((( FEST REVIEW )))

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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">NOT STILL ART FESTIVAL REVIEW</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Dear friends,</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Here's the news on the 11th annual Not Still Art Festival.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">The international screening attracted a great crowd from NYC and
beyond.&#160; </span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">But what the attending artists most appreciated was the interviews!</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">(concensus: the screenings and interviews should be released on
DVD.)</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">PERSONAL EXPRESSIONS - SENSATIONS - PHILOSOPHIES -</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">deep+serious / crazy+wild / cynical+absurd / playful+silly</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">PLUS the *extraordinarily beautiful.*</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">THAT is what non-narrative and abstract work is now -</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">2D, 3D virtual reality, video artists and musicians/composers/sound
artists and poets are doing exactly what they want - without
restriction. They are transcending technology.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">So, with that introduction, here is the Not Still Art Festival review.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Carol Goss, Artistic Director</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">[for pix and links: http://www.improvart.com/nsa/ ]</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">The Not Still Art International Screening opened with &#147;thereabouts,&#148;
a subtle yet tour de force piece by animators Peter Byrne and
Carole Woodlock with Ethan Borshansky&#146;s music.&#160; &#147;thereabouts&#148;
suggests much and confirms little &#150; the aerial shots could be Iraq or
a weekend hike.&#160; The dynamic movement between abstraction and
realism is powerful.&#160; Borshansky&#146;s sound pushes you forward, then
it retreats, erasing something - but you&#146;re not sure what.&#160; There is
something important happening here, but it&#146;s at a subliminal level
which leaves you in suspense.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Particle animation is Stephen Larson's m&#233;tier.&#160; His work continues
to evolve and ever become more expressive.&#160; &#147;Discord: metal and
meat&#148; sluices through turbulent organic matter &#150; blood is inferred
and eventually becomes a sea.&#160; Metal, representing mechanical
constraint on nature, proves inadequate.&#160; Larson&#146;s music is complex
and rhythmic.&#160; USA.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">&#147;Cycle,&#148; animation and music by Edward Ramsay-Morin, is a 3D
assembly-line nightmare.&#160; Humans play a small role in this black
and grey world of pipes, gears and red globs &#150; which are the
product and life force of the system.&#160; Whereas Larson&#146;s red blood
dominates nature, Ramsay-Morin&#146;s red substance is controlled by
an unseen force. Neo-serfdom is implied. USA.</span></font></div>
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<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">&quot;The Suskind Sisters,&#148; directed and conceived by Kadet Kuhne,
reveals that linguistic inflection and nuance is not limited to voice,
but is conveyed equally by gesture.&#160; We see only the hand gestures
of two sisters conversing.&#160; What we hear is sound triggered by their
hand motion &#150; and it is just as expressive as language &#150; with nearly
all the content. USA.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Marco Villani&#146;s &#147;ReadyMadeLife&#148; takes body language to another
level &#150; that of the surveillance camera.&#160; The blue light of the CRT, in
high and low resolution, reveals human behavior as vulnerable.&#160; The
subjects are extraordinarily relaxed in their unselfconscious state.&#160; A
strange, elongated *silent night* sung in a shopping mall in Genoa
Italy further distances the subjects from their invisible observers.
Italy.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Ruud Vrugt&#146;s &#147;Eyes&#148; whisks by in a moment. Macro eyes, a whirling
globe, Bergman-like trekkers on an icy horizon repete and speed up
to toy-box like music.&#160; This oddly familiar motion implies the gloss of
television advertising without the product-flogging content. Debut.
