[narrator] "Art Loft" is brought to you by- [sponsor] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys, and Key west.

[narrator] The Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor, and the board of County Commissioners, and the friends of South Florida PBS.

[narrator] "Art Loft," it's the pulse of what's happening in our own backyard, as well as a taste of the arts across the United States.

In this episode, fashioning the future.

Right now, we are kind of at the beginning of the internet, and everybody is very optimistic, but also sort of cautious about what's, "What is that?"

Most people haven't really experienced immersive interactive storytelling yet.

So how do we catch up humanity, but then also start having these conversations, 'cause we're moving so quickly that we have to be really careful of what's gonna happen in that space.

My name is Diliana Alexander, and I'm the Co-Founder and Executive Director of FilmGate Miami and FilmGate Interactive.

FilmGate is a nonprofit organization that supports the independent voices of South Florida.

We have two festivals, the short film festival that is specifically for Florida filmmakers.

And then we have FilmGate Interactive, which is our international festival, where we show projects, and we call them projects, because it's not specifically a 2D screen that is involved, but interactive and immersive projects.

So the vision behind the interactive festival, first of all, is to show new and emerging technologies, and how these technologies can be used to create interesting and new narratives.

So it's not only to highlight the technology itself, but the strategies that are used with these technologies to create narratives that perhaps several years ago were impossible, or unheard of, or just no one thought of.

So if you kinda go through the experiences that were chosen for this festival, you'll see that they have to do a little with all the experiences that us as a humanity, as a people, as a community, have experimented in the last year, with quarantine, with loss, with the whole change in society with the pandemic, and sort of re-imagining of what the future can be now that all these changes and all these things have come up in our society.

There's a lot of anxiety, right?

And I think that interactive and immersive experiences XR experiences, can be very therapeutic, because you can relive a certain trauma that, in a different way, but you are actually reliving it.

You're not watching on a TV's 2D screen.

Sometimes you are driving that narrative.

Then also being inside of the story, as opposed to outside of it, it's very difficult to ignore it totally, right?

So you feel it.

You're in it.

If you get a hug in VR land, you actually kinda feel the endorphins from this hug, which is really interesting.

I mean, how do you explain to someone what schizophrenia is just by explaining, right?

Do we have the words, even?

[narrator] Can you tell the difference between what is and isn't real?

"Goliath: Playing with Reality" comes to us from the UK.

Tilda Swinton is the narrator, plays the part of Echo in this experience.

[voiceover] You can't, you can't, tell, tell, tell what's real, what's real, what is real.

Disrupt- It's always a challenge, because every year there's a new technology that's been developed, or we enter it as well.

This year, it's our first year we're programming dome experiences.

We have banded together with the Frost Science Museum, which is a very natural partner for what we program.

This is the first time we're also figuring out, how do you program for that?

You know, how do you tell stories in a dome?

It's not a laser show.

It's an actual virtual story that happens around the audience.

We have a presentation of the Smartphone Orchestra, which is an interesting experience in which everyone will be able to control how this orchestra or be a part of an orchestra on their cell phones.

I love the combination of outdoor and also indoor experiences that we're presenting.

I love that, for example, Breonna's Garden is a project that's augmented reality.

There's a physical component of it, and also an augmented digital component of it, and a beautiful talk attached to it.

We are all in community with each other.

So the kind of the philosophical and the artistic vision, but also the technology that comes with it.

We like to look at the full philosophy and the artistic vision, but then also what is the tech that drives that?

How does this exist?

I didn't know about this.

These are things that are changing every year.

So it's very, very exciting to see what's gonna happen next year.

How does it become more democratic, cheaper, lighter, easier for audiences that are maybe not as tech forward and experimental to deal with?

Whoa!

Breonna's Garden started out as a need or a desire to want to provide a safe place for Ju'Niyah Palmer, who's the younger sister of Breonna Taylor.

I wanted a way for her to feel safe, you know, in a world where people were saying very disparaging things about her sister.

Someone who's a role model, her hero, right?

And so in this garden setting, we provide the ability to silence a lot of the noise, and focus on the clear signal of healing, of reconciliation, of honoring someone's life, honoring the connection.

