You can read more about the festival program, including full lists of speakers and awards judges HERE.

I am totally excited to be attending, I totally was not expecting to until a free pass magically appeared in my inbox last Thursday. And to top it off, I get to spend more time with the very charming Philip Bloom, who I met just last week along with other talented Vimeans Karen Abad and Rob Imbs. Check em out – these three are folks worth following. Anyway, I hope to see lots of great and innovative work, as well as meet other fellow mover-shakers behind the digital media revolution. I definitely plan on shooting a little bit while I’m there, or at the very least Tweeting about all the coolness as it happens.

That said, I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite videos up for awards by sharing them here. If you’re a Vimeo user, you can vote for your favorites in each category – the winners of the Community Choice Awards (the actual winners are chosen by the official Vimeo Judges). If you’re interested in voting, you should go to the Vimeo Awards site and watch all the videos in a particular category before casting your vote.

That’s all for now. Enjoy the vidz and more soon!

If you’re not already, you might like to follow these Twitter feeds:

@natlhq
@mostmodernist

THE PAST
NHQ recently produced a live event – WITHOUT WAX: 14 Years of Derek Erdman in Chicago.
Many people attended, and it was quite a success. Thanks!

THE PRESENT
Events are very much at the core of our company. Live experiences of the cultural kind are exactly what led us to starting an Internet company. Many of the challenges that producers and promoters of events face are known to us as well. Many of them will be mediated by the Internet. Many already are. Using the Internet the right way saves production money–on promotion and marketing, especially. This is no secret.

For most of 2010, we here at NHQ have been working on two major projects, sort of behind the scenes: One is very related to events, websites, and social promotion for producer organizations. The other is an Internet video which we hope will take the medium to a new level, by incorporating some edgy tech…

THE SOFTWARE
Depending what you know about the Internet, you may or not understand the role of software in the making of it all. If you do, you know we are in an early age of something… If you don’t care about software, but care about how the Internet can help you and your company promote shows and events, well then we’ve got what you need (coming soon). We’re developing software designed to turn the challenges of the Internet into benefits, for the types of people who already use the web socially, but don’t want to spend valuable creative and productive time tending to a website. This software is being built with the help of a grant from the Arts Work Fund. The flagship users of the software will be the recipients of that award: 500 CLOWN, a Chicago based, inter/national performance group (and friends of NHQ).

MAN V. CANDY MACHINE in-progress. Click to view fullscreen (it’s prettier that way)!

THE VIDEO
The video is a 15 minute narrative duel between a man and machine. It’s more than a video, friends. It will also be that which is come to be known as an “app”-lication. It will be doing more than your average video. But like all elements of an event–lights, sounds, design–it’s best for the audience if their attention is not overdrawn by any one effect. We are working on a seamless design which incorporates entertainment and interactivity, without the activity becoming too game-like. It’s easier than it sounds, because we are not making a game. We just want to allow the viewer some exploration, without sending them off the course. Speaking of course: it’s still the story. You’ll have to watch the video for that.

THE FUTURE
Our company is undergoing a metamorphosis. We will emerge soon with the products of the year, a new website, new business. All of the incredibly skilled people who have worked or are currently working with us on our current projects will be named and credited in due time. They know who they are, and we are humbled they agreed to collaborate with us.

We have parted ways with a couple of associates, for now. We wish the best of luck to Gretta and Julia, both of whom persevere their respective crafts. We hope to exploit and promote their good work again in future NHQ productions. Thanks for everything, ladies!

