In late 1999 and 2000 I hung out with the PirateTV.net crew at the Ninjatune studios in South London, for weekly netcast live audiovisual jams. The PirateTV slogan was “DIY psychedelic political interactive streaming zentertainment with quality content from top selectors”. The lineup would change from week to week, the mainstayers being Mike (VJ Juxta), Bongo and Matt Black (Coldcut). Sometimes live musicians would come in, I’d often do live camera for those. We netcast from Matt’s studio “Spacelab” behind the record label offices, crammed with records, instruments, decks and audiovisual gear. There was even a couple of old early synthesizers that the Doctor Who theme song was played on, I’m not sure how often they got dusted off and plugged in. The Fairlight Computer Video Instrument got a fair bit of play, as did PCs running Vjamm (running early versions of Vjamm 2 at that stage) and the Panasonic MX50 video mixers. We used Real Producer to stream out to a varying audience, encouraging folks to hop into the IRC channel to chat while we jammed.
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Mostar Trek (10mins, 2001) is an experimental/documentary of the PirateTV CAN-DU tour of the former Yugoslavia in 2001, produced for the Mixmasters series (Addictive TV) screened on ITV and internationally.
Glitch Western (2min 9 sec, 2003) is a snippet from an audiovisual performance by Spoole (Anna Helme aka Spanna, Sean Healy aka Jean Poole, Andrew Sargent aka FutureEater) at Electrofringe 2003. The Glitch Western show was like a remix of the cinematic motifs and techniques of the Western, but also an examination of man and nature, and the impact of the pioneering (colonising) spirit on the environment – in the wild west, but also here in Australia.
Electric Dreams – Act 1 (1 min 40 sec, 2004) is a clip from the Artesian AV Arkestra’s performance of “Electric Dreams” for Nextwave 2004. The Artesian AV Arkestra was Anna Helme, Louise Terry, Paul Bourke and Michael Prior. “Electric Dreams” was a colourful genre-hopping hybrid theatre / audiovisual performance piece commissioned for the Nextwave festival.