Kinetica : Lift Off!

Another day at the EIFF, this time for the Kinetica event. Kinetica is a new company set up by Sharon and Corinne, two friends who first met at the Edinburgh film Festival some years ago. They are looking to create opportunities for cross-media collaboration, throw networking events and curate live music and visual events.

The Lift Off! event was held in the Inspace Gallery in the newish Edinburgh Uni building on Crichton Street (where the car park used to be - a short cut to the supermarket when we lived in Forrest Road) and was part of the Soundtracks strand of this year?s Edinburgh International Film Festival. Artists performing included indie newcomers Letters, electronica from Luxury Car and electro-pop from X Lion Tamer. There were VJ (Video Jockey) sets from Konx-Om-Pax and Pixel to provide "a continuous, flowing audiovisual performance experience for attendees". Visuals were also specially commissioned from two teams of Edinburgh based artists ? Makksi and Rods&Cones.

Sarah Keeling and Rachel King, aka Makksi, created a trippy neon world specifically for the music of X Lion Tamer. Amy and Bence of Rods&Cones created visuals for the dark atmospheric indie sound that is Letters.

All of which was interesting to see and listen to, but a nightmare to photograph. Add light to illuminate people, and the projections disappear. Leave it as it is and the ISO needs to go way up to record anything and therefore there is loads of noise. Still, the latter was much more atmospheric, so was mostly what I did. Fortunately it wasn't a commissioned job - more by way of practice at capturing this sort of event.