We would like to wish a good voyage to Derek Erdman. West Coast be on the look out. Thanks to all the following for helping make WITHOUT WAX possible:

High Concept Laboratories
Printers’ Row Wine Shop
Odd Obsession DJs
Julia Miller
Sarah Miller
Matt Gawryk
Aaron Brown
Christian Doll
Griffin Sharps
Aaron Wickenden

STAY TUNED…

On display will be every item in the artist’s possession that can possibly be sold, including but not limited to: paintings (canvas, glass, wood), drawings, sculptures, CDs, DVDs, records, posters, prints, books, clothing, furniture, and more. Most items will be made by the artist, but many will be from his own personal collection–the value of which is not to be underestimated, as Erdman himself is a notoriously obsessive collector of rare and/or useful memorabilia. Items in the exhibition catalogue, which may be purchased online at the event, will amount in the hundreds with prices ranging from $0.01 to $1000. Opening Night will feature a special presentation of Erdman’s collected video works (Rap Master Maurice, Juggalo Documentary Series), collected audio works (Kathy Mcginty & other prank CDs, excerpts from his Advice Masters & Free Psychic Hotline telephone conversations), live DJ sets by Odd Obsession, and hamburgers for everyone. WITHOUT WAX will be a fun, fond farewell to Chicago’s most prolific artist of all time.

This exhibition is curated by Angeline Gragasin in collaboration with Derek Erdman.

Derek Erdman paintings c. 2007. Screengrab at www.derekerdman.com © Derek Erdman 2010

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Derek Erdman (b. 1973 Cleveland, Ohio) is regularly called a Pop Artist, and this is understandable given that his tactics appear to intensify the preoccupations of the Factory tradition. Over the last decade Erdman has developed an increasingly efficient method for producing batches of art that he can make quickly, duplicate easily, and sell cheaply. According to this method his energy is concentrated in the plan (selecting source materials from which he will ‘borrow’ imagery), and the execution of each piece becomes semi-automatic, a series of choreographed tasks that he can carry out much like an assembly liner or a tap dancer might perform his job. The subjects of his paintings (second-tier celebrities, flash-in-the-pan current events, obsolete advertisements) are almost always borrowed from the moving spotlight of popular attention, and so the pieces themselves take on the form of commercial debris, relics of the recent surface-past. Occasionally they even turn up in thrift stores. In displaying and distributing his work (paintings, but also magazines, CDs, and pranks of all kinds), Erdman has demonstrated an unwavering preference for the banal and the widespread, favoring newsstands, restaurants, building sides, and balloons over galleries. And he has become an expert at harnessing the special hype-magic of the Internet (along with the party and various other spectacle-events that will circulate later in other people’s stories), which he uses not only as a mass-marketplace, but also to cultivate his own semi-celebrity, which carries his work, infusing it with everyday myth.

Unlike his Pop predecessors, Erdman’s paintings are not meditations on the shiny coldness of market interactions, nor are they clever declarations about the end of art. Instead, they are exercises in turning commercial surfaces back into a folk tradition, a truly popular lexicon, which we can playfully control. If his paintings are flat and bright—and they are incredibly, stubbornly so—it is because they are the coins in this constant exchange, the tokens of an unfolding common language of serious puns and half-jokes being shot back and forth between Erdman and his fans. The fan is the single constant, the only truly necessary piece in Erdman’s game, and to play it, the artist himself becomes a super-fan of the constantly shifting popular landscape, faithfully reproducing how it delights and disgusts. What results is a collapsing of the personal and the public in Erdman’s work, and in his life—a collapse that Erdman has embraced perhaps more than any other artist. Just as he re-frames the seemingly impersonal stuff of mass-publicity (celebrities, news events, commercials) as the shared familiars in our common biography, so too do the workings of Erdman’s private life become his material for public entertainment. No detail, no matter how mundane or potentially damaging to himself or his audience, is spared from consideration (the examples are endless, but see for instance the fallout of his recent appearance at Pecha Kucha in Chicago). All this may seem quite megalomaniacal. It is. But in the end it is also the opposite. In a way Warhol would never have tolerated, Erdman perpetually offers his fans absolute artistic control of his fate (gleefully handing over his Myspace password, for instance, so that anybody might tinker with his brand). In doing so he illuminates his own celebrity, like all the others, as the people’s creation.

- Hannah Woodroofe
February 2009 Ohio

WITHOUT WAX: 14 Years of Derek Erdman in Chicago
Saturday, August 14, 2010
6pm – 11pm
Location: High Concept Laboratories – Chicago, IL
RSVP derek(at)nationalheadquarters.org for address

Media Release (online)

Read more HERE.

