YLEM Forum: Multimedia Fandago
Wednesday, January 18, 7:30 pm
RX Gallery and Bar
(No one under 21 allowed)
132 Eddy St., San Francisco, CA 94102
Two blocks from Powell St. BART station.
Suggested donation: sliding scale $5-10.
Open to the public and wheelchair accessible.
Contact: Trudy Myrrh Reagan, forum@ylem.org
650-856-9593
Sponsored by YLEM: Artists Using Science and Technology
Sylvia Pengilly, dancer, composer and video artist, demonstrates how video and music can be combined to create visual and audio splendor. She will show two works and do a real time demonstration of the software used. Multimedia artist Beverly Reiser and video artist Mark McGothian will show their interactive piece created for Burning Man called “The Black Hole of Desire.” Finally, Alex and Martha Nicoloff will show videos of colorful, dancing spectral light to the music of Bay Area composers.
PROGRAM
Sylvia Pengilly is a composer of both electronic and acoustic music who is fascinated by the correlation between what the ear hears and what the eye sees. She was willingly seduced into the world of video and computer graphics. Her current works amplify the theme of each work by introducing it to the audience through the eye as well as through the ear.
“Patterns of Organic Energy,” her music/video work using these techniques, will demonstrate how video and music can be combined within a common framework. She will give a realtime demonstration of the software used. This piece was included in the recent Computer Music Journal special edition on music and video.
“The Outer Edge of Possibility,” which represents her first collaboration with composer Michael Rhoades will also be presented. This work is based visually upon a simple silhouette of the human body which is subjected to amazing transformations that are only possible through the miracle of software.
She is professor emeritus of the College of Music at Loyola University, New Orleans. Mathematics and physics, including Chaos Theory, Quantum Mechanics, and Superstrings, frequently provide the basis for her works.
Beverly Reiser has been doing multimedia for twenty years, and had an early piece shown at Centre Pompidou in Paris. For 14 years she was president of YLEM, and helped design its first web site in 1984-5. YLEM’s prize-winning site was one of the first fine arts sites on the web. Mark McGothigan is a video installation artist, experimental video producer, and senior technical writer for 18 years. He creates abstract visual images and also documents cutting edge events and performances. His primary artistic interest is to refresh the vision of civilization. From the Black Rock City LLC, Beverly Reiser and video artist Mark McGothigan received a commission that enabled them to expand their multimedia work in a harsh desert environment. In "The Black Hole of Desire," Beverly and Mark created a station at the Burning Man observatory for people to record their desires. A playback feature produced a cacaphony of recorded desires. This has been combined with video and sound they collected to make an intriguing DVD.
Alex and Martha Nicoloff have just completed a DVD of their work of many years, combining video of their colorful spectral light displays with contemporary music. They will play us several tracks and describe its construction. About the work, Alex says:
"We find, track and capture video imagery moving in the solar spectrum. During many one pass encounters on the wing. a moment in time appears when random beginnings on the edge of chaos, become a kinetic epiphany.
"Playing music of Bay Area composers, we synchronise the many moving images with sound in a dynamic equilibrium. In improvising, we look for and find 'deities of the moment' in many one pass encounters, changing their color-forms as they keep moving on".
Records of Previous Forums:
SEPTEMBER 2005: Show/Play!
AUGUST 2005: Art, Activism and Technology
JULY 2005: Patterns in Nature
MAY 2005: ARCHIMEDIA from Australia
MARCH 2005: Art Enlivening Biology
JANUARY 2005
NOVEMBER 2004: LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!
(previous forums not on site. We have been hosting forums for over 25 years!)