November 12, Tuesday, 2002
November 22-23, Friday-Saturday, 2002
DIGITAL SHORTS

Balagan is collaborating with Video Space to put together a program of the digital shorts by the local artists. The program will be playing on the monitor as a loop at the National Conference of the Association of Moving Image Archive. Location: November 12 - Coolidge Corner Theatre; Noveber 22-23 - The Boston Park Plaza Hotel

Vis a vis, 8min 2002
Director: Dennis Miller

Vis a Vis is a mixed-media artwork that combines synthetic music and images. The two media share a number of governing principles, both technical and formal. For example, the technique of convolution, in which two sounds or images are "blended" in imaginative ways, is used throughout the piece. In addition, formal continuity is achieved through the varied repetition of elements of both media that are introduced at the opening. Vis a Vis is organized into three distinct sections of approximately equal length. Each section introduces its own unique elements while developing material that preceded it. The POVray scene description language was used to generate the images, and the Acoustic Mirror plug-in was used for the music. Final compositing of the music and pictures occurred in Adobe Premiere.

Dennis Miller received his Doctorate in Music Composition from Columbia University in 1981. Since that time, he has been on the Music faculty of Northeastern University in Boston where he heads the music technology program and serves on the Multimedia Studies Steering Committee. He is currently Associate Professor. Miller was the founder and served as director of the League-ISCM in Boston from 1982-1988. His works have been performed on concerts and festivals throughout the world, and his music appears on Opus One Records and the Frog Peak Collaborative CD, among others. Miller is an Associate Editor of Electronic Musician magazine, for which he writes about music software and hardware technologies. Since 1998, Miller has also been active as a graphic artist and 3D animator. His animations have been shown at numerous venues throughout the world, most recently the 9th New York Digital Salon, the 2001 Art in Motion screenings, immedia, Sonic Circuits, the 2002 Cuban International Festival of Music, and the 2001 Not Still Art screening. His work was also presented at SIGGRAPH 2001 in the Emerging Technologies gallery. Recent exhibits of his 3D still images include the Boston Computer Museum and the Biannual Conference on Art and Technology, as well as publication in Sonic Graphics: Seeing Sound, published by Rizzoli Books. Miller's music and artworks are available at www.dennismiller.neu.edu/~dmiller.

I Can't Help It, 7min, 1998
Director: Dana Moser

A short experimental documentary on the surprising conclusions drawn from research into patients who have had the two hemispheres of their brains surgically severed. Discoveries made by the team led by Dr. Michael Gazzaniga raise fascinating and disturbing questions about the role cognition plays in our perception of purposefulness.

Dana Moser's films and videotapes have been seen in numerous venues including the ICA (Boston), the Brattle Theater, San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Collective for Living Cinema in NYC. He has also created performances and live events using digital imagery and telecommunications for the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The National Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa; The Kitchen, NYC; The International Gartenbauaustellung, Munich; The Visible Language Workshop at M.I.T.; and the 42nd International Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Dana was also a co-founder of the trashy political cabaret rock band "Adult Children of Heterosexuals" and teaches as an associate professor in the department of Media and Performing Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art.

One Arm Bandit 3min, 2002
Director: Andrew Dimirijian

One Arm Bandit is an exploration of marketing and media overexposure through the use of a Las Vegas style ‘One Arm Bandit’. The bandit spits out shreds of our culture’s text and audio instead of coins; look at what you’ve won.

Andrew Demirjian is a video and installation artist from Boston,Massachusetts. Andrew’s works have been featured at: The Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles for ‘Arvest 2002’, the 2002 Gyumri Biennial, and InMedia’s “The Senses” at the University of Michigan. This summer he was selected for the artist in residence program at the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art in Yerevan, Armenia. Andrew has participated in collaborative installations with artist Dahlia Elsayed including the ‘Tent’ project at the Locust Gallery in Miami in 2001. His work has also been shown at The Space 07 gallery in Miami, the Reverie gallery in Rockport, MA and the ASA 'Artists Ball' in NYC. Upcoming exhibitions include: the City Without Walls Gallery in Newark, NJ, The Mills Gallery in Boston, and ‘Detachment’ at the Tremont Gallery in June 2003. Former guitarist and songwriter for the punk/rock band Stickmen, Andrew has performed on the Van’s ‘Warped Tour’ and has released several full length CD’s nationally.

Chance, information inundation, collective and individual realities as well as the nature of success in our society are themes of my work. am interested in exploring new ways of communication with multimedia. Fusing images, text and audio in a way that reconsiders the doctrine of American culture. The installations involve viewer participation and collaboration that grows and changes over time. - Andrew Dimirijian

Birdbeat (fugue) 4.05min, 2002
Director: Geoff Adams (photography, animation, alto & baritone saxophone, hand percussion)

The ritual hierarchy at a backyard bird feeder, accompanied by saxophone ensemble.

