Pixelvision: Electronic Folk Art
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Mon 29 September 2008 // 20:00
(Mon 29th, 8pm, £4/£3)
Pixelvision: Electronic Folk Art - Gerry Fialka, Director of the PXL THIS festival, presents an interactive workshop on the Fisher-Price PXL-2000 toy video camera. He explores the significance of this raw DIY moving image art tool through the percepts of Marshall McLuhan, George Seaurat, Salvador Dali, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Frank Zappa & more.
James Wickstead invented the plastic camcorder and Fisher-Price produced it from 1987 to 1989. It records picture and sound directly onto audio cassettes, which creates its grainy look. Another distinguishing feature is its "in-focus" capability from zero to infinity. The "in your face" attitude restores a certain human vitality to the sensory overload that bombards us daily. It illustrates Marshall McLuhan's perception that television is tactile - you can practically touch the dots, all 2,000 of them (as opposed to the 150,000 you normally see on TV). Orson Welles said that a movie studio is "the biggest electric train set a kid ever had." On the other end of the spectrum, the PXL-2000 video camera is the cheesiest failed toy ever -- a train crashes in the playpen. Yet, in the hands of visionary video-makers, it has become an essential tool of cutting-edge creativity.
http://www.indiespace.com/pxlthis and http://www.venicewake.org
Pixelvision: Electronic Folk Art - Gerry Fialka, Director of the PXL THIS festival, presents an interactive workshop on the Fisher-Price PXL-2000 toy video camera. He explores the significance of this raw DIY moving image art tool through the percepts of Marshall McLuhan, George Seaurat, Salvador Dali, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Frank Zappa & more.
James Wickstead invented the plastic camcorder and Fisher-Price produced it from 1987 to 1989. It records picture and sound directly onto audio cassettes, which creates its grainy look. Another distinguishing feature is its "in-focus" capability from zero to infinity. The "in your face" attitude restores a certain human vitality to the sensory overload that bombards us daily. It illustrates Marshall McLuhan's perception that television is tactile - you can practically touch the dots, all 2,000 of them (as opposed to the 150,000 you normally see on TV). Orson Welles said that a movie studio is "the biggest electric train set a kid ever had." On the other end of the spectrum, the PXL-2000 video camera is the cheesiest failed toy ever -- a train crashes in the playpen. Yet, in the hands of visionary video-makers, it has become an essential tool of cutting-edge creativity.
http://www.indiespace.com/pxlthis and http://www.venicewake.org