EVENTS >
NEW FRONTIER ON MAIN
New Frontier on Main showcases cinematic installations, multimedia performance events, microcinema screenings, new media technology, and the Rabbit Hole, a DJ installation lounge cafe. Check the film guide for scheduled times of the events.
Location [map]
333 Main Street (lower level)
Friday, January 18 - Friday January 25, noon to 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, January 26, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Open to all Festival credential holders and the general public as space permits.
Opening Reception
Friday, January 18
2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
New Frontier Artists
Doug Aitken
Jennifer Steinkamp
Yang Fudong
Hasan Elahi
Jim Campbell
Graffiti Research Lab
Eddo Stern
Cause Collective
Daniel Rozin
Robert Boyd
Marina Zurkow
Stephanie Rothenburg & Jeff Crouse
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid
Paper Rad Art Collective in collaboration with Cory Arcangel
Califone and the Animated Films of Brent Green
The Composers Lab Experiment: Braden King and Shahzad Ismaily
Doug Aitken
Sleepwalkers, 2007
http://www.dougaitkenworkshop.com/
Doug Aitken: sleepwalkers was commissioned jointly by Creative Time and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is a major public artwork comprising eight large-scale moving images that were projected onto the exterior of MoMA on January 2007, enlivening the building's architecture with the nocturnal journeys of five characters representing city dwellers -a bicycle messenger, an electrician, a postal worker, a businessman, and an office worker. Conceived by Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) specifically for the Museum's iconic building, sleepwalkers was inspired by the densely built environment of midtown Manhattan and portrays the metropolis as a living organism fueled by the desires, energies, and ambitions of its inhabitants.
Sleepwalkers entwines distinct storylines constructed around five archetypal New Yorkers, nocturnal beings who awaken as the sun sets, prepare to set out into the night, and make their way through the city to their disparate destinations. These five narratives are each 13 minutes in length and will be presented at New Frontier on Main during the Sundance Film Festival in a single channel format.
Throughout the work, Aitken explores not just the constructed landscape upon which sleepwalkers was initially projected, but also the architecture of the video image itself. At key moments, the images break down into abstraction, sometimes into pixels that are the building blocks of most of the moving pictures we encounter today.
Sleepwalkers features a diverse cast of actors, including New York City street drummer Ryan Donowho (Broken Flowers, Strangers with Candy) as the bike messenger; musician and actor Seu Jorge (City of God, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) as the electrician; Chan Marshall (singer Cat Power) (North Country, V for Vendetta) as the postal worker; Donald Sutherland (M*A*S*H, Klute) as the businessman; and Tilda Swinton (Orlando, Chronicles of Narnia, Michael Clayton) as the office worker.
Sleepwalkers continues Aitken's exploration of the ever-evolving ways in which people experience memory and narrative and relate to fast-paced urban environments. During the past decade, the artist has created innovative contemporary video art by fracturing the narrative structures of his films across multiscreen environments. His work has been exhibited in museums around the world, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris. In 1999 he was awarded the International Prize at the Venice Biennale.
Demo Clip: Watch video
Jennifer Steinkamp
Mike Kelley, 2007
Mike Kelley are high definition video projections of individual trees with branches moving in a twirling pattern. Projected to fill the height of the gallery's walls, the images interact with the architecture of the gallery, creating tension between the imaginary landscape and the physical space.
Jennifer Steinkamp is an installation artist who works with video and new media in order to explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and perception.
Steinkamp employs computer animation and new media to create projection installations exploring ideas about architectural space, motion, and phenomenological perception. She creates environments in which the roles of the viewing subjects and the art objects become blurred.
