P.R. and Drop Screenings in New York and Atlanta

If you missed PR at last weeks 15th New York Underground Film Festival, don't despair. Two films will be screened later this month in New York as part of the Brooklyn Arts Council's 42nd Film Festival. My film P.R. will be screened on May 1st, 2008 at the Long Island University Kumble Theater as part of the A Contemplation of Violence program. And my film drop will be screened on May 8th, 2008 at the Long Island University Spike Lee Screening Room as part of the The Power of Art program.

If you are in NYC, hope you can make it!

Also, this week Drop is showing at the Atlanta Film Festival which looks like a great event, I wish I could be there!

Temporal Interference Performances

I will be staging Temporal Interference once again at a dance festival - Performatica in Pueblas, Mexico this week - April 3, 7-10 PM.

On the way back from Mexico Jane Franklin Dance has agreed to a performance here in Denver as well.

The Denver performance will be a free concert at the King Center, University of Colorado Denver on April 5, 7:30 PM, 2008 (download the press release with King Center performance details.

Looking forward to it and hope to see everyone there!

Dorkbot Denver

Finally! Went to my first Dorkbot since moving to Denver, it was great! Saw a local developer from Cycling74, Darwin Grosse, gave brief intro to Max/MSP/Jitter. Looks like Cycling74 will release the much anticipated Max 5 sometime in April, can't wait for that. John English showed his highly efficient electric bike and a great set by Ate Bitten, a guy using 8-bit sound and video, really cool stuff.

Nice to see such a good crowd, it reminded me of DC's very active Dorkbot chapter. Looking forward to meeting more noise musicians, programmers and people doing strange things with electricity.

Second Prize in Black Maria

I am very happy to report that an animation I did "P.R." has been accepted into the Black Maria Film Festival. This is a great festival, they feature very good cutting edge work and have long been a champion of independent film. The film won a second juried prize- I like how they summarized my work on their site:

"This biting work is a conceptual deconstruction of an ill-considered pronouncement by a noted televangelist. The artist “metamorphizes” one icon into another as he turns media-driven culture against itself. P.R. is a compact, yet effective protest against right-wing reactionary thinking."

What a great commentary! What I liked about the piece is that I felt like I didn't have to really do anything at all, I just let the subject speak for himself and it all just fell into place.

This Monday, Feb. 25th the Black Maria will be right down the street in Boulder, CO, I may have to skip out of class early to go see it on the big screen.

This year I have also had another animated film "drop" accepted into both the Byron Bay Film Festival in Australia and the 30th annual Big Muddy in Carbondale, IL. I'm really happy to see this work getting out there in such fantastic venues. I feel I've been quite fortunate and it's really motivating me to finish up some other animations I've been working on.

Transparency in Design

I had not heard of this system before, but it's a clever visualization solution to show the public the quality and conditions of their environment in an easy to read format. A colored glow indicates what the Ph balance is of NYC's water at any given time. Cool!

New York City Ballet

Paula Scher has designed a new logo for the NYC Ballet company that is very clean and classic. Great design!

DIY Government

Two articles caught my eye this weekend, artists are taking government into their own hands and improving cities themselves. Why not? If we wait for our governments to actually fix anything we could be waiting a long time.... But, on the other hand, what if the artists are not that good at fixing things either?

Second is a cure for famine - stop listening to advice from developing countries! According to the NYTimes, Malawi found that it's better to look at what developed countries actually do (namely subsidize farming) rather than what they tell others to do. Malawis suffered a devastating famine several years ago and not wanting a repeat invested in fertilizers. It's a great read and I think it questions conventional wisdom in the west over the last 20 years or so.