24700

Chris Miller's 'Puss in Boots' is nominated for an Oscar. | Image: courtesy of Paramount

Early Tuesday morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for the 84th Annual Academy Awards, and CalArts alumnus Chris Miller (Film/Video 90) earned an Oscar nomination for directing DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots.

Miller competes with four other films in the Animated Feature Film category: A Cat in Paris by Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Feliciol; Chico & Rita by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal; Kung Fu Panda 2 by Jennifer Yuh Nelson; and Rango by Gore Verbinski.

In excerpts from his New York Times review, critic Stephen Holden writes:

“Puss in Boots” mixes it all up. Even more than in the “Shrek” movies, from which this likely candidate for a new animated franchise is spun off, it is a cheerfully chaotic jumble of fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters parachuted into a Spanish storybook setting. It also looks terrific: brighter, with a lot more visual pizzazz than the “Shrek” films. Even when the story loses its thread, the movie rewards your eye.

…There is much to admire. The movie’s most remarkable feature is a spectacular use of 3-D that raises the bar for a mainstream animated film. Avoiding the usual stereoscopic clichés, “Puss in Boots” often looks multidimensional, especially its action sequences.

And unlike the “Shrek” movies “Puss in Boots” doesn’t give you the slightly queasy feeling of being stranded at a Friars Club roast where the talk is peppered with inside show business jokes. The tone of the screenplay is more innocent, and the movie is apparently directed at a slightly younger audience. That’s all to the good.

The Academy Awards will be broadcast live on ABC at 7e/4p on Feb. 26, 2012.

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Video: “Like Powder to the Light” by Steve Horowitz, from the Stations of the Breath CD.

There’s a Musicircus coming to The Walt Disney Family Museum tomorrow (Saturday, Jan. 28)—just without the elephants.

Instead, the halls of the museum will echo with strains of CalArtian music throughout the day, in a Family Fun event coordinated by the museum and the San Francisco Chapter of the CalArts Alumni Association.

The first part of the day (1:30-5:30 pm) is inspired by John Cage‘s Musicircus (1967), an invitation for performers to assemble and play together. It’s a “happening” with multiple performances occurring simultaneously for new and unusual configurations.

John Cage wrote about the piece:

I have not made detailed directions for Musicircus. You simply bring together under one roof as much music (as many musical groups and soloists) as practical under the circumstances. It should last longer than ordinary concerts, starting at 7 or 8 in the evening, and continuing, say, to midnight. Arrange performers on platforms or within roped-off areas. There must be plenty of space for the audience to walk around. If you have more groups than places, make a schedule: Group 1 in Piace A from 7-9:30;  Group 23 in Place A from 9:45-midnight, etc. There should be food on sale and drinks (as at a circus). Dancers and acrobats.

The lineup of more than 30 acts, including a number of alumni, faculty and students, joined by well-known Bay Area performers. Yamaha has donated a Disklavier Mark III MIDI grand piano for the day to enable both in-house and remote performances throughout the afternoon. On the program are works by David Rosenboom, dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts, faculty members Vinny Golia, Michael Jon Fink, as well as Steve Horowitz (Music BFA 89), Kubilay Uner (Music MFA 91) and Stupid Man Suit, comprised of recent grads Mike Lockwood (Music MFA 11), Jake Rosenzweig (Music BFA 11) and Maxwell Gualtieri (Music BFA 11) and Matty Harris (Music MFA 10) and current music MFA student Ryan Parrish.

The afternoon performance marathon is free to the general public and designed to be kid-friendly, with film screenings from the CalArts and Disney archives, dance performances, educational workshops and hands-on fun during the day. The day wraps with a more adult gala concert from 6-9 pm.

CalArts Family Event
The Walt Disney Family Museum
104 Montgomery St., The Presidio of San Francisco
San Francisco
Saturday, Nov. 28
1:30-5:30 pm: John Cage’s Musicircus
6-9 pm: A CalArts Family Showcase Concert

The event performances are free to the public, but does not include museum gallery admission.

CalArts Winter Motion Graphics Show 2012 will be held on Jan. 27 at 8 pm in the Bijou Theater.

[View with PicLens]

Last week, 24700 posted about the winter residency of 20 Korean artists from Hongik University, in which a select group of upper-level motion graphics and animation students participated in a one-month residency at CalArts from Jan. 2-27, through a collaborative program between Hongik and CalArts’ Office of International Relations and CalArts’ Program in Graphic Design – Motion Graphics.