For images, visit http://jsteinkamp.com/
Demo clip: http://users.design.ucla.edu/~cariesta/steinkamp_kelley_sim.mov
Yang Fudong
Seven Intelectuals in Bamboo Forest Parts 1-5
35mm black and white film transferred to DVD, 2007
Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, and the Renaissance Society, The University of Chicago
Filmmaker Yang Fudong has created some of the most staggeringly beautiful works of independent cinema to come out of China. Exquisitely framed and filmed in b&w 35 mm, Yang's work has an anachronistic feel, combining the lyricism of Chinese scroll painting, with the loose expressiveness of nouvelle vague, all mixed with the stark tableau of Jim Jarmusch whom Yang cites as something of an inspiration. His critically acclaimed films reflect on the conundrums of idealism and ideology.
Yang Fudong was born in Beijing and graduated from the China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou.
Seven Chinese Intellectuals is an adaptation of the traditional Chinese stories known as "The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove." It is a series of films based on the history of seven talented intellectuals from the ancient Chinese Wei and Jin Dynasties. Ruan Ji, Ji Kang, Shan Tao, Liu Jing, Ruan Yan, Xiang Xiu and Wang Rong were famous poets and artists at that time. Open and unruly, they used to gather and drink in the bamboo forest, singing songs and playing traditional Chinese musical instruments, in the hope of escaping from earthly life. They pursued individuality, freedom, and liberty. Their remarkable talent and passion made them a notable group in Chinese history.
Yang Fudong explores here the role of intellectuals in contemporary China -their uncertainty in the emerging mix of communism and capitalism- through seven protagonists interacting in the Yellow Mountain landscape where nature and psychology become one.
Part 1 is about their trip to the Yellow Mountains. The 7 young people are greatly touched by the beautiful scenery. All kinds of thoughts about life come to them.
Part 2 exposes closed city life in a noisy metropolis, such as Shanghai. The 7 young people live in the city, but seem to have little connection with the city.
In Part 3 these seven young people try to change their identity and have a different life. They choose to live in China's Southwestern villages, where they can get closer to nature, and to their own hearts.
Part 4 is about the idea of living on an island with no one else, avoiding the hustle and bustle of the busy metropolis. In Chinese legend, there is an island of Peach Blossoms—the very ideal place to live, where one's thoughts can fly freely.
Part 5 is about the return to the city and to reality. We live in the city and belong to it. If any problem arises, we are able to solve it.
Hasan Elahi
Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project, 2007
Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project is derived from a six month long FBI investigation after the artist was erroneously reported as a terrorist. This experience led him to voluntarily develop a network device, which opens just about every aspect of his life to the public.
Throughout the FBI investigation, he actively decided to cooperate with them to a point of compliance to where the current work now borders on a collaboration with them, albeit unauthorized. The network device generates a database of imagery and locative information that combined with a web-enabled companion tracks him and his points of transit in real-time.
Since the development of this device, his FBI agent (along with everyone else) has been able to track him online. This video installation is created from the thousands of images captured and compiled by his mobile network device along with other information in the database.
Elahi is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines issues of surveillance, simulated time, transport systems, borders and frontiers. His work has been presented at the Venice Biennale; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Kulturbahnhof, Kassel, Germany; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia; and The Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in New York, among others.
Elahi has one foot in art and one in science. His media is databases and all sorts of electronic information, essentially tracking himself as spies would. He explores the border between society and technology, attempting to bridge the human and the virtual worlds. He analyzes the way technology is packaged to be perceived as desirable and essential by people. Elahi's process results in translations and mistranslations between the physical and the virtual, between the body politic and the singular citizen.
Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project Website: http:/trackingtransience.net
Artist Website: http://elahi.rutgers.edu/
Jim Campbell
Home Movies 300, 2007
Home Movies consists of strung columns of high-powered LEDs, which are mounted to wires and suspended three inches from a wall. The LEDs face the wall thus creating an image on the surface of the wall. However since the LED boards are in-between the viewer and the image, one has to look through the curtain of LEDs (i.e. through the display device) to see the image. In other words the display device is partially blocking the image from being seen. This work displays found footage of home movies, low enough in resolution so they become universal.
