Film @ International House

Friday, May 23 + Friday, May 30 at 7pm

Center for Visual Music: Essential Visual Music

Center for Visual Music is a nonprofit film archive dedicated to visual music, experimental animation and abstract media. Based in Los Angeles, CVM is dedicated to Visual Music, experimental animation and avant-garde media.  CVM is committed to preservation, curation, education, scholarship and dissemination of the film, performances and other media of this tradition - together with related historical documentation and other material. CVM's talks, programs and preserved films have been featured in museum exhibitions, cultural centers, cinematheques and festivals worldwide. 

Please visit CVM at www.centerforvisualmusic.org.

Essential Visual Music is presented in conjunction with Screening at Vox Populi Gallery, 319 N 11 Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia. On view from June 6 to July 27, Screening dedicated to the presentation of innovative, challenging and exciting moving images and exhibits work exploring the ways moving image culture influences how we see ourselves and others.  Opening reception Friday, June 6 from 6pm–11pm.   Special thanks to Matt Suib and Nadia Hironaka.   

Click Here for Rare Classic from the CVM Archive        

 

Friday, May 30 at 7pm

Essential Visual Music: New Visions

 

Essential Visual Music: New Visions are recent acquisitions and contemporary works selected by the Center for Visual Music that delve even deeper into the realm of visual music.  With new work by contemporary Visual Music artists Barbel Neubauer, Scott Draves, George Stadnik, Steven Woloshen, Samantha Krukowski, Robert Seidel, Bret Battey, Mondi, Jim Ellis, Scott Nyerges, Devon Damonte, Richard Baily, Vivek Patel and more.

 

Approximate running time 1 hour, 20 minutes

 

Opening

dir. Devon Damonte, US, 2008, 16mm, 2 mins, color, handmade sound

Created especially for this Program.

 

xtacism

dir. Richard Baily and John Buchanan, US, 2005, digital, 5 mins, color, sound

xtacism was created with visual effects artist Richard Baily's software invention SPORE. "There is no middle, beginning, end, it is like the river, it just keeps on going..."

Hypnogogy/Drift

dir. Jim Ellis, US, 2006, digital, 3.30 mins, color, sound

The state between being awake and asleep. An individual may feel and appear to be fully awake, but has brain waves indicating that they are technically asleep. Also, the individual may be completely aware of their state, which enables lucid dreamers to enter the dream state consciously directly from the waking state. This has been proposed as an explanation of experiences such things as alien abduction, apparitions, or visions. In honor of Richard "Doc" Baily.

Miserlou

dir. Vivek Patel, US, 2005, 3 mins, digital, color, sound

Miserlou uses abstract elements to create a sensual show. Visual elements come to the screen and exist like actors in a play. Musical parts are expressed visually to draw a stronger association between what is seen and heard. Impeccable synchronization between the two; creates a sweet show for the eyes and the

ears.

Music composed by Aaron Kula, performed by Klezmer Company Orchestra.

POLAR

dir. Scott Nyerges, US, 2007, digital, 1.35 mins, color, silent

POLAR presents apocalyptic inner visions of the polar ice caps’ demise, using the Arctic as metaphor for a body out of balance. Fissures emerge. Mass transforms. The sea falls into itself. This silent film was created with handpainted 35mm film strips and digital video.

 

artreading v1

dir. Samantha Krukowski, US, 2008, digital, 4.5 mins, color and b/w, sound

artreading is a response to image saturation in contemporary culture, a critique of image excess as it relates to cultural memory, and a personal attempt to remember images from the multitude presented in the art, architecture and film magazines that appear monthly on my doorstep.

The Firebird

dir. Scott Draves, US, 2007, digital, 4.15 mins, color, sound

An homage to Igor Stravinsky's 1910 Symphony, "The Firebird" is itself an excerpt from "Dreams in High Fidelity #2", rerendered at 2400x2400 resolution for full-dome projection. The graphics were created by the Electric Sheep, a cyborg mind consisting of 60,000 computers and people communicating with a genetic algorithm.

All Over

dir. Emmanual Lefrant, France, 2001, 16mm, 6:15 mins, color, sound


Whilst All Over is a film made without "instrumentation" (like a camera), it also differs from direct films in that the film remains untouched by any tool (not even the hand). As in dripping, materials and color are spontaneously laid down on the film in semi-controlled gestures, which create a shower of colored dots. The soundtrack functions according to the same principle: the sound, in all its expressions, is formed using one single formal element.

A Sense of Wonder

dir. Devon Damonte, US, 16mm, 2.30 mins, color, silent

A transformative exploration into the nature of wonder in our collective pop cultural consciousness. Made entirely by hand directly onto clear film leader.

Shimmer Box Drive

dir. Steve Woloshen, Canada, 2007, video, 3.5 mins, color, sound

Reflections, recollections and thoughts from the front seat of an automobile.

futures

dir. Robert Seidel, Germany, 2006, digital, 4 mins, color, sound

In Futures you will see crushed things, completely abstracted… finding together and building up to something we all have seen before… Like our true wishes and desires they shape over time and get clearer… followed by the next longing… Innuendos, artifacts and the rough synchronisation add subtle emotions to the uncertain process that build the morbid tableaux of all possible futures…

Music - "zero 7 feat" by Jose Gonzalez, Courtesy Atlantic Records 

 

Kronos

dir. Mondi, US, 2005, digital, 4.20 mins, b/w, sound  

Mercurius

dir. Bret Battey, UK, 2007, digital, 6 mins, color, sound

Mercurius expands algorithmic animation techniques I developed for cMatrix10 (2004) and Autarkeia Aggregatum (2005), while also being my first work in which the audio is constructed entirely using modulated-feedback techniques I have been developing since the late 1990’s. Both the audio and visual components of the work have no cuts or edits. What we hear is a continual transformation of one synthesis process, just as what we see is the continuous animation of nearly 12,000 individual points.

 

Digital Lumia Composition 01 - World Premiere

dir. George Stadnik, US, 2008, digital, 8.5 mins, color and b/w, sound

A collaboration with the composer, a pioneer in electronic music. The visuals amplify the feelings borne by the music, and are computer simulations of optical phenomena. The juxtaposition of motion, color and music is intended to create a very personal experience for the viewer.

Music - "Elegy for Iraq" composed and performed by Dr Franklin Morris

Morphs of Pegasus

dir. Barbel Neubauer, Germany, 2004-08, digital, 10 mins, color, sound

A computer 3D "motion painting in image and sound." Morphs of Pegasus is about an inner way, expressed through a journey in the universe. The film has no cuts and moves all the time.

Free admission members above Internationalist level; $5 Internationalist members, students + seniors; $7 general admission. 

In advance at and 866.468.7619 or 1/2 hour before showtime.

 

Programs curated by Center for Visual Music. Thanks to the individual artists and Kevin Baily.

 
Tel: 215-387-5125 • Fax: 215-895-6535
3701 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104, USA

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