mapping 2007

 

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Narrative Lab [UK]
Paul Mumford (Vnaut), Toby Harris (Spark)
www.nlab.org.uk
Au Bac Présentation et performance "The story-collector"[45 mn], le vendredi 27 avril
Au Zoo Vj set le samedi 28 avril

Narrative Lab est un laboratoire créatif et conceptuel issu de l'AVIT VJing festival.
Ces artistes explorent un univers narratif dans le domaine du VJing en se servant d'une grande variété de traitements visuels et de media.
Leurs travaux au sein de leur communauté s'articule autour d'une plate-forme de recherche dans les nouvelles formes de VJing.
Leur recherche et constituée de travaux personnels et collectifs et explore aussi le coté plus théorique de la production et de l'interprétation de ce nouveau médium.

Narrative Lab [UK]
Paul Mumford (Vnaut), Toby Harris (Spark)
www.nlab.org.uk
In the Bac presentation and performance on Friday, april 27th
In leZoo on Saturday, april 28th

The narrative lab is a creative and conceptual laboratory that has sprung from the AVIT VJ'ing festival which seeks to provide spaces and frameworks where research on narrative within VJ'ing can take place. We find that narrative is a way of mediating images and meaning and so wish to make use of its application to structure the wider issues of development. The primary aims of the lab are therefore to progress the conceptual development of the VJ art form, and to enable participating VJ's to progress from a level of performance to competency to producing work that can compete with existing media/entertainment forms.

Research is conducted through a variety of process and media. Facilitated by the growth of collaborative clusters within the community. The narrative lab participants actively undertake their own research through the personal and collaborative efforts and seek to produce completed works which demonstrate the use of narrative within VJ'ing.

Two dominant strands of thought can be traced through the Lab's work. The first sets a critical agenda, encouraging the new medium of VJ'ing to enter theoretical discourses. VJ practitioners are invited to experience contemporary theoretical critiques of VJ practice; lectures which begin to explore and interpret VJ'ing as an act, as an art and as a new medium. A second strand of thinking meanders through and engages with the 'process as practice' debate. Intuitive approaches to production are common within the VJ community, as many practitioners do not have formalized training. Narrative Lab seeks to facilitate evolution in the understanding and management of the creative process.

The narrative lab is an ongoing project with the an annual conference program that seeks to educate on two main levels: through lectures which advance thought about VJ practice and follow up workshops which advance the management of the creative process through the use of process methodologies. Narrative Lab actively encourages cross-polination between VJ'ing and other related fields, such as cinema, creative writing, experimental film practice and interactive arts.

The Story-collector -Live Performance [approx. 45-min]
Members of the Narrative Lab have worked collectively to create a graphic narrative adventure.
Blake is an urban city dweller whose alienation with his surroundings prompts him to start collecting stories. VJed graphic overlays help to build and explore the new world Blake creates as he layers multi-sensory information over the gritty cityscapes that are his home. Follow his character's growth through the development of a magical second sight through which all the events in his life become connected.
This piece is a practical exploration of one of our theoretical agendas -the notion of 'process as practice' and seeks to realise its ongoing commitment to the creation of next-generation performance. The production begins to use story development as a research methodology by using a story-collector as filter device. The character will develop throughout the plot action by taking stories he is witness to and weaving them into his personal life narrative. As we see the character learn to connect story structures and ideas together in the screen plot we ultimately uncover the same process through storywriting. This allows us to explore and investigate the process behind hypernarrative production techniques in a practice as research project. The production process has developed as a result of a collaborative writing project uti ising online writing technologies that have enabled multiple users to simultaneously edit and write on the same page from remote locations, allowing a truly collaborative system of development.

The Story-collector -Live Performance [approx. 45-min]
Presentation of our Research and projects.
We wich to present a collection of pieces from a number of lectures we have held over the past few years. Initially we talk about process methodology and ways of creating stroies through techniques such as character cards and collaborative writing, hypernarrative and very uniqueness of VJing. An introduction to the narrative lab's programme and past work leads on the community including Charles Kriel. Falk Gaertner, Visual kitchen, Paul Mumford, Lara Houston and Toby Harris. and we wish to explore research undertaken in 2003 looking at narrative structures that can work in the non linear context of the vj practice. It is eviident that traditional structures cannot be employed in combination with the random access and live construction elements of video perfromance. A solution to the structural problems can be somewhat overcome by adopting a hypernarrative appraoch, and is one that links far more directly to techniques and process's of the vj.