Jim Findlay

2014 performance of "The Demo," a music theater work written by composer/performers Mikel Rouse and Ben Neill based on Douglas Engelbart’s historic 1968 demonstration of early computer technology. Engelbart’s 1968 demo rolled out virtually everything that would define modern computing; videoconferencing, hyperlinks, networked collaboration, digital text editing, and something called a “mouse.” The Demo re-imagines Engelbart’s historic demonstration as a technologically-infused music theater piece, a new form of hybrid performance.

World premiere of "The Demo," a music theater work written by composer/performers Mikel Rouse and Ben Neill based on Douglas Engelbart’s historic 1968 demonstration of early computer technology. Engelbart’s 1968 demo rolled out virtually everything that would define modern computing; videoconferencing, hyperlinks, networked collaboration, digital text editing, and something called a “mouse.” The Demo re-imagines Engelbart’s historic demonstration as a technologically-infused music theater piece, a new form of hybrid performance.

In the illustrious tradition of on-the-road, rambler cinema, Welcome to Nowhere (Bullet Hole Road) is a fresh, experimental take. Heavily reliant on motion graphics animation, director William Cusick charts the surreal encounters of five overlapping strangers in the American desert. The spirit calls to mind David Lynch, and more recently Calvin Lee Reeder and Cory McAbee, but it never feels derivative, it always brings fresh light...Cinema often loses power in clarity, in a strict adherence to narrative logic. The unwieldy and fractured nature of Welcome To Nowhere offers more than a story, here, all that really matters is the weariness of the ramble. It's hazy and sweaty and sketched. "You know how some pills you take are clear, but on the inside are all these little balls of shit that are really the pill?" That's where nowhere is. This used to be the stuff of cult classics.