New media artwork is hard to categorise, says artist Gina Czarnecki, particularly on a funding application form. Influenced by eugenic theory and an early career in animation, her films take the human figure as their starting point and fuse it with digital video and processing to comment on the inevitable crossroads between technology and the biological human body. Initially based in London, Czarnecki spent over a decade in Dundee before relocating with her partner to Melbourne. Having appeared at the Sundance Festival and Cannes as well as many other film festivals in Europe and the USA, a collection of her video works, Infected, is presented at AK05 by the Moving Image Centre and will appear at the Britomart Union Fish Building, running from March 3-13. She speaks to SAM EICHBLATT via email.

SAM EICHBLATT's interview with Gina Czarnecki continues here.

In 2004, close to 700 people descended upon the Bruce Mason Centre, Auckland, in what can only be described as New Zealand's very first design orgy. Far be it from me to channel the voice of hundreds of graphic artists, designers and visually-gifted individuals, but for one curious, artistically-shitbrained introvert at least, no other description comes close. Call it a conference, a junket, a summit of things that make you go "ooo" – all perfectly adequate pigeonholes for the yearly event, but each not nearly enough a reflection on what really goes on behind closed doors. By TIM WONG.