Keram Malicki-Sánchez


Keram Malicki-Sánchez is a Canadian actor, singer, writer, essayist, futurist, interactive media developer music producer, film producer and film director.

Early life

His debut in the world of music and acting began with musical theatre at the age of 7 in the title role of Oliver! at the Limelight Dinner Theatre in Toronto which performance was met with rave reviews by the local press, including the Toronto Star.
He went on to create the role of Jason in the award-winning trilogy by playwright Jim Betts "The Mystery of the Oak Island Treasure," "The Last Voyage of the Devil's Wheel" and "The Haunting of Elijah Bones" at the Young People's Theatre in Toronto, Canada. It was at the same theatre company that he starred in the role of the eponymous Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang in the musical version directed by Peter Moss in 1984.
In the early stages of his career he played a variety of roles for CBC radio dramas, and at the age of fourteen was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore award for Outstanding Performance by a Male in a Principal Role – Musical in a musical for his portrayal of Prince Edward in playwright Joey Miller's adaptation of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper at the Young People's Theatre in Toronto – one of the youngest actors ever to be nominated in this category.

Musical career

Malicki-Sánchez released a solo 45" on vinyl in Spanish at the age of thirteen through Fe Discos from Ecuador. In 1990, he founded the record label Constant Change Productions out of Toronto, Canada. He began his own band, Blue Dog Pict, aged fourteen. The band released three albums: The Picture Album, Anxiety of Influence: a nodding into...?, and Spindly Light Und Wax Rocketines that were distributed by Distribution FUSION III from Montreal, Canada.
In 1995, Keram's Constant Change label released "Irrevocable UPGRADE" - a compilation of exotic musical works across a wide variety of genres from Lo-Fi to spiritual hymns which he curated and produced. He subsequently studied the tabla with Ritesh Das, the master of table who founded and led the Toronto Tabla Ensemble who also appeared on the compilation record.
On 25 January 2008, Keram released his solo debut acoustic album ,. at Room 5 in Los Angeles.
In 2014, Malicki-Sanchez announced that he had completed work on his album "Come to Life, " after 7 years. The album features the contributions of over 30 musicians, including Alex Lifeson on guitar. The album was mixed by Rich Chycki and mastered by Andy Vandette at Masterdisk New York. The manufacture and promotional budget was raised through a successful IndieGogo campaign that achieved 144% of its original goal. The album was initially launched by way of an audio-visual presentation of the complete album at the vintage Royal movie theatre in Toronto, Canada. Guests were invited to listen to the entire album while watching abstract images on the movie screen. The album then released via a live performance at The Supermarket in Toronto's Kensington Market district on April 12. Alex Lifeson made a guest appearance, joining the band onstage for two songs.
He later crowdfunded 3 new songs - " By the Dazzling Charades" and later "Artificial Intelligence" and "That Light" which feature David Bowie bassist Carmine Rojas, RUSH guitarist Alex Lifeson again, drummer Ryan Brown Zappa Plays Zappa and was again mastered by Andy Vandette.
That same year he licensed two songs in the style of Dubstep to the Lifetime Network film "Perfect High". Subsequently, he went on to compose and or provide music for a variety of television movies of the week for Lifetime Movie Network and PixL, Twist of Fate, Bad Date Chronicles and was the lead composer on "Same Time Next Week" an 84-minute made-for-TV movie starring Jewel Staite for PixL in 2017, and "Sleeping With Danger" - a TV movie for Lifetime Networks about domestic violence.

Filmmaking

His first short film was accepted into the Glastonbury, Atlanta Horror Film Festivals and was an award winner at Shockfest for Best Monster Creation. His subsequent short film toured the film festival circuit and screened to sold out theatres at the Newport Beach Film Festival among others. His third short features motion graphics by John Watson who also worked as a VFX artist on and made the festival rounds in 2011 including the Austin Film Festival winning various People's Choice Awards.

