Graphic Film Score: Instructions for performers and instruments of Light and sound
Composed by Luis Macías — Interpreted & performed by OPTIPUS
In person only — Q&A follows the performance
Microscope is very pleased to welcome back to the gallery Spanish artist and filmmaker Luis Macías as well as New York-based film & sound collective OPTIPUS for an evening of visual and sonic performance.
In this in-person expanded cinema event, the performance is based on the “Graphic Film Score,” a score composed by Luis Macías and made entirely of 16mm film strips. These are to be interpreted, much like an orchestra interprets a musical score, by light and sound makers. This project for Macías is a reflection on the ideas of “filmmaker as musician” or “projector as instrument” and one that questions “cinematic concepts of free interpretation.”
Graphic Film Score will be interpreted and performed by the following members of the expanded cinema collective OPTIPUS:
Bradley Eros ›› 16mm film & loops / 35mm slides / foley
Jeanne Liotta ›› Overhead projector
Richard Sylvarnes ›› Sampler
Genevieve HK ›› Overhead projector with liquids
Lary Seven ›› Magic Lantern
Scott Kiernan ›› Tube camera and audio/video synthesizer
Ava Witonsky ›› Hand-held video
Linh Vu ›› hand-processed & hand-painted celluloid
Masami Tomihisa ›› Synthesizer
Mia Theodoratus ›› Harp
Thomas Dexter ›› prepared guitar
LeLe Dai ›› Bicycle / contact mics with shadow play
The score begins with a few indications or instructions for the performers, such as the following:
Each page is structured in 4 time lines of events.
Each one of the 4 time lines connects with one or several performers/instruments independently
The variations, forms, textures, defined in the time line, are the punctuation signs and indication elements of time, modulation, intensity, contrast, distortion and internal-external rhythm.
The reading has to be precise, but its interpretation is free.
A Q&A with the artists follows the performance.
Please note: Proof of Covid-19 vaccination and masks are required for entry to our events at this time.
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OPTIPUS is a nomadic group of chameleon artists, players & performers, composers & decomposers. We are cine-scientists in search of a laboratory, shape-shifting according to site-specific requirements. The group embraces the ephemeral cinema of unfixed forms and open composition. It is a magnetic field, derived from the psychic urge to build, via collective energy and desire, that also contains its opposite, the destructive impulse, seen in its wild sway towards the dangers of pure experimentation, obsolete media, and an attraction to aesthetic decay, technological destruction and failure. Optipus’s members emerge in myriad collaborations, producing works and events, soundtracks and invented instruments, video edits and film loops, and expanded cinema and immersive installations. Optipus has been seen at various venues including The Kitchen, Anthology Film Archives, The KnockDownCenter, The Parrish Museum, Participant Inc., New York University, MANA Contemporary, Microscope Gallery, Bobby Redd Project Space (The Church), Millennium Film Workshop and others. OPTIPUS uses (or misuses?) film projectors (35mm, 16mm, Super 8mm, R8) + slide projectors (35mm & magic lantern), overhead projectors, and video projection & cameras (hand-held, live recording & re-mixing), plus shadow play, liquid light, transparencies, gels, external lenses, loops, hand-processed & hand-painted celluloid, objects, foley, mirrors, mylar, contact mics, mobiles, synths, strings, percussion, samples, transistor radios, music boxes, toys, appliances, & mutable screens. . .
Luis Macías (Barcelona, Spain) is an artist, filmmaker and image composer. His pieces deal with the formal and spectral properties of the moving image, through the exploration of the cinematographic device itself and the photochemical nature of the medium. He is one of the most prominent Spanish filmmakers of the contemporary experimental scene. His films and pieces of expanded cinema have been shown in prestigious film, art and music festivals as well as art centers, museums and alternative spaces around the world. Macías has been part of collective exhibitions as well as individual. Also, he has collaborated with various artists, musicians and filmmakers in the creation of collective works. He is a co-founder and an active member of Crater-Lab, an independent laboratory for analog cinema, and alternates his art work with specialized teaching in experimental cinema and the exploration of analog formats.