Kenneth Collins
Kenneth Collins (writer/director/designer/performer) is the founder and artistic director of Temporary Distortion.
Kenneth works in the gray space between the "black box" of theater and the "white cube" of the art gallery, creating projects at the intersection of visual art, digital media, theater, cinema, and artificial intelligence, investigating questions of authorship, embodiment, and human expression in the age of generative media. His practice encompasses sculpture, video art, installation, performance, and synthetic media works that challenge the traditional boundaries between disciplines.
As founder and artistic director of Temporary Distortion (2000-present), named one of the "Best New York Theater Companies" by TimeOut NY Magazine, Collins has created work shown in over 30 cities across 17 countries on 5 continents. This includes work in Australia, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, and the United States. During this time, his company maintained its roots in New York City as an invested stakeholder in the downtown arts scene for over 25 years.
His work as a visual artist has been exhibited at the Grand Palais Immersif (Paris), Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu (Poland), Benaki Museum (Greece), Bakhrushin Museum (Moscow), Aram Art Museum (South Korea), River City Bangkok, The Anchor of Arts & Antiques (Thailand), Yates Gallery (Chicago), and Ideal Glass Gallery (New York City).
Reflections on his work have been featured in numerous books including La vidéo en scène: L'acteur et ses technologies, Performance & Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field, Utopii performative: Artisti Radicali ai Scenei Americane in Secolul 21, the popular US introduction to theatre textbook, Theatre, Brief, among others. Academic essays on his work have been published in Yale's Theater, NYU's The Drama Review, UCSD’s TheatreForum, Queen Mary’s Contemporary Theatre Review, American Theater, Chance Magazine, and other industry leading periodicals.
Kenneth Collins serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film and Media Arts at the University of Utah, where he is a Responsible AI Initiative (RAI) Faculty Fellow and holds a shared-faculty appointment with the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute. In Fall 2023, Collins became the first professor at a major university to develop and teach a dedicated course in AI Filmmaking.
LEARN MORE AT: www.kennethcollins.art
John Sully
John Sully (composer/sound designer/musical director/performer) is a three-time NYSCA award-winning composer, sound designer, multi-instrumentalist, and graduate of Yale’s Sound Design program. His music for stage and film has crossed the globe, including numerous cities in Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, Europe, Eastern Europe, North and South America. As a multi-instrumentalist, he has shared the stage with such notables as Martin Chambers, Bo Diddley, Fishbone, Albert King, and Noel Reading.
He has been combining his music with contemplative practices for over 25 years. At the original NYC Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, John performed his original scores alongside the live painting events of American visionary artist, author, and Vajrayana practitioner, Alex Grey. Along with his explorations of spirituality and music, he is an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church, made famous by its ads in the back of Rolling Stone.
Sully first learned music on the street, in the clubs, and at warehouse parties in New York City during the 1980’s, where he was deeply enmeshed in the squatter-culture of the Lower East Side at that time. It was from deep inside this lawless atmosphere that he first developed his aesthetic and vision as a composer, musician, and sound artist. He has since studied music all over the world, including recent studies of doumbek, kamancheh, riq, and tabla with masters in Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East.