Audiovisual team Gail Priest & Sam James
"Sounds created imaginative worlds, images on-screen entered waking dreams and a shifting sonic depth of field immersed us
into a multi-faceted sensual experience.” RealTime 80
Sam & Gail perform live audiovisuals using laptops, midi controllers and live cameras. The performances are semi-improvised, redesigned specifically for each site.
We aim to create an audiovisual experience that is saturating and sensuous. Aesthetically driven, our live presentations explore the porous barriers between abstraction and representation in order to approach resonances of the subconsious.
View a video excerpt from a 15 minute compostion created for Immersion: Electrical Empathy, a residency and performance at Performance Space, CarriageWorks, Sydney June 2007.
A sampler DVD of more work is available to be mailed on request.
GAIL PRIEST
I am interested in releasing the hidden melodies and broken beats found in raw sonic material. By stretching, looping and manipulating samples augmented by instrumental and vocal improvisations I creates soundscapes which aim to capture the atmospheric essences of places, dreams and memories.
Gail performs electro-improvisation at national events and festivals such as Liquid Architecture and the NOW Now festival. A large part of her work is in composition for performance and dance, frequently performing the scores live. She has worked extensively with dancer Martin del Amo on his last 4 works, including a tour to the UK in 2006. She has created soundscapes for screened and installation video works and has been commissioned to make radiophonic pieces for the Australian Broadcast Corporation, where she also undertook a 3 month fellowship in 2001. She has contributed tracks to several CDs: Transit by Lawrence English (Cajid), Melatonin - Various (Room40) and the Liquid Architecture 2006 sampler. Her debut CD Imaginary Conversations in Reverberant Rooms was released in 2006 on her own label MetalBitch, and was included in Transmediale 2007, Berlin. She has also curated and produced media art and sound festivals, events and exhibitions including Electrofringe (2003/4).
In 2007 Gail & Sam produced Immersion: Electrical Empathy, a week long audiovisual intensive collaborating with eight artists from around Australia. Excerpts from the performance are included on the DVD.
SAM JAMES
With the intrusion of the constructed world on nature, hybrid forms evolve. Amongst the digital realm forms can take any escapist direction; digitally they are remade from old forms. I am trying to draw subconscious relationships between ordinary objects and places. It is what I watch or look for in any kind of art or entertainment—a fusion of the escapist dream with something from the real world. An object is attracted to an environment, and environment with another environment, an object with another object. Objects can never just be inanimate.
Sam James works as a projection designer for many contemporary performance companies and independent dancers in Sydney. He has worked mainly with the Performance Space as this is the strongest base of cross-disciplinary artists in Australia. His practice as a dance filmmaker has flourished from 2000-2007, with Nun’s Night Out (choreographer Julie-Anne Long) winning Best Australian Dance Film at the Australian Dance Awards. He works alongside of high profile companies such as Sydney Dance Company and The Australian Ballet as well as with radical B-Grade performance group Frumpus, Japanese trained, site-specific, Body Weather artists in De Quincey Company and live improvisation in the NOW Now Festival (2006). His main area of focus with the Shimmerpixel/Snagglepussy collaboration is to pursue improvised video as a performance element rather than a dormant aesthetic experience. His main techniques are in animated collage, movement of objects and the derivatives of the abstract image into perceptual clarity. www.shimmerpixel.blogspot.com
Technical Specifications
Sound
All sets available for stereo or multispeaker presentations
Sound system: 2 or 4 speakers with amplifiers, subwoofer
& mixing desk
Video
Video/Data Projector
Dark room
Video is projected onto a scrim (supplied by us)
in front of the performers
Contact
gail@snagglepussy.net
61 413 183 370
sam@dirtymouse.net
61 414 511 388
Quote by Tony Osborne, RealTime 80 www.realtimearts.net/article/issue80/8681