CoLab's April Newsletter hot off the pixels.

Event | Screen Edge Industry Forum

The Screen Edge Forum, as part of the Documentary Edge festival runs from May 2-4, 2012 at AUT University’s City Campus.
The Forum is an annual Film, TV and All Media industry event focused on innovative ways to create and fund all kinds of screen production. It includes seminars, panels, master-classes, and a pitching forum. An exciting change to the forum this year is the shift from a documentary focus, extending its ambit to the screen industries in general, although documentary remains at its core. The event is a place to update your tool-box with cutting-edge ideas and network with local and international professionals and experts.

Screen Edge Forum is organized in conjunction with the Documentary NZ Trust and AUT’s Faculty of Design & Technologies (Communication Studies, Art & Design, and CoLab). AUT students will also be showcasing their work at this event.
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Research | Making a Case: Digital Art Live

When CoLab joined forces with THE EDGE to help develop a programme of interactive art for the screen at the Aotea Centre in 2011, we all thought this would be a relatively straightforward curatorial process. However it has proved to be a more complex task, that has involved not only showing the work of some of New Zealand’s leading interactive artists, but also providing opportunities for emerging artists and technical support for artists established in other areas but lacking experience working with interactivity. As New Zealand’s only on-going programme of interactive art, Digital Art Live has also become a research project, where we are exploring and analysing the aesthetics of interactivity. Documenting this process, we are about to release a series of case studie on eight DAL exhibitions from 2011, prepared by PhD student Verena Ziegler and DAL curator Nolwenn Hugain-Lacire.

Exhibition | Growth by Jeffery Nusz

They came, they waved, and they saw digital plant forms grow. The preview for Growth was held on Wednesday 28th March, and it was great to see people jumping, waving, dancing and interacting with the work to make the plant forms grow.

The exhibition will run from 27 March - 4 May 2012 at Digital Art Live, Level 2, Aotea Centre.

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Opportunity | Join New Orchestra Practices (NOP)

NOP performed in March at the Wine Cellar and enthralled viewers with their unique ensemble and musicianship – using joysticks to control image and sound – and joining together to create unique pieces. Now they are looking for new players to develop new works for performance, if you're interested please contact the conductor, Nolwenn Hugain-Lucire at nolwenn@nop-project.com.

News | Seven Marker workshops ready for enrolments!

Marker is a public workshop programme (based at AUT) that is focused on igniting creativity through the use of new technologies. Three of the workshops available are in the Textile & Design Lab using cutting-edge machines and the latest textile printing technology. The workshop areas are digital silk scarf printing, T-shirt graphics and screen-printing, and knitted accessory designing where you design the accessory, and the TDL’s Shima Seiki machine knits it for you.

The forth workshop involves using virtual reality software to create an online art gallery, and the fifth workshop enables participants to add interactivity to multimedia projects through the use of graphical programming software. Also included are two workshops involving sound editing and processing software Ableton Live, enabling participants to make audio tracks, and remix and process them to the highest quality. For more information and to register for workshops see markercreativeworkshops.co.nz or email Rebekah Foote, Marker Coordinator, admin@markercreativeworkshops.co.nz.

Opportunity | IE 2012: Second call for Papers

There’s still time to be involved with this year’s Interactive Entertainment conference (IE2012), 21-22 July, 2012. The paper submission deadline has been extended to Sunday 15 April 2012.

The Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment is a cross-disciplinary conference that brings together researchers from artificial intelligence, audio, cognitive science, cultural studies, drama, and HCI. Areas of research also included are interactive media, media studies, psychology, computer graphics; as well as disciplines working on new interactive entertainment specific technologies.
This year’s overarching theme is titled Playing the System. Topics include but are not limited to the following four tracks: Playing Games, Playing Art, Playing Mobile, and Playing Education. Keynote speaker is Blizzard’s Brian Schwab.

Event | Envisage 2012

With partners Film Auckland and ATEED, CoLab will be continuing to run the Envisage series of screen industry-education forums in 2012. Watch this space for details of this highly successful programme which will focus on research and development in the creative sector.

The team at CoLab wish you a very happy Easter and we hope you’ll enjoy a good break before 2012 continues to fly by with many interesting developments, events, and opportunites.