samuel james

DREAM SHELVING

2011-11-05T12:25:00.003+11:00

After five months out in Minto, this is a new work about the secret lives of shopkeepers and the sacrifice of putting a life on hold to achieve material goals. It is a video research process of digital reformation and simulation, an alchemy in search of psycho-electronic jewels. Vacant shops in Minto's Mall were shot and recomposited, objects within the spaces were animated to generate new life forms and performers responded to the shops themselves and the imaginary lives that may once have inhabited them. It looks at the fractalisation of the physical world and the boundaries and doors to its metaphysical layers. Five shops, five performers and five screens installed in the Minto Mall Post Office gallery with performers Julie Vulcan, Jeff Stein, Teik Kim Pok, Julie-Anne Long, Clare Britton and sound Gail Priest.

Supported by Campbelltown Arts Centre's Artist Initiates Residency Commission
10th-19th Nov, Mon-Sat 11am-3pm Shop 51 Minto Mall, Pembroke Rd, Minto.

iBunyip!

2011-09-23T11:35:00.003+10:00

Lots of bezier masks for Erth's new show iBunyip, a pretty open door introduction to some of the indigenous spirit creatures in Australia. Applying big brushstroke photographic bush and effects overlayed onto Steve Howarth's foam and inflatable sets. Working with the master Phil Downing on Quartz Composer and open frameworks genius Matt Gingold on Kinect camera tracking and motion registration. Check it out at Carriageworks for the next 2 weeks in the Children's Festival, then Q-Theatre Penrith and Campbelltown Arts Centre.

Versions of Versions: VIVARIA tour and PORTAL

2011-08-13T18:17:00.006+10:00

Vivaria is touring in Mobile States, opening at Artshouse (Melbourne) 4-7 Aug, now at Salamanca Arts Centre (Hobart) 11-19th Aug, Adelaide Festival Centre 24-27th Aug, Performance Space (Sydney) 30th Aug-10Sept. The setup at Sidespace Gallery in Hobart was irregularly arranged like a garden so there was distance between screens and no more than two could be seen at once. This was a good feeling with the presence of other video angles behind you and in the periphery so single screen viewing was not dominant. It had the effect of walking down the street with many aspects only partially visible in a landscape and made transcendent by the ominous presence of solo performers keyed into the scenes. Multiscreen peripheral experience is translated here as eyes of compact mpeg cameras showing a panopticon of virtual environments, usually described by the handheld cameras of tourists. Portal in New York on the other hand is showing a single screen, linear version of my originally multiscreen The Cracks on the rooftop of Regina Rex Gallery. Below is another short excerpt derived from a Springbrook residency with Ladyfingers, discarded but reused for Portal curator Janis Ferberg in her ongoing online exhibitions, using the web as exhibition environment in tandem with real space. http://portalforvideo.com/portfolio/sam-james/

Encryption Keys

2011-06-24T11:51:00.009+10:00

At Eastern Bloc, the launch of a new gallery with directors Wade Marynowsky and Nathan Hrebabetzky I made a small series of mobile phone scale videos, designed especially for pre-iphone models. The Encryption Keys began as a series of 'fate' videos; non-figurative moving imagery which acted as a kind of portable video talisman for phone culture. Each are a meditation using elements in relation to each other, such as a cluster of dead sticks against a growth of straight sticks in the ground: an animism of everyday objects removed from the chaos of literal vision. They were selected randomly by numbers so the receiver did not control the image they received.

(Format: Micro SD card or .3gp download or Bluetooth)

Pluralist Doco-Fiction..

2011-05-17T16:50:00.002+10:00

So I've been doing a lot of performance documentations lately where its possible to shift the form - Living with the Dead, Untrained, Tiny Stadiums, Elephant House... The advantage of documentary is you can see the world from the front, back, sides, top and bottom - there is no limit to the angles that you can juxtapose. A singular artwork or drama is seen from a fixed angle no matter where the camera is and this is held continuously, not giving any alternatives but to watch the work. Documentary is not authorship it is merely an arrangement of perspectives. To frame and film it is the first removal. Multi-screen can then enable the beginning of the break of the monoform as we can't see all the information at once, collage is a third stage. Interaction is a fourth stage. The delirious pluralistic doco, with many fractures and shifts is a fifth level.

The Darkroom 2

2011-04-03T12:55:00.005+10:00

After a remount of In Glass at Melbourne's Dance Massive we went straight in to a triptych version of The Darkroom, choreographed by Narelle Benjamin. Previously worked with the Australian Ballet on the theme of a life cut short, this version adds another two components; a kind of pre-birth and afterlife. The pre-birth section is filmed through a crystal ball and is a choreography of spheres and what lies within their bubbles, and afterlife is a prismatic Euclidiean play on what we can perceive, what is retained from life and from which direction we are looking. It is also an epigram of the monolithic constructions we choose to represent our transitory place in the world.

