Category Archives: Performance

Always Say Yes to Dancing Barefoot in a Fountain

December 24, 2014Art, Dance, Filmmaking, Performance, Projection, San AntonioREB

I’m finally starting to get settled after Echo. One of the problems with doing performance gigs where I use my computer for projections is that my whole work area (home/studio) becomes completely savaged, with much of my stuff moved off-site. Sure, I tote my laptop with me to the performance venue and then back home, but there are all the other things that get unplugged and shuffled about. This time around one of my tables was removed (it’s a very handy adjustable DJ table). And the external video card which allows me to use all these three computer monitors was away. My audio interface, also elsewhere. And even afterwards, with everything back home, I’ve been too lazy to reconfigure the whole array. But finally, over the weekend, I have my work station back in shape.

So now I have all sorts of diversion to keep me from doing all of the projects hissing for my attention. I spent several hours this morning with Ableton Live video tutorials. Also, I migrated my website from www.rebosse.com to erikbosse.com (my namesake domain came back on the market, and I snapped it up).

What I really need to be doing is to edit the footage from the other day when Amber, Charles, Eric, and Adan wandered around downtown, staging impromptu dance performances as part of Amber’s “Taken In Arms” project. They were dancing. I was shooting.

Then there’s the Mandala Healing Arts Project, which Deborah is running. I’m on board to create a series of videos to be informed by the participants. Deborah and I should be busy working on storyboards. Maybe Saturday.

I can’t forget the promotional video for the San Antonio Dance Umbrella. It should be simple and short. But last week I interviewed about ten people. There’s a lot of information to sift through. (And, I believe I need to do a final interview.)

Gemini Ink is expecting a finished edit soon from an event they had several days back which I shot.

Also, Serpientes y Escaleras. This is a play I need to start writing. The script is due the second week in January.

But, ’tis the season for procrastinators. This holiday period (for good or bad) is a nice time to hide from the world and all those pesky responsibilities.

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Taken In Arms is a portable, modular dance work created by Amber Ortega-Perez. She work-shopped a portion of the piece back in 2013 (I believe) at the W-I-P. At some point she asked if she could include me in a grant proposal. I love Amber and the wonderful work she creates, so of course I responded with an enthusiastic “yes!” The grant she was after was from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio. Back in late January of this year it was announced that she had won the grant in the dance category. My role in the project was to create a film of some of the portions; provide live video projection work during those performances in suitable venues; and to provide some documentation of the process and presentations.

We jumped into things very quickly. In February we shot some scenes of dance at Mission San Juan, and also near the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. The first performance with dance and projection was at the Blue Star Arts Complex on March 8th for the Artist Foundation’s MAP (Moveable Art Party). I also included part of Taken In Arms as one of my rotating community artist portions of my play, Tales of Lost Southtown, staged during March. There was another short performance during W-I-P Créme, held back in the spring at Say Sí. (There was also a staging of one of the modules for the 8×8 showcase at Jump-Start in June, but it didn’t involve any video work.) In late September we took the piece on the road and staged some of it at the 254 Dance Festival in Waco.

On Friday (Dec. 19th) we closed the project with some impromptu public appearances (though I’m encouraging Amber to have a wrap-up event so as to squeeze out a bit of media coverage). The performers have changed over the months for various reasons. Friday, we were Amber, Charles, Eric, and Adan. Amber’s son, Topi, was there with his violin to provide music. I had my trusty C100 on a monopod. We began at HemisFair Park, hitting two sites. Next, we headed to Main Plaza, where the dancers took off their shoes and began rehearsing in one of the fountains. It was a perfect day. Blue skies and in the 70s. I also took off my shoes so that I could be in the fountain with them as they performed. I always like shooting in water. Three other locations we hit before the end of the day was a courtyard at the Southwest School of Art, the roof of the Radius Center, and the River Walk side of the Tobin Center.

Here are some screenshots from the day. I’m experimenting with some color correction schemes.

