New Media Travels: the Ann Arbour Film Festival.

For anyone enrolled in school, at any level, whenever the words "Field Trip" even slightly take presence in a class room, students usually tend to make the direct association with the idea that, for a specific period of time in thier near future, they will no longer have to listen to any sort of class instruction, crack open text books, or participate in any of the school's curriculum. This is definitely not always the case, and for those that DO make that instant association, maybe a lesson there is to be learned somewhere in there. Luckily for us in UTSA's New Media program we have got one hell of a professor, Leslie Raymond. Because of her and some possible support from the university, we , the students in Multimedia Video: 4953, were able to step outside of the university's walls past social, political, and physical borders only to end up cross country, in south Texass' national geographic near-polar opposite Ann Arbour, Michigan.



So by plane, train, and automobile, we arrive one by one to the university centered Ann Arbour. Not really knowing what to expect, beside a drastic change in climate, Id feel ok saying that we were all prepared for both the best and the worst. We can be kind of cynical down south. Nonetheless, we arrive, not a complete group yet, but a good sized one. We are immediately picked up by one of our professors old time friends and director of Circumference, Tom Bartlett. And before given a quick tour of the city, we take a small detour and are introduced to this amazing creation over at his shop.




After all the oo's and ahh's, we head down towards the center of the city and to our accommodations, whom Leslie, once again, was awesome enough to find for us through another long time friend, and faculty member at U of M, Chris McNamara.

After settling in, it starts. The commute from where we were staying and the events venue was relatively close,but after of a day or two some of us were starting to show signs of having gone from one of the nations most unfit cities to THE fittest. In spite of that, we treaded forward and to one of our second homes of the trip, the Michigan Theater.

The first night's event, the opening gala, was really remarkable. Along side all the people, and the commotion, the theater itself was probably what made my first night there memorable, and therefore paving the way for the week to come.

"Constructed during the silent film era when films were shown with live musical accompaniment, the Historic Auditorium is known, acoustically speaking, as a "live" house. The acoustics are perfect for classical music, one of the reasons we've been home to the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra since 1984. Additionally, guest performers love being on our stage because of its excellent natural sound...

...Real gold leaf, real butter on the popcorn - in short, this is a movie palace that is simply not like any other theater."

-taken from the MichiganTheater.org

Aside from live sound, after the first nights screening (the opening night's show case was a kind of sneak peak of whats to come) I think it there was an unspoken consensus that the theater was also going to be perfect for the experimental film to come. I mean, the main room came equipped with its own circa 1920's theater pipe organ. How cool is that? "Very cool" is the right answer. Adding on, the pipe organ played before every screening through out the week. And so the stage was set.

Day by day, I, along side my travel buddies, set out for a day of film trying not to get too involved in the distractions of a new city. Films were viewed, opinions were made, emotions flowed. Overall, my opinion of the festival was good with some slight queries. First off, The booklets with the screening schedules were everywhere. This was a good thing for me because a misplaced schedule was an often occurrence. I felt that if the schedules were possibly shown on screens in the main lobby, where most of the in between/down time took place, that would eliminate paper usage, and possibly instantly guide people with out knowledge of what was showing upon arrival. Although, the schedule booklet does make a nice souvenir.

The second, and lastly but most important observation was brought to my attention by my classmate/friend Utah Snyder. Most of the screenings seemed to group, if not by similar theme, by stylization of the pieces themselves. This is actually a pretty grave issue for the artists involved. Although grouping pieces by theme is OK, as long as the pieces differ stylistically from each other. When you group three or more similarly styled pieces together, one's immediate reaction tends to be that after seeing the first one in the screening, the rest can just be blown off because you might feel like you have already seen it before.


With that being said, and adding some minor, seemingly unavoidable, technical issues involved, I felt the festival was a success. I was able to socialize in a comfortable environment where nothing felt pushed or stressed, the screenings and artist discussions were all easy to embrace, and the overall atmosphere was welcoming. Personally, I felt saddened to leave, and being a huge homebody, this is saying a lot. I was very glad to have attended the festival and the events that took place during our stay Ann Arbour. Thank you to all those who made it possible.

Best of Bearded Child Screening

the UTSA downtown campus held a screening of the "Best of" of the Bearded Child Film Festival Friday Feb. 20, 2009. The screening was presented by Dan Anderson, the Film Festival's director, as well as film artist. The screening consisted of a variety of different short films which dealt with different experimental formats. The films in the screening were played back to back with only a simple introduction in between each film. The Bearded Child Film Festival hails from northern Minnesota and also puts on musical performance.

DIY & the Avant Guard pannel discussion.

the DIY & the Avant-Garde disscussion panel opened its doors up on Thursday Feb 19th to anyone wanting to hear about the start up process and opinions on the future in art of 5 distinctly accomplished artists. The artists on the panel included Michele Monseau, UTSA alumni and director of her own artspace, Jason Kahn, a record label director, Dan Anderson, whom started his own film festival, and Chris Cogburn, Musician and Director of his own sound inspired Festival. The event dealt with a varied array of casual questioning moderated by Justin Boyd, an artist based in San Antonio and professor under the new media dept. at UTSA. The panel then spoke about the trials and tribulation of starting up their careers in varied genres of art by themselves from the ground up. The discussion then ended with a question and answer forum from the audience.

"self."

Developed with the idea of creating a self portraiture in mind, "Self." is an attempt to encourage inquisition through the study of specific subject matter and their relationships within a language characteristic of the artists. This leaves the piece to cultivate a strong sense of alienation among the audience as the video progresses, provoking the audience into questioning everything about the piece.

The topics dealt with in the piece are intended to encompass the artist's own viewpoints of culture and technology and how they play with in his own life, but are not meant to limit the audience into further analysis. As culture and technology become more and more intertwined due to emergence of the information age, the idea of self, and everything that makes a connection with it, becomes something left to redefine, but will we make the decision, or will technology beat us to it?

Proposal: "Self"

Attempting to create a thought out depiction of one's own concept of "self" can seem as an easy task superficially, but one can find that it can just as easily turn into an overwhelming process. The concept of "self" is a highly debated and highly controversial topic in some circles, because it can fundamentally lead to thoughts dealing with the "ultimate", whether dealing with spirituality or the secular.

So, one starts to piece together ideas and concepts, found externally or internally, to find a definition of what or who one "is". Yet, even in the "defined" or in definition there is a slight sense of variance, because with out exception, nothing goes unaltered in time. This can seemingly depreciate the core of what is being defined, but our acceptance of this is where the true definition lies of what it means to own our own idea of "self".

With all this in mind, I hope to touch on the intricacies of what it takes to find definition and test its staying power with out taking away focus on a whole concept of self, keeping "acceptance" of that that is, as a guide.

Quick Bio.

Mauricio Gudino was born on Feburary 3rd, 1985 in Mexico City, D.F. Son to Mauricio and Sara Gudino, Mauricio (jr.) grew up living in Mcallen, Texas. Having been a resident to south Texas for the majority of his life, he has grown a distaste for hot and humid weather. He is currently attending the University of Texas at San Antonio as a New Media Student under the College of Liberal and Fine Arts.

Inspiration.

http://modernurbanliving.com/2008/07/vine-like-wine/

Definition/Re-definition.