As the last performance to go on in the evening, Seaside was packed and full of Mantyfans! This was my first time collaborating with my brother on anything and I’d say it was a huge success. The screen was misshaped, causing me to project half on the ceiling, and half on the band, but it actually made for a really interesting effect. In particular my clips of animated creatures, which appeared to climb out of the background and over the drumset. It was definitely a lot of fun, and loud, and crazy! My brother is a kickass drummer.
Last Wednesday I attended and projected for the first time at an event called the Warper Party. It’s a group of people who aim to build a community connecting visual artists with electronic musicians and give everyone a fair chance at expressing and exploring that in a public space.
I started getting email from Warper after signing up on their mailing list at Burning Man’s NY Decompression party last year. They were announcing their monthly shows and looking for volunteers to help out, project, play music, give workshops, etc. I signed up to project visuals and got a time slot within a couple days. It all turned out to be such a great night, at a perfectly lounge-worthy venue. I had a super fun entourage of friends who came out to support, drink and help in case of disasters, and I met a whole crew of great folks, musicians that were interested in what I was doing, future collaborations and just a general good vibe overall which made the night so wonderful.
I was so inspired by the night that I strung together a bunch of my latest designs and put it to a piece of music. I’ll probably end up doing this regularly after my projection nights. Each are different, and I add new work each time I play. I’m already looking forward to projecting again because of how excellent my experience was last week. I never knew what a rush it could be for me. The next show is this Friday night at Seaside Tavern (formerly Jimmy Seaside) in Stamford. It will be my first time collaborating with my brother, who is the drummer of the band, Manyhose, who I’ll be visualizing for. Please come out if you’re a Stamford local! Should be a fun night. We go on late, 11:30pm. Hope to see you!
http://www.vimeo.com/3103177
I love, love, love this graphic!! Having grown up with the idea of originality and uniqueness as a strong core value, I had a lot of trouble borrowing images to use in visual work, even though I’m a collage artist. I knew for VJing, the only way to get my start, was to develop a visual library. This is where I began collecting old movies and video clips that had elements of interest to me, whether it be in color, texture, or action. I’m slowly starting to realize what is stated in the graphic above makes a lot of sense to me, and that it does not negate the originality of the intended idea or the uniqueness of the person creating the work. While I do enjoy taking my own footage & photography, I also really love collecting elements from other sources and remixing them to new heights, almost as much..
Tonight I’m performing some live visual action at the Delancey in NY, Upstairs, 9-10PM for the 3rd Year Anniversary of the Warper Party! This will be my first experience with Warper, and I’m excited to say that I’m slowly starting to move from using just collected imagery, into using more of my own pieces.
My goal is to strike a more cinematic experience, with a designerly approach. I’m sick of all the techno typographic explosions, epileptic color choices and digital noise that hurts your eyes. The work has been flowing nonstop, and I’m really feeling more and more how this will become a permanent part of my future.
