VIX Sound+Light+Motion

Guru Mandala -- Victoria Gibson

EMPAC — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center

My application to attend the summer intensive workshop has been accepted. August will find me in New York at one of the most advanced media arts centres in the world learning sophisticated control technologies. This workshop is intensive, going from 10am-10pm for 7 days on campus in residency.

LIVE.MEDIA + PERFORMANCE.LAB

8/16 – 8/22

The workshop addresses emerging and professional art practitioners, scientists, researchers, and students from different backgrounds in performance and new media committed to sharing their interest in developing a deeper understanding of composing work focused on real time, interactive or time-based experiences and multidisciplinary collaborative processes (video, sound processing, projection design, lighting, choreography and directing).

This workshop will assist me in realizing my Immersive Environment Instrument (IEI) and possibly lead to collaborations with other media artists that attend. An opportunity that has come along at exactly the right time to help me create my vision requires some pre-production consideration.

A Macbook Pro looms in my future, but I will still try to program and control my sensor array with Ubuntu.

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Now I have chosen to go with Photoshelter to host some of  my galleries, I will be uploading more events that I have photographed. Now I have completed the Canadian League of Composers event that occurred at the Western Front back in January. See my progress on my Photoshelter  homepage here.

Soon I will have other galleries hosted. I realized after I started this account that I could easily host this level of  photo storage and slideshow view on my own site. So here is a slide show of the Canadian Composers I photographed in January. If you are pictured and you would like a copy, please contact me. You are welcome to copy the image off the site but please credit me if you use it professionally. Most of these photos are untouched and would benefit from an application of graphic design skills. I am willing to trade or accept an honourarium for the work.

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I attended several events during the Vancouver 2010 Cultrual Olympiad and my friend Paul played with Phil Emerson and Tommy Babin in the trio, “String Stories”. The light was very tricky and I am still getting used to my new 50mm 1.8 lens. My Nikon D50 did the best it could in my hands and this is the result. I learned a lot from taking these photos, but they still preserve some great moments.

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One of the other really cool shows was Umalali, a group I had connected with at the 2009 Folk Music Festival. I have yet to obtain permission to post images from this concert, but here are the pictorial  examples of Olympic Security – Belize style.

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Have to get back to music now.

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UniverCity Net – digital art by Victoria Gibson

As an Integrated Media Artist, I have many project ideas that I am constantly working on. My most recent project proposals have been seeking support to develop a new instrument for me to play in performance. My current goal is to develop a performance instrument that works using gesture control and sensors to create an alternative reality environment.

Although my core training is in music, I have studied dance and motion and have spent years of my life in on-stage performance as a musician. In my recent presentations, I have played computer based instruments and I realize that a lot of the impact of musical presentation is about the gesture of producing the sound.

If I am to continue to use the computer as a performance instrument, I need to develop a controller that responds to dance-like movements. The vision of being able to focus physical energy through dance and control audio and visual elements was crystallized into my need for an Immersive Environment Instrument (IEI). (continue reading…)

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Podcast (vixmedia01): Download

Paul Plimley and Victoria Gibson have formed the duo, You Are Here and are excited to announce their first podcast. This podcast contains samples from the first three musical works completed from their upcoming disk “Twilight Zone Love Affair”.  Paul and Victoria discuss the meaning and the making of the three tracks, Condensed History Patterns, In A Ghana Havana and Sleepwalkers Vacation.

Download a pdf file outline of the three tracks and some information about Paul and Victoria here.

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The inspiration that I have received from the time I was able to spend in Banff cannot be over-rated. It was a complete coincidence that I was acting as video and photographic documentary support to composer Pauline Oliveros during the first Roots and Rhizomes: Percussion Residency with Steven Schick. My discussions with the percussionists who were participating in the educational opportunity and the instructors encouraged me to complete a draft of the work for percussion quartet that I have been working on since 2003.

Pauline Oliveros was particularly inspirational to me in so many ways. Her example, as composer of “Meditation on a Single Stroke Roll”, and her advice to me in writing instructional notation were invaluable.

Hearing the very high level performances and experiencing both the excellence of traditional works and the innovation of American composer Mark Applebaum were part of the experience. Mark Applebaum is a serious composer who included a movement in his composition that had the percussionists drawing shapes with black markers on large easels. The resulting sound were amplified to create the percussive sounds of the piece. He is so imaginative to have injected such humour and wit into the intelligence of his work.

Now, I have finished a draft copy of “The Incredible Delicacy of Silence”, I have also asked a local Vancouver percussion quartet to consider performing it. They are busy with their first recording at the moment, but they have accepted a copy and will be reading it soon.

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