Gretta is devising the piece in collaboration with Julia Miller, and in it, they explore themes of creation, destruction, recreation, and nurturing. The scenic design is somewhere between an old widow’s cabin in the woods and a teenage girl’s bedroom. The sole character (played by Gretta) is a sort of garden-dwelling creature, a “sluggy cocooned lady,” content with solitude and the companionship of her plants.  She surrounds herself with collages of humans made to look like plants and plants that take on human characteristics. Her way of life is far removed from yet still connected to everyday hyperstimuli with which we normally surround ourselves. Check out the images below and feast your eyes on what promises to be a truly odd and unique new video from NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS. More to come!

Character Sketch for GARDEN APARTMENT by Gretta Johnson.

Character Sketch for GARDEN APARTMENT by Gretta Johnson.

Slug Lady taking shape… Beet-and-Legs Collage by Gretta Johnson. Costume and Wig by Gretta Johnson and Julia Miller. Photos by Julia Miller. Collage by Angeline Gragasin.

I would’ve liked to spend more time with her last week when I was in Kansas City, but we’re both so busy that the best we could do was a couple cheerful hugs at Succotash, a cozy indie brunch house over which an enormous, larger-than-life sized painting of Jaimie dribbling tomato soup down her chin presides, as if to say “All Hail Queen Jaimie. Queen of Kansas City. Queen of the World!” So I conducted this interview over email, but have every intention of following up with more behind-the-scenes content (if there is such a thing as “behind the scenes with Jaimie Warren”) the next time we cross paths, fingers crossed!

Whoop Dee Doo. Photo © Megan Mantia, 2010.

Angeline: Why Kansas City? What is your relationship to the city, and to the Midwest?
Jaimie: Born and raised in Wisconsin, daughter to the owners of a biker bar in the Milwaukee suburbs, I came to Kansas City for my first day of college, and I had never been prior. I have come to absolutely love it here, mostly because I think my friends are so incredibly talented and helpful. Also, living in a smaller city makes you form this very DIY, “make your own fun” sort of lifestyle and aesthetic. Everyone here helps one another with their projects, because we are all trying to see the city succeed and be seen as an emerging arts center. So it’s an awesome way to work! We all want each other to be successful, and we have tons of fun doing it!! I am always collaborating with bands like the Ssion and Carnal Torpor or fashion designers like Peggy Noland and Ari Fish.

Video by Cody Critcheloe

A: How did Whoop Dee Doo get its start?
J: Whoop Dee Doo started as a gallery exhibition of Kansas City artists that we exhibited at Rocket Projects in Miami. By the night of the opening, 14 Kansas-Citians had flown themselves out to do random, amazing performances for the event. It made me realize how much awesome performance stuff was going on, and how I really wanted to highlight that somehow. At the same time, I was insanely inspired by Chic-a-go-go, a public access tv show in Chicago, and I had traveled to Chicago to be on it several times. Plus, since KC has such a small arts community, we often branch out to other mini-communities. So you’ll go to a party and there will be punk kids, drag queens, Mexican bikers, moms, etc. Super weird and awesome. It’s a mix of all of these elements that made the show what it is today.

Now we have about 22 volunteers. Matt Roche and I are the Co-Directors, and other big bosses are Leone Anne Reeves, Natalie Myers, Megan Mantia, Flannery Cashill, Chris Beer, Roger Link, Peggy Noland, Stuart Smith, Lee Heinemann, and others. Our crew is totally amazing.

Whoop Dee Doo. Photo © Megan Mantia, 2010.

Whoop Dee Doo. Photo © Megan Mantia, 2010.

A: How has your experience curating and producing Whoop Dee Doo informed your work as a photographer, and vice-versa?
J: It’s weird, I know they totally inform each other, because both bodies of works revolve around how unique my community is, and finding a strange way to express it, but to this day I wont allow myself to photograph the show in my own style. It’s like I force myself to keep them separate for some reason. But anyway, I’ve always been a performer myself, only in a super-awful-and-awkward sort of way, so everything meshes really well.