"Forseen" Parramatta Riverside Theatre - 6-9th April

Bangarra Theatre 15-16th April 2011
The Darkroom (Narelle Benjamin)
and Debris (Frances Rings)

Projections Sam James, Sound Huey Benjamin/ Chris Abrahams, Lighting Karen Norris

NIGHTSHIFTERS - The Cracks

2010-11-05T13:03:00.018+11:00

In Nightshifters, curated by Bec Dean I made 'The Cracks' - 7 small projections masked onto specific holes and features of the Carriageworks walls. The abstract surface ‘characters’ of the cracks and holes of the western foyer of Carriageworks lie watching us silently, solidly, the wallflowers of the entertainment industry. I am cutting out the dream characters of the wall paint and morphing them into simple animations. This work samples these cloudgazed shapes and animates the brooding essence below. Codified messages are passed on, through stencilled texts of the building and the coaxed friendships are engaged with the animistic suggestions of performer, Georgie Read.

Thurs 4- Sat 13 Nov, 8pm-11.30pm

Performance Space @ Carraigeworks

http://www.performancespace.com.au/?p=4369

No Door on her Mouth

2010-10-10T12:03:00.001+11:00

A very quick development to show with performer/writer Dawn Albinger. A single channel projection moving from logged forest plantations, to Plato's cave to gutted hospital to a Truman Show ending, woven through by Dawn, the solo Diva/deer character. Again with dark dramaturge, Margaret Cameron.
Judith Wright Centre (Brisbane) 11-12 Oct, Blue Room 26 Oct - 13 Nov(Perth)

In Glass - Studio SOH

2010-09-09T09:48:00.002+10:00

Paul White and Kristina Chan are hugely courageous dancers and project a superhuman quality with choreography of Narelle Benjamin setting a high bar of contortionism. One-way mirrors serve as a rear projection surface to animate their unconscious. I could have blasted the mirrors with total oversized, syncronised documentary, then cracked the mirror and dissolved into the netherworld like an Orphean conspiracy.

http://www.vimeo.com/21189309

'Spring Dance' at The Studio, Sydney Opera House, 7-12th Sept 2010

ARTSPACE: Amygdala - Fear Conditioning

2010-08-08T21:58:00.014+10:00

A doomsday, asteriod field using 22 of my past video projections from live performances. Using twelve screens and four projections this is an experiment in finding a confluence between a selection of recollected hot spots of live performance combining distorted archival documentation and a reanimation of projection images that once accompanied other works. The result is a heavy state of loaded experiences oscillating and regenerating amongst themselves.
With artists Ms&Mr from August 13th - September 10th, Artspace Sydney, 43-51 Cowper Wharf Road, Woolloomooloo

http://www.artspace.org.au/newsletter/newsletter_20100804735572.html

My Darling Patricia/ Mt Gambier residency

2010-07-25T14:16:00.000+10:00

My Darling Patricia's development of 'Ted Head' is based on a collection of short plays for children by Ted Hughes. We were using the Varcoe Theatre rehearsal space and Tenison Woods school and drove up the Coorong to find apocalyptic environments, caves and deforestation. Then back to animate seeds, build leaf houses, bark monsters and car factories out of dough. Who could not have a great time doing this? The bakery around the corner had hearty soups and South Aussie pasties. Fingers crossed this will be on at the Malthouse in April next year.

Broome: BURU

2010-07-10T13:35:00.000+10:00

A new work by Marrugeku, its great to be doing projections about the landscape and the six seasons, with the spiritual presence of the 'Boss Lizards', the most powerful creatures in the Western Kimberley. Of course I could devote a lifetime to understanding all the Aboriginal dreamtime stories here and I still wouldn't know enough, but Marrugeku seems to be forging a new path for performance in the Broome area. Goolari TV is a big inspiration, artistic animations and short films from the community are made with very open access to training and equipment so the culture there is very direct; straight from the artist via Goolari TV, film and video art is immediately embedded in the community culture. This image is of a mozzie in Mangala, the hot, wet time of the year. On from 8th October, 2010.

Vivaria at 'Reeldance Installations #4'

2010-06-11T19:55:00.006+10:00

Vivaria presented as part of 'Gesture Dance' curated by Erin Brannigan (Aust), Janine Dijkmeijer (Netherlands) and Pascale Moyse (UK) with other video installations by Kate Murphy, Su Healey and Adam Synnott, Sean O'Brien and Isabelle Rocamora,
spread across several site specific spaces and in-house faculty screens at the Uni of NSW Kensington.
Vivaria is a cube structure of a multitude of obscure spaces from Tokyo and Berlin with dancers Peter Fraser, Georgie Read, Linda Luke, Martin del Amo and Lizzie Thomson. Their mechanised tableaus are interchangeable, like shuffling a deck of cards.

