Perennial Growth

Sorry for no post yesterday. &%^$@* work got in the way of my photo editing. 

Anyway, the next show up is Perennial Growth, one of the most interesting at the festival. No words, just dance and gesture set to an original score. It was hard for me to get the meaning but then, as usual, I was paying attention to images. Apparently scientists create a super-plant, which proceeds, with its kin, to quash humanity and take over the world. The goal might be to save the planet. Or something like that. It was quite beautiful. I'm more concerned, though, with artificial intelligence systems gaining the ability to learn and recursively self-improve. If that happens it will be, as they say, a whole new ball game. 

I edited way too many pictures for a single blog post. All of them will be on FB shortly.     

Drama

I've taken more than 5,000 pix over the first four days of The Fringe, with next weekend still to go. Lots of them are junk, of course, but there some gold nuggets amidst the gravel. This was taken yesterday and is the one that sticks with me the most. The play is called Pain by Tony Marr, Jr. It is about the lives of young black men and the huge barriers that face them, try as they may to do the right thing.

This scene was a drug deal gone bad. Toy gun, of course. So much more to edit. The festival resumes Thursday night.   

Why They Call It The Fringe

I shot my first two performances at the St. Louis Fringe Festival last night. There are a total of 16 shows on my schedule for this weekend and next. This show was called With/Within/Without. Four young women knelt or sat on the floor on colored cloths, something to do with earth, air, fire and water. They recited arcane, New Age-y texts. The words were hard to hear over the loud ventilation system but it was something about breathing with your tongue out and trying to feel like a tree.

The audience was given a piece of candy, something that made a sound and something with a lot of texture. Then they were asked to put on blindfolds. After about 20 minutes of recitation all the lights were turned out. The audience was invited into the center of the space to do I don't know what. No light, no photos, so I was on my way. This wasn't really up my alley.

I'll be posting about the festival for days to come.