Just like I was saying, in the same way our community is so random and mish-mash and amazing and awkward: so is the show. So you’ll have Celtic Bagpipers and Dads and kids and drag queens and drill teams and Swedish Dancers and scientists all dancing in one room together. So amazing!

A: Who/what are your influences?
J: Roseanne Barr is my #1 inspiration, and yes, mostly because of who she was on the show “Roseanne,” AND HER INFAMOUS SINGING OF THE NATIONAL ANTHEM at the San Diego Padres game in 1990!! And my dream would be to be famous enough one day so that people followed my weight loss and gain like they do with Roseanne and Oprah Winfrey.

But also—John Waters (DUH!), Diet Dr. Pepper, Halloween pranks, all the VH1 reality shows (in particular- Rock of Love and Rock of Love Bus, Flavor of Love, and I Love New York), Stevie Wonder, Dolly Parton’s book: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, Roseanne Barr’s book: My Life as a Woman, and the Nightmare on Elm Street movies (I have the 8 disc series WITH the original 3D glasses).

“Still Punk” video featuring Jaimie Warren by Cody Critcheloe

A: What is your training, how has formal arts education impacted your career?
J: I have a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. I think my education came mostly from my peers. I was totally blessed to have an amazing crew around me that worked all night, every night; we were good at constructive criticism and we all pushed each other very hard. Also, I had a radical teacher, Adrian Herman. She was the bomb. I still work with a lot of the same people I did in school, even those who have moved away.

Jaimie Warren as Madonna in Ssion’s BULLSHIT video, by Cody Critcheloe

A: Can you talk about the title of your book, Don’t You Feel Better?
J: Weeeeeellllll, that’s sort of a weird and awkward story, as the title of the book (and my website) used to be the title of a totally different project that got put on the backburner many years ago, but who cares! I think it’s funny because when someone says that phrase, I picture someone taking a big dump and feeling better after it happened. Don’t you? Heehee but seriously: I think it plays well with the self portraits. It reminds me of playing dress-up as a little kid, which I’m still able to get away with as an adult. Which is funny and kind of pathetic at the same time.

A: When you take self-portraits, do you usually have someone else to give the camera to while you pose, or do you take them yourself?
J: I always hand it off to a friend. I tell them what I’m generally looking for, and it almost always works out pretty good.

Photo © Jaimie Warren, 2010.

Photo © Jaimie Warren, 2010.

Photo © Jaimie Warren, 2010.

A: You’ve managed to create images and events that are highly theatrical yet feel very candid and personal. How do you balance improvisation with pre-production? When does the work demand precariousness and when does it need to be precious and purposefully composed?
J: Well, if you are seeing anything precious it’s just an illusion. Everything is usually planned somewhere between 30 seconds and 5 minutes before the shot is taken. It’s pretty improvisational. I think that’s why some people like it, because it has that very “I could do that” or “I’ve done that” look to it. Everything is done on an extremely low budget, and when I am emulating someone, it might almost seem like an insult because it’s so half-assed it seems comical or ridiculous, or even awful.

Photo © Jaimie Warren, 2010.

A: How has the Internet influenced your idea of documentation?
J: The Internet is so amazing for someone who lives in the Midwest. Especially for Whoop Dee Doo, when we are researching acts to have on our show when we travel to other cities or countries. I don’t know if there is a term for it, but you know when you hit link after link after link, and you’ve suddenly been on this totally weird downward spiral on the Internet? That is when we find our best stuff, like when we got the Christian Mimes who paint white face and have floor length silver sparkly outfits, or the Civil War re-enactors who amputated a foot on stage for us. As for my photography, I cant tell if it’s influenced my personal work, but I know it makes it easier to research other peoples’ photos.

