The "Official" Art's Bday Press Release ;-)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Join Video Pool Media Arts Centre in Celebrating
Art’s 1,000,045th Birthday on January 17, 2008
– The party starts at 8:00 p.m. at Club Desire (441 Main St.) –

Winnipeg, MB (January 2, 2008) – At Video Pool, we love art, and we love parties. It is in this spirit that we are thrilled to continue our tradition of bringing international Art's Birthday celebrations to Winnipeg!

In 1963, French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou declared that on January 17, one million years ago, art was born when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. A deliberate yet playful act left open to chance… who knew art would evolve to become something so culturally significant?

To recognize the worldwide appreciation of art, Video Pool is pleased to host an evening of performances, contests, interactive fun, and other goodies. We’ll begin the night with a VJ-style new media performance by Ryan Stec (Winnipeg/Ottawa). This will be followed by an experimental electronic music set by internationally renowned Venetian Snares (Budapest/Winnipeg). Local favourite, Mama Cutsworth, will take over the stage next, and she’ll keep the party going by spinning funky vinyl into the wee hours.

Art’s Birthday is also a chance to get involved!

• COSTUMES: Everyone is welcome to be creative and party in costume. The theme selected by the International Art’s Birthday Committee for 2008 is “Forever Young”… unique interpretations of this are encouraged!
• CAKE: What is a party without cake? Bring your real or surreal cake to the party and enter it to be judged by our panel of “experts”. Please click here for more information.
• MEDIA GIFT EXCHANGE: Bring a wrapped gift such as a video clip on DVD, an old 8-track cassette, or a sequence of ambient sounds on a CD and take another mystery media gift home with you at the end of the night. Please click here for more information.
  
• RAFFLES: Try your luck at our draws for great items from fantastic local merchants!

Art’s Birthday is a chance for one and all to come together and have a wonderful time in the name of Art. It is an event that gets bigger and bigger each year, and it is not to be missed, so join us and be a part of the action!

Thursday, January 17, 2008
Club Desire - 441 Main St., Winnipeg



Admission is $15 or $5 for those arriving in costume
Doors open at 8:00 p.m.

* * *

Art’s Birthday is also a time to say thank you to organizations that help make art possible. Video Pool Media Arts Centre is grateful for ongoing support from:



Video Pool is also thrilled to have the support of local merchants including Pastry Castle, which has generously donated a birthday cake for us to share!



VIDEO POOL MEDIA ARTS CENTRE is a non-profit artist run centre dedicated to advancing the discipline of media art by providing media artists, non-profit organizations and community groups with access to professional video and media equipment, training, distribution and programming. Video Pool strives to be a national leader fostering innovation, experimentation, critical dialogue and advocacy in media arts.

Contact:
Milena Placentile, Programming Coordinator
Video Pool Media Arts Centre
#300-100 Arthur St., Winnipeg MB R3B 1H3
http://www.videopool.org
http://videopool.blogspot.com
204.949.9134 x 1

Save the Date! Art is going to be 1,000,045 on January 17, 2008!

At Video Pool, we love art. And we love parties, so it makes sense that we'd wanna keep up our fantastic tradition of joining international celebrations in honour of Art's Birthday!

Art is going to be one million and forty-four years old this year, and we have all kinds of awesome things brewing to mark this very special occasion!

So far, we've lined up a VJ-style new media performance by Ryan Stec (Winnipeg/Ottawa) and an experimental electronic performance by Venetian Snares (Budapest/Winnipeg). We're also on the look out for the perfect DJ... someone highly capable of making you wanna shake your booty! Sounds like fun, huh?

But that's not all... we're gonna have a costume contest, and an art cake contest, and a new media gift exchange, and colouring stations, irrational quantities of candy, and then some!

It’s going to be a blast, and we want YOU to join us!!

So, save the date: Thursday, January 17 2008 beginning around 8:00 p.m. @ Club Desire (441 Main St)

Be prepared to get creative, get crazy, enjoy performances, and maybe even perform a little yourself ;-)

Art’s Birthday is a chance for everyone to come together and have a great time in the name of Art. We’re looking forward to this event we and hope to see you there!

UPDATE: Are you looking for the latest info? Check out our "official" Art's Birthday 2008 press release =-)

Happy Day After Art's Birthday!

