Microscope is pleased to present an evening of live expanded cinema performance by Dallas-based artist Michael A. Morris.
An artist working primarily with film, video and expanded cinema, Morris will be premiering a new performance "A Chorus of Black Voids Sings In Rays of Unseeable Light", intended as "a study in media ontology and the ritual space of cinema" involving 16mm dual projection, video projection, analog video synthesis, and custom software.
Most of Morris' performances involve multiple 16mm film projection used alongside current digital technologies, set in communication so that each simultaneously influences the other, causing visual variations in a vicious circle. Morris will also be performing two works from his ongoing performance series "Hermeneutics" that apply the hermeneutical principles to multi-projection, with text and raw visual materials that are “interpreted" and reprocessed live through closed-circuit camera systems and feedback techniques.
Morris will be available for Q&A following the performances.
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Michael A. Morris is an artist and educator based in Dallas, Texas. His work responds to the rapid changes in how moving images are created and experienced in the 21st century, affirming the traditional space of experiencing cinema while also exploring the implications of new media. He has performed and screened his films and videos at museums, galleries, microcinemas, and film festivals internationally, including events at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, The International Symposium of Electronic Art in Vancouver, Oak Cliff Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Texas Biennial. Morris teaches at several institutions throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth area and curates programs around the region regularly, including the Dallas Medianale and as cofounder/programmer for Spectacle Society, a microcinema collective of artists, filmmakers, and scholars. He is also a regular visualist at Dallas Ambient Music Nights, a monthly showcase of experimental music in the D/FW area. Residencies include Vermont Studio Center and the Signal Culture Artist In Residence Program, among others.
Program:
Second Hermeneutic
Performance with 2x16mm projection, analog video signal as audio, 2013
The second in a series of works that explore the nature of interpretation. In this case, a pair of 16mm projections are overlapped while being captured by an HD video camera. The analog component signal is fed into an audio mixer without any further filtering. All audio in the piece is produced by the camera's output. The video waveform is manipulated by the film projection to produce a real-time, synaesthetic cinematic experience using the artifacts of one medium interpreting another as raw material.
Third Hermeneutic
Performance with 2x16mm projection, custom software, 2014
The third work in the continuing series of expanded cinema performances exploring the hermeneutical process as it might be applied to cinema and technology. In this entry, the text-based filmic image is overlaid with a digital video projection that is controlled by custom software. The hybrid moving image is re-interpreted by the computer to control immersive audio synthesis. The viewer is questioned about her relationship to history, meaning-making, and cinematic experience.
A Chorus of Black Voids Sings In Rays of Unseeable Light
Performance with 2x16mm projection, analog video synthesis, and custom software, 2017
A study in media ontology and the ritual space of cinema in which we sit together in the darkness. Witness the physical presence of film becoming an absence and that absence becoming light. See and hear the echo of frames becoming signals becoming numbers becoming a point of light in the darkness.