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 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:

It isn’t illegal to own, and have in your own home, media that hasn’t been classified yet in New Zealand (as long as it’s not got content considered to be “objectionable” under NZ law). This means that, if you’re unable to find what you are looking for at a local retailer, you are able to go online and buy from online retailers located overseas, and have the item shipped here – direct to you.

The second interesting thing, I think, is that this is essentially what Aro Video was doing in the first place – in the past, when you asked them to find something you couldn’t find anywhere else in New Zealand, they would contact their overseas suppliers and purchase the item… but they would then sell it to you (with NZ label) over the counter.

These days, Aro Video finds itself getting “scooped” by online retailers like Amazon, because consumers can go direct to overseas suppliers, via sophisticated tools that aggregate together a great many of these different suppliers at once.

Thanks to the internet – everyone is suddenly able to see this network of suppliers, and import whatever we want to watch in our own homes!

So, this issue seems – at least to me – to be, not actually about “shortening the ‘long tail’ of consumer choice”… but rather about how free international trade is impacting on small New Zealand businesses…

It is also interesting to note that Aro Video is making money this way as well, their website states that they “also welcome international orders, so no matter where you are in the world, you can order (and even pre-order) films to buy from the website”.

It does seem to me that it might be easier for Aro Video to blame New Zealand Censorship law for being unable to obtain material, than to admit that they can’t afford to acquire and process everything that their ‘long tail’ customers ask for.

Perhaps part of the business model of an ‘alternative’ video store involves taking a financial hit on the import of rare titles in order to keep a reputation of being able to ‘find anything’. How much can you pass these expenses on to the customer? (After all, Aro Video is only $1 more expensive for a ‘general release’  than Video Ezy Wellington – would we pay more for a wider range of local rentals?)

Furthermore, it’s not quite as devastating as it sounds:

• This economic problem only applies to a very small section of films. A lot of ‘non-mainstream’ titles are traditionally brought into NZ through film festivals. Film festivals get a waiver of up to 75% of the classification fee, and this fee is fronted by the film festival organizers (this may be why film festival tickets are slightly more expensive than ordinary cinema tickets), not by retailers/rental stores.
• Much of the films brought into New Zealand may be cross-rated from Australia and the UK, meaning they don’t have to go through the OFLC, and may just ‘adopt’ our stickers. (Cross rating isn’t the be-all and end-all: if we’d followed Australia’s classification system to the letter, we’d have censored a lot more video games last year. Thankfully, our censors still look at the higher rated items, to classify them R18 so Adults can still access them even if Australia or the UK bans them).
• Many of the items Aro Video lists as unavailable actually have been previously classified in New Zealand, and are in fact available for import. Some of the list are banned due to objectionable content.

In a recent article in the Capital Times, Bill Hastings (New Zealand’s Cheif Censor) spoke about some of the issues. I was interested in his call to the video rental industry: “I would say New Zealand is missing out because the video shop industry is not being sufficiently creative in being co-operative… Why don’t these guys get together and jointly pay the waived classification fee for the title of a DVD, and then they can import as many as they want – they’d just have to pay the small amount for the classification sticker on each DVD.”

I can see, though, why this would be difficult to implement. Why would video stores, currently in competition with each other for customers, agree to collaborate? If other stores start stocking these hard-to-get items, won’t Aro Video lose its great reputation?

As a librarian, my personal view is that the onus is instead on cultural heritage institutions (particularly university libraries, where ‘works of cultural merit’ are concerned, but also public libraries) to band together and bear some of the cost of classification on the part of the public. I was quite surprised to see several Victoria University Librarians complaining, in the comments of the Lumiere blog post, that classification was “prohibitive” to their collections. (My recollection was that Victoria was considering collaborating with other university libraries to get their collections classified.)

I think that librarians (and New Zealand retailers too) have an obligation, as people who care about creative media, to promote public awareness, and support the process of classification… in order to protect access to these materials and future creative works. I think we’re fortunate to have an established system in New Zealand that looks independently and critically at what the appropriate audience is for material, as opposed to just banning it outright based on moral panic.