The intensive course, Design & Techniques of Motion Graphics, included field trips to Dreamworks and Disney Animation studios and a number of motion graphics studios. The residency culminates with a screening of the students’ music videos created at CalArts tomorrow night (Jan. 27) at 8 pm in the Bijou Theater, on the CalArts campus.

Several Hongik students shared their experience at CalArts:

“I really enjoyed the field trip to Dreamworks Animation and seeing their processes,” says Da-Hyeu Kim. “I would never get a chance to experience that in Korea.”

“I felt that the students here at CalArts have absolute artistic freedom,” said You-Kyung Kim. Classmate Sooyul Bae added, “I hope my friends in Korea can experience the program’s atmosphere.”

A Lunar New Year party and farewell follows the screening tomorrow night at the CalArts Coffee House Theater.

The stills from their work, above, demonstrate the tremendous diversity and range of visual vocabularies employed by the exceptional group of students.

Winter Motion Show 2012
CalArts Bijou Theater
Jan. 27, 8 pm
Free 

CalArts MFA Writing Program hosts a number of renowned authors this semester for its Visiting Artist Series, beginning Thursday at 7:30 pm with Canadian writer Gail Scott in Butler Building 4.

Scott’s new novel, The Obituary (Coach House) is a kind of ghost story with a narrator living on the top floor of a Montreal triplex, who may be a ghost herself. She’s haunted by her tap-dancing grandfather and the early 20th century Paris gendarme (cavalryman), who has a crush on him; her mother’s indigenous family; and Montreal quarry workers who, in the 1880s, frequented the Crystal Palace gardens—the remains of which sit below her apartment building.

While part whodunit, the book is more about the discovery of self and an exploration of who else may be speaking through us.

An excerpt:

To underscore how we are haunted by secrets
of others. Such as they colporting spite from The
Outers to rue Settler-Nun, Mile-End, QC. Further
absorbing under surface of community amenity, bitter
particles of those going there before, say, the Shale Pit
Workers! Floating up from burnt-down Crystal Palace,
whose rotting pylons still directly under. Where once
upon a time, when it not being used for smallpox
hospice, British officers used to hold their
balls.

They were rumoured not to like girls like me very much.
They also hated Indians. This is better documented.
By the end of our tale, we may likewise be dead —

The Obituary was named a finalist for the 2011 Grand prix du livre de Montréal (Montréal Book Prize). Scott’s other novels include My Paris, Main Brides and Heroine. She teaches Creative Writing at Université de Montréal.

The Visiting Artist Series, which is curated by Critical Studies faculty member Tisa Bryant, also includes the following authors and panel discussions:

• Feb. 2 at 7 pm – No Need to Perish: Tenacity & Indie Publishing with Two Dollar Radio, Kaya Press, Poets & Writers and Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency;
• Feb. 9 at 7:30 pm – Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
• Feb. 12 at 7 pm at REDCAT – The Magic of Solidarity: Shahrnush Parsipur and Suheir Hammad, with Persis Karim (presented in Collaboration with Art, Justice and Global Aesthetics: The Equity and Diversity Reading Series); and
• Feb. 16 at 7:30 – Melissa Buzzeo.

All events are held in BB4 unless otherwise noted.

Late CalArts faculty James Tenney's 'Having Never Written a Note for Percussion' (1971) will be performed by Danny Holt (Music MFA 06) in Room 3 of the Welcome Inn in Eagle Rock on Sunday. | Image: SASSAS

This Sunday (Jan. 29), the Society for the Activation of Social Space Through Art and Sound (SASSAS) transforms the Welcome Inn motel—located in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock— into “a six-hour tour through key moments in LA’s experimental music history” with Welcome Inn Time Machine. The free Pacific Standard Time event, which runs from 4 until 10 pm, features more than a dozen concurrent micro concerts in individual motel rooms, revisiting experimental works created in Southern California between 1949 and 1977.

Among the works presented are Bruce Nauman’s Violin Tuned D.E.A.D., John Cage’s Variations IV, Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations, CalArts faculty member Barry Schrader’s Lost Atlantis (excerpts) and the late CalArts faculty member James Tenney’s Postal Pieces. The duration of the concert series derives its length from the 1963 premiere performance of Cage’s Variations IV at UCLA.

Two CalArts-related highlights:

James Tenney’s Postal Pieces

James Tenney | Photo: Betty Freeman

Tenney’s series of 11 indeterminate scores composed between 1965 and 1971 were printed on post cards (“score cards,” as Tenney referred to them). Most of the 11 works were produced while Tenney taught at CalArts between 1971 and 1976. Several CalArts alumni are among the 13 musicians performing the work on Sunday.

