Chromatose

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.

Azdel and Echo

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

virus.circus.touch // micha cárdenas and elle mehrmand from azdel slade on Vimeo.

I love Azdel's guts. And Echo's guts. And guts.