Also Screening at Cinedans Amsterdam, 8-12 Dec 2010
http://www.realtimearts.net/article/97/9889

Dates: June 15-19 Daily 10-5pm
Venue: Io Myers Studio, Australian School of Business, Robert Webster Building.

Lost by Manipulation

2010-04-26T10:14:00.009+10:00

Collaging for 'Wrong Prom' again...warping and sampling trashy dance videos::: a euphoria of patterning of patterns of superficial teen dramas, or at least a revelling in 80's romanticisim. Romanticism : superficial? Its easy to dis' romanticism.. an imaginary aesthetic... paralleled by the impossibility of teenage dreams. Maybe.

Wrong Prom, Carriageworks - 5 May/Flashdance, 23 June/Blues Brothers, 28 July/Grease, 25 Aug/Chicago 2010

Crystal

2010-01-20T12:31:00.007+11:00

In progress dance video, shooting through a crystal ball mounted on the front of a dslr. Concept and choreography, Narelle Benjamin with dancers Emme, Martin del Amo and Julie-Anne Long, filmed at Fraser Studios in Nov 2009. Shot, animated and composited by me to an initial choreographic-edit sketch by Narelle. It will probably be adapted for projection some time this year...

http://www.vimeo.com/11703944

Falling Like a Bird, Albury

2010-01-05T13:33:00.003+11:00

A Hothouse Residency with Dawn Albinger and Julie Robson for one week working and shooting late into the night, walking through wetlands, passing through the full force of a storm. Broken trees, no electricity, no water, sucking lemons. With Margaret Cameron, Nikki Heywood, Annette Tesoriero Sound: Lindsay Pollak, Cathie Travers.

Brief Breath in Bundanon

2009-11-28T19:39:00.002+11:00

We scored a week in Bundanon at the end of October, courtesy of Rosie Dennis. I spent a week animating a gum tree stick-railway network which took a lot longer than expected. I was trying not to go too feral but it is hard, trying to ignore wombat tantrums under the floor boards and unacceptably happy Friar birds out the front window of the studio. I can't concentrate with all these noises of nature. Shifting from urban insomnia to crazed, ethanol fuelled bull screams in the dead of the night echoing across the valley and daily spiders in the bed.

VIVARIA - Berlin residency @ GlogauAIR

2009-07-02T03:09:00.019+10:00

Getting close to the end of editing this labyrinthine project...'VIVARIA' on the residency in Kreuzberg. Its five weeks time-out to work on the post production of a four screen video installation to be watched from the centre. It has a feature film's worth of compositing in it.., at the moment in Berlin its better to be outside and riding a bike.

- Working in 1080p with 1280x720p h.264, distorted 1024x768 mjpeg and deinterlaced 1080i HDV. Sometimes this makes an entire timeline go black after rendering. But the 1080p gives a nice crisp, animated stutter on speed adjusted clips.

- Wow the days are slipping by, not sure how to fit in the coffees and beers. Stuck doing manual rotoscoping, 2000 manual keyframes in a 1.5 minute video clip, 2 days just to do that...

- The complexity of editing 4 channel video should not be underestimated. That is, the relation between one edit and another in a single channel, multiplied by the relations between each of those in another three channels (linearly), multiplied by the relations between the corresponding events between each channel (spatially).

Ghost Quarters

2009-05-03T11:24:00.007+10:00

My ninth work with Tess de Quincey, this performance installation is based on the writing of Thomas de Quincey
(Confessions of an English Opium Eater). This work has a programmed avoidance of cognitive structure though there is a sensory framing of Tess' four mind states; outside, internal hallucinatory, murder and vortex. Ian Stevenson's sound is randomized on Max making quotes from the text lingering and constantly in flux. Two 6000 lumens projectors, side on in 16:9 are pointing towards a central labyrinth of tule. Mixed live on two Numark Arkaos mixers.
9th-16th May 2009
Track 12, Carriageworks

Night Garden

2009-02-16T21:30:00.013+11:00

Delve into the unconscious... and never return. Forget wishy-washy SUBconscious video projections, this heavy duty hallucinogenic work holds you underwater until you drown, and then the show starts. My Darling Patricia's next performance puppetry work is set in traverse with delicate textured burnt gauzes and projections on nighties in a perspex shed. There are a few challenges with the projections on such fine material in confined spaces and being in traverse, but there's a lot of attention to detail so it should be a great and haunting work. Co-directed with the inspired Margret Cameron (VIC) and Chris Ryan (NSW).

