Todd Thille Blog

µ:avit

25 May 2008

The DMY festivities were well underway when I arrived from Istanbul. The Visual Berlin crew had a booth set up in the dark nether-regions of the cavernous Arena by the Spree River. The showcase schedule on the µ:avit site is up to date and all is in readiness for the Avit event on Saturday. The usual suspects from the Visual Berlin crew were present and accounted for: fRED, Flux, HilmeKillme, cyper…fALk was also present and Willow made a surprise visit.

Toby and I trekked out to the wilds of Wannsee to stay at fALk’s place, nestled amongst 700-year-old oak trees.

µ:avit go underway around noon on Saturday. A series of lectures and performances were staged in two locations in the Arena. Toby *spark was first up with a Quartz Composer demo, Kristian Raue gave talk about his MASH tool. Ilan from GarageCube conducted a modul8 user group meeting. Bram did a hands-on session about MIDI, I talked about some AV pieces of interest, fALk gave his thesis on Live Cinema.

Closed the DMY festival for the evening. The Visual Berlin crew plus out of town guests made their way to a local beer garden. Delicious pizza and beer kept the group going for a while. I headed back to fALk’s. Was happy to see the bed. Was up early hoping to get packed and ready to meet up with Toby and fRED, but never quite connected. Ended up walking through the woods to the local bakery to get some breakfast breads. Had a fantastic brunch in fALk’s garden. Mogreens came by a bit later to record an episode of the podcast he and fALk are making. I got interviewed for the episode.

META 2008

04 May 2008

Took the Greyhound overnight from Atlanta to Asheville, North Carolina. Met up with Duncan Laurie and his daughters Lena and Bryn. Headed into the “hippie” part of town for some vegetarian lunch at the Laughing Seed Café. Found one of Duncan’s cast metal belt buckles from the 1970s in the Paul Taylor Sandals shop.

Finished lunch just as it started to rain. Piled into the car and headed for Rockmont, the former home of Black Mountain College. For one week, the Rockmont Camp for Boys would serve as host to a hand selected group of artists, musicians, and filmmakers from around the world. Primarily friends of filmmaker Roger Manley, the family is continually expanding.

Notable participants included: champion for world peace Lane Berk, visionary artist Paul Lafolley, multi-media artist Jonathon Hexner, photographer Cheryl Dunn, writer Tom Maxwell, harpsichordist Elaine Funaro, photographer Deborah Luster, cellular biologist Kevin F. Sullivan, Ph.D., cinematographer Dyanna Taylor, documentary filmmaker Les Blank, tenor Michael Bennett, composer Giuseppe Gavazza, sculptor František Skála, musician Steve Nalepa, sculptor Duncan Laurie, and filmmaker, author and host of META Roger Manley.

Spent a fantastic week meeting new folks and hearing talks about what they were doing.

Duncan and I set up the IBVA with rocks and plants 3 times to show off how they work. Lots of interest and at one session, an interesting trio of harpsichord, tenor and plants.

One of the nights I set up the projector and a Rutt-Etra Max patch with a live camera input going for the others have a go at it.