I’m glad I was allowed to play with all the people involved in Taken In Arms. Some I’ve worked with before, others were completely new to me. And it’s always encouraging to leave a project wanting to work with all involved in the future. Thank you so much, Amber Ortega-Perez, Charles Perez, Jenny Been Franckowiak, Eric Flores, Adan Alarcon, and Laura Beth Rodriguez.

Echo

December 18, 2014Art, Filmmaking, Performance, ProjectionREB

It might have been back in January of this year as I was pulling my trash can to the curb when my neighbor shouted to me, “Erik, congratulations on winning those Artist Foundation awards!” I was a bit taken aback because I hadn’t applied that year. But my neighbor was on the board of the Artist Foundation and should know best. I was fairly sure that one of the awards she was speaking of had been given to Amber Ortega-Perez. Amber had mentioned that she was placing my name on her application as a collaborator. But, what else? I eventually learned that Julia Langenberg, the aerialist, had also attached me to her application.

The project with Amber (“Taken in Arms”) began several months back. It’s a series of modularly devised inter-connected dance pieces. My contribution changes, depending on the location. I’m either filming the movements, or I’m providing the projection of live camera work as well as pre-recorded material. Amber has one last iteration of Taken in Arms to be staged in five locations throughout the day this Friday (yikes! that’s tomorrow!) around downtown San Antonio.

I’ve worked with Amber in one way or another for at least five years (I shot her 2009 performance of The Willing), and so we had already formed a working relationship and a sense of one another’s aesthetics. And, really, I don’t do work-for-hire (which is one of the reasons I’m always poor). I prefer working with people whom I’ve built a mutual mesh of trust and respect. However, I’d seen Julia’s work at Luminaria, the W-I-P, and the Guadalupe, so I had some idea of what I was getting into. The real sticking point was the venue in which the work would be staged. Julia’s studio was inside an event facility which used to be Jump-Start Performance Co., before the entire Blue Star “arts” complex went to shit, and Jump-Start was forced out. I mentioned my general sour attitude to Julia, but told her I’d rise above my petty animus and commit to the project.

Echo evolved into a fairly large production of six aerialists, six musicians, a lighting designer / board operator, and a video projection crew of two.

Putting aside the (very considerable) artistry of all involved, one of the best things about the experience was to see the solid work-ethic demonstrated by Julia and her aerialists. Also, Jaime and his musicians. I must confess that I’ve become terribly discouraged by the flaky nature of so many of the people I’ve meet in the film and theater scene in town. But, for the most part, Echo was a smoothly run production with some wonderful people. It was also beautiful.

My part in this managed to escalate each time I opened my mouth. Usually saying something like, “Yeah, we can do that.”

There’s a reason most of these visually sumptuous A/V presentations in town are staged by professional companies with scads of cutting-edge equipment and a brace of well-trained crew members. It can get fairly complicated. True, you can do amazing things with a laptop and a few consumer devices, but just about every new device you need will also need several other devices to make it play nice with all the other tech. (“What’s that you say? You wanna run a GoPro video signal into your MacBook? You’ll need this Blackmagic box. It’s a steal at only $150. Oh, and it doesn’t come with the ThunderBolt cable. You’ll need one of those. Only $50.”)

This is one of the reasons I pulled in Trey Cunningham. He has much more experience in doing this. He also had projectors to rent. But, mostly, I wanted an opportunity to work with him.

We ended up using: four short-throw video projectors, one DVD player, two MacBook Pros, a Matrox TripleHead2Go, an HDMI wireless transmitter/receiver, a GoPro, a Panasonic DVX, a Blackmagic UltraStudio recorder, a Korg Nano Kontrol, and a Belkin thunderbolt dock; the data was sent over various cables such as SVGA, ethernet, coaxial, and of course that HDMI wireless transmitter; the software used was Modul8, Resolume, and SIGMASIX Syphoner. And because of the nature of the venue (the less said about that the better), I was breaking down everything except the projectors and the data cables every night after rehearsals and performances. The upside to this, is you develop a deeper understanding of the tech and (at least for me) an increased level of confidence if anything starts to go awry.

