Spotlight on “Question Bridge: Black Males,” Innovent’s Transmedia Partner at the Sundance Festival 2012

Blessings come in threes. The artist-producers behind “Question Bridge: Black Males,” an immersive art installation turned educational transmedia project, are still spinning from the events at Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Story Lab in Utah. The Story Lab provides creative storytelling support to artists contributing to the emerging field of multi-layered, multi-formatted, immersive narratives. Question Bridge creators Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Bayete Ross Smith, and Kamal Sinclair couldn’t be more thankful for the honor of taking part in this inaugural Story Labs. But now they have another humbling blessing - Question Bridge is now on the roster of the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier exhibition line up for January 2012.

Maybe blessings come in threes. Prior to being chosen to take part in Sundance’s Story Lab, Question Bridge, partnering with transmedia firm Innovent, has secured exhibit partners in Brooklyn and Oakland. The Question Bridge art installation is scheduled to open at the Brooklyn Museum and at the Oakland Museum also this January.

“Talk about multiple entry and exposure points,” said Innovent CEO Antonio Kaplan. “We’ve always been developing transmedia strategies with the Question Bridge team on enriching the project’s outreach platforms - via online presence, mobile app, art installations, street teams, and as an educational curriculum. What a better way to kick off the transmedia campaign then at the Sundance film festival.”

The New Frontier Story Lab is founded on the Sundance Institute Lab model, which offers intensive, residential retreat focused on creative support. These include daily keynotes, case-studies, group sessions, and the scenic, invigorating mountainous outdoors of Sundance Resort in Utah.

“It was really amazing to be in the room with such legends of storytelling and masters of technology all figuring out how to tell a compelling story or create spaces for compelling stories to manifest in a transmedia world,” said Kamal Sinclair, collaborator and media lead for Question Bridge. “This must have been what it was like to be one of the early filmmakers experimenting with how to tell a story through ‘moving pictures,’ only we are dealing with smart phones, tablets, computers, interactive objects of all kinds and our audience isn’t sitting still in a theatre, they are constantly moving through multiple environments in real time. It is exciting to be part of a paradigm shift.”

Creative Advisors for the New Frontier Story Lab includes, among many others, Michael Goldenberg (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Contact), Richard Lagravenese (The Fisher King, Water for Elephants), Aaron Koblin (Johnny Cash Project, Google Data Arts Team), Wesley Strick (Cape Fear), David Gale (MTVX), Takaaki Okada (Condition ONE), Susan Bonds (42 Entertainment), Nick Fortugno (Playmatics), Laura Poitras (My Country, My Country), Noland Walker (Citizen King), and Lance Weiler (Pandemic, The WorkBook Project).

“We’ve been completely inspired by the Sundance Lab and mentors,” said Kamal. “Nick Fortugo gave a brilliant presentation on storytelling in gaming. Susan Bonds is a guru of Alternate Reality games. Lance Weiler walked us through his massive thoughts on transmedia. We’d shout paragraphs on Twitter if we could. There’s so little space to convey all that warmth and gratitude.”

Innovent’s co-founders have now partnered in several of Sundance’s transmedia firsts. Pandemic 1.0 (Sundance January 2011 selection), market the first time the lab supported a feature film / transmedia project. As for another first, Question Bridge took part in the first ever New Frontier Story Lab in Utah and will now set a precedent in cross-nation dialogue via art installations.

Six artist teams and projects were chosen for the 2011 Sundance New Frontier Story Labs - “Follow Back,” “Kill Shakespeare,” “The Last Hijack,” “Rome,” “Question Bridge: Black Males,” and “18 Days in Egypt.” The last two have partnered with Innovent in pulling out a transmedia engagement plan - from sketches to actual implementations.

“18 Days in Egypt” is a collaborative, crowd-sourced interactive documentary and worked with Innovent to design an interactive web portal that covers the last 18 days of the Egyptian Revolution. The project features thousands of videos, photos, emails, tweets supplied by eye witnesses and participants. 18 Days is also a recipient of the first-ever Tribeca Film Institute New Media Fund, having been awarded a 100,000 USD grant.

“We’re happy to work with such innovative teams,” said Innovent CCO Elise Baugh. “We seem to be drawn to projects that vehemently push the envelope. They dream up the twistedly engaging and the poignantly arresting.”

“Question Bridge: Black Males” and “18 Days in Egypt” question the fabric of the status quo using new media alternatives, and in the process unweave them. Innovent is a transmedia company that takes on projects that aim for social change.

