shoni

Embedded narrative is the predetermined story that exists within a game. Regardless of how the player interacts with the game, and the individual choices she or he makes, the narrative unfolds in the same way.

Emergent narrative is when the story develops through the player’s interaction with the game. The player’s narrative experience is influenced by the choices she or he makes during the game.

Twelve ‘micromovies’ shot on mobile phones have been shortlisted for a new category in the St Kilda Film Festival. The films can be viewed at www.micromovie-award.com and at the festival which takes places 24-29 May. The winner of the competition will be announced on 30 May.

World without end is a screen exhibition that explores concepts of time, place and landscape. The exhibition is located in the screen gallery at Australian Centre for Moving Image in Federation Square, and is exhibiting until the 17 July 2005.

It was with a sense of intrigue that I descended into the darkness of the screen gallery. I have a strong interest in place and landscape and was looking forward to seeing how the artists had interpreted these concepts. The dark space was almost eerie as haunting sound tracks transcended the parametres of individual works. Despite my initial curiosity I found it difficult to connect with most of the works presented. I wondered whether this was in part because the works negotiated a space somewhere between art and narrative, a medium that I’m not conversant with. I found that much of the work lacked depth, repeating themes that reflect a largely western world view. This alone, made it difficult to engage with the material in a meaningful way.

Clare Langan described her work, too dark for night, as an exploration of ‘mankind’s fragile existence in the face of the relentless forces of nature’. The stunning yet haunting imagery portrayed a predominantly patriarchal view of nature. I found it disappointing that this view was again reflected in many of the other exhibition works. I think this form of representation reinforces the western paradigm that people are disconnected with place, landscape and nature.

Simon Carroll and Martin Friedel’s history of a day compresses time and space to make up of five, four-minute ‘days’. These visual sequences are shown simultaneously on five different screens, that are arranged in a circle, encasing the audience in the middle. The imagery is awe striking but in a similar way to too dark for night the sound track and dramatic images represent nature as a force to be reckoned with, reflecting the discomfort associated with not being able to control the cycles of nature.

In contrast Hold: vessel 1 by Lynette Wallworth, was a more positive and uplifting experience. In a dark room the visitor holds a glass bowl over beams light. Projected onto the glass are a series of bright, colourful images of microscopic sea life. The result was mesmerising. Wallworth has designed the experience to be interactive helping to engage the visitor. The other work that intrigued me was Train no. 1 by Daniel Crooks, which ‘time slices’ a suburban Melbourne train fragmenting the viewer’s perception of time and space.

Overall I was disappointed with the limited scope with which the main thematic threads were exlpored. The curators Alessio Cavallaro and Alexie Glass discuss the exhibition in more detail in their world without end: exhibition essay.

Bj and I lived in an apartment that had been converted from an old theatre. Wedged between upstairs, downstairs and next-door neighbours, our walls and floors were ears to what should not be heard. We heard it all. Telephones ringing, parties, arguments, doors banging, high heels walking, dishwashers, televisions, washing machines and hairdryers. Then there were the pervasive smells, wafting perfume, smoking barbecues, fish cooking, and fumes from the undercover parking.

Within weeks of moving in we were strung out and exhausted. We didn’t think it could get any worse until our downstairs neighbour had a baby… Suddenly the other irritating and intrusive noises paled into insignificance. Bj and I were woken as many as three times in a single night and sometimes the little tacker screamed for over an hour. We wore earplugs, wrote to ‘Dear Guru’ at the The Age, and banged on the floor. Other nights we taped the screams on the ipod and replayed them in moments of hopeless despair, vainly hoping for some sense of retribution. One evening, mum and I were trying fruitlessly to watch a film immersed in the sound scape of a baby screaming. After an hour the baby was still screaming and was obviously very distressed. We were both concerned so my mum, who is a psychologist, decided to go and see if they were okay. They said they were fine and that they were simply trialling control crying to help establish a routine.

I read in Boing Boing today that you can buy a Revenge CD which is a compilation of 20 sound tracks designed to get back at your noisy neighbours. It would have been fantastic to play the tracks up loud, with speakers face down to the floor, before we were driven from our inner city pad. I would have especially relished playing the track titled ‘newborn’, particularly after all those attempts at capturing the baby’s screams on our ipod. How much fun would have it been to answer the door and have our neighbours complain about the noise level of our party and for us to reply ‘what party? We’re not having a party?’ Hindsight is never sweet but having a quiet house is.