BNMI Co-Production Archives 'G'

Tae Kwon-do CD-ROM Encyclopedia

This Canadian designed multi-media project is an electronic encyclopedia including video production, graphics, historical data, interviews, and music detailing the history of Tae Kwon-do. In particular, the CD-ROM outlines the personal history of the acknowledged father of modern Tae Kwon-do, General Choi Hong Hi. This instructional tool uses audio, images and video production, which was shot exclusively at The Banff Centre. While in Banff, General Choi gave two days of extensive video interviews, outlining his childhood in Korea, his adventures during and after World War II, the formative years of Tae Kwon-do, the philosophy of Tae Kwon-do, and his vision for the future.

Co-producers: VICOM Multimedia (Canada), 1997
Format: CD-ROM

Talk Nice

Talk Nice is an interactive installation using unique SAY technology to navigate video. The user interacts with the installation verbally as the SAY tool analyzes the user’s voice and pulls up responses from stacks of video clips. This work explores specifically the query-posed statement and how we position ourselves by tone of voice. Specific scenarios include a group of young women speaking and an interaction with a computer (male) technician in which the user tries to get a computer problem solved. Additionally a series of photographic images with accompanying audio samples were produced matching mountain ranges with frequency analysis samples of voice sound bytes.

Co-Producer: Elizabeth Vander Zaag (Vancouver, Canada) with the Canada Council and Stentor, 1999
Format: Installation

Te Durosh

Te Durosh is a one-hour documentary, which follows the lives of three Albanian women whose stories reflect the turmoil of their country’s recent history. The first spent most of her life as a political prisoner in the network of labour camps erected by the ruthless dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. Another was a leader of the student movement, which played a central role in the popular unrest, which finally overthrew the regime in 1991. The third survived the Hoxha era by making subtle compromises, which are the lifeblood of tyrannies, only to fall victim to the anarchy which devastated the country in 1997.

Co-producers: Rob Rapley and Alessandra Zeka (New York City, United States), 1998
Format: Video, Length: 57 minutes

TELEBODY

TELEBODY is a large-scale performance piece for three music and video performers. Using digital music instruments, the players have real-time control over not only an audio environment, but also images of two bodies. The theme of TELEBODY revolves around man-machine interface and the human body. Digital image capturing, three-dimensional scanning, and effects processing of the human figure provide a metaphorical description of a potential digital human. The performers act as metaphorical biogeneticists, perfectly controlling and manipulating images of the human body.

Co-producer: Steve Gibson (Victoria, Canada), 2000
Format: Performance

T-Garden Project

T-Garden is a responsive environment where visitors wear sound, and can dance with images, and socially shape media, constructing musical and visual words on the fly. The performance aims to dissolve the traditional lines between performer and spectator by creating a computational and media architecture which allows the visitor-players to sculpt and subtly influence their overall environment. At the same time, the T-Garden coordinates with a research project investigating such questions as: how can we inhabit hybrid responsive spaces and what are the topological aspects of temporal experience?

Co-producers: Sponge, Encart, Ars Electronica, C3 (International), 2001-2002
Format: Installation

The Time In Between

“The Time In Between” is a tri-lingual educational website, focused at the intersection of an online documentary and art activism. At the core of the project is the desire to facilitate an intercultural dialogue between Kosovo, Serbia, and the United States two and a half years after the NATO bombings. By presenting personal stories from the people of Kosovo and Serbia about their memories of the postwar years, this project consists of four parts: a digital archive, an examination of media's representation of war, a collaborative online exhibition Art in Response to War, and a timeline which chronicles the lead up to the events in Kosovo in 1999.

Co-producer: Trebor Scholz (New York City, United States), 2003
Format: Website Streaming Video Footage in Mpeg 4

That Thing Between Us

That Thing Between Us is a nine-minute duet for two performers, projected on opposing walls, where the audience watches from in between the action of the performers. This site-specific video and film installation captures the energy and dynamism of a heated discussion and articulated dance duet. It blurs the line between abstract and personal expression and offers a view of the duet that is impossible in the traditional theatre setting. Nicole’s objective in the creation of this new work is to combine a vocabulary of broadcast quality film and video techniques, to address the potential of physical storytelling, and to encourage the active participation of the viewer.

Co-producer: Nicole Mion (Calgary, Canada), 2005
Format: Video, Length: 9 minutes

There is No Body

There is No Body is a virtual performance in which a three dimensional rendered image of an artist in the form of Michelangelo’s David may be manipulated by users. The user may move, stretch, and change the virtual body of the artist in front of them by use of a ‘data glove’, while viewing the corresponding images on a life-size screen. The user may then learn the area of influence, and the difference between the virtual body and the real body. This feeling of detachment of the user’s hand is thus part of the experience.

Co-producer: Piotr Wyrzykowski (Poland), 1997
Format: Virtual Performance

Toothpaste

Toothpaste, a five-minute operatic short starring Kids in the Hall's Mark McKinney and vocalist Barbara Hannigan, was originally screened on BRAVO! Directed by Rhombus partner Larry Weinstein, Toothpaste is set in the bedroom and bathroom of a house in Toronto's Rosedale neighbourhood and involves a man and woman quarrelling over a tube of toothpaste. Their dialogue is sung in opera style, with McKinney lip-synching to a recorded track. The corresponding website sequence involves 360degree shots of the two rooms, and allows surfers to click on various background objects to trigger text info about the history of those objects, their symbolic meaning, or observations about opera itself.

