SubSub blog

As promised, here’s some more Light Up Bristol footage.

Light Up Bristol from crustea on Vimeo.

Light Up Bristol happened once again in December. This time bigger, better (and more chaotic) that before. There’s a whole load of pics up on the Flickr group, although with this year being in motion images don’t do it justice.

We’ve got some more video in production (yep, I know it’s March, we’ve been busy!), but for a preview check out the AntiVJ reel, which contains a little of the event from 1:34. (Note: The installations presented at the beginning of the reel are other works by the AntiVJ label)

5 nights
17 artists
100+ meters wide worth of building
6 dam large digital projectors
20 other lighting projectors and lights
3 machines
Over 100k worth of lighting power
4 french men
5463 chestnuts
2 snow machines
many late nights…

Last night I headed over to Bluescreen @ the Cube Cinema, mainly to see the latest piece of work by Chuen Hung Tsang and Chris Hawkes. Chuen’s work so far has been beautiful, so this latest project, a personal project funded and supported by Black Dog Films held a lot of potential.

The work didn’t fail to deliver. Their work does so well because even in such a small team (of 2), they have a plethora of skills, from technical to storytelling. The visual styling is rich, with bleak apocalyptic settings with classic anime’esqe over exposed sky, the edits and cuts were strong and the story held you throughout. Well done boys.

Nothings online yet to view, so you’ll have to bide your time with their last endeavor, a music video for Leave Land For Water.

Also to note from the evening: Some fun and well put together stop frame animation from a recent UWE grad (who’s name I missed, but hopefully will get to add here soon) and the intimate-INTIMATE documentation, a piece commissioned by Black Out Arts for the tollgate house projections by Minton Film

If you don’t know of Futurelab, perhaps you should have a word with yourself. Bristol based (but internationally renowned) Futurelab have been looking into the future of education, in particular how technology is likely to change the way we pass on our knowledge in the future. And you can now get access to a number of their findings through their website at: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/research/

In particular a number of quick hits of info can be found in their handbooks: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/research/handbooks.htm

Enjoy the read.

The second Dorkbot happened last night.  I’ll have to admit to only witnessing the beginning before having to run away.  But the turn out then was already great, with a number of weird and wonderful inventions and inventors.

It seems all the physical geeks are coming out of the woodwork, which I’m very excited about.

The Innovation theme continued through to Friday with the BBC coming to town to discuss their Innovation Labs. The basic premise is that the BBC has problems, and they understand they may not be the best people to solve them… so setup this scheme to probe and commission the best innovative people across the country to help them do it.

That of course is where SubSub comes in, with so many creative and intelligent innovators under one (digital) roof.

The day started by finding out a bit about the scheme, the briefs they’ve set out and the systems and technologies they use. We then had an afternoon of brainstorming, concluding in a impromptu pitch back to the people there. This was really just an excuse to get us riled up, with the real submissions taking place online over the next few months.

Although some involved found the process quite hierarchical, I found Matt Locke (Head of Innovation) an exceptionally intelligent and articulated chap, and would enjoy the chance of working with him (let’s hope he doesn’t read this, and blame us for attempted ‘buttering up’)

We hope to get at least one idea generated and in to the running, preferably more. We’ll obviously keep people informed of the progress.