GPS-equipped pigeons, interactive platform shoe devices, surveillance technologies and choreographed cell phone calls are tools of the trade in locative cinema, a new media art form combining time, space and place.
Now, the Banff New Media Institute at The Banff Centre, along with the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers Initiative and ZER01: The Art & Technology Network, have awarded the first ever Locative Cinema Commission.
The UK-based art group Blast Theory has been awarded $4,500 for the art commission, and there’s an additional $5,000 available for production and residency costs while at The Banff New Media Institute in Alberta, as well as substantial in kind support from The Banff Centre.
‘Locative cinema’ has been conceived as a ‘platform agnostic apparatus’ through which artists can use their location as something both specific and generic in order to share a vision of place.
The 2009 winner of the commission, Blast Theory, uses interactive media in creating new forms of performance and interactive art that explores the social and political aspects of technology. Led by Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj, the group most recently created Ulrike and Eamon Compliant, an ambulatory work commissioned for the 2009 Venice Biennale.
Blast Theory’s Locative Cinema work, after its debut at the ZER01 01SJ Biennial in San Jose in September 2010, will exhibit at New Frontiers at the S2011 undance Film Festival and then, at the 2011 Banff Summer Arts Festival.
Commission jury member and ZER01 Artistic Director Steve Dietz noted in a release, “Blast Theory is one of the most innovative artist groups in the world working in the overlap of participatory art, virtual worlds, and public space. Their work constantly expands our notion of what a narrative experience can be, and we are thrilled that their next ‘movie’ will be the result of the first ZER01-Banff-Sundance Locative Cinema commission.”
Based in Brighton, UK, Blast Theory received a BAFTA nomination for Technological and Social Innovation.
“ZER01, Sundance Institute and the Banff New Media Institute all have proven commitment to supporting emerging forms of creative practice,” said Susan Kennard, Director and Executive Producer at The Banff New Media Institute. “We’re excited that this collaboration has inspired Blast Theory to create a dynamic new work that will be exhibited to wide and diverse audiences in San Jose, Park City, and Banff and engage the public in a manner that exemplifies the new and changing ways one can experience art.”
“In this moment, when the entire film industry is undergoing a sea change, it is incredibly important to support artists and filmmakers who are moved to invent new ways of cinematic storytelling that adapt to the new landscape. The work of Blast Theory exemplifies an artistic vision that is located at the crossroads of art, film, and new media technology, and suggests a fresh new direction as our cinematic culture evolves,” said Shari Frilot, Senior Programmer, Sundance Film Festival.
Blast Theory’s commission is based on how strategic intervention of our everyday portable sound devices, like the cell phone and music players, can transform the experience of one’s surroundings. Through the use of an open source phone management system technology that triggers simultaneous calls to participant’s cell phones, the commissioned work will engage participants in a fictional frame of reality, placing participants in a socially constructed, interactive movie as they walk through the city. Closely timed calls to the different participants will build tension and drive the story forward through overheard fragments and brief moments of unscripted interaction. As the narrative reaches its apex, its status as fiction will come into question, leaving participants to ponder Blast Theory’s overarching query: as locative media and city based games develop, in what sense are the participants ‘present’ in their societies?
In response to the news of their Locative Cinema Commission Blast Theory art group members commented, “To have received the Locative Cinema Commission from three such distinguished partners is a career highlight for us. It gives us an important opportunity to extend our practice and to create a new work within the context of cinema, narrative and urban space.”
on the ZER01 blog
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