Netherlands.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Daveed Schwartz works Benjamin Peret&#146;s poem &#147;New
Superstitions&#148; into a marvelous multitasking take on Rene Magritte,
which Magritte, no doubt, would have loved.&#160; Period images are
keyed into frames behind Magritte, who is animated with flailing
arms and heard in French - as we see text in English revealing
inane advice, such as: &#147;For good luck, break your toothpicks after
use.&#148; USA.</span></font></p>
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<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Brit Bunkley, pushes surrealism just over the edge.&#160; His hyper
realistic 3D animation concerns itself with human movement in
relation to architecture and nature.&#160; In &#147;Rural Vignette No.3&#148; we
know we&#146;ve been had when the helical lines on the lighthouse start
to revolve.&#160; But then, he shows us waves crashing on the shore &#150;
and we&#146;re not sure if this is real or Bunkley.&#160; Debut. New Zealand.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">John Hawk&#146;s &#147;Parts Per Million&#148; cuts us adrift as in a daydream.&#160; We
hear the sounds of the wharf, but our eyes are defocused, and
shapes drift by like floaters in our eyes.&#160; It is only when a steely drop
of liquid occasionally plummets from above that our consciousness
is jarred to attention.&#160; This hazy piece reinforces an awareness of
the *moment* that more accurate detail would obliterate.&#160; Debut.
USA.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Lora Petrova Markova, plays with cut and paste like a school child -
a blue girl manages to swim through a 2D world of torn color paper
and zippy pop music. Bulgaria.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Animator, Stephanie Maxwell, finds an admirable collaborator in
Michaela Eremiasova.&#160; &#147;All That Remains&#148; moves at lightning speed
through thousands of abstract and natural images.&#160; Maxwell&#146;s use of
B/W and color forms plays well with Eremiasova&#146;s dynamic
electronic score. USA + Czech Republic.&#160; </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Jaeyoon Park&#146;s 3D animation occupies a white space filled with
mundane objects from traditional Korean culture.&#160; But this space is
more spirit world than daily life.&#160; And in &#147;Evocation&#148; the symbolism of
the carp, the crane and the empty slippers all convey, even to the
uninitiated, a sense of poignant loss.&#160; Junho Yang&#146;s music, with Soo
Myun Jeong&#146;s performance, pushes the piece into the realm of the
ecstatic. South Korea.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Robert Rolfe-Reading&#146;s &#147;Contemporary Mandala&#148; is perfect trance,
and if you&#146;ve never managed to meditate, then this piece is for you.
Spherical perfection transforms into the cosmos and back again.
Debut. USA. </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Yeon Choi&#146;s animation stands up to the considerable challenges of
Jerry McGuire&#146;s music and poetry in &#147;Learning to Play How High the
Moon.&#148;&#160; McGuire is concerned with Nietsche and the inadequacy of
normative modes of thought.&#160; Being &#147;backwards&#148; becomes a
metaphor for Choi&#146;s images of a woman traversing a barren
landscape made of fallen goddesses, perhaps Niuka, the Chinese
goddess who created humans then was indifferent to their petty
self-destruction.&#160; The claustrophobic flooded medieval castle and
caged bird stand in contrast to the soul which is free. Debut. USA.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">INTERMISSION</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">The semicircle is primordial, and we can contemplate it as horizon
or steering wheel.&#160; Ian Wilcox implies the latter with his screeching,
throttling sound design.&#160; But in this excerpt of &#147;Rorrim Pt.1, &#148; Andrew
Greaves&#146; barely 3D animation is more ambiguous.&#160; A flat plane is
creased by an unseen instrument, and we are persuaded that we
are observing an imaginary yet tangible space. United Kingdom.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Musicians Scott Smallwood and Stephan Moore of Evidence,
commissioned video artist, Betsey Biggs, to create images for &#147;Path
1.&#148;&#160; The sound design seems ordinary enough until you get deeper
into the piece.&#160; Slowly it evolves and compounds its effect until you
buy into its aesthetics.&#160; Amazingly, Betsey Biggs has created a
video which is as mysterious and layered as the music.&#160; The
semicircle appears again, but this time conveys cycles. USA.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Thomas Liphard pushes the mysterious into the realm of magic.&#160; He
does this in his short piece, &#147;Composition 4,&#148; not with special effects
or special music, but with a levitated look at the moment.&#160; Liphard
doesn&#146;t want to tell you something, he wants to share an
inexplicable moment with you.&#160; It is just a moment, and if he were
not there to point to it, you would most probably miss it.&#160; Debut.