Hello and Happy [day after] Art’s Bday!!

We enjoyed a wonderful night of celebrations in honour of Art’s Birthday, and we hope that you did, too!! Ryan Stec’s remix of video works by Stacey Abramson, Clint Enns, Simon Hughes, and Dominique Rey offered a tantalizing audiovisual experience, and his eye candy tricks and treats also factored deliciously well into the sets of our other performers. We’re still breathless over Venetian Snares’ paying of IDM puppet master to our dancing bodies and breakcore minstrel to our minds, and we’re still floating over Mama Cutsworth’s soulful delivery of vinyl delights that transported us through time and space! Thank you to these incredible talents for helping us set the pace for a fantastic night!

We are also grateful to John Kendle, Tracey Koga, and Morley Walker for their expertise and good humor participating in our real and surreal cake competition. Because, well, what’s a birthday party without cake? And, further to that very important thought, thank you to Pastry Castle for contributing a beautiful, creamy, chocolatey-goodness, icing smothered treat that was shared among many!

Thanks are also due to Shawna Dempsey for her role as an MC, the many video makers who contributed work to our reel, and the many volunteers who worked tech, decorated, worked the door and sold raffle tickets. Special thanks are also due to Jaymez and Big Mama for their “tasty” contribution to the evening. Also, thank you very much to Ragpickers Anti-Fashion Emporium for setting up a fabulous costume rental depot... awesome!

We are also extremely grateful to the many local merchants and galleries who contributed sensational items to our raffle! We will soon be posting a special thank you mentioning all of them. Thank you!!

Thanks also to the staff at Club Desire for giving us a place to party and for helping the night run so smoothly.

We also want to thank Charles, Michael and Thor for capturing the night in still and moving image... those pics and vids will be coming soon! We can’t wait to share them. Oh, and that reminds us... if YOU have pics, please send them to us!! We’ll post them, with credit, of course!

So, until then... we hope you enjoy another wonderful year of art!

[Art's Birthday 2008]

Media Gift Exchange

Art's Birthday is just a few days away and, in the in the midst of planning your costume and making your cake for the real and surreal cake making competition, you're probably asking yourself: "What is the media gift exchange, and how can I participate?"

Well, it's a good thing you ask, because we'd love to tell you!

Even though January 17 is Art's birthday, it's an opportunity for all of us to revel in the gifts that art brings ;-) Since Video Pool is all about spreading love and appreciation for media arts, we thought it would be great fun to collect bits of media -- wrapped up nice n' pretty -- and facilitate an anonymous exchange.

To participate, all you need to do is bring a wrapped media item. Feel free to get creative on what this might mean. Maybe a quirky 8-track or vinyl record you uncovered at a garage sale, a VHS tape you found in your basement, a clip of found video that you've captured onto DVD, or a selection of strange audio samples burned onto CD.

Individuals who bring gifts will place them on our gift exchange display when they arrive at the beginning of the night and will be eligible to select a gift from the display later on that evening. Who knows what will be made available! Maybe something provocative enough to inspire new work, or at least something to have a good laugh over ;-)

[Art's Birthday 2008]

More about the Art's Birthday Real and Surreal Cake Comeptition

Here's the scoop:

Everyone is welcome to arrive at the party with a cake. It can take any form -- 2D or 3D (or 4D!) -- and can be made out of anything! The only thing we ask is that entrants provide a list of ingredients so we can determine if the cake is actually edible ;-)

Prizes will be awarded in the following categories:

• The Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod Body Break Award – for the cake most likely to contain vitamins or beneficial nutrients
• The Stanley Cup – for the cake with the ‘smoothest’ icing
• The Bell Canada Titanium Timbit – for the cake project most likely to receive Canada Council funding
• The Darwin Award – for the most primordial cake reflecting art’s humble origins 100,000,045 years ago.
• The Blizzard Award – for the cake most likely to have been purchased at a St. Vital Dairy Queen
• The Istvan Kantor Li’l Debbie Log d’Or – for the cake that provokes the most intense reaction in the genital region

The cakes will be judged by a panel of experts. This year's judges will be Morley Walker (Winnipeg Free Press), John Kendle (Uptown Magazine) and Tracy Koga (Shaw TV).