5th -14th March 2009, Performance Space, Carriageworks
24th - 29th March, Arts House, Meat Market

nargun and qlab

2009-01-29T12:33:00.006+11:00

If you're thinking of using Qlab this is what you're looking at. These are my corrections notes JUST from the plot. Zoom in to the A4 pages! 5 times the amount of work than updating dvds - tedious and time consuming. The 2Ghz Intel Mac minis were only just barely able to do a cross dissolve, pathetic! Still, if you have to hand the av over to another operator, this is the way to do it. A BIG loss is no live operation, its all automated.

Nargun and the Stars

2009-01-04T17:19:00.004+11:00

This is LARGE scale, scary puppetry from the mind of Scott Wright (Erth) co-directed by Wesley Enoch. Eye scorching, heavy duty, saturated imagery will be buffeting the scrims and textured cyc's - there will be screams of terror. For ages 8 and up. I've been working with triple layered composite mattes cut out of photographs from the Hunter Valley. Monstrous rocks, terrifying trees, spirits, dreams, night storms and supernatural swamps... puff, puff. Motion particle generators, luma keyed puppet multiples, filmed shadow puppetry, explosions, real videoed particle transtions... 9 weeks of intense making cut in as much detail as I have time to motion track it all. Some of the masked landscapes have come out similar to Sydney Long's paintings of opiate and impressionistic spirit dreams. The pain of this show is the 56,000 hours to program and prepare video for Qlab.
SYDNEY FESTIVAL, Riverside Theatre 15-21 Jan, 2009

recent biog

2009-01-04T17:02:00.009+11:00

Sam James has been a filmmaker and projection designer for performance since 1995. His focus has been to collaborate with new media, dance and theatre projects to develop integrated, paradoxical languages in live performance. He has been a regular contributor to Performance Space for ten years also filling a role as video documentor for many independent dancers there. His approach to the moving image is to unveil paradoxes between media and the live presence and being seduced but complicit in the manipulations of the stage. Most of his work involves animation of abject subconscious, environments and objects, playing with and against the performer. He trained in architecture and film and has been a set designer and made successful super 8 and 16mm films such as Nun's Night Out (winner best dance film, Australian Dance Awards 2006). He has screened dance films in Cinedans Amsterdam, MOVES Manchester, VideoDansa Barcelona, Dança em Foco Rio de Janiero, Tansfilm Wetbewerb Berlin, Video Danza Buenos Aires, MediaTerra Athens, Reeldance in Australia and NZ and the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, New York. Although he spends most of his time working on small, independent developments he has regularly contributed to the major festivals in Australia, from Adelaide to Perth to Alice Springs.

Nomads

2008-11-28T17:41:00.006+11:00

Led by Hans Van den Broeck (Ballet C de la B) : a three week development at Performance Space with intensive camping/filming at the south of Sydney. Psychological breakthroughs were happening second by second with Hans' tough manipulations and from the periphery, improvised video is forced to to a more rugged level. It must be recorded, but it must be new. It is the catalyst of dream and memory, but at a different time, the mere playing card in a play of real life. The basis of the exercise/experiments lead to a constant, churning invigoration of presence in time, memory and interactions between individuals. Our participation leads one to question whether we are part of this, or whether we are playing roles in a group hypnosis, witnessed by an audience, also partly hypnotized. The daily updates and reformation of material by Van den Broeck makes the artists unable to hold onto 'unauthentic structures' and the improvised thread must be climbed fast before gravity can break it...

Triptych

2008-11-07T13:17:00.003+11:00

A minimal and transformative work by Tess De Quincey with dancers, Linda Luke, Lizzie Thompson, Victoria Hunt and Peter Fraser. Simple for me was simple, objective, working with Tess' video shoots of trees in wind, water near her house and Robin Fox's oscilliscope, using the feeds of Chris Abraham's sound. A very collaborative cross-over, intersection of three states, air, electricity and water... three screens with diffusion cloth repositioned in three formations in the round. The av component was based on using remote, mobile projectors with mac minis cued by Qlab and Quartz Composer and three down projectors in the rig. We almost had independent power on the mobile projectors too but inverters would have been too big, powering large 6000 Lumens projectors. All in the essence of the elemental footage, my editing was sparse and manipulation practically non-existant. Tess' selfless shooting eye already showed what needed to be seen.
Performance Space @ Carriageworks 6th -16th Nov 2008

Tokyo (Aug-Sept)

2008-09-01T11:39:00.010+10:00

I can't tell the difference between dream and reality, the streets full of colourful alien co-travellers, stuck in microcosms that I only momentarily encounter, like heavy raindrops in an endless tropical storm. Night showerers are shuffling in yukates in the ryokan, where I'm staying. I'm shooting MPEG backgrounds and foregrounds, waiting for the super-haze to steam off into the less flat afternoon, evening glow, then contemplating middle grounds to flip them beyond child's drawings. In the mornings drinking iced-coffee, eating mayonaise sandwiches and falling back out into endless discovery. When do you come back in? Not sure how to put this all together, I've got too much but not enough.

