Women in Resistance Film Festival

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: dance • film • installation
23 Oct

One of my longest collaborator is the Bulgarian choreographer, dancer and film maker Zornitsa Stoyanova (BodyMeld). One of her films, Explicit Female, that I did the music for was featured in the German festival Poetry Film Festival – Women in Resistance.

“Explicit Female” is a visual poem that takes on pregnancy and the act of birth as its theme. Making another human in one’s body is often thought of as magical, beautiful, and peaceful. This film illuminates all that, plus the hidden trauma of the experience. Using mirror psychedelic effects, the body gets transformed into sensual ever-changing vaginas, organic-looking aliens, shapes and colors that later remind of DNA division. Deeply sensual, the sci-fi imagery lures the imagination while furthering the feel of otherness and alienation. An automatically generated voice speaks of the female body’s durability and the complete destruction of identity that happens to a new mother. “Explicit Female” is part of a bigger performance of the same name that evening.

Here’s a preview of the film from the Philadelphia Fringe Festival:

Antarctica

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: film • installation • performances
08 Nov

For The Fidget Fall Experimental Music Festival Nora Gibson and myself were asked to create a music and dance work. We decided to show a work-in-progress for a large media project Antarctica. Antarctica is the story of the end of human data, the end of history, the end of information. It was presented as a 20 minute film projected on three translucent floating screen and with singing by Steve Quaranta.

Below is an excerpt from the film:

ANTARCTICA Development Preview from Michael McDermott on Vimeo.

Assembling Minutiae

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: dance • film
05 Sep

For the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2008. I composed a piece of music called “Pure” for a new dance / film piece by my colleagues Perpetual Mvmt<>Snd. The music I came up with was a slowly building wash of sine waves that uses frequencies found in the note middle C on the piano. The hypnotic sequence builds slowly and almost inaudibly as the lowest frequencies are introduced.

The live dance performance (by Emily Sweeney) was presented at NEXUS/Foundation for Today’s Art at the Crane Arts building. The set was designed by interdisciplinary artist bilwa. The minimal white washed film was created by Blaine Seigel and had movement by Emily Sweeney, Rebecca Patek and Jil Stifel.

Below is an excerpt from the film.

Assembling Minutiae (Excerpt) from Michael McDermott on Vimeo.

Perpetual Movement and Sound – Perfect Sec0nds

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: albums
22 Sep

image

This was our first and only studio recording done as “Perpetual Mvmt<>Snd” (Bilwa and Mikronesia). We did the recording in one weekend using a variety of synthesizers, percussion and effects. The music was created with our movement partners in mind and also as a companion to our gasp show at Philly Fringe that fall. This also turned out to the the first release on the new label earSnake. The limited edition spray painted CDs were sold at the Philly Fringe show.

Download from bandcamp

Perpetual Movement and Sound – Paraphrase/NEXUS

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: dance
22 Sep

This was our first of many improvised performances as NEXUS Gallery in Kennington for the Paraphrase/NEXUS series. Bilwa became a member of NEXUS in 2007 and started a series Paraphrase where sound and movement artists would come and respond to artwork in the gallery with a performance of their work.

This performance is improvised music from Mikronesia (radios and fx) and Bilwa (balloons and fx) performing music while Emily Sweeney and Rebecca Patek perform dance in an installation by Jodi Sweitzer And Elaine M. Erne.