Mmm, Aro Valley. The barista at Aro Cafe now greets me by name every morning when I stop there on my way to work. He knows what I like to drink, and often if I go there with friends for breakfast he’ll say – ‘Would you like a long black to get started, Timothy?’ – as we head for our table.

Even though Aro has raised the price of their long blacks recently, I still frequently stop by there for a coffee. I have to admit that I feel this personal connection has quite a bit to do with my continued patronage!

In fact, I think it is pretty significant that in a city like Wellington, where I have so much choice in terms of coffee, it has been the baristas that have most frequently influenced my repeat visits.

I think there is something to learn from my experience, about the power of personal, one-to-one, human, connection for creating great experiences. I wonder how this experience translates into web services, the online environment, or even patrons’ experience of libraries or museums.

Brooklyn Museum made this kind of personal connection with me recently, when I signed up to become one of their ’1stfans’. Within a few minutes of subscribing, I recieved a tweet from their community manager, welcoming me to the group, and emails and friend requests only a short time after that. Even though I am miles away from New York city (and wonder if I’ll every actually get to visit the Brooklyn Museum in my life) I feel much more a part of this community, fond of this place, and connected to its staff, than I do (for example) my local public library!

Is this feeling just some illusion? Has my favourite Aro Street barista just used a little bit of manipulative psychology to turn me into a repeat customer?

I’m not sure, but it does make me think more about my current role as Senior Tutor. I definitely could be doing a better job at making a personal connection with my students, particularly those who are further away- who I don’t see in class each week. If I think about it, my role is at least in part, to be a ‘community manager’ of sorts. I wonder what I can do to make their experience of the programme more personal. How can I learn more about them and anticipate their needs?

Any ideas? I suspect it is something more subtle than just ‘get them to follow you on twitter’. I think one thing I could do right away is try to reply individually and quickly to emails from students, instead of ‘saving up’ my replies and sending out group messages. But how do I balance the additional time cost this might bring.

Have you any suggestions? Perhaps you have particularly good or memorable experiences that spring to mind that I could learn from.

Sukiyaki Western Django

“Imagine El Topo remade by Suzuki Seijun, and you might have something like this East-meets-West, pop art-meets-psych, guns-and-swords fusion that Miike makes weirder by having his Japanese cast speak in phonetically delivered English with subtitles! The icing on the cake? A Tarantino cameo”.

Ben X

“A galvanizing portrait of autism and its profound impact on both the autistic person and their families and community, Ben X boldly melds virtual reality with live-action vérité style and docudrama to create what may be a new film grammar”.

Married Life

“Ira Sachs’ slyly ironic film noir relocates British crime novelist John Bingham’s Five Roundabouts to Heaven to the Pacific Northwest in the late 40s”.

Be Kind Rewind

“When Jerry pops into the corner video store – yes, video; the new-fangled DVD is banned – run by his friend Mike (a delightfully doleful Mos Def), his magnetised brain erases their entire stock. In order to satisfy the store’s most loyal renter, the two friends set out to remake the lost films, starting, improbably, with Ghostbusters, and progressing to Rush Hour II, The Lion King, Driving Miss Daisy and any number of turkeys and classics.”

CJ7

“Ever a champion of the underdog and the handmade, Chow, whose own childhood poverty informs all his movies, conjures a savior out of a junkyard – a strange alien who looks like a newly-hatched chick with huge eyes, a flubbery green body, Charlie Chaplin moves and an unstable relationship to the martial arts.”

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

“In a rich array of archival footage, home movies and intimate recollections, director Alex Gibney (Enron, Taxi to the Dark Side) zeros in on the frantic 60s and 70s when Thompson rose to fame and then infamy with his own brand of maverick, subjective journalism”.

Mechanical Love

“Compelling, disquieting and droll, this gaze at relationships ahead vividly illustrates the age-old need to love”.

Want to know when we plan to see these, and where they’re showing? Well, I made a calendar.