I'm Lady PheOnix.

I'm an artist, I'm a curator, and I'm an art advisor.

I wanted to engage Ju'Niyah in a, you know, kind of hands off way.

Just started following her on Instagram, wanting to understand her story, wanting to understand who Breonna really is, and was to her and her family, and her community, and in doing so I was very touched, very touched by everything Ju'Niyah was sharing.

I phoned up my buddy Sutu, who's a legendary AR/VR artist.

And I said, "Hey, I have this idea.

Are you interested?"

And he said yes straight away, love the idea.

And we began working.

That was in the summer of 2020.

When we initially approached Ju'Niyah, at first she was like, "This is cute.

This is cool.

Thank you for doing this.

I'm not interested."

She was like, "Well, I get approached all the time.

And it actually never really is about Breonna, or they never follow through."

I said, "Okay, no problem."

And I kept working, and kept observing, and remained a part of her online community.

And then I came back and I said, "We have something for you to actually look at.

It's not just like a deck.

We have something for you to interact with.

What do you think?"

And then she messaged me back, and she was like, "Oh my God, I love it.

I'm crying.

I showed my mom.

She's crying.

This is beautiful.

Yes."

I think she felt seen.

I wanted to give Ju'Niyah a choice, ultimately.

Sure, the world is saying what they're saying about your sister.

You know, your family knows that's absolutely false.

They didn't know her, right?

They're just, it's, they're simply trying to get a rise out of people, and selling the hour.

How about we come into a reality where who Breonna was to you, who she is to you, can be the core of why people gather?

Love can be the focus.

What's horrible and traumatic is known, but the unknown is the beauty, is the joy, is the wonder.

And to be in a place that's not only held for that possibility to continue to flourish, but also the possibility of complete strangers coming into the garden, planting their own flowers through their own memory of their loved one.

People who are drawn to this project are drawn because of the healing nature of the project.

And because of the beauty nature of the project.

It's actually quite beautiful to be held by butterflies, and hummingbirds, and you know, all manner of life, and colorful flowers, and bees, you know.

Literally, life is attracted to this place, whether it be in the digital sense, or in the physical sense.

We're creating a bridge where people can move closer to that beauty within them, and move closer to that healing within them.

It's something that we as a humanity, especially in COVID when people couldn't even bury their loved ones, I think it's a solution, an important solution, that allows us to keep living, and keep loving, and keep remembering, and keep sharing, and keep coming together around things that are important, and that are precious, which is life.

[narrator] To learn more about the experience, visit BreonnasGarden.com.

And for details on FilmGate's annual interactive festival and its monthly film festivals and boot camps, check out FilmGate.Miami.

I was born in Mexico, and I grew up in a border town with Texas.

Early on, I started looking at American pop culture, and all all these influences that come from two different places.

But then when I come to Miami, I find this like melting pot of all of these Latin cultures together.

And I think that's something that you could see in the work, like a collage, I guess, of different obsessions, different interests from both places.

The point of departure of the work is materiality.

So I think there's like always like collecting, always like searching for material that has meaning to me.

Tesoro at the Frost is an exhibition that I curated from the permanent collection, and with some of my own work.

When you first enter the exhibition there is a piece called "Mothership," and it's a three-dimensional collage.

And it kinda like serves like as an atlas, also serves like as a guide to really tell you how I think and how I'm gonna put the show together.

My own mythology is there, mixed in with all these different cutouts that come from very disparate places.

Everything is addressed: floor ceiling.

I see it as like a way of like entering one of those 3D collages that I made at the beginning, like you're being surrounded by this collage, a collage that you can enter to.

I think after so many years of working with paper, I mean, I still love it.

I still, my main body of work.

And I think that's the reason why "Mothership" opens the exhibition, Tesoro.

But now I'm actually buying those objects, and using the actual object in the work.

There happens to be a thrift store here in Florida called Out of the Closet, where a lot of the gay community donates all their belongings.

It's like a hand-me-down of a sub-culture that gets recycled into making the work.

I first started doing 3D collages that were on a flat surface for so many years.

