Video by Carrie Gates Illustrations by Jason Baerg Sound by Michael Red 2013
Kisik Acimowina (translated most often as Sky Story in Cree)
Kisik Acimowina is an experimental collaborative multimedia piece created for exhibition purposes by New Media Artists Carrie Gates, Jason Baerg, and Music Composer, Michael Red. The work explores a time-collapsing journey in our land, from the perspective of a single traveller inside an ever-evolving land and sky scape.
Red's music was inspired by the image of the calling of a rattle and an outdoor fire, while the individual illustrations by Baerg are abstractions of the Cree cosmological world. Gates then used sound-reactive animation and experimental motion graphics techniques to bring the abstractions to life alongside the music.
This piece is the first collaboration in a larger project between Gates, Baerg, and Red. Spread across Canada, the artists created this piece remotely from one another, and they are looking forward to developing this storyworld in more detail with an upcoming project that includes a longer, live performance version of this material.
vjcarriegates.com jasonbaerg.ca soundcloud.com/michaelred
Video by Carrie Gates Sound by Jon Vaughn Illustrations by Jon and Carrie 2013
Visceral and mind-melting, Ectocism takes you on a freestyle trek through a realm of blinged-out slime and gut-wrenching visual drama. The mangled electronic sounds are derived from Vaughn’s signature no-input mixing board sounds and intensified by a painfully precise computerized madness. Illustrations are animated with sound frequency mapping, motion paths, varied 3D parameters, and live manual manipulation by Gates with both serendipitous glitchery and programmatic strategy.
Carrie Gates and Jon Vaughn have been collaborating for more than ten years, performing together in many experimental audiovisual projects, expressing a rich spectrum of vivid non-linear narratives. Over this time, they have developed an innate sense of each other’s improvisational flow and conceptual spaces.
Performance highlights include the Sight & Sound Festival (Montréal, 2012), the Vancouver New Music Festival (Vancouver, 2011), the RE:FLUX Festival (Moncton, 2011), the Neutral Ground New Music Series (Regina, 2007), and send + receive (Winnipeg, 2006). Carrie Gates and Jon Vaughn first performed Ectocism live at _ģ̶Ł̶1̶ɫ̶C̶ʮ̶_Δ┌┼---\/\/\/\/\/\/!┬---jonCates” hosted by the Neutral Ground Contemporary Art Forum in September of 2013 in Regina, SK. The duo continue to create new works with plans of more performances and exhibitions in the future.
vjcarriegates.com jonvaughn.ca