Category: Uncategorized

We Are Queens Music Video #7

Sara Fox Leave a comment

We Are Queens is at it again. They have created another music video bringing artists together in a time of isolation and uncertainty in the community. The organization received submissions from all over the world to come and be a part of this amazing experience, they received submissions from artists in Canada, UK, and Germany. The final cast consisted of dancers from right here in Ann Arbor, California, New York, and finally Wales.

The team consisted of one creative visionary (the person who planted the seed and the entire video is based on), the choreographer, and nine dancers. We Are Queens was also joined by the amazing Morgan Harrison, the professional mentor of the project who provided advice throughout the entire experience and a free master class to the team. Not to mention the We Are Queens executive team backing the entire project.

The idea behind this music video was mental health, or more specifically, celebrating the little things that remind you of the beauty in life. With the choreographer being in New York City the dancers were incredibly talented and hard-working, they learned the entire choreography through a video and performed it in front of the camera less than a week after learning it. The videographer and editor did an incredible job as well, including the dancers that were virtual and recorded themselves doing the choreography separately.

All of the dedication and passion from each member of this team is felt as you watch this music video. I highly recommend watching this and the other videos We Are Queens has produced thus far. In addition to raising money for She’s The First, We Are Queens is also supporting a new organization IGYB (I Got Your Back) a mental health organization raising money and awareness on mental health and the JED foundation by creating really cool merchandise.

IGYB: https://donate.jedfoundation.org/fundraiser/3117332

She’s The First: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/she-s-the-first/tal-kamin-we-are-queens

We Are Queens Website: https://www.wearequeens.org/

We Are Queens Music Video: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CMiZokKDffA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

 

the rose vine – “Bronze Sunrise”

Ezra Rose (she/ they) Leave a comment

“Bronze Sunrise”

Light permeates the room through the blinds on my bedroom window.

Warmth kisses my skin for the first time in what feels like months.

Though I am still exhausted something feels different today.

The weights placed on my body now lifted, though my bones

still ache from the ghost of their presence.

 

I sit up in bed, a seemingly simple task transformed

from impossible to merely extremely difficult.

Minute steps forward after weeks of falling back

seem odd to celebrate, but I need a victory.

They clap from the stands when the injured limps off the field.

What’s it like recording during COVID?

Josie Faith Leave a comment

Hey, all!

I’ve had a really cool opportunity these past two weeks–as well as the next two weeks to come–to spend some productive time with my a cappella group, DJs A Cappella, and the company Liquid 5th in order to record our 1st-place-winning ICCA set from last winter (Think Pitch Perfect).

Over the last two weeks, I’ve gotten to take an inside look at how different recording studios are handling the pandemic and the inability to have people face-to-face while recording music. I figured this might be something interesting to some of you, so here we go!

Liquid 5th is the company my a cappella group has worked with for years. Our contact with the company is located in North Carolina, and specializes in working with collegiate a cappella groups. My freshman year we took a road trip down during our spring break in order to finish recording an EP the group had started the previous year, and I can honestly say it’s one of my top 5 college memories.

You can check out that EP here! https://open.spotify.com/album/1vkjsGmjdfUSPqhMegWz1k

During that recording process, we had 5 or 6 members in the studio at once, each in our own sound-proof boxes, and recorded together. Liquid 5th worked closely with our music director and the person who arranged the specific songs we were recording in order to make sure the final product was as close to what we had imagined as possible.

 

This time around, things are a little different. We’re still working very closely with professionals in order to make sure the outcome of our sessions is high quality, but instead of recording in North Carolina, I have 18 people recording one at a time in my tiny studio apartment off of Liberty Street.

Our contact with Liquid 5th and I had a zoom meeting a week or so ago to install a bunch of super crazy software on my Mac, which not only allows him to control my computer from where he is in North Carolina, but to directly transmit all audio recorded by the equipment here in Ann Arbor to his home studio hundreds of miles away.

Each member of the group has a 2-hour time slot where they are charged with recording their specific voice part for all of the 12 minute set. Instead of singing along simultaneously with other members as we did last time, we sing with a pre-recorded MIDI track of the voice parts on a piano, as well as the vocal tracks of any members who’ve already recorded before us. It’s a little different, but it works.

