lot of multi-media.

I just finished a writing/ editing job which was a bit of a departure for me, over-writing a chapter for a Year 9 history text for Oxford University Press.

And I've been working sporadically on some local history research for a novelist, which has involved tracking down and interviewing a bunch of different Melbournians.                                           

15 second place/ Westspace

ACMI's new online project/ phone app 15 second place has launched.  I spent a big chunk of the first part of this year making videos for this project, as well as helping with research/ development and production coordination.

The site is about creative responses to real locations - all video content is geo-located, attached to a real place on the map. I interviewed 40+ creative types, including film-makers, street artists, historians and more, about the significance of specific places to them and their work. I'm just enjoying re-watching the segments on The Dandenong Lunar Drive In and the Chinese New Year celebrations in Little Bourke Street.... All the interviews (edited into web-friendly grabs) are in the Themes section. To find them, click on a theme then choose 'Go Behind the Scenes' under a topic/ place.

Some samples (Chinese street performers, Indigenous artist Reko Rennie and Director Sue Brooks (Japanese Story, Road to Nhill):







I've selected a few more favourites over here.

Site users are encouraged to upload their own videos capturing the places around them and to respond to a different challenge each month (and win prizes!).

West Space 2011 is this year's edition of West Space's annual fundraising exhibition and I have a small work in the show. It's on for a short time only... until September 25. They're in a beautiful new space now and worth supporting! 

Lately

What animal are you? The children's animations from my recent Artplay workshops with Dell Stewart are online now and will also be screened on the big screen at  Federation Square, Melbourne, during the school holidays, starting July 4th.

Here's a sample:

What Animal are you? (THURSDAY) from Dell Stewart on Vimeo.

You can see more at the 'Animal Self Portrait' website.

The online documentary project at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image that I have been busy making video content for since January is set to launch in August. It's about how how real places inform creative activity and vice versa, something I have become very interested in of late. More on that to come.

ACMI have also recently updated their website with videos from  some digital storytelling workshops I helped deliver late last year, with war veterans and people with disabilities. In these 2-5 day intensive workshops we help people script, narrate and produce short autobiographical videos, built using their own archives of photographs/ video and new material captured during the sessions. One of the people I assisted in making her story is Michelle Newlands. It's about having to 'start again' after an acquired brain injury and is quite an amazing tale of perseverance.

Recent works I've written about for the National Film and Sound Archive's online screen history site Australian Screen  include '60s quiz show Pick a Box and Jane Campion's short films Passionless Moments, Peel and A Girl's Own Story.

I've just arrived in Berlin to begin a month-long Goethe Institut scholarship and enjoy a bit of European Summer. Hurrah.

8, 7, 6...

 I am about to head to Berlin with a proposal for the Berlin Today Award.

I'm working with Dell Stewart on a kids' animation project we will run at Artplay in mid- April, thanks to a city of Melbourne Grant.

Both of the above are cut-out animation projects so there is some handy crossover with research/ development.

I've been working at ACMI (The Australian Centre for the Moving Image) on  video content for a new online project about the relationship between places and the moving image. I will also continue my work this year as a Curator for the National Film and Sound Archive's Australian Screen website.

I have received a Goethe Institut language scholarship, which will mean another trip to Berlin later in the year. If my Berlin Today Award film proposal is able to progress further, this would also mean more time spent in Berlin. Yay!

Counting down to a busy and varied and hopefully fun year...


Fruit Salad - an animated countdown leader by Dell Stewart and Kate Matthews