Big Car was able to host programs at the Central Library’s Clowes Auditorium. Here are images and video clips from the series. Listed below are a few of our favorite ones.
7 Simultaneous Lecturers: Indy Arts & Globalization — Seven prominent names representing the city’s art community joined to discuss the future of Indianapolis arts in the face of globalization. However, there was a twist — the lecturers all spoke at the same time. Audience members were given the power to arbitrarily raise or lower the volume of each speaker as the talks progressed, creating a frantic, unstructured whirlwind of words and ideas.
Thrift Music from Big Car on Vimeo.
Thrift Store Music-This two-day event sent musicians to randomly drawn thrift stores to find instruments and objects on a budget for creating music they’d perform four days later. The musicians were only able to use what they found at the thrift stores.
Ubu Web — An amazing repository of experimental music and video, www.ubu.com is a website that demands to be shared. Big Car Collective members and others will selected their favorites from Ubu Web to share on the big screen and through the auditorium’s sound system.
Big Curiosities Series — September of 2009, Jeffrey Meldrum, a prominent researcher on Sasquatch and professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University presented a talk at Central Library. Meldrum’s interest in Bigfoot grew after being shown 15-inch footprints in a plowed field near Walla Walla, Washington. Although initially believing the tracks to be forgeries, upon further examination he noticed what he believes is evidence of a high degree of flexibility in the print and a mid-tarsal break, traits he has come to believe belong to Bigfoot. Meldrum has published several academic papers ranging from vertebrate evolutionary morphology, the emergence of bipedal locomotion in modern humans and Sasquatch and is a co-editor of a series of books on paleontology. Meldrum is the author of the 2006 book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, a companion volume to the Discovery Channel documentary of the same name.
The following month, UFO expert Stanton Friedman was also brought in for a talk. Friedman became interested in UFOs in 1958, and since 1967 has lectured about them at more than 600 colleges and 100 professional groups in 50 U.S. states, nine Canadian provinces and 16 other countries in addition to various nuclear consulting efforts. He has published more than 90 UFO papers and has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV programs including on Larry King in 2007 and twice in 2008, and many documentaries. He is the original civilian investigator of the Roswell Incident and co-authored “Crash at Corona: The Definitive Study of the Roswell Incident.” “TOP SECRET/MAJIC,” his controversial book about the Majestic 12 group, established in 1947 to deal with alien technology, was published in 1996 and went through six printings.
Silent Film Scores — Big Car Collective assembles an unusual orchestra of experimental musicians to create a spooky and spontaneous soundtrack to the 1920 silent version of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde — just in time for Halloween. Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel about the dark side of human nature comes to life with silent-era heartthrob John Barrymore as upright Dr. Jekyll and demonic Mr. Hyde. A dinner conversation on the topic of human duality at a dinner party prompts Jekyll to concoct a potion to divide the human psyche’s two sides: good and evil. Soon, the dark side takes over to deadly results. All will be accompanied by a live soundtrack featuring a Tonos Triad, Shiny Black Shirt and others.
Pierre Bastien Performance: Indianapolis, Indiana from Big Car on Vimeo.
Pierre Bastien Concert — French musician Pierre Bastien was termed a mad musical scientist by The Guardian. Since starting his career in 1977 he has collaborated with Filmmaker Pierrick Sorin, Fashion designer Issey Miyake, singer and composer Robert Wyatt, and Richard D. James, also known as Aphex Twin to name a few. In 1986 he formed his own one-man orchestra, Mecanium. He has made 20 albums and is currently on the record label Western Vinyl. The concert he performed at Central Library was part of a his series ‘Playing With the Dead. He selected several dead musicians music and films to layer over his musical machine. Attendees were also be able to see him work with the machine, as there there was a tiny camera that projected every movement he made with the machine on the screen behind him.
Choose Your Own Adventure — Leadership from the Central Library, Big Car and Know No Stranger teamed up to provide an interactive way to consider Transportation, Education, Arts, Libraries and Parks, Urban Farming and Local Economy. Graduate students from Dr. John Clark’s Public Policy Process class at IUPUI’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs were brought in to help provide research on the issues and information on how they’ve played out around the country.
