Friday evening, a group of Taiwanese dancers performed under the dimly lit blue and yellow lights in Marche Café at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art as part of Cinema Pacific’s Fringe Festival, turning an otherwise posh lunch and coffee spot into a cultural expression.
The annual Fringe Festival is one of the more avant-garde events of the festival’s programming. Friday’s festival featured multimedia art installations, the first public showing of a Godzilla video game and the winners of a film remix competition of a classic Taiwanese film.
Cinema Pacific staff was at the museum at 9 a.m., converting the Marche Café, an area stocked with dozens of tables and chairs, into an art exhibit and performance space. The Fringe Festival effectively created an entire multimedia party down the often forgotten entrance hallway of the JSMA.
“I really feel like people have fun with the idea of mixing culture with new media,” said Fringe Fest assistant coordinator and senior Cinema Studies major Keith Hoskins. “All the way through the process, from the remixes to the classic dance and music. The whole idea is to showcase the identity of our focus country with a dash of new.”
One art installation titled “Hunting Requires Optimism” consisted of ten vintage refrigerators lined up. When opened, there were TVs showing black and white videos of animals being hunted in the wild. The piece is by Vanessa Renwick, who will be giving a live performance with Portland underground music composer Menche of a similar piece tomorrow night at 8 p.m. in the JSMA.
Another installation, called “Mapping Taiwan,” consisted of a wood-carved geographically exact map of Taiwan with a projection on a screen, which showed clips from the classic Taiwanese film. When you touched certain points on the woodcarving, different clips would project, based on their location in the film.
“We worked with components of the video and used real-time space,” said artist Amanda Novy, a senior Digital Arts major. “I would like for people to get an interest in the experience of the place itself.”
“We wanted to emphasize its size and geography by giving it a tactile element,” said John Park, Novy’s art instructor who also worked on the piece.
The event also featured the first public showing of “Godzilla Smash 3,” designed by Eugene-based software company Pipeworks.
“People are excited about the game. One thing I’ve noticed is that doing something live like this is a great experience, getting to meet people and see their reaction to the game is very valuable,” said John Cboins, the game’s lead artist.
Godzilla Smash 3 will be released on May 16, the same day as the new Godzilla film. It is a free application that will be available on both Apple and Android products.