Expanded cinema group Optipus presents a live multiple projection composition, using films, video, slides, liquid light & magic lanterns, plus live electronic sound, field recordings, samples, foley & shadowplay ~ on a theme of the visual fruiting body, the mycelium underground & the magic of mushrooms, evoking death, decay & regeneration, along with the biomorphic ecology of transformation & the body.

Optipus is a many tentacled optical creature. This incarnation of the group includes: Bradley Eros, Richard Sylvarnes, Rachael Guma, Gabriel Guma, Scott Kiernan, Ava Witonsky & Jeanne Liotta,

Optipus is a nomadic group of chameleon artists, cine-scientists in search of a laboratory, shape-shifting according to site-specific requirements. The group embraces the ephemeral cinema of unfixed forms and open composition. It is a magnetic field, derived from the psychic urge to build, via collective energy and desire, that also contains its opposite, the destructive impulse, seen in its wild sway towards the dangers of pure experimentation, obsolete media, and an attraction to aesthetic decay, technological destruction and failure. Optipus’s members emerge in myriad collaborations, producing works and events, soundtracks and invented instruments, video edits and film loops, and expanded cinema and immersive installations

We use (or misuse?) film projectors {35mm, 16mm, Super 8mm, R8} + slide projectors (35mm & magic lantern), overhead projectors, and video projection & cameras (hand-held, live recording & re-mixing), plus shadow play, liquid light, transparencies, gels, external lenses, loops, hand-processed & hand-painted celluloid, objects, foley, mirrors, mylar, contact mics, mobiles, synths, strings, percussion, samples, transistor radios, music boxes, toys, appliances, & mutable and myriad screen surfaces . . .