Screening of Miss Representation at UNR

Via Joe DeLappe, here's news of a free screening at UNR Wednesday night:

Miss Representation
Wednesday, November 16th, 5:30pm
Theater Joe Crowley Student Union
Followed by a panel discussion including:
Jen Hill, Director, Gender, Race & Identity Program and Chair of Women's Studies
Ann Keniston, Accociate Professor, Department of English, GRI Faculty Associate
Mary Stewart, Professsor of Sociology and Women's Studies

All a game

A few gaming-related links today. First off, I'd like to point readers to another SNC student blog, "Baron's Gaming Blog," maintained by Computer Science student Tyler Baron, located here:

http://barongames.blogspot.com/

Tyler has been making weekly posts about aspects of video game design -- his latest post was a critique of several cutscenes, and he's also looked at voice acting, the difference between "homage" and "ripoff," the way art direction can support or subvert gameplay, and several other topics. Anyone interested in the thinking process behind effective game design (or in its inverse, the "non-thinking process behind ineffective game design") would be well-advised to check it out. He has a pleasingly snarky style that makes for an amusing read.

There is also a visiting artist lecture this afternoon at UNR, by Eddo Stern, an artist who has used video games as both subject and production tool. It's at 4pm -- click on the below flyer for a larger version with all the pertinent info. It promises to be a fascinating talk.

Stern's website is http://www.eddostern.com/



Lastly, I recently came across the below video by someone who goes under the youtube handle "fluxlasers." He has used the user-generated content capabilities of the videogame Little Big Planet to recreate the first film in Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle. I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of Barney's work, but seeing his video-game influenced white elephant art literally re-imagined as a video game makes me feel a bit more warmly toward it.

Of Prospectives and Pig Bladders

I'm still catching up on activities that happened towards the end of last semester or over the break; one of the highlights of that period for me was the Prospectives 09 festival, a digital arts festival organized by Joseph DeLappe, a Professor of Digital Art at UNR.

I wrote a review of a portion of the festival for Rhizome -- specifically, an exhibit hosted at UNR's Sheppard Gallery. Here's a quote:

It seemed there was a common desire to enlist the spectator as a participant. Open until December 16, 2009, the works included in the show involved a fair amount of “play,” but the artists seemed attuned to the complexities involved with the interaction between machine and participant, thus it’s play inflected with critique.

I didn't have room to cover the performance aspect of the festival, a cluster of multimedia pieces presented at the Nevada Museum of Art. The performances were worthy of a write-up in themselves, though at this point I only have a couple fugitive notes to offer. Below are two photos Joseph sent me. The first shows Stephanie Lie's Vibrating Milk, in which a camera trained on a drum head covered with milk sent a live feed to the big movie screen in the NMA's Wayne and Miriam Prim Theater. Modulated sound got the drum head vibrating, and the milk was perturbed into a variety of shimmering patterns -- on the big screen, we were treated to a mix of a constantly-shifting abstract expressionist painting, and a 60s psychedelia rock show backdrop.

The second photo is of Natalia Jaeger's Miranda. Jaeger offered the audience bananas, and then invited the audience to watch a clip of Carmen Miranda projected on her underwear. We watched the Busby Berkely-choreographed dancers navigate their giant bananas through their geometric progressions (even without the upskirt proscenium, it would be impossible to miss the phallic implications of a bevy of female dancers wielding massive bananas. But it was still a bit of a revelation to see the bananas, at one point -- as they were ranged into a circular bullseye -- suddenly become teeth in a canary vagina dentata). And while we watched, Jaeger regarded the audience with eyes of dull malice, slowly chewing the heads off a small bouquet of flowers.



Nor did I have space, in the Rhizome review, to elaborate on the swarm of flying pig bladders that were set whirling in the air above the UNR campus one evening. They were the work of Doo-Sung Yoo, who has created a variety of pieces that meld robotics with animal parts.

(first pic courtesy of Joe, the others are mine)




I actually caught the outdoor installation by accident, on my way to an unrelated dance performance at UNR. After the dance, on my way through the Church Fine Arts Building at UNR, I came across a cluster of the pig bladder balloons corralled at the end of an empty hallway, quietly jostling each other, unattended. It was gratifyingly eerie.

Local Event: Prospectives.09

UNR is hosting what sound like a very exciting three-day festival of digital artworks, starting this Thursday, Nov. 12. Events include a symposium, an exhibit at the Sheppard gallery, a projection at the Fleischmann Planetarium, and performances at the Nevada Museum of Art.


As the blurb has it:

Prospectives.09 is an international festival showcasing the work of graduate and Phd candidates working across a diverse spectrum of digital arts practice. The festival showcases the work of 37 artists and performers from throughout the United States and internationally (including artists from Australia, United Kingdom, India, South Africa, Chile, Sweden and Portugal).

The main link is here:
http://www.unr.edu/art/prospectives09.html

And even if you can't make any of the local events, they're hosting some net art as well, which you can experience from the comfort of whatever seat you happen to be sitting in right now. The direct link for that is:
http://www.unr.edu/art/prospectives09/netart.html

Dance & projection at UC East Bay

Last week, Kristin and I went down to UC East Bay, to present a piece Kristin has been choreographing with some UNR students, and a projection of some animation/dance work we'd done in the past. It was presented to a couple classes, one taught by Eric Kupers and one by Kimiko Guthrie (outside of teaching, they're the artistic directors of Dandelion Dancetheater. They had a successful run of a show in New York last summer, even snagging a review in the NY Times, which was one of the summer's little thrills -- it was nice to see pictures of folks I'd worked with, reproduced in an official capacity under that stately "New York Times" header font.)



Babs put together a portable "nest," derived from the one she constructed out behind the art building, that was used as a piece of sculptural stage-setting. The dancers were Mandy Albert, Nicole da Roza, Teryn Jackson, and Daniel Miller. Nicole also edited together a projection of stills, taken from prior performances and in staged settings, which added to the dreamy atmosphere of the thing; the title of the live piece was "Dreaming in Black and White."


We got some good questions from Eric's class, kicking around the differences between projected work and live performance. Here are a few pics; a few of them have bigger versions, and look the better for it, so click on through for the full effect.

Ian MacKaye Q&A in Reno this Sunday

Wolfpack radio and the Holland Project are sponsoring a Q&A with former Minor Threat and Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye this Sunday at 6pm, on the UNR campus. More info on the flyer below (click it for a larger version).

Pictures at a Dress Rehearsal

At the dress rehearsal for the upcoming dance show at UNR, I managed to take some pics before I had to go up to the booth and start my video. Here are a few:

Performance at UNR this Thurs & Fri

My wife Kristin has been artist-in-residence at the UNR dance department this past semester; she'll be putting on a piece she set on some UNR students, and staging a couple pieces with two of the dancers from her San Francisco-based company, Element Dance Theater, as part of the UNR Fall Dance Festival this week. It's this Thurs and Fri at 8pm, at Nightingale Concert Hall at the UNR campus -- the festival features work by UNR dance faculty and students. More info is at the link.

One of the pieces is "Drunk Trumpet," and features some of my animation projection, so I'll be up in the lighting booth, manning the projector. The still above is from a previous staging of the piece.