This is a little experimental short film I made to accompany the music track which I created through a collaborative online community project, where several people share audio clips, and then all participants are encouraged to create a finished work with the pool of samples. This music bed was what I created. I then shot some footage of the acequia near Mission San Juan, as well as some other items in my home.

I’ve been working these last few months to move away from paid gigs as well as unsatisfying “collaboration” projects (I love to collaborate, but with the exception of maybe four or five people I often work with, most people misuse the word to mean those people they use to help round out their singular vision). I still have a few pesky obligations I need to extricate myself from, but I am using this increasingly unencumbered time  to do little personal projects which help me to better understand various editing programs I’m trying to learn. This particular piece made certain demands on me to dig deeper into Ableton, Max for Live, SpeedGrade, and Resolve.

Here’s a link to the audio only, on SoundCloud:

 

A couple of field recordings of downtown San Antonio mixed in Ableton Live with some resonator filters to fill them out. A bit of Tension and Collision. Some distorted vocals. And a drum rack full of household items being struck, stroked, and otherwise misused.

I started out with a bike ride downtown. It was an overcast day, so I had no desire to shoot. And as I have this new front rack for my bike which holds all my equipment to do field recordings, I thought I’d check out a few sites with some interesting sound properties. The three areas I chose were the Arneson River Theatre (an outdoor performance area on the riverwalk), the bus stop at the downtown library across from the Southwest School of Art (it’s a portion of Navarro Street with a lot of echo and constant buses driving by, stopping, and idling), and a little fountain at a peaceful pocket park under the Augusta Street bridge. I ditched the Arneson recordings. There was some horrible compressor running in an adjacent construction site. But the other two seemed nice. What I’ve been doing lately with these ambient recordings of wild sound is to process portions through some of Ableton’s resonator filters, to fill in a sort of modulated orchestral sound. Than I built a drum rack with about ten sound clips I recorded of various items at hand (small wooden box, glass votive candles, an empty fish bowl, masking tape being peeled off the roll, etc.). I added all sorts of filters to give the sounds depth–corpus is a nice one for this sort of percussive work. Then a couple tracks of very spare melody, using two Ableton instruments, Tension and Collision. I finished it off with a few clips of me reading short passages from some of my short stories (the voice has been filtered through a Max for Live effect which emulates a voice over a telephone). I spread the tracks about by panning them across the stereo field. I also played some with automating elements within the various track envelopes. It’s probably the most tinkering I’ve done with a sound project. I like the feel of the piece. Also, I think there’s a nice balance of the intentional, and the accidental (though, I suspect, this is only something I would notice).

The W-I-P is a long-running joint program presented by the San Antonio Dance Umbrella and Jump-Start Performance Co. This monthly event allows local audiences to see preview performances of area dancers and performance artists. Following each of the curated performances, the audience is able to provide feedback which may well help the artists to further develop their work. I put this together to help the W-I-P in seeking funding to help continue this wonderful program.

These opportunities to work with Amber Ortega-Perez on her graduate school projects continue to be quite rewarding. It might have been back in January when she mentioned a performance she was expected to create with, I believe, at least two collaborators from other disciplines. (I should point out that this is a low-residency program out of state, and these dance projects are video-taped and the instructors review the documentations of the work.) She needed to have everything delivered by early April–a record of the collaboration as well as whatever contextual paper she would have to write. I suggested that we could stage the piece at Jump-Start, but we’d have to work around the set for my show which would be running. I thought that it might look intriguing. Also, a bonus, would be that as Amber wanted video projection, I knew that I’d have at least one projector installed in the space for the theater piece. She agreed. She invited Charles Perez to be part of the collaboration. And I suggested we also bring in Deborah Keller-Rihn and Laurie Dietrich. These are all people who I’ve worked with together on dozens of creative projects, but never all together. The team members were each creative, imaginary, and fearlessly innovative.  There was no baggage of ego or self-important inflexibility.

For a few weeks we mostly bounced ideas around via email. We had one discussion meeting. One working session with some props. One experimenting rehearsal. And the final staging. It was organic, simple, painless, and quite beautiful.

