Night Gardening by lizsolo Mathilde/Liz Solo and Fau Ferdinand/Yael Gilks 2010 Odyssey Performance Art Festival People and avatars from around the world garden simultaneously in the virtual world of Second Life and in a quiet backyard in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Starring Liz Solo, Fau Ferdinand, Patrick Lichty, Mike Kean, Anne Pickard and many avatars. More performances to come in this series including Night Swimming and Night Painting.
See: Odyssey - http://www.odysseysimulator.blogspot.com Liz Solo - http://www.lizsolo.com
Steve Abbott and I had a great time co-hosting this year's Chromatose Animation Festival - a presentation of the Black Bag Media Collective. Here we are pictured above in a photo by Nauris Nikans admiring one of the videos as it plays in on our monitor.
The Chromatose Anymation Festival takes it name from an invented word chromatose - meaning critical overdose of color (created by me and steve) and the word anymation coined by the Croatian anymator Tom Jantol. For a full explanation of the concept of anymation here is a link to Tom's Anymation Manifesto. Tom Jantol is an old friend and friend of the BBMC and I am his number one fan.
Tom's work was featured throughout the festival. The Chromatose Anymation Festival also screened new animations and machinima from around the world, including videos by Osprey Therian, Rose Borchovski, Pyewacket Kazyanenko, Robbie Dingo and over two dozen others. The festival also screened Eat the Feeling - a piece I created for the React 2010 exhibit in collaboration with Vancouver's Erik Hoff Rzepka.
It has been more than a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand (a.k.a. Azdel Slade and echolalia Azalee in SL) as machinimatographer. I have been documenting some of their performances in Second Life, most recently virus.circus.touch that took place simultaneously at Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo New York and live in the virtual environments of Second Life.
Here is machinima of the performance from the Second Life Perspective:
And here I have superimposed the real life video of the performance and the machinima of the performance. Much is suggested here, in terms of ideas for merging live real and virtual performance - in video anyway. (live performance footage starts at about 2 minutes in)
Here is the video of the live performance from the New York perspective, shot by by Alice Alexandrescu
Super 8 film shot as part of a Nickel Film Festival/St. John's International Jazz Festival collaborative project. Filmmakers were challenged to shoot a piece in-camera, with no edits and have it scored by a partner musician. I shot film to reflect my thoughts on the fancy new anti graff writing by-laws brought in by St. John's City Council in 2008. This piece of film was originally called "311" (the phone number citizens can call to report seeing graffiti) and was scored by Russtafari.
Today I thought I would edit the rolls to a song I have written on the same subject. After experimenting for awhile I discovered that the reels fit perfectly on top of the song in terms of time, which was kind of freaky. So here is the first reel up above and the second reel below, both edited in camera and laid on top of "Expression is Not a Crime" from my "alien" CD. Mike Kean, Steve Abbott and Alex Pierson play with me on this track.
It is pretty funny how some of the images work with the song here:) I may eventually re-edit a new piece using both reels, as so many edits are suggested. Please contact me or just take this footage to re edit if u r so inclined, and please repost if you do:) Lots of recognizable St. John's faces in there.
This month Resource Center for the Arts hosted a live reading of my newest play - Melody Neglected - in the freshly renovated LSPU Hall Second Space. This reading was the final part of the Write On program - an excellent annual playwright workshopping process, this year facilitated by Ed Riche. I had a real dream team of actors working on this one, as you can see below.pictured here: Amy House (RCA Artistic Animateur), Megan Coles, Emily Bridger, Colin Furlong, Geraldine Hollett, Liz Solo, Nicole Rousseau, Neil Butler, Didi Gillard-Rowlings. photo by Peter Rompkey.
I am stoked to have been contacted by Elly Clarke of the Clarke Gallery in Germany (via our mutual friend Scott Kildall - thanks Scott!) and asked to present my Slide Show - A Trip Around the World by Liz Solo - at the Eastern Edge Gallery on Saturday, May 8 at 3 PM. This slide presentation is a part of the traveling WUNDERKAMMER show. WUNDERKAMMER is making a one-day appearance at The Eastern Edge Gallery, St. John's, Newfoundland. The show presents the work of all 11 Berlin-based/Clarke Gallery artists whose work was already shown on 22nd April in Berlin and introduces two new works - by Canadian artists Eryn Foster and Terry Piercey.
