A blast of Japanese visual innovation capturing the latest and most inspiring music videos, motion graphics, and shorts from some of Japan’s finest moving image-makers.

• yoshiyuki komatsu [power graphixx]: asadoya yunta /omodaka / japan / 03:43
• takeo hatai: alter ego/ japan / 01:00
• hitoshi takekiyo [koo-ki]: after school midnight / japan / 06:50
• koichiro tsujikawa: omstart / cornelius / japan / 04:58
• satoshi tomioka: usavich - beware of dance/ japan / 01:30
• mizuhiro savini: diedisco/ japan / 02:07
• takafumi tsuchiya: spen za nite wiz dis sit/ japan / 04:28
• hideyuki tanaka [antenna]: hello_8 bit edition / ram rider/ japan / 04:20
• kosai sekine: maledict car / jemapur / japan / 04:03
• mamoru kano: new moon / japan / 02:00
• tetsuo suzuka [anny]: clear skies in may / japan / 03:21
• hiroshi matsumoto: fishing / japan / 01:33
• mamoru kano: scramble crossroad / japan / 01:31
• tsuyoshi hirooka + yohei ito: yosawya san / japan / 04:30
• satoshi tomioka: usavich - beware of checkpoints / japan / 01:30
• ichiro sato: evening before the hangover/ japan / 02:28
• k+me: screaming dance / leonard de leonard / japan / 02:40
• junji kojima [teevee graphics]: you-you-you / polysics / japan / 03:44
• makoto yabuki: confine[s] / lyoma / japan / 02:40
• kan eguchi [koo-ki]: cosplay / nike id / japan / 03:05
• satoshi tomioka: usavich -beware of assault / japan / 01:30

18 digital artworks born and influenced by audio and code. inspired by synaesthesia, these abstract manifestations are sculpted by the soundtrack. Curated by universal everything and musician freeform.

• robert seidel / germany
• carl burgess / uk
• karsten schmidt / uk
• universal everything + minivegas / uk
• mate steinford / usa
• robert hodgin / usa
• jelle feringa / france
• universal everything / uk
• mark kremens / uk
• panda panther / usa
• thomas traum / uk
• paul simpson / uk
• maxim zhestov / russia
• panda panther / usa
• tom sholefield / uk
• alex peverett + paul seen / uk/japan
• peppermelon / argentina
• universal everything / uk

A select international program of critically acclaimed, digitally inflected short film and animation, extending way beyond the boundaries of traditional storytelling and style.

• josh raskin: i met the walrus / canada / 05:15
• ben hibon: heavenly sword [the animated series] / uk / 10:00
• mark simon hewis: the life size zoetrope / uk / 06:38
• run wrake: the control master / uk / 06:36
• andy martin: end of the street / uk / 04:57
• amëal isnard, manuel javelle, clément picon: musicotherapie / france / 05:31
• david alexander anderson: tongue of the hidden / uk / 05:45
• tokyoplastic: the praying machine / uk / 05:46
• eric toubal, yves d'incau, thomas castellani, clement renaudin: 893 / france / 04:38
• hitoshi takekiyo [koo-ki]: after school midnight / japan / 06:50
• henrik bjerregaard clausen: e.t.a. / denmark / 04:24
• sylvain jorget, acel morales, mathias rodriguez: l'homme à tête de poule / france / 05:00

Global creative expression exploring new future visual trends in motion across motion graphics, character animation, enhanced digital and experimental works. disciplines span architecture, fashion, illustration and graphic design.

