Tom Revill drew a picture of the “scuttle bugs” that featured in Phil’s “Global Hockets” project. They were awesome, controlled by performers hidden above the stage, they interact with each other on stage.

There’s a clear case on top of wheels (so you can see the workings). The speaker on the top emitted sounds of night animals.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I’m at the Aotearoa Digital Arts Symposium (ada2009), which is being held at Victoria’s School of Architecture and Design.

ADA is a charitable trust (”We finally became charitable this April” says Zita, the chair) that has formed out of an email discussion list and a distributed support network populated by a group of digital artists here in New Zealand. The yearly ADA symposium is now in its 6th year. It helps keep build and nourish this “uncomfortably small but cozy community” (says Zita: “I don’t mean ‘uncomfortably small’ in a really uncomfortable way”) by facilitating a face-to-face get together of folks who are otherwise perfectly happy to converse and collaborate virtually.

The symposium also helps bring in new people to this community (like myself!), and they try to be as open as possible to new ideas and conversations. The three signature elements of the event seem to be: The free lunch (nom!), friendly and open events, conversational approach.

This ‘conversational model’  seems to me to be quite similar to what I’ve seen at several recent conferences - a growing trend towards interactive, participatory, short presentation sessions - encouraging as many people to get up and speak as possible. It can be challenging to compress your ideas down into 5 minute talk, but it also narrows the focus of talks down to the most important elements, and lowers the barrier of entry to those who might not otherwise feel like they can prepare for a full session.

The feel of the conference is very grass roots and comfortable (and I loved how the plates and mugs for lunch have been sourced from a local thrift store), and everyone is very friendly and happy to help. I went to workshop sessions yesterday on Arduino and Quartz Composer, and despite being such a newbie - there were great people to give me tips and get me started!

It’s still possible to just drop in on the conference (which still has today, tonight, and tomorrow left to go) for a very small fee - so check out the programme and see if anything takes your interest! (You can follow our conversations on twitter).

I should start this post by pointing out that - yes - my partner does work at the OFLC. The views expressed below are my own - as always - not theirs. I’m going on what I remember from past conversations, and my own thoughts, so some of my facts probably need checking.

I love Aro Video and - as an Aro Valley resident myself - regularly borrow films from their store. However, I’m concerned that their recent campaign for censorship reform is cloaking what is primarily an economic challenge for small New Zealand businesses in social/moral rhetoric and emotive language.

Maybe that’s too harsh, I’m sure that is not their intent - but I do think it is interesting to see how economic and social issues collide (jostle for position?) around this issue.

Here’s what I understand, in simple terms:

• Films must display a New Zealand classification to be sold here.
• Films are classified in New Zealand when, before they are supplied to the public, “someone” submits it to the OFLC and pays a fee.
• Most of the time, this “someone” is a big fancy distributor to whom $1100 is not much more than a drop in the bucket. (When you’re looking at millions in Kill Bill sales, $1100 is nothing to get an R18 classification and sticker for your ultra-violent film so that sensible adults can buy it in New Zealand.)
• But big distributors only tend to import and stock what the “mainstream” watch and play. So when it comes to alternative titles - media consumed by smaller groups of the New Zealand population - noone is there to pay this fee.
• Because there are also less people to buy these alternative titles, less units are likely to be sold in New Zealand, meaning that the amount of profit to made from stocking these titles is far less, especially when you take into account that you’ll also have to foot the bill for $1100 to stock it in the first place.
• When you are a small store like Aro Video, and you have built your reputation on being able to find ‘just about anything’ for your customers, this can pose a bit of a problem. If you have to pay a classification fee on top of the cost of importing just one copy of a DVD for a keen customer, you are likely to lose money, not make it. Aro says they provide “a comprehensive choice of contemporary, classic and curious cinema including a significant selection of exclusive titles” - they trade off this reputation.

Now, here is where it starts to get interesting: (more…)

I believe that storytelling is one of the most important things we can do as human beings. Jonathan Harris - capturing stories told by ordinary people, making them collide and interact - is totally my hero.

I admire so much of his practice - from personally collecting ephemera and found objects to digitally harvesting public, yet profoundly intimate, tales.

One day, when I grow up, I’d love to play a similar role as a curator of everyday storytelling.