Curated by Elly Clarke and Jessica Brouder, Wunderkammer is the German translation of Cabinet of Curiosities and this is the first Clarke Gallery exhibition to travel beyond the confines of Elly's Berlin apartment. WUNDERKAMMER in St. John's has been brought to Canada from Berlin in Jessica's hand luggage. WUNDERKAMMER in St. John's incorporates sculpture, photography, painting, drawing, performance ephemera and A Slide Show by... Liz Solo (at 3pm).
We are very grateful to Eastern Edge Gallery for hosting WUNDERKAMMER in St. John's. Eastern Edge Gallery is Newfoundland and Labrador’s first non-profit artist-run centre established in 1984. Overlooking the St. John’s harbour, Eastern Edge offers support, professional development, a sense of community, information and resource-sharing and a meaningful context for contemporary artistic activity.
CLARKE GALLERY PRESENTS: W U N D E R K A M M E R in St. John's 8th May 2010, 12pm-5pm
With A Slide Show by Liz Solo at 3pm
Eastern Edge Gallery EXHIBITING WORK BY THE FOLLOWING ARTISTS: Jessica Brouder Elly Clarke Julian Eicke Eryn Foster Alexander Heaton Liz Fletcher Sophia New and Dan Belasco / plan b Terry Piercey Christian Sievers Vajra Spook Anna-Myga Kasten Kym Ward Andrea Winkler
On February 20, 2010 Adzel Slade/Micha Cardenas and ecolalia Azalee/Elle Mehrmand presented technésexual - a hybrid reality performance - simultaneously at East of Odyssey and at the LACE's (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) GUTTED event, curated by Dino Dinco. I had the pleasure of documenting this event from Second Life. Azdel and echolalia are working with ideas here that I also wish to explore - especially the interfacing/connecting of the avatar and the human body via various sensors and and devices - read more about technésexual below. This video documents the Second Life component with sound coming from Real Life via SL's voice interface. Most recently this video was screened at the University of California, San Diego's Open Studios 2010. See: http://ucsdopenstudios.com/2010/
About technésexual (from www.transreal.org) "In technésexual the performers commit playful erotic acts in physical and virtual space simultaneously, using devices to amplify the sound of their heartbeats for the two audiences. An electrocardiogram was used to monitor the heart rate with an Arduino/Freeduino, playing a recording of the heartbeat at the correct rate using Puredata. Temperature sensors modulate the audio based on touch. DIY biometrics are used to bridge realities with audio, finding ways of exploring the space between realities.
technésexual opens discussion on the multitude of sexualities outside of the restrictive LGBT formulation and homo/hetero categories, which are rooted in binary gender assumptions. The mixing of realities in this project can be seen as paralleling our own experiences mixing genders and sexualities, queering new media. Virtual worlds such as Second Life facilitate the development of new identities, allowing for unimagined relations and relationships. technésexual looks closely at these new relationships, how they affect our everyday lives and horizons of possibility." See also: http://www.transreal.org http://bang.calit2.net/elle http://www.flickr.com/photos/lotu5/se... http://odysseysimulator.blogspot.com
On Valentines Day, 2010, the artist known as Wirxli Flimflam publicly took his own avatar's life over his unrequited love for the artist known as SaveMe Oh. This machinima documents the sad event. To find out more see Wirlxi Flimflam's Memorial Blog: http://www.wirxliflimflam.blogspot.com And SaveMe Oh's Blog: http://www.savemeoh.wordpress.com
Ronald McDonald and his Little Buddy prepare for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. A machinima video created for the React2010.com site by Liz Solo and Erik Hoff Rzepka. React 2010 is a web and gallery exhibit of the Alternator Center for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, B.C. - "engaging artists and the global community in a conversation about the values surrounding the Olympics." See http://www.react2010.com Special thanks to Gazira Babeli for "McBarfin"
My hybrid machinima/film/video machine i am premiered this weekend in Real Life at the 2nd Annual MaMachinima International Festival at Planet Art in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and simultaneously in the virtual world of Second Life. I was tele-present for the whole event via Second Life. The MMIF was an exciting, star-studded, jam-packed day of machinima with entries from all over the world. It was awesome to see so many machinimators in one place and to learn about how they are all working. Machinimatographers are pushing hard in all directions and in multiple dimensions of the metaverse to advance the medium of machinima forward. It was great to be among others working with the same vocabulary and to see how the themes other machinimators are working with resonate and intersect in so many places with the work I am doing. It is downright heart warming, really. Read MMIF founder Chantal Harvey's MMIF Opening Remarks, from her blog.
