EyeWash *Instant Cinema*

Friday, November 14
Admission: $5, $10 minimum
Showtime: 7:30 & 10pm
reservations are recommended

Maybe Naval Cassidy has run out of ideas. That’s possible; he’s been up to no good for a long time… 15 years to be exact. Or maybe he wants to strip it down. Not likely. He’s a gadget junky of the worst kind. So what’s left? 20 minutes of calculated madness, a chronograph that measures time in sputters and spurts, and a homage to the Zimmer Tower in Lier, Belgium. 13 clock faces that measures 13 phases of existence. It’s a return to the basics. Naval Cassidy has been an instant cinema and sound performer for over fifteen years. Working solo, or with groups like Stackable Thumb and The Hands of Orlak, or his recent collaborations with the great percussionist/foley artist Michael Evans, he has been a consistent presence in New York’s live video and performance scene. Through his special blend of video performance, Instant Cinema, Naval pulls delirious visions out of discarded broken objects, simply by placing each one under the watchful eye of his surveillance cameras.

Blair Neal was first a musician, but now he’d rather play video than instruments. Using a custom VJ patch and a drum pad, he improvises live video edits and effects along with whatever music is placed in front of him, using everything from retro footage to things he’s shot around town. He has been playing various gigs around Troy, NY for the past year or two while being a full time electronic arts student at RPI. Kyle McDonald is a fellow student, and will be performing the audio portion of this set. His prior musical projects have included drumming in a 3 person post rock band, and singing/conducting in a 13 piece gypsy punk band, but he’s quite at home on his laptop too doing lightly electronic or experimental pieces.

Video artist Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez presents “Zodiac Wheel of Fortune”, an ethereal astrological journey composed of live visual manipulations and music, selected by Ray Velasquez. Working with the four basic elements of Fire, Earth, Air, and Water as backgrounds for a visual game, deeper elements of astrology are explored as subsequent layers in the composition (the The Cardinal, The Fixed and The Mutable personalities of signs, the planets, the sun and the moon), are added to the mix. As the composited layers get more deeply stacked, each zodiac sign takes shape and meaning. The game aspect of the performance comes from the actual gadget discovered while doing research. The Zodiac Wheel of Fortune is believed to have the same properties as the luck enhancing fan used by Feng Shui masters in Hong Kong to transform bad luck into good luck.

Jarryd Lowder + Julie Fotheringham return with more perform selections from their ongoing performance projectintegrating dance/movement and video/audio/music accompaniment. Jarryd is a video artist, musician/composer and teacher living in New York who primarily works with integrating video/audio within solo and collaborative performance works. Julie is an escapee from Cirque Du Soleil & Las Vegas who now resides in New York and creates solo and collaborative dance/movement projects.

EyeWash is an event where VJs and Video artists perform live-mix video, present audio visual performances in collaboration with Audio artists, workshop performance involving video and technology. EyeWash is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.