In Tenney’s obituary for the Los Angeles Times in 2006, Mark Swed wrote, “To some extent, [Tenney] was the ultimate Western composer. He approached each new piece as an adventure, with the goal of discovering original territory and, if need be, taming some theoretical musical beast or acoustical bugbear.”

Currents Series

As part of the event, CalArts faculty member Barry Schrader presents a two-hour recording of electro-acoustic music studio works that were originally on the Currents series at the Theatre Vanguard between 1973 and 1978 in Los Angeles.

Image courtesy of Barry Schrader

In addition to Schrader’s piece, works by Pierre Schaeffer, Louis & Bebe Barron and Vladimir Ussachevsky are on the program in Welcome Inn’s Room 22, which runs continuously from 4-10 pm.

A full schedule of performances at the Welcome Inn can be found here.

Pacific Standard Time: Welcome Inn Time Machine
Welcome Inn Motel
1840 Colorado Boulevard, Eagle Rock
Jan. 29, 4-10 pm
Free

As previously posted, experimental classical/contemporary group wild Up presented a show of bird-themed pieces, Ornithology, in the two-story studio space of the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena on Jan. 14. Performing to a sold-out crowd, the show featured performances, arrangements and compositions by CalArtians.

The young, 24-member ensemble premiered new works by recent alumnus Chris Kallmyer (Music MFA 09) as well as faculty member Mark Menzies. Kallmyer’s work, this nest, swift passerine, utilized birdhouses with embedded speakers scattered around the room that emitted field recordings of birds, over which the ensemble played corresponding textures. Menzies piece, Double Tui, which is named after a New Zealand bird, included rain sticks, boom boxes, and some theatricality involving performers moving on and off stage.

Among the other bird-themed arrangements on the program were jazz legend Charlie Parker’s Bird of Paradise, arranged by Archie Carey (Music MFA 11), who stretched the opening chords of the famous tune into a microtonal soundscape. Richard Valitutto’s (Music MFA 11) arrangement of indie songwriter Andrew Bird’s Fake Palindromes was an amalgamation of Bird’s songwriting with the mindset of composer Oliver Messiaen’s gestural and harmonic writing.

With many CalArtian performers in the ensemble, two were featured during the evening.  In composer Brian Ferneyhough’s La Chute d’Icare [The Fall of Icarus], clarinet soloist Brian Walsh (Music MFA 08) played virtually non-stop through the 10-minute, physically-taxing composition. Ferneyhough’s complex music is extremely challenging to perform rhythmically and structurally.  Pianist Valitutto also performed a difficult work of Oliver Messiaen’s, Oiseaux exotiques [Foreign Birds], which was inspiration for his aforementioned Andrew Bird arrangement.

To read more about the compositions and arrangements, visit wild Up’s blog.

On Jan. 19, wild Up and its artistic director Christopher Rountree were featured on American Public Media’s Performance Today with Fred Child. Listen to the broadcast here.

Students from Hongik University in Korea participate in a CalArts course titled 'Techniques and Design in Motion Graphics.' | Photo: Scott Groller

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Earlier this month, 20 upper-level undergraduate students from Hongik University, a prestigious visual/design university in Seoul, South Korea, arrived in California for the first Intensive Winter Program at CalArts.  Coordinated by CalArts Graphic Design Program Co-Director Michael Worthington and Lisa Barr, Project Manager of the Office of International Relations, the selected students met rigorous requirements to participate in the intensive, during a four-week period (Jan. 2-27) between the Fall and Spring semesters.

The workshop, Techniques and Design in Motion Graphics, uses the music video format as a platform to explore a variety of concepts and techniques for motion graphics in broadcasting and cinema. In addition to Worthington, three faculty members from the industry—Daryn Wakasa, Chris Lopez and Taekyu Kim—are team-teaching the students, with four CalArts students serving as teaching assistants.

Upon completion of the program, the participating students receive three credits from CalArts, transferable to Hongik. Also included in the program are field trips to Prologue, Stardust and Brand New School motion graphics studios in Santa Monica, as well as Rhythm & Hues, DreamWorks Animation and Disney Animation. The intensive culminates in a screening of work created at CalArts in the Bijou Theater on Jan. 27 at 8 pm.

