If any of you are in the CT area on this snowy friday evening, I will be projecting some videos over at the City Lights Gallery in Bridgeport from 6-11pm tonight. Thanks to Liz of Paradox Ink for inviting me!
I picked out 10 of my favorite experimental pieces that I worked on in 2009 and this will be the first time they are landing on gallery walls. I’m sure at some point in the evening I’ll end up free-form VJing a bit too.
City Lights gallery is debuting their first Nu Media show, involving a mixed collection of video art, short films, and  animation. Hope to see you!
City Lights Gallery is located at 37 Markle Court Bridgeport, CT 06604 Â : $5 Entry fee
This is the latest bit of my experimental vj works. The concept based on my mantra, energy for energy. The impact of two elements coming together and creating passion. Creation, exchange & fire. Highly compressed but wanted to share anyway! The song is called “Surfin” by William Orbit. Footage both found & mixed with my own, plus some final cut manipulation.
RESERVE A SEAT ON THE MONKEYTOWN SITE
I’m keeping my fingers crossed… I’ll be calling a couple of potential design studio spaces this week to see about taking my biz out of my crooked little apartment and into town. Wish me luck!!
A drawing sample from students in class
Friday night I trekked out to Washington, DC to join the Motion Graphics Festival. The workshops all sounded wonderful, but it especially piqued my interest when I read that VJ Shantell Martin was teaching a workshop in live-painting. On the practical side of what I do, my instinct was to take the After Effects class, but the VJ side of me couldn’t let go of the opportunity to hang with other visualists from around the world, so I signed up.
The class introduced the idea of using a wacom tablet mixed with painting software to drawing live and intuitively to music, while recording your session and being able to cut it up and re-use it as animation in performance or later for editing. I found this particularly useful because I never record what I’m doing directly from the screen. There is a program called I Show You which does this perfectly, creating a high res quicktime file.
While much of my personal VJ style has been to mix motion graphics & after effects work, with video files, I’m interested in seeing what direction the concepts I learned in class could take on for me. Definitely a lot of fun, and definitely a new tool to play with and explore.
Thanks to all of you who I met this weekend. I hope our paths cross again soon!
Click here for our info on Monkeytown’s website. The calendar for August was just launched.
We’re getting excited for our upcoming show!! Mark your calendars and send an RSVP here. August 6th, Thursday at 8:30 PM. We are currently looking for a second act to play with us, open to suggestions!
Soon I will be posting the massive amount of photos & video that were taken this weekend in the Chrysalis Dome from the festival we performed at in upstate NY this past weekend. The rain gods did not hold off on any rain that they had planned for us despite my plea, but as a result the adventure became that much more spontaneous and unpredictable.
Unfortunately we were only able to get Chrysalis up for two nights before the rain turned everything into swamp lands. We then took our cables, projectors, tarps and equipment over to a smaller inflatable dome to keep the party going to finish out the weekend. Either way, the project continues to become more interesting with each launch.
Thanks to everyone who made it all the way up there and stuck it out through the rainy conditions. I had so much fun working with everyone and experimenting with this amazing project.
Monkeytown with the Cutlery
Thanks to all who managed their way to the couches of Monkeytown last night! Â The haunting jingle jangles, clarinet, record player, typewriter and banjo strings of the Cutlery ominously echoed the walls and brought a sultry, nostalgic mood to the shadows.
The room had a nice mellow feeling of serenity throughout our set, and was a lot of fun to edit live in my spontaneous ways of vision. I planned to have the visuals take you on a journey through time. We spent most of the evening floating between the 1920s and 1930s. Flappers, poetic meanderings, dramatic romances, cryptic cartoons and a side of Charlie Chaplan. In addition, lately I’ve been missing one of my very best friends, Zora, who passed away a few years ago. Her and I had just begun to collaborate on beautiful things together in the year before she passed.  I know she would have loved the type of work that I’m doing these days. I always wonder what we would be creating today if she were still around. In our short time together we collaborated on one stopmotion film, Fascade Filosophia (also posted below), a few bare experimental tests of painted waves (will be posting soon) and animated sand.
Fascade, full of dark puppetry and mysterious castles, was a big hit last night from what I heard after the show. It felt amazing to have her with me last night, breathing through the walls. I’ve been missing her something fierce and showing that film reminded me that she’s still here inspiring me everyday. For me, last night’s set was dedicated to her.
That venue is so intimate and personal, I wish I could project visuals there more often. It’s absolutely my ideal space, and motivates me to make better and better work.
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Driving home from yoga, Saturday morning sun. Canon SD780.
I finally received my new digital camera in the mail last week, the new Canon SD780. My last camera was my absolute favorite, the Olympus Camedia 5050z, and I’m looking to resurrect it from it’s death one day. However, for now it’s all about life through a new lens. I’ve been without a point and shoot for nearly a year now, and I think it’s finally time for me to open up my eyes again. I’ll be doing a series of test shoots over the next few weeks and collecting them here. We’ll see how she fairs next to my old trusty Olympus.
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Inspired by the hauntingly beautiful music of the Cutlery ladies and the poetic words of Nick Cave. I created this piece with an old wooden frame & collaged imagery found from fashion photos from around the world. It almost came together in a seemingly unconscious way, and became an animated photo album that expanded from the corners of my imagination. The photography was altered, animated, arranged and woven into these treasured memories. This piece was created to be projected during the Cutlery’s live performance of this song, and was debuted on the four walls of Monkeytown last Friday night. Looks like we’ll have another gig there in June!!
Lately I’ve been feeling nothing less than colorful & vibrant. The world is opening it’s doors down all the paths that I’m curious to explore, and I’m happily skipping down each one with wide eyes. I had some time today between edits to remind myself how much I love layering in photoshop, and how much I love doing work that is purely for the art of enjoyment. For the last many years I’ve been working insanely long hours, and insanely hard for other people. Finally I have time to make art again, for myself.
This piece is inspired by one of my all time favorite design heros, Scott Hansen. It reminds me that as a designer, sometimes we don’t have to over-think our work down to every last detail. Â Sometimes if we just start having fun and doing what attracts us, you get the best results and are happier for it.
