TRANSMEDIA :29:59
media art in public urban space

Curated by Michael Alstad and Michelle Kasprzak

August 1 - 31st, 2005:

29th minute: Manu Luksch - 'Movie Stars'
59th minute: Jillian Mcdonald - 'Screen Kiss'

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Launch event: August 3rd, 8-10pm: vjs fluid & faux amie - music by cyan & naw! Yonge- Dundas Square, Toronto
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Year Zero One is pleased to announce the launch of TRANSMEDIA :29:59, a year long programme on the pedestrian level video billboard at Dundas Square in Toronto. Beginning August 1st 2005, one minute video works will be broadcast 24/7 every half hour on the 29th and 59th minutes.

Featured for the month of August is Jillian Mcdonald's 'Screen Kiss' & Manu Luksch's 'Movie Stars'.

Jillian Mcdonald's 'Screen Kiss' is a web project/video featuring several popular actors including Daniel Day Lewis, Vincent Gallo, Johnny Depp, and Angelina Jolie. Macdonald inserts herself into existing film scenes as stand-in for the actresses being kissed by or engaged in other gestures of romance with these actors. This work has received funding support from Soil Digital Media Suite at Neutral Ground Gallery and The Canada Council for the Arts, New Media Commissioning program.

Manu Luksch's 'Movie Stars' was shot at a remote beach in Thailand where Chris and Anthony trained hundreds of starfish to move in a synchronized manner. The starfish execute a formation dance reminiscent of the glamourous choreography by Berkeley Busby for Hollywood movies of the 1930s. MOVIE STARS is an unedited, unprocessed real-time documentation of a starfish performance; the film's length is dictated by the creatures' limited short-term memory for movement.


Year Zero One gratefully acknowledges Yonge-Dundas Square and Clearchannel for their support of Transmedia :29:59.


BIOS

Jillian Mcdonald is a Canadian artist transplanted in New York where she teaches at Pace University.

Her work in media and performance has been shown recently at The Whitney Museum's Artport; Manifestation d'Art Internationale de Québec; 404 International Festival of Electronic Art in Argentina; BananaRAM in Italy; The Sundance Online Film Festival in Park City, Utah; The Cleveland International Performance Art Festival; La Biennale de Montréal; ISEA in Talinn, Estonia; and the Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in France. Solo and 2-person shows in 2004-5 included Video Pool in Winnipeg, Edge Media in St John's Newfoundland, TPW in Toronto (presented at The Drake Hotel), YYZ in Toronto, and vertexList in Brooklyn (with Scot Kaplan).

She has received grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, Soil New Media, Turbulence, The Gunk Foundation, NYSCA, The Experimental Television Center, Thirdplace.org, and Pace University. She has lectured in North America and Europe about her work and has attended numerous residencies including DAIMON and La Chambre Blanche in Québec, Emmedia in Calgary, and Harvestworks in New York City.
Mcdonald has happily rediscovered playing the piano and camping, and is learning how to rock-climb. Some of her favourite people are strangers.

Manu Luksch, founder of the London-based arts production company ambientTV.NET, studied Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria and Thailand, before joining the the Media Lab Munich as Artistic Director (1995-97). Her latest feature-length documentary film and internet-radio project ‘Virtual Borders’  looked at questions of identity of the Akha people, a minority group in Southeast Asia. Manu’s current project, ‘Faceless’, is compiled from surveillance video footage recovered under the UK’s Data Protection Act, weaving fictive narratives from Big Brother’s cinema verité. The film explores urban fantasy and subjectivity under the regime of closed circuit TV, personal stereo and the multitude of ways we now leave data-traces and are tracked through the city.


Year Zero One has extended the deadline for submissions to TRANSMEDIA :29:59