Animal Collective Seducing Montreal 5/15/09

The multi-sensory experience of live music.




Animal Collective started their show Friday night LOUD. loud sound pulsing and flashing lights felt jarring at first. This seemed quite contrary to the first time I saw them at Great American Music Hall in San Fran a few years ago.
Bands become louder as become bigger? Somethin like that.

I'm overheating because of the loudness- music gets louder, harsh lights flash brighter, look around, crowded, no way out, sweating neck, PANIC

.... sitting on the sidewalk outside for a cool down.
Upstairs.
On the upper stairwell in front of a screen overlooking the stage. I could see about half of the stage here.

You see where I'm going. Screen AND live. perspective perspective...

Well the screen quite disturbed me actually. I think it was hd. I could feel it looming over me and it was hard not to look. The better option for screens during performance is the kind of screen I've seen Radiohead play with. Rather than an -as close to perfect as possible- representation (also known as HD) of what's happening live, Radiohead had screens up of artistic bizarre close-up angles of the stage, manipulated, strangely colored. Lets suggest to the viewer another perspective, let's let them guess what's this? Let's inspire their curiosities with oddity in a manipulated shot of part of the action, perhaps. Not just simply give them an hd picture. No need for this, Metropolis. I'd rather just listen than have a view of an hd screen of live performance happening in front of me.

Here in the stairwell is when the show got better *hmm funny Montreal is noted for their stairwells. Katie says it's because back in the day during the building of the city (arrround 1850?) people wanted stoops. For example in NY the stairs are on the inside of buildings, but in Montreal they're outside. Which means there are stoops.
What an idea! Oh how stoops add to a city in a Jane Jacobsian type way.



Swamp sounds verberate throughout the audience. "There's a lot of reverb up here" says [I think it was] Avey Tare.
"No shit." says the dude next to me, commenting on the load of electronics on stage.

Mutually exclusive sounds become inclusive
= love?= connection? I always come back to love= connection.


2 sounds become three three become four four become five
five become one
All sounds one, we're ALL one. The audience feels it too.



possibly
describable
only
in
poetry
?

trickle tickle, wave, smooth, expand, involve, hum, shriek, cover, arrest, embolden embody empower, birth, surround, bloom boom, feather flutter heighten explain express understand, fall, breathe, rest

all the verbs that go with sound
The fact that I feel so much nostalgia right now has to do with this.

The reverb seduces me.. it's a trick?

Sway me bring me lift me out of my box lets go. Later, put me back. or not.

The more I experience Animal Collective the more I hear the music in everyday life. Individual sounds work into each other, play off one another, All building into something eventually......

Encyclopedia Pictura

This weekend at the San Francisco International Animation Film Festival, my eyes were opened to a new world!
It is that of Encyclopedia Pictura. EP is an animating collective of three young men from Santa Cruz who are currently enjoying a lot of attention since their animation and production for Bjork's 'Wanderlust.' View here.


-Darren Rabinovitch, Sean Hellfritsch, and Isaiah Saxon of EP, and Sean Uyehara, Programmer of SFIAFF

Encyclopedia Pictura are definitely on top of their game. As designers /producers/ artists, they mix live action, digital animation, stop motion animation, and also they do stereoscopic 3D. Their work proves mastery of the latest animation technology (they use Maya, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, and After Effects), as well as a well rounded sense of art. I think they must operate with %100 creativity and %100 tech skills, which is amazing to think about.

Because they are an independent cohesive unit, creating ground-breaking art, the three are reminiscent of a rock band- only they're animators. Music isn't the only situation where a small team of people can collaborate on an artistic vision and be successful and recognized for it!
*Note- This is also interesting considering our apparent switch to a visual culture these days*

The Animation Fest showed a series of their different short works, including Grow, Grizzly Bear: Knife, Bjork, Born Like Stars, Micro/Macro, Tactical Advantage, Seventeen Evergreen, Zion I: So Tall, Ballistic Jaw Propulsion of, and Spore.

I feel somewhat speechless trying to describe any of the pieces in words, because that's just it, their work is not about words but rather visuals complimenting sound. You can probably get that sense from watching Wanderlust. I can say however that when watching I was thinking about the idea of humans/earth as one. I kept noticing there seemed to be an emphasis on the beauty of (sometimes personified) natural non-human things (Watch Ballistic Jaw, Born Like Stars).

When the pieces were over and it was time for q and a, Founder Sean Uyehara had some news for us. The three guys hadn't arrived yet! Uyehara began to speak about their work when his phone rang. They were on the other line in the car on the way, so Uyehara held his phone to the microphone and we asked questions through him until they walked through the door to inspired applause. They had been sailing and got held up...

When asked about their vision, EP said, "We'd love to give people a sense of wonder through an experience that's not word based." I say mission accomplished.

Someone in the audience asked about if there's an underlying world view/ perspective that their work is made with. "It's an ecological perspective understanding the balance of all complex systems...Deep ecology," one of them responded (which means my thought of humans/earth as one sort of fits).

Even though Bjork offered them another music video deal, and also Animal Collective, a band they said they'd always wanted to work with (and also one of my favorite bands) apparently they're not doing music videos anymore. They didn't say why not.

Monarch Movie

Here is a movie I made intro to video production at USF with Samara Halperin last fall. It features music by Animal Collective, Mark Mothersbaugh (from the Life Aquatic) and Colleen, various butterfly footage from youtube, and voices by Dan and Kim Bartlett. enjoy!