Newfoundland Joy Award!

While at ISEA in Istanbul this year I got some great news - I am the proud recipient of the 2011 Newfoundland Joy Award for my upcoming hybrid video project "the machine" -

merging video, 16 mm film and machinima. Woohoo! The award comes with in-kind support from NIFCO, The Atlantic Studio Cooperative, John Doyle, some film from KODAK (we'll see how that goes:) and some cash support from the CBC. I have been working on this script for awhile, in 2010 it won the Newfoundland Arts and Letters Dramatic Script prize. I go into production in April 2012. Stay tuned for announcements.

photo by Fau Ferdinand from the virtual set of “the machine” in Second Life.

Night Gardening

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

Your Discarded Guitar

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.

Expression is Not a Crime

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.

Melody Neglected at RCA

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.