BNMI Co-Production Archives 'I'

IceBorg

IceBorg is a multimedia pop-cultural project developed by MEET Factory together with partners from around the world, as part of the program for Helsinki 2000 European City of Culture. IceBorg is an online 3D virtual world and internet community, accessible by registered users and general public alike. Media is streamed into the virtual world from live venues or from pre-recorded material, and regular events and competitions are arranged for members. The website is aided by live guides who inhabit the online world, helping new users, and also acting as provocateurs. The long-term plan for IceBorg is the creation of a fully developed, active, and accessible online community.

Co-Producers: MEET Factory – Andy Best and Merja Puustinen (Helsinki, Finland), 1999
Format: Website

Imaginal Expression

Imaginal Expression is an investigational piece on how technological developments tend to reduce the human body to a digital archive. This interactive installation implicates the body in a complex interplay between representations of embodiment and assumptions underlying virtuality. A flexible wireless interface worn by the viewer in the installation space is a kind of surrogate skin. Each wearable interface is associated with one molecular image, and as the viewer touches this skin-like responsive surface, a corresponding action occurs in the corresponding molecular image. The functioning of this installation/web piece is wholly dependent on the bodily presence of the viewer, and is incorporated into a live experience.

Co-producer: Reva Stone (Winnipeg, Canada), 2001
Format: Interactive Installation, and Website

Incident at Tango Creek

This film is a surreal story of a man, a woman and a death. Incident at Tango Creek occurs in a timeless place that exists in memory and outside of history, where time is suspended, reverses itself, and flows around the protagonists as they follow their dark, awkwardly articulated desires. A raucous saloon dancer and her mysterious admirer from out of town are compelled to repeat an old story, dimly grasped, as they are haunted by different memories of the same event. Each struggles with their role in that crucial moment, as they inexorably retrace the steps formed by their own personal histories and find themselves returning to the scene of the crime, again and again.

Co-producers: Mark Morgenstern and Janet Oxley (Montreal, Canada), 1998
Format: Video, Length: 15 minutes

An Index of Possible Saviours

Hyper-text fiction author and new media artist Tim McLaughlin developed this website as a means to connect poetry and image, to move literature beyond the normal limitations of linearity. His work includes lyrical poetry, novels, articles, and analysis, written in hyper-text, and examines the importance of these links as a means to move away from traditional literary models. This project utilizes the techniques for animation on the web to add a motive element to concrete poems and to explore new conceptions of digital typography. The title is an allusion to bp Nichols’ long poem “The Martyrology”.

Co-Producer: Tim McLaughlin (Vancouver, Canada), 1997
Format: Website

Indigestion

An interactive video installation that converges old and new genres (film noire, video games, video installation art, Exquisite Corpse structures) into an ironic mix. Two characters meet across a dinner table and only their animated hands appear on screen - reaching, spearing, gesturing their food and witty dialogue revealing a mysterious tale. The viewer/guest chooses the characters from a 'menu' of gender and class. Indigestion uses technologies of choice to question the rhetoric surrounding interactive technologies, politics, and class distinctions. The script was written by Canadian novelist Douglas Cooper; the installation exhibited throughout the world.

Co-producer: Diller + Scofidio (New York City, United States), 1995
Format: Gallery Installation

Inherent Rights, Vision Rights

Integrating three dimensional sound and visuals, this project pioneers new techniques for the exhibition of virtual reality (VR) pieces by blending computer-generated 3D sound with figures derived from Lawrence Paul’s paintings. In this installation, the participant explores a sacred ceremony in a traditional West Coast Native Canadian long house. The long house is occupied by music, fire, and spirits, with which the participant may interact. Two eyepieces, a joystick, and buttons, are all that are needed to navigate through the landscape. Inherent Rights, Vision Rights was the first VR piece to be exhibited by the National Gallery of Canada.

Co-producer: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (Canada), 1995
Format: VR Installation

Inside the Wall

Inside the Wall is a video exploring a day in the life of a homeless camp of young men on Venice Beach, in California. They are led by Will, a talented artist haunted by the loss of his small son. As he struggles to help his friends find food, work, and shelter, he also fights his own inner demons in his quest to get off the streets. This time, it looks like he will make it. A film by Calgarian Megan Bishop-Scott, this film explores what is required to remove oneself from the cycle of disenfranchisement and disappointment to emerge victorious over your own limitations.