A: What are you currently working on, what should we be on the lookout for in the next couple months?
J: Peggy Noland and I are working on a project in Brazil next year! Also, we plan to have a live animal birth (cow or pig?) on Whoop Dee Doo when we travel to a small farm town to do a new show in November. Also, Whoop Dee Doo will be in featured in a new book through Deitch Projects called “WILD FILE” which will have a USB stick with videos by radical artists like Cory Arcangel, Ryan Trecartin, Takeshi Murata and more. I’m also in a recent Rizolli book called SHOOT: Photography of the Moment, with 26 photographers including Wolfgang Tillmans and Juergen Teller (OMG!!). The book was released at the New Museum and is traveling internationally with an accompanying photo show of works from the book – it’s going to Ireland next. The project is curated by Ken Miller, who used to be an editor for Tokion for many years, and he is super cool and smart.

What else? I have a fake goth band called “Y-Not” where I scream the word “Why” at the top of my lungs until everyone leaves the room, which usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour. And me and my best girlfriends have a rad DJ performance night called “Booby Trap” that we’ve been touring, so you should bring that to your town, too; it’s really weird. And when I was in India in January I was working on a potential Whoop Dee Doo BOLLYWOOD edition! (Oh please dear God I hope it happens.) Lastly, I am currently working on a new book with Higher Pictures so keep your peepers peeled!

Jaimie Warren is a photographer, performance artist, and Creator/Co-Director of the faux public access television show “Whoop Dee Doo.” She is represented by Higher Pictures (New York, NY), she has had her first solo artist monograph published by Aperture (New York, NY) in 2008, recently closed her first solo museum exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Warren has exhibited at White Flag Projects, St. Louis; Smith-Stewart, New York; David Castillo, Miami; Max Wigram, London; Getsumin, Osaka; Beida University, Beijing; Rocket Projects, Miami; Colette, Paris, among other venues. Her photography has been published in dozens of national and international publications. Warren is a recipient of the Lighton International Artist Exchange Program grant, and a 2009 Charlotte Street Fund grant.

Warren’s non-profit community arts program and faux public access television show “Whoop Dee Doo” has exhibited at various galleries and museums including the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, Deitch Projects (New York), The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE), and LOYAL gallery (Malmo, Sweden).

dontyoufeelbetter.com

Circuit bending, hacking and prototyping is spreading almost as fast as the moving electrons that inspired its genesis. A growing community built around the re-purposing of consumer electronics can in part be attributed to some cornerstone books: “Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking” by Chicago circuit-bending professor Nicholas Collins and Reed Ghazala‘s “Circuit-Bending: Build your own alien instruments.” Citing Collins as reference for his creations, Yoshi Akai applies his talent, imagination, and bronzed and bejeweled aesthetic sensibility to the creation of nervous nano-scale soundscapes and analog acid-sonic washes.

On a cultural level, the allied fields of bending and hacking have merged into a medium for teaching that is literally the sharing of knowledge from experimentation. Articles to come will explore this transformation of hackerspaces to making spaces, but for now little imagination is required to think of Akai’s pieces as products of an airship guild, the fruits of hours of toiling and attention to detail that comes from rigorous apprenticeship. Yoshi talks about the beginnings of and inspirations for work that has not gone unnoticed, and that arguably ushers in a new breed of Steampunk.

Alex: Tell me a little bit about your background and what led to building these instruments?
Yoshi: My background is art and design. I have been researching interaction design. What led to building these instruments is simply curiosity. I always desire to visualize my idea.

A: Your designs strike a balance between utility and turn-of-the-century charm. How do aesthetics affect the you way make instruments?
Y: I always believe that high quality or expensive instruments are not only about quality of sound. They are also about delicate craftsmanship.

A: There is a wonderful playfulness in your inventions, from using a LEGO as a conductor to your crispbread record player. Is that an important aspect of your art?
Y: The concept of the LEGO Sequencer was started as an interaction design project. The concept is to make a 3D tangible user interface. To make a device for a computer, LEGO has limited possibility, however for simple instruments, LEGO is a nice material. Because almost people have played with LEGOs, it invites the user to have fun. I usually get ideas and questions from something surrounding me. Knäckebröd (Crispbread) Turntable is a conceptual art piece, so the Swedish bread has a meaning on this work. When I saw the crispbread in Sweden I thought that could be almost same size as a record; it is only a little bit bigger than vinyl.