It was the most involved and kludged-together setup I’ve yet had to devise. And because of that, I learned quite a bit.

Here are some stills taken from the video documentation shot by Destiny Mata.

I had fun shooting some of the textures which I ran through Resolume. I used my motorized Kessler slider to shoot closeup tracking footage of brown rice, lentils, split peas, and various dried beans. I also clamped a GoPro to one of the aerial apparatuses (the double halo) to get some dynamic footage of Teddy spinning above ground. I employed After Effects for some of the animation. And I used Motion’s optic flow for the poor man’s morphing effects.

Now, off to the next series of projects….

Teddy and the GoPro

December 2, 2014Art, Dance, Filmmaking, Movies, Performance, Projection, San AntonioREB

A version of this found itself into the over-all video design for Julia Langenberg’s Echo, an evening of aerial dance with live music (composed by Jaime Ramirez) and live video projection (provided by me) which was staged in a Blue Star venue on December 11, 12, 13, 2014. The performer on the double halo is Elise “Teddy” Sipos. (I should point out that the music here is really sped up from Jaime’s score). The video was shot by using a GoPro mounted to Teddy’s apparatus. I composed the layers in Resolume and then exported the video. I like the shifting images of wood to convey a sense of vertigo.

Kerrville’s Zombie Infestation

November 6, 2014Art, Filmmaking, Performance, ProjectionREB

I’m presently in a state of low level anxiety because of all the projects I have initiated, and others which I have committed to. This is all compounded by the fact that none are, as yet, terribly pressing, so I just keep letting much of these things slide, trying not to think about the wave which will crash sooner or later.

One of the bigger projects is Echo, a performance work being created by a San Antonio-based aerialist. I was somewhat taken aback when I learned some months ago that I had been attached to her Artist Foundation grant proposal. I am expected to provide video design and such.

With these sorts of presentations, I find myself spending dozens of hours just trying to figure out the best manner to set up the tech. We’re talking about live media manipulation, live camera feeds (probably two), multiple projectors (perhaps as many as four), and a fair amount of projected pre-recorded material. I’ve been trying to find the best way to get a camera signal to my laptop which I’d prefer to have set up at the back of the venue. A wireless HDMI transmitter sounds nice. My hope is to place a GoPro up on a rigging in the high ceiling and down to my computer. I’ll have to compress the signal with a BlackMagic encoder. But now another problem. My Mac Book Pro has only one Thunderbolt port. I need this to bring in the wireless signal. But the port is already being used for my output to the projectors. Now I could buy a new computer (those new MBPs have two ports), but I’m already pissing away tons of money into wireless transmitters, encoder dongles, and cables. So, I’m experimenting with networking two MBPs together and use a Syphon program to import the camera images into my VJ software. What an ordeal. So, once I get the whole workflow figured out, I can start shooting and editing the imagery.

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I had hoped that by now I would have wrapped work on the San Antonio segment of Gustavo Stebner’s newest Wappo project (a short web series to help promote a feature film). The other week we shot a couple days of scenes on downtown streets, a makeup studio, a River Walk restaurant, at a magician’s sideshow act, and at a cabin on some zombie-infested ranch outside of Kerrville. At some point in the weeks ahead we’ll pick up the scene with the San Antonio Film Commissioner. Drew had been unavailable earlier because he was in China, which is, of course, a great excuse.

Below are a few screen captures:

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Back in March just before the opening of my play, Tales of Lost Southtown, one of my co-stars, Pamela, gave me a little present. It was a Mexican version of Snakes and Ladders (or, properly, Serpientes y Escaleras) which she had picked up at Papa Jim’s Pet Shop and Botanica over on S. Flores. I loved the pastel illustrations of the game board, they had a style very reminiscent of those iconic Lotería cards.

