What happens when you take cinema out of the confines of the movie theater, wrench the film reel off the projector, and start editing the images and sound live, in front of the audience? Live cinema.

Recent developments in media processing software tools have facilitated a new generation of electronic artists across the world in creating real-time video performances. The practice of combining music and images live started in club culture and carries on the visual music tradition of abstract filmmakers such as Oskar Fischinger and the Whitney brothers. The form also resurrects the expanded cinema experiments of the 1970s, in which artists started to craft an immersive synaesthetic or expanded cinema, one that would create a new kind of vision, a new kind of consciousness.

On August 8, 9 and 10, during ISEA 2006, Club Glo in downtown San Jose will host some of the most avant-garde live video artists from the Bay Area and around the world in a three-night program of sound and moving image fusing electronica with live experimental video. Each evening’s program will feature a series of live performances and screenings by live cinema artists from the US, but also from Colombia, Finland, France, Israel, Mexico, Spain, and Turkey – many of which have never been seen before in the US. The stellar line-up offers viewers an unparalleled introduction to one of the most vibrant emerging artforms in contemporary culture.

Curators Michael Lew Juha Huuskonen Lucas van der Velden Jan Rohlf Pedro Soler Director Michael Lew Writer Holly Willis Producers Kate Walker Nathalie Aubret Production coordinators Derek Leverette (Los Angeles) Julia Scott (San Jose) Devon Meyers (San Jose) Designers Bonnie Thompson Jenova Chen

Special Thanks To Steve Dietz, Brian Eder, Wanda Webb, Beau Takahara, Michela Pilo, Anuradha Vikram, Ana Serrano, Henry Warwick, Larry Cuba, and the Consulate General of Israel in San Francisco.