USA. </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">American and Autralian desert imagery, plus cultural artifacts, are
the virtual environment of &#147;Tracer&#148; which Deborah Cornell created
and specially navigated for video on an Immersadesk.&#160; Richard
Cornell, who composes for electronic environments as well as
acoustic instruments, created the score for &#147;Tracer,&#148; performed by
the Boston Music Viva chamber ensemble.&#160; The poignancy of the
violin and piano duet correspond to the pathos we feel for the
remnants of ancient cultures.&#160; This is the excerpted last movement
of the more extended piece. USA.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">&#147;Dust&#148; is the emotional sequel to &#147;Tracer.&#148;&#160; Golden light barely filters
through the semi-opague atmosphere created by Shimpei Takeda in
video that looks more like particle animation.&#160; John Hudak&#146;s
acoustic and electronic music releases partial phrases and
distortions, emphasizing the loss of form.&#160; Debut.&#160; Japan + USA. </span></font></p>
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<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Gerhard Mantz&#146;s b/w &#147;Allegro Ma Non Troppo&#148; is alien life with a
groove.&#160; This anthropomorphized 3D bipedal bot hogs the dance
floor with virtuostic grace.&#160; Mantz&#146;s music is fun as well. An excerpt.
Germany.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Heath Hanlin kicks it up a notch in his b/w 3D &#147;Hell&#146;s Prow.&#148;
Information from Digital Elevation Model (DEM) datasets from the
United States Geological Survery (USGS) output a molecular model
and sound which gyrates to ever faster code instructions.&#160; There is
order writhing through chaos. An excerpt. USA.&#160; </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">L&#225;szl&#243; Zsolt Bordos and Iv&#243; Kov&#225;cs collaborated on this b/w 3D
extravaganza.&#160; Music is by Prxt Kriszti&#225;n Prokob.&#160; They ratchet us
through mechanical wizardry and optical tricks, leaving us with a
glorious portrait of a young, Renaissance man flying overhead &#150;
perhaps it is a self-portrait. Bulgaria.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Erik Rasmussen's&#160;animation<i> </i>&quot;Infinite Range,&#148; a hyper 2D-3D
trajectory, pulses with life without anthropomorphizing movement or
form. Thor Alvarez&#146;s<i> </i>startling super-pop music whips and swings.
USA.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Chris Casady&#146;s wit can always be relied on.&#160; In his flash animation,
&quot;The Rice Song,&quot; he punches his images with comic clarity to the
music of John Dentino and The Fibonaccis.&#160; Proof that abstraction
is not without a sense of humor. USA.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">99Hooker, cynical, un-PC poet of our age, sets his cultural
clairvoyance to animated psychedelic bubbles in &#147;Static Ocean&#148;.
Debut. USA.</span></font><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size:12pt"> </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Brian Evans only make pieces 2:15 seconds long.&#160; &#147;Amazilia&#148; is no
exception.&#160; These 1950s retro-modern mosaics are created from
datamaps, but that doesn&#146;t take away from their lush sensuousness.
USA.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Kevi Louis-Johnson&#146;s video &#147;Blueroom,&#148; with location sound, is a
montage of city streets in a palette from aqua to ultramarine.&#160; The
layered motion creates an abstraction of movement itself. USA.</span></font></p>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">In &#147;Turgator&#148; Marjan Moghaddam has animated blue ectoplasm on
a white ground with audio triggers from Adam Caine&#146;s relentless
electric guitar.&#160; Caine&#146;s trio, with Ken Filiano on bass and Phil
Haynes on drums, punches life into this abstraction.&#160; The interface
is seamless and the result is brilliant. USA.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">******************************************************************************</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Thanks to our magnificent interns - Derek Larson, from Yale
University, and </span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Keli Bodle, from Louisiana State Univerity.&#160; Also, thanks to William
Laziza for demonstrating his interactive video art and for technical
support.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Thanks to improvartart.com, telenet.net and the MicroMuseum.com.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">Special thanks to the Experimental Television Center's Presentation
Funds program, which is supported by the New York State Council
on the Arts.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">******************************************************************************</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">THE END</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">If you wish to be removed from this list, please reply with &quot;nsa2&quot; n
the subject field.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial" size="1"><span style="font-size:8pt"><i>Not Still Art is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts</i></span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">N O T&#160;&#160; S T I L L&#160;&#160; A R T</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">http://www.improvart.com/nsa/</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10pt">[email protected]&#160;&#160; </span></font></div>
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