kanonmedia, ngo for new media

k.i.o. lab

real time media installation
audiovisual djing workshop

produced by
soho in ottakring
in cooperation with
wiener kinderfreunde
kanonmedia.com

soho in ottakring / vienna / austria
april / may 2004

idea & concept
alexandra reill
participants
the kids from yppenplatz
visual production coaching
muck
alexandra reill
audio production coaching
florian & martin
technical production
muck
peter riedl
kids coaching
sonja / tuerkan / martin / florian / ruprecht / hans ...
coordination:
elke probst
alexandra reill
ula schneider
sabine walchhuetter
public relations:
martina montecuccoli

on occasion of the art festival soho in ottakring
kanonmedia.com installed a multimedia lab for
the kids of yppenplatz - a collaborative
multimedia scenario on the basis of a series of
workshops on video shooting, digital drawing
& visual djing.

in a preparatory phase the kids participating
in the k.i.o. lab creatively worked with
analogue and digital methods of multimedia
production. they collectively shot scenes out
of their daily life with a digital camera,
made digital photos and created colorful
drawings and paintings. in an interim phase,
the analogue pieces were digitized by
alexandra reill and transformed into a catalogue
of animations and visual djing sets.

the audiovisual workshops concentrated
- in a first phase - on girls only who needed
a very sensitive coaching approach.
the majority of the girls felt afraid of the
multimedia equipment, was concerned about
damaging the machines and did not dare to try
out what they could perform on a computer
or a video mixer. regarding the audio production,
the girls were far more fascinated by the
microphone than by the audio mixer and their
favorite approach was singing the songs
they've known from little on.

the second phase invited boys to join the
audiovisual performing teams. from the very
beginning they were keen to experiment with
the equipment and the playing of turkish and
serbish pop hits was big fun for them whereas
the visual editing and real time compositioning
through the layering of video sequences and
graphic clips in combination with animated filters
and effects especially attracted kids and
juveniles with visual talents.

in a finalizing phase the kids of yppenplatz
trained - again on a purely intuitive basis -
how to perform in real time, without breaks,
without disturbances, as cooperative
audiovisual teams working together -
the individual kid relating to the other
ones through the rhythms of music and
visual animations, letting them
dissolve tensions and aggressions in
collaborative workflows based on intuitive
apprehension.

in the evening of the last workshop module
the juvenile teams presented their creative
skills and talents, fully bases on their cultural
identities, to an adult audience mainly coming
out of a vienna cultural scene. the audience
seemed fully surprised by the sensual intensity
of the atmosphere the kids created. as the
k.i.o. lab formed an integral part of the art
festival soho in ottakring, the adult audience
had the full chance to learn and get involved into
characteristic traits of mediterrenaen ways of
having fun and cekepbrating a party.

the creative intensity of the kids' real time performance
let the adults fully indulge in the kids' ways of life.
adults and kids were dancing turkish dances together,
smiles were evoked continuously. Last but not least,
the audience was 'spoiled' by the migrant kids and
juveniles who had been cooking big portions of
delicious curd soup with mint, followed by beef in
aubergine, during the afternoon to offer hot food
to the guests in the evening.

the conscious constellation
of juvenile and adult methods of creative production in combination with the fact that the kids and juveniles had the chance to quickly reach very appealing results of creative production through the simple to use but very adult technologies applied prooved very much for an enhancement of the kids and juveniles, mostly migrants of second and third generation with turkish, serbian, croatian and roma identities, to identify with an elaboration of creative vision.

all learning was purely based on an experimental, intuitive basis as opposed to theoretical, linear and efficiency-oriented methods of teaching skills how to use certain technologies. creative vision could be experienced through playing, trying out, experimenting, researching. a transdisciplinary approach allowed the kids to change between application fields, such as audio production, digital imagery production and real time performance techniques.

all the workshops were kept open - the kids could play football or whatever analogue kids' games they like to play in their daily lives. this approach allowed the kids to relax from digital complexities when they had the need to and at the same time to naturally integrate these complexities of it-applications in the course of their day.

kanonmedia.com could notice with joy that in the course of the transdisciplinary k.i.o. lab workshops - with the real time creative performance in form of a party as final highlight - juvenile and adult representatives of different cultures were finding themselves prepared for open communication and fearless contact on a collective human-to-human-basis, music and visual worlds bringing people together,
far beyond ideological thoughts or trained attitudes.