Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Homer to Amsterdam


I was recently given the opportunity to voice a piece/performance for artist/filmmaker Pablo Pijnappel in Amsterdam's lovely Rijksacademie. It was awesome to reunite with old friends in old Amsterdam and be a part of the art world again. 8 years ago, Pablo and I studied Media Arts together in Amsterdam at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie of Art & Design.

The show was a photography installation of Pablo's images of Homer. It was surreal for my family to travel half way across the world only to be suddenly immersed in Homer all over again. Taken in a European context, Homer Alaska is totally alien -- beyond the end of the road for sure. I voiced a wonderful story that he had written, and then performed live readings of the story for the start of the open studios (of which another 50 artists were having concurrent gallery shows).

I heard a rumor that 10,000 people from all over Europe converge at the Rijksacademie over a period of 3 days for the open studios.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Video: Exploring the Chiswell Ridge



We just finished this video for the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G). It was our first project to incorporate HDV -- which quickly turned into "render hell" since we were mixing SD and super huge images/animations with the new video format. Our older machines were pushed beyond the system requirements for sure. As in 8 hour plus render periods on the timeline. Ouch! Time to move on to the next version of FCP.

The video was made to shown on wildlife cruises (on Kenai Fjords Tour boats), science conferences and general "outreach" situations.

Rebecca Sheir of Alaska Public Radio voiced the piece. Kammi Matson wrote the script and Miriam Elizondo labored hard as the finish editor and sound/music engineer. Great team work!