Knäckebröd (Crispbread) Turntable © Yoshi Akai, 2009

A: Pieces like the Wireless Catcher, White Magic and Velvet remind me of Edison and his “invisible” technological breakthroughs. What about the invisible is attractive to you?
Y:I do use the ideal of the invisible for my art and design works. For the design, if technology is the infrastructure, the designer should make the technology invisible. For the art and performance, the invisible is a kind of magic for me.

A: Hacking consumer goods obviously plays a large part in your creations. What was your first hacking/modifying experience?
Y: Actually I cannot remember. I should probably talk a bit about my family first: my great grandfather was a professor of Japanese Tea Ceremony, and my grandfather was a stonemason. They both made their own tools from consumer tools to fit a new purpose, for example making a stone carving tool from a kitchen tool. I have been doing it since when I was kid. I still do not have an exact definition of “hardware hacking,” but for me an Hawaiian Aloha shirt also a type of hacking.

Yoshi Akai in performance

A: What resources would you suggest for people interested in building their own devices?
Y: I always get inspiration from different fields, if I look only in the music field for making the musical instrument, I cannot find a new idea. Also a toy store is full of inspiration. From a technical perspective, “Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking” by Nicolas Collins is a great book.

Detail on one of Yoshi’s handmade pieces © Yoshi Akai, 2009

A: What are you currently working on, interested in or listening to?
Y:Right now I’m working on an interface with bionics sensor.

Yoshi Akai’s collection of modded instruments © Yoshi Akai, 2009

A: Can people purchase any of your creations?
Y: Unfortunately, I do not have plans to sell anything at the moment. It’s because I only have one set for my performances. Also, every piece is handmade, so production requires several months. I hope one day to make limited editions for sale.

Yoshi Akai was born in Nagoya, Japan. He obtained a BA in textile design and a MA in design from Tama art University in Tokyo, and a MA in textile art from Southampton University Winchester School of art in UK. After his work as a designer in Japan, he joined programs at Kungliga Konsthögskolan and Chalmers University in Sweden. He has had numerous exhibitions in Japan, UK, The Netherland, Korea, and Sweden. He is currently producing original musical instruments with a unique input system, and is doing performance with those creative gadgets.

You can check more of Yoshi’s pieces at his website or on youtube.

Children in the village try to squeeze into the picture. (Photo by Christian Doll, © 2009)

Angeline: Where does the name “Oyat” come from?
Christian: In Uganda, I lived with people from the Acholi tribe, who gave me this Acholi name. Most African names, particularly in Uganda, come from the condition of one’s birth, like their birth order or if they are born after twins or during a rainstorm, or if they have a birthmark. “Oyat” is usually given to people born under unusual circumstances. Few people aside from elders know the meanings of all the names, though. So, the student who gave it to me (a former child soldier who was also an amazing dancer and “footballer”) thought that it meant “an unusual person.” This was kind of a joke because there I was, the only white person for miles and miles living in the middle of a Ugandan village, living like the people there, trying to help and trying to learn the language. Pretty damn unusual. Being an atheist named “Christian” can get cumbersome, so I’ve been using the name Oyat more and more and have been publishing everything online under it.

A: How well-prepared do you think were for living and working in Uganda?
C: Well, I was a refugee case manager for a few months in Chicago right before I left and I made several African friends who I talked to extensively, so I think that prepared me a little bit for some of the cultural aspects, though not many. Since I didn’t know what country I was going to until a few months before, I didn’t get to read up all that much on Uganda and knew just what most people think of: Idi Amin. Plus, I read all that I could about the Peace Corps and talked to a bunch of RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers). Honestly, though, nothing could have possibly prepared me for living in a developing country and working in a developing country.

