Sonic Acts XII - the Cinematic Experience is a festival/conference, taking place in Amsterdam from 21-24 of february 2008. Besides a conference, screenings, performances and an exhibition they’ll have a publication which has an interview with me in it! It discusses how the Internet changes the cinematic experience both in terms of distribtion and artist’s production experiences. You can order the publication here.
On the occasion of the twelfth Sonic Acts festival, Boris Debackere and Arie Altena edited a multi-faceted book with nine essays and ten interviews dealing with various aspects of the cinematic experience. The book focuses as much on theories of the cinematic experience, as it does on the practice of artists working in the fields of cinema, contemporary media art and sound. It shows how artists develop their work and theories on the cinematic experience, using different technologies and materials, and offers a many-sided theoretical journey into the history, present and future of the magic we call cinema.
A new article for the german print magazine PAGE (issue 01/08).
I presented some projects which remix user generated content as a data resource for creative projects and by this create new web aethetics.
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SimonSchwarz.org is my new playground for experimental projects.
Expect some progressive experiments soon!
The Website is not finished yet, but you can check out the brand new showreel!
Exclusive soundtrack by jsaal.
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I edited the new Showreel for the Berlin based actress Daniela Schulz.
Among others she was appearing in Tatort and Soko Wismar lately.
Brussels based ARGOS centre for Media and Art organized a conference on VIDEO VORTEX: Responses to YouTube. I was invited and held a talk on “The Artist Moving through the Web - new forms of Artists’ production and distribution on the Internet.”
It was a very inspiring conference!
Thanks to Stoffel, Maria, Adre, Bram and the whole team at ARGOS for the wonderful weekend!
“Over the past years the moving image has claimed an increasingly prominent place on the internet. Thanks to a wide range of technologies and web applications it has become possible, not only to record and distribute video, but to edit and remix it on-line as well. With this world of possibilities within reach of a multitude of social actors, the potential of video as a personal means of expression has arrived at a totally new dimension. How is this potential being used? How do artists and activists react to the popularity of YouTube and other ‘user-generated-content’ websites? What is the impact of the availability of massive on-line images and sound databases on aesthetics and narrativity? How is Cinema, as an art form and experience, influenced by the development of widely spreading internet practices? What does YouTube tell us about the state of art in visual culture? And how does the participation culture of video-sharing and vlogging reach some degree of autonomy and diversity, escaping the laws of the mass media and the strong grip of media conglomerates?”
Speakers are JOHAN GRIMONPREZ, PETER HORVATH, LEV MANOVICH, ANA KRONSCHNABL & TOMAS RAWLINGS, ADRIAN MILES, SIMON RUSCHMEYER, KEITH SANBORN, PETER WESTENBERG.
I wrote an article for the german print magazine PAGE (issue 10/07) on the influence of the web on movie distribution and marketing.
The article orginates from Four Eyed Monsters, the first full feature film on YouTube and, and broades the perspective to a general discussion om internet marketing and distribution for former cinema releases.
Moving Web is a blog I started accompanying my diploma thesis on the covergence of movin media and the Internet. It has grown into a lively discussion platform for progressive trends and developments, where I continue my research in the field of web video.
Moving web is a place to share thoughts about all forms of moving content on the web. As bandwidth keeps growing, the internet will converge with the moving media: film, tv & video.
Therefore the Internet as a textbased information medium seems to be the past - moving web explores the future possibilities of the internet as a more immersive entertainment medium. We choose a rather broadly based perspective on the theme of motion on the web: Flash Video, Mobile Web, WebTV, Viral Video, Interactive Narration - all these phenomena are discussed with the emphasis on how moving content will change the web.
Together with Advertising Agency Die Vision I realized two Video Banner Ads for a Health Insurance Company.
While they did the concept and postproduction I was responsible for Production and Direction on the shooting.
The Ad was released on big portal sited like AOL or Finanzscout.
I was invited to the OFFF Festival for Post Digital Creation Culture 2006 in Barcelona, Spain, to show my short Film Palindrome in their 6th annual Competition. OFFF is an amzing festival with loads of great speakers, a very nice venue (in a very nice city) and a great atmosphere. This year it was also hold in Ney York and in 2008 the festival is moving to Lisboa.
Thanks to Fred for hosting me and to Sergi for taking care while the festival.
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The shortfilm Palindrome explores the medium film by discovering the everyday activity of the breakfest. The Shots are running back and forth, leading to a somehow surreal composition. The film is questioning the reception of film stereotypes. What does happen, when a rather boring activity like a breakfest becomes visualized as pure aesthetics?
“A young woman enters the kitchen to eat breakfast. Strange things happen, but she pays no attention. Palindrome - a short film about the meal we pay least attention to.”
Type: Short Film
Format: mini35
Duration: 4:30
Direction/Editing/Production: Simon Ruschmeyer
Actress: Daniela Schulz
DoP: Robert Staffel
Focus Puller: Sören Lang
Gaffer: Hendrik Thul
Sound Recording&Design: Sebastian Waschulewski
Palindrome was accepted for the OFFF Festival for Post Digital Creation Culture 2006, Barcelona, Spain.