OAMF - 2026
Open Air Media Festival
Open Air Media Festival (OAMF) is excited to announce the 2026 program; a traveling film/video art screening presented in three cities in late May and early June. The program will travel across the Midwest and Southeast bringing artists from across the country to outdoor, public locations.
The 2026 OAMF screening schedule:
Iowa City, IA
Friday May 29th, 8:30pm,
FilmScene in the Park
Greenville, SC
Friday June 5th, 8:30pm,
Monaghan Mill
Louisville, KY
Saturday, June 13th, 9:00pm,
Big Four Bridge
OAMF is co-organized by Zen Cohen, Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Clemson University, Clemson, SC and Dana Potter, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the Hite Institute of Art + Design, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY with production assistance from Caleb Payne.
Participating artists were curated from a national open call, from 12 U.S. states, and spanning ages 25 to 72. Selected works exhibit a vast spectrum of video art including non-traditional documentary, 3D animation, narrative, and non-narrative, expanding public access to contemporary media art.
Open Air Media Festival is generously supported by:
City of Iowa City Public Art Program
FILM & VIDEO SCREENING
Eric Souther
Kalamazoo, MI
website
@ericsouther
Eric Souther (b.1987, Kansas City) holds an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and an BFA in New Media from the Kansas City Art Institute. His creative research draws from a multiplicity of disciplines, including new materialism, anthropology, ritual, deep time, and toolmaking. These areas are read through one another and coalesce in technological assemblages that form emergent systems or software for exploring relations. I instrumentalize these systems so that they can become performative ways to navigate unexpected images/meaning making. My work takes many pathways, which include interactive installation, audio-visual performance, single-channel video, and software. His work has been featured nationally and internationally at venues such as the Museum of Art and Design, NYC, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, and the Museum of Art, Zhangzhou, China. His work has screened in The Athens Digital Arts Festival, Athens, Greece, Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival, Beyoglu, Instanbul, Cronosfera Festival, Alessandria, Italy, the Galerija 12 New Media Hub, Belgrade, Serbia, the Simultan Festival, Timisoara, Romania, and the Festival ECRÃ of Audiovisual Experimentations, Rio de Janeiro. Souther is an Assistant Professor of Kinetic Imaging in the Gwen Frostic School of Art at Western Michigan University.
No Time of Deep Time
00:08:00
Experimental
If we could witness the Earth across deep time, the ground beneath our feet would oscillate, revealing the dynamic nature of our planet‚ what feels permanent to us is actually in constant flux when viewed on the geological timescale. No Time of Deep Time explores Michigan's Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the Upper Peninsula as a site of geological deep time. I use custom software to transform audio waves into complex patterns that weave and cut across vantage points of the site, exploring the aged relationships between water and rock. A contemplation of imperceptible movements that have shaped these iconic sandstone cliffs over 500 million years. The images work as metaphors to visualize geological processes, that reveal hidden rhythms in what appears static. Patterns that seek to feel erosion, sedimentation, and metamorphosis‚ processes that continue unabated beyond human perception.