OCAD University

Tethered Together Pageant: Livestream

Saturday, December 9, 2017 at 1:00pm

The Interference Ensemble Sauntering Band will be performing in the Holstein Christmas Parade and live-streaming to Facebook and the Durham Art Gallery in a cyber-folk mashup. If you're not in Holstein, come to the Gallery and hear singer Heather Saumer perform a libretto over the live event!

Each musician is pulling a float in the non-motorized parade, carrying a sculpted passenger. Original music composed by Doug Tielli.

The livestream will be at:

https://www.facebook.com/AkimboArt

The Interference Ensemble Sauntering Band includes: William Bossi, Grace Bridgman, Dave Dunn, Jim Grant, Basha Mayo, Steve Morel, Chris Palmer, Jenny Parsons, Robin Rich, Heather Saumer and Doug Tielli. The Ensemble is led by Tony Massett and Geoffrey Shea.

Generous support has been provided by the Ontario Arts Council, Akimbo Art Promotion and the Durham Art Gallery.

The ACM MM Interactive Art Program is a premier international venue connecting the arts and digital multimedia. MM-ART is a stage for digital art innovation utilizing multimedia technology, and a research venue advancing multimedia technology through the innovation of the arts.

Professor Geoffrey Shea presents Portage, an aesthetic, technical and social research project based out of the Ontario College of Art & Design which has, as one of its outcomes, a publicly installed interactive artwork, mediated largely through mobile phones. We have created a number of interactions that facilitate both haptic and digital experiences. Users choose among a range of activities that are completed individually or in collaboration: playing musical instruments via mobile devices, viewing themselves as video surveillance subjects, or setting off a series of visual and aural feedback loops based on the presence of mobile devices. The experiences created go beyond cell phones; they include elements of sculpture, performance, and other forms of site specificity.

Film by Geoffrey Shea as part of the Fabulours Festival of Fringe Film

This 30-minute meditative film is a reflection on consciousness and community: the things that bind us to others and keep us apart. It was shot in Jungle Village, a training facility maintained by the New Tribes Mission for preparing missionaries for overseas work. The two characters, while clearly in some kind of relationship, exist as kinds of figments in each other’s imaginations.

The Jesuit missionaries in my own family struck me as exceedingly kind and conscientiousness individuals and it is very hard for me to reconcile that image with the culturally destructive role that missionaries have played in indigenous societies throughout the world. The chasm that separates religious and intellectual proponents at both ends of the spectrum in North America is one instance of the mystery surrounding the difference that our tenuous understanding of consciousness and community generates.

The film was shot over about a week with no budget and I am very grateful to Michael Tweed (camera) and Sonja Posod (my co-performer) for their commitment, trust and interpretive talents. PJ Dean-Thornton sang the song that I wrote and Tony Massett contributed his improvisations on the sax to the original music.

Image: Still from Plastic Houses - Geoffrey Shea, 2012

226-432-2179

www.fabfilmfest.ca/film2013/plastichouses.html

$5

New Media Installation by Geoffrey Shea and Rob King

Multimedia presentation that allows participants to interact with a large video screen through social media on their cell phones.

Geoffrey Shea and Rob King have worked together on several interactive art projects including Tentacles, Play and Portage.

www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/project.html?project_id=1274

Free