Amber shaped the movement and the basic theme. Laurie brought in the idea of water and the heightened ritual components. Deborah created a mandala on the ground with rice flour and powdered tempera paint. I hooked up two additional projectors (we used three in all), and I also placed a GoPro in the ceiling with a wireless feed into my computer. The live camera signal went to the two side panels, the images warped with a software effect. The rear wall displayed an image Deborah had created for me for my show (I turned it into an abstract rotating kaleidoscopic animation). I also mapped twelve slow-rotating pieces of art created by attendees of Deborah’s Mandala Healing Arts workshops–there was a cut Styrofoam grid on the back wall of the theater as a scene element (which was part of Karen Arredondo’s design for the show). I also provided some ambient music I had created for my show. And Charles–who is very attentive, sensitive, and observant–helped to fill in the spaces; and, by interacting with all the elements, he helped to bring everything together.

Here is a short clip of the first rehearsal.

Some of us had been taking pictures and sharing thoughts about the project on social media. And when a local reporter inquired if she could attend the final staging (which had originally been just an opportunity for documentation), Amber thought that was an excellent idea. So, Saturday morning, March 28, we set up everything again. The props, the projectors, the tarp to protect the stage floor, etc. There were some changes. Laurie and Deborah’s costumes were now white. The face paint was not used. And my GoPro died on me, so I had to hook up another camera, shooting from the side. We had maybe ten people show up for a free Saturday morning experimental dance performance. It was perfect. A slow and peaceful ritual of comforting ambiguity.

And then we had to clean it all up, because the penultimate performance of Serpeintes y Escaleras was happening later that day.

Amber calls the work “Re-Turning,” and she is considering submitting it to the Houston fringe festival. I would love to do it again.

Here’s the full performance:

A moody ambient piece I constructed to better understand my way around Ableton and Max for Live. The central bed is from a field recording I made with a pair of MXL 604s microphones of the I-410 overpass at the San Antonio River. The drum rack was created with recordings with the same microphones of plastic cups, zippers, rubbed foam rubber, and crinkled plastic. Some voice recordings of myself. And a very heavy hand on a diverse array of effects.

This whole project began when Pamela Dean Kenny gave me a little gift before one of the performances of my Jump-Start show I staged in March of 2014 (Tales of Lost Southtown). Pam was one of the performers. When I opened the little roll of laminated card stock I found a board game. Serpientes y Escaleras. The Mexican version of Snakes and Ladders, or Chutes and Ladders. The art work was the first thing I noticed. It reminded me of the iconic Lotteria graphics. And then it occurred to me that the little couplets of images (an action, followed by a consequence) which represented either a virtuous ladder or a iniquitous snake could be acted out in a wryly playful manner on stage.

At some point I proposed the concept to Jump-Start with me and Pam in the position of lead artists. It was accepted and placed in the 2014-2015 season, with performances slated for March of 2015.

I asked Laurie Dietrich to direct. I also wanted her involved in the development stage. We wanted a fairly small cast, as the new location of the Jump-Start performance space was very limited. We also wanted several scenes conveyed just through motion. We decided to wait to develop the choreography until after the script was finished. So, we concentrated on getting our actors lined up (and locking our two dancers later). I would be performing on stage, as well as Pam. We also brought in Monessa Esquivel, Clint Taylor, and Martha Prentiss. We began improvisational character- and scene-building in October of 2014.

I soon realized we were crafting a much more nuanced work than was my initial plan. What I had envisioned was a darkly comical surreal TV game show where two members of the audience (planted shills, most likely) would be invited to compete. The cast members would enact stories from these “random” contestants lives. My role would be as the assistant to Pam’s quiz-mistress role—a sort of Ed McMahon sidekick. I also would design all the media components of the projected electronic game board, and manipulate the visuals in realtime. My thoughts were to devise a sort of modular production, with each contestant landing on 6 to 8 snake or ladder squares. 12 to 16 short scenes in total.

What I wasn’t anticipating was that we would all begin to add a significant amount of back stories of the characters who work on the game show itself. At some point the politics of the TV production team became as important as the central conceit itself (the struggle for each contestant to make it to the winning square).

The plan was that the development sessions would end by the first week in January. At this point, Laurie and I left town to have some privacy to write the script. We spent about five days in New Orleans and returned with the working script for Serpientes y Escaleras.

As we began rehearsing, we also brought in Stephan Gaeth to choreograph the four dance pieces. He, along with Michi Fink, provided the dance performances. Deborah Keller- Rihn created the art work for the game board. Karen Arredondo came in and provided set design and lighting design. Chuck Squire and Jordan Cimmino ran the light board. Mellissa Marlowe was our costumer.

