A Film Fest That Transcends Films
8 October 2002

For most people, going to the movies is about watching larger-than-life images rolling across a screen against a cascading score and the sound of munching popcorn. But to the producers of the fifth-annual Transcinema Festival of Expanded Cinema, the definition of film is somewhat broader.

“Technology has made movie-making tools more accessible to artists,” said Gregory Cowley, director and curator of the San Francisco-based festival, which runs from October 8 - 12 at Bay Area arts venues. “As a result, the cinematic experience is changing. It’s no longer two-dimensional.”

Work on show during the festival, which features screenings, talks, installations and performance pieces by a number of interdisciplinary artists, ranges from nightclub-style visuals by Grant Davis (aka VJ Culture) to “Interstice”, an immersive sound and light installation by Chris Musgrave.

With his piece Let's Make A Monster!, New York multimedia artist Perry Hoberman takes the stuff of cinema and, like Dr. Frankenstein himself, gives it new, unpredictable life. Drawing on sci-fi B-movies and tech industry marketing materials, the work merges cinematic collage, live performance and installation in a wry commentary on the parallels between grandiose claims made by today's science and technology firms and the far-fetched plotlines of 20th century sci-fi and horror flicks.

"Mad scientist movies use a lot of the same rhetoric as real-life scientists," said Hoberman. "The main difference between scientists in films and real life is that real scientists don't brag out loud about taking over the world, even though in secret, that's what they want to do."

Although Let's Make A Monster! questions the authority of science over society, Hoberman said he is more fascinated by his subject than critical of it.

Half submerged under a pile of scientific paraphernalia, from cameras and computers to beakers and dials, Hoberman recites snippets from popular science books and promotional material from biotech websites, as clips from horror and sci-fi movies flash on screens above him. "In the same way as a chemist mixes chemicals in a lab, I'm mixing material from different media," said Hoberman.

"Perry Hoberman is one of the most funny and provocative multimedia artists," said Stephen Wilson, professor of conceptual and information arts at San Francisco State University. "He's been a mad scientist for many years."

With a history of exploring such themes as the nature of interactivity and the process of technological development through technology-centric sculpture, installation and performance works, Hoberman's piece marks the artist's return to cinema as a medium.

"The piece is a bit of a throwback," he said, "but no matter what I do in my work, I respond most strongly to cinema out of all the arts."

In some ways, Transcinema is inherently a "throwback" concept.

"Transcinema? You'd think we'd have got way beyond cinema by now," said Wilson.

Artists like Nam June Paik and Laurie Anderson have explored the medium for decades -- the history of using the moving image in unconventional ways is almost as old as movies are.

Nevertheless, the name is fitting, especially for a festival in flux. In its early years, the event remained largely underground, serving an audience of digital art fanatics in San Francisco warehouses. The festival is now reaching out to a wider audience, including mainstream modern art museum patrons.

For these new audiences, evoking the cinematic tradition may be a way of introducing them to experimental work.

"Just like with photography and new media, there's a learning period before the public comes to accept an art form," said Cowley. "Even though screen-based art has been around for decades, people don't understand it yet."

Copyright Wired Digital Inc.