And then I eventually discovered that I wanted to make like a figurative sculpture out of collage.

Now that they passed that stage of them being like a sketch, I'm creating like limbs, legs, tentacles, and all of these different body parts, where they were made out of paper, and now they're actually like more visceral, more like confrontational because they're more alive.

Now we live in a time where there's more people that are interested in art, and Commissioner is engaging all these local artists and local collectors.

So I think the best advice for beginning collectors is that to really collect something that you love.

You're gonna have to live with it for the long term.

So I think one of the best things to do is just to really love the object.

And you're gonna be spending so much time looking at it, and it's gonna occupy that space in your home.

So I think it's important.

My name's Brian Twohorns, and I'm from Tampa, Florida.

I design and create original sci-fi characters, costumes, and props.

Well, I started with cardboard when I was 15.

I was just tired of Halloween costumes.

They were just garbage.

The kind you'd buy at stores were just, they were cheap and poorly made mass produced stuff.

And I was like, "I can do better than this."

So I started with cardboard, and worked my way up to better materials.

I only did it once a year at first, until about 2012, when I started doing it like full time.

And like all, you know, I started making like four or five suits a year.

My pieces have been used in a lot of indie films, some commercials, and most recently an EarthGang music video.

My whole ethos is to pay homage to the god of practical effects, which is all things practical effects in movies, and TV shows, and everything like that.

Everything's CGI, and I want to bring more practical effects to this universe.

I want bring more realistic robot costumes, and, you know, things that you can do with CGI, but are much more were satisfying to watch the actual, 'cause you can definitely tell.

You can always tell.

Practical effects will always have a place.

Yeah, it's a little bit visionary.

It's like, there's a multitude of landscapes and surreal concepts going on through my head, and I'm dragging this ethereal concept into reality a lot of the times.

I've got these designs floating around in my head, and half the time they're not even on paper.

I just kind of drag them down and start making 'em.

I guess what makes me different from other artists is that I'm doing a lot of futuristic, cyberpunk designs that are not really in tune with like the utilitarian vibe that you see in a lot of movies that's really wild, and feathers, and LEDs everywhere.

And like, just lots of energetic elements that I'm not really, not really sure where it's going, but it looks cool, so .

First I usually get a, I'll start with the face.

Usually I'll start with the face.

I get a mannequin head, which is appropriately sized, and I'll just build off that.

And yeah, I mean, like I have mannequins for the rest of the armor, so... Well, I mean, I do everything from just cutting, shaping, heat-forming.

I use super glue, Barge Contact Cement, all sorts of other thermoplastics and little...

I just, there's so much that goes into it.

Lots of just, you know, gluing and cutting, essentially.

It's all freehanded.

I use the laser cutter for precision, small little detail parts that I can't do by hand.

And I'll go over and design those in a digital format, and just batch cut them, usually, for small parts and little tiny details.

I use vinyl foam, Kydex, PETG, all other kinds of thermoplastics, metal tubing, leathers, polypro webbing, among just a list of other things.

Just anything I can warp and create to my own whim.

I just want to be happy and sustainable like I've been doing now, but I wanna be able to delegate more work to other people, and work on larger scale projects, like art installations.

And one of my main goals is to bring the part of my world that I have in my head into experiences for people.

So when they walk up to it, there's like performers, and big towers, and things like that, like that can give just a vibe of a different world.

My name is Anne Schroeder.

I am a painter's, a collage work artist.

I like working in multimedias.

There's just too many medias out there to, you know, to settle on any one .

I'd started doing the feather collage work, and that's actually what launched my art career here in the Keys.

Never seen it, never heard of it.

I just love all the different patterns, and colors in the feathers.

Two years into doing that professionally here in the Keys at shows, a friend of mine, Kim Workman, she's like, "Well, why don't you paint something on the feather?

You used to paint."

And I'm like in complete ignorance.

Like, oh, sure.

How hard could that possibly be?

And now I know why that there's only about five or six feather painter artists that do it for a living here in the United States, 'cause it takes so much longer.

With the feathers, you can't, you don't have that freedom of movement like you would have while like on a canvas.