The equipment we’re using was rented from another contact of the group’s, and we cart it back and forth from the studio to my apartment before and after every day of recording.

In general, it’s meant a lot more of the responsibility for things to go well lands on our individual members of the group. We’ve had to be very on top of scheduling, locations, driving, and drop-off/pick-up times.

Overall, however, we are super psyched to be able to put out new music even though we cannot travel or record like all the past members of this group have in their own respective times as members of the DJs!

If you’d care to give our award-winning set a listen, it can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D6ok1iWRDU

Round green shapes of varying sizes glow against the black background. The text reads, "Immersive."

Immersive #7: 17776

Liana Leave a comment

At the rate that technology is currently progressing, it’s easy to envision a chrome-plated future where autonomous technology is able to resolve even the most menial of issues we encounter in our day-to-day lives. With advanced technology, we’ll be able to extend lifetimes beyond our modern rates, perform more complex and previously unimaginable feats, and address the most challenging issues of our time: war, poverty, famine, and so on.

But what happens in the case that we are able to resolve all our challenges and fulfill all our ambitions with some sort of technological venture? What would that world look like where the impossible was possible? For sports writer Jon Bois, this futuristic world and its population would find a new sort of fulfillment through American football, or at least a modified version that exists in the year 17776.

Bois’ 17776 was an unprecedented multimedia narrative that sought to develop a world that was absurd and engaging without being gruesome or down-right miserable like the rest of the popular stories at the time. Thus, the story was created to follow the perspectives of three space probes as they watched on-going football games that spanned across state borders and involved hundreds of players at a time.

An animated gif of two lines of X's, indicating players, approach a football located around Seward that has a green line trailing behind it, indicating its path of movement.
Football Game Play Visualization

17776 first begins with an regular sports article, whose text quickly expands to fill up the rest of the page and eventually transforms into a calendar labeled “March ‘43.” Here, we are introduced to the character of Nine, a personified version of the space probe Pioneer 9, who’s urgent questions and existential crisis are left unanswered for months as the reader continues to scroll down the site, a physical and visual reminder of the time that passes within the story. The narrative continues through a combination of plain-text commentary, vintage graphics, and surreal videos, showing brief vignettes into the lives of various football players and human characters as the space probes comment more largely on how far the game has evolved to become more than just a simple past time: “play is the point of existence now.”

The graphic contains a yellow calendar. At the top, the text reads "March '49." From March 3 to 6, in green text, it reads "God damn it! I said no communications! NO communications! Now you have to start over. Please sit and wait. Remember: 27 years, 13 days. On that day, do not contact me. I will contact you. Do not respond to me. Don't." And in red, the text reads, "OK, sorry." On the 13th, the red text reads, "Wait, shit. I'm an idiot. I'm sorry. Starting over again. See you in 27 years, 13 days."
Space Probe Characters Communicate to Each Other

Altogether, the hodgepodge that is 17776 with its space probe main characters, niche facts and features, and absurd football gameplay is proof that inspiration and compelling stories can come from anywhere. But, beyond this brief insight into the existential and speculative tale that 17776 seeks to tell its readers, the story is best experienced in its actual form as its charming implementation of text language and visual space can not be described in words alone. To this end, I encourage you to read 17776 to experience the way in which all elements of the story come together to describe a world where the state of Nebraska is a perfectly valid football field and where technology has advanced far enough that space probes can become sentient.

Experience 17776: HERE

(A sequel story called 20020 also exists.)

+KHAOS+ EP.19: ONE STEP CLOSER

Kat Leave a comment

+KHAOS+ EP.19: ONE STEP CLOSER

+KHAOS+ EP.19: ONE STEP CLOSER

When Zion agreed to join Khaos, Ellea started to rumble. Ed and Milo couldn’t believe what was happening in front of their eyes; Khaos was ready to lift off into space, headed to another destination.

+Author’s Comment+

Back at it with the colors!
Feel free to follow my art Instagram account: @kats.art.folder