Noisemakers 2000: Digital directions

>> Filmmaker Gerard Betts explores the new media terrain

by MATTHEW HAYS

For a filmmaker who's working on a project about the implications of the digital age on collective perception of the world, Gerard Betts admits to being somewhat out of the loop.

"I only just started really exploring digital technologies in the past year," says the Montreal musician and filmmaker. "Clearly, definitions and categories of media are changing and converging so rapidly, our perception of culture itself is shifting at the same time."

Betts points to renowned cultural theorist Walter Benjamin as a major inspiration. "In his essay, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,' Benjamin discussed the way in which film and photography changed public perception itself. Similarly, the digital technology is revolutionizing our perception of the world."

Thus Betts' 20-odd-minute film, currently in production and titled The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction, will be an "animated, philosophical, documentary essay" on Betts' explorations into the wonderful world of new media and technology.

Along with local Webmaster Rick Lalchan, Betts has been developing a Web site devoted to the project (outlandmedia.com). Ultimately, Betts hopes to have both film and site up and running simultaneously, with the "site complementing the film, and vice versa," a la Blair Witch.

A graduate of Concordia University's film program, Betts won the national Norman McLaren film award for his 1990 animated short, The Myth of Sisyphus, in which Betts employed Terry Gilliamesque animation styles to rework the ancient tale.

Betts concedes the new project is light years away from his previous work. "I find this evolution fascinating. I want the film and site to be a totally different take on the new technologies and their implications." l