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 8

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

On a Piece of Chalk, Kristian Derek Ball (USA) and Dwight Frizzell (USA), Live Performance for chalk, voices, contra-alto clarinet and video projection, 16 min.

The chalk talks when dropped in water and tells of its origin in the calcareous nanoplankton that blanketed an expansive inland sea in the Cretaceous period. Thomas Huxley’s 1868 address to Norwich chalk miners is used as commentary and to intermodulate the chalk soundscape.

The History of America, MK12 (USA), 2007, video, 30 min.

Centuries of campfire tales have spun America’s true origin story into a folkloric web of myths and half-truths. We’re here to set the record straight in this penetrating look into the Civil War as it actually happened: in Las Vegas, featuring cowboys and astronauts fighting for their way of life.

TELEPHONEME, MK12 (USA), 2010, video, 2:49 min.

The Voice Research Laboratory has partnered with Swedish Secrets Productions to produce this televideo as a means to inform the public of a massive linguistic conspiracy.

The Crone, Kevin Berg (USA), 2010, video, 51 min.

The Crone is a contemporary retelling of a popular American myth about a shape-shifting miscreant from Southern folklore.

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.