Creators On the Loose in NYC

A still from Chris Doyle's 50,000 beds project, one of the highlights of this weekend's Creators Series events in New York (Photo: Tomorrow Unlimited)

By Chris Willard

Looking ahead at the future of art and emerging creativity is the focus of the inaugural Creators Series, an interdisciplinary conference and multi-media gallery exhibition of projects exploring the possibilities of art through film, media, design, illustration, fashion, advertising, and technology. Featuring artists from around the globe, the series will also host demonstrations and salon-style discussions; Chris Doyle, Matt Hanson and Martin Percy will chat about the future of making movies through a process called participatory filmmaking.

"We decided to kind of look at new forms of filmmaking," said Jeremy Boxer, head of programming at Tomorrow Unlimited, the curatorial enterprise that organized the Creators Series. "We tried to look at people who are changing the way we look at the traditional pyramid of the director on the top and being like the idea of an auteur."

Doyle, a filmmaker and artist based in Brooklyn, will exhibit 45 short films as part of his 50,000 beds project. To produce the project, Doyle put 45 artists in hotel rooms and asked them to create their own shorts. "All the short films are gonna be put together into a gallery show," Boxer told The Reeler. "He’s going to create an (opportunity) to experience the film and the overarching kind of idea linking them together into one narrative."

Matt Hanson has turned filmmaking into a community experience by opening the entire preproduction process to public scrutiny in his project, Cinema 2.0. Contributors can help choose and produce the artwork, poster, and trailer for the film, and the film’s script will be posted on a wiki-site, where edits can be made. Percy’s work meanwhile, focuses on combining filmmaking with interactivity. Boxer said Percy represents more of the documentary-style angle by doing something he’s named The Digital Debate, a process that uses digital cinema to bring debate to a whole new medium. “Basically it crosses the boundary between interactivity and filmmaking and talks about the possibility of doing interactive film and also doing interviews in documentary style ... that allows people to ask questions," Boxer said. "It will be more conversational and not just like being talked to.”

The Creators Series runs today through Sunday at the Altman Building in Chelsea and the Canal Room in Tribeca. For programming and ticket information, visit the event's Web site.

Posted at June 8, 2007 11:34 AM