National Projects, Commissions and Collaborations
INFINITE JEST, a Cinematic Assemblage
Premiere, December, 2013, Art Week Miami
WOMAN IN WHITE, POINT BREAKS, (and other perpetual loops)
Premiere, December, 2013, Art Week Miami
BREAKDOWN: A SAMPLE-BASED OPERA AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA, NEW YORK
Premiere, February 20, 2009, Carnegie Hall
Film/video Artist, Director and co-producer
18 MINUTES.
Images
Presented in concert with the American Composers Orchestra, George Manahan, conductor.
This work was acquired by the NYU Bobst Library for its collection
+
BREAKDOWN THE REMIX
Vimeo Remix Award Winner, 2010.
SVA Visual Arts Theater, New York
Film/video Artist, Director and co-producer
Premiere: October 8, 2010
10 MINUTES
Images
“Breakdown” parodies the misuse of mass media in such historical periods as America”s McCarthy era, when corrupt powers have manipulated public opinion to build support for their political, military and economic excesses. The film uses thousands of fragments of 1950s pop-culture and mass-media images, sampled from public-domain sources, to demystify propaganda through humor while simultaneously warning of its continued power to distort and endanger. Since “Breakdown” won the 2010 Vimeo Award for Best Remix, the online version has been loaded almost 2 million times.
"Kasumi vs DJ Spooky"
Ingenuity Festival, Cleveland, OH 2006
Images
L'HISTOIRE DU SOLDAT BY IGOR STRAVINSKY
New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall
Director, experimental film
MAY 12, 2005
Images
Xian Zhang conducting
Created "Memories of a Dead Princess," performed live in concert with the New York Philharmonic performances of "Histoire du Soldat" by Igor Stravinsky. Worked with Doug Fitch, designer, Kitao Sakurai, cinematographers and Valerie Madonia, ballerina. Out of respect for union considerations, portions of the material on the above link have been re-cut to original music.
BEATS OF BASQUIAT WITH THE LEGENDARY GRANDMASTER FLASH
2 hours, single channel live videoart performance
Presenting institution: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Commissioning organization: Starbucks
February 11, 2006
This performance, attended by 6,000 people, was the final event of a four-part series in conjunction with the exhibit “Basquiat,” an exhibition that examined and explicated the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). The imagery I chose for this performance was evocative of themes found in the works of both Basquiat and Grandmaster Flash.
KINETIC SHADOWS
Presenting organizations: University of Southern California and Case Western Reserve University
Bing Theater, University of Southern California
Role: Video artist
Premiere: May, 2002
Commissioning organization: Internet 2 Consortium
14 minutes
Kinetic Shadow is a collaborative work for multi-channel videoart and 6 dancers. The piece, choreographed by Gary Galbraith of CWRU and the Martha Graham Dance Company, was simultaneously performed in Cleveland and Los Angeles with cast members in each location using Internet2 technologies to broadcast the live video streams and the surround sound live audio. For this piece, I created video art that was projected on the bodies of the dancers as well as three large screens that were part of the set.
Sponsors: American Fiber Systems, Audio-Technica US, Barco, Callahan Foundation, Cicso Systems, Dell Computers, Netgear, Qwest Communications, Spring Corporation, Star Valley Solutions, Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems Division The videoart portions were presented at the Cisco Global Higher Education Summit in California
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUMMER
Two Channel Videoart Projection for Summer Solstice, The Cleveland Museum of Art
Commissioning Institutions: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Public Art, The Cleveland Institute of Art
Two channel 45 minute looping videoart installation, projection spanning the facade of the Cleveland Museum of Art
Premiere: June 2011
QUADRASCOPE
Commissioning institutions: The Cleveland Playhouse, The Cleveland Orchestra
Role: Film artist, director, co-producer
Premiere: April 2010, Cleveland Play House’s Fusion Fest
18 minutes
Collaborated with The Cleveland Orchestra, creating film/video piece to accompany the work “Catch and Release” by Esa-Pekka Salonen, former artistic director of Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra:
CHRONICLES OF LAUGHING YESTERDAY
Premiere: February 2011
12 minute videoart work created for 2011 Big [BOX] series at Cleveland Public Theatre. With live music by FiveOne music ensemble.