• mischa rozema: postman returns / netherlands / 02:26
• david o'reilly: wofl 2106 / ireland / 03:18
• simon robson + chris atkins: celebrity [excerpt] / uk / 00:50
• kristian labusga: rebel with a cause / germany/ 02:18
• crush: the gum thief [glove pond one] / canada/ 01:20
• trevor jiminez: key lime pie / 03:32
• ryan molloy: the veneerists / usa / 02:45
• claus-maria zimmerman: destination sex city [elixir exotique] / usa / 02:25
• minivegas: aides - boy / uk / 02:45
• suryummy: interstellar sugar / usa / 01:34
• leftchannel: chocolate / usa / 01:04
• rob rae: fading object / uk / 02:42
• james houston: big ideas [don't get any] / uk / 03:55
• váscolo: índico / argentina / 01:38
• superstudio: lamole /argentina / 00:45
• martin böttger + bruno dias:tractor / germany / uk / 03:39
• maxim zhestkov: 005 / russia / 01:35
• minivegas: aides - girl / uk / 01:00
• zurich29 + etienne constantinesco: ink [amnesty international] / france / 03:03
• yves geleyn:dandelions / france / 01:02
• marco di noia: la scimmia dell'inchiostro / italy / 01:30
• yoshi sodeoka: blind side of a secret / usa / 01:49
• andras ketzer: le trippin / uk / 01:56
• susanne luechtrath + anton riedel: lautlos [without a sound] / germany/ 02:14
• ritxi ostáriz [iikki]: viva calaca / spain / 03:05
• crush: the gum thief [glove pond three] / canada / 01:20
• bernard stulzaft: trem / france / 2008 / 04:30
• domenico bartolo [21-19]: in motion / australia / 01:36
• will adams: terrafarmer / uk / 01:40
• wayne horse: bunchy hunkky / germany / 01:15
• tomas gárcía [peppermelon]: the fabulous farting valley of fat-farts / argentina / 02:06
• rex crowle: grip wrench [the presidator] / uk / 02:30

Exploring innovative, visually progressive music videos. this radical collection of new works includes outstanding promos for Radiohead, R.E.M., Justice, Flairs, Björk, Gnarls Barkley + more international gems.

• encyclopedia pictura: wanderlust [björk] / 07:76
• chris milk: who's gonna save my soul? [gnarls barkley] / 03:26
• gordon thomas + silke briel: pantomime horse [dapayk + padberg] / 02:26
• las palmas: huoratron [$$ troopers] / finland / 04:11
• so me, machine molle + yorgo tloupas: dvno [justice] / fr / 03:00
• jonas odell: better when you're naked [ida maria] / sw/ 03:08
• jonas + francois: better than prince [flairs] / fr / 03:10
• vince collins: visuals [excerpt] [jon hopkins] / uk/ 01:43
• quayola + georgia polizzi: miko [michael fakesch] / uk / 02:00
• fluorescent hill: myriad harbour [new pornographers] / 03:56
• crush: hollowman [r.e.m.] / ca / 02:40
• james frost: house of cards [radiohead] / usa / 03:58
• dominic hailstone: holy tears [isis] / uk / 05:13
• martin sulzer [landjugend]: tween my lips [food for animals] / de / 02:22
• mark hough: skypager [a tribe called quest] / uk / 01:52
• daniel garcia + nathan love: flyentology [el-p + trent reznor] / usa / 04:05
• bonzom: lollipop [mika] / uk / 03:11
• markus feder + martin sulzer [landjugend]: everyone - everywhere [cock rock disco] / de / 03:55
• dennis liu: again and again [the bird and the bee] / usa / 02:46
• cocobongo: l'art de la guerra [eina] / es / 03:29
• andy huang: adrenaline [sunny day sets fire] / usa / 01:14
• psyop: my drive thru [santogold, julian casablancas + n.e.r.d.] / usa / 02:30
• timo boese: escalate [michael fakesch] / de / 01:49

The US premiere of the onedotzero_adventures in motion festival comes to EMPAC Friday, April 17 through Sunday, April 19, with an explosive showcase of internationally curated moving image. Featuring ground-breaking short film screenings, playful installations, spectacular live cinematic performances, vj/dj events and presentations.

All-day screenings feature compilations of short form videos that represent the latest innovative work in moving image including music videos, character animation, experimental digital shorts and motion graphic design.

Extraordinary installations by Troika and Quayola will be installed in the EMPAC studios and mezzanine, which also includes a lounge and café.

Performances include Scanner and Olga Mink’s live multi-channel audiovisual performance that kicks off the festival in the theater on Friday, followed by local luminaries skfl and jenks who will bring the café alive with a mix of bouncy music and cinematic video on multiple screens throughout the space.

On Saturday night local musician and multimedia artist Jesse Stiles presents a new live score for and within Quayola’s brilliant video installation viewed on a massive screen suspended on the ceiling. Quayola will then follow with his own performance, Path to Abstraction a live synesthetic audiovisual event.

The London-based onedotzero — a self-described “hybrid”organization that is both a media production company in its own right and a network of events — makes EMPAC the only US stop on its 2008-2009 international tour, presenting selections from their acclaimed international festival.