Campbell creates innovative technology-based artwork pairing "custom electronics" with the use of L.E.D. (Light Emitting Diodes) and additional materials in the form of resin, Plexiglas and still photographs, among others. He creates groundbreaking installations and sculptural works of new media art.
For more images, visit: http://www.brycewolkowitz.com/
Click on "Artists" and then on "Jim Campbell". Scroll to the last two installation pictures in the image browser at the bottom of "Jim Campbell's main menu."
Graffiti Research Lab
L.A.S.E.R. Tag, 2007
L.A.S.E.R. Tag is an open-source Weapon of Mass Defacement (WMD) designed to enable graffiti writers, artists, activists and citizens to communicate in the urban environment on the same scale as advertisers, corporations and governments. L.A.S.E.R. Tag combines 1800 watts of audio and 5000 lumens of video projection capability that can be mounted on an industrial tricycle, car, 70's-era school bus or snowmobile. The L.A.S.E.R. Tag payload allows individuals to write their own personal communications and expressions with a 60 milliwatt green laser on industrial facilities, monuments, towers, bridges, city skylines and other hard and soft targets of interest. L.A.S.E.R. Tag is in the public domain. No rights reserved. For more info go to: http://graffitiresearchlab.com.
The Graffiti Research Lab is bringing L.A.S.E.R. Tag to Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier on Main from January 18th to the 28th. The G.R.L. will be executing stealth projection bombing sorties at screenings, parties, celebrity events and other soft targets of interest for the duration of the festival. The L.A.S.E.R. Tag unit will allow any individual to communicate in public on the scale of advertisers, corporations and governments using a 60 milliwatt laser, 1800 watts of audio and a big ass projector. Operating out of a modified rental car, the G.R.L. Cold-Regions Research Unit (CRRU), will be field-testing a number of new graf-technologies at Sundance, including night snowboarding with LED throwies, the distributed street-party and other disturbances. Video documentation of these experiments will be premiered during the festival. Stay Tuned for more information on G.R.L. screenings and events. If you are a graffiti writer or a snowboarder and want to get involved, contact the G.R.L. @: megaohmresistor@hotmail.com.
The Graffiti Research Lab is dedicated to outfitting graffiti writers, artists, pranksters and protesters with open source tools for urban communication. The goal of the G.R.L. is to technologically empower individuals to creatively alter their surroundings on the scale of advertisers and the authorities and to reclaim public spaces from commercial culture. Their work has been featured in such commercial culture as the NYTimes, Wired, Time Magazine, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Digg.com and the front page of YouTube. GRL Weapons of Mass Defacement (WMDs) have received numerous grants and awards from rogue governments and art organizations, including an Award of Distinction from Ars Electronica in 2006. They have shown their work all over the world and will be featured in the MoMA and at Sundance in 2008. Thousands of ubiquitous, clandestine agents have been trained, via the web, to use GRL tools and techniques to create their own public interventions all over the world. Graffiti Research Lab splinter cells have formed in Amsterdam, Vienna, Toronto, Barcelona, Taipei, Tijuana and Australia. The G.R.L. is in the public domain. No rights reserved.
for images, visit: http://graffitiresearchlab.com
demo clips:
Rotterdam: http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=76#video
Barcelona: http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=99#video
Hong Kong: http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=125#video
Eddo Stern
Darkgame, 2007
Best Flame War Ever, 2007
Darkgame is a videogame installation in which two participants, playing against each other, maneuver avatars around a two-dimensional plane, their movements projected against the gallery wall. The experience for both parties involves elements of sensory deprivation. Both players are alternatively blind or deaf, or cannot see the action play out in real time. Stern opens up new avenues for gaming in which the education of the senses is paramount.
Best Flame War Ever is a plasma screen based computer animation that reenacts chat room conversations dealing with overboard masculinity and perceived violence.