CalArts’ ongoing relationship with Hongik has strengthened within recent years. “More Hongik alumni are accepted to CalArts’ MFA programs than any other Korean university,” says Carol Kim, vice president for International Relations at CalArts. In addition, one of Hongik’s graphic design faculty members and former chair, Don Ryun Chang, is an MFA alumnus of CalArts (Art 83).

Next week, 24700 will showcase the work the Hongik students produced at CalArts.

Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national American theater organization that fosters communication among professional, community and university theaters, is in the midst of its 50th anniversary celebration. In July 2011, TCG launched its I am Theatre video series that raises awareness of the many creative and technical contributors to a theater production.

For the project, the group interviewed and filmed 50 theater artists, including actor Eric Begosian, playwright Lynn Nottage and Huntington Theatre Company’s Managing Director Michael Maso, and posted one new video weekly to the TCG website.

This week’s selected clip features director and CalArts theater faculty Chi-wang Yang (Theater/IM MFA 07), a founding member of Cloud Eye Control, a performance collective known for integrating technology, live theater, animation and music in its productions.

Yang—who explores issues of identity and physicality in both his theater and installation work—has been featured internationally, including at REDCAT, LACMA, Time-Based Arts Festival, Fusebox Festival, EXIT Festival (Paris), the Platform International Animation Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Havana International Film Festival and the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe.

In the above video segment, Yang talks about his work, influences and ensuring theater’s relevancy in the 21st century:

Theater can be incredibly relevant and powerful, but I think that is very much contingent on how much it is able to open up to include other kinds of art forms, aesthetics and art-making practices….ultimately, yes, I do want to consider myself a theater artist, but it’s not necessarily because I want to hold onto what theater is or has been, but it’s because I’m thinking about what theater can be.

Cloud Eye Control's 'Under Polaris' | Image: Courtesy of the Artists

Video: A compilation of some of Rachel Rosenthal’s performances

Legendary interdisciplinary artist and performer Rachel Rosenthal visits CalArts for a special performance of My Brazil tonight (Jan. 18) at 7 pm.

Working in collaboration with electronic percussionist and CalArts faculty member Amy Knoles, Rosenthal updates a work that was originally performed in 1979, about her coming-of-age as a French refugee in Brazil during WWII.

The latter version of My Brazil recently premiered (on her 85th birthday) during a Pacific Standard Time event in November.

Rosenthal is known for developing a performance technique that integrates “text, movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, inventive costuming, dramatic lighting and wildly imaginative sets into an unforgettable ‘total theater’ experience.” She was also a leading figure in the LA Women’s Art Movement in the 1970s, co-founding WomanSpace, among other projects.

A Q&A with Rosenthal and Knoles follows tonight’s performance.

Rachel Rosenthal’s My Brazil
Walt Disney Modular Theater
CalArts
7 pm
Free

This Saturday (Jan. 21), two jazz greats, drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath and pianist Art Lande, come together in a rare performance at CalArts. The musicians join CalArtian jazz faculty and alumni on stage at The Roy O. Disney Music Hall at 8 pm for a free concert.

Heath, who’s been described by AllAboutJazz.com as a “top hard bop-based drummer with an open mind toward more commercial styles of jazz,” has worked with legends including saxophonist John Coltrane and trombonist J.J. Johnson.

Lande, who is currently in residence at The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts during the Interim term (Jan. 17-20), has also had a stellar career, performing with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, trumpeter Woody Shaw and others. While he’s crafted numerous compositions throughout his career, Lande’s also known for his unusual and distinctive interpretations of popular and jazz standards.

Saturday’s first set features a four-movement piece performed by four different pianists, including Lande, CalArts Jazz Program Director David Roitstein and alumni Cathlene Pineda (Music MFA 11) and Rory Cowal (Music MFA 08).

“It’s sort of a round-robin performance with two pianos and four pianists,” says Cowal. “Beginning with one solo pianist, the next performer will enter the stage after some time and begin a duet. Eventually that first performer will leave and the second pianist will play a solo, and so on.”

The final set of the concert is dedicated to the late jazz drummer Eddie Marshall, a dear friend of Lande and Heath who passed away in September. The duo will play free improv, some standards and a few pieces of Marshall’s music.

Above, Heath performs with his trio at Duc des Lombards in 2008. Below, Art Lande and saxophonist Paul McCandless perform Virgil’s Brown Box.

Art Lande and Albert “Tootie” Heath, Special Guest Artists Concert
Roy O. Disney Music Hall, CalArts
Jan. 21, 8 pm
Free