Composing
30 x 3 virgin remy: $200 OBO
30 x 3 virgin remy: $200 OBO is an experimental dance film and craigslist ad about long hair and life in rural Vietnam during 1972-1974.
Narration: Hoàng Kim Nguyễn
Dance & Concept: Sarah Nguyễn
Music Composition & VFX: Ramin Rahni (raminrahni.com)
B&W Photography: Wimpy AF (@wimpyaf)
Camera Operation: Vivian Uyên Vi Phan, Lộc Tony Phan, and Darach Miller
CC-BY-NC
LinkRot
LinkRot is a ~9 minute dance inspired by broadcast audio and RSS preservation practices, technology obsolescence, and 3-2-1 backups. Sounds recreating auditory memory of early digital networking are made tangible through isolated limbed branches that build to a feeling of potential completion, but soon breaks down as segments are gradually destroyed due to algorithmically-controlled centralized over-saturation. This is an exploration of the social pressures made from rapid content creation through conveniently available GUIs versus openly accessible text-based mediums.
There is an undervaluation of the internet's open source dependencies. From the invisible labor contributed to open source development to the ephemerality of the content. Podcasters are only just recently becoming aware of this issue. The RSS feed is an open framework to deliver files between computers, and with the rise of commercial RSS publishers, podcasts (e.g. audible cultural content) are being lost. RSS feed link rot can be avoided. Dancers have lived with this issue since the beginning of its time. Performance and practice is stored in muscle memory, while recordings only capture bytes of audiovisual interpretation. Exerted movements and feelings are never reproducibly the same with each performance. Movement link rot is an ongoing study.
And last, open source tools--web archiving and software preservation techniques exists, but are not cohesive. Specifically, Git version control systems, like GitLab, hold codebase for a wide variety of games, media, research, protocols, etc. Existing archiving techniques are missing components to recreate the full computational environment. LinkRot is a dance that serves to emulate the physical euphoria that internet content creation permits to the digital decay that comes with loss (or is there even a feeling of loss?).
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Sarah is a modern-contemporary dancer and a librarian-archivist in training. She is a student at the University of Washington's iSchool for Library and Information Science, project coordinator for Preserve This Podcast, research scientist for Investigating & Archiving the Scholarly Git Experience, and archivist for the Dance Heritage Coalition/Mark Morris Dance Group. An advocate for open, accessible, and secure technologies, she promotes open source tools such as GitHub Pages, Nikola, and vrecord for all involved projects. Offline, she can be found riding a Cannondale mtb or eating plants.
Ramin Rahni is the sound collaborator for LinkRot. He is a musician and sound designer based in New York. He plays middle eastern inspired techno as part of Googoosh Dolls, and noisy pop as part of Tar Of. He is godfather to many cats across Brooklyn.
Pondlife x AMNH
https://www.amnh.org/explore/pondlife
A three part miniseries about some of the microbial inhabitants of New York City and the surrounding areas, made in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History.
Created by Sally Warring
Cinematography and editing by Serena Kuo
Location sound and sound mixing by Jon Flores
Original music, sound design, and animations by Ramin Rahni
Studio sound Jesse Vance & Russ Baird
Assistant producer Lisa Rifkind
Executive producers Erin Chapman & Eugenia Levenson.
UNSINKABLE
UNSINKABLE: MY HEART WILL GO ON
dir. [Name of Director]
live score / video collage
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 7:30 AND 10:00 PM
Even after two decades, [year of blockbuster] blockbuster [name of blockbuster] remains indelibly etched into the collective consciousness. Originally released to breathless acclaim, 14 Oscar nominations, and 11 wins including Best Picture, and endlessly repeat theater visits by teenage viewers, the movie lingers in the memories of many, accompanied a deep-seated shame at knowing every note in “[title of canadian soundtrack pop hit]”.
Join us on the twentieth anniversary of [name of blockbuster]’s debut for a live reconstruction of [blockbusting director]’s unsinkable creation. With visual processing by Sleepy Peopl and an improvised score by Cyrus, [EVENT NAME] is a 30-minute voyage into the unknown, a wreckage that will go on and on.
Cyrus is Ariyan Basu, Maggie Drew Brennan, and Ramin Rahni. Maggie is a city-based visual, audial dilettante. Tar Of play experimental pop and electronic textures, and recently discovered a shared past obsession with a certain cinematic experience.
Sleepy Peopl piece together live video projections from found and created materials and one of them has still never seen TITA–[film in question].
Lichen
A short documentary about Lichen. Part of the anthology film MOSAIC. Premiering at the 10th annual Imagine Science Film Festival in New York, October 13-20 2017.
Written/Directed/Narrated — Sally Warring
Music/Animation — Ramin Rahni
Cinematography — Joshua Kristal and Sally Warring
Location Sound — Jon Flores
Post Production — Brett Harding.
Element
Field notes refer to various notes recorded by scientists during or after their observation of a specific phenomenon they are studying. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of meeting Mike Kershnar knows that defining his presence as a phenomenon would be an understatement. Nevertheless, Element was the scientist in this scenario and with the help of the wonderfully talented filmmaker Brandon Moore, we drafted our very own Field Notes via video on wanderlust artist Michael Kershnar. You can research our findings here and don't forget to follow Mike on instagram at @huskyroundupfor further observation, to try to understand the true perspectives of the mentioned subject being studied. Original music by Ramin Rahni.