Before getting into the aesthetic and technical aspects of this project, a small digression, because there is a very human and personal element that puts my involvement in proper context. In late 1997 I moved from the cultural oasis of Edmonton to the ultra-conservative culture of Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island - the move effectively severed connections to a lively arts community and progressive grants programme that for years had supported my visual art and writing practice [ this is not the place to get into all the implications of such a move, I have outlined some of them in my trAce Net Journal ]. It was during my early days in Nainaimo, fraught with a strange sense of isolation, that I approached the web/net. And was sucked into cyberspace like a vacum suddenly being filled.

In conversation with author Kate Pullinger during trAce's Incubation Symposium in 2002, I mentioned a need to expand my digital work into the realm of live performance. After seven years spent creating work primarily for publication on the web [ see: Online Studio ], it was time for an aesthetic shift. But another year passed before a perfect opportunity presented itself - to collaborate with multimedia artist, composer, and theorist Steve Gibson on CONTACT - a dynamic audiovisual project for live performance. Ironically, it was connections established on the web that led me to work with Steve, who lives and teaches in Victoria [ a small coastal city about an hour's drive down island from my home in Nanaimo ]. Now, after a year collaborating on CONTACT, it feels like I have been shat out the other side of cyberpsace - into the wider and exciting world of performative digital arts.

Essentially CONTACT consists of a series of compositions for MIDI keyboards by Steve Gibson. The keys trigger and dynamically manipulate animations that play on a wide screen. Interestingly, the imagery was created for the music - a non-traditional approach to audiovisual work because the imagery is usually created first. The digital images were appropriated from the web or scanned or both and then manipulated following certain themes [ science fiction, religion, pop culture ] all relating to Steve's electronic soundscapes [ including voice samples from popular movies and television]. The original .jpegs can be found on the images page. Initial .gif animations can be found on the animations page. The final Shockwave Flash animations can be found on the updates4 page.

CONTACT has been presented twice [ with a final 2004 performance on 26 November ]:

• Interactive Futures [ 29 January 2003 ] ]: CONTACT: YOU AND I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT AT THE END OF THE WORLD. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Steve Gibson, Randy Adams. A collaborative event featuring a spoken word performance by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, with live electronic music by Steve Gibson and imagery by Randy Adams. View a quicktime .mov of the performance
  
  
• New Forms Festival [ 14 October 2004 ]: SONIC DESIGN-NEW FORMS FESTIVAL 2004:TECHNOGRAPHY. Presented at Vancouver's artists's run centre, Western Front [ archive listing ]



• Music in the Wires Symposium [ 26 November 2004 ]: Visual Arts Building, Room A146. University of Victoria.

[ a n i m a t i o n s  |  i m a g e s  |  s w f   f i l e s ]

• 17 - 21 November 2003: A very optimistic and naive beginning.



• 25 November 2003: A handful of images.



• 28 November 2003: Some of the initial grids used for layering over the images.



• March 2004: The beginnings of real progress and a report on the first presentation. Includes links to some of the .jpg sequences, animated .gifs, and RealPlayer files. Following are shortcut links to individual pages, each representing one composition. And links to Steve's soundscapes [mp3's].
• Appointment at the end of the world
• Let him in
• Skyward
• We are not alone


• Appointment at the end of the world - mp3
• Let him in - mp3
• Skyward - mp3
• We are not alone - mp3



• June 2004: Barely worth mentioning except it shows two of the first Shockwave Flash [.swf] animations.



• 04 October 2004: The most complete update, including: Steve's description of CONTACT in aesthetic and theoretical terms, a short note about the problems inherent in multimedia collaborations, and many .swf animations. This update was written 10 days before the performance at Western Front in Vancouver. Steve and I were plugging the animations into Director files, matching MIDI keys to animations, and experimenting with effects like scale and frame rate. He played the keyboards and we watched the animations on a small laptop screen. A year's worth of discussion and tinkering finally paid off, the animations seemed to fit the pace of the music, our vision for the piece coalesced. There were a couple of lovely happy accidents. It was during this time that we decided to use three instead of four compositions.

A few last words, I suppose, to tie up loose ends, the soundscape we decided not to use was 'Let him in'. Not only did we run out of time, but it is quite different from the others. Steve is working on a new composition. The .swf animations for 'We are not alone' are not included in this report. A professional video and DVD of CONTACT will soon be available. if you are interested in a copy, email runran. Also, a live performance of CONTACT is available for club gigs, new media conferences, or large parties - depending on location, availability and funding.

Note: These works_in_progress have been presented in conjuction with the trAce Online Writing Centre's Writer's Studio program. My thanks to trAce for their generous support.