Essen Dortmund Lederhosen (2005, 36MB, 6:11 min.)
Rick Silva a.k.a – camoufleur, created a musical video
for the former duo-member band – Zeugwart Hallbauer.
Category Archives: nature
Sam Easterton – Animal Vegetable Video
Ardvark (2001, 1.6MB, 15 sec.)
Scorpion (2001, 1.1MB, 10 sec.)
Tumbleweeds (2001, 1.2MB, 10 sec.)
Since 1988, Sam Easterton has been using tiny
‘helmet mounted’ cameras to create an archive of videos filmed
from the perspective of plants and animals.
By Mica
Matt McCormick and The Shins
Matt McCormick – The Past and Pending (2003, 34MB, 5:17)
Matt McCormick – Australia (2007, 29MB, 3:57)
Matt McCormick is one of those heroes I never knew I had.
He makes insanely tight music videos and local commercials
around the Portland area, in addition to being a friend to hipster
bands and a musician himself.
These are two award-winning videos for the band The Shins,
who I’ve posted from before, though I have no affiliation or
particular love for them.
They just end up extra special on film, especially through
McCormick’s visions of A-Team remakes and leisurely photo drives.
David Askevold – Nova Scotia Fires
Nova Scotia Fires (1969, 5MB, 3:00 min)
I hadn’t, to my shame, heard of the late David Askevold until the Camden Arts Centre
put on a beautifully put together and gripping retrospective last year.
Here’s one of the pieces on show then. It’s not particularly great quality plus
it’s in a tiny window but it does conjure (perhaps an appropriately Askevoldian
choice of word) something of the impact -witty, smart and otherwordly – of his work.
* and there’s a good review of that here.
Erica Schreiner – Ohio
Short analog video by Portland based artist Erica Schreiner.
Music by by Prussia.
Alan Sondheim – Kelvin Helmholtz Clouds
Kelvin Helmholtz Clouds (2008, 5.6MB, 24 secs)
It’s funny – even when Sondheim does picturesque there’s
something very defiantly personal about his take on it.
Here it’s the way that the sequence of images just occasionally
looks as if it hadn’t been thrown together at random but
most of the time it does.
And this does not matter -in fact it’s an asset -there’s a shamanic
urgency to everything Sondheim does which is wholly engaging.
Bob Ross is alive. The Joy of Painting..
Bob Ross is alive (2008, 22MB, 2:50 min.)
The Joy of Painting (2008, 15MB, 5:45 min.)
Bob Ross came to prominence as the creator of ‘The Joy of Painting’,
a program on public television in the US. Here are a couple of great parodies
that poke fun at Bob and his