The Very Near Future @ ArtSpace Gallery - by Alex Davies (2014)
The Very Near Future - Film/Art / Mixed-Media / Transmedia Installation @ ArtSpace Gallery - by Alex Davies (2014)
The Very Near Future by Alex Davies - 16 January - 16 February 2014
(Click the link above for official ArtSpace webpage...)
So - the successful launch of Alex Davies' film noir time-travel mixed reality (interactive cinema) transmedia project The Very Near Future was on Wed 15th January at 6pm at ArtSpace Gallery, Woolloomooloo, and over 230 people were in attendance. (Yay!)
Outside ArtSpace Gallery at the launch of The Very Near Future (Jan 2014)
Dr Alex Davies and Annabel Line (who plays `Scarlet' in the feature film, The Hop-Head Hatchet Man)
The Very Near Future (ArtSpace Gallery, 2014)It's been described as: "a Charlie Kaufman take on Groundhog Day as a noir film".
The installation is free, courtesy of the Australia Council for the Arts, and is open to the public until 16th February 2014, as part of the Sydney Festival - and, many thanks again to Mark, Caroline, Sandra - and all of the wonderful crew at ArtSpace Gallery.
The work itself has been dramatically expanded since its successful Carriageworks exhibition in 2013 as part of the International Symposium of Electronic Arts. (If you already saw it before... you ain't seen the half of it..!)
I was also lucky enough to do some work with Dr Davies, and the approximately 30 other people involved in the project: including but not limited to:
Greg Ferris, Alex Ryan, Chris Caines, Brendan Lloyd, Steve Rodgers, Veronica Sywak, Matthew Prest, Mark Simpson, Annabel Lines, Rebecca Conroy, Damian Martin, Pete Manwaring, Andrew Maher, Monica Brooks, Ed Horne, Leigh Russell, Mark Swartz, Alexandra Crosby, Michaela Davies, Phil Young, Celia Curtis, Martin Crouch, Julianne Pierce, Adam Mada, Aaron Michael Gregory Clark, Andrew Traucki, James Hurley, Chris Fox, Chas Glover, Christian Heinrich, Justin Maynard, James Hancock, Alex Holver, UTS Media Center, Erth, Mark Mitchell, CMAI, ArtSpace, and the Australia Council for the Arts.
Anyway I wrote some of the film scripts in collaboration with Dr Davies, and I also crewed a little on the shoot.
One of the coolest things about the installation is its immersion and interactivity: If you stand at the window in the `film set' (pictured below left) for 5 seconds... and, you peer through the window, into the darkness --
And... - if you then walk over to the current-day edit suite (pictured below) you will (most likely) find yourself inserted - as: "the figure at the window" - into the feature film itself, that is being edited in realtime, when `Scarlet' the nightclub dancer (played by Annabel Line) notices someone spying on herself and Detective Eddie Getz...(!)
Dr Davies at the edit controls... as `the villain' appears at the window, in the film in realtime-!Great reactions ensued from some launch attendees who found themselves inserted into the film as a cameo, in realtime...(!) [Try it for yourself, when you do visit the installation...!]
And - yet another of the cooler aspects of the installation is - the notion that you have wandered into a film studio, where a film noir movie, The Hop-Head Hatchet Man, is being shot, live.
The live security-camera footage gives a glimpse of `30 seconds into the (very near) future' in the various rooms of the film studio itself... It takes about half-an-hour of watching the live shoot inside the studio itself to appreciate the 7 x different parallel universes...
The storyline of the feature film itself (The Hop-Head Hatchet Man) includes a murder-mystery, a love triangle, and a suitcase-bomb that the femme fatale Evangeline Montgomery has planted for her unsuspecting husband - Senator Montgomery - in their mansion's sunroom...
But - will Detective Eddie Getz be able to get to `the scene' of the would-be crime in time? (And - when he does - which of the 7 parallel universes will he find himself in..?)
Frank's Security RoomDue to the multiple time-warps - and parallel universes - involved, there is also an old Steenbeck flatbed editing suite inside the film studio - where the film is also being edited - as well as, the `modern-day' non-linear edit suite...
Actor Steve Rogers (who plays gumshoe detective Eddie Getz in the film The Hop Head Hatchet Man) checks out the day's rushes- As research, it was great fun revisiting classic film production history, including discovering that Steenbecks were first manufactured in 1953 - and in fact, are still made today... We used them at film school (AFTRS) back in the day, as well as AVIDs and other film editing technologies. (And - the AFTRS still has a Steenbeck!)