Stern straddles the worlds of art, industry, and internet culture. Well known for his work on such projects as Tekken Torture Tournament, where gamers endured electric shocks relative to the injuries of their onscreen fighters, and Waco Resurrection, in which players assume the role of David Koresh as government authorities advance on the Branch Davidian compound, Stern's art challenges and expands not only our relationships with videogames, but also the social and political histories from which they spring.
Demo Clip http://www.eddostern.com/darkgame.html
Cause Collective
Along the Way, 2007
Along the Way is a 15-minute video mosaic that includes over 1,200 videos taken by the artists featuring the people and places of Oakland, California and the surrounding Bay Area. This piece bears witness to a nine month journey that the artists undertook among the people of the Bay Area. Upon arriving to Oakland, viewers are reminded that community is made up of a myriad of peoples. Individuals of different ages, races, and socio-economic backgrounds are depicted without being categorized. The thread is their humanity which is evoked in video portraits and the culminating video mosaic on the media wall. At its core, Along the Way is about the journeys a diverse community like Oakland bestows upon its people. The diversity of Oakland and its vibrancy is captured in extraordinary video portraits of everyday people. At times intensity, seriousness, humor or even lightness is evoked through a stare, grin or grimace. Faces and places merge and commingle creating a vocabulary that evokes mood while underscoring place and movement with the unifying thread being the humanity of what we encounter "along the way" in a place like Oakland.
The CAUSE COLLECTIVE is a team of artists, designers and ethnographers creating innovative art in the public realm. Their projects explore and enliven public spaces by creating a dynamic conversation between issues, sites and the public audience. The artists are: Ryan Alexiev, Jessica Ingram, Jorge Sanchez, Bayeté Ross Smith, and Hank Willis Thomas.
For more information on the artist, visit http://www.causecollective.com.
Daniel Rozin
Snow Mirror, 2006
Peg Mirror, 2007
Snow Mirror is the first in a series of pieces that celebrate slowness and black and white, in this piece the image of the viewer is created by the congregation and accumulation of white snow flakes in areas of the image that are brighter. The result is projected on a transparent silk fabric which creates a feeling of the flakes being suspended in space.
Peg Mirror comprises 650 circular wooden pieces that are cut on an angle. Casting shadows by twisting and rotating, wooden pegs forming concentric circles surround a small central camera. The mirrored image produced in this work is activated by software authored by Rozin that processes video signals and breaks up imagery geometrically, seemingly pixel by pixel. The silently moving wood components in this piece flicker like jewels or coins in the spotlight, challenging our notions about what constitutes a “digital object”.
Daniel Rozin is an artist, educator and developer, working in the area of interactive digital art. He creates installations and sculptures that have the unique ability to change and respond to the presence and point of view of the viewer. In many cases the viewer becomes the contents of the piece and in others the viewer is invited to take an active role in the creation of the piece. Computers are often used in Rozin's work, but seldom visible. Rozin is also a multimedia Associate Art Professor at ITP, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.
For images, visit: http://www.bitforms.com/rozin
Demo Clip: http://www.bitforms.com/movies/movies/snowmirror.mov
Robert Boyd
Xanadu / U.S.A., 2007
Robert Boyd is an interdisciplinary installation artist working in the areas of video, photography, sculpture and new media. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His video installation Xanadu, 2006, has been exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis, 2007; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf, 2007; Context Galleries, Derry, Northern Ireland, 2007; Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, 2007: PKM Gallery, Beijing, 2006; The Hospital, London, 2006; and Participant Inc, NYC, 2006. His other installations and solo exhibitions include The Virgin Collection, Schroeder Romero, Brooklyn, NY, 2002; and Deathstars, Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY, 1999. Recent group exhibitions include Three for Society, 303 Gallery, NYC, 2007; Somewhere In Time, Artsonje Center, Seoul, 2007; Into Me/Out of Me, Kunst Werke, Berlin, 2006; Darkness Ascends, The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, 2006; and Fugitive Eternity, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 2006. He was awarded a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant in 2006 and a New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship in 2004.
