:: works_in_progress - updates [ 04 October 2004 ] ::

Skyward works_in_progress
[ 04 October 2004 ]

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

This update has been a long time coming. The project has developed and shifted somewhat. Steve Gibson has taken on the basic programming in Macromedia Director and Jim Andrews has become an able trouble-shooter, a hired gun whose accuraccy and attention to detail has made the code easier to work with. There is of course more to the story, some parts are not pleasant. Collaborations are not always easy. Although they offer an opportunity to extend the scope of one's art practice and learn new skills, some people have a difficult time letting go of control, especially if they are not used to working in real time with other creative people. The view that working in multimedia makes one expert or even competent in all of the component arts is wholly naive. Such a view can lead to discussions that are at best counterproductive or, at worst, obstructionist. To explore the aesthetics of multimedia one must embrace a certain collaborative spirit and maintain a high level of trust.

As you can read below, CONTACT is ready for another presentation. See the updates for more information on the development of this project. New Macromedia Flash movie clips have been created using jpeg sequences developed over the past few months. The Flash clips can be viewed below.

CONTACT
New Forms Festival [ Thurs. Oct. 14 ]
Music by Steve Gibson
Images by Randy Adams
Programming by Steve Gibson & Jim Andrews

A special dress rehearsal performance of CONTACT will take place on Tuesday Oct. 12th at 8 pm in Visual Arts A146 at the University of Victoria. Steve Gibson will perform the piece is its entirety, and it will be documented using video cameras.

CONTACT: YOU AND I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT AT THE END OF THE WORLD is a collaborative event with live electronic music by Steve Gibson, images by Randy Adams, and real-time interactive programming by Jim Andrews. CONTACT is built around the idea of the remix. In CONTACT the artists actively engage with both found sampled objects and the treatment of those objects by the other artists: Steve Gibson borrows texts from iconic sci-fi films; Randy Adams uses highly-processed images from the same sci-fi films in his montage of images; Steve Gibson turns both the text and visuals into musical objects.

CONTACT is aesthetically situated between electronica, improvisation, video montage, and industrial culture. In keeping with the central theme, these different forms are treated as found objects and are remixed together in an expressive blend. Thematically CONTACT explores the sense of impending technological apocalypse that is quickly becoming the dominant cultural méme of the new millenium. The music of Steve Gibson veers between the chaotic and the expressive, thematically mimicking the sci-fi samples. The images of Randy Adams verge on the subliminal, mixing images of technological formalism with political catastrophe. In performance these images are broken down by the music, torn apart by effects and spliced together in an unending synchronous flow of sound with vision.

Crossing the boundaries between performance, technological innovation and cultural politics, CONTACT simultaneously inhabits the space of critical resistance and artistic endeavour. Above all CONTACT is conceived as an expressive piece which displays both the excitement and the fear engendered by technology and the current culture of technological paranoia.

Some of the following .swf animations are quite large, more than a meg, so be patient while they download. People with dialup connections should probably not bother to view these files. They were made to be activated and manipulated using one of three MIDI keyboards and run on a Mac G5. They were made to be woven together during a live performance, not delivered over the internet, so you have to use your imagination. At some point, there will be a streaming video. This list represents only a handful of the .swf clips, fashioned from over 1500 images.