Christian with one of the Rwots (Acholi chiefs) and his wife at their house in Gulu. (Photo by Christian Doll, © 2009)

A: How has this experience affected your perspective as a documentary filmmaker?
C: It has made me more committed than ever for having any film project I work on from now on arise organically from the people I’m working with. There are so many documentaries about the developing world that force a western or even a local but privileged perspective upon the material. There was a terrible documentary made about the organization I worked with that was narrated by a British woman and showed the people who were served by my organization doing things but only interviewed one of them. It was all from the frame of reference of the filmmakers. In documentary, perspective is everything, and after living there and seeing so many media projects imposed on people, I would never work on something that wasn’t mostly or entirely shot and planned by the people it was about. I didn’t get a chance to make my film there because I ran out of time and had so many more pressing needs, but my plan was to have a few of the kids I worked with decide how they wanted to document their lives and then train them and work with them to do it. They would dictate what to film, how, and who to interview. I’m still planning on going back and doing it at some point, but we’ll see when I can find the time to sit down and write the grant.

Jarrod sticks his tongue out at Christian. (Photo by Christian Doll, © 2009)

A: In what forms of cultural exchange did you engage while in Uganda? How do you propose to continue the dialogue back here in Chicago?
C: Everything was a cultural exchange. I mean, there were more big ticket cultural events I attended like wedding preparations and these things they call “introduction ceremonies.” And I learned some of the dances a little and I learned the language of the people I lived with. But every hour of every day was a cultural exchange, where I was sharing myself and continuing to gain a deeper understanding of everyone I lived with. After a while, you start to lose yourself in the place around you. When it becomes your way of life too, it stops being so foreign.

A: What was it like killing a chicken with your bare hands?
C: Hahaha. Well, I used a knife, so it wasn’t really with my bare hands. The first thing I killed was a duck, and I felt a little weird about it afterward, especially since it was much harder to kill than a chicken and it took a lot longer. Every time I thought about it, I felt horrible, but that only lasted a few days. Then, I was ready to do it again. Then, I killed my first chicken, which was a lot easier, but it slipped out from under my feet and started hopping around. You always hear about chickens running around with no heads, but no one tells you that they still squawk from the body with no head and that the head moves around on its own. That’s what’s really freaky. By the time I got to the one I killed on the YouTube video, I was pretty much showing off for everyone that it didn’t bother me at all. Honestly, I felt like if I wasn’t able to go through with killing things when that was the only way to have fresh meat in Africa, I should go vegan. The animals I ate in Uganda, though, are raised and killed a lot more humanely than the ones we raise in the United States. I think they have a different way of considering animals there because they are all around you, the farm animals at least, and they’re the way people sustain their livelihood. One of my neighbors stopped asking me for money at one point and would instead offer to sell me one of her chickens which she would raise until I was ready to eat it. It was like making an investment, in her and her children and in my next time hosting people at my hut.

A: What is the single most important thing you learned while in Uganda?
C: Corruption is real, poverty is real, the problems in Africa are vast and the wars have been devastating, and while outsiders can help a lot, anyone who does not aim every ounce of their work into empowering the people they are working with and working themselves out of a job is either ignorant of the situation around them or simply feeding their own ego.

Christian Doll is an ethnographer, documentary film maker, and essayist. He has worked supporting and developing organizations serving refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs), and the homeless. He hopes to continue to educate and move people to action on issues of social justice and human rights and empower the powerless through his work and documentary films. You can read his writing at oyatdoll.wordpress.com.

We’re going to let you guys in on our secret next project that’s been in the works for a few years now. It’s MAN V. CANDY MACHINE, something we are calling an “Internet Tele-Play,” currently in development to be released later this spring. OK, so we may not have James Cameron’s Stereoscopic 3-D cameras or millions of dollars to throw into this production, but what we do have is a highly original and well-written screenplay, a top-notch production staff, and we damn well know how to use a green screen.

Now you might be wondering, what is MAN V. CANDY MACHINE?

And what is, for that matter, an “Internet Tele-Play?”

