Alexis Gideon introducesVideo Musics III: Floating Oceans

Musician, animator, and filmmaker Alexis Gideon combines all these interests in his stop-motion animated video operas. Floating Oceans, the third, explores and celebrates Irish literature and mythology, as reexamined through contemporary styles such as hip-hop and psychedelia. Based on the works of Lord Dunsany, an early 20th-century Irish fantasy writer, the piece is also inspired by the experiments of John William Dunne, an Irish engineer interested in dreams and parapsychology. And all this plays out through the form of a bourgeois dinner party. The live music mirrors the video’s action exactly, and the animated characters' mouths are perfectly in sync with the sung lyrics. (38 mins., video) A Q&A with the director follows the program.