...For anyone who is a `serious' film aficionado - or even just a lover of cinema in general, (and also - time travel, M-theory, and parallel universes) - this film/art installation is a rare treat - a truly unique sensory and conceptual experience - combining many of the astonishing and immersive technical techniques that Dr Davies has been perfecting over ten years of prior work as an installation artist of international renown.
Wander around the studio/installation work, and examine the props, notated scripts, and other media (eg labelled film cans) lying around, and you'll also notice references to classic cinema history - including: The Maltese Falcon, Sunset Boulevard, Zentropa and even Barton Fink, to name just a few.
The installation/work itself is also an example of transmedia storytelling, given the various media through which the story (universe) is told...
Also, as a longtime lover of the noir genre, I enjoyed these 2 quotes from The Stanley Kubrick Archives (2005):
`[Paul] Schrader rightly contends that film noir is not a separate movie genre, since it depends on the conventions of established genres, such as the gangster film, the science fiction film, and the western. Hence, it is necessary to “approach the body of films made during the noir cycle as expressions of pre-existing genres”.’ (Castle, 2005, p. 281)
And, RE: `Killer’s Kiss' (Dir: Kubrick)
`True to noir tradition, the story begins at the end, and is told in flashback, with the beleaguered hero serving as the narrator of his own downfall.’ (Castle, 2005, p. 281)
I also love Mickey Spillane's comment about his detective/noir fiction: "I don't have readers... I have customers-!"
Brendan, the Sound Recordist on the feature-film-noir, The Hop-Head Hatchet Man, within The Very Near Future...
The Very Near Future is free from Jan 16th to Feb 16th 2014, at ArtSpace Gallery, Woolloomooloo, Sydney - opposite Harry's Cafe de Wheels -
Dr Davies tackles a tiger @ Harry's Cafe de Wheels...Enjoy the Sydney Festival - and we hope to see you (all) - in:
The Very Near Future
...
- Check it out-! [It's free!!]
Also - a cool review in The Thousands, by Bethany Small, here:
http://thethousands.com.au/sydney/look/alex-davies-the-very-near-future
JT Velikovsky
Transmedia Screenwriter & Film Researcher
http://storyality.wordpress.com/
https://uws.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky
The Very Near Future by Alex Davies - 16 January - 16 February 2014
(Click the link above for official ArtSpace webpage...)
So - the successful launch of Alex Davies' film noir time-travel mixed reality (interactive cinema) transmedia project The Very Near Future was on Wed 15th January at 6pm at ArtSpace Gallery, Woolloomooloo, and over 230 people were in attendance. (Yay!)
Outside ArtSpace Gallery at the launch of The Very Near Future (Jan 2014)
Dr Alex Davies and Annabel Line (who plays `Scarlet' in the feature film, The Hop-Head Hatchet Man)
The Very Near Future (ArtSpace Gallery, 2014)It's been described as: "a Charlie Kaufman take on Groundhog Day as a noir film".The installation is free, courtesy of the Australia Council for the Arts, and is open to the public until 16th February 2014, as part of the Sydney Festival - and, many thanks again to Mark, Caroline, Sandra - and all of the wonderful crew at ArtSpace Gallery.
The work itself has been dramatically expanded since its successful Carriageworks exhibition in 2013 as part of the International Symposium of Electronic Arts. (If you already saw it before... you ain't seen the half of it..!)
I was also lucky enough to do some work with Dr Davies, and the approximately 30 other people involved in the project: including but not limited to:
Greg Ferris, Alex Ryan, Chris Caines, Brendan Lloyd, Steve Rodgers, Veronica Sywak, Matthew Prest, Mark Simpson, Annabel Lines, Rebecca Conroy, Damian Martin, Pete Manwaring, Andrew Maher, Monica Brooks, Ed Horne, Leigh Russell, Mark Swartz, Alexandra Crosby, Michaela Davies, Phil Young, Celia Curtis, Martin Crouch, Julianne Pierce, Adam Mada, Aaron Michael Gregory Clark, Andrew Traucki, James Hurley, Chris Fox, Chas Glover, Christian Heinrich, Justin Maynard, James Hancock, Alex Holver, UTS Media Center, Erth, Mark Mitchell, CMAI, ArtSpace, and the Australia Council for the Arts.