I observed the rhythmic ritual of intimidation and submission at our backyard bird feeder. I cast a European Starling with two male House Sparrows, a female House Sparrow, and a male House Finch as characters. The Starling is represented by baritone saxophone, the small birds by four alto saxophones. I played improvised passages on the saxophones and arranged select bits into a fugue - a musical exchange - inspired by the rhythmic interplay I had observed in the yard. I shot digital pictures of the birds from a blind I constructed in the backyard. The pictures were animated to the music. The result is Birdbeat (fugue).- Geoff Adams

RESFEST 2002, Toronto On Line Film Festival, MicroCineFest, Williamstown Film Festival, Woods Hole Film Festival, Motion Arts Festival, Portland International Short Short Film Festival, Convergence Film, Animation and Video Festival

Geoff Adams is a film, video, and music maker living in Providence, Rhode Island. For 20 years he has been a producer of work for both art and commerce. Geoff has directed TV spots, music videos, and corporate video. Geoff is the creator of the live-action segments for the PBS animated show Arthur produced by WGBH in Boston. Geoff's most recent personal video work, Birdbeat (fugue) combines improvised music and animation inspired by backyard bird behavior. Noise In My Backyard, made in 2000 is a personal documentary exploring the dilemmas of backyard ecology. Noise In My Backyard was screened at many festivals nationally in 2001 and won top awards at the Athens International Film & Video Festival, and The New England Film & Video Festival. Geoff has received numerous awards and grants, including two National Daytime Emmy Awards, a George W. Peabody Award, two Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowships and a Production Development grant from the LEF Foundation. As a musician, Geoff scores all of his film and video work. He is a saxophonist and has played with jazz, rock, funk and blues bands. Geoff is currently an adjunct faculty member in the Film, Animation and Video Department at Rhode Island School of Design. http://www.geoffadams.com

How to Make a Vampire Movie, 2002
Director: Nicole MacDonald

Art director for Arnold Advertising by day, edgy impresario by night, Nicole McDonald, 28, has all her fingers in the creative pie and she's making a hell of an interesting mess. McDonald is one of the founders of Ooze, a Boston-based avant-garde performance group known for their satirical mayhem, irreverent frolicking, astonishing costumes, and hilariously disturbing props. But it's more than shock value that makes this troupe, and McDonald, one to watch. After the macaroni and fake blood washes away and the copper corsets are safely back on the shelf, the performance's disquieting underpinnings – themes about sexuality, death and existentialism – are what haunt you most. – Suzanne Kammlott, Weekly Dig.

The Morphology of Desire 6min, 1998
Director: Robert F. Arnold

An experimental exploration of the commodified representation of romantic love in popular culture, and the relationship between the still and moving image, using digital image morphing to animate romance novel cover illustrations as a dance of unrealized desire. This cyclical movement is segmented into a minimalist narrative by short passages quoted from romance novels.

Robert Arnold: Studied sculpture before starting to make films in 1980. Earned Ph.D. in Film Theory , University of Iowa, 1994, and has published several articles in academic film journals. Teaching film and video since 1985. Currently Associate Professor of Film Production at Boston University and recently Visiting Professor of video and installation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan', Poland. Recipient of 2001 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists. Resides in Jamaica Plain, MA, with spouse Katie Travis and dogs, Mr. Dog and Stinky.

Potence 6.5min, video, 2001
Director: Lawrence Klein

"Pithus, the last barbarian, is haunted by Grenlac The Perverter, and by his own sexual confusions in this rage-filled tale." Lawrence Kelin's films have been shown in the Visions Festival (2001 & 2002, juror's choice in 2001); F4 Film Festival (Most Original film Award 2002); The Rhode Island Film Festival (2001); The Boston Undeerground film Festival (2002); the New Hampshire Film Expo. (2001).

Traces 2:16min, 2001
Director: John Erwin

John Erwin received his undergraduate education in Art History before studying film at the Massachusetts College of Art. His super-8 film and video has been exhibited in Atlanta, Athens, New York, Boston, and Miami. He is currently attending the San Francisco Art Institute for his Master in Fine Arts.

Flying Falling, 6:21min, 2002
Director: Ann Steuernagel

Ann Steuernagel is an experimental video and sound artist. Her visual work accentuates the gestures and quotidian rhythms of her subjects. Ann's sound work-a blend of ambient sound, ethnographic recordings, story telling, and original music-stems from her decade-long collaboration with choreographer Caitlin Corbett. Ann has created numerous sound scores for the Caitlin Corbett Dance Company. Ann's work has been shown throughout the United States including Boston, New York, and San Francisco. Her work has also been screened in Canada, Mexico, and at the Rencontres Internationales Hors-Circuit Festivals in Paris and Berlin. In 1999, Ann's video boy running won first prize at the XX VideoArt Festival in Locarno, Switzerland. In 2001, she received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Media Fellowship.

How Far Will the Sweetbread Go? 10min, video, 2002
Director: Jared Medeiros

How Far Will the Sweetbread Go? documents the baking of a Portuguese Sweetbread. The predominately matriarchal tradition is passed down from my grandmother to my father, and from him to me. The video is an example of how things change through generations.

Jared Medeiros is a recent graduate from Tufts/ Museum School with an MFA concentrating in film and video. His work usually involves his family.