For 10 years, the Image Movement Sound Festival has featured
creative talent from local colleges collaborating in the hopes of creating
something different. And on Sunday, April 2, in the first part of this year’s
two-part program, that’s exactly what the audience got: Different takes on how
to mix and match media, different looks at modern life, and different degrees
of success from the 11 different projects.
For my money, the most successful pieces belonged in the
“image” category, as several of the films engaged and impressed with their use
of new (or, at least, new to me) techniques. Chief among them is “All That
Remains,” in which Eastman PhD student Michaela Eremiasova’s trippy musical
composition offers a nearly perfect aural equivalent to IMS co-founder
Stephanie Maxwell’s hypnotic animation. Maxwell created the collection of
images by etching/painting directly onto 35mm film, some reworked live action
sequences and more. I could not take my eyes — or ears — off the six-minute
work.
Also visually stunning, but in an entirely different way, is
“[tides]” by composer Abby Aresty, filmmaker Matt Costanza, and choreographer
Missy Pfohl Smith. Set to a beach soundtrack, the film
warps the image of a group of dancers. Costanza plays with the light, or the
absence thereof, to distort the figures into wave-like swirls. The result is
striking, although the project could stand to be half as long — even after five
minutes, something new can become too familiar.
The multimedia piece “EXCESS” blends the best facets of
modern dance, film, and sound. Five tiara-topped dancers wearing maid uniforms
made of bubble wrap perform a routine with 17 wooden chairs as a disembodied
voice recounts her visit to an acquaintance’s garbage-filled apartment. Behind
them a film plays,showing gigantic, undulating piles of trash. I
immediately started considering what I own that I don’t actually need.
If the goal of a work is to illicit a reaction from the
audience, then “Repetitive Seams” ably succeeds. Sarah Lathrop’s film explores
the anxiety of a lonely older woman, mostly conveyed by the woman’s harried
pawing at her extensive collection of veil-covered dolls. It’s the soundtrack
by Abby Aresty, however, that really stands out: a constant, low-level hum
frequently punctuated by bursts of ear-splitting shrieking. The result was
physically discomforting, and if the point was to make me never want to become
lonely or old, mission accomplished.
The Image Movement Sound 2006 Festival concludes Saturday,
April 22, with a 7 p.m. performance installation by Sarah Lathrop and Ali
Secrest and an 8 p.m. program of screen and multimedia works, both at Visual
Studies Workshop, 31 Prince Street. Tickets are $5, students with ID free.
www.imsfestival.org.
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2006.
