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Curated by PATRICK LICHTY Even though the use of mobile phones for still photography is Gaining more widespread acceptance, more and more cell phones, PDA's and handheld devices are being equipped with video capabilities. What then, are the potentials of the handheld device as a cinematic tool for expression, activism, and experimentation? To paraphrase Antin, what are the distinctive qualities of Mobile Video, and how do narratives from this technological set differ from its predecessors? Does the intimacy and mobility of the video-enabled cell phone create a change in perspective? Does it represent a culture of universal surveillance where there is a universal intimacy but a complete lack of private space? How does the mobile perspective shift our perception in the way the mediated image of the cellular/network individual is represented? Does its low-resolution somehow challenge the aesthetics, 'truthfulness', or technofetishism of the increasingly filmic nature of video? These are some of the questions that Mobile Exposure hopes to address. CONCEPT Mobile Exposure presents works that address mobile culture or uses mobile/handheld devices. Our criteria for slection was very broad; reflecting on the mobile and locative through the medium or the concept. THE CALL FOR WORKS The Mobile Exposure handheld video program is an exploration of the potentials of mobile video and culture. Practitioners were invited to submit all lengths of work, although the focus finally settled on short works (less than 15 minutes in length). Initially, the videos will NOT be shown on cell phones, but in the cinema. We were looking for works made using cell phones, obsolete video cameras, wristcams, childrens’ NON-(vhs/dv/hi-8) video cameras, PDAs, and even small cameras that allow mpg. VENUES: Mobile Exposure will be a traveling theatrical festival. About Patrick Lichty Lichty is an artist, scholar, and curator in New Media and technological arts, and is noted for his expertise in arts using mobile technologies. He is Editor-in-Chief of Intelligent Agent Magazine.
Reviews and Other Info:
Curatorial Statement: In conceiving of what would become the Mobile Exposure video festival in 2003, I had just finished the implementation of the (re)distributions mobile device art exhibition which featured works for the hand, body and embedded processors cooexisting in the spaces around us. Mobile and handheld devices have always seemed like a natural platform for art, but it’s been a while seeing it develop. When I envisioned the (re)distributions exhibition after the first time I saw a Palm Pilot in 1998, there was a lag between the rise of the technology, and the time required for that tech to reach critical mass in mainstream society. It seems that it’s taken a lot less time for cellphones to catch on than PDA’s as art devices. When I got my first video cellphone, I knew it was a matter of time for this festival to take place, and am gratified that the timespan between conception and inception for Mobile Exposure has been far less time than previous projects. Thinking about the cellphone as a place for video, I think about the history of video art, one of the seminal wells from which this festival draws. An essay that has influenced my thinking on video and technological art in general is David Antin’s “ The Distinctive Qualities of Video”, which discusses the differences between video and television, power, and access. Antin believed that television is the medium of the institutional broadcaster, and video is created by the grass roots, do-it-yourself, guerrilla practitioner. My belief is that with the rise of digital technologies, and mobile recording devices, the grass-roots video that Antin spoke of is becoming increasingly candid, experiential, intimate, and in the moment. These qualities are evident in many of the works featured in this festival. Melinda Rackham’s cellphone journeys play with metaphors of travel as she walks along inset maps, stars and other elements after she had traveled from Australia to Scandinavia. Michael Spakowski’s meditative shorts compress human experience into a small space by virtue of the mobile recording device. Also, the intimate nature of the mobile device reveals itself in “Amor Es” and “The Stolen Kiss” and “Kaytai” (Japanese for cellphone), a video that reflect on people’s relationships to their mobile devices. To return to Antin, in the time between today and that of the time of Antin’s essay, the rise of network culture, mobile technologies, and radical shifts caused by digital technologies have come about. Aesthetic, social, political, and cultural issues surrounding the arrival of new technologies have arisen through the coming of these new technologies as well. One of these is that of access. Equipment that was hopelessly out of reach on the 1980’s now exist in miniscule devices as consumer equipment, and professional-grade video equipment exists that can be had for a couple thousand dollars. This was unheard of even in the day of the PortaPak. And taken to its logical extreme, Bryce Beverlin’s “Wristwatch 61” takes mobile video to its most gestural and fleeting by using serial imagery from a Casio WristCam.