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Small File Media Workshop
*interesting-practice*Small-file Media Screening at Rory Gallagher Theatre, MTU Bishopstown Campus, Cork, 24th March 2026. A Review
Radek Przedpełski
moodAmazing day trip to Cork with Claire Nidecker and a group of NCAD students/interesting-practicesmall-filemedia makers. The trip culminated in a screening of interesting-practicesmall-filemovies beautifully curated by Material Gestures (Collette Nolan and Colette Lewis) at MTU Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork. The films brough together works of art students from National College of Art & Design, Dublin and MTU. It was a special moment and a culmination of the year-long dialogue between Cork-based Material Gestures and Dublin-based Frugal Media Research Group (Chloe Brennan, Claire Nidecker, Cliona Harmey and Sarah Durcan). Many thanks to MTU Arts Office for hosting the screening in the rockin’ Rory Gallagher Theatre, MTU Bishopstown Campus!
Our conversation started last year during the FRUGAL MEDIA symposium at NCAD, followed by my small-file media talks and workshops at NCAD and MTU. The student projects then germinated with the kind support of Material Gestures and FRUGAL MEDIA. What an absolute delight it was to see a community of makers come into being!
- reflectionThere is something magical about watching [[interesting-practice | Small File movies on the big screen. Across an impressive array of techniques (glitch media, compression aesthetics, datamoshing, archival footage, field recording, night vision camera, weird apps, obsolete media (incl. Nintendo DS)), twenty-two beautifully crafted films made perceptible how does it feel to inhabit the earth. Not a static landscape but a moving, fragmented earth, shot through data infrastructures and cliches. What came to the fore for me was how these films affirmed, one way or another, a sense of being out in the field, be it countryside, or an urban garden; inhabiting the field of vision; journeying to a site, or non-site; embodying a molecular field of energy. There was a special quality to the filigree pixel patterns at the thin places between waking life and dream that punctuated many of the screened films, akin to the knotted patterns of Celtic designs. It was a moving moment to engage with the small-file films negotiating a sense of place and identity on this island, on which we stand,
- whose air we breathe,
- whose movement we sense. The films navigated these issues with poetic cadence, bravado and lyricism. The sound quality and music was exquisite, from sounds of wooden objects through distorted bagpipes, to drum’n’bass.
—————This programme will be going places!]]