Xanadu / U.S.A is a rapid-fire montage that condenses archival footage of Doomsday cults, iconic political figures, and global fundamentalist movements into seconds-long image bites, representing a history of apocalyptic thought as a series of MTV-style music videos.
The works that form Xanadu probe society's self-destructive impulse while parodying various elements of popular culture such as documentaries, news media, cartoons and pop music. Culled from hundreds of hours of archival footage including that of Doomsday cults, iconic political figures, and global fundamentalist movements, Xanadu tweaks, condenses and re-frames modern events into seconds-long image bites, representing a history of apocalyptic thought as a series of MTV-style music videos within a setting reminiscent of a discotheque. Do sweet dreams of suicide cults, mass annihilation, genocide and the Apocalypse all become part of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Set to saccharin dance tracks, the Xanadu videos suggest that humanity is not apathetic about its own demise, but on the contrary - it secretly desires it!
Marina Zurkow
The Poster Children, 2007
Heroes of the Revolution, 2007
Marina Zurkow works with character and narrative in animated cartoons, interactive installations, print and pop objects. Marina Zurkow returns to the festival (her BRAINGIRL series was featured in the Sundance Online Film Festival in 2003) with a haunting pair of gorgeously rendered animated installation works that reflect our surreal world of oceanic detritus, child warfare, and melting ice caps.
Recent projects include a single channel video for WNET/PBS in New York and the award-winning episodic cartoon Braingirl, chronicling a mutant-cute girl who wears her insides on the outside. Zurkow's icons and characters have been incorporated into films, hotel design, light boxes and clothing. Her work has been exhibited at Rotterdam Film Festival, Walker Art Center, SFMoMA, and Brooklyn Museum.
Demo Clip: http://www.o-matic.com/play/poster/
Stephanie Rothenburg & Jeff Crouse
Invisible Threads: Sweatshop Jean Factory in Second Life
At Sundance you will be able to buy jeans via the internet and literally walk away in them.
Invisible Threads is a collaboration between Eyebeam fellow Jeff Crouse and Stephanie Rothenberg. As Second Life becomes more “populated” the price of virtual land has increased exponentially and become the game’s idealized virtual commodity, further replicating real world economies. In order to emphasize this relationship and the exchange of real world dollars for virtual assets, the SL sweatshop will follow the “indentured servant” model – SL citizens will work in the factory for a set amount of time and in turn be given virtual land in exchange for their service. For the launch of this exciting cyberneurial venture, we will be producing designer blue jeans. Styles include boot cut, skinny leg, flare and the new "Boyfriend" trousers. Profits from these purchases will be used to maintain the factory (monthly land rental tiers, SL advertising) and pay for workers’ land.
Stephanie Rothenberg is an artist and educator working at the intersection of art and technology. Her interdisciplinary practice merges performance, installation and networked media to create solicitous interactions that question the boundaries and social constructs of manufactured desires. She has lectured and exhibited in the US and internationally at venues including Conflux Festival and the Knitting Factory in NYC, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Interaccess Media Arts Centre in Toronto, 2004 International Symposium of Electronic Art in Helsinki, Central Academy of Art in Beijing, and Sarai Media Collective in New Delhi. She is currently Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY Buffalo and a 2007 Eyebeam Artist-in-Residence.
Jeff Crouse is an artist and technologist who uses web technologies to create social software, generative projects, happenings, and installations. Past projects include YouThreebe, a YouTube triptych maker, Dirt Party, an installation and performance where salacious information about each attendee is gathered from the web and presented back to the audience, and Switchboard, a Processing (Java) library that allows artists and designers to easily use a variety of live data sources for digital art. He received his MS in Information Design and Technology from Georgia Tech in 2005 and is currently a senior fellow at the Eyebeam art and technology center in New York City.