TARKOVSKY'S Horse

2008-08-11T16:12:00.004+10:00

Sorry to post yet another black and white picture.. can't seem to get colour into these projections! Tone and expressionism always seems to be stronger without the realism of video colour. Coming up is Peter Fraser's 'Tarkovsky's Horse' as part of '2 SOLOS' with Peter and Linda Luke, part of The Weather Exchange. Abstract, elusive, pure choreographic imagery by Peter blends into a flashing, pseudo super-8 front projection with great idiosyncratic sounds by Natasha Anderson.
Melbourne (Dancehouse 15th-17th Aug), Sydney (Campbelltown Arts Centre 21st-22nd Aug, Performance Space, 'Liveworks' 25th Aug-7th Sept)

IMPROLAB Cairns

2008-08-04T11:08:00.010+10:00

Russell Milledge, Rebecca Youdell and Nick Mills invited us to the On Edge Festival in Cairns to do the 5th version of Improlab. Jim Denley, Amanda Stewart, Tess De Quincey and myself. With a new approach I poured dozens of mpeg videos captured in the space and the near surroundings into a modified, compacted digital setup, one small hdv camera firewired to Arkaos and the Numark mixer and crossed them with a single live feed of the present space. A relay between live and prerecorded. Each Mpeg went stale after only one day. Starting with uglier conceptual images in the first performance (tourist development and deconstructive shots of bumping in, running schedules, taxi receipts) and returning to a sanctuary of aesthetics on the third performance, burning together Tess's subtle movments, twisted vines, sprays of water, remnants of flooding, lichen, wind blown shadows, tiny fish in mud. That was us, tiny fish in the vast mangrove, on the edge of an infinite blank page.
On Edge Festival, Cairns @ JUTE Theatre, July 31st - August 2nd 2008.
Realtime Review THE STUDIO
http://www.realtimearts.net/article/77/8340

Electronic Church (Berlin)

2008-06-19T01:49:00.004+10:00

There is a little man inside machines who turns the meters but they are always slightly faulty. The record of time progresses forward but loses order in the present. The present jumps to anything which has occurred in the past, but because it always moves in regularity we respect its accuracy as a rough measurement of time. Also showing other recent animations from Prague and Glasgow and Calcutta. At Electronic Church, 223 Greifswalder Str, Berlin in Prenslauer Berg, 19th June 2008, 9pm.
With great old and new travel sounds by Gail Priest.

Calcutta Visual Arts Residence

2008-04-17T07:45:00.006+10:00

You need to be more than a Bengali poet to put Calcutta into words. This residency with dancers, Tess de Quincey and Santanu Bose was an exploration only of the tip of an iceberg. Iceberg is not a metaphor to use for Calcutta. I am trying to extract high resolution, progressive motion jpeg videos into slow moving graphic energies and cryptic combinations of chaos. An expression of the impossibility of framing in a complex urban environment. We did 2 performances with dance and video at Uma Gallery to audiences of about 40 per night. With some positive responses we passed through unscathed, a mere blip on a fizzling Calcutta radar.

(getting around in Cal)

Anamorphic Archive

2008-02-28T20:30:00.015+11:00

For interesting RealTime reviews by
Martin del Amo and Jodie McNeilly
check 'links' above and program notes are in this blog's comments.

Martin del Amo, 1997.

DANCE SCREEN Sydney Festival

2008-01-12T11:04:00.000+11:00

Erin Brannigan has curated a selection of recent dance films presented in a variety of formats in the Studio Foyer of the Sydney Opera House. In this I have 'Midnight Dancer' with Martin del Amo, excerpts of 'Simulated Rapture' with Rosie Dennis and excerpts of '5' with Victoria Hunt. They are on interactive touchscreens designed by David Corbet, limited to 2 minutes, with headphones. I'm going to check them out when we bump in INTO again on Monday 14th.

