The 2012 Alpert Award recipients are (left to right) Nora Chipaumire, Kevin Everson, Myra Melford, Eisa Davis and Michael Smith.

On May 11, the 18th annual Alpert Award in the Arts were announced at the The Herb Alpert Foundation in Santa Monica. The award was given to five exceptional mid-career artists in the fields of Dance, Film/Video, Music, Theatre and Visual Arts, with each recipient receiving a $75,000 prize in recognition of “past performance and future promise” in their métier.

The 2012 awardees:

Nora Chipaumire, Dance, was recognized for her “profound movement intelligence, steaming hot and extraordinary presence, the dialogue she creates with audiences, and her visceral struggles with critical issues of the day.”

In this video, Chipaumire performs “Chimurenga (boj, jok, revolucija)”:

Kevin Everson, Film/Video, was selected for his “relentless curiosity, sustained inquiry, for elevating the visual power of expressive quotidian gestures of working people and for his aesthetic caring gaze.”

The trailer for Everson’s film, “Erie”:

Myra Melford, Music, was honored for “her ascending and expansive trajectory, great, generous musical mind and her ability to take multiple musical traditions into another sphere.”

Melford plays the blues:

Eisa Davis, Theatre, was selected for “her profound multiple gifts as playwright, performer and musician, her portrayal of the complex richness of our American character, and her work’s relevance and epic sweep, expanding our notion of how one might live in the 21st Century.”

Davis performs “What’s Left”:

Michael Smith, Visual Arts, was awarded for “subversively using the visual languages of popular and corporate culture to take on big issues, for pioneering narrative within video art practice, and for rendering the everyday as truly strange.”

Smith performs his character Baby Ikki at Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan:

Considered one of the more lucrative annual arts prizes in the United States, the prize has been given annually since 1995 by musician/record executive Alpert and his wife, Lani Hall. CalArts has worked with the Foundation in presenting the award to recipients in the five categories of the arts.

Each of the Alpert Award winners will serve as a visiting artist at CalArts next year.

Read more about the recipients on the Alpert Awards website and via the LA Times article.

The 2012 Producers' Show screened works from CalArts' student animators.

The 2012 CalArts Character Animation Producers’ Show screened works from CalArts BFA animators last week before an at-capacity crowd at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

Chris Miller (Film/Video 90), director of Puss in Boots and a CalArts alum, delivered an introduction of the films to the audience of film industry veterans, animators, and their friends and families.

Immediately following Miller’s remarks was the public announcement of the recipient of the Walter and Gracie Lantz Animation Prize (aka “The Woody Award”): BFA 3 student Eusong Lee.

Lee’s short film will—which this year’s earned top marks in the faculty-scored prize and opened Wednesday evening’s film screening—takes on issues of love and loss within the context of the still emotionally charged subject of 9/11:

Eusong Lee – will

The Peer’s Pick award (selected by students) was also announced. BFA 2 student Toniko Pantoja’s heartwarming film Crayon Dragon focuses on a girl and her friendship with a one-winged dragon:

Toniko Pantoja - Crayon Dragon

The following films were also were featured at the 2012 CalArts Character Animation Producers’ Show:

• Brian Carter (BFA 4) – Princess of the Magical Tears 
• Sabrina Cotugno (BFA 4) – Kagemono
• Tahnee Gehm (BFA 4) – Can We Be Happy Now
• Louis Thomas (Exchange student from Gobelins) - le ballet 
• Hannah Ayoubi (BFA 3) – Story Time Confessions
• Theresa Latzko (BFA 2) – Days without accident 
• Jisoo Kim (Experimental Animation MFA 3) – The Bathhouse 
• Michael Piazza (BFA 2) – Under a Big Tree
• Zesung Kang (BFA 4) – In This Grave Hour
• Jacob Streilein (BFA 2) – Swelter
• Mallory Dyer (BFA 3) – Lapsena
• Taylor Price (BFA 2) – Below
• Jasmin Lai (BFA 3) – When I Grow Up
• Sun Jae Lee (BFA 3) - The Princess Who Never Smiled
• Jason Reicher (BFA 2) – The Red Tide
• Paul Flores (BFA 2) – Camping Chaos
• John Kim (BFA 1) – You’ve Been Mimed 
• Natalie Wetzig (BFA 4) – Royal Pain 
• Tom Law (BFA 3) - Cactus Film
• Sam Kremers-Nedell (BFA 3) – Know Me

Please visit the 2012 Character Animation Student Films on Vimeo.

Scene from 'A Splendid Death,' directed by Maureen Huskey at CalArts.

[View with PicLens]

Today (Monday, May 14) in the Main Gallery from noon to 6 pm, the work of graduating and continuing students in the School of Theater’s Design and Production programs will move from background to foreground during Portfolio Review 2012. 