People are welcome to visit the factory. You can get there searching the SL classifieds for "Double Happiness", or by going to http://www.doublehappinessjeans.com and clicking on "Visit The Factory" at the top. This will take you to a site where you can see the island on a map, and then, if you have Second Life, it will launch it for you and take your avatar to the factory.
Demo clips:
http://www.doublehappinessjeans.com/movies/recruitment_small.mov
For Embedding: http://www.doublehappinessjeans.com/movies/recruitment_streaming.mov
DVD-Quality: http://www.doublehappinessjeans.com/movies/recruitment_dvd.mov
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid
Terra Nova: The Antarctic Suite, a work in process, 2008
A look into the creative process of the making of DJ Spooky’s eventual full-scale multimedia performance: "Terra Nova: The Antarctic Suite." In this first glimpse of a large scale work in progress, Miller acoustically portrays a rapidly changing continent.
A transformation of his first person encounter with the harsh, dynamic landscape into multimedia portraits with music composed from the different geographies that make up the land mass. Paul (DJ Spooky) Miller's field recordings from a portable studio, set up to capture the acoustic qualities of Antarctic ice forms, reflect a changing and even vanishing environment under duress. Coupled with visual material from Getty Images' vast collection. The Antarctic Suite is a live performance, creating a unique and powerful moment around man's relationship with nature.
Demo Clip:
Small promo (32mb):
http://djspooky.com/media/djspooky_antarctic_promo_small.mov
Large promo (177mb)
http://djspooky.com/media/djspooky_antarctic_promo_large.mov
Paper Rad Art Collective in collaboration with Cory Arcangel
LAST YEAR’S BAD NEWS BEARS
Paper Rad Art Collective in Collaboration with Cory Arcangel will screen their 15 minute video game video "The Super Mario Movie", as well as a one night film and video performance.
The Super Mario Movie, is a 15 minute movie programmed onto a hacked Mario brothers cartridge. The film runs on a video loop directly from a 1984 Nintendo Entertainment System.
The one night film and video performance will feature a collection of short performances by Cory Arcangel, various members/music groups associated with the Paper Rad Art Collective, and various other friends (TBA). To start off the evening will be an audio visual performance by "Dr Doo,” a multimedia driven video narrative, similar to a silent movie scored with live music. Through a synced presentation of voice, music and video, the audience is ushered into a new digital universe. Dr Doo is Ben Jones of Paper Rad’s solo vehicle.
Next up: Cory Arcangel will perform excerpts from his new composition for solo glockenspiel entitled: “The Bruce Springsteen Born to Run Glockenspiel Addendum”. In this piece Cory has composed glockenspiel parts to accompany the songs on Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run record that do not already feature that instrument. For the live performance, Cory will play glockenspiel along to a copy of Bruce’s LP playing on a vinyl record player.
The last performance will be by Extreme Animals, a drums / keyboard duo, will be performing their inspirational set of dance inspired anthems. A barrage of sound, Extreme Animals will provide a release of spirit and energy for the night. They have performed at museums and traditional performing arts and music spaces.
Cory Arcangel is a digital artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. His work is concerned with the relationship between technology and culture. Cory's best known projects probably are his Nintendo game cartridge hacks and his subversive reworking of obsolete computer systems of the 70's and 80's.
The three-artist collective Paper Rad produces comic books, videos, performances, paintings, and an entertaining website. The group's penchant for childlike Pop Art and their exploration of the faux-innocent fun aesthetic with a darker, satiric side reminds us of Keith Haring. They parody the simpleminded visions of personal empowerment, passionate lifestyle and spiritual bliss that are continually foisted on infantilized consumers of all ages.
Demo clips and images:
http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/tags/artwork/
Califone and the Animated Films of Brent Green
God Build Like Frank Lloyd Wright
A live performance by Brent Green and the band Califone, playing and interpreting the original animated films made by Green.