FIGMENT Sydney Festival

2007-12-28T22:15:00.000+11:00

This is a dance work about schizophrenia, again with Choreographer Narelle Benjamin. I imagined I would have unlimited imagery for a work about mental illness but no, there's a huge responsibility making a substantial work about it. It is attempted through multi planes of image making, then fracturing them together, based on a real person's experiences. Its important for an audience to see the whole picture to relate to the mental state, but its been a while since I've felt schizophrenic, so this work can only be an external view into a whole and complex existence. I am trying to think that we are all schizophrenic in our relationship with the urbanized world but I can't tell if I am in that state or have adapted and desensitized myself from it. Again we are using a black scrim front projection for states and ghostly presences and a rear projection onto a 2 x 1.5m One Way Mirror for positive and reflective psychic states. Its an example of a symbiotic expressionism in dance and projection that cannot be logically explained.
INTO @ Riverside Theatres 8-12th Jan,
The Studio Sydney Opera House 15-20th Jan 2007
Dancer: Kathryn Dunn
Sound: Huey Benjamin

BLUE PRINT

2007-10-26T12:24:00.001+10:00

This is a new work directed and performed by Deborah Pollard and three firemen. It traces memories of the Canberra Bushfires in 2003 pivoting on a live overhead camera projection of the floor plan of Deborah's family home which was destroyed. The voice overs of her family members articulate the vivid detail of the moment but we show little of the actual event in images. There are two strands of imaging the event, the cold, technicality of re-drawing the house plan in live camera and a subconscious projection of a masculine principle and its relation to trauma and grief. This is embodied by a life size model of a horse, the three yellow clad, anonymous firemen and the projections of doorways and windows leading into forests, the doorway into the heart and guts of the horse and the parallel of the suburban and the wilderness meeting in tragedy. I'm looking forward to a 3 day break at the end of 12 weeks constant work.

Performance Space @ Carriageworks
26th Oct - 4th Nov 2007

Quietly Collapsed

2007-09-11T13:17:00.001+10:00

After almost 6 weeks this 3 minute video directed and performed by Rosie Dennis
is almost at the end of the tunnel. Its shot and edited on hdv, the process just able to eek out of my G5. Produced by the ABC and Channel 4 in the UK. New teams, numerous people in the chain of events, epileptic editing restrictions and grading limits... so complex, its back to the inefficiency of film and tv. I've become so used to getting up late and going to film some mpegs by myself and shifting images around randomly. Some of the editing in this was random, a lot of it was single frame adjustments left and right to get movements to jump cut nicely. Rosie made some radical edit shifts which made the sense of the choreography leap forward. For me, shooting in a brightly lit, brand new office building, its a film where there's nowhere for the filmmaker to hide. Everything is exposed, transparent and very 'video'. It is serving Rosie's quality of performance though I think, and taking it to a new place developed by chopped-up editing.

Language of Loss

2007-08-18T13:28:00.001+10:00

This performance, directed by Nikki Heywood and devised by Matt Prest, Lizzie Thompson, Michelle Outram, Costa Latsos, Siobahn Murphy with sound by Jason Sweeney, projections and design by myself, unlike many other projects, allows us to search without the need for answers. I am constantly trying to tie things up and tie them in but apart from sound and image resonances, the work resists analysis. Although it is based on the performers' real experience, ambivalence reigns, an unrelenting, unconscious sculpture... phew... humbling... beyond conscious, before construction...

Immersion: ELECTRICAL EMPATHY

2007-06-19T14:11:00.000+10:00

An Inter Arts Grant, Gail Priest and I produced a one week development with 2 showings at Carriageworks, Performance Space.
I designed two large 16:9 screens with some expensive front and rear projection diffusion cloth, suspended in Track 12. Technically analogue, feeding into three vision mixers but from a combination of live camera objects (Nick Ritar, Cicada, VIC), Isadora (Scott Morrison, NSW) and Arkaos with a Numark mixer (myself) developed two, 45 minute sequences in which we each crossed over with sound artists, Gail, Jason Sweeney (SA), Peter Newman (NSW video also) and Ai Yamamoto (VIC). We had a great week, trying to produce something that wasn't the usual solo-artist-type event where we would overlap and create new partnerships. The plans of setting up half outside was impossible because of the floods going on out there, so we had immersion inside.

The DARKROOM

2007-05-19T14:59:00.000+10:00

A ten minute dance/projection piece in BODYTORQUE with the Australian Ballet, Sydney Theatre, May 2007.
Choreographer, Narelle Benjamin and myself use our formula screen design - Black Scrim downstage with high contrast black and white 'ghosted' objects with a background on White Cyc. 7 weeks of time lapse video of 4 different roses growing and dying at the beginning of winter. They flower in a derelict room, three dancers from the ballet company articulate a man's early death and his surrealist signals from the afterlife. Music: 'Drive By' - The Necks.

