BNMI Co-Production Archives 'E'

Ecolab

“Project Ecolab” is an experimental educational website for children ages 8 to12. The site creates an environmental simulation where children invent their own plant and animal life, and place their creations in a simulated world. As children add creatures to the ecosystem, the database changes to simulate the interaction between these creatures. Random or cyclical factors such as weather, climatic change, and continental drift are also included to keep the simulation fluid and ever-changing. As the creatures thrive or decline, the computer identifies the basic ecological principles at work and allows the children to guide their creature’s evolution to respond to changes in the environment and ecosystem.

Co-producer: Steven Comeau (Halifax, Canada), Colleidescope, 2001
Format: Interactive Website

Each and Every One of You

Each and Every One of You is a hypothetical television show which demonstrates how to make contemporary installation art. In two episodes, The Political Accumulation Installation Episode, and The Weirdness Installation Episode, viewers are immersed into one of the most progressive international art styles. The result is an entertaining, critical, and informative mix. These pilot videos are both madcap creations in which worn-out stuffed toys and art videos are worked into a consideration of normality.

Co-producers: Don Goodes and Ann Marie Leger (Montreal, Canada), 1996
Format: Video, Length: 34 minutes each (two pilots)

Ed Pien: New Works

Acclaimed Canadian visual artist Ed Pien’s work has continually expanded the definition of drawing by exploring alternative use of space, materials, and technology. To this point, Pein’s installation work develops interactive relationships with the viewer as well as incorporating sound and video to develop narrative. This project incorporated two and three dimensional animation as a catalyst to facilitate this unique vision. Animation allowed Pien to further explore space/time shifts within their own parameters, and is reflected in this collection of drawings.

Co-producer: Ed Pien (Toronto, Canada), 2001
Format: Animation

The Eighth King of Roswell

This documentary video was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the most famous extraterrestrial incident in history. Along with footage of the activities of the week, interviews are held with noted UFO-logists. These experts’ opinions are debunked by an eccentric, former abductee who appears to have all the answers to alien life in the last frontier. Director John Will has worked with The Banff Centre in a variety of media throughout the years, ranging from printmaking and painting to performance and video.

Co-Producer: John Will (Calgary, Canada), 1997
Format: Video, Length: 28 minutes

Einstein’s Brain

This work examines the idea that the world is merely a construct sustained through neurological processes contained within the brain. The Einstein’s Brain project suggests that the world is not some reality outside ourselves, but is the result of an interior process that makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a world. Further scrutiny works to prove that the investigation of virtual reality and its accompanying social space is an exploration of the construction of consciousness.

Co-producers: Alan Dunning and Paul Woodrow (Calgary, Canada), 1998
Format: Navigable VR Landscape, Multimedia Installation

Electric Living

This website allows viewers to overhear parts of conversational interviews with artists across Canada. The Canadian new media artist today is uniquely placed in a microcosm of the future in which multiplicity and fragmentation are the source of play. Always a playground for Canadian bureaucratic study, the theme of identity is fully defined by Canadian artists, categorized into personal identity, regional influence, relationship to place, and the identity of the work itself. Communication, another Canadian theme, shows itself through the network of artist-run centres across the country, and through the influence of places such as The Banff Centre.

Co-Producers: Carol Sill and James K-M (Vancouver, Canada), 1999
Format: Website

Elevator Down

Elevator Down, originally titled, “The Country Elevator Story”, is an educational documentation of the era of the country grain elevator, its raison d’être and its eventual eradication. The objective of the project is the formation of an archival collection for educational and historical reference. This remarkable collection consists of photographs, writing, audio-visual components, music, a website, a CD-ROM, and artefacts. This project is unique because it is a comprehensive compilation of Western Canadian history material utilizing a multitude of media and presentation methods. The outcome provides the public with an accurate, artistic, and poignant examination of an important part of our heritage.

Co-producer: Kristen Wagner and Tim Van Horn (Calgary, Canada), 2001
Format: Installation, website and Video, Length: 8 minutes

Emergence: A Mysterious Narration of Urban and Imaginative Life

A collaboration between three artists, this project explores computer networking as a metaphor for communication and conversely, communication as a metaphor for networking. Each of the participants developed individual projects that have a certain degree of self-sufficiency. At the same time, these projects have an interdependency, just like nodes in a communications network. The gallery installation will be a self-contained network which is at the same time connected to the outside through the internet, speaking metaphorically to the interconnectedness of networks, which move outward from local to external environments.

Co-producers: Myron Turner, Susan Turner and Dale Amundson (Winnipeg, Canada), 1999
Format: Gallery Installation and Website

E's For Artists: A Handbook for Electronic Artists

This book describes the aesthetic, conceptual, technical, and practical aspects of electronic media, and the way media provides artists with the means to create meaningful and aesthetically pleasing visual and audible experiences. This is a book for the artists and designers of tomorrow, for those who want to use electronic media to create arts forms which reflect contemporary culture expressively, creatively, and with competence. Intended for artists of any discipline or maturity, this book is aimed at individuals who are interested in using electronic media for the creation of fine and commercial art products.

Co-producer: Don Ritter (New York City, United States), 2001
Format: Publication

Ethyl Mermaid

Ethyl Mermaid is a quirky dramatic comedy aimed at entertaining both children and adults. This adventure story, about a little girl who mistakenly believes that her mother wants to grow up to be a mermaid, is based on a short story written by Calgary’s multiple award-winning author Roberta Rees. Through the bold and questioning eyes of a ten-year-old girl, this short film explores and exposes the interconnection between Christianity, spirituality, and magic. Grappling with complex philosophical questions about language, representation, and belief systems, the young protagonist cannot fathom the contradictions couched in the spiritual practices of her township. She casts a critical eye over rural Alberta in the 1950s and searches for a place within for her mother, herself, and her sisters.

Co-producer: Michele Wozny (Calgary, Canada), 2001
Format: Video, Length: 30 minutes