PANOPTICAL DELUSIONS
Role: Director
Comissioning organization: Ingenuity Festival of Art and Technology
12 minutes, two channels
EDGES
Role: Director, Image and sound
Collaborating institution: Case Western Reserve University, Mather Dance Center
14 minutes, multi-channel video, stereo sound, live dance
Premiere: November 2010
Choreographer: Gary Galbraith
THE FRENCH WRITING DESK
Role: Director
Commissioned by: The Cleveland Museum of Art
August, 2005
Seven minutes, stereoscopic single channel film
Curatorial Guidance: Stephen Harrison, Curator, Decorative Art and Design, The Cleveland Museum of Art
Lighting: Howard Agriesti, Chief Photographer, The Cleveland Museum of Art
Technical Director: Jared Bendis, Virtual Reality Specialist, The
Cleveland Museum of Art
Production Assistant: Gary Kirchenbauer, Photographer, The Cleveland Museum of Art
Technical Consultant: Jay Horowitz, NASA Glenn Research Center
CXXV
Role: Director
Commissioned by: the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Five minutes, single channel
Premiere: May, 2008, The Cleveland Institute of Art, 125th Anniversary celebrations
NINE THE MUSICAL
Role: Director, Videoart segments
Commissioning Organization: The City of Cleveland Heights
12 minutes , Cain Park, Cleveland Ohio, August 2007
Commissioned by The Ohio Arts Council to create a twelve minute art film for integration into the production of NINE, directed by Victoria Bussert. The Tony Award-winning Best Musical of the 1982 Broadway season is based on Federico Fellini’s 81/2. Book by Arthur Kopit and music and lyrics by Maury Yeston. The film is the play in miniature as seen in a hallucinatory dream-state. It focuses on film director Guido Contini savoring his most recent and greatest success, but facing his fortieth birthday and a midlife crisis blocks his creative impulses and entangles him in a web of romantic difficulties in early-1960s Venice.
HAIR THE MUSICAL
Commissioned by Kent State University, The School of Theatre and Dance
30 minutes
Book and Lyrics by Gerome Gagni and James Rado. Originally produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Directed by Victoria Bussert.
I created six art film segments (totalling about 30 minutes) based on musical selections that were integrated visually and conceptually into the production. Focusing on themes that are relevant today as they were in the of late 60's, the work depicts issues of morality, sexuality, individualism, racism, violence, drug use, loyalty, and social acceptance in the style of surrealistic pop art.
SLEEPWALKERS, an exhibition of prints and videoart, Asterisk Gallery
Two person show with Douglas Max Utter
Compilation of videoart works:
Selections of prints:
ADHESIVE WHITE MILLENIUM,
Experimental print created by manipulating hand on photocopier
Daily life is a matter of complex equilibrium, achieved in a micro- and macro-context of mind boggling velocities -- like passengers napping on a commuter flight. One of the secrets of our poise is the interior positioning system that cognitive scientists term proprioception -- the way we perceive where different parts of our bodies are in space in relation to each other based on internal clues. This is something that art in general seems to comment on and explore. A painting or a video (or dance or concerto) inevitably distorts the transmission of information about both visual and internal realities, a distortion that has emotional, intellectual, even neuro-muscular implications and impact. The works in this show play with a range of effects caused by the interplay of color and line, recognition and transformation based on images of the human figure. These are not intended to be emotionally expressive studies (though they can be); they meditate on the use of formal qualities and materials to evoke the movement of energy through the half-awake array of identities and postures that each of us lumps together under the heading: “myself.” (text by Douglas Max Utter)
Premiere, December, 2013, Art Week Miami
WOMAN IN WHITE, POINT BREAKS, (and other perpetual loops)
Premiere, December, 2013, Art Week Miami
BREAKDOWN: A SAMPLE-BASED OPERA AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA, NEW YORK
Premiere, February 20, 2009, Carnegie Hall
Film/video Artist, Director and co-producer
18 MINUTES.
Images
Presented in concert with the American Composers Orchestra, George Manahan, conductor.
This work was acquired by the NYU Bobst Library for its collection
+
BREAKDOWN THE REMIX
Vimeo Remix Award Winner, 2010.
SVA Visual Arts Theater, New York
Film/video Artist, Director and co-producer
Premiere: October 8, 2010
10 MINUTES
Images
“Breakdown” parodies the misuse of mass media in such historical periods as America”s McCarthy era, when corrupt powers have manipulated public opinion to build support for their political, military and economic excesses. The film uses thousands of fragments of 1950s pop-culture and mass-media images, sampled from public-domain sources, to demystify propaganda through humor while simultaneously warning of its continued power to distort and endanger. Since “Breakdown” won the 2010 Vimeo Award for Best Remix, the online version has been loaded almost 2 million times.
"Kasumi vs DJ Spooky"
Ingenuity Festival, Cleveland, OH 2006
Images
L'HISTOIRE DU SOLDAT BY IGOR STRAVINSKY
New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall
Director, experimental film
MAY 12, 2005
Images
Xian Zhang conducting
Created "Memories of a Dead Princess," performed live in concert with the New York Philharmonic performances of "Histoire du Soldat" by Igor Stravinsky. Worked with Doug Fitch, designer, Kitao Sakurai, cinematographers and Valerie Madonia, ballerina. Out of respect for union considerations, portions of the material on the above link have been re-cut to original music.
BEATS OF BASQUIAT WITH THE LEGENDARY GRANDMASTER FLASH
2 hours, single channel live videoart performance
Presenting institution: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Commissioning organization: Starbucks
February 11, 2006
This performance, attended by 6,000 people, was the final event of a four-part series in conjunction with the exhibit “Basquiat,” an exhibition that examined and explicated the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). The imagery I chose for this performance was evocative of themes found in the works of both Basquiat and Grandmaster Flash.