Brent Green (nervousfilms.com) makes animated films by hand. He shows them with live music, sometimes solo, sometimes with small groups like Califone, Sin Ropas, Garland of Hours, and with instruments ranging from banjo, to fiddle, musical saw, trumpet, guitar, and drums. Green also narrates his films with poetic word-streams.
Brent Green is a self-taught, thoroughly original animator whose films have been screened at Sundance, the Getty Museum, Hammer Museum, Walker Arts Center, Bellwether Gallery and the IFC Center. The New York Times called Green's films "some of the most original animations we have seen in years."
These short films (most are 5 to 7 minutes in length) are nervous, choppy, and rough. His works are richly textured, showing an unpolished exterior, yet just below the surface they are as convincing as dreams. They make no pretense to technical smoothness and they hide none of the method. They are highly theatrical: the stage is there and you can see it shaking, glittering, dissolving and reinventing itself. Green tells bizarre and spooky stories, —some autobiographical, some not. The sculptural characters seem both lively and deathly at the same time.
Kate Strassman of Whitehot Magazine writes "Green is inventing his own form of live performance animation. This new breed of folk tales that hover between life and death, melancholy and joy, mesmerize the audience."
Califone's earliest roots lie in the band Red Red Meat, from whence came Califone's founding members Tim Rutili and Ben Massarella and its longtime producer Brian Deck. The band's first release was a self-titled EP on Flydaddy in 1998, followed later by the full-length debut, Roomsound, in 2001 (recently re-issued on Thrill Jockey) and eventually the band's Thrill Jockey debut, Quicksand/Cradlesnakes in 2003. After touring for the release of Roomsound, Califone had little time off to take in the impact of the music they were creating. In three years, they recorded four albums (two instrumental, two song-based including Heron King Blues) and toured heavily in between with Wilco, Modest Mouse, Sea and Cake and others. They performed at All Tomorrow’s Parties curated by Sonic Youth and Rutili contributed to Isaac Brock's Ugly Casanova project and Michael Krassner’s Boxhead Ensemble with Fred Lonberg-Holm and members of Smog and Dirty Three.
Demo Clip:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mjK6NSgDo6I
The Composers Lab Experiment: Braden King and Shahzad Ismaily
The Story Is Still Asleep
A collaboration between Lab Fellows Braden King (Filmmaker) and Shahzad Ali Ismaily (Composer), with video artist Deborah Johnson, this live, multi-media film and music event explores the prenarative ether from which the movie emerges. The Story Is Still Asleep literally and figuratively shines a light onto the Film's initial, unconscious, non-narrative points of origin and inspiration. In this case, the film King's upcoming narrative feature, HERE, a dramatic, intensely visual, landscape-obsessed road movie that chronicles the relationship between an American satellite-mapping engineer and an expatriate art photographer who impulsively decide to travel together into uncharted foreign territory.
Combining Johnson's dynamic multiple projections of King's scouting and research imagery, film "samples" of past and related work and Ismaily's improvised score and sound desgin, The Story Is Still Asleep creates a literal and metaphoric map of the atmospheric tone and dreamlife from which HERE is now awakening.
Shahzad Ismaily is a film composer (this year's Frozen River) and performing musician who works in collaboration with M. Ward, Jolie Holland, Marc Ribot, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and Tom Waits; he lives in New York City and is of Pakistani descent.
Deborah Johnson has designed and performed live video accompaniment for music groups including Wilco, Lambchop, Calexico, Chocolat & Akito, and Sufjan Stevens in venues such as Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Fillmore, The Ryman and Wiener Konzerthaus.
Braden King, whose work includes Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks its Back and music videos for Sonic Youth, Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Sparklehorse, is a filmmaker whose work blurs classification and genre, combining traditional methods with experimental approaches in an effort to explore the full potential of the medium.
Sample images: http://web.mac.com/truck4/Braden_King_Photos/Boxhead__Stills.html
For more info on Braden King: http://www.truckstopmedia.com
For more info on Deborah Johnson: http://www.candystations.com/projects/performance.html