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Past events
Installation: Alma, a Tale of Violence 21 Nov 2012 at 10:00
Exhibition of photography and drawings from the interactive project Alma, a Tale of Violence.
Installation: Moments of Innovation 21 Nov 2012 at 10:00
Interactive Installation: When Documentary and Technology Converge
Installation: Robots in Residence 21 Nov 2012 at 15:00
If robots can build cars and bomb people in foreign countries, why wouldn’t they be able to make documentary films one day?
Bear 71
Wildlife in Banff National Park from the perspective of a grizzly bear and that of the park rangers watching her 24 hours a day.
In Banff National Park in the Rocky Mountains, Canada, various wild animals are implanted with a GPS receiver and a chip, and from that moment they’re known as numbers: Deer 48, Fox 21, Bear 71. The parl rangers know exactly where they are every moment of every day, and they film their daily comings and goings using the security cameras they set up all over the park. Web documentary Bear 71 lets us watch over their shoulders, to disturbing effect. Director Leanne Allison’s husband, a Banff park ranger, gave her thousands of hours of grainy surveillance footage from the park, from which she and digital documentary pioneer Jeremy Mendes, focusing on 3-year-old grizzly Bear 71. In voice-over, she explains how the animals are being pushed ever further into the mountains by advancing freeways, train tracks, and nature tourism. The immense amounts of data and surveillance material allow the audience to follow the proceedings in the park on an interactive map. Humans rule this territory, but remotely, from behind their monitors. The site’s visitors, likewise watching a screen, are forced to share the perspective of the guard/voyeur. Slowly but surely, we become aware of a primal human urge to grab hold of new technologies to exert control and to repress.
Project details
Year of development :2012Created by:Jeremy Mendes, Leanne Allison
With:Digital Studio and Produced by the National Film Board of Canada
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