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Reactor’s second Trampoline event took place at Broadway Cinema on Sunday 6th February 2005. The event was planned to coincide with Trampoline Berlin, which was being curated by founders Miles Chalcraft and Anette Schafer. Their Trampoline was a themed event called ‘Global Cooling’ and was scheduled to take place as part of the Transmediale Festival 2005.

A live-stream interface, designed by Nottingham based Active Ingredient, was used to link the two sister events via the internet. The trans-European connection meant that the Nottingham event had a distinctly German feel. Opening with a live mix of German music and continuing, throughout the night, with the premieres of a variety of new German film and performance work.

This Trampoline event (as with the first), was to be compared by Ringmaster Dan and the Reactor (shit) Bear. However this time the bear would be in Berlin and would communicate with the Nottingham audience remotely using the live link. The first challenge faced by Reactor, putting the live link through its paces, was an elaborate experiment to teleport the Reactor (shit) Bear (which had accidentally turned up in Nottingham) over to Berlin.

Dr Günter Haos and his assistant Beaker went about preparing the teleporting apparatus which was installed in the Broadway Café Bar. The reluctant bear was adorned with a rocket pack and a protective electrode helmet. The bear was charged up to the point of explosion when, with a bang, it disappeared at lightning speed out of the double doors at the front of the cinema. In a matter of minutes it reappeared in the Berlin venue and waved to the Nottingham audience via the live link – mission accomplished!

The bear now safely deposited in Berlin, went on to introduce the night’s events, communicating with Ringmaster Dan (left behind in Nottingham) using scrawled placards held up to the web-camera (because of course bears cannot speak!)

The first event to be announced was a series of films screened in the Café Bar: The Look of Love by Joanna Callaghan, Time Travel by Akiko & Masako Takada and Stop Motion Studies by David Crawford.

In the midst of these our old friend Egg Box Head made an appearance to launch the Reactor Party’s 2005 Egg Box Appeal. Following the success of last year’s appeal, where over 1,000,000 boxes were donated, the Reactor Party hope to collect even more in the forthcoming months to assist with preparations for Total Ghaos.

This was shortly follow by an introduction to German artist
Folke Köbberling's Bellystore (Tagesfialle) project. A week before the event, Reactor had received a mysterious package, inside were instructions on how to build a Bellystore and to start up in the business of selling resistors.

Reactor were inspired, promptly building their own Bellystore and going about selling resistors to the people of Nottingham. Folke Köbberling was present at the Trampoline event in Berlin and was able to communicate with the Bellystore operatives in Nottingham, via the live link, and question them on the expansion of the Köbberling brand in the UK. Impressed with booming business in Nottingham, Folke Köbberling later previewed a rendition of her new company hymn to the Nottingham audience via the live link.

Other highlights of the evening included the screening of the eagerly anticipated second instalment of The Fairytale of Mandy. The sad tale of the sweet girl (from the former Trampoline logo), corrupted by the evil Reactorb and turned into a bear. Enslaved in the Trampoline office, Mandy looked to her Fairy Codmother to release her from her suffering.

Later in the evening there was a chance for the Berlin team to experiment with teleporting through the web-stream. Impressed with what
Dr Günter Haos had achieved, and in many way in thanks for the gift of a large bear, Berlin based performance group Plan B, proceeded to teleport a real life carrot back to us in Nottingham. This time the experiment was not quite so successful and the carrot arrived in Nottingham 1000% its original size – carrot cake for everyone!

The final
Café Bar film screening previewed Walk Adventure by San Francisco based, Sugerpine, Daddy's Girl Mamma's Boy by Dan Hopkins and the trance-tastic get-your-feet-moving Mothership by Christopher Bennie.

As well as a jammed packed schedule in the Café Bar work was on dislay in other places around the building: v
ideo installations Please Stop and the singing lollypop-barbershop-quartet by Alex Pearl in the foyer and stair well and Paul Steven’s Ferris Wheel video loop in the box office area.

Tony Lopez installed his spectacular wall object now! installation in the link building. The device featured four interlinked VCRs playing from the same piece of tape, each linked to a split screen TV. The first VCR records a CCTV image of the viewer looking at the TV, this is then played four times in succession in the four different corners of the TV until the tape returns to the first VCR and is recorded over again.

In the Mezz, two computers previewed five new web-based projects including:
The public launch of Ellie Harrison’s new year-long project Swear Box 2005. Viewers could see the tempestuous beginnings of a collection of a year’s worth of swear words.

Alex Hetherington’s Glasgowland let you take a trip around virtual Glasgow through a website inspired by the city's environments and mythologies.

Prosthetic Interface Series by Andrew Bucksbarg, let you play with five nifty computer interfaces, demonstrating how great sounds and images can work together

Dimitrios Fotiou’s No More Questions presented simultaneously 25 web-cam portraits, when the mouse rolls over the different images snippets of dialog are revealed.

New York Skyline by Juliana Yamashita allowed viewers to observe an unexpected image of the New York skyline. Not a real representation but an image generated by data collected from Google searches of the street names.

Playing all night on loop in the Seminar room, was a showreel of the finest new films selected from open submission featuring: Joanna Callaghan, Sachiko Hayashi, Chara Lewis, Alex Pearl, Rafaël, Erica Scourti, Akiko & Masako Takada.

The showreel also feature premieres of three films from German artists selected from Trampoline Berlin’s Transmediale showreel including: Ulf Aminde, Susanne Hofer & Marianne Halter and Ralph Meiling.


Trampoline

 


Teleporting the bear


Bellystore action


Business meeting

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