BIO

Zoe works with a variety of cinematic imagery; film, stereoscopic projection performance, and interactive media. Her projects are philosophical toys, objects to think with and through, more or less tangible. Her desire to communicate with the spirits of the past led her back to early cinema uncovering links between nineteenth century technologies and the digital realm.

This led to the production of her first interactive film on CD-ROM, BEYOND. Zoe has also worked with artists from other disciplines. In 1997 she was invited by the Wooster Group theater company, to create the CD-ROM WHERE THERE THERE THERE WHERE, inspired by Gertrude Stein's play DOCTOR FAUSTUS LIGHTS THE LIGHTS. More recently Zoe has been working with sound artist Ken Montgomery on A MECHANICAL MEDIUM, a projection performance inspired by Thomas Edison's search for an apparatus to communicate with the dead. She is currently in production with SHADOWLAND OR LIGHT FROM THE OTHER SIDE, a 3D film based on the based on the 1897 autobiography of Elizabeth D'Espérance, a materialization medium who could produce full body apparitions.

Her work has been exhibited internationally. Venues include, MOMA, Rotterdam Film festival, Pacific Film Archives, the Pompidou Center and the Whitney Museum Biennial.

	Zoe Bellof, New York Illusions; 1999

bio	Zoe works with a variety of cinematic imagery; film, stereoscopic projection performance, and interactive media. Her projects are philosophical toys, objects to think with and through, more or less tangible. Her desire to communicate with the spirits of the past led her back to early cinema uncovering links between nineteenth century technologies and the digital realm. This led to the production of her first interactive film on CD-ROM, BEYOND. Zoe has also worked with artists from other disciplines. In 1997 she was invited by the Wooster Group theater company, to create the CD-ROM WHERE THERE THERE THERE WHERE, inspired by Gertrude Stein's play DOCTOR FAUSTUS LIGHTS THE LIGHTS. More recently Zoe has been working with sound artist Ken Montgomery on A MECHANICAL MEDIUM, a projection performance inspired by Thomas Edison's search for an apparatus to communicate with the dead. She is currently in production with SHADOWLAND OR LIGHT FROM THE OTHER SIDE, a 3D film based on the based on the 1897 autobiography of Elizabeth D'Espérance, a materialization medium who could produce full body apparitions. Her work has been exhibited internationally. Venues include, MOMA, Rotterdam Film festival, Pacific Film Archives, the Pompidou Center and the Whitney Museum Biennial.
Illusions	I will introduce ILLUSIONS or PHILOSOPHICAL TOY WORLD. Inspired by toy cinematic apparatuses from the 19th and early 20th centuries, this web site is a call to reinvest moving images with the marvelous, a cry for a multiplicity of "cinemas", past, present and future. My dream is to open up the moving image once again to new languages of vision. The cinemas I imagine are marginal, fragile, sometimes coalescing only momentarily in the act of projection. They create parallel universes, calling into question corporate visions of progress with their digital utopias. Like the philosophical toy itself, the site is designed to be playful and provoke thought. Icons project the reader on a journey criss-crossing numerous conceptual constellations.
the presentation	Wednesday, February 2, 7:30pm, Salle Fernand-Séguin, Cinémathèque québécoise In English. During the presentation I will also demonstrate several of the toy projection devices that inspired the project, including the "Space Viewer: Auto-magic Picture Gun and Theater" and the "Nic Projector: talkies". These apparatuses are part of what I often describe as the secret history of QuickTime movies.

Zoe Bellof, New York Illusions; 1999

Illusions

the presentation

Zoe Bellof, New York
Illusions; 1999