Here is a link to machine i am on youtube - this will only be up for a limited amount of time before I do one final tweaking edit and release the finished, finished version. You will have to watch it in three parts, here is Part One, you can find Parts 2 and 3 on my YouTube Channel
There was so much to love at the MMIF - the fabulous Pyewackey Kazyanenko showed a piece of 3D machinima, Double Dutch - and I just happened to have my 3D glasses handy. Trippy!
Fau Ferdinand submitted Therapy by The Second Front which I loved to see again - shot by Osprey Therian of one of our performance pieces.
I learned about new tools people are using for machinima including In Movies (PC only) and Movie Storm (Mac friendly) - these are not virtual real time spaces but machinima generators. Not as interesting to me as online spaces, because of the missing element of virtual embodiment - but the animations are quite seamless and I have downloaded and am going to experiment a little with Movie Storm.
A very memorable piece from the MMIF was from Ogogoro called In Pursuit of a Third Term - a machinima made in Movie Storm about police corruption in Nigeria. View it by going to the Nollywood Channel - In Pursuit of a Third Term.
Like Ogogoro, taking risks and raising consciousness is a focus of many machinimators. There were commentaries on war, especially historical-based pieces and many others with references to the ethos of WW2 - reflecting and questioning our own troubled times. Machinimators are also exploring the classic "fairy tale" through machinima, as well as examining the notion of idealized space and of reconciling our relationship to the natural world via the loving application of technology to nature (and vice versa). I saw these ideas reflected in many pieces, such as Osprey Therian/Vivian Kendal's most awesome sci-fi piece Virtual Reality in the Future (if you saw my 2002 installation Museum of the Mind this is actually kind of freaky):
There was also some downright brilliant artistry, as in this surrealist gorgeousness of Lainy Voom/Trace Sanderson's Push
There was more and more blurring of the boundaries between different virtual worlds, something I play with in machine i am and illustrated with some fine comedic prowess in Phaylen Fairchild's entry to the festival - Phaylen Seeks a World of Warcraft Guild. Nothing I like more, really, than mixing up one virtual world with another, especially when WoW is involved, so much potential for comedy:
In total fifty four machinima pieces were presented at the MMIF. You can view them ALL by going to The MMIF 2010 and clicking the On Demand button and then MMIF 2010 selections.
Here's a few shots taken by Pyewacket Kazyanenko of lizsolo Mathilde presenting at the MMIF in Second Life, the film playing on the screens in the background. Here you can see me smoking three cigarettes at once. I was a little nervous.
There is a gallery opening today for the REACT 2010 project at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, B.C. Curated by Jennifer Pickering, Jason Baerg and Arthur Schwimmer.
"We are engaging artists and the global community in a creative cultural conversation about the values surrounding the Olympics."
I am very happy to have been invited to show a series of new pieces as part of this gallery exhibit. My theme: Ronald McDonald and the Olympic Torch. That's a little test image above. REACT 2010 also includes a web component, of which I am also proud to be a part. To see all the work by REACT 2010 artists please visit the REACT2010 WEBSITE
I have also been working on a new video to accompany these images. It is a collaboration with Vancouver based artist Erik Hoff Repzka/Xisuthra Loma called Eat the Feeling. Stay tuned, I will post here soon.
Here is a link to an article on the exhibit from the Kelowna Times:
Steve Abbott and I had a great time co-hosting this year's Chromatose Animation Festival - a presentation of the Black Bag Media Collective. Here we are pictured above in a photo by Nauris Nikans admiring one of the videos as it plays in on our monitor. 
pictured here: Amy House (RCA Artistic Animateur), Megan Coles, Emily Bridger, Colin Furlong, Geraldine Hollett, Liz Solo, Nicole Rousseau, Neil Butler, Didi Gillard-Rowlings. photo by Peter Rompkey.
of Cabinet of Curiosities and this is the first Clarke Gallery exhibition to travel beyond the confines of Elly's Berlin apartment. WUNDERKAMMER in St. John's has been brought to Canada from Berlin in Jessica's hand luggage. WUNDERKAMMER in St. John's incorporates sculpture, photography, painting, drawing, performance ephemera and A Slide Show by... Liz Solo (at 3pm).
Fau Ferdinand submitted Therapy by The Second Front which I loved to see again - shot by Osprey Therian of one of our performance pieces.
Here you can see me smoking three cigarettes at once. I was a little nervous.
There is a gallery opening today for the REACT 2010 project at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, B.C. Curated by Jennifer Pickering, Jason Baerg and Arthur Schwimmer.