I decided to create a play around the game. So, with Pam as a co-lead artist on this, we will produce it with Jump-Start Performance Co. in March of 2015. Laurie Dietrich will direct. She will also be helping in the writing of the script. It will be a devised work, created collaboratively by the cast. We’ve already begun to build the work. Expect to hear more about Jump-Start’s Serpiente’s y Escaleras in the weeks ahead. It will be fun, somewhat dark, and very strange.

Oscuridad

August 17, 2014Filmmaking, Performance, Projection, San AntonioREB

Grant Writing

June 17, 2014Art, Performance, WritingREB

I’ve been having these ongoing talks with the San Antonio River Authority for maybe two months. It was a bit confusing at first. There’s the San Antonio River Foundation, which is the non-profit arm of SARA (San Antonio River Authority), and it was through them that I first began interacting. This is because I have a friend who works for the Foundation. This is how these things usually begin. You know someone who knows someone.

My first plan was to find out how I might gain access to a portion of the river down by Mission Espada to mount a performance work with projection and dancers. I was gently steered towards using a plot of land which is slated to become Confluence Park (near the Mitchell Street bridge). I was a bit hesitant, but the more I learned, the more interesting the possibilities became.

The larger event with be called something like The River Fest. I’m not sure the full name has been worked out. It will begin at noon and last until nine at night. There will be art, and arts education projects. There will be food trucks. Bands. And when the sun sets, the project I am working on will be presented. I believe I gave some sort of vague working title such as “River: Giver of Life.” I have a basic idea of how I want the work to unfold. Now I need to reach out to the choreographers I have in mind. Shoot and edit several sequences. And through an equitable and, I hope, fun collaborative process, give shape to the whole piece. It will be a Jump-Start-At-Large performance art piece.

They have a good team at the River Authority/Foundation, who are planning some wonderful events to engage the public, with an emphasis on environmental responsibility.

I had a good meeting yesterday with the River Authority and I feel that things are well on track for a great event. The Confluence Park festival will be September 13.

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The other thing that has been dominating my time lately is grant writing. The San Antonio Department for Culture and Creative Development provides city funding to non-profit arts organizations. The process has changed dramatically this year. All of the organizations who have enjoyed previous funding will take a major hit. The funding amounts will be cut. And the percent of the grants which recipients are awarded will need to be matched by a greater percentage than ever before. So, I have been putting in long hours with other members of Jump-Start to get this massive grant in before the deadline. A wise decision, because it seems that the website where all of the grant language and support files are to be uploaded is buggy and quite inelegant. After fighting with the website last night for several hours, I’ve finally concluded that it’s a bit more stable than I initially thought, but it’s still a fucking mess. (There’s an added problem that some of the other arts organizations have been, unintentionally, spreading misinformation. I need to stop listening to this sort of hearsay, because I keep forgetting how appallingly technologically illiterate are so many arts administrators). Anyway, the deadline is, I believe, Friday. Jump-Start’s self-imposed deadline was supposed to have been last night. If we get all this submitted today (which is the current plan), we will be well ahead of the curve.

And then the wait begins.

I’m not the only one in the organization who is nervous. Because we have moved to a much smaller space, and because of a few other challenges, we will be requiring a smaller amount of funding this year from the city than we have requested in perhaps over a decade. But the truth is, we really need every penny we’re asking for. There is no guarantee we will get the full requested amount (or, well, anything—though this, I have been told, is very unlikely). It’s frustrating to me because in spite of recent challenges, we have presented a large amount of programming, including quite a few events which we have added to our season in addition to our original proposed performance plan presented for the previous funding cycle.

Okay. This coffee cup is empty. Time to head over to the studio and see if we can’t get that grant finished.

Freezer-Full of Atrocities

June 15, 2014Art, Fiction, PerformanceREB

I’m sitting here Sunday morning drinking coffee and making some hardboiled eggs. I’m also waiting on a phone call from someone who wants me to help on some sort of creative project. I understand that there is money involved. These are things I dread. I hate to tell people no. It is a huge problem in my life. I’m slowly learning to be firm. It has been my habit of telling people who I’m not keen to work with “maybe” again and again, so that eventually they will decide to disengage. Yes, I said that there’s money involved. I hate when the first thing mentioned about an art project is money. It never goes well. From a position of motivation, money is a killer. At least for me.