Anyway I wrote some of the film scripts in collaboration with Dr Davies, and I also crewed a little on the shoot.
One of the coolest things about the installation is its immersion and interactivity: If you stand at the window in the `film set' (pictured below left) for 5 seconds... and, you peer through the window, into the darkness --
And... - if you then walk over to the current-day edit suite (pictured below) you will (most likely) find yourself inserted - as: "the figure at the window" - into the feature film itself, that is being edited in realtime, when `Scarlet' the nightclub dancer (played by Annabel Line) notices someone spying on herself and Detective Eddie Getz...(!)
Dr Davies at the edit controls... as `the villain' appears at the window, in the film in realtime-!Great reactions ensued from some launch attendees who found themselves inserted into the film as a cameo, in realtime...(!) [Try it for yourself, when you do visit the installation...!]And - yet another of the cooler aspects of the installation is - the notion that you have wandered into a film studio, where a film noir movie, The Hop-Head Hatchet Man, is being shot, live.
The live security-camera footage gives a glimpse of `30 seconds into the (very near) future' in the various rooms of the film studio itself... It takes about half-an-hour of watching the live shoot inside the studio itself to appreciate the 7 x different parallel universes...
The storyline of the feature film itself (The Hop-Head Hatchet Man) includes a murder-mystery, a love triangle, and a suitcase-bomb that the femme fatale Evangeline Montgomery has planted for her unsuspecting husband - Senator Montgomery - in their mansion's sunroom...
But - will Detective Eddie Getz be able to get to `the scene' of the would-be crime in time? (And - when he does - which of the 7 parallel universes will he find himself in..?)
Frank's Security RoomDue to the multiple time-warps - and parallel universes - involved, there is also an old Steenbeck flatbed editing suite inside the film studio - where the film is also being edited - as well as, the `modern-day' non-linear edit suite...
Actor Steve Rogers (who plays gumshoe detective Eddie Getz in the film The Hop Head Hatchet Man) checks out the day's rushes- As research, it was great fun revisiting classic film production history, including discovering that Steenbecks were first manufactured in 1953 - and in fact, are still made today... We used them at film school (AFTRS) back in the day, as well as AVIDs and other film editing technologies. (And - the AFTRS still has a Steenbeck!)
...For anyone who is a `serious' film aficionado - or even just a lover of cinema in general, (and also - time travel, M-theory, and parallel universes) - this film/art installation is a rare treat - a truly unique sensory and conceptual experience - combining many of the astonishing and immersive technical techniques that Dr Davies has been perfecting over ten years of prior work as an installation artist of international renown.
Wander around the studio/installation work, and examine the props, notated scripts, and other media (eg labelled film cans) lying around, and you'll also notice references to classic cinema history - including: The Maltese Falcon, Sunset Boulevard, Zentropa and even Barton Fink, to name just a few.
The installation/work itself is also an example of transmedia storytelling, given the various media through which the story (universe) is told...
Also, as a longtime lover of the noir genre, I enjoyed these 2 quotes from The Stanley Kubrick Archives (2005):
`[Paul] Schrader rightly contends that film noir is not a separate movie genre, since it depends on the conventions of established genres, such as the gangster film, the science fiction film, and the western. Hence, it is necessary to “approach the body of films made during the noir cycle as expressions of pre-existing genres”.’ (Castle, 2005, p. 281)
And, RE: `Killer’s Kiss' (Dir: Kubrick)
`True to noir tradition, the story begins at the end, and is told in flashback, with the beleaguered hero serving as the narrator of his own downfall.’ (Castle, 2005, p. 281)
I also love Mickey Spillane's comment about his detective/noir fiction: "I don't have readers... I have customers-!"
Brendan, the Sound Recordist on the feature-film-noir, The Hop-Head Hatchet Man, within The Very Near Future... The Very Near Future is free from Jan 16th to Feb 16th 2014, at ArtSpace Gallery, Woolloomooloo, Sydney - opposite Harry's Cafe de Wheels -
Dr Davies tackles a tiger @ Harry's Cafe de Wheels...Enjoy the Sydney Festival - and we hope to see you (all) - in:
The Very Near Future
...- Check it out-! [It's free!!]
Also - a cool review in The Thousands, by Bethany Small, here:
http://thethousands.com.au/sydney/look/alex-davies-the-very-near-future
JT Velikovsky
Transmedia Screenwriter & Film Researcher
http://storyality.wordpress.com/
https://uws.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky
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