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The Bruise is your creative playground.

The Bruise is an interdisciplinary, collaborative research and production environment that will explore the intersections between art, sound, interactivity, intermedia and virtual space. The Bruise is your friendly contusion, your fibrous abundant quota. We go 50-50 with you. We seek to share, support and exchange ideas, images, sounds in the spirit of a FREE CULTURE - The mission of the Free Culture movement is to build a bottom-up, participatory structure to society and culture, rather than a top-down, closed, proprietary structure. A good example is the current "open source" development. What is posted on The Bruise will never be for sale or valued monetarily within the planned economy.
The Bruise wants you to participate and help establish a different paradigm, one that supports the nurturing source of sustainability, ecology, human rights, and a defy the culture rooted in domination, egotism, and competition.

We invite you to support, participate and submit projects that allow positive creative development. The Bruise hopes to have many participants involved in the experiment, feel free to submit and collaborate. Send us an email with your thougths/project proposals.

The Bruise began as a collaborative effort between designers Mark Shepherd and Briana Bolger. It was our desire to see the pulpy Bruise grow bigger and stronger than any contusion known to man or beast. The Brusie is not the result of a violent act, nor is it the blackening area of living tissue. We are The Bruise.Our goal is to soften and rekindle, share and share alike in a network of abundance. Fluxus member Dick Higgins may have stated all this better back in 1966." Could it be that the central problem of the next ten years or so, for all artists in all possible forms, is going to be less the still further discovery of new media and intermedia, but of the new discovery of ways to use what we care about both appropriately and explicitly?"

Meet The Bruise Members

Mark Shepherd is a graphic designer and illustrator whose work has been featured in numerous national magazines including Speak, Adbusters, Chicago Tribune, Playboy, and Talk, and Aspen Magazine. He has also created several CD packages, posters, logos, web sites for bands and music venues. His most recent project includes a book cover for writer John Domini at Red Hen Press. Mark moved into his formal design studies in 1985, after failing out of micro-economics, he graduated with BFA in graphic design from Northern Michigan University. With a desire to combine his training in both design and art Mark made the jump to Chicago, IL where he worked as Senior Designer at KBA Marketing, art directing a group of Jr. Designers on a wide range of projects for RJR Tobacco before taking his knowledge and experience to the classroom. Mark taught as an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at both Grand Valley State University in Michigan and the College of Creative Studies in Detroit. The LA chapter of the Society of Illustrators honored his work in in the 2001, 44th Annual Exhibition. From 1998-2000 he collaborated with the highly respected designer Martin Venezky on several projects including "Speak", a magazine which both questioned and lifted established design standards. In 1998, his web site was featured in the book "Cutting Edge Web Design: The Next Generation", and on the web portals Digital Thread and Net Diver where brutalgiftland won a "Design Forte Award" for his clever Flash animation and design. His playful cold_elf sound collage project was recently featured on NPR's Open Mic and will be featured in an upcoming untitled independent film from B.C., Canada. Currently he is living and working in Portland, Oregon. Mark's digital prints can be purchased online at ImageKind. You can also purchse t-shirts at GoodStorm.

Briana Bolger currently touring the windy city. Her rock band The Godforsaken Fists can be seen performing in various big city venues. Briana likes to take long hikes up and down Chicago Avenue bird-watching, huskin' and examining the weather patterns, with a proclitivity toward thunder. On rainy days you may find her sporting a beret and sipping a cool latte at her favorite bistro. Her life long ambition is to live on a farm. Pets include two cats, Mikey & Vinnie. Her favorite film you ask? The 1972 epic Evel Knievel starring George Hamilton. Look for Briana's creative work on packages of Marlboro.