BNMI Co-Production Archives 'W'

Walter Phillips Contemporary Art Series

This six-part series about galleries, artists, and exhibitions, includes contemporary visual art and new media. Each of the programs in the series is derived from lectures delivered by world renowned gallery curators. The interviews cover a variety of topics, including an eclectic mix of commentary on contemporary art and the role and the meaning of the curator, the contemporary art exhibition, the changing functions, the changing expectations, and the changing relationships to art and to the artists.

Co-producers: ACCESS TV, TLC (Canada), 2000
Format: Television Series

Waterfalls

Digital Whitewater is a digital video study of the white-water at Bow Falls, Banff Canada, recorded during the summer of 2002. By minimizing conventional indicators of orientation, the artists invite viewers directly into the play of differences generated by the white-water. The composition of this video consists of a non-sync soundscape, hand-held video footage altered in both speed and direction, and inverted and modulated colour manipulation. Digital Whitewater is the third of a four movement study of the Bow Falls.

Co-producer: Paul Ryan (New York City, United States), 2002
Format: Video, Length: 10 minutes

We and the Time

This video is essentially a symphony focussing on the city of St. Petersburg. The tape references the city symphonies of the 1920s, specifically Dziga Vertov’s classic, Man with a Movie Camera (1928), but inversely – coming as it does at the end of the century and the Soviet era – bending montage to expand its shape out of the ideological, incorporating ambiguity, daily life, satire, and critical analysis within a musical structure.

Co-producer: Abigail Child (New York City, United States), 1997
Format: Video, Length: 78 minutes

WestGrid

The WestGrid Network is an extensive high performance computing research initiative aiming to advance visualization and collaborative research methods. It includes the Banff New Media Institute, research universities in British Columbia and Alberta, as well as NewMIC Vancouver. BNMI will focus on collaborative tools created with and for science research, visualization of science data, physical computing interfaces, and pattern recognition in advanced visualization. This project explored ways of enhancing collaboration through advanced research tools and software.

Co-producer: WestGrid 2003-2005
Format: Interactive and Networked Media, Laboratory Based Research

Words Fail

Words Fail is a starkly emotional, six-minute dance piece choreographed and danced by
Peggy Baker, in duet with cellist Shauna Rolston, performing music composed by Juno Award-winner Chan Ka Nin. Through use of gesture, harsh lines, and direct movements, this piece is a powerful example of the potential for dance in film. Words Fail was produced with assistance from The Alberta Film Development Program of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the National Film Board of Canada in association with Bravo!FACT.

Co-producers: Veronica Tennant (Toronto, Canada), Michele Boniface (Edmonton, Canada), 2000
Format: Video, Length: 7 minutes

The Writing Machine

This project is an interactive text and sound-based work for the worldwide web, also exhibited as an installation. The primary content is provided by people writing personal histories as a kind of notation into a window of “The Writing Machine”. These stories are entered into a database, along with weather conditions and dynamic topology, and are then modified according to erosion, percolation, sedimentation, fracture, and page-cycling models. Individual notations retain their integrity as orthographic pages while individual stories are heterogeneously layered and combined in ways similar to the abstract processes found in relationships between an individual and communities.

Co-producer: Patrick Clancy (Kansas, United States), 2002
Format: Installation, and Website