Theater and entertainment industry professionals from across the country have a chance to view portfolios from set designers, costume students, lighting, sound and video designers, puppetry students as well as from technical directors, stage managers, production managers and producing students.

Past years have welcomed industry professionals from across the country, including representatives from Center Theater Group, Thinkwell, Walt Disney Imagineering, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among many others. The public is also welcome to view the work in the Main Gallery and the Modular Theater Lobby.

We’ve posted a few photos from several of this year’s School of Theater productions to provide a sense of the artistry that happens behind the scenes.

The 2012 Portfolio Review
CalArts’ Main Gallery and Modular Theater Lobby
24700 McBean Parkway
Monday, May 14
noon to 6 pm

The 'Next Words' series comes to REDCAT on Sunday.

On Sunday at REDCAT, the CalArts MFA Writing Program in the School of Critical Studies presents the final installment of the Next Words spring reading series, featuring works from the graduating class of writers.

Curated by Ebony Williams, Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, Lan Pham and Zoe Etkin, Next Words events were held at Mandrake, Skylight Books, Pop Hop Books & Curio and Concord this semester, allowing the MFA candidates to explore territories beyond defined genres in different venues around Los Angeles.

The Writing Program at CalArts is dedicated to experimental art-making, frequently venturing into hybrid or new ways of exploring the written word. Performers/writers on Sunday are:

• Heatherlie Allison
• Seth Blake
• Gina Caciolo
• Byron Alexander Campbell
• Justus Caudell
• Evan Chavez
• Patricia Cram
• Zoe Etkin
• Jill Foster
• Nancy Fumero
• Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle
• Tiffanie Hoang
• Rachel Kolb
• Sonal Takako Malkani
• Michael Molitch-Hou™
• Oscar Moralde
• Melinda A. Morelli
• Marlene Nichols
• Lan Pham
• Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal
• Chelsea Leigh Trescott
• Ebony Williams.

The evening also marks the release of the Next Words publication—a collection of works from the aforementioned writers, designed by Benjamin Woodlock (Art MFA 13). A reception immediately follows the reading.

Next Words 2012
CalArts MFA Writing Showcase
REDCAT
631 W. 2nd St., Los Angeles
7 pm
Free

Tonight (May 11), The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts’ Music Technology program hosts a showcase of tech wizardry at the Digital Arts and Technology Expo. The event celebrates new student and faculty work made over the course of the academic year with projects and topics ranging from artists’ perspectives on computer games to forecasting future directions of digital performance and exploring new applications of projection mapping. The projects—which involve artists from across the Institute—integrate cutting-edge engineering and computer science with visual and performing arts.

The exhibitions and demonstrations run from 6-8 pm in the lobby surrounding the ROD. In conjunction with the exhibition, a concert takes place at the Roy O. Disney Hall (ROD) starting at 8 pm, featuring Princeton University Sound Lab founder and visiting artist Perry Cook. A renowned expert in computer audio, Cook co-developed the audio programming language, ChucK, and co-founded the Princeton Laptop Orchestra. He has also worked frequently with CalArts’ KarmetiK Orchestra.

'GR1D,' an interactive light display with forty low-density pixels, is responsive to interactions with mobile devices. Photo: Dimitri Diakopoulos

Among the projects slated to be presented at the expo are a light installation (see above photo) that allows viewers to control light patterns with their mobile devices, a responsive cat with motion sensitive hot pink fur and a performance by dancers costumed in motion tracking costumes made on a knitting machine using conductive thread.

The video above is a demonstration of the motion sensitive fabric.

Digital Arts and Technology Expo
Exhibition: May 10, 6-8 pm, ROD Lobby
Concert: May 10, 8 pm, ROD
Free 

A scene from 'Crescent City.' | Photo: Steven A. Gunther

[View with PicLens]

The Industry, a new experimental opera company created by CalArts alum Laura Kay Swanson (Theater MFA 10) and partner Yuval Sharon, brings more than 50 artists from a number of visual and performing arts disciplines together for its inaugural production, Crescent City, which runs May 10-27 in Los Angeles.

Created by composer Anne LeBaron, a faculty member of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts, with libretto by writer and CalArts School of Critical Studies faculty member Doug Kearney, the “hyperopera”—a highly collaborative, boundary-pushing work—creates a visceral and otherworldly experience for the audience.

Sharon, who also directs the production, originally encountered earlier versions of Crescent City while he was programming VOX, the New York Opera’s acclaimed new-works showcase; LeBaron’s work was featured twice at VOX.

From the production notes:


In the wake of a devastating hurricane, Crescent City is a shell of its former self where the few remaining inhabitants struggle for survival. The bad waters of an impending new storm wake up the notorious ghosts of the city’s past, including the legendary voodoo goddess Marie Laveau (played by Gwendolyn Brown). Marie pleads with the awakened voodoo gods to save the city. They agree to come to her aid on one condition: They must be able to find one good person among the ragtag and desperate citizenry. Crescent City becomes a travelogue in search of the one who will make the city worthy of salvation.

