Alpha-ville presents three awards on competition: two Jury Awards and an Audience Award. For the Jury Awards a panel of industry professionals are invited to select the winners. The Audience Award is given to the work with the highest rating by public vote.

Submit to the Future of Moving Image Award 2012

2011 AWARDS

Theme: Zeitgeist, from digital to post-digital.

Jury
Christine Schopf, co-director of Ars Electronica in Linz Austria
Mary Burke, development producer at Warp Films
Adam Woodward, website editor at Little White Lies
Steven McInerney, director at Hackney Film Festival

1st PRIZE & Audience Award
Robots of Brixton
by Kibwe Tavares

Brixton has degenerated into a disregarded area inhabited by London’s new robot workforce – robots built and designed to carry out all of the tasks which humans are no longer inclined to do. The mechanical population of Brixton has rocketed, resulting in unplanned, cheap and quick additions to the skyline.

The film follows the trials and tribulations of young robots surviving at the sharp end of inner city life, living the predictable existence of a populous hemmed in by poverty, disillusionment and mass unemployment. When the Police invade the one space which the robots can call their own, the fierce and strained relationship between the two sides explodes into an outbreak of violence echoing that of 1981.
kibwetavares.blogspot.co.uk

See related article in BBC

2nd PRIZE
The Golden Age (Simulation)
by Paul Nicholls

Shortlisted

The Battersea Experiment

by Dan Tassell

Old Black — Egyptrixx feat. Ohbijou
by A.N.F

2010 AWARDS

Theme: Visionary Cities

Jury
Rebecca Page, Curator – Music and Live Words at Whitechapel Gallery
Tom Vaughan, Programming & Acquisitions at Future Shorts
Ruth Torjussen, Founder of Filmdirecting4women
Olivia Bellas, Independent Film & Arts Producer

1st PRIZE & Audience Award

Augmented 3D City
by Keiichi Matsuda

The architecture of the contemporary city is no longer simply about the physical space of buildings and landscape, more and more it is about the synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume and organise; an immersive interface may become as much part of the world we inhabit as the buildings around us.

Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology defined by its ability to overlay physical space with information. It is part of a paradigm shift that succeeds Virtual Reality; instead of disembodied occupation of virtual worlds, the physical and virtual are seen together as a contiguous, layered and dynamic whole. It may lead to a world where media is indistinguishable from ‘reality’. The spatial organisation of data has important implications for architecture, as we re-evaluate the city as an immersive human-computer interface.
keiichimatsuda.com

2nd PRIZE
Snowcrash
by Hypnololly

3rd PRIZE
Leonardo at the Museum
by Greg Tran

Shortlisted

Transcendent City
by Richard Hardy

The Pentecostal Ministry of Fire
by Jonathan Gales

The 2010 and 2011 Alpha-ville Moving Image Awards were supported by Vimeo, Shooting People and Animate Projects.
If you would like to sponsor the Alpha-ville Future of Moving Image Award 2012 please contact estela@alpha-ville.co.uk

The call for submissions for this years edition is open until 22nd June 2012 around the theme of ‘Unfinity’. There is a submission fee of £5 and only works after January 2009 will be accepted. For details on how to apply visit the submissions page: alpha-ville.co.uk/submissions.

Montreal artists Jean-Sebastien Baillat and Guillaume Cardell join forces with designer Daniel Iregui for this online experience at the occasion of the BIAN (International Digital Arts Bienale) taking place from April 18th to June 13th in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Phenomena is an online interactive experience with 9 chapters released over the course of the BIAN. This is the first chapter and it has really captured our attention for it’s hypnotic aesthetic and of course the quote referenced: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is undistinguishable from magic” by Arthur C. Clarke.”. This work links to the stunning image of the BIAN. Play with it from here:

http://bianmontreal.ca/phenomena

Keywords: interactive, strobscopic, online, magic

You probably have seen a diorama (a small-scale replica of a scene) before but this one is got to be amongst the cutest ones.
Made as part of the graduation work of students at Otis College of Art and Design (California), the project took 3 months to film. The details are very impressive and the scene flows nicely.

One to watch: Mike Ko

Keywords: modelling, 3D, diorama

‘Unnamed Sculpture’ is a moving sculpture that reproduces the body data in the shape of a motion sculpture. Using 3 kinect cameras the artists have recorded the dancers movements and have created a multidimensional piece that plays very well with space and sound, with physicality and virtuality. As the editor says, ” with the complex quasi-static, inconsistent forms the body is painting, a new reality space emerges whose simulated aesthetics goes far beyond numerical codes”. Very nice work.

Read article in CAN.

Produced by Onformative Studio and We are Chop Chop. Music by Machinefabriek.