I would like to say what a wonderful experience the whole endeavor was, however, it was a fucking mess (this was chiefly behind the scenes, and, for the most, I think the audience was spared the angst from all of our challenges). Many of the people whose names I mentioned did extraordinary work. A few, not so extraordinary. Also, there were about half a dozen people who absolutely flaked on us, enthusiastic one day, and utterly absent the next. Many of these people profess to be professionals. I guess even though we were paying, and trying very hard to be pleasant and accommodating, we just fell to the bottom of quite a few people’s priority list. The concept of a solid work ethic seems to be less important than it was ten or twenty years ago. Or, so it seems to me. One of the problems was that we didn’t have a stage manager. And we sure could have used some harsh taskmaster who might have, well, you know, fired some people. I’m too nice.

What a shame. A great deal of work went into the show. And, really, the concept was weird and promising. And, honestly, I’m proud of the finished work, the final four performances were solid. And I think I might write it as a novel. However, this could well be the end of my short foray into the theatre world. We’ll see.

Here are some wonderful photos of the production shot by Fadela Castro:

 

Finally I’m diving into Ableton deep enough to feel I should make something. This is comprised of field recordings of a morning thundershower I gathered from my front porch with a pair of MXL 603s. I also tossed in a track each using Tom Exile’s the Finger as well as the Mouth. The vocal is of myself reading a portion of a short story of mine titled Ambrosio. The mix is embarrassingly muddy. But, I can only get better.

This is the edit of the video which screened at the final event of Deborah Keller-Rihn’s Mandala Healing Arts Project, a five month long series of workshops and discussions of topics which exist in the intersection of art and wellness (emotional and physical). Several of the participants of these workshops (free and open to the public) took advantage of creating healing rituals which were also captured on video. The music added here is from Pseudo Buddha, a San Antonio music project comprised of some of the most accomplished artists in the region (here is a link to their full album, Motive). When this video screened at the Blue Star complex on Sunday, March 8th, it was accompanied by the live music of Rick Henderson and Alice Zimmermann, who performed in an adjacent room.

I was intrigued with helping whoever might want to fashion a healing ritual which could be made into a short film. Several participants took us up on the offer. Some were done very quickly and with little planning, others were more planned and contained a stronger narrative shape.

One of the staff with the DCCD (the arts funding arm of the city of San Antonio) suggested that Deborah not run her workshops every Saturday from October to March. The grant was substantial, not not really intended for such an involved project. Over 20 workshops. About a dozen facilitators from a wide range of disciplines. A gallery show one night. And a large celebration on another night, with chants, song, dance, film, art, mandala-making, and even cake. About a dozen mandalas created by the participants were printed large and mounted between plexiglass and set onto inflated inner tubes and fashioned in such a manner as to float on the river with light coming from beneath. Oh, right, and a finished 20 minute film. It’s incredible what some people in the town can do with very limited funds (and quite shocking how little some people and institutions can do with overly-generous funding). It’s hard work to pull off something this involved, but Deborah managed to maintain grace and good cheer. She always amazes me.

Sadly inclement weather forced a change of venue for the culminating event on Sunday . The original idea was to have the mandalas floating on the river adjacent to the offices of the San Antonio River Authority. There was a nice grassy area to relax on, as well as a paved circular overlook on which dancers and musicians might perform. The rain plan was implemented, and the event was moved to the second floor of Building B at the Blue Star Arts Complex where Deborah’s studio is located. I projected the film (with the assistance of Trey Cunningham) onto the outside wall of the facing building until the rain began again, and we moved the projection inside.

The event was beautiful, moving, and well-attended. It was an honor and a privilege to be involved in this project.

The Mandala Healing Arts Project was generously supported by the San Antonio Department for Culture and Creative Development.

Writers in Communities is a long-running program of Gemini Ink which takes professional writers and places them into schools, community centers, etc, as an important part of their literary outreach. This is a little promotional video I did for them to highlight a reading which was the culmination of part of the WIC program.

This is the third year I’ve done this. Bulk-loaded 12 months of images from my Instagram feed into a video editor and spit out a year of memories. For some reason they didn’t land onto the timeline in chronological order. Oh, well. I love making these years in review. I, mostly, fear I fritter my life away, with not direction, no plan. But at least when I look back over a year with beautiful images of interesting projects, unplanned excursions, and warm friends, I feel some vague sense of, well, I guess vindication for living such an irresponsible life. (This song is “Shut Up,” by Posse. I love their sound.)