Monteith P. McCollum
Undergraduate Director; Associate Professor
Cinema
Background
Monteith McCollum is an interdisciplinary artist working across film, sound, performance, and sculpture, with a fascination with topics encompassing ecology, agriculture, urban mobility, and technology in sound. Both his experimental shorts and feature essay documentaries have frequently blended nonfiction and fiction moving between character and subject-driven concepts. Parallel with creating his own work he often has been commissioned to compose soundtracks for experimental and independent filmmakers. His live audio-visual performances and fixed media sound compositions interweave environmental field recordings with musical assemblages incorporating strings and modular synthesis. Feature documentaries and shorts have been exhibited and broadcast on PBS’s “POV” series as well as presented in museums such as MOMA’s New Directors / New Films, Wexner Center for the Arts, and The Hirschhorn. Film festivals have included South by Southwest, Slamdance, Hot Docs, IDFA, Osnabruck Intermedia Film Festival, The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and San Francisco International Film Festival. In addition to screenings his work has received generous financial support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, NYSCA, Kodak, The Rockefeller Foundation, The National Endowment on the Arts, Iowa Arts Council, POV, and the Jerome Foundation, he received an IFC Independent Spirit Award for his feature Hybrid in 2002. Along with being an educator at Binghamton University, he has enjoyed leading sound workshops at UnionDocs on film sound design. Some of his side interests include cultivating a small pear orchard, kayaking, and constructing alternative architectural structures.
Education
- BFA, Chicago Art Institute
- MFA, Syracuse University
Research Interests
- Experimental and Hybrid Documentary
- Sound Art and Electronic Music
- Historical explorations in sound and image science
- Environment
- Sound Mapping
Teaching Interests
- Non-Fiction and Experimental Film
- Sound Design
- Field Recording and Experimental Electronic Modular Synthesis
- Live Audio Visual Performance