As part of Sean Griffin’s second residency, EMPAC presents three video installations that cover the past six years of his integral collaboration with the artist Catherine Sullivan. Sullivan’s work comes out of theater, but has become primarily realized as multi-screen video installation with Griffin scoring and collaborating on the overall aurality of the work, in one case even authoring a pseudo-Neanderthal language used throughout Triangle of Need. In The Chittendens, the 16 actors execute elaborate movement structures, vocalize, and portray distinct attitudes from within characters embodying stereotyped identities of 19th and 20th century America. Existing somewhere between/beyond the formal approaches of Yvonne Rainer, Mike Kelley, and Anton Webern, the work is highly structured, beyond catharsis, and full of embedded cultural critique. In Triangle of Need, the far-flung, conceptually mosaic work takes the idea of the Neanderthal as its source metaphor but explodes into fractured narratives ranging from Nigerian email scams to figure skating. Triangle of Need, pairs seductive cinematic conventions with provocative ideas about evolution, human behavior and social inequality. D-Pattern is an exuberant work in which the emergence of narrative erupts from automata-like compositional/choreographic structures. Originally a live performance, the throng of actors/dancers in the piece perform repetitive movements that embody and effuse certain attitudes — and through the colliding and recombination of encounters a micro-history begins to unfold for the viewer. It's like a Ouija board, Griffin says, a conjectural machine spelling out something that isn't really there.

A collection of three films: Olaf Breuning's Home 2; Sascha Paladino's Throw Down Your Heart, with Bela Fleck; and Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s The Couple in the Cage, together, present a complex terrain of intention and action surrounding tourism, cultural interchange, appropriation, and hybridity. Unfiction is not going “on safari” — but using the idea of safari as a way to look at the site of intercultural one-way mirroring: where the viewer seems not to understand the exchange as being visible to both parties involved along the same human lines. In their own way, each film illuminates an aspect of this exchange, one that becomes increasingly important to examine as we hurtle towards ever-greater globalization. What is the safari of the 21st century and how do we know when we are are on it?

Upending, a work commissioned by EMPAC, is a stereoscopic theater performance, an actor-less drama of disorientation and reorientation that compels us to rethink our relationship with the material world. Using ordinary flat photographs and processing them with non-photorealistic rendering and stereoscopic HD video, Upending transfigures familiar objects, spaces, and persons in ways that are both beautiful and uncanny. Upending takes the form of live 3D cinema and has the viewers’ eyes probing the projected imagery almost as if touching its light, feeling for the illusory surfaces of things as they cross the threshold from abstraction to likeness.

Upending is enacted on both perceptual and thematic levels. Ordinary objects, spaces, and bodies are probed and queried from unfamiliar perspectives, so that viewers become exquisitely aware of their own perceptual processes and of their minds’ continual attempt to spin out meaning from what their eyes take in. The play of images is accompanied by an EMPAC-produced recording of Morton Feldman’s First String Quartet by the FLUX Quartet that places the listener, literally, in the center of the ensemble, with every sonic gesture articulated across space simultaneously. Through this aural lens, the moving image becomes almost balletic, even as the projected play of light allows the audience to hear Feldman as never before.

They Watch was an immersive installation commissioned by EMPAC for a panoramic screen, 360° interactive projection method, and a 32-channel sound system. Over a period of years and several residencies at EMPAC, including research and development with game-technology, Workspace Unlimited advanced methods to allow them to track audience members, and to develop interactive functions enabling avatars (virtual versions of the artists) that would appear to be aware of visitor’s presence within the panoramic environment. EMPAC’s panoramic screen is a cylindrical projection and software environment for 360°-panoramic projections, developed at the ZKM | Institute for Visual Media, at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany in collaboration with the iCinema Research Centre, Sydney. It can display panoramic films via four or six projectors, such as 3D animations or video footage, as well as stereoscopic VR-applications and a wide range of applications for interactive real-time work. 

Workspace Unlimited (WU) is a digital arts collective co-founded by visual artist Thomas Soetens and architect Kora Van Den Bulcke that has been commissioned by cultural institutions to create large-scale digital environments for specific exhibits or buildings. WU’s projects feature hybrid spaces, merging the thin line between physical environments and perceptual realities. Conceptually rooted in the convergence of art and architecture, WU reconciles these two “realities” through the creation of environments where virtual space overlaps with “real” physical space, through the use of immersive environments, real-time gaming technology, projections, body tracking, and mirroring techniques.