New media

In 2000 Malicki-Sánchez launched "freedom" – a highly customized phpnuke bulletin board, messaging and community building portal whose active community kept the site alive for six years, preceding such social media portals as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook, which perhaps it resembled most, even in its blue and white colour scheme which it derived from the Constant Change Productions website where it was a subdomain. Many of the site's early code modifications were done by longtime friend Will Rowe whom Malicki-Sánchez originally met in the IRC chatroom for Internex Online – Canada's first and independent ISP. In 1994 he founded "Robot Pride Day" – an ironic annual festival named after a song by Blue Dog Pict that is celebrated twenty years later.
In September, 2008, Keram launched the – a podcast he hosted that was a digest for the topics discussed at his various blogs and , also referred to as "IGR," - an independently run indie game critique blog that has continued to publish reviews for over a decade from over a dozen writers from around the world. He maintains the position of editor-in-chief, current as of 2020.

Virtual reality and immersive technology

In 2015 he founded VRTO – a Toronto-based virtual and augmented reality meetup that sold out its inaugural event held at Ryerson University's Student Learning Center and Transportive Technology – a virtual reality content production company which saw Malicki-Sanchez teaming up once more with Lee Towndrow to create one of the world's first 360 ASMR Immersive videos. This led to the creation of FIVARS, which is an acronym for the "Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories" which he co-organized with Joseph Ellsworth, the technical director.
FIVARS debuted at the Camp Wavelength music festival in Toronto and showed the first full viewing of MansLaughter by Cinemersia – which claims to be the world's first virtual reality feature film. FIVARS had its inaugural show in Toronto on September 19 and 20, 2015, including 21 virtual reality stories from around the world. The second FIVARS continued in 2016 at MSMU Studios – a 5,000 square foot warehouse redesigned for the festival. September 16–18th and Malicki-Sanchez curated over 30 selections from around the world.
Malicki-Sanchez then created the VRTO Virtual & Augmented Reality World Conference & Expo which in its first year was staged at the Mattamy Athletic Centre that featured director Brett Leonard, scientist Steve Mann, Canadian Film Centre's Chief Digital Officer Ana Serrano and USC's Philip Lelyveld as keynotes speakers. It was at this inaugural conference that Steve Mann and Keram Malicki-Sanchez organized a launching via keynote, panel and town hall around the Code of Ethics for Humanistic Augmentation also known as the "HACode" or "Toronto Code."
The second year of VRTO, curated and directed by Malicki-Sanchez, featured 100 speakers and 65 installations. It was held at the Rogers Communications Center – a part of the Ryerson University campus. Speakers included many pioneers of the interactive immersive media space, including David A. Smith, Graham Smith, Sara Diamond, optical holography artist Michael Page.
The 3rd VRTO festival, in 2018, Malicki-Sanchez swung the focus towards transcendentalism, Gnosis, psychedelia, astrology, cryptocurrency, blockchain and security and privacy. Featured speakers included Philip Rosedale - creator of Second Life who announced the implementation of EOS as a base for his social VR world High Fidelity, and game designer Steve Gaynor, whose games Gone Home and Tacoma Malicki-Sanchez cited as keystones for immersive storytelling and keynote speaker and Voices of VR podcast host Kent Bye whose opening presentation touched upon esoterica and the philosophical foundations of experiential design.
In 2019 VRTO welcomed media harbinger Douglas Rushkoff, Bloomberg Prize Winner Amelia Winger-Bearkskin, Olivier Palmieri of Ubisoft Sarah Vicks of Intel Studios, and 35 other leaders of the VR & AR industry. The conference moved to the Toronto Media Arts Centre. Rushkoff recorded the first episode of Team Human in Canada live at the conference.
Malicki-Sanchez has also been invited to speak about VR and its effect on society across North America including at Toronto Tech Week, Digital Hollywood, the Canadian National Exhibition, Cinegear Expo, ideacity, EntertainmentTO, Team Human podcast hosted by Douglas Rushkoff and New Yorker magazine, among others.
In 2020 his essays were published in two books: Handbook of Research on the Global Impacts and Roles of Immersive Media Edited by Jacquelyn Ford Morie and Kate McCallum, and Dyscorpia: Future Intersections of the Body and Technology, Edited by Marilene Oliver and Daniel Laforest, Published by Dept of Art and Design, University of Alberta.
The same year he moved the VRTO conference online, working with various platforms to create a multiplatform experience he coined "The Flotilla." It used a video-streaming conference app, the Mozilla Hubs web VR platform running custom code on the Amazon Web Services cloud and hosted a microsummit on accessibility.. The launch of this initiative corresponded with his creation of the company Spatialized.Events.

Filmography