The Road to El Dorado

That's the title of my audio work submitted to The 8 Fest in Toronto. The festival screenings are coming up at the end of January 2010. When I was invited to participate back in October I had no idea I would be invited to Dawson City to participate in a residency at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture.

Milada, one of The 8 Fest coordinators gave me the theme of 'Golden' of which I could interpret in any way I wanted. So I racked my brain and did some googling and settled on gold fever, evils of capitalism, and popular culture representations of same. I did a mash up with sound sampled from the Price is Right, Goldfinger(the 007 Bond movie soundstrack), The Wizard of Oz and the cartoon The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. A fun romp using my soundscape making software.

To make a long story short, I was invited to Dawson City after I delivered the 'The Road to El Dorado'. Dawson City Yukon is the heart of the Klondike Gold Rush, an event that brought thousands of gold seekers to the Yukon starting around 1896. The history here is deep with stories of fortunes won and lost all related directly to gold.

Did I conjure up this trip with the creation of the art work?