Who knows, maybe this guy will win me over. I’ve never met him, and maybe, just maybe, there’s a sliver of room in my upcoming wall-to-wall series of projects between now and March, 2015. But the thing is, these projects are all (with one or two exceptions) with people whose aesthetic and character I know and like and respect. Most are friends.

So, here are the ground rules (or, they should be the ground rules, if I weren’t such a weenie). I’ve lived in San Antonio now for a decade. If you’re a local artist (in any discipline) and our paths haven’t crossed, I want to know why. You don’t know who I am? I don’t know who you are? Well, I throw my net pretty fucking wide. Maybe you’ve recently awoken from a coma? Perhaps have been released from prison? No? Really? If you’re just getting into a creative career, or you’ve recently moved to town, I completely understand. Otherwise, take a number, because there are so many brilliant, community-spirited artists who I am dying to work with—and many have said yes when I’ve asked, or, better, they have reached out to me because they like my work; and, best of all, so many of these collaborations are already falling into place.

Strangers with promises of money and grand ideas they’ve taken to label “art” is one of the main reasons I unplugged myself from the San Antonio film “community.” Too many gormless individuals with dollar signs in their eyes and not one iota of aesthetic. To be less dramatic, I don’t feel we share the same values.

And it suddenly occurred to me that today is Father’s Day. I am reminded that my unreasonable and irresponsible approach to life will most likely mean that I will die poor—perhaps even poorer than I am at the moment, if that’s possible—and that these behaviors of mine which result in financially poor choices were most likely learned from my father. Though I doubt if he were alive, the either of us would think twice about these decisions. His or mine.

So, I sip my coffee and wait on a phone call for a potential paying gig I plan on wriggling free from, under the assumption it won’t be fun. (And, I could be wrong. And maybe this person has no interest in working with ME.) I check on the eggs and return to making notes for the dozen other projects I have in the works between now and March of 2015 which I’m fairly confident will be quite fun, though not so financially rewarding.

[Later edit: Oh, yeah. The guy never called.]

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Jump-Start has begun a series of performances for the months of June. Cafe du Jump: 8 x 8. Eight nights of eight, eight minute performances on an eight by eight foot stage. Admission $8. Performances begin at 8pm. You get the picture.

My offering is a performance piece titled “A Freezer-Full of Atrocities.” It has been changing each week. For week two, I brought a couple of company members on stage to help out. I also added some video projection. I’d like week three and week four to each become more complex and layered. For last night and Friday night I was also doing tech. So I had to set the lights, audio, and begin the video before climbing down from the tech booth and getting on to the stage. But, the truth is, we are all doing multiple tasks.

Also, I was asked by fellow company member Pamela Dean Kenny to write a monologue for her. I asked her if she had any ideas. “I do. How about an eight year old girl giving a Ted Talk on silverfish?” I can so do that! And so I did. She was perfect!

Two more weekends. I wonder if I can convince the rest of the company to extend the 8 x 8 through July.

Ambrosio

June 6, 2014Fiction, Performance, WritingREB

“Ambrosio” was a short monologue I created for Pamela Dean Kenny for Jump-Start’s 8 x 8 showcase. She asked me if I could write an eight minute piece where an eight year old girl gives a Ted Talk on the subject of Silverfish. Absolutely, I said.

Here is” Ambrosio.”

AMBROSIO

(A stagehand comes on stage unrolling a length of string from the backstage area. The string ends at the center of the stage. The stagehand walks off. A woman enters. She carries a little box and walks along the string like it were a tightrope. She comes center stage and looks out.)

