October 31, 2017 — Due to visa processing delays stemming from current federal immigration policy, Ali Moini will not be able to enter the US for his performance on November 9th. To honor his absence, the set of My Paradoxical Knives will be installed in the EMPAC lobby on Nov. 9. Please join us at 7:30PM for a Skype conversation with Moini and collaborator Fred Rodriguez.

Drawing on Persian cultural tradition, Ali Moini's My Paradoxical Knives includes poetry by the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi and movements reminiscent of the Sufi whirling dervish. Diverging from this tradition, Moini performs in a costume made of straps that connect metal knives to his body like appendages or prostheses. As Moini spins and sings, the knives ascend and point toward the audience as if to ask: What happens when poems are cut loose and become dangerous? What is a safe distance between the audience and the performer? How close can you get to someone who comes from a different culture?

Dialogue and reception with collaborator Frederick Rodriguez and curator Ashley Ferro-Murray.

Microsoft’s HoloLens is the world’s first fully untethered, self-contained holographic computer. Wearing the headset, users scan their physical surroundings and use gestures to place and manipulate digital 3D objects.

Distinct from virtual-reality environments, the HoloLens creates a “mixed reality” where computer-generated elements are integrated into the human world. From the classroom to the operating room and into the performing arts, applications for the system are just starting to be explored.

Following a daylong open demo of the HoloLens on the EMPAC Mezzanine, Microsoft’s Kayla Kinnunen will present a talk on the future of human-computer interaction within mixed-reality environments. Kinnunen leads a production team building HoloLens and Mixed Reality applications. She and her team generate content for the platform meant to reach a wide range of audiences and spur creativity and innovation in the new medium. This event will be an opportunity for audience members to help imagine the impact of devices like the HoloLens and provide feedback on their experience working in mixed reality.

Theorist Abigail De Kosnik discusses her concept of the "media crease" within both traditional and digital media.

Unlike paperback novels that show their use in folded pages and creased spines, or the grooves in vinyl records that deepen as a song is played and replayed, digital media offer no physical trace to document their owner’s use and reuse patterns. Considering both hard and soft media and the different ways that copies are created of each, theorist Abigail De Kosnik will chart how “the media crease” can be observed within digital culture. From common acts like reblogging, retweeting, playback, and reviewing to unintended effects like glitches and erasures De Kosnik will examine different traces and patterns within the digital landscape.

Following the launch of her new book, Low Relief, artist Lucy Raven and special-effects legend Phil Tippett will present an excerpt of their in-progress moving-image work, Coming Attraction. Tippett will discuss his collaboration with Raven, and offer an in-depth look at the making of the 1997 sci-fi cult classic Starship Troopers, including an edit of footage made by Tippett during the Troopers location scout in the badlands of Wyoming.

In 1996, while preparing for the filming, director Paul Verhoeven visited Wyoming with his production crew and creature visual effects supervisor Tippett. Tippett’s footage of the scout reveals rare insight into the ways in which he provided a visualization strategy for his studio back in California, and his approach to how they would populate the barren landscape with alien bugs, transforming it into a battlefield. Under a staircase in his Berkeley visual-effects studio Tippett recently unearthed over 12 hours of VHS tapes, including the location scout and behind-the-scenes recordings made on-set during the shoot, an edit of which will be screened at this presentation.

The evening will end with a screening of Starship Troopers, directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, and Dina Meyer. Starship Troopers imagines warfare in the 23rd century. In a society where citizenship is earned through military service, the story follows young soldier Johnny Rico and his exploits in Mobile Infantry, a futuristic military unit. Earthlings have become space-exploring colonizers in search of new planets, and have encountered a species known as Arachnids. Once war is declared, the alien bugs retaliate violently against the intrusion of humans into their habitat.

PROGRAM

• Coming Attraction (work-in-progress) Lucy Raven and Phil Tippett
• Lucy Raven and Phil Tippett
• Starship Troopers Location Scout (1996)
• Phil Tippett
• Starship Troopers (1997) Directed by Paul Verhoeven
• Directed by Paul Verhoeven
• Approximate run-time: 180mins