Artist In Residence: Jacob Ciocci
2006 Creative Heights Grant recipient Jacob Ciocci is currently in the middle of a 14-month residency project with Pittsburgh Filmmakers. The Gary Panter screening is the first of six public screenings that will culminate in the creation of an original 20-minute television pilot geared towards children.
Jacob Ciocci is currently working on the "script bible" for his 20-minute pilot for kids. After many discussions and lots of research (and after weighing in the voices heard at the first panel discussion in
January), it has been decided that the show will be a plot-driven adventure story, not a variety show (as previously anticipated). The show is tentatively titled "Problem Solvers" and follows a rag-tag group
of characters as they attempt to journey through an unkown land. The land will unfold to the viewer in much the same way as early video games: side-scrolling action from left to right. The look of the show will
be largely computer-animated.
Over the next 2 months, the story and animation bibles will be finished (this means finishing the script, as
well as developing specific rules and aesthetics for animation) and voices will begin to be recorded. The
voices will be recorded in Providence, RI, in a recording studio that has been set up by Jacob's
collaborators (Paper Rad). This is where the voice talent (Peter Glantz and Rich Porter being two
examples) is located as well as the home studio of Paper Rad.
In addition, the second in the series of screenings will take place, probably towards the end
of summer. The second screening will focus on the craft of animation and it's changing role in popular
culture. Possible panelists include Sally Cruikshank and the creators of Wundershowzen (not confirmed).
Bio:
At once critical and affirmative, artist collective Paper Rad (Jacob Ciocci, Jessica Ciocci, and Ben Jones) synthesize popular material from television, comics, video games, and advertising, allowing these materials to contextualize and cross-reference each other. Their videos and animations seem to eminate from a never-ending resource of sub-conscious pop-cultural memory infused wwith a strange unidentifiable mystical purpose. They have been reviewed in the New York Times, ArtReview and RES Magazine, and their work has been shown at the New Museum in New York, the Tate Britain, and the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.