Judging will take place between 9:00 - 10:00 p.m. and prizes will be awarded at 10:30 p.m., so please make sure you arrive with your cake before 9:00 p.m. =-)

For more information, please send an email to vpprogramming@videopool.org

[Art's Birthday 2008]

VP on TV

Art's birthday is now just a few short days away!

Thank you to Tracy Koga from Shaw TV for taking the time to interview us earlier last week about this amazing upcoming event, and thank you in advance to CityTV for welcoming us onto Breakfast Television... we'll be in the studio on Tuesday, January 15, so keep an eye on yer tube for us!

Above: John, a Shaw TV Cameraperson, with an Art's Bday postcard in hand

[Art's Birthday 2008]

Special Thanks to Our Very Generous Local Supporters

Video Pool is extremely grateful to have received such generous support from so many local friends including merchants, arts organizations, an art collective, and a band.

Enormous thanks are owed to:

Advance Electronics
American Flamewhip
L’Atelier national du Manitoba
Aqua Books
Bikram Yoga Winnipeg
Blue Earth Organics
BorderCrossings Magazine
Cinematheque
The Fyxx
Hooper’s Bazaar
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Manitoba
Into the Music
Kustom Kulture
The Line Up
Mac Helper
MAWA
Mondragon
Mother’s Music/The Drum Store
Olympia Ski and Cycle
Orange Poppy
Out of the Blue
Pastry Castle
Platform Gallery
Plug In ICA
Prairie Fire
Pure Essence Spa Salon
Red River Books
Urban Shaman
Winnipeg Folk Festival + King's Head Pub



The contributions of these organizations truly helped to make Art's Birthday a success! Thank you!

[Art's Birthday 2008]

VJ in Residence =-)

During the days leading up to Art's Birthday, Ryan Stec spent a few days working on-site, preparing footage and planning his performance. Here's a pic...



[Art's Birthday 2008]

More Info About Art's Birthday...

Hot off the interwebs, we've got some more info for you about the stellar performances lined up to take place at Art's Birthday 2008...

Wikipedia offers a wealth of information about Venetian Snares, namely that he is from Winnipeg and is known for making experimental electronic music often in odd numbered time signatures. He is an unusually prolific artist, having released records on the History of the Future, Isolate/DySLeXiC ResPonSe, Addict, Zod, Distort, Sublight, Low-Res, Planet Mu and Hymen record labels.

Read more at http://www.venetiansnares.com. Take a listen at http://www.myspace.com/venetiansnares. That's where the pics came from. Click on 'em for the full effect!

Ryan Stec is a Winnipeg born/Ottawa based media artist and curator working in documentary and experimental forms. As a curator Stec has produced five editions of the media art commissioning program Remix (2002-2006), presented by SAW Video, the Available Light Screening Collective, and Art Star, Galerie SAW Gallery's Video Art Biennial.

Work from his very broad practice, ranging from live performance to traditional documentary, has been presented at a variety of venues from The New Forms Festival in Vancouver to Platform Gallery in Vaasa, Finland and the Canadian Film Institute in Ottawa. He is currently the Artistic Director of Artengine, and can be seen performing regularly as a VJ at both art and club venues in Ottawa.

Using strictly vinyl, Mama Cutsworth is no stranger to making folks flip on the old school funk, soul, hip hop and latin music.

Voted Winnipeg's #3 DJ in Uptown Magazine (after the impermeable DJ duo Hunnicutt and Co-op), Mama C. has played at music festivals and art galleries, roller rinks and warehouses... anywhere there's enough space to dance. Over the years, she's thrown her own dance parties, won the title at the Clash of Titans DJ battle, has hosted CKUW's Stylus Radio for over
6 years, and recently performed at the St. John's International Women's Film Festival in Newfoundland.

With the dusty funk staying permanently in her record crates, you can bet your neighbour's kid that by the end of the night you'll be freaking out to the hot horn sections, flute solos and slammin' percussion.

PLUS there is more information on its way concerning the art cake contest, costumes, and the silent auction, so stay tuned!

More VP on TV =-)

Did you catch VP on Breakfast Television this morning? Heather and our Programming Coordinator talked about the history of Art's Birthday and about all the exciting things going on at Club Desire on Thursday night, which is now only TWO days away!!



Have you started on your costume yet?

;-)

[Art's Birthday 2008]

Art's Bday Photos - Round 1

[Art's Birthday 2008]