MUSIC

Aurora Picture Show in collaboration with the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents Media Archeology Festival: Liquid Light to the Laptop, the Evolution of Live Visuals. Curated by Bree Edwards.

Media Archeology is Aurora Picture Show's annual multimedia festival that features artists who incorporate audio/visual technology with live performance. Each year, Media Archeology focuses on a different sub-genre of technology-based performance, and this year the theme is Liquid Light to the Laptop, the Evolution of Live Visuals.  The Festival will pay tribute to the multi-media spectacle of the psychedelic light show, as an art form that revolutionized rock concerts, influenced corporate events and advertising and paved the way for the VJs of today.

Saturday, April 18, 8PM:   Maximal Art: The Origins and Aesthetics of West Coast Light Shows. Presentation by Robin Oppenheimer and special screening of Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable with The Velvet Underground by Ronald Nameth.

Light Shows of the 1960’s are associated with rock music, pulsating lights, and wild-haired hippies dancing in a drug-induced trance. As part of the counterculture of consciousness-raising and Vietnam war protests, light-shows were the first attempts by artists to blend the “new” twentieth century communications media technologies – photography, film, audio, projectors – to create a montage of popular culture images and sounds. Robin Oppenheimer’s presentation will trace the historical origins and aesthetics of light shows on the West Coast and will feature rare documentary footage.

ABOUT ROBIN OPPENHEIMER Robin Oppenheimer is an internationally recognized media arts consultant, historian, curator, writer, and educator who has worked in the field since 1980. She is a professor at the University of Washington. Ms. Oppenheimer was the first Media-Arts-Historian-in-Residence at Bellevue Art Museum, near Seattle (2000-2). As Manager of the Seattle Art Museum's Open Studio Project (1997-2000), she oversaw Web production and literacy training for almost 60 Seattle artists and arts organizations.

She is also a former Executive Director of 911 Media Arts Center in Seattle (1989-95), and IMAGE Film/Video Center in Atlanta (1984-8), where she directed the Atlanta Film & Video Festival.

Special thanks to Treebeards Restaurant, Art Lies and Modern B&B.

Pictured:  detail of a still from Exploding Plastic Inevitable.