FESTIVAL DEDICATED TO CONTEMPORARY AND DIGITAL ARTS

Athens Video Art Festival is the official festival of digital arts and new media of Greece, representing of our country internationally during the past seven years.

This is a draft diary of the conversations and thoughts at the districts of the festival office.

Peace Love Unity Creativity & Dignity

  • Artist: Tristram Cary
  • TrackName: Visible Manifestations (E1 A - D)
  • Album: It's Time For Tristram Cary

BRITISH EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC #1

While spending numerous hours at the office, The Athens Video Art Festival Production Team spins tones of old dusty vinyls, listens to monster mixes by Dark Sky and rhymes over old school samples. A few days ago, during a fever of laptop keyboard bleepin and sweet nuthins Shotz started listening to a series of massive BBC Radiophonic Workshop tunes. One thing leading to another he returned home to drop a spin of a Johnny Trunk’s compilation dedicated to Tristram Cary. This was the start of our tribute to British Experimental Music; Four volumes yet to come beginning from here…

THE CURIOUS STORY OF TRISTRAM CARY

Born in Oxford, the son of the novelist Joyce Cary, refusing his father’s advice to become a doctor, seemed to be much more interested in contemporary electronics, mechanics and composing soundscapes.

While his Royal Navy service, during the World War II, Tristram Cary mercilessly experimented developing his own conception of tape and electronic music. Right after the prevalence over the Nazis, Cary returned back home with loads of ideas in his luggage. While studying composition, piano, viola and horn, he felt much more secure to start building his own studio by using cheap military equipment.

As the 1950’s rose, he was offered a series of commissioned work, with more distinctive of them all, the composition of the score of the original film «The Ladykillers» in 1955. Financially accomplished, Cary had the time to evolve his experimentations and vision. In 1967 he founded the Royal College of Music Electronic Studio and his meeting with Peter Zinovieff and David Cockerell stood as the breaking point for the creation of UK’s very first synthesizer company, Electronic Music Studios (EMS). Alongside the construction of VCS 3, Synthi and Delaware, he continued adding new ideas to his vision and recording for a small Norfolk based label.

In 1974 he moved in Australia composing of groundbreaking music until the end of his life.Tristram Cary died in 2008 having changed the face of contemporary music for once and forever. This is a short excerpt of his legacy…

PURSUIT GROOVES :: REVOLUTIONARIES :: DIG IT BOYS & GIRLS! YOU MUST BELIEVE

Alpha-ville International moving image competition now open!

Athens Video Art Festival is partnering with Alpha-ville Festival 2011 and invites you to submit your film to this year’s International Digital Moving Image Competition. Alpha-ville is looking for work that represents the transition from digital to post-digital culture. The competition aims to participate in the ongoing debate about the effects of the digital revolution in the arts, culture and society.

The 2011 International Moving Image Competition is open to artists working across all genres of digital short film: animation (2D, 3D, stop-frame, CGI, motion graphics, etc), fiction, documentary or experimental. The competition seeks entries that demonstrate originality and vision.

Alpha-ville will award three prizes including an honorary audience award. Jury panel: Christine Schopf, co-director of Ars Electronica in Linz Austria, Mary Burke, development producer at Warp Films and Adam Woodward, website editor at Little White Lies.

“With this year theme, Alpha-ville wants to address the transition from a digital to a post-digital culture, that looks beneath technology at how human behaviors such as collaboration, participation and interaction have redefined the creative practice and society itself, and at how the physical boundaries between reality and online are blurred. Alpha-ville joins the discourse about post-digital initiated in 1998 by visionary, thinker and founder of the MIT Media Lab Nicholas Negroponte who pushed the edges of information to predict the future of our culture.” Estela Oliva, Alpha-ville founder and director.

Deadline: Friday 2nd September

Follow alpha-ville:

www.alpha-ville.co.uk

@alphavillefest

Alpha-ville Facebook Fan Page

ESG :: MOODY

A SOUTH BRONX STORY!

A.J.’s real name is Ajamu Talib. His dislike for his African name is the least of his problems, still it says a lot about him. Brooklyn born and bred yet outcast by his peers, his only escape was music. A.J. found freedom in rock n roll.

Tight clothes, straightened hair, popular with girls and partying every night, he is fully entrenched, in the debaucherous New York rock n roll scene. For once he feels like everyone else. Well almost. He begins to find that his chosen community, the white rock world, only seems to run smoothly for white rockers. A series of events force him to recognize hisfriends both exotify him and are in denial of his blackness. Black, but not “really” black. What’s a young black rocker to do? “White Lies, Black Sheep” is one of those films where the locations and the city itself are as important as the story. Much like Taxi Driver, Wild Style, Downtown 81, or Kids, “White Lies” is sure to be used as a reference point, establishing for future generations just what New York was like, back in early second millennium.

Executive Producer Matthew Morgan

Producer James Spooner

Producer Matthew Morgan

Producer Sam Harman

Director James Spooner

Screenplay James Spooner

Director Of Photography Brad Young

Trus’ me :: Shakea Body

Working Nights LP :: Fat City

Afro-Punk, a 66-minute documentary, explores race identity within the punk scene. More than your everyday, Behind the Music or typical “black history month” documentary this film tackles the hard questions, such as issues of loneliness, exile, inter-racial dating and black power.

We follow the lives of four people who have dedicated themselves to the punk rock lifestyle. They find themselves in conflicting situations, living the dual life of a person of color in a mostly white community. The style of the documentary inter-cuts interviews from scores of black punk rockers from all over the nation with scenes from our four protagonists’ lives. They come from different regions, generations, genders, and sexual preferences but their stories are amazingly similar.

Afro-Punk features performances by Bad Brains, Tamar Kali, Cipher, and Ten Grand. It also contains exclusive interviews by members of Fishbone, 247- spyz, Dead Kennedys, Candiria, Orange 9mm and TV on the Radio to name a few.

Produced Directed and edited by James Spooner Shot by James Spooner and Kira Kelly Producers : James Spooner , Matthew Morgan

Matthew Burton & Kate Rathod’s choon fits perfectly to a Saturday summer noon!

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