So yeah, I'll have the TV or music playing, 'cause I'll have to get up about every 5 to 10 minutes, 'cause otherwise, I'm just sitting there with tiny brushes, just very still for extended periods of time.

These little guys and miniature pieces can take 5 to 10 hours.

And then the big pieces, like the tigress, up to 25 to 30 hours in the piece.

A lot of times, with all the art shows that I do, it's what the customers are looking for.

And then some days when I can actually sit down and say, like with the Sumatran tiger, it's like, okay, this really brings me joy, and it's like a personal piece.

[narrator] Captured in front of a live audience, "Circa and Mia" is the work of choreographer Sandra Portal-Andreu, and MDC Live Arts, Miami.

[child] People aren't going outside because it's so hot.

Every year it feels like it's getting hotter.

My name is Sandra Portal-Andreu.

I'm a multidisciplinary artist, with a focus in dance and theater.

I'm an educator, and a mother.

"Circa and Mia" really all came about through conversations that my husband and I had.

And so the first part of the project, which is "Circa" the film, I interviewed 37 children throughout Miami-Dade County.

And I asked them simple questions, like, you know, "What do you know about climate change?"

"How do you feel about it?"

If it keeps getting too hot, I really don't wanna, you know, live in a place that's not really safe.

And perhaps what are some solutions that they could offer?

[child] The sun is happy 'cause people are using the solar panel.

[sandra] Through those conversations, I also asked them to create artwork, which was then animated by fellow MDC MAGIC graduate Brenna Verner.

And it was also accompanied by a score created by Afrobeta.

Well, I first became involved with this project when Department Chairperson of MAGIC, Mauricio Ferrazza, referred me to Sandra because he was familiar with my animation work, being a former student of the MAGIC program.

And he was confident that I could help Sandra bring her vision to life.

There was a lot of kind of grim imagery, like about the extinction of animals, or the planet overheating, or there being a lot of pollution, but it was very important to Sandra and I to end on a very hopeful note.

So of course we were made sure to highlight all the beautiful flora and fauna that Miami is famous for, and that there is hope for the future if we start making small changes in our everyday lives.

"Mia" was a fascinating performance to stage.

The choreographer, Sandra Portal-Andreu designed this as an immersive experience for our audience, which presented an amazing opportunity for the audience to experience this all around them in a 360 setting, which is quite different than you would find if you were viewing this show in a traditional proscenium-style theater.

We worked closely with Sandra to design lighting and projection mapping that would bring this sort of immersive experience closer to our audience, and make them feel elevated and entranced by all the art that was happening around them.

I've been friends with Cuci and Tony, who make up Afrobeta, for a really long time.

Cuci and I actually went to college together.

We've always had this conversation, of like, we wanna do something together, but the project wasn't initially there.

And when I got this opportunity with LALA and EcoCultura, I thought this would be the perfect project to bring them on, because it is a Miami-based, Miami-driven, engaged community work.

And I felt like the music that needed to go into the film and into the performance really need to have that authentic Miami sound.

My name is Kathryn Garcia, and I'm the executive and artistic director of Live Arts Miami at Miami-Dade College.

The LALA Performance Series is the capstone to our annual artist and residency program of the same name.

LALA stands for the Live Arts Lab Alliance, and its purpose really is to support the creative process of local artists, and the development of new work.

So the audience was fantastic.

They were so generous.

So open.

We were really overwhelmed by the positive responses that we got from not just the audience members, but families and children that participated in the project.

I myself just was really happy to be part of the process, and really like performing in there, and really moving among the people.

I think for many people, this was the first time that they were out in a live performance as well.

So there was this sense of like , like a collective, communal breath, and it was very positive.

Get to, get to do Get to, get to do Get to, get to do Get to, get to do Get to, get to do Get to, get to do Get to, get to do [narrator] To see the full performance, head to MDCTV on YouTube, and look for Circa-slash-Mia.

Find full episodes, segments, and more at artloftsfl.org, and on YouTube at South Florida PBS.

[narrator] Art Loft is brought to you by- [sponsor] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys, and Key West.

[narrator] The Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor, and the board of County Commissioners, and the friends of South Florida PBS.