Blind people playing baseball?  Yeah.  That's right.   All you need is a ball that beeps.

(photo credit: "baseball" by theseanster93 via flickr creative commons)

Here's a music video I made for Sigur Ros as a part of their Mystery Film Experiment:

With Myself and Anna Drever.

My friend Vikthor Frankenstein did the handheld camera work and my other friend Sean was kind enough to loan us his equipment. I did the concept, projection design, and direction, and my tripod was kind enough to hold the camera for me when Vikthor wasn't around.

The map images used in the film are licensed under creative commons including:

19960528 01 Scotland Map by davidwilson 1949

Map of the United States by Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the BPL

Don't give up, true believers.  It's coming, it's coming. I promise.  I've just launched a website to host the entirety of my feature-length animated film "Immune: The Origin of Ryan Scammell, Superhero" at www.immunethefilm.com.  On it you can find a new re-animated high-res version of the prologue (originally launched on this podcast) as well as all of Part One.  Part Two has been completed and will be posted in the next month.  Part Three is about halfway done and will be released shortly after that. And assuming I can get the time off of my "real" job to get it done, the final episode, Part Four (when it all comes together!), will be completed by the middle of next year.  

If you'd like to stay updated, just send your email address to:

ryan@immunethefilm.com

and I'll shoot you an email when the new episodes are posted.

As a small change of pace from the rest of the podcast, here's a short music video I put together made entirely out of letters.  

The video was created for a two-week run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as part of a live show I was doing alongside comedian and performance artist Ryan Good. Initially the video was meant to serve as a background element to a movement piece, but we ended up liking the video so much that we all but abandoned all on-stage movement during the projection.

The song in the video is Jonsi's "Go Do."  Some of you may recognize Jonsi as the lead singer of the Icelandic band Sigur Ros.  If you like the song (somehow after well over 100 listens, I'm still not tired of it) you can buy it here.  Or it's worth checking out Jonsi's website directly, where you can watch the official "Go Do" video, or live footage from his "Go" Tour which includes animated projections that are way more impressive than anything I can do.

The alternate title for this was going to be the Isaac Hayes-esque "Girl, I Wanna Get You In My Belly Button T-Shirt Hole" but the mp3 title field wouldn't fit it.  But now that you know that, I mean, c'mon, aren't you curious....? 

The first full episode of "Immune: The Origin of Ryan Scammell, Superhero (Approximately 72% Nonfiction)."  The four-part series explores the period of time in my life where I became convinced that I had superpowers and the reasons, perhaps, why we all want to believe that superpowers could be real in the first place.

If you haven't already seen it, its worth starting with the Jan 6, 2010 post which serves as the prologue.

I just finished a live reading at Maryland Insitute College of Art's Falvey Hall in Baltimore this past weekend where I performed live versions of "One Reason When Visiting Sacred Sites" as well as "How to Be a Man (sort of...)" alongside playing some clips from "Beneath the Surface."  After the performance, one of the students showed me a painting/drawing she had done inspired by the first segment in "Beneath the Surface." It was quite a nice surprise gift so I figured I'd share it with all of you as well. I've attached the picture here, entitled "Fading Time" by Sophie Monosmith.

In other news, I've spent the last year trying out a variety of different animation styles to figure out the best way to approach the rest of "Immune." Well, after a year, I think I've finally got something figured out and a decisive style through which to approach the film. My hope it to release the first episode before the end of the year.

 

A number of people have asked why it's been so long since I've posted anything, and whether or not I've stopped the podcast all together. The answer is no, in fact, the only reason it's taking me so long is because I've been making a feature length animated film, which as you can imagine is quite time consuming. As a result, I suspect that posts will be pretty sparse at least for awhile, but in the meantime, I figured I'd give you a little taste. Here's the first 3 minutes of "IMMUNE!: The Origin of Ryan Scammell, Superhero (approximately 72% nonfiction)."

Because this is a much longer piece than I normally produce, and because in writing it, it naturally broke down into seven distinct parts, I wanted to give the listener the option of listening to the piece as a whole or to each section individually. So I created an enhanced podcast, which allows you to interact with it the same way you do a CD. You can jump forward to the next track or back to one you want to hear again. Also each track has it’s own chapter title and individual artwork. The only downside is that not every portable music player can handle an enhanced podcast (sorry) so I had to make two separate ones.

This project started because I was interested in the hundreds of towns around America that have been evacuated and then purposely flooded in order to make reservoirs. In many cases, the streets, the buildings, still exist underwater. When droughts happen, these town resurface and the people who lived in these towns often come back to see what’s left of their old homes. To me, this was a very powerful image. I saw it as such a perfect example of the idea that “you can never go home again.” As I started researching I kept finding all these different parallels between water and memory, between water and time, in mythology, psychology, physiology, in the great floods, and icebergs, in swimming pools, and ancient rivers. It began to feel like maybe the reason water kept appearing as a metaphor for these things, was because it spoke to a basic human connection between the two. That maybe somewhere in the nature of water itself, we could find the nature of the human mind. (((NOTE: This piece is a slight departure from my earlier work. The piece is written less as a monologue and more like a transom of ideas set to music that I've written for it. It’s separated into 7 different sections, like tracks on a record, each with a different perspective on the relationship between water and memory. So to that extent it should be listened to more like a music album with narration instead of lyrics.)))