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The first CD-ROM on a South African artist has been published.
It provides viewers with an insight into the wide range of media with which
this brilliant artist works.
William Kentridge is one of the best-known South African artists.
He has created work in a variety of mediums - charcoal drawings, editioned
prints, video, film and theatre.
Born in Johannesburg in 1955, he studied Politics and African History at the
University of Witwatersrand, and theatre in Paris. In the first twenty years of his career, his art has been given seventeen solo
gallery exhibitions and included in over twenty five group exhibitions in South
Africa, the USA,
the UK, Norway, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and Australia.
In 1997 his work was selected for DOCUMENTA X one of the major art events held
every five years in Kassel, Germany.
The information included in the CD-ROM consists of:
- reproductions of images from his drawings and prints
- excerpts from his animated films
- excerpts from filming of his theatre productions
- texts and reviews by various authors on his work
- his own writings and transcriptions of lectures
- nearly one hour of narration by the artist
This CD-ROM runs on both Windows 95 and MacIntosh systems.
Quicktime software is included in the CD-ROM which needs to be installed on the
computer to allow the video content to run.
USER GUIDE AND INFORMATION ON CONTENT
TO START
Load the CD-ROM in the cd-player, click on the cd drive, usually D:.
A small window opens which shows the following folders:
WK_WIN LIBRARY DATA README SYSTEM
TECHNOTE WK_MAC
Click on WK_WIN if you have a PC, or on WK_MAC if you have a MAC.
The CD is launched with an edited animation clip from FELIX IN EXILE.
It then goes into the MAIN PAGE which allows access to all the sections of the
CD-ROM.
(NOTE:-If the animation clip does not run in the opening sequence, it means
that the computer does not have the QUICKTIME animation program loaded.
See the TECHNICAL section on how to load the program from the CD-ROM)
The LIBRARY folder contains a further 2 folders - TEXT and VOICE - each of
which are essential viewing.
TEXT contains files with all the text researched and provided;
VOICE contains the full voice-clips spoken by the artist.
There is more about this in the TECHNICAL section below.
The operation of this CD-ROM has been kept reasonably simple, but the designers
would like the viewer to explore with the cursor to find some of the hidden
inter-active
capabilities.
For example, when the cursor changes from an arrow to a little circle you are in an interactive area.
If an image is clicked with the magnifying glass on it, then it needs to be
clicked a second time to return to a normal cursor.
OPERATING THE CD-ROM
Once the MAIN PAGE is on the screen, one is able to click into any of the
content sections.
In the various sections, along the right side halfway down, there is a
vertical line which offers you INFO or EXIT or an arrow allowing moving forward
or backwards to see still images.
INFO reverts to the REFERENCE section with any applicable text for whatever is
being viewed at that moment.
Where there is no dedicated text, the same default information comes up. It is
the start of the transcript of the artist's VOICE. The full transcript of VOICE
can be found in
REFERENCE.
CONTENT DETAILS:
HELP
The HELP section sets out the icons and explains their use.
The main icons of sound, depicted by a closed or open megaphone, reference and
exit are found at the bottom of most of the section pages.
The sound icon needs to be clicked to activate voice-over excerpts by the
artist each time a window is changed. Voice over-rides the background sounds
which can only be stopped by
switching off the computer sound.
LANDSCAPES OF MEMORY
This is a repeating animation clip created by the designers using some images
from the artist's work. It accompanies the artist talking about growing up in
the Johannesburg
landscape.
DRAWINGS FOR PROJECTION
This section consists of brief clips drawn from the artist's animated video to
date:
Johannesburg - 2nd greatest city after Paris
Monument
Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old
Mine
Felix in Exile
The History of the Main Complaint.
The drive-in movie screen swings towards you and after clicking on a title one
then clicks onto the drive-in screen to make the movie begin!
MOVIE STILLS is the designer's random selection of still images and should be
viewed first as the artist explains his approach to drawing for projections.
DRAWINGS
This consists of a few groupings of drawings selected by the designers without
reference to chronological order, as follows:
The Triptychs
Suburban Suite & 1987
Drawings for a Procession
Dancers
The Panelbeaters
Landscapes 1988
Collage Drawings
Mayakovsky
Other
SPECIAL PROJECTS
This a mix of the various projects selected with graphics added by the
designers (watch for the magnifying glass), as follows:
Special Projects:
-SITE Santa Fe - referring to an installation by the artist
-The Havana Biennale - referring to an installation by the artist
-Memo, a collaborative animated video - and you can also listen to
the
telephone ring or the typewriter type!
Collaborations:
-Easing the Passing (of the hours) - a collaborative computer animation - arrow
cursor moves images
left & right
-Memory and Geography - a project for the First Johannesburg Biennale in
association with the
Danish curator.
Theatre:
This shows brief extracts from films of the 3 theatre productions created to
date in association
with Handspring Puppet Company:
-Woyzeck on the Highveld
-Faustus in Africa
-Ubu & the Truth Commission
STILLS is a selection of images from UBU and should be viewed first with the
voice on to have the artist explain how these theatre productions came about.
To run any of these, one must click on the film-screen and allow the
sequence to run through completely.
PRINTS
This consists of images and information on most of the limited edition prints
created by the artist.
The designers have grouped them without reference to chronology, as
follows:
Monoprints
Casspirs Full of Love
Little Morals
Landscape (Reeds)
Miscellaneous
Domestic Scenes
Industry & Idleness
Ubu
Sleeper
Head
Iris
HMV & Special edition
PROCESS provides photographs and text relating to the making of the Sleeper
series and also the Reeds print with master-printer Jack Shirreff at 107 Workshop
in Wiltshire,
England.
PRINTS offers the most detail and lists many of the works editioned by the
artist.
All the recent work published by David Krut Fine Art are illustrated with the
exception of Iris, 1992 omitted in error.
A de luxe edition of the CD-ROM is also available which includes a limited
edition etching created by the artist to fit the CD case.
Two different images were created for this project at 107
Workshop in Wiltshire, England in August 1997 in an edition of 50 each.
TECHNICAL
If the opening sequence does not run the animation clip, it means that the
computer does not have the QUICKTIME animation programme loaded.
QUICKTIME 32 can be loaded from the CD-ROM by clicking on the SYSTEMS folder
and then clicking QT32 and going through the installing procedure.
The files in TEXT and VOICE are abbreviated but should give sufficient
indication of content.
Each TEXT file once clicked, requests the file to be opened by using any word-processing
program available on the computer.
The text is then usable as in any word processor.
Each VOICE file once clicked, has a special set-up which requires you to run
the audio as you would on a normal tape deck.
TECHNOTE
This is a FOLDER which sets out in detail the types of technical problems and
conflicts that may arise from different types of computers.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
WINDOWS: 486 DX-66 MHz or higher CPU; 640x480, 16 bit colour display: 8 Mbytes
RAM; double-speed
CD-ROM drive; 16-bit sound card with external speakers or headphones; Windows
95.
MACINTOSH: 68040 @ 33 MHz /Power PC; 640x480, thousands of colours display;
8 Mbytes RAM; double-speed CD-ROM drive; external speakers or headphones;
System 7.
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