Silverfish. I love that word. That way it feels in the mouth when you say it. Silverfish. The way it tastes! Silverfish. Go ahead. Slow and soft like you’re whispering it to a baby. Silverfish. When I told my mom I wanted a silverfish, she thought about it. And guess what? She said yes! So we went to the pet store. I was so excited. We went to Papa Jim’s on that street where we buy our tamales. But she took me to the fish section. I told her a silverfish isn’t a fish. “But, here’s one,” she said, pointing to a big one swimming around. “And those are also silver,” she said, tapping on another tank. “These are little, you can get two.” That’s when I realized my mother isn’t very smart. I think she thought a silverfish is like a goldfish, just cheaper. When she finally realized what I meant, she just rolled her eyes and told me that they were pests. Silverfish. But that was fine with me. I’m a pest too. That’s what they say.

Silverfish. They are closely related to the very first creatures to emerge from the oceans. Their Latin name is Lepisma. That’s fun to say, too. Lepisma.

I saw my first Silverfish when I was sitting in bed reading. It was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This frisky fellow wiggled across the page and just stopped right on top of a question mark. He sat there, staring up at me. I moved my finger in close, and he took off, down into the valley between the pages and up to the top of the book. He went over the edge, but I found him again on the next page, skittering across that picture of the Dodo bird with the walking stick. He took off across my bedspread and I followed him down to the floor. We had many adventures that day before he disappeared into a crack at the back of my closet. I never saw that one again. That silverfish.

He’s not the same silverfish as this one in my box. No. His name is Ambrosio. My mother says it sounds like the name of a gigolo. But I don’t know what that is. I found Ambrosio in that little bookstore in the basement of the library. He was just sitting there, on top of a used coloring book in an open box on the floor. His antennae twitched but he didn’t move as I scooped him up. I put him in the little pill bottle where I keep my medicine, and no one noticed when I snuck him right out the front door.

Silverfish. They are arthropods. Like insects, spiders, and shrimp. It’s my opinion that were silverfish big enough, they’d taste as good as shrimp. And you want to know something? My silverfish is the biggest in the world. Ambrosio’s the size of my pinky finger. I’d take him out of the box, but, you know, he doesn’t like all the lights. Or all the people. They’re very shy creatures, you know. Silverfish.

They say silverfish eat books and old photographs. That may be true. But my Ambrosio eats nothing but french fries. One will last him for a long time.

My mother teaches art for the kids at the State Hospital. And one afternoon I wandered over to the gymnasium to play with Ambrosio. The place was deserted. I unrolled a length of string all the way down the basketball court. I’d taught Ambrosio to walk along a string on the floor. It might curve, or go straight, but he’d always follow it. Maybe on the left, right, or on top of it. But he’d always follow that string. I had it straight. On the floor from hoop to hoop. He did it in 27.5 minutes, without a break!

They say silverfish can live for a year without eating. I find that hard to believe. After crossing that floor, Ambrosio was famished. He put a big dent in a french fry that day!

That day was the first time I ever heard my mother say a kind word about Ambrosio. She said he was a very disciplined silverfish. Well, actually, she called him a bug. That’s a vulgar word. Bug. But I kept quiet about it. I let it slide. Silverfish. Much better than bug. Don’t you think?

I had been asking around about a book on silverfish. There must be some, right? One day this guy my mother was dating gave me a book. It was “The Care and Feeding of Your Golden Retriever.” But he’d put a piece of white tape over Golden Retriever and written Silverfish. Hilarious. It wasn’t a total waste. I mean, we did have a golden retriever. But a book wasn’t much help. I don’t know about you, but what do you do with a dog that doesn’t chase a ball or bark at the mailman anymore. If you ask me, he’s outlived his usefulness. But I guess people like having them around. Sleeping on a pillow in the corner.

There are whole sections in the library for dog books. But for silverfish, I had to research. I’d get a little sentence here, paragraph there. I do know that a silverfish can live as much as eight years. Not bad. But I can’t figure out how old Ambrosio was when I saved him from the library.

He still seems pretty lively. I think I’ll teach him to fetch a tiny little ball. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it, Ambrosio? People and their dogs. Silly, right? I mean, when you have a silverfish.

Well, my time seem to be up. I’d better go back into my box.

(She turns and follows the string backstage.)