Co-producer: Megan Bishop-Scott (Calgary, Canada), 1999
Format: Video, Length: 24 minutes

The Institute: Or, What We Do for Love

The Institute: Or, What We Do for Love is a poly-serial website in which fictional and documentary modes interrogate each other in mapping the travails of a large cultural organization. Simply stated, The Institute is a government entity using shells of closed hospitals as sites for retirement homes for artists of all disciplines. Cultural bureaucrats from agencies across Canada threatened with downsizing have the option of being retrained for a variety of responsibilities involved in running The Institute. The result is a ‘ship-of-fools’ situation in which absurd matters can take place, offering a lens view of the way things work in the country at large.

Co-Producers: Vera Frenkel (Toronto, Canada), Canada Council and Stentor, 1999
Format: Website

Into the European Mirror

Into the European Mirror is a video essay that traces the influences of Moorish culture on Spain and considers the impact of the expulsion of the Moors from that country. Through interviews with Homi Bhabha, Chris Giannou, Thierry Hentsch, and Rana Kabbani, this second part of Samuel's video trilogy explores how Europe became defined in opposition to the East. With Europe's last Moslem fortress, the Alhambra, as a backdrop, the effects that both political and imaginary frontiers have had on contemporary European and Eastern viewpoints are examined.

Co-producer: Julian Samuel (Montreal, Canada), 1993
Format: Video, Length: 56 minutes

Inversion

Inversion is a collaboration between the media artist Bill Seaman and the Dutch dancer/choreographer Regina Van Berkel. The installation is comprised of hyper-close-up video imagery explored conceptually in relation to nanotechnology; a series of auto-generating computer-based projections exploring machine-genetics. Set to an elaborate musical score by Seaman exploring particle synthesis as juxtaposed with more traditional instruments, the dance/installation functions in an ongoing time-based manner. Because of the auto-generating nature of aspects of the work, it is not entirely fixed in a time-based sense but instead has emergent properties which arise in conjunction with related time-based media and dance.

Co-producer: Bill Seaman and Regina Van Berkel
(California, United States), 2001
Format: Installation

Invertigo

In a gallery, a solitary swing spans real and virtual space, acting as a feedback mechanism between the two. Each swing arc marks time and the rhythm of movement while conjuring up cinematic fragments – sensations of bodily feedback. Through the physical act of swinging, audience members alter the video images that appear on the projection screen. As they move, the images shift between representations that evoke feelings of psychological distance and more intimate ones, flickering between a fast cut and a soft caress. Each swing arc marks time and the rhythm of movement, while conjuring up cinematic fragments and the sensations of bodily feedback.
Co-producers: Beth Stryker, Sawad Brooks, Christa Erikson (New York, United States), 1997
Format: Installation

Iron Horses of Delson

Iron Horses of Delson is an original composition for piano by Eldon Rathburn. In it, Mr. Rathburn imagines the many steam locomotives housed at the Canadian Railway Historical Museum at Delson, Quebec, “breaking out of their prison and scurrying all over the country, only to return to reality.” In a four-minute musical video, this story is brought to life with live performances by Stephane Lenelin and dancer Krysten Blair. Performances interspersed by black and white photographs celebrate the train’s journey to freedom through the Canadian landscape and our imaginations.

Co-producer: Lorna Sutherland (Edmonton, Canada), 1999
Format: Video, Length: 4 minutes

Isi-pikiskwewin Ayapihkesisak (Speaking the Language of Spiders)

A powerful and deeply thoughtful work, this collaborative production explores both idealized and demonized images of First Nations people by examining the influence of First Nations history, spirituality, and language on marginalized, urban First Nations youth. Based on the nine domains in the Saulteaux cosmological cycle, this website explores a variety of digital technologies including computer graphics, animation, and manipulated photographs, weaving together a complex meta-text that locates spirituality and traditional knowledge within a landscape of prostitution, drugs, danger, and violence.

Co-producers: Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew in collaboration with Lynn Acoose, Elvina Piapot, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Joseph Naytowhow, Richard Agecoutay, Sheila Urbanoski, Russell Wallace, Sylvain Carrette, Greg Daniels, Chris Kubik, Mark Schmidt, and Anthony Dieter, (Canada), 1997
Format: Website