Page 122 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016

122embraced the initiative, two artists were chosen to give concerts: Argentine Lisandro Aristimuño and Norwegian Ane Brun.In 2013 the International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia started up an interesting participatory competition that was also geared to the possibilities of mobile devices with cameras (nowadays nearly all of us have smartphones with not one but two cameras, front and rear).The competition is called Phonetastic Mobile Film Festival.20 Anyone interested can take part provided they comply with a number of requisites. Films must: be shot using a mobile device with a camera (smartphone, tablet); belong to the fantasy genre (fantasy, horror, martial arts, mystery and suspense or science- ction); be in English or have English subtitles; and last no longer than 15 minutes.The voting process is also participatory inthat anyone who wishes to can vote for their favourite short lm provided they are registered on the website (once again, it is free to register as a user). The lm with the most votes receives one of the two prizes (the other winner is chosen by an international panel).What is interesting is that the organisation may consider entering the short lms submitted to this section for other o cial sections of the Catalan lm festival, even subsequently for the Oscars if appropriate. So, bearing in mind that the medium on which the competition is based is highly accessible, the competition is open to participation on two levels: for both submitting and selecting works. And the festival is con dent of the results.Another prominent example that involves voting is the animated short lm festival Subtravelling Festival promoted by TMB (Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona). This festival, which held its sixth edition in 2015, proposes two phases of participation: onelasting nearly a month, during which anyone can lm freely on Barcelona’s public transport network (underground and buses) a short lasting a maximum of three minutes and, as in thecase of Phonetastic, using mobile devices only. The technical requisites for taking part are that applicants must previously post their videos on YouTube and share the URL when lling in the participation form. A lot of the participants are young people – an interesting fact which shows that the competition encourages this age group to be creative with audiovisual language.During the second phase, which lasts two weeks, people vote on the lms in the two sections of the festival: the candidate shorts(in the Rueda en TMB section) and those in the Microcortos Internacionales (International micro- shorts) section, which features about 20 that are previously shortlisted by a panel and even include animated lms.These shorts are also projected on the screens inside the carriages of the city’s underground trains and in some of its buses. The whole festival therefore takes place online and on screens, except for the closing and award ceremony.In the sense that audience and creator canbe interchangeable, the already mentioned #TwitterFiction Festival is designed on the basis of the communicative nature of tweets: as well as short, they can be issued by anyone with a pro le on this social networking site, and are ubiquitous and redistributable. As commented earlier, this festival invited a few famous writers to take part with conversations and, especially, live written stories. Some of these stories were not only retweeted and read, but could be continued in di erent versions by any user, as well as begun, under the hashtag (interactive label) #TwitterFiction.Moreover, to encourage people to beat blank page syndrome (writer’s block, when you don’t know how to begin), the organisers created a2. NT BEFORE AND DURING THE FESTIVALFocus: Use of New Digital Technologies at Cultural Festivals