Presentation at Digifest 2021 Festival, Durban, South Africa

Published on Thu Nov 4, 2021 by David J Colbran

A couple of weeks ago I was honoured to be asked to present and exhibit some of my artworks at the Unmasked Digifest and annual research conference 2021, based in Durban, South Africa.

Back in the deep lockdown of 2020 I joined an online art class organised by The Open Eye Gallery - a visual art project which reflected on our collective experience of the pandemic. We explored a variety of crafts and techniques with the goal of creating a series of anonymous postcards to our future selves. I have blogged about my finished pieces before - check the Postcards from Us post.

The programme for Digifest had close to 28 sessions, 48 virtual exhibitions and 56 speakers from South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Brazil, The United Kingdom, United States of America, France, Germany, Singapore, Italy, Greece and Mexico. And as it existed in the virtual world, I had to brush up on my Zoom / Team skills for my presentation.

Fortunately during lockdown I learnt OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) and tested out my new skils with some live streaming music sessions. It is clear that OBS is a great solution for offline video recording and live streaming. It has an open canvas approach to video creation and can mix a variety of audio and video sources to a single output. This output can then be recorded or hooked in to other broadcast applications - in this instance Microsoft Teams. So it enabled me to show the viewers my work, while at the same time my face appearing in a small box, as I was giving my presentation.

It really was useful looking back and reflecting on my work during the preparation for this event. Also it pushed me out of my comfort zone in developing and delivering a presentation. I rarely am seen the other side of a lens and hardly ever talking directly to camera - so that was a good challenge.

Below are a few screen grabs from the presentation and my certificates from the Festival.

Author: David J Colbran