As part of our annual luncheon听media arts lecture series at the BC, we are happy to confirm Matt Soar for March 3, 2014. Soar is an intermedia artist,听designer, and filmmaker, and associate professor of Communication听Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. He is co-developer of the听Korsakow System, an open source software application for interactive,听nonlinear storytelling. His most recent Korsakow film, Ceci N鈥檈st Pas听Embres (2012), a 鈥榙atabase diary鈥� reflecting on life in a small French听village, was recently selected for RIDM 鈥� the Montreal International听Documentary Festival. Soar鈥檚 eclectic writing has appeared in journals听such as Cultural Studies, Jump Cut, Body & Society, and Eye: The听International Review of Graphic Design. He has contributed to the听forthcoming anthologies Dynamic Fair Dealing (University of Toronto听Press) and New Documentary Ecologies (Palgrave). Soar also collects听old signs and is an aspiring voiceover artist.
My current research-creation project explores the meanings of听commercial film leaders: the 鈥榟idden鈥� footage at the beginning of a听film reel, littered with all kinds of esoteric markings: logos, lab听notes, handwriting and type, color tests, projection cues 鈥� often听taking up only one or two frames each. Leaders are doubly 鈥榣ost鈥� due听to their routine invisibility from the audience, and their impending听obsolescence. Working with a sound artist (Jackie Gallant) and a听variety of tools 鈥� a lightbox and a macro lens, a DSLR video camera听attached to a high-powered microscope, interactive narrative software听鈥� Lost Leaders aims to be an extended poetic engagement with the听metadata of film; the graphical residue of film processing, printing,听and projection.
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Matt Soar will be speaking from 11:30am to 12:30pm, in the ATLAS building, room 311.