Your Django Story: Meet Michela Ledwidge

This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here. 

Michela Ledwidge is an artist and director redefining the space between cinema and games. In 2004 she won a NESTA Invention award for ‘remixable film’, which outlines her vision for playful storytelling and digital culture and continues to underpin her artistic practice. She is co-founder of studio Mod and has been both the creative and technical lead on numerous productions.

 

How did your story with code start?

My dad bought a Commodore 64 and some copies of Compute’s Gazette magazine home in the mid-80s that I was expressly forbidden to use without permission. Mucking around with computers was elevated to a more attractive illicit activity than it would otherwise have been. This was back in the day when full source code could be printed in magazines. My first “coding” was covert typing in of pages and pages of BASIC to get a new game. At primary school we did some LOGO (Turtle Graphics on the Apple IIe) but once puberty kicked in I abandoned coding. It wasn’t until university that I got back into coding. I ended up majoring in Computer Science and French as part of an Arts Degree. This was 1993 and my honours thesis “Cruising and Creating with WHype” involved writing a (very rudimentary) web browser/editor and publishing the first website in NSW.

 

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

As a ten-year old? Not that much.

 

What do you love the most about coding?

I subscribe to hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson’s school of thought, that software is a branch of film-making. As a director, my process involves writing words, music and code. I love the creative process of turning ideas into art and functionality. Being able to develop your own ideas can be very empowering. I’m a lifelong student of digital culture. It’s a fascinating story.

 

Why Django?

I’ve been using Django since 2009 after switching from Turbogears. What attracted me was the larger user base and “batteries included” functionality like the admin interface. I’m not a full-time developer so I place great value on stable frameworks that support quick and dirty prototyping.

 

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

My day job is creative and technical director at studio Mod. We create interactive entertainment that sits between cinema and video games and often incorporate live experience. Django is a core component of our production management product Rack&Pin which powers all our shows. Our immersive interactive video show ACO Virtual lets the audience remix the Australian Chamber Orchestra and set a new benchmark for high performance video off a single PC. The show is 2 years into a 4 year tour - currently showing at Gataker’s Artspace and Gladstone Art Gallery. We’re in production on a new show - an immersive “on board” experience for the Australian National Maritime Museum’s destroyer-class warship and submarine. I’m using Django to direct an experience across 30+ hidden computers in a process I’m calling augmented set design.

 

What are you the most proud of?

I’m most proud of our little studio Mod which is now five years old. It’s a very tough business environment to operate in but we’ve done some exciting work with media and technology. I find it very satisfying and a privilege to lead fabulous multi-disciplinary teams.

 

What are you curious about?

I’m curious about how the traditional screen industry and interactive entertainment will evolve. I’m very curious as to how we can increase digital literacy for women and get more people coding, writing, directing and producing in this space.

 

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

Watching comedy. Playing games. Bushwalking.

 

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

Pick a subject that you’re passionate about and look at how programming can help. There are lots of excellent general purpose tutorials out there (including the djangogirls one!) but nothing is more satisfying that coding something personal that you and your network find beautiful and/or useful.

Thanks Michela! :)

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