CONTACT:
David Blair
P.O. Box 174
Cooper Station
New York, NY 10276 USA
tel/fax: 1 212 228 1514
internet: artist1@rdrc.rpi.edu
FIRST FILM TRANSMITTED ACROSS INTERNET:
"WAX or the discovery of television among the bees" (85:00) A FEATURE-LENGTH, INDEPENDENT, ELECTRONIC CINEMA WORK
On Saturday May 22nd, David Blair's "WAX or the discovery of television among the bees" (85:00), the first truly independent work of electronic cinema to achieve successful international theatrical distribution, also became the first film to be digitally transmitted across the globe. The transmission took place on the Internet, the "network of networks" that links hundreds of local academic and research networks, and so millions of users in every nation of the world. With much of it's connective functionality available now to private and commercial users across the world, the Internet is quickly becoming the digital age's medium of general and instant communication.
ABOUT "WAX": The video-originated film, self-distributed by the maker, has played all major markets in the United States, with, excellent reviews. Some sample quotes: "One of the boldest examples of cinema as dream" (Boston Globe); "4 Stars [highest rating]" (Chicago Sun-Times); "Transcendent Weirdness" (LA Reader); "A brilliant and original film" (LA Times). A Japanese version opens in June for a full summer's run in Tokyo, and will be followed by production of a dual-language CD-ROM containing the entire film in digital form, with hypermedia extensions. The film-bleu opens this summer in Australia.
TRANSMISSION TECHNICAL INFORMATION: This was a multicast of the video/audio across the mbone (multimedia backbone), which consists of specialized routers (dedicated workstations) able to pass on the multicast data packet, which is a subset of the IP standard packet. The "multi" in multicast points to the fact that, when bandwidth becomes available, it will be possible for multiple users to send and receive video among themselves during a session... participating in local or global multicasts, constituting a two dimensional, audio/video/text cyberspace. This multicast was approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force. Please note that multicasting is still experimental. Increased bandwidth, and concommitent installation of routers able to handle the mbone's data standard is necessary before multicasting can be available to all net users. This multicast was executed by Gport, a commercial multimedia network for users in film/ video/print.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT DAVID BLAIR, as listed above