Keywords: kinect, motion sculpture, data, body

Nice new installation by AntiVj’s Romain Tardy. It’s the first of a series of 5 “versatile” installations. Looking forward to seeing the next ones.

Keywords: mapping, installation, antivj

Artist note:
Matter is a time-based digital sculpture; a celebration of matter itself, the substance of all physical things. It describes a continuous dynamic articulation of a solid, pure block of matter, from the simplest primitive forms to the highest details of geometric complexities, and vice versa… from the unpredictable grace of geological processes to the perfection, beauty and precision of man made crafts.
The subject of this piece is Rodin’s sculpture Le Penseur (The Thinker), a masterpiece born as the avant-garde that has since become a universal classical icon, and now considered the bridge from classical to modern sculpture.
Commissioned by Audemars Piguet
Opening March 21st, Park Avenue Armory, New York

Artist: Quayola
Sound: Matthias Kispert

Keywords: digital sculpture, mesh

Conference topics include:
• Participatory Media
• Arab Spring
• Future Cities
• Mass Observation
• London 2012 Data Art

Special Offer (until 01/04/12)

20% off the current Advanced Rate 2 Day Conference Ticket. With this exclusive rate, the price is reduced from £180 to £144.

If you’d like to take advantage of this limited offer, quote this promotion code when purchasing your ticket: CSO2012

Tickets can be purchased via this link, please select the Advanced Rate 2 Day Conference Ticket and press the promotion code button for this exclusive special offer:
http://futureeverything.org/tickets/

/////////////// NEW ALPHA-VILLE PODCAST PRESENTS ROLY PORTER /////////////////////

Continuing the re-emergence of Bristol’s Subtext, former Vex’d artist Roly Porter presents a mix of current and forthcoming music from the label including tracks from label mates Emptyset.
We’re very happy to say that the mix he’s made for Alpha-ville is arguably one of the finest in the series; an abstract and sombre affair, which, like his album, eschews beats altogether. We won’t spoil it here but rather leave you to discover it for yourself….

Read exclusive interview with him and then listen or download the mix for free for the next 3 weeks: HERE.

We’re guessing that most of the people who follow Alpha-ville’s podcast series will know Roly Porter predominantly through his previous dubstep project Vex’d. As Vex’d, Porter and his creative partner, Jamie Teasdale forged brutalist, edificial bass music that, for a period, seemed to contain the essence of what dubstep would become. If it ultimately didn’t, the impression left by its sheer weight and rude power was still felt within the genre long after the project dissolved from the landscape.
While Teasdale continued to make music as Kuedo post-Vex’d, Porter distanced himself from music altogether. However, at the end of 2011 Porter returned from his self-imposed extradition with outstanding album Aftertime. We’re not exaggerating when we say that when Pinch deployed ‘Hessra’ on his recent Fabric Live cd, we sat bolt upright. These new tracks, beatless, sometimes beautiful but often uncomfortable and harsh clearly represented a new direction for Porter, yet one not entirely broken from his past.

We’re very happy to say that the mix he’s made for Alpha-ville is arguably one of the finest in the series; an abstract and sombre affair, which, like his album, eschews beats altogether. We won’t spoil it here but rather leave you to discover it for yourself. First though, we caught up with the man himself for a debriefing on the tracks he’s chosen, where he’s at now and what it’s like swapping rewinds for people, well, standing and listening.

Firstly, Can you tell us a little about the mix you’ve put together. All the tracks featured are released on the recently relaunched Bristol label Subtext, right?
Yes, it is all either current or upcoming Subtext releases. I’m really happy at the label. I genuinely like all of the music and I feel it works well when presented together as one idea. I hope we do another Subtext event soon….

Listening to the mix it becomes quite apparent that you’ve steered clear of traditional structures – something which you also did on your album Aftertime. Is it liberating to be freed of impetus to make people dance?
Yeah definitely, when I was younger I loved to be in a rave. I was even seen dancing on some rare occasions but the highlights of it for me were when everything, bass, the noise would be overwhelming and I could just stand in another world on my own in front of the system. I wasn’t a very social raver. It’s that experience that I want to recreate. Dub has it, dance music can have it and I’m not ruling out ever writing beats again but I will definitely not release an album of 11 tracks all the same tempo or stand for the whole night listening to the same beat. I feel free from that now and although Vex’d was designed to be outside a genre we still got sucked in.

