Sight-mapping, Site-seeing - Call for Entries / Program

International video exchange project by Experimental Intermedia Gent, W3 en Video Art Centre Tokyo in the framework of Puddels 2002

Call for Entries

Being able to read and understand a map is an important analytical skill. Mapping has been a part of our lives since the very first explorers set forth to chart the lands beyond their countries. After centuries of such adventures, very little of the Earth's surface remains yet uncharted. Orbiting satellites also have been making many detailed maps of the Earths surface. However, much of the most exciting mapping being done today happens in explorations by artists.

Whether a map is of a room, a city, a planet, or an Universe, the same basic knowledge is required to understand the information it contains: legend, code, scale, orientation, angles, and measurement.

With "Sight-mapping, Site-seeing" Experimental Intermedia, W3 and Video Art Centre Tokyo, invites Japanese and European artists to redefine maps using information like geography, time, transparency and class.

A video camera becomes an appropriate tool to find all of the goodies and mark reference points. Topographical features like hills are interesting images. Would compass directions help? How does a distant landmark look? What should a video map convey? How might a video map be different if we were driving cars or flying planes? Should it have political boundaries like precincts, counties, and states? What sorts of uses would this map have that, say, a sightseeing map wouldn't? Why bother recording altitude? Can you think of anything else but contours to record? Does it change the way you make a map if you stand in another place to make it? How can you devise a system to represent the area and the objects in it so that they will have the same relative size or scale in a video?

Amanda Cardell	Bea Albers	Harald Busch

Moving outside towards other countries provided us with different challenges; scale, elevation, and topology gained importance. Through representations we can increasingly see the relationships between the world and the symbols which are represented in the videos.

To map a large area of the world the project requires a lot of investigation and networking. Presenting many living spaces and neighbourhoods in this context allows us to trace routes through life. The streets represented may lead to directionality. A system of coordinates is just a way of systematically denoting and labelling points in space. Numbered aisles in supermarkets, grids on road maps, and lines of latitude and longitude on the Earth are all systems of coordinates which we use every day. Systems of coordinates are usually based on two lines, or axes, which are most often perpendicular to one another. The direction 'north' is defined as the direction from any point on the globe towards the North Pole, where the axis of rotation of the Earth sticks out of the surface in the Northern Hemisphere. Similarly, 'south' is towards the South Pole. We usually look at maps and globes where North is on top. Should that be so? Are the two hemispheres equally populated? Do you think 'north is up' seems natural to people in Australia?

Christof Schlegel	Eva Kollischan	Yves Mettler

Like a tourist trying to find the sites referring to the maps, artists shoot a video of the city where they live, even though they have a full knowledge of it. In between 'sight' and 'site' the videos are presented at various venues, we can re-discover ourselves in our urban, social and work environment.
The video works from "Sight-mapping, Site-seeing" can become markers in our memory, their content can be traced back on a map but it will be too big to observe all at once.

Fricties - Vooruit, Gent - http://www.vooruit.be/fricties/

"Sight-mapping, Site-seeing" is not a video festival or a contest. Artists who are interested to submit a video can contact Lieve D'hondt, before October 20 2002, at info@experimentalintermedia.be

Program

Otto Mittmannsgruber (AUT), tt (01/02/02), 8 min 30
Takashi Yamaguchi (JPN), Sight-mapping, Site-seeing, 7 min 20
Reggy Timmermans (B), No title, 1 min 30
Jens Brand (G), HUM, Westf. (building excerpt), 10 min
Yoshito Ikeda (JPN), Melting point, 3 min 20
Robin Kolleman (NL), Me, My Cat and I, 11 min
Takehiro Iikawa (JPN) & Akira Nishihala (J), Vert, 6 min
Lucia Penninckx (B), Atomium, 5 min 20
Yves Mettler (AUT), A Table, 3 min
Rob Moonen (NL), Out of sight, 3 min
Alexandra Dementieva & Arnaud Jacobs (B), Traffic, 16 min
Yasutaka Kobayashi (JPN), "C", 14 min 30
Peter Morrens (B), Stuttering, Stammer, Falter, 1 min 20
Tetsu Takagi (JPN), Call of nature-Tokyo / Okinawa, 2 min 10 / 2 min 10
Harald Busch (G), nach Bremen..., 55 sec
Gansomaeda (JPN), IAI, 1 min 35
Lieve D'hondt (B), Orientation, 3 min 15
Katja Butt (G), Busy blues, 7 min 30
Akira Mori (JPN), Weekender, 2 min 45
Christof Schlegel (AUT), Offwalk, 5 min 30
Eva Kollischan (G), Tried to get near, 2 min 45
Maria Blondeel (B), Video meteorology, 12 min 30
Toshihiro Nakanosai (JPN), ein Bildwerk, 6 min
Rik De Boe (B), Trailer for the film 'A short trip through Europe', 5 min 30
Beatrijs Albers (B), BXL 20.02.2002, 8 min
Masayuki Kawai (JPN), Absent landscape, 7 min 20
Yoshi Matsumoto (JPN), Small Light, 20 min
Kentaro Taki (JPN), Exchangeable cities, 8 min
Amanda Cardell (SW), One day she jumped, 3 min 35
Kunio Sekiguchi (JPN), Lunar Module, 18 min
An Seebach (G), The great vermilion Torii, 2 min 05

Maria Blondeel	Otto Mittmannsgruber	Reggy Timmermans

Rik De Boe	Rob Moonen	Takashi Yamaguchi

Peter Morrens	Masayuki Kawai	An Seebach

Alexandra Dementieva	Jens Brand	Lucia Penninckx