The Science and Culture in America class from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, taught by Neal Jahren, has been assigned questions (see below) in response to Kidd Pivot’s production of Dark Matters. Their previous classwork has examined how scientific concepts have been applied to visual and conceptual artworks. They are interested in how these ideas apply to performance works, such as Dark…

Vancouver’s version of theCity Pages, theGeorgia Straight, published a great article/interviewearlier this year with Kidd Pivot mastermind (and Vancouver native) Crystal Pite. She explains that for Dark Matters (opening Thursday at the Walker) she “drew on the ideas of the kuroko stage hands and theBunrakupuppeteers of old Japanese theatre. ’They’re these anonymous black-clad characters that move…

Could it be possible, that after 192 years, dozens of movies, television shows, critical theses and innumerably terrible Boris Karloff latex masks, that anything new could be said about the Frankenstein story? Dave Douglas and Bill Morrison certainly think so. Utilizing bleak found footage of early 20 century avant-garde films and combining it with experimental jazz and ambient sonics to retell Mary…

We invited Neal Jahren and his students from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design to respond to Dave Douglas & Bill Morrison’s production of Spark of Being. The class is Science and Culture in America. The Frankenstein myth, where technological innovation creates unintended consequences that then must be addressed by decision makers and society, apparently resonated with some of the material…

Tomorrow night the Walker-commissioned Spark of Beingwill be performed in the McGuire Theater by Dave Douglasand his band Keystone. Fans of Erik Friedlander’s Block Ice & Propane performance last year will probably find much to love with Spark of Being, because both pieces feature film by Bill Morrison. However, tomorrow night’s evening length film was developed in conjunction with Dave Douglas’ ongoing process of music composition; in contrast to film footage being used as accompaniment to music, tomorrow night’s piece is more of a cross-pollination, with the music heard and the film seen being inseparably involved in each other’s creation. As Douglas said in…