aka Silver Polish 
Watch the animation project
https://vimeo.com/150304140

There's an Orchid Shaped Hole Inside of Me
Residency Connexion ARC, New Brunswick (2015)
How do we touch something?
Frances Adair Mckenzie’s month-long residency at Connexion ARC will process and respond to the self-initiated force-feeding of 24HR news cycles – dancing between the emanating waves and singing into the face of something that says < only watch and listen > Using recorded sounds, images and other digital media to emphasize the tactile, bodily nature of physical reality, McKenzie will respond to a lived experiment, using herself as the subject.

Animation; Frances Adair Mckenzie
Sound Design; benjamin iv

*Note this audio is a mere afterthought, unaffiliated with main project.

reaching for the moon

Watch the animation project
https://vimeo.com/134162369
https://vimeo.com/139414809

Anteism's Second Augmented Reality Book
Anteism is ready to print their second augmented book, featuring the work of multi media artist Frances Adair Mckenzie. The book will be 48 pages, 8x10 inch hardcover, color printing, with foil debossing and augmented reality media on it's pages!
This project will be an exploration of how augmented reality can change the reader's experience of an Artist book. This project is Anteism's first book combining sculptural works, performance, installation and video work. A full exploration of the printed page through new media including emphasis on tactility, movement and sound.

Animation; Frances Adair Mckenzie

Sound Design; benjamin iv

*Note this audio is a mere afterthought, unaffiliated with main project.

anteism workshop

aka b.m.w.y.w.
Watch the animation project
https://vimeo.com/233655798

b.m.w.y.w. is an experimental stop-motion animation developed as a part of Frances Adair Mckenzie's 2017 exhibition B.M.W.Y.W at Centre Clark in Montreal. All footage was created inside the space of the gallery, as an ode to Joyce Weiland's 1965 film Water Sark.

Sound design and Foley; Benjamin IV & Vera Bozickovic

centreclark.com/en/projects/bmwyw

busybodies (bmwyw)

Watch the animation project
https://vimeo.com/301467664

Trading Hooks for Hands is an experimental animation that rhythmically investigates an aged rivalry through the landscape of the mundane. Attempting to unearth the seemingly existential connection between rat and cat. Envisioned as a post-humanist response to cinematic conventions and an ode to Joyce Wieland's "Rat Life and Diet in North America" (1968) this work builds through effect and sound based ebbs. Creating its un-logical flows of meaning without ever providing the final release of connection.

Video; Frances Adair Mckenzie
Sound design; Benjamin IV & Vera Bozickovic

Trading Hooks For Hands

aka Day of Y
Watch the animation project
https://vimeo.com/373960427

Animation; Frances Adair Mckenzie
Sound Design; benjamin iv

*Note this audio is a mere afterthought, unaffiliated with main project.

4 EYES

Watch the animation project
https://vimeo.com/458700797
Experience the Website
https://www.howeareyouisland.com

In the speculative short Howe Are You Island? a melodic voice-over travels through a landscape of interspecies relations, an ecology both real and digital. Shot on Ka-ou-enesegoan (Howe Island) in the lake district of Ontario (Canada), we follow our unseen, possibly nonhuman protagonist through the pangs of trying to connect. In the face of wonder and desire, interspecies relations progress with a glitch. Past the veil of romance, while crossing over shared lands, doubt erupts over the ability to bond in mutual, meaningful ways. What must be given, or given up?
A critical fabulation, Howe Are You Island? wonders over the troubles of our living ways, to prefigure: which future connection with the environment and other species is possible?

Co-directors: Alisha Piercy and Frances Adair Mckenzie
Text: Alisha Piercy
Animation: Frances Adair Mckenzie
Sound Design: Benjamin IV
Musical Composition: Orin Piercy

Howe, are you Island?

Watch the Trailers
https://vimeo.com/515559332
https://vimeo.com/516491122

Compagn di letto 

Bedfellows is a video created and directed by Canadian artist Frances Adair Mckenzie for ‘A Toolkit for the Future‘. Things are changing at such an impossible speed that wildly imaginative alternatives for how we live are more important than ever. Mckenzie’s alternative draws from a rich repertoire of video effects and voiceovers by poets Maya Khamala and David M. Armstrong. Inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s writings on forests and environmental biology and by Ursula Le Guin’s writings on futuristic anthropology, Bedfellows insists on the possibility that, taken together, poetry, love and history can lead us beyond our fear of change, towards new horizons.
“Ecology is a permanent economy.”
—Women-led Chipko Movement, India, 1970s

Director & Animator
Frances Adair Mckenzie
Prose 
Maya Khamala

Poem 
David Armstrong
Voice 
Colette Arsenault
David Armstrong
Producer
Livia Filotico
Sound Design 
Benjamin IV
Recording & Sound Mixing 
Pascal Desjardins
Cello
Tyr Jami
Title Design 
Jayme Spinks
3D Animation
Brandon Blommeart
Translation
Venetia Gittes
sostenuto dall’Ambasciata del Canada in Italia
Special thanks to the Fonderie Darling artist residency program, Chili & Juju
& the Canada Council for the Arts
*Artifact footage shot at the National Roman Museum Palazzo Massimo alle Terme
* Gulax font by Morgan Gilbert/Velvetyne Type Foundry
Pilowlava font by Anton Moglia & Jérémy Landes/Velvetyne Type Foundry

BEDfellows

Recording of R. Murray Schafer's 
spoken introduction to Asterion [EDIT]
http://www.patria.org/Asterion/index.html
Asterion is a multidisciplinary research exploring the relationship between the scenographic environment and the participating audience member in the context of site specific theatre. The project involves the participation of artists from a variety of disciplines to interact in the development of a series of performance environments in the form of a labyrinth. 

what lies beyond is full of marvels

Minotaur Howling Melange
Sound Design - Benjamin iv
R. Murray Schafer - Asterion
Jerrard Smith - Artistic Director.
www.patria.org/Asterion/index.html
Asterion is a multidisciplinary research exploring the relationship between the scenographic environment and the participating audience member in the context of site specific theatre. The project involves the participation of artists from a variety of disciplines to interact in the development of a series of performance environments in the form of a labyrinth.

Asterion Minotaur

This track was made with an instrument that was gifted to me (& a former ladyfriend) in Salt Spring, BC, it traveled around a bit before resting in my current abode in Montreal. Recently, it was played by an amigo, whom I sampled & reconfigured into a memorial piece for a dear kinsman who had recently passed... the image is of an old graveyard in Mission where he & I used to walk through/ philosophize with regularity. 
RIP Fearghall / Fergal "Fearless" McCaffrey.

Instrument Sampled =
http://www.soulvibs.com

Cemetery Memory

One... Two... Three... Four...

Sample of Father explaining the 
Facts of Life to his child via 
The Internet Archive
http://archive.org/

Live Remix via: benjamin iv
©ocosuma - (Tapping) the Source = 
featuring the lovely voice of Jen H Ka 
- from, "I refuse to Grow Up" (2002).

existential detective

Popular tracks