Entering the darkened Projects Gallery in the Salt Lake Art Center you are met with a wall-size projection of a serene underwater landscape that is suddenly displaced when a fully clothed man plunges into the water from above. Accompanied by a roar of sound and a luminous explosion of bubbles and turbulence, he slowly sinks with arms outstretched, his body limp and motionless. Rays of light undulate as streams of glowing bubbles ascend to the disturbed surface. Midway down, his descent slows and finally stops, his body remaining suspended in space. Is the man dead or alive? He does not move, but the water moves him. Very slowly, he begins to rise until he reaches the surface. There, air bubbles emerge from his mouth and he begins his involuntary descent again. He sinks into the depths and his body then disappears into the darkness. The landscape returns to its original peaceful state. Then, unexpectedly, the man plunges into the water again with a shocking explosion of light, sound and movement, as the video loops once more. Exhibition held in the Projects Gallery space.
Salt Lake Art Center’s exhibition of Sundance Film Festival New Frontier opens the door to new forms of creativity. The New Frontier artists and filmmakers reconfigure art, technology, film, and performance to explore narrative structure, the three-dimensionality of the cinematic image, and innovations in transmedia storytelling. Interactive, community-curated video archive In Ghostcatching (1999), Bill T. Jones dances a series of original and haunting choreographic sequences accompanied by his own vocalizations as OpenEnded Group captures and portrays the movement using a customized technique. After Ghostcatching expands this work to incorporate 3-D technology, immersing audiences inside the dance and allowing them to experience this wondrous world of virtual movement with new depth. OpenEnded Group & Bill T. Jones, U.S.A., 2010, 13 min. loop. Single -Channel, 3-D Video Installation Our prolonged and increasing exposure to dramatic entertainment shapes our imaginations, our aspirations, and the way we reference our memories and structure the time in our day. Mixed-Media Video Installation The Johnny Cash Project and The Wilderness Downtown. These two participatory, web-based projects are the result of the innovative collaboration between data-visualization artist Aaron Koblin and filmmaker Chris Milk. The Johnny Cash Project invites participants to create individual drawings that are woven into a collective, animated music-video tribute to Johnny Cash, set to his song “Ain’t No Grave.” The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive film that uses HTML5 programming and Google Maps to create startlingly personal videos that accompany the Arcade Fire song “We Used to Wait.” Milk+Koblin (Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin), U.S.A., 2010, 3 min. and 5 min. respectively. Participatory Website, Interactive Film. Myth and Infrastructure and Dreaming of Lucid Living. Brimming with elevated visions of the ways the human body interacts with its surrounding environment, award-winning animator Miwa Matreyek integrates her own shadow into her whimsical, handcrafted, animated worlds. Her breathtakingly beautiful images mix with dreamy original music to create glistening realms of enchantment. Dreaming of Lucid Living explores domestic spaces, large and small cities, and magical powers in dreamlike vignettes. Myth and Infrastructure expands the scope of the connections to the environment as a whole. Miwa Matreyek, U.S.A., 2010, 17 min. Multimedia Performance. Pandemic 1.0. A mysterious virus begins to affect the adults in a small rural town, and the youth soon find themselves cut off from civilization, fighting for their lives. How fast is the virus spreading? It is confirmed—the virus has hit Salt Lake City. Can you survive? Pandemic 1.0, a transmedia storytelling experience, unites film, mobile and online technologies, props, social gaming, and data visualization, enabling audiences to step into the shoes of the pandemic protagonists anytime during the day. Mission Control is the only way to learn where you stand in the face of the spreading pandemic. Lance Weiler, U.S.A., ongoing. Transmedia Storytelling. Exhibition held in the Main Gallery Space.
Screen put up for an outdoor movie. "You wouldn't believe they showed a WW II movie once." -Vietnam Veteran. 3/4 Cavalry Vietnam, Cu Chi, 1966. Photo by Roger McGill.
Designed to enlighten and entertain, Art Talks provide the audience a great opportunity to meet and talk with the artists, curators, educators, and fellow art enthusiasts while learning more about our exhibitions and Films from the SLC Film Center. Art Talks include: "Creation of the Impossible: On Formal Invention in Contemporary Painting," "After the Fall," "The Lives of Others," Good Bye Lenin!," "Ecology," and "Protest."