Coming from a dance/club background is it strange to make the leap into the more abstract. It seems playing to a club and playing to a room of people standing and listening would be drastically different experiences.
The only problem is one of self confidence. When you play dubstep to a club full of people dancing you can look up and hopefully see hands in the air or people shouting or you can see an empty dance floor. You can gauge pretty quickly whether you have blown it or not. When you play an hour of music with no beats, ranging from ambient to quite brutal noise, you look up and people are either standing or sitting but it is impossible to get a clear idea of how they are feeling. I feel completely confident in the music I am making now and in a sense I am happy to look up and see people leaving the room. It isn’t easy listening. People are forced to listen to this music, dancing is a distraction which can make dreadful music seem passable. I know that my music is uncomfortable and requires patience but if I look up at the end of a set and someone has stood still for a whole hour and is clapping, for me that’s as good as a club full of people shouting for a rewind.

The overriding mood is quite – and I hope I’m not oversimplifying – sombre and uncompromising; there’s a brute force in many of the tracks you’ve chosen. What is it that appeals about these kinds of textures?
It’s not oversimplifying, but I think it will be a different experience for each person. Or to explain better I think different people group emotions differently. If something is designed to be happy or uplifting I am likely to fight it and be grumpy. If something is haunting or melancholy or completely bleak I am likely to be much happier. It is difficult to explain but I don’t generally listen well with others. It is certainly sombre, but not depressing, only serious in its intentions.

Likewise, your old project Vex’d could be incredibly visceral. Do you see your work made under your own name as a continuation, in some ways at least, of what you began with Vex’d?
Yes, totally. I am still trying to achieve a similar goal that we set out to achieve with Vex’d. I feel a bit closer, but not there yet. The style of the music is not the whole point. I think we could have written a jungle Degenerate 10 years before and in a sense I feel I wrote a beat-less one many years after with Aftertime.

Besides the aggressive, industrial timbres there’s some really beautiful passages of modern classical music, which is something you’ve been experimenting with. Where did this interest in modern composition come from?
I feel that if I play an hour of just noise and bass the power of those elements will quickly be used up and become tiring. It doesn’t take a huge amount of variation to maintain a bit of tension. Also, for me, bass can be very beautiful so it is not a case so much of classical or string movements being a separate event to ease people along. I really want to incorporate sub and noise in that world.

What inspires you to get up in the morning a write a track? Do you have to be a particular zone to be able to create your music? I mean, the music you’re making now, particularly on your album, seems to come from quite a specific place.
I really don’t know why. When I wrote Aftertime I did not expect it to be released and I definitely didn’t expect anyone to like it. I also don’t really remember the actual process of writing it which happened quite quickly. I was listening to a new piece in the studio with a friend last week and when it finished my first thought was I wonder what I did that for? It is something that I feel is missing from the music that I hear.

Some time lapsed between Vex’d coming to an end and you beginning to make music again. What were you doing?
I stopped listening to modern music, stopped going to clubs and I stopped writing music. I worked as a carpenter and I learnt the banjo. And I had children. This meant that the time I could spend listening to music was massively reduced but my emotional response to it was definitely increased.

Are there any musicians who you feel are currently pushing musical boundaries right now? Who?
Sorry, I can’t really answer that. There is a lot of quite strange music around and I feel that often it can’t really be judged. I like to make instant decisions and I take ages to change my mind, so I tend to hear three seconds of something and say “nope, shit” or totally fall in love. But there is so much music that can’t really be judged at the moment. Emptyset is a good example. Do I like it? It pushes musical boundaries but is that a good thing, is that impressive in itself? The answer for me is, in this case, yes I do like it but it can’t be judged and it certainly can’t be analysed the way you might with other music, like is it beautiful, does it make me want to dance etc.

Any exciting things in the pipeline which you can share with us?
I want to be in a band.

(Interview by Louise Brailey)

Listen and download here:

Track list

Sketch for Industrial Machinery – Paul Jebanasam

Function Remix – Roly Porter

Burn Hole – Eric Holm

Pretending to Breath – Eric Holm

Interstice – Emptyset

Giedi Prime – Roly Porter

Music for the Church of St John Baptist pt. II – Paul Jebanasam

Return – Emptyset

Al Dhanab – Roly Porter

interlude

Hessra – Roly Porter

Haxan – Paul Jebanasam and Roly Porter

Corrin – Roly Porter

Music by Emptyset

Video by Clayton Welham and Sam Williams

Medium is stunning audio & visual piece by Emptyset and visual collaborators Clayton Welham and Sam Williams. The project created around the Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire. The Gothic Mansion was abandoned by its builders in the middle of construction, leaving behind a building that appears complete from the outside, but with floors, plaster and whole rooms missing inside. It has remained in this state since the mid-1870s.

Woodchester Mansion
There were recordings with vintage mics and other analog machines then transformed into the powerful sounds you hear. All footage was filmed on site and broadcast, processed and captured before editing, mirroring Emptyset’s ‘chain of sound’ processes.

Keywords: av, analogue, sound, process, abandoned architecture

Links: Subtext, Emptyset in The Wire.