It’s something I’ve wanted to produce and direct from the moment the writer first shared it with me over two years ago. It’s the story of the conflict between an archetypical (Middle) man and (Omni) machine who he consults for his everyday / everyneeds. We are employing new technologies, as well as developing new applications for those technologies to provoke the audience to consider the question, “Is man destined to be controlled by machines?” The footage was shot from 3 perspectives – Man’s, Candy Machine’s, and the third person. We are working with a Flash developer–the great and powerful Alec Oliver–to present the video in a way that allows the viewer to toggle between these different perspectives, sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure video. We’re also hoping to further customize the experience for users by integrating GPS and IP address metadata into the action of the narrative, sort of like how ads are targeted and therefore remarkably relevant (or not) on Google or Facebook. The idea is that the user has an unique, interactive experience with his or her computer vis-a-vis an original online interface that allows the user to participate in the storytelling in a way that is not possible on popular Internet video sites such as YouTube or Vimeo.

Character design for MAN by Gretta Johnson, © NHQ 2010

Gretta Johnson illustrating storyboards for MAN V. CANDY MACHINE

Storyboards for MAN V. CANDY MACHINE by Gretta Johnson, © NHQ 2010

The aesthetic is a robust mix of equal parts vintage and contemporary Sci-Fi and Western styles. This includes all aspects of production, from cinematography to sound design to acting to editing. The author has often likened the character of MAN to a “Futuristic Frontiersman.” This image has all sorts of salient references in popular culture, from the Revisionist westerns of Sergio Leone (Spaghetti) and Alejandro Jodorowsky (Acid), to dystopian Sci-Fi films like Blade Runner (action thriller) and Brazil (satire)

The production will bear many similarities to a video game. We are proposing a new way of participating with and thinking about media. We are activating the user by giving him or her the ability to control certain elements of the production, certain parts of the story that make up the whole. We are inviting the user to reconstruct the experience of watching a video based on their own personal value system (choose-your-own-adventure) instead of what we, the producer/distributor, decide is important. The user is invited to interpret their experience as they are having it. The action of interpreting media, of analyzing it in realtime and making choices and performing actions that cause that media to change—this type of user behavior is commonly found in the realm of the gamer, but it is also most often associated with the behavior and practice of the game designer.

MAN through the viewfinder of the 5D, photo by Daniel Postilnik © NHQ 2010

Extreme Close-Up on MAN’s mustache, photo by Caleb Condit © NHQ 2010

“I’m a settler, ain’t you never heard of it? I’m living on a quicksand nature urban development.” -MAN

Stills from security camera footage, © NHQ 2010

There is some thrill in manipulating media that we consume, that we did not create. That is the thrill of the artist-interpreter. By giving the user the ability to edit his or her experience (the chance to determine the outcome) not once, but multiple times, we are inviting our audience to experience a limited but not insignificant degree of that thrill. An important goal to identify, then, is the desire to “thrill” the audience, or for the experience to be “thrilling.” Perhaps a more precise name, instead of Internet Tele-Play, is Internet Thriller? Are we reinventing a genre, or simply contributing to the one first discovered upon clicking an unassuming link to the screaming monster, the Rickroll, the Leekspin, the meme du jour?

“Settle down there Organ Machine. Tuesday morning is too early in the work week to see your short– To see your short– To see your short and curly circuitry!” -CANDY MACHINE

We wrapped just last week on principal photography, and you can see more photos on our Flickr page. The work was long and hard but tons of fun and totally worth it. We have our very talented and professional production team to thank for this. They include Production Manager Daniel Postilnik, actors Eddie Jordan and Rico M. Benzito, Production Designer Gretta Johnson, Wigmaster Mark Botelho, Sound Op Brian Sulpizio, Assistant Camera Robert Cauble, Director of Photography Caleb Condit, and Writer Jonathon Anthony. We’d also like to thank Joe and Leo at Zacuto and Ben at Kolakvideo for hooking us up with lots of high-quality professional gear for very reasonable prices. Now all that’s left is several weeks of postproduction–editing, sound, motion graphics, software development: the works. Stay tuned here for updates on production and release–we’re currently planning a series of related events featuring this and other works for Spring/Summer 2010. Let us know if you’d like to learn more or are interested in getting involved, we’re having a blast! Till then…