Wave Energies FeedBack:
30 Years of Electronic Media
at Kansas City Art Institute

Lloyd Schnell started Kansas City Art Institute’s Photography Department in 1970 and soon thereafter Richard Matthews began teaching 16mm filmmaking. In 1975 Gary Sutton joined the Photography Department, and in 1976 Mitch Deck began offering video elective classes with three Sony PortaPaks and a color studio camera.  Enrollment was primarily from the Photography and Sculpture Departments. Deck also taught single frame or stop motion 16mm film animation classes.   In the late 1970s Larry Hope began teaching beginning and advanced 16mm filmmaking, and departmental equipment at that time included movieolas, edit bins, a flatbed editor, a film chain, an optical printer, Bolex H-16 cameras and Nagra audiotape recorders.  In 1983 Deck worked with Douglas Davis in establishing the Kansas City component of the International Art Network funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, a project that Davis initiated whereby several schools including KCAI utilized video technology as a creative and communicative medium of expression.  This made it possible to incorporate a 3/4 inch video-editing system in the video studio with Deck serving as technician and instructor.  At this time 16mm film was discontinued and Reed Estabrook replaced Lloyd Schnell as Chair of the Photography Department.  In 1986 Patrick Clancy was hired as Chair of the Photography & Video Department to begin a new program emphasizing camera arts, sound and emerging technologies.  It was clear that digital technology would eventually become the norm and that although analog technology would still be relevant, a dialog between the camera arts, light, sound, wave energies and interactivity emphasizing emerging technologies would shape the future of this new program.  Since that time the faculty has developed a unique undergraduate multidisciplinary department that emphasizes three primary components: photography, video and sound. The re-structuring of the curriculum also allowed the faculty to teach a broader range of elective courses in performance, installation, computer modeling and animation, contemporary art theory and history of media arts.  There continues to be a strong dialog between analog and digital technologies, performance and installation art, the still and moving image and all aspects of the camera arts.

Wave Energies FeedBack emphasizes recent works produced by graduates of KCAI’s Photography & Video/New Media/Digital Filmmaking Department who attended KCAI between1980 and 2010.  Full-time faculty during this time included: Mitch Deck, Gary Sutton, Patrick Clancy, Wendy Geller, Kenvin Lyman, Kristine Diekman, Christopher Burnett, Sheldon Brown, Celia Dougherty, Magaly Ponce, Dwight Frizzell, Ellen Zweig, Andrew Wells, Cyan Meeks, Andrea Flamini, Rebecca Dolan, Diana Heise, and Tom Lewis.  Part-time faculty included: Gwen Widmer, Tal Wilson, Martin Arnold, Gene Cooper, Isa Gordon, Tony Allard, Caitlin Horsmon, Frank Hamilton, Hesse McGraw and Jeff Witt.  Departmental Technicians have been Marc Deckard, Jeff Brown, Hafiza Capehart, and Tom Livesay. – Patrick Clancy

October 15

Atkins Auditorium, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art — Free tickets available online

Last Man of Idaho, Ascot Smith (USA), 2010, video, 25 min.

In this photofilm a talking potato from the future guides an aspiring author as they travel through time. Highlights include a bank robbery, winning the lottery and cryogenic hibernation.

Development Inc., Robert Renfrow (USA), 2004, video, 3:45 min.

The pristine Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest is up for auction and the proceedings are being shadowed by a Harris hawk.

Horoscope, Naoko Wowsugi (Japan), 2010, video, 2:46 min.

Wowsugi calls people she hasn’t talked with in awhile and reads them their horoscopes.

Chant, Naoko Wowsugi (Japan) and Monica Palma (Mexico), 2007, video, 4:20 min.

Wowsugi and Palma are reading the marks on Palma’s painting as sound. They chant her painting like a prayer.  

The Moment After the Moment, Robert Heishman (USA), 2010, video with original score by Heishman and Amanda Bowles, 5:55 min.

This video uses a pinhole camera fixed with multiple apertures, which form words in Braille that are based on Billy Collins’ poem In the Moment.

Driftwood, Cyan Meeks (USA), 2010, video, 7:00 min.

Pinhole photography is used to document the end of Meeks’ grandmother’s life. A genealogical narrative merging reality and fiction forms an ancestral archive that is dispersed and displayed.

Green, Brendan Meara (USA), 2009, music video with original score, 2:13 min.

Light Bulb Video, Brendan Meara (USA), 2009, music video with original score, 7:01 min.

In Meara’s works light and the material source of light are presented as ostensibly transcendental. Fields of saturated color and photographic artifacts of sublime beauty are paired with an atmospheric and emotional score.

Center, Jamie Hitchings (USA), 2008, video, 1:20 min.

Center is a mixture of known and receptive sound and imagery meant to invoke a feeling of fluid time.

Courtesan Ghost, Kristie Alshaibi (USA), 2006, video, 4:14 min.

This excerpt from a 30-minute video was the background for a live Butoh performance by Camilla Ha.  

Signal Cross-Over, Kristie Alshaibi (USA) and Usama Alshaibi (Iraq/USA), 2007, video, 3:24 min.

He has gone on to another plane.  With his guidance she will join him via a ritualized live cremation process. Signal Cross Over is a metaphorical sati.  Burn away the surface and see what lies beneath. 

Grains, Kristin Miltner (USA), Live Performance with voice, computer and video projection, 30 min.

Grains combines vocal improvisation with layers of synth sounds, Wurlitzer and Rhodes samples, birdsong, water and field recordings from industrial Oakland.  All sounds are captured using an unruly, unpredictable homebuilt scanner patch and are repeated by the computer in a rhythmic way. The video is an intuitive reaction to this music. 

Other events in series:

October 8
October 15
October 22

Credits: All videos, performances and image stills courtesy of the artists. Shelf Life image still courtesy of Tina Erickson © 2008. Shelf Life image courtesy of Tom Butler ©1965. Christopher Willits image courtesy of Jan Kruml. Electromediascope is curated by Patrick Clancy and Gwen Widmer.