KINETIC SHADOWS
Presenting organizations: University of Southern California and Case Western Reserve University
Bing Theater, University of Southern California
Role: Video artist
Premiere: May, 2002
Commissioning organization: Internet 2 Consortium
14 minutes
Kinetic Shadow is a collaborative work for multi-channel videoart and 6 dancers. The piece, choreographed by Gary Galbraith of CWRU and the Martha Graham Dance Company, was simultaneously performed in Cleveland and Los Angeles with cast members in each location using Internet2 technologies to broadcast the live video streams and the surround sound live audio. For this piece, I created video art that was projected on the bodies of the dancers as well as three large screens that were part of the set.
Sponsors: American Fiber Systems, Audio-Technica US, Barco, Callahan Foundation, Cicso Systems, Dell Computers, Netgear, Qwest Communications, Spring Corporation, Star Valley Solutions, Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems Division The videoart portions were presented at the Cisco Global Higher Education Summit in California
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUMMER
Two Channel Videoart Projection for Summer Solstice, The Cleveland Museum of Art
Commissioning Institutions: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Public Art, The Cleveland Institute of Art
Two channel 45 minute looping videoart installation, projection spanning the facade of the Cleveland Museum of Art
Premiere: June 2011
QUADRASCOPE
Commissioning institutions: The Cleveland Playhouse, The Cleveland Orchestra
Role: Film artist, director, co-producer
Premiere: April 2010, Cleveland Play House’s Fusion Fest
18 minutes
Collaborated with The Cleveland Orchestra, creating film/video piece to accompany the work “Catch and Release” by Esa-Pekka Salonen, former artistic director of Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra:
CHRONICLES OF LAUGHING YESTERDAY
Premiere: February 2011
12 minute videoart work created for 2011 Big [BOX] series at Cleveland Public Theatre. With live music by FiveOne music ensemble.
PANOPTICAL DELUSIONS
Role: Director
Comissioning organization: Ingenuity Festival of Art and Technology
12 minutes, two channels
EDGES
Role: Director, Image and sound
Collaborating institution: Case Western Reserve University, Mather Dance Center
14 minutes, multi-channel video, stereo sound, live dance
Premiere: November 2010
Choreographer: Gary Galbraith
THE FRENCH WRITING DESK
Role: Director
Commissioned by: The Cleveland Museum of Art
August, 2005
Seven minutes, stereoscopic single channel film
Curatorial Guidance: Stephen Harrison, Curator, Decorative Art and Design, The Cleveland Museum of Art
Lighting: Howard Agriesti, Chief Photographer, The Cleveland Museum of Art
Technical Director: Jared Bendis, Virtual Reality Specialist, The
Cleveland Museum of Art
Production Assistant: Gary Kirchenbauer, Photographer, The Cleveland Museum of Art
Technical Consultant: Jay Horowitz, NASA Glenn Research Center
CXXV
Role: Director
Commissioned by: the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Five minutes, single channel
Premiere: May, 2008, The Cleveland Institute of Art, 125th Anniversary celebrations
NINE THE MUSICAL
Role: Director, Videoart segments
Commissioning Organization: The City of Cleveland Heights
12 minutes , Cain Park, Cleveland Ohio, August 2007
Commissioned by The Ohio Arts Council to create a twelve minute art film for integration into the production of NINE, directed by Victoria Bussert. The Tony Award-winning Best Musical of the 1982 Broadway season is based on Federico Fellini’s 81/2. Book by Arthur Kopit and music and lyrics by Maury Yeston. The film is the play in miniature as seen in a hallucinatory dream-state. It focuses on film director Guido Contini savoring his most recent and greatest success, but facing his fortieth birthday and a midlife crisis blocks his creative impulses and entangles him in a web of romantic difficulties in early-1960s Venice.
HAIR THE MUSICAL
Commissioned by Kent State University, The School of Theatre and Dance
30 minutes
Book and Lyrics by Gerome Gagni and James Rado. Originally produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Directed by Victoria Bussert.
I created six art film segments (totalling about 30 minutes) based on musical selections that were integrated visually and conceptually into the production. Focusing on themes that are relevant today as they were in the of late 60's, the work depicts issues of morality, sexuality, individualism, racism, violence, drug use, loyalty, and social acceptance in the style of surrealistic pop art.
SLEEPWALKERS, an exhibition of prints and videoart, Asterisk Gallery
Two person show with Douglas Max Utter
Compilation of videoart works:
Selections of prints:
ADHESIVE WHITE MILLENIUM,
Experimental print created by manipulating hand on photocopier
Daily life is a matter of complex equilibrium, achieved in a micro- and macro-context of mind boggling velocities -- like passengers napping on a commuter flight. One of the secrets of our poise is the interior positioning system that cognitive scientists term proprioception -- the way we perceive where different parts of our bodies are in space in relation to each other based on internal clues. This is something that art in general seems to comment on and explore. A painting or a video (or dance or concerto) inevitably distorts the transmission of information about both visual and internal realities, a distortion that has emotional, intellectual, even neuro-muscular implications and impact. The works in this show play with a range of effects caused by the interplay of color and line, recognition and transformation based on images of the human figure. These are not intended to be emotionally expressive studies (though they can be); they meditate on the use of formal qualities and materials to evoke the movement of energy through the half-awake array of identities and postures that each of us lumps together under the heading: “myself.” (text by Douglas Max Utter)