LeBaron’s music weaves together a number of styles, including electronica, bluegrass, jazz and improvisation. The production includes a live 16-piece orchestra, conducted by CalArts faculty Marc Lowenstein, and features Timur and the Dime Museum, fronted by Timur Bekbosunov (Music MFA 08), a noted Kazakh-American performer and director.

An industrial warehouse in the new Atwater Crossing performing arts complex has been converted into a mythical landscape. Audience members stand or sit in and around the space, but are able to see and hear activity in other parts of the vast area through live video streams and sound technology.

In addition to set and lighting designers, the hyperopera—a concept that has evolved in LeBaron’s work and teaching at CalArts—also includes the work of six LA-based installation artists: Mason Cooley, Brianna Gorton, Katie Grinnan, Alice Könitz, Jeff Kopp (Art MFA 01) and Olga Koumoundouros (Art MFA 01).

There’s a meet-the-artists reception on Friday (May 11) from 8-10 pm to see the installations up close. We’ve posted images from Crescent City in the photo gallery above.

• Listen to excerpts

Crescent City
Eleven performances only: May 10-27
Atwater Crossing
3245 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles
Tickets: $25-$75

Artist Rowan Smith (Art MFA 13) and composer Ingrid Lee (Music BFA 12) recently collaborated on a project to transcribe the sounds of a guitar smashing into a piece for solo piano. The work, titled COME ON YOU FUCKERS, is meant to encompass the commercialization of rebellion as well as “the obsolescence of protest gestures within a pop-cultural paradigm and translation as an interpretive and generative methodology.”

To create the piece, Smith smashed a guitar while Lee recorded it. Lee then painstakingly analyzed the recording by ear and assigned notation to corresponding sounds  in order to make the intricate score.

“A lot of the recording was mostly noise, but from that I was still able to extract pitches,” says Lee. “For me, the objective of the transcription was to fit these sounds into the rigid system of notation for piano. This required me to round pitches up to the nearest equal-tempered pitch on the piano and to fit the natural rhythms into seconds.”

More on the project from the creators’ website:

COME ON YOU FUCKERS as a title is derivative of street vernacular; argot that appears familiar, but holds no direct reference. It is a generalized call to action, which in this case, is empty of both content and meaning. The lack of subject and agency in this title alludes to the contemporary climate of commodified rebellion, which is symptomatic of middle class complacency within a post-counter-cultural milieu. We find a representation of this attitude in the gesture of smashing a guitar, a gesture of protest which…has become void of meaning.

The artists recently released a recording of the piece on 7″ vinyl designed by David Karwan (Art MFA 13) and Isaac Berenson (Art MFA 14). The package also includes a publication of texts written by Smith, Lee, Jen Hutton (Critical Studies MFA 14), Michael Molitch-hou (Critical Studies MFA 12), Linda Stupart and Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal (Critical Studies MFA 13) examining the contemporary climate of rebellion. Through this project, the collaborators investigated translation as a creative and nonviolent strategy, which was used in every facet of the project (the score, the recording, the design of the publication, the texts).

In celebration of the release, Lee and Smith are holding a release party/concert on Friday (May 11) at 8 pm at the Wulf in Los Angeles. The event also features performances of new and existing works by LA artists examining themes of “protest, translation and the commodification of rebellious gestures.” For more information about the release event, visit the project’s website.

Above is a video of the first performance of the piece performed by Lee at CalArts.

Just one of the many highlights of CalArts’ spring semester is the Graphic Design program’s year-end exhibitions for BFA, MFA and Motion Graphics students.

If __, then  __, which opens at 8 pm tonight (May 10) in the D301 gallery, features the work of 63 undergraduate designers. The show’s title refers to the decision-making processes—and the questions asked—that artists undertake when creating new designs. From the BFA website:

Our answers would differ, and our solutions would vary, but all would be valid means to an end or even a new beginning. The show expresses this running conversation in various forms of interaction, such as a reading room of our self-created books and zines, collage walls for your creative disposal, and other ways to possibly ask yourself your own “If____, then____.”

The 23 MFA graphic designers are also presenting works in point at it, located in the adjacent D300 gallery. From the MFA website:

Our work highlights our intentions, draws a circle around them. It points. To point is to signify in the most universal, most simplified language. I motion away from myself with my finger—this act is the original logo, the archetypal symbol for elsewhere, a movement which represents another constellation of forces just ahead.