* But if you think that I do not have misgivings about having mobile eyes everywhere, the upshot mobile recording is plain as well. Foucault wrote of the prototype prison called the Panopticon, which was supposed to create an environment that allowed everyone to watch everyone else in the space (if so desired). Maybe this seems old hat by 2005, but with closed-circuit cameras and surveillance platforms everywhere from the local convenience store to the bank, the Orwellian Big Brother-esque scenario in which anyone could be watching you is here. This includes the cell phone. So, with security cameras peering at us, and us peering at them, we are under the microscope. Whole subcultures devoted to skirt peeking with personal cameras are not news, and phone cameras are sophisticated enough to make credit card imaging a problem. So, not only governments and institutions can watch us with impunity, any element able to obtain and use such a device is made capable of recording our lives as well. We’re living within a sort of “The Truman Show”. But then, this also opens up the possibility for the cell phone and other personal recording devices as ‘counter-surveillance’ devices. For instance, when authorities wish to have a record of an event for ‘official’ purposes, such as identification, the gaze usually does not include that of the person behind the counter – officer, teller, etc.; just the client. Personal imaging devices create a reflection of surveillance, one that could possibly be a metaphorical ‘watching of the watchers’, and would ideally keep everyone honest. Derek Jarman’s “My Response to Chroma” takes us inside Wal-Mart, one of America’s tightest commercial surveillance zones to give us a counter-record of American consumer culture. This form of counter-surveillance is essential to the future of electronic freedom, but it’s obvious to anyone who has watched cable news that with the proper angle and the proper editing, that the truth of an image becomes far less stable. The ideal model is far from perfect in real life. However, as I may have been painting too dark of a mobile video worldview, the flexibility of image creation with portable devices also offers the possibility for unique creative viewpoints. As with the Kodak Brownie and Polaroid Land cameras, and the Sony PortaPak after them, the mobility of the recording device created new perspectives from the users of the technologies. As mentioned before, many of these are different, if not new, perspectives of human existence, grass-roots visions, and intimacy. A critical mass for mobile video is upon the cultural scene. In the United States (typically behind in mobile technology) cell phones may have the ability to create video, but until recently the cellular infrastructure lacked the bandwidth to reliably deliver the content to the mobile device. In 2005, mobile video was a hot topic at the Electronics Entertainment Expo, video blogging is reaching a wider audience, and content providers, including Playboy.com are exploring the possibilities of mobile video. The blog, and even podcast, are being supplanted by the vlog as 2005’s media du jour. Mobile video has broken the surface of the electronic mass culture. In creating the Mobile Exposure festival, the goal was not to construct a venue for the transmission of cutting-edge content for cell phones, the idea was to create a festival in which all of the content was about mobile culture or created by cell phones and mobile devices. This is evident in “Art as Seen by the Machines”, “Gesture Lesson”, and “A Form of Human Relation”, which takes the vantage point of artistic interpretation through programs written for the mobile platform or graphics for the handheld screen. These are the distinctive qualities of the videos in this festival unique to this body of works, and it is the first festival in my knowledge to feature works created with this viewpoint in mind. Understand that what you are seeing is from a small screen or a lens in someone’s palm, and not the silver screen. This is a unique perspective that I have had the singular pleasure of witnessing, like a child in a penny arcade at the turn of the last century. David Crawford’s “Stop Motion Series 13” uses a mobile perspective to refer to Muybridge’s original studies, but with mobile devices on subways and on the street. It’s heartening to see that there are others that see the parallels of historical development as new technologies emerge. I would like to voice my profound thanks to Joel Bachar and Patrick Kwiatowski of Microcinema for their unfailing support of this project, and to all of the artists who were kind enough to participate in this ground-breaking enterprise. And as usual, special thanks go out to my wife, Leigh Clemons, my family and close colleagues for their patience, as projects like these don’t happen overnight. Thanks to you, our audience, for being part of this event as well, and I hope you enjoy the festival. * - The curator’s own video series, “8 Bits or Less”, was also shot using a Casio WristCam, using 3600 individual frames.
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