Co-producer: Marble Media (Toronto, Canada), 2001
Format: New Media, Video, Length: 5 minutes

Topological Slide

Mathematicians often describe the nature of certain topological surfaces by describing what it would be like to ‘take a walk’ on the surface. “The Topological Slide” project uses immersive virtual reality technology to provide this type of direct sensual experience. The ‘rider’ in this project wears a head-mounted display enabling an interactive wide-angle stereo view of a three-dimensional space. The space consists of a model of a topological surface to which the platform is bound and upon which it is free to slide. The ‘rider’ may then traverse the model's surface by leaning in the direction in which she desires to move.

Co-producers: Michael Scroggins and Stewart Dickson (United States), 1995
Format: VR Installation

Touche

“Touche” is an interactive web installation which explores intimacy and the internet. Internet technology is an extension of us – our bodies and our systems of communication between individuals. “Touche” follows our tactile relationships, complete with the longings and distance found in every human interaction and through internet technology. For this project, Montreal based artist Catherine McGovern received support from the Canada Council Media Arts section and the Manitoba Visual Arts Network.

Co-producer: Catherine McGovern (Montreal, Canada), 1998
Format: Website

Towards A Walking Artist

In 2004, Fleck Fellow Simon Pope continued his research with the Banff New Media Institute, investigating the conceptual framework and operational detail of a Walking Artist’s Project. In this intense research retreat, Pope crafted a report summarizing the findings of the investigation, and composed an annotated inventory of walking artists’ assets at The Banff Centre. In an attempt to further his research on ‘walking as an art practice’, the main focus of this residency was to ultimately organize a Walking Artist conference and exhibition, which would bring together walkers, thinkers, artists, scientists, technologists, academics, and enthusiasts.

Co-producer: Simon Pope (Cardiff, United Kingdom), 2004
Format: Research

Trace

“Trace” is a memorial environmental sound installation that is site-specific to the network of hiking trails near the Burgess Shale fossil beds in Yoho National Park, British Columbia. The installation transforms the network of hiking trails, to a physical interface, to a database of sound recordings; the majority of which are made as memorials to people who have died. The database is accessed when a visitor to the hiking trail dons a knapsack and starts to explore. Memorials are played back in response to each hiker’s movement and position in the landscape, which is detected by a computer/GPS unit in the hiker’s knapsack. Recordings are heard through tiny speaker/headphones and playback is at low volume so memorials intermingle with ambient sounds from the natural environment.

Co-producer: Teri Rueb (New York City, United States), 1997
Format: Sound Installation, Demo Tape, Length: 8 minutes

Tracking Distance

This documentary outlines how radar station C.F.S. Dana was officially closed on December 31, 1986. In its 25 years of operation, countless military families and personnel were connected with the station. Tracking Distance is a video documentary which examines a portion of the tangible legacies of the Cold War; to contrast personal histories with national agendas. The film explores what remains, what has permanently changed and what has become of some of the people who were affected by the station during its operation and its closure. The film is based on interviews with individuals, each with a personal connection to the closed radar station.

Co-producer: Greg Marshall (Calgary, Canada), 1998
Format: Video, Length: 29 minutes

trajets

trajets is a video/dance installation that crosses dance, digital imagery, sound, architecture, and 4D network space. The process for creating the piece can be understood as a developing choreography across physical, mechanical, and digital techniques. It is to be shown in a range of conventional and non-conventional theatre spaces, including galleries. trajets unites a dynamic inhabitable space with a projection of abstracted four dimensional choreographies. The presence of the visitors to the installation affects the movement of both screens and images, transforming audience members into participants within the project.

Co-producers: Gretchen Schiller (Montpelier, France) and Susan Kozel (Montreal, Canada), Canada Council and Stentor, 1999
Format: Installation

The Translators

This experimental narrative mixes melodrama and humour with conceptual ideas. As the title suggests, the operative metaphor is translation – a process implicit in every act of communication and understanding – which also refers to the viewers’ untangling of the narrative. The story concerns a couple, he a writer, she an academic, whose personal difficulties and ambitions are tested by chance, fate, and misadventure. A cast of friends and strangers, not to mention their own son, help them to elaborate on issues of romantic love, cultural identity, spiritual disquiet, art, loss, and mortality.

Co-producer: John Zeppetelli (Montreal, Canada), 1998
Format: Video, Length: 38 minutes

TRIO

TRIO centers its action at the place of ultimate and fundamental departure in a ballet dancer’s life – the ballet barre. Three professionals, one woman and two men, are beginning their day, as they always have and always will, at the barre - in the esoteric, inevitable ritual of subjugation of will, and mastery of their instrument. As we admire the form, symmetry, line and sheer beauty of ballet’s language, emotional undercurrents intrude on the seeming serenity. TRIO was nominated for two 2002 Gemini Awards, for which it won Best Cinematography. TRIO also won an Alberta Motion Pictures Award for Best Vignette in 2002.

Co-producer: Veronica Tennant and Michele Boniface (Toronto, Canada), 2001
Format: Video, Length: 10 minutes

Two Men Making Gun Noises

Anne Walsh, Los Angeles new media artist, has an extensive body of installation work, including video and sound pieces dealing with the subtle but magisterial ways we announce our identity to the world. Two Men Making Gun Sounds is an installation/video project that works the ground of humour, mimicry, and pathos, as the artists’ brothers produce a range of semi-automatic ballistics from their vocal chords.

Co-producer: Anne Walsh (Los Angeles, United States), 1996
Format: Video, Length: 30 minutes

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