The Motion Show—MOSHOW 2012—immediately follows the gallery openings at 10 pm in the Bijou Theater and celebrates the year’s motion graphics pieces. Past shows have re-enacted famous movie scenes, portrayed monsters, zombies, occultist and aliens. From the MOSHOW website:

This time around we are going back to our roots and we are just going to be ourselves. As designers, we can all agree that we are all very fascinating and dynamic individuals with vast layers of character. It is in these layers where one can find the captivating aspects of an individual’s personality, similar to how one would find various levels of interesting content in a poster, a book or in the MOSHOW’s case, a motion graphic piece. In a way we are the work and the work is us. The work acquires its life from the designer through their thoughts and their spirit. The thoughts and spirit of the designer are what make the work even more significant and lasting. This is the essence of this year’s show, a show made by us for us & about us.

The School of Art advises that attendees arrive to the MOSHOW early since Bijou seats are limited. Watch videos from previous year’s Motion Shows here.

In addition to the exhibitions, posters from the newly launched REDCAT Poster site will be on sale. Proceeds will benefit the CalArts Poster Archives.

If ___, then __
D301, CalArts
May 10-17
Opening: May 10, 8 pm
Free

point at it
D300, CalArts
May 10-17
Opening: May 10, 8 pm
Free 

MOSHOW 2012
Bijou Auditorium, CalArts
May 10, 10 pm
Free, space is limited 

Moroccan Lantern, 2011 | Photo by Janet Sternburg

The Fifth String, a play written by Janet Sternburg, will be produced in a staged reading on Saturday (May 12 at 3 pm) at La MaMa Theatre in New York.

In The Fifth String, a long-lost family manuscript sparks a journey across space and time. The historical musician Ziryab joins up with three couples of various ages, along with Señor Truco (“The Trickster”), to embody such great cultural figures as Ibn Arabi and Maimonides, as well as the Jewish and Moorish exiles from Spain and, the displaced peoples of the modern era. In the program note for the play, Sternburg writes, “I’ve placed the Andalusian time of creative ferment and expulsion in juxtaposition with our own time of diasporas and migrations.”

Sternburg, a writer whose books include the classic two volumes of The Writer on Her Work; the memoir, Phantom Limb; and the poetry collection, Optic Nerve: Photopoems, is also a fine art photographer whose work has appeared in solo shows in Berlin, Korea, Mexico, Los Angeles and New York, as well as in Aperture and Art Journal. The Fifth String is her first play; to date, it has been given a reading in Berlin; a workshop at Pact Zollverein in Essen; and a series of developmental workshops produced by Loose Change Productions, directed by Carey Lovelace (Music/Critical Studies BFA 75) in collaboration with La MaMa Theatre, culminating in the upcoming staged reading.

A number of other CalArtians are involved in the production: Marissa Chibas, School of Theater Faculty Member, is in the acting ensemble, along with New York-based alumni John Daggett (Theater BFA 82); Robb Martinez (Theater MFA 07); Sean Lynch and Jesse Bonnell of Poor Dog Group (both Theater BFA 07). The Fifth String is directed by Rebecca Johannsen who is also co-producing a cycle of the plays of Erik Ehn (Dean, CalArts School of Theater from 2005-09). Sternburg herself is a former School of Critical Studies faculty member as well as life and work partner to her husband, CalArts President Steven D. Lavine.

Sternburg became involved several years ago with Andalusian pre-Expulsion culture, becoming deeply moved by its richness and beauty, much of it only recently uncovered. She sought out its history, its literary and performing traditions, and came to realize that the pre-Expulsion era of La Convivencia (living together with difficulty but productively) presses on our current time of divisions among peoples and faiths. Using lyrical language, song and humor, with voices that reach across time and space to converse with one another, Sternburg’s work poignantly speaks to the desire for home and history.

The Fifth String by Janet Sternburg
La MaMa Theatre
74A East 4th St., (btw Bowery & 2nd Ave)
New York, NY
May 12 at 3 pm

Brittany Knupper's 'Galatea' is at CalArts this week.

Brittany Knupper, an MFA 3 playwright in the School of Theater, has written and developed a new project that explores the exotic and erotic “idoll” subculture. The play, Galatea, receives a workshop production this week at CalArts, directed by Zoe Aja Moore (Theater MFA 11).

Idolls are silicone mannequins advertised as “custom made to your specifications…completely articulated skeletons which allow for anatomically correct positioning.” (In popular culture, they’ve played roles in Lars and the Real Girl, The Twilight Zone and most recently, an episode of House this season).

Knupper’s play depicts curious couples and customers seeking human connection, while examining the “duality of personified objects—and objectified people.”

Galatea performs in Butler Building 2. Reservations for the six performances can be made through Eventbrite.

Galatea
CalArts, Butler Building 2
24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia
Wednesday, May 9-Saturday, May 12 at 8 pm
Additional matinees at 2 pm on Saturday and Sunday
Free, but reservations needed