SHOWS:  The Phoenix Festival 2001 The Phoenix Festival was once again a true journey for dandelion collective. Last year, our visual focus went from Life to Death to Rebirth over the course of the three nights. This year, each night was a completely different experience, from new forms of collaborative video mixing to setting up the Dimension Elevator immersive video environment for the very first time. For us: EPIC. Night 1: Three Crew Collaborative VJ Mix Night 2: Planned Collaboration: Phoenix Cycle Night 3: Dimension Elevator Night 1: Three Crew Collaborative VJ Mix A few months before the Phoenix Festival, Alex from NUMB Productions PDX sent an email to DCV and an email to Subliminal Imaging inviting us to collaborate at the festival this year. Good Plan! This was a perfect opportunity to try out a mixing configuration that I (topherZ) had always been interested in: video-network. What is the best way to use three mixing rigs, when one of them is enough to create a nice signal? One of the tricks with collaboration is not stepping on others toes and ideas, to give each element their own freedom to move and create within a well defined area. Its helpful to define each elements boundries. DCV arranged to have a three screen setup. [DAN, however arranged and designed the stage and lighting area and video screens, which was just incredible.] Boundries: each visual crews mixer controlled one of the projectors. NUMB on the left, Subliminal Imaging in the center, and dandelion collective visual on the right. However, the main out from each mixer did not go directly to the projector, it went to one of three video distribution amplifiers. From the amplifier (video splitter) the signal went to the projector, AND to the other two mixers. SO each VJ crew could mix with the signals coming from the other two mixers. One benefit of this is that at any time, a vj could mix all the way to someone elses signal. Together we were able to control the three screens - sometimes all three screens showed different mixes, sometimes they all showed the same signal.... and everything else inbetween.       And then there was Jesse's damn eyes!        Night 2: Planned Collaboration: Phoenix Cycle On Saturday night, DCV continued the story it started last year at the first Phoenix Festival. In the month before the show DCV and Subliminal Imaging coordinated a visual library that would allows to tell the story of the Cycle. Rather than focussing on one of the three stages: Life, Death, Rebirth: we meditated and mixed on the cycle itself. If we are reborn time and time again, how does that impact your view of what is going on in your current life, and how does that impact your view of others? Key to this nights set were libraries of circular motion clips, and the fractal spiral clip developed by DCV. Night 3: Dimension Elevator At 6pm on Sunday, we trucked from campsite over to the stage area to start setting up the DE. Stephen, Kerstin and Evelyn worked on the screen structure while Topher worked in the tent to export each of the four video signals to miniDV tape: North, East, South, West. With even a light wind it soon became clear that a 20 foot by 16 foot screen made out of kite material was not going to be held in place by a few stakes in the ground. The posts were swaying and bucking violently. Meanwhile, the firewire port on Tophers laptop decided to take a vacation. And of course we are exhausted from the previous two nights of vjing - and the previous week of preparation. Hmm, maybe we have done enough? Sleep? ..... but we have done so much just to bring the damn thing down here! We get by with a little help from our friends. Dan had plenty of guy-wire left over from setting up the stage. He donated that and with help from a rigging guy from the HOUSE camp just down the hill, the screen structure found stability. Mo, from modefy, who was doing visuals on Sunday with Greg from warehouse600 had an extra DV cable so that Topher could plug the firewire drive into a DIFFERENT DV port on a PCMCIA firewire card. Well, its not as simple as all that, but heres the piktures anyway, notice the sky going to dawn, 12 hours isnt that long is it? Is it?