Chunky Move

I was introduced to the works of Australian contemporary dance company Chunky Move in a New Media and Performance class at school yesterday. Holy... dear... sweet... Jesus. The stuff that these guys do is breath-taking. Aside from brilliant, meaningful choreography, the company's work is rich with the integration of cutting age technology that is used to intensify the impact of each piece to the fullest possible degree. If you're at all interested in dance, movement, performance art, theatre, computer software, the abstract, theatrical lighting or sound, or just seeing things that are frieking beautiful, put aside a a few minutes and WATCH THIS STUFF.

I'm going to post here the first video we watched in class. The one that made me look up the rest of their work immediately when I got home. It's highlight footage from a piece called Mortal Engine, which the company's website describes as the following:

"Mortal Engine is a dance-video-music-laser performance using movement and sound responsive projections to portray an ever-shifting, shimmering world in which the limits of the human body are an illusion. Crackling light and staining shadows represent the most perfect or sinister of souls. Kinetic energy fluidly metamorphoses from the human figure into light image, into sound and back again. Choreography is focused on movement of unformed beings in an unfamiliar landscape searching to connect and evolve in a constant state of becoming. Veering between moments of exquisite cosmological perfection and grotesque evolutionary accidents of existence, we are driven forward by the reality of permanent change."

If you or someone you know would like to share creative work, send an email to gscale88@comcast.net with "PWYP" in the subject line.

Jimmy Quartuccio's choreography clips

For you dancer types out there (not me)... or for those of you who just like to watch works in progress as they're put together (definitely me).

My buddy Jimmy Quartuccio has been shooting a bunch of clips of dancers working with unfinished pieces of his choreography at different stages of the learning period. Great stuff. Very lyrical, uninhibited sort of style with loads of physical expression. He's put it all up for display on his Youtube channel.

Here's a sample... beautiful track in this one. I'll have to find out what that is.

If you or someone you know would like to share creative work, send an email to gscale88@comcast.net with "PWYP" in the subject line.

Terje Sorgjerd - The Aurora (Northern Lights documentation video)

Terje Sorgjerd, a Norwegian photographer, took roughly 22,000 shots of one of Mother Nature's greatest works of art and turned it into a stunning two-minute video called The Aurora. The video chronicles the movement of the Northern Lights in and around Norway's Kirkenes and Pas National Park on the border of Russia. Of all the breath-taking mysteries on our planet, this has always been one of my favorites. It's so hard to believe that it's real. Check it out:

If you or someone you know would like to share creative work, send an email to gscale88@comcast.net with "PWYP" in the subject line.

Dante Bucci and the Hang Drum

A relatively new invention, the Hang drum (pronounced “hung”) is a melodic, inverted steel percussion instrument born in Bern, Switzerland, circa 2000. The Hang looks like a steel drum crossed with a UFO, and has its own distinctive voice that draws comparisons to steel pans, harps, and even synthesizers. Each drum sings its own harmony, with a root in the center and a scale arrayed around the circumference. When used right, it's probably one of the coolest sounds I've ever heard.

Dante Bucci is a fixture in the Philly indie music scene and one of the most-recognized Hang players in the world, thanks to a constantly-expanding list of subscribers and over six million combined views on his YouTube channel. His style is a unique, beautiful blend of world music and melodic indie rock. Listen to one of his tunes below and learn more about his instrument and his work here.

If you really like what you hear, you can buy his album (MP3 Download) for super cheap at the link below:

If you or someone you know would like to share creative work, send an email to gscale88@comcast.net with "PWYP" in the subject line.

Virtual Choir

Inspired by a lone YouTube video of a young girl singing one of his pieces, popular classical composer/conductor Eric Whitacre put together an entire Virtual Choir project. The way it works is, Whitacre creates a guide video of himself conducting and posts it online. He then encourages folks from all over the world to record themselves individually singing along to it and post the video on YouTube. All of the individual videos are eventually edited together by producer Scott Haines into one massive virtual choir, and the end result is breath-taking. See for yourself:

(Whitacre's virtual choir performing a stirring rendition of "Lux Aurumque".)

Beginning as a self-described "simple experiment in social media", this video features 185 individuals from over 15 countries worldwide. People separated by oceans, who will never meet face to face, singing alone. But also together. You can find some more really interesting information about the creation process of this video here.

The choir has a new video premiering on April 7th, which received a staggering 2051 responses from 58 countries. 

If you or someone you know would like to share creative work, send an email to gscale88@comcast.net with "PWYP" in the subject line.