The Libre Video Lab opened in Brussels, hosted by Constant, a Brussels organisation for media art. Peter Westenberg blogged about the opening film screenings on the OS Video blog:
Open Source Video ?
On 22 september, we showed some films in our freshly opened Libre Video Lab, which is part of Constant Variable, Constant’s new lab building dedicated to F/LOSS art, on Rue Gallait 80 in Schaarbeek, Brussels.
We showed some video’s that were in their own way give meaning to the ‘open’ in ‘open source’ video. The shorts Interdit de filmer; Une Mer; Headwar and Pov Mec; by Sarah Pleak, aka Sarah Tohn are made using free softwares such as Kino and Cinelerra and open source codecs and are available under a free license (from: http://www.c3p0o.org/larsselavy/).
Other video’s addressed issues concerning public space, border crossing, notions of identity and freedom, common spaces and collective ownership.
Le Pied by Fred Chemama; and Frontière by Jerome Giller are both released under a Creative Commons license. They were suggested for the evening by 68septante, the super sympa Brussels based organisor of cultural events and publisher of dvd’s that wants to stimulate creative production and exchange between artists and a broad public.
By clapping your hands (up to 25 claps per seconds) you could slow forward the single shot film Barca High Speed by Peter Westenberg, which was projected behind the door of the main room. The film is a portrait of a walk through Barcelona shot as a series of photographs on B/W super 8.
Stéfan Piat showed documentation of his interactive installation Fort Saint-Nicolas and a GPS video collage, reconstucting a walk along the canal de Charleroi in Brussels, using gps data that was captured along the video.
After enjoying some beautiful clips of the work of Stadtmusik , and a quick look at an example from the wonderful slit scan blog, Michael Murtaugh showed some results from MotionCamera, videos made with “motion” & ffmpeg, commandline tools, including Cat Motion #2.
And finally Simon Yuill was present to show his film Given to the People a film telling the story of the Pollok Free State, a Free State initiated by the actions of local resident Colin Macleod, who began a tree top protest against the building of the M77 motorway through Pollok Park, one of Europe’s largest inner city public commons, in the early 1990s. Yuill joined the original VHS footage that was shot at the time with additional interviews that contextualise the actions in an atmospheric account of the events.
For all the video’s goes: yes they can be found on line, but usually some higher resolution exists with the makers. Send a mail if you would like to show something and you think we can help.
Pictures can be found in the Constant Gallery. & Further infos can be found on the wiki.
