Blog posting written by Shawn Steiner '13 & Andrew Ronald '15, Film, Photography, and Visual Arts, FLEFF Interns

New media and an experimental filmmaker? Be prepared for some very unique and inspired thoughts during this next hour of FLEFF Lab Friday. Make sure to stop by Park 220 sometime today as it will always have something exciting going on.

A very good start to the conversation. Everyone is introducing themselves and seeing the variety of interests in the room.

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Evan Meaney talks about transmedia and how his method is to destroy everything. He takes apart files and then tries to create something new from the pieces.

QUESTION: What is it to live in a world where media is decaying?

Mansoor Behnam discusses his obsession with images and how the ideals of mystical Persian literature has led him to produce his experimental films. He is experiementing with the idea of god with the help of digital media and technology.

SCREENING: "When You Are Blind" (2001) Short Film By Mansoor Behnam (video embedded below)

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"It's the burden of representation."

Mansoor believes that in order to experience the non-representational one must embrace the experimental format. It is necessary to represent the invisible and create mystical work through a lot of abstract effort and imagery.

One major goal of his projects are to bring "new and hidden truth to a body of knowledge."

Another point is that collaboration can bring out new heights and thoughts in each work.

The issues of suppression and public viewpoints are a serious consideration to talk about and unfortunately we need to give some time to Evan Meaney so find Mansoor and ask him questions!

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"Art-math high five?"

Evan takes a stab at explaining Null_Sets. It basically is a way of converting text into images, similar to the method of a QR code. And theoretically if you have a camera with a high enough fidelity you could translate these images back into their original data.

QUESTION: "At what point does noise become useful data?"

Now, you can even download the Null_Sets toolkit right here.

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QUESTION: How do these works connect?

Mansoor sees it in the images that come out of new media attributed to the presence of the infinity. Also, if anyone has seen Middle Eastern rugs, many people have seen a connection to telling stories through patterns in these carpets to the visuality of the Null_Sets jpegs.

Evan discusses compression and how if something becomes so compressed it becomes something unreadable and unreachable. We don't have access to it. "It becomes invisible." Which is what Mansoor attempts to describe in his work.

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Fortunately, a lot of their work is available online. So go watch it, use it, download it and let us know what connections you find.

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Blog posting written by Chloe Wilson, Television-Radio '14, FLEFF Blogger, Ashland, Massachusetts.

When I was a freshman in high school, I got bitten by the travel bug.

With the People to People Student Ambassador Program, I travelled to Australia to discover an entire new culture.  I stayed with a host family, got to snorkel through the Great Barrier Reef, and hike around Uluru - considered by many to be an unofficial wonder of the world.

After that, all of the money I earned from part-time jobs went to travel - whether it was a class trip to Germany or gas money so I could drive to visit my friend a few towns over, I loved travelling and I loved being mobile.  

The ability to explore - which I think is inherent to this year's theme of mobilities - is something a lot of people take for granted.  Many people in countries all over the world do not have access to things that seem commonplace to us - public transportation, well-paved roads, government access to leave and enter countries freely.  

FLEFF allows artists, scholars, interns, and all other attendees to be mobile.  Physically, FLEFF is an international festival that brings people of many cultures together.  Intellectually, ideas at FLEFF travel from person to person and at the festival's end, they travel to the homes of all who attended. 

Being mobile allows us to explore other places while sharing our knowledge. FLEFF's theme of mobilities gives us the opportunity to explore that this year.  

What are your thoughts about this year's theme of mobilities?