Life at Sea: An International Collaboration

In November 2010, artists from the Jakarta Institute of the Arts (IKJ) in Indonesia came to CalArts for a week-long, intensive residency program. Once at the Institute, the guests collaborated with students and faculty from The Herb Alpert School of Music and CalArts, The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance and CalArts School of Film/Video, which culminated in an evening of performance in the Main Gallery.

Musicians, dancers, animators and filmmakers came together to create an evening of performance in just one week. As projectionist and animator, my goal was to match the loops and short animations created over the course of the week with the music and dance being created throughout the workshop. I chose to do this as a live performance also, mixing and editing the videos to fit with the music and dance on stage. This allowed the animators the flexibility to create work on short notice, without worrying about editing or timing, and gave the on-stage performers the flexibility to improvise and change timing without worrying about throwing off synchronization with the moving image.

I also created a hand-drawn animation of the life-cycle of the jellyfish that I projected on to the undulating bodies of the dancers during a slow, soft group piece. See 8:00 – 9:00