Floating Oceans

About

For this week's Tuesday Evenings at the MCA, New York animator and songwriter Alexis Gideon visits the MCA for a special live performance of Floating Oceans, the latest installment of his multimedia opera series, Video Musics. The series explores traditional folklore through stop-motion animation, musical composition, and epic ballads. All dialogue and narration are expressed through lyrics and music that are performed live by Gideon, in front of the projected video. Based on the works of the early 20th-century Irish writer Lord Dunsany, and inspired by the time and dream experiments of the Irish physicist John William Dunne, Floating Oceans contrasts the vivid dreams of its poet-protagonist with the foreboding routine of pedestrian life.

The program opens with a live performance of Chicago writer and illustrator Ezra Claytan Daniels's immersive science fiction graphic novel Upgrade Soul. The performance includes narration by Daniels with a live score by Alexis Gideon.