Press Release for You First

You First at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, October 1 through October 29. Opening night reception 5:00 p.m. Performances begin at 7:00 p.m. For more information visit www.occca.org and www.uforafest.com. OCCCA is open Thursdays and Sundays from noon to 5:00 p.m and until 9:00 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays. Located at 117 N. Sycamore, Santa Ana, California, in the Santa Ana Artists’ Village. Contact: Rob Mintz or Dalibor Polivka , Email:uforafest@yahoo.com   Ph: 714.667.1517 

Artists Rob Mintz and Dalibor Polivka present You First, an exhibit arriving with more than fifty attractions! Dive into the think tank if you dare! Featuring young partisans of the real from the nation’s top schools —-  plus a cadre of international art luminaries* —- You First presents authentic & genuine Relational Aesthetics: art in the here and now! See it, feel it, think it through! The great dream belongs to everyone! Glimpse the new paradigm. It’s no longer business as usual. (Exhibit may contain language not suitable for children under eighteen years of age.) See poets, slaves, soap-sellers, lovers, inmates, outcasts, scientists, city planners, a guy reading a newspaper, a woman in a tree! See artists, documentarians and photojournalists at the height of their game. Art is more than just another facet of life: it’s the name of a hope, reaffirming the social bond.  During the opening, choreographer Sheron Wray and her dance troupe will improvise interactively with the audience. On the same night, You First will present Zoe Gruni’s performance piece, Urban Jackalope, first seen at the Biennale di Venezia, plus the dance stylings of Derek Fleming of Soul Train fame. Milan Kovac, the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic, will present documentation of  Slovakia’s humanitarian aid in troubled regions of the world.  You First has received the kind endorsement of the French critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud who coined the term, “relational aesthetics.”Another true art luminary, Alfredo Cramerotti, a UK-based artist, author and curator, represents himself with a collaborative blog and videos about the radical European art fair Manifesta. Best-selling social visionaries Michiel Schwarz & Joost Elffers’ will reveal new symbols for a sustainable future. NYC’s favorite rock and roll fashionista, Jordan Betten, will demonstrate how to dress for the party. Marc Pally, a high-power hyphenate, is both the artistic director of Glow (an all night event held in Santa Monica) and an LA-based artist showing sensitive, stylized drawings of a human face, wry, melancholy and somehow heroic. Max Presneill, mercurial director of the Torrance Art Museum, exhibits brooding, painterly explorations of cognition and experience. Arie Galles, a professor at Soka University, artist and gallery director, bears witness to the Holocaust in a series of large-scale drawings of maps and aerial photographs from military archives. Art collectives are a fascinating phenomenon —- and there is none more elusive than Finishing School, masters of street-smart provocation.  The artists in You First are graduates of the most prestigious art programs in the nation, among them Art Center, Art Institute of Chicago, Cal Arts, California College of the Arts, Cornell, Cranbrook, Harvard, Mills College, MIT, New York Academy of Art, Otis, Rhode Island School of Design, Rutgers, San Francisco Academy of Art, and Yale. The participants in You First come from the United States, Italy, France, England, Sweden, and Slovakia, nomadic citizens of the planet Art. A complete exposition about You First, the ideas and personalities that shaped it —- and the Ufora project in general —- will be unpacked in a forthcoming book by the curators.

* The art luminaries include: Base Design, Jordan Betten, Nicolas Bourriaud, Finishing School, Derek Fleming, Arie Galles, Zoe Gruni, Milos Koptak, Marc Pally, Max Presneill, Michiel Schwarz & Joost Elffers, Karen Smith & Ida Hledikova,  Stealthart,  Wolfgang Steahle, Ta Tu, and Sheron Wray.

University of Ottawa Department of Theatre

Drama Guild Presents

MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA – THE HAUNTED

By Eugene O’Neill

Directed by André Perrier

The University of Ottawa Department of Theatre proudly announces the Drama Guild production of Mourning Becomes Electra – The Haunted by Eugene O’Neill, directed by André Perrier

Celebrating 79 years since its first appearance on Broadway, Mourning Becomes Electra – The Haunted adapts the Greek myth of Orestes into a story that delves deep into the lives of the Mannon family during the American Civil War. Inherently a melodramatic script, this intriguing play, acted by a young cast, explores the themes of adultery, murder, and incestuous love and revenge.

Actor, director and playwright André Perrier studied at the Conservatoire de Québec from 1979 to 1982. In 1992, he wrote and directed  Signal d’alarme, which won best play at the Ottawa Book Festival. He was artistic director of Triangle Vital from 1990 to 1998 where he wrote and directed most productions. He became the Artistic Director of Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario in 1998, throwing his creative energies into the development of new plays, including Du pépin à la fissure and Univers (winner of the Masque de la meilleure production franco-canadienne 2001). André teaches part-time at Ottawa University where he has directed La Maison de Bernarda Alba and Ubu roi and has also taught at l’Université du Québec à Montréal where he has recently directed Coulson P.M. Lately, Sexy béton 1 and 2 which he directed for Porte Parole Theatre, made the Montreal Ici newspaper’s best ten list of 2009.

The Drama Guild Production of Mourning Becomes Electra – The Haunted also features a set design by Normand Vandal, costumes by Judy De Boer, sound design by Kevin McCagg, and lighting design by Margaret Coderre-Williams.

The University of Ottawa Department of Theatre invites you to experience the genius of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra – The Haunted, which opens Tuesday, March 9 and runs through Saturday March 13, 2010. Showtime is 8:00 p.m. Performances take place in the theatre of Academic Hall, 133 Séraphin Marion, University of Ottawa.

Reservations:             Secretariat, Department of Theatre, 613-562-5761

Tickets:                      General Public, $15, Students/Seniors: $10

From:                          Tuesday, March 9 to Saturday, March 13, 2010

Venue:                        Academic Hall, 133 Séraphin Marion

Publicity:                     Marilena Gaudio, 514-827-3161, marilenag_87@hotmail.com