The Creators Project

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  Radical Friend, The Digital Flesh

  Radical Friend is an LA-based duo composed of artists and filmmakers Kirby McClure and Julia Grigorian. Their work includes some of the most otherworldly music videos known to man and interactive installations that blur the boundaries of the digital and tangible. The duo has put together something truly special for The Creators Project—an installation that will eventually cross four continents, five cities, and take place in the physical, virtual, and online realms.

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  Spike Jonze, I’m Here videobooth

  Academy Award-nominated director Spike Jonze has created some of the most critically acclaimed and popular commercials, music videos, and television shows ever conceived. Spike’s feature film debut, Being John Malkovich, stretched the notions of what a movie could be and his follow-ups—Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are—are arguably some of the most important films of the last 50 years. For The Creators Project launch event he’ll be showing I’m Here, a half-hour love story about the relationship of two robots living in LA. We will also be featuring an I’m Here videobooth where Spike will ask viewers three questions about the movie, life, and love via video. The viewer answers will be uploaded to TheCreatorsProject.com after the event.

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  Nick Zinner, A.D.A.B.A.

  Nick Zinner is best known as the guitarist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but he is also a gifted songwriter, producer, and a distinguished photographer who studied the craft at Bard College. Nick’s band tours have inspired three photography books that document life on the road and the groups’ adoring fans. Lucky for us, he managed to carve some time out of his insane schedule to create an exhibit for The Creators Project conference in NYC. A.D.A.B.A. combines his photography work with a score Nick composed especially for the exhibit. As if that weren’t enough, he’s enlisted Human League and Heaven 17 alumnus Martyn Ware to mix the music into a three-dimensional audio experience.

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  Takeshi Murata, Melter 2

  Takeshi Murata is a digital artist who creates flowing, Rorschach-like swaths of color, distortion, manipulation, and psychedelic imagery. His work has been exhibited at Deitch Projects and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, LA’s Peres Projects, and many other places. For the NYC Creators Project launch event, Takeshi has manifested his video-based Melter 2 series (an example of which is featured on the cover of this magazine) throughout the first floor gallery of Milk Studios.

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  Mark Essen, Jetpack Baseball, Thrill of Combat and NIDHOGG

  At first glance, Jetpack Baseball, Thrill of Combat and NIDHOGG are three seemingly retro and straightforward videogames developed by Mark Essen. But play one for a few moments and you’ll notice that something is awry. The graphics look 8-bit, but the game play defies conventional standards. These are the hallmarks of Mark “Messhof” Essen, along with a penchant for painfully precise controls and custom sound effects. One of our favorite games that Mark created is Party Boat, the objective of which is to dodge heat-seeking missiles in a very finicky helicopter. It’s hard to describe, so you’ll just have to play it to see what we mean. His work (most of which is available for free at messhof.com) was recently featured in the New Museum’s Younger than Jesus exhibit. Photo by Nak-Won Choi

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  Peng Lei, A Room With A Cat

  Peng Lei brings his retro yet new-wave sensibility to A Room With a Cat, a pop-infused tale of a beautiful girl and her feline waiting for an unknown visitor. It’s playful and sexy, with an undercurrent of longing—and the surprise at the end transforms this modern love story into a dadaist fairy-tale. Photo by Madi Ju

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  Ray Lei, The Face

  Ray Lei is a 24-year-old animator from Jiangxi, China, who exemplifies his country’s commitment to taking huge chunks of Western culture at a time, chewing them up and then spitting them out faster, better, and with a slight but noticeable Asian inflection. His magnum opus, which will be screened at the NY Creators Project launch event, is a silent, eight-minute short called The Face about a hip-hoppy Asian society in which everybody has weird, rotating Rubik’s Cube heads.

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  Danny Perez and Animal Collective, ODDSAC

  Visual artist Danny Perez is perhaps best known for his face-melting music videos for Animal Collective songs that look like he found a way to record dreams and nightmares with a camera. Danny’s latest collaboration with Animal Collective, ODDSAC, is a 53-minute “visual album” that psychedelically expands the boundaries of what’s possible with the moving image. Words won’t really do it justice, so be sure to check out the screening of the film at The Creators Project launch event.

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  ladj ly, Go Fast Connexion

  Like the work of many revolutionaries, Ladj Ly’s gritty short films and documentaries about the state of civil unrest in France have caused outrage and censorship. Go Fast Connexion is a “docu-fiction” about the French media’s inadequate coverage of the hot-button issues that have caused riots and widespread protests by the French citizenry. It is one of the most powerful political and social films of recent times, and you can experience it at our NYC launch event.

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  Patrick Jean, Pixels

  French director Patrick Jean is one of a growing number of artists who use outdated technology as both a medium and reference point in their work. His short film Pixels depicts a swarm of classic 8-bit-era video game characters attacking New York City before setting off a blocky, pixelated version of Armageddon.

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  Sun Haipeng

  Sun Haipeng is one of China’s most talented and creative computer-graphics animators. We will be screening three of his films at the Creators Project NYC launch event—Dragon Fist, Super Baozi vs Sushi Man, and Chinese New Year—that all share one common, universal theme: food.

And here is your quick-reference guide…