Generative Film and Performance

The Computer Arts Society presents:

a FREE evening of film from the 1970/80s and more recent performances that use computer-based generative systems. Malcolm Le Grice, Mike Leggett, Ernest Edmonds and Mark Fell

Location: Birkbeck Cinema London http://www.birkbeckcinema.com/filmsociety/whereweare.htm Date: Monday 26th July Time: doors open 6.30 for 7.00 pm

Curated and introduced by Ernest Edmonds

Red+Green+Blue, Mike Leggett 1972-76. 16mm film, 9 min.

Mike Leggett has been working with media across the institutions of art, education, cinema and television since the late 1960s and has film and video work in archives and collections in Europe, Australia and North and South America. He has curated exhibitions of interactive multimedia for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Brisbane International Film Festival and Videotage Festival of Video Art, Hong Kong. Making the film ‘Red+Green+Blue” was a process of recording the operation of a generative system. Recording the operation of the system caused its variables to become constants, each projection of the film simply reproducing them.

Fragment, Ernest Edmonds 1984-85. Computer Generated Video, excerpt, 10 min.

Between 1980 and 1985 Ernest Edmonds developed a system for making time based abstract artworks that were generated by computer in real time (i.e. in the time employed for projection) and recorded directly onto videotape. The first completed piece “Fragment”, which lasts (in full) for rather more than one hour, was shown as part of his art exhibition at Exhibiting Space in London in 1985.

Digital Still Life, Malcolm Le Grice 1984-86. Computer and video, colour, 8 min

Malcolm Le Grice made his first computer generated film in 1969 using a large mainframe, but only continued in the 1980s once personal computers appeared. Digital Still Life was originally made for projection directly from an Atari computer. The same computer program defines the image sequence, the colour values and the music produced through a MIDI synthesizer using a series of time-based algorithms. This version also edits in some of the original 'live-action' from which the digital images were made.

Attack on Silence, Mark Fell 2010. Generative Performance.

Attack on Silence is a series of works exploring sacred geometries, sound as a tool for meditative practices, technologies of mind control, and neuro-aesthetics. Presented internationally as performance, installation, screening, print and DVD; Attack on Silence was hailed as “a minor masterpiece”...“a beautiful work - provocative in all its simplicity” and “a sample of serious borderline activity”.

DC Release, Ernest Edmonds and Mark Fell 2007. Generative Performance.

DC release is a collaborative work featuring synthetic sound, colour projection, and a series of increasingly complex generative systems. The two performers intercede in the processes by modifying the generative systems as the work evolves. This piece premiered at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC in 2007 as part of the Colourfield Remix Exhibition.


© mark fell, modified July 08, 2010, at 08:06 AM PDT edit print