INVISIBILITY PROJECT

2007-05-04T20:53:00.000+10:00

Apart from me reversing the polarity on electrical devices, the laptop has done some fast rendering through a showing of Nargun and the Stars (Erth) at Carriageworks and a development of "Miss and Miss Elder" with Julie-Anne Long. In M + M Elder, Julie-Anne goes on a long shopping expedition with her projected sister to Westfield Eastgardens. There these elderly sisters have enjoyable hallucinations but it leads one to question whether her sister's projectionism means she is a figment of the imagination. It is a project looking at lonliness and invisibility of old people in a busy world.
PERFORMANCE SPACE @ Carriageworks 9-13th October 2007.

Improlab: 45 Downstairs

2007-03-14T14:54:00.000+11:00

Improlab performed for four nights in Melbourne in the new space at 45 Downstairs, Flinders Lane.
This space is beautiful, old wrinkled floorboards, a brand new rig with nice new profiles and fresnels. One whole wall of old windows next to a narrow lane full of weeds. The receptions in Melbourne were very warm with lots of interest and feedback.
Every night we ate in Chinatown. It was a good chance to bond and develop this work further - the forth incarnation.

Remixing the old

2007-02-26T12:51:00.000+11:00

"I Shatter" is remade from material I made in Hill End with the Darling Patricia's
called "Invisible Cities" which has continued to be very invisible because its too long and we're not in Hill End anymore... It should be on at the inaugural
Performance Space Nightime #1 in April. (narrated by the Magnetic Fields song 'I shatter')

Carriageworks Open Weekend

2007-01-25T12:09:00.000+11:00

Performance Space included Simulated Rapture as an installation for the open weekend at Carriageworks.
It was a general public opening. It was hectic.. a bit like the Powerhouse Museum on a Saturday. Its an exciting space, but like a giant white horse, so big its hard to get on it, but fascinating, but it makes you feel like you've got to upgrade all your gear...
This was the basic setup - 2 monitors with separate JBLs. It reads well that way, but there was the suggestion of doing 4 monitors, each with a separate performer's world.

Elusions: postphotography and fascination

2007-01-18T16:29:00.000+11:00

an article by George Alexander
in a book on Post Photography by CCP
Some quotes in response to 'Strange Eyes'
- see comments below

Trust and Try ABC

2007-01-13T11:33:00.000+11:00

The ABC has bought "Trust and Try" for five years. A five minute film by Julie-Anne Long and shot and edited by myself. Again it was the most simple film, like 'Potsdamer' I think it took about an hour to edit. It is basically four single takes of simple vaudeville acts with Michael Whaites, Kathy Cogill and Narelle Benjamin, Rakini Devi and Julie-Anne with a clicking super-8 projector as a soundtrack... with a few indiscriminate speed changes.

Desconacida

2006-12-30T17:10:00.000+11:00

a work in progress with dancer Kathy Cogill that has documented her as a performer, getting pregnant and performing with her baby, Clara. Kathy has been dressed as Wonder Woman for two years, and this is another patchwork docu/drama assembling scraps of video memory into fiction. Desconacida means 'unknown'....

strange eyes

2006-12-17T12:14:00.000+11:00

Experimental filmmaking seems like its only referred to as a formalist category of film, something that only relates to the material of film. So few people are looking for a way of communicating images of different qualities seen in a sequence over time that transcends narrative language. It is higher and lower than narrative at the same time. It is like intuition versus thinking. The camera can be used to look at what is below the surface. Turn the camera on without setting it and focussing it. It is a mode of seeing, by being fixed in its mechanics, that enables our perception to stretch and seek. As in individuals that are in trouble or insane, the frame is not lined up or focussed, but it is still the frame of reference. The art of experimentation is to give value to the world outside the conventional mode of expectation.
Improvised video cameras give us a shifting perception of the room we are all in. We see something abstract and then may realise that it is simply part of something familiar. But that is not the total aim, familiarity. Familiarity is when the mind stops seeking for itself, the soul is not stimulated, it dies.

IMPROLAB Transparencies

2006-11-27T20:59:00.000+11:00

The Improlab team plus Ami Yoshide and Sachico M (Japan) finally made two nights of improvised performance at the Studio, Sydney Opera House. The Studio is a tough and unadventurous space, and hard place to find inpiration. Each night we ran two sections of about 40 minutes each. After the first night I was completely drained and after the second I was rushed into a speedy bump out. Our rehearsals were much better than the shows. But the audiences were as expected - half bored out of their minds and the other half totally enthused. Overall I think its the most genuine and rewarding artform anyone could hope to participate in.
Realtime Arts Review: http://www.realtimearts.net/article/77/8340

Australian Dance Awards

2006-11-22T12:00:00.000+11:00

Astoundingly Nun's Night Out seems to have won Best Australian Dance film for 2006. I didn't go because of the bizzare context but I'm very thankful to Julie-Anne Long, Erin Brannigan and Amanda Card from Onextra for helping it rise to the surface. I still don't know how it all happened. But anyway, Yee haw!

SIMULATED RAPTURE

2006-10-04T19:50:00.000+10:00

At a 'Critical Path' Residency, NSW, Belgian Dance Filmmaker, Thierry de Mey, hosted a workshop for ten Sydney dance filmmakers. I decided to continue working on a project, "Simulated Rapture" which I began in Europe in January '06. The film features four of Sydney's most interesting independent dancer/performers; Martin del Amo, Lizzie Thompson, Brain Fuata, Rosie Dennis and sound by Gail Priest. It is a dual-screen installation in which the performers relate to each other through distorted reflection and paradoxical association. Thierry de Mey's past work with choreographer Anna Therese De Keersmaeker and his multi-screen works influenced the structure and editing of this piece.

'POD'

2006-09-05T14:06:00.000+10:00

The dance film, Pod with Narelle Benjamin and Sydney Dance Company is nearly finished almost a year after it was first shot at the Wharf. We have been juggling a series of graphic templates of nature to demonstrate the transformation of a body through seasonal and environmental change. The Sydney Dance Company dancers are transformed into elements of a microscopic world born from water and evolve through physical and chemical interaction with natural environments and forms.
Choreography and Concept Narelle Benjamin
Videography, Editing, Compositing and Online Effects Samuel James
'New Moon' Composed and Performed by Melisande Wright
Sound Design Huey Benjamin
Produced by Huey Benjamin
Screened: VideoDansa Barcelona 2007, Dança em Foco Rio de Janiero 2007, Cinedans Amsterdam, POOL 07 Tansfilm Wetbewerb Berlin

IMPROLAB PICA

2006-07-15T15:54:00.000+10:00

At Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, De Quincey Company is making new developments of 'Improlab'. It is an artist residency supported by PICA and the Inter-Arts Fund. Tess de Quincey (dance), Amanda Stewart (vocals), and Jim Denley (wind instruments) with Sam James (live camera projections). There will be unofficial showings of the work at Club Zho and PICA. My work with Improlab is a re-visitation using live camera in performance, working without digital manipulation or any preconceived strategies in image making, except to intimately and intuitively mediate responses to sound, space and live bodies and resonate, as an equal and non-dominating element of live art. This could potentially be used as material to make dance films. I am scalping rough shoots off the wall to hopefully make a filmic compilation out of these totally one-off occurrences.

'Baby Jane'

2006-06-18T17:34:00.001+10:00

In Performance Space and Theatre Kantanka's "The Boxed Set" a collection of performance works in a shipping container, Julie-Anne Long with video artist Sam James created 'Boxing Baby Jane', a new media dance work of mother dancing with her projected child. (Live Bait Festival, Bondi Pavillion 2005)

Bryoni Tresise RealTime Review:
"Womanhood is given a different telling in Julie-Anne Long’s subtly satirical meditation on motherhood, Boxing Baby Jane. In
collaboration with video artist Samuel James, Long constructs a “duet for live mother and projected child” in which the figure of saintly mother is placed against footage of a very sickly-sweet disembodied girl child. In a series of projected sequences, Long interacts with the ‘fictitious’ child through a combination of abstract and literal choreographies, building a progressive antagonism that stems as much from the implied mother/daughter relationship as from the compositional difference their live and filmic bodies erect. James’ video montage merges realtime footage, still shots, film intertexts and animated sequences to form a suspended limbo of part-image, part-performance that creates a skewed multi-dimensionality, particularly in moments where mother and daughter ‘enter’ excerpts from 1960s psychological thrillers that recall haunted suburbia and sinister veneers of smiles and propriety. Yet it seems that these canonical films and James’ playful interventions are intended to work more suggestively than literally. As the house of their pas de deuxerupts into flames, both mother and daughter remain caught in past ideals of role and gender, living the frustrations and complexities of an obsessive relationship that has its cinematic 'boxing' incinerate around them."

FRUMPUS - SIDESHOW ALLEY

2006-06-16T19:40:00.001+10:00

Cult performance group Frumpus are developing black comic, New Media performance on infamous female murderers!
The 4 week Inter-Arts development being shown at
Performance Space. Multiple animated projections in sync
with live performance. Video animations Sam James. Live music and sound by
Rose Turtle-Ertler. 2nd-3rd July 2006

GOSSAMER

2006-06-03T15:17:00.000+10:00

Still from "Gossamer", dual projections at the Sydney Opera House with dancers from the Sydney Dance Company.

2006-06-03T15:08:00.000+10:00

Teching at the Sydney Opera House, June 2006.
Sam James' immersive screen projections for 'Gossamer'.
Choreographer Narelle Benjamin, with the Sydney Dance Company.