Apertus May Newsletter

[Sebastian Pichelhofer]

Hello, everyone, welcome to another edition of our monthly newsletter!

We are so excited right now we can barely sit down and write this text! We’ve aimed high with our decision to develop a high-end next generation digital cinema camera, and boy have we already scored HIGH!


Prix Ars Electronica: we won an Award of Distinction!

In 2012, 3,674 projects were submitted from 72 countries to Prix Ars Electronica. This is possibly the most prestigious international competition for Digital Culture, Computer Animation and Electronic Arts.

From a pool of 313 applicants, Apertus has been selected for an Award of Distinction in the Digital Communities category. This award includes 5,000 € prize money which will be presented to us at the Ars Electronica Gala within the Festival Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria.

Initiated in 1987, the Prix Ars Electronica has earned a reputation as the definitive barometer for measuring trends in the international media art scene. Juries composed of leading experts in their respective fields convene annually to select the most outstanding contemporary works (in seven competition categories), awarding the “Oscars” of media art.


Foundation

Talks continue at our forums for the creation of the Apertus Foundation. In case you missed the last edition, this is a topic of great significance since our Kickstarter campaign will be run via this non profit entity.

This is also the reason behind why we are inviting long term active community members to help form our board of directors. Of course, we’re planning a party of sorts for our first board meeting, and please do feel welcome to come along (but remember that it will be a significant and solemn occasion).


Talk the talk

The first “official” international meet up is coming closer and may even happen before the constitution of a foundation.

The Libre Software Meeting 2012, scheduled from July 7th-12th in Geneva (Switzerland), has announced the approval of project member Sasha Cohen’s presentation. Entitled the Community as a Power Source, it will use our project (Apertus) as a primary example to examine some of the best methods for open source projects to attract a professional and independent community from all corners of the globe.

Our project leader and self-proclaimed hair stylist Sebastian Pichelhofer has also had his talk confirmed for the LSM. Apertus - The birth of a completely open digital cinema camera will show the process of developing a high tech camera without secrets or restrictions, in which everybody is welcome in. Hopefully, three other presentations about Apertus can still happen at this same event.

Sebastian participated in the Linux Week Vienna, in Austria, where he spoke about Apertus in the Open Hardware and Platforms category.


Catalunya rises

Do you remember the Kinoraw project? Based in Spain, headed by Carlos Padial and Simón Vialás? We’ve featured these guys in our newsletters because of their monthly meetings hosted at Telenoika, Barcelona. Well, they are gathering funds via Goteo, a crowdfunding platform, until May the 10th. The deadline is approaching!

Kinoraw’s main objective is to establish an Elphel workflow based around Blender. Carlos Padial is known in the open source video community for his work on Jump to Cut, a suite offering greater access to advanced editing features in Blender’s Video Sequence Editor.

Speaking of Catalunya, multi-use project member Biel Bestué has published a bash script that helps us creating backups. Now, when you have a CF card, or an external HDD, and you’re unsure if everything has been copied to your workstation, this application might be of service. It still needs some improvements, but it’s there! And it’s GPL! So enjoy!

Discuss this newsletter edition here.

See you next month,

The Apertus Team.