This was the last night of Bindjareb Pinjarra playing at the Seymour Centre, presented by Reconciliation Australia. The play, largely improvised, explores the oral and written history surrounding the events of 1834 where allegedly a very large number of Aboriginal Australians at Pinjarra (86 km from Perth) were killed by soldiers led by the-then Governor of Western Australia, James Sterling. While referred to as the "Battle of Pinjarra" the play depicts how one-sided the conflict was.
The play has been touring Australia for many years but this was the first time I'd heard about the subject matter. So what does any curious person do in 2012? I looked it up on Wikipedia. And sure enough, for all the world to see, the event is still recorded as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pinjarra
There was a 2010 Wikipedia request to rename the page to Pinjarra Massacre, while retaining reference to the historical label, but this move didn't make it through the Wikipedia process due to a lack of consensus at the time. But according to the play, Western Australian students are now given the topic "Battle or Massacre" in the high school curriculum. Perhaps as part of national healing it's time to make a new move to the Wikipedians and update the history books.
And before I forget, the show was bloody entertaining and at times hilarious thanks to theatresports-style audience participation. Funny massacre... who would have thought?! Laughter truly is the best medicine.
Some of the most interesting developments in the space the last couple of years have come out of Canada largely due to the National Film Board of Canada's investment in projects documenting and incorporating open culture especially open design processes into film and televison.
On Nov 5, their new documentary One Millionth Tower directed by Kat Cizek as part of the Highrise Project. I caught a preview of the project at the Canadian Film Festival last year and thought it looked awesome.
This will be premiered at the Mozilla Festival (#mozfest) in London using a bunch of new open source technology including Popcorn.js from the Mozilla Foundation (the non-for-profit supporting the people creating open software like the Firefox browser) to bring real-time information from the web into cinemas.
You can RSVP for updates at Mozilla and see more information on One Millionth Tower on the Highrise website
To anyone considering the future of storytelling in 2011 I recommend checking this out.
]]>Are we there yet? Maybe I’m the wrong person to ask. Apparently I’m way out there.
I blame the Web. I got so excited about it when I was at uni. For a while back in 93 I was the only one on campus using it, so it was really hard to explain over beers at Manning Bar. It was years before some of those friends got online and saw what I was raving about. And now they’re all there. But it’s still hard to explain what I do.
After uni I was the 1st webmaster at the National Library. It was pretty sweet - the job description involved about a week setting up servers and then “keeping track of the internet” which I did for a few years. The hard bit was trying to convince librarians that the Web wasn’t a passing fad. A bit like social networking today. Easier to get in hindsight. There were three of us in the web team. Two librarians and me, the geek. And while we built one of the early web sites upstairs, downstairs your library book withdrawal slips, bits of paper, were shot around the building in vacuum tubes popping out in the basement. It was an ancient system but it just worked. A bit like email.
Since then I’ve worked mainly for myself. I love the freedom to try out new stuff. Every year the landscape changes. New ideas. New mashups of old ideas. The first Web years were so exciting. No one knew how things would end. And they really haven’t. We keep throwing ourselves into making new experiences. Some made millions, some lost their shirt, some lost their minds. I was one of the lucky ones. I made a good living in the online business world while dealing with the more tricky business of transitioning from male to female. The dotcom bubble crashed. I had gender reassignment. It didn’t happen overnight and I really resented having to slow down and “sort out personal stuff” while others my age flew by without a gender care in the world. And I assured myself that I could make up the time later on.
I’m in much less of a hurry now. In 2004 I launched my third company, MOD Films - I wanted to kick-start a new kind of film-making with a new format - the remixable film - inspired by gamers and powered by user-generated content MODs or modifications. It was too complicated. Too hard to sell. Too hard to bring audiences along for the ride. I underestimated the simple appeal of YouTube. We’re not quite ready for film MODs.
So here we are in 2011 and really I’m still doing the same as I was doing in 1993. Learning how to best produce products in the present, learning from pitfalls in the past. Exploring options. Last year Mish and I started a Sydney studio MOD Productions and a few weeks ago we did our biggest production - a 13 camera 3D shoot at Fox for an interactive Virtual Orchestra installation that should tour the world sometime next year. It’s a remixable film of sorts but don’t tell anyone.
So if you’re asking yourself Are We There Yet? then maybe you should get off at the next stop. You might have gone far enough for now. There’s no rush. Enjoy the ride.
Here are my notes on DomeLab 2010 and my ongoing development of Virtual Tours.
]]>You can do an awful lot with interactive digital technology nowadays. The real challenge is to make the interactions meaningful. For this week's Detours & Destinations show at the Sydney Opera House we want to engage people through a variety of interfaces and respond in a meaningful way.
Incoming SMS and Twitter messages are not only displayed onscreen in the Sydney Opera House Studio, they are also interpreted as instructions. .
Each message is checked against a list of 'control' keywords that can trigger different actions. Combinations of keywords result in a sequence of actions. Think of it as a very simple form of programming.
e.g. "Miimali Game Stars in the house. We like!" contains the keywords "house" and "we" and trigger different animations.
e.g. "red green blue crossroads" are all keywords. Onscreen colour changes three times and then an animation is played.
I've built a little iPhone app rig so that we can quickly add new controls based on what's going down.
Come and drop by the Sydney Opera House Studio or tune into the web cast.
See the current list of control keywords.
]]>Editor Katrina Fox describes the portal as "The Scavenger comes along and takes what’s left after the masses have had their feed. The Scavenger is where you’ll find the bits and pieces that mainstream media can’t or won't find a home for.". Check it out.
Status: Available now for iPhone and iPod touch!
I've been blogging about this on the Napkin Games blog and also twittering.
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