Harp + Silver

Phil Villarreal
covers the Harp+Silver event in Caliente

Silver & Harp::Intermedia Presentation on April 7

TUESDAY APRIL 7, 2009
» 6:00 PM
» Gallagher Theater, Student Union

On April 7, 2009, 6:00 pm at the Gallagher Theater, Hilary Harp + Suzie Silver present a media presentation and lecture about their collaborative art with a focus on their current media performance AV Lodge Presents: Fruit Machine. Included in this presentation is a live demo performance of excerpts of Fruit Machine. Post-performance discussion will be led by media scholar Caryl Flinn (UA Women’s Studies).

AV Lodge Presents: Fruit Machine
Media Performance by Hilary Harp and Suzie Silver

Fruit Machine Description
Fruit Machine is a campy hour-long media performance that uses a dynamic interplay between live and screen-based events to probe the relationship between bodies and fantasies. Inspired by a long tradition of camp aesthetics, especially Jack Smith’s homemade participatory glamour and Leigh Bowery’s extravagant perversity, Fruit Machine brings together camp and digital performance. Using Arduino microcontrollers, Bluetooth and Max/MSP/Jitter, we create physical props and costumes that actively influence screen-based and sonic events. The overall performance is more mutant musical or concert than play. As much emphasis is placed on sound as image, with props and costumes functioning as audio-visual instruments.
“Fruit Machine” was a name given to a Canadian device designed during the Cold War to ferret out homosexuals from the civil service and the military. The subjects were made to view pornography, and the device measured the pupils of the eyes, perspiration, and pulse for a supposed erotic response. The word “fruit” in our title refers to both a quirky, eccentric or queer individual and to the fecund sex organs of plants. “Machine” references the rather technical engineering of the lurid and antic images. Camp codes of high artifice and excess, and camp’s self-conscious celebration of exotica are all at work here. Fruit Machine occupies a unique place at the juncture between technically sophisticated interactive media and humble and carnivalesque aesthetics reminiscent of a folk ritual or a school play.

Brief Bio
Collaborating since 2003, Hilary Harp and Suzie Silver have created a range of projects including objects, installations, videos and performances. Drawn to exotica, science fiction and pre-digital special effects, Harp & Silver create D.I.Y. spectacles by combining technical sophistication with humble materials. They have exhibited their objects and installations throughout the U.S. Their videos have screened all over the world and are distributed by the Video Data Bank. They have performed their live media variety show “Fruit Machine” in a number of venues nationally including Transformer Gallery, Washington DC; Around the Coyote Festival, Chicago, IL; and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

cfa website
flier, in .pdf format

Brad Slater visits on April 6

MONDAY, APRIL 6, 2009
» 3:00 - 3:50 PM & 4:00 - 4:50 PM
» Marshall 211 » Professional Practices discussion
» Event is free and open to all Media Arts students

Brad Slater is a talent agent at the William Morris Agency (WMA). Previously a talent manager, Slater joined WMA in 2003.

Slater’s clients include Academy Award winners Forest Whitaker (“Last King of Scotland”) and Jennifer Hudson (“Dreamgirls”); Brendan Fraser (“The Mummy”), Amaury Nolasco (“Prison Break”), Chad Michael Murray (“One Tree Hill”), Derek Luke (“Notorious”), Dan Fogler (“Balls of Fury”), Chazz Palminteri (“A Bronx Tale” and “The Usual Suspects”), Terry Crews (“Everybody Hates Chris”), Neal McDonough (“Desperate Housewives” and “Flags of our Fathers”), Emily Procter (“CSI Miami”), Jerry Ferrara (“Entourage”) and Jensen Ackles (“Supernatural”).

Prior to WMA, Slater was a manager at The Firm, which he joined from AMG where he had worked since 1998. Slater began working in the talent representation business as an assistant for Keith Addis at Industry Entertainment and later went to work as an assistant to Rick Yorn at AMG. He was promoted to manager in 2001.

A Los Angeles native, Slater graduated in 1996 from the University of Arizona. In college he interned at Sony Music for MJJ records (Michael Jackson’s record company) and Sony Pictures for Mandalay Entertainment where he worked for Peter Guber, Todd Black, Ori Marmur and Jason Blumenthal. His first job in the business was at Goldbar Entertainment selling American films to overseas buyers.

BFA Info Workshops

FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2009
» 4:30 - 5:30 PM » Marshall 221

FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2009
» 9:00 - 10:00 AM » Marshall 211 Conference Room

Are you interested in applying to the BFA Program this fall? Then you need to attend one of these workshops!

Learn more about the BFA program, the difference between the BA and BFA degrees, and details about the portfolio process.

If you plan to apply to the BFA program in September, you are REQUIRED to attend a workshop. These will be the only two offered this semester.

Please note: these workshops are open to Media Arts students only.

For questions contact
Professor Michael Mulcahy at mmulcahy@u.arizona.edu or 621-1155

.pdf flier

Independent Filmmaker Deborah Stratman Visits

Chicago-based experimental filmmaker Deborah Stratman will screen “In Order Not Be Here” and other experimental short films at 7pm Tuesday, March 31 at The Screening Room (127 E. Congress Street). The event is free and open to the public.

Stratman’s work plies the territory between experimental and documentary genres. Shot entirely at night, “In Order Not Be Here” is a flight through hysteria and police surveillance in suburban America. Stratman will also screen 16mm prints of "The Paranormal Trilogy,” a series of works that collectively address concepts of the paranormal in the information age.

Stratman’s work has screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, Centre Pompidou and MoMA – NYC, among other venues. The program is from 7:00pm-8:15pm and will include a Q&A with Stratman. For more on Stratman’s work see: http://www.pythagorasfilm.com/

.pdf flier

Press Release: IDIWS 09

I Dream in Widescreen
The School of Media Arts 2009 BFA Thesis Films

Friday May 15, 2009
6:00 pm doors open, 7:30 pm screening
The Tucson Music Hall, Downtown Tucson, FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Fire breathing dragons, at-risk musical youth, Ron Jeremy and more! Students graduating from the School of Media Arts Bachelor of Fine Arts program at The University of Arizona will screen their senior thesis films at I Dream in Widescreen. This popular, standing-room-only event is the culmination of the skills, knowledge and creative vision fostered by the highly selective Media Arts BFA program in film and video production. Students from the program will present their films at major film festivals, such as 2006 alumnus Jonathan Pulley, whose film Move Me played in the Sundance Film Festival.

Slated for this year’s screening is an unusually diverse and ambitious array of films written, directed, and crewed by Media Arts students and starring talent from throughout the Tucson community. Ranging from Scott Silver’s Sui-Sci-Fi Musical, a hilarious spin on the teen musical genre, to Ariela Stern’s The Inheritance, a poignant meditation on Jewish identity, to It’s American! a send-up of 1970s exploitation films, starring none other than Ron Jeremy the star of Deep Throat himself, to The Wind and Hills a fantasy epic about a fiddler turned dragonslayer, this year’s I Dream in Widescreen will also feature a comedic series of commercial spots written, directed and produced by Rhys Stover and a music video for local band Holy Rolling Empire directed by Chelsea Coles. The films will be followed by a lively question and answer session with all of the graduating filmmakers.

A local tradition started at The Loft Cinema, I Dream in Widescreen drew 800 people to the Fox Tucson last year and expects to draw an even bigger crowd this year to The Tucson Music Hall. “The School of Media Arts is excited about taking the stage at The Tucson Music Hall, in the center of Tucson’s historic downtown arts district,” said Lisanne Skyler, Assistant Professor in the School of Media Arts and producer of this free screening.

I Dream in Widescreen is made possible by support from The University of Arizona College of Fine Arts Small Grants Program,The Hanson Film Institute, The Student-Faculty Interaction Program and the School of Media Arts.

more info
Meg Askey | mgaskii@email.arizona.edu
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Visiting Artist: Julie Sandor

BIO:
Julie Sandor is an independent producer who has worked on films within a wide range of genres such as horror, comedy and thriller. She has worked with actors such as Matthew Broderick, Philip Baker Hall, Jeremy Sisto, Parker Posey, Paul Rudd and Danny DeVito.

Ms. Sandor is currently a Producer at Strive Productions and she has worked for Castle Rock Productions, Out of the Blue Entertainment and she was Head of Development for Ambush Entertainment. Ms. Sandor received her masters from New York University in Cinema Studies and her PhD from Northwestern University in Communication Studies.

Sandor will speak to Media Arts students and the public about The Producer and Script Development in ILC 130, on March 23.

more info:
Facebook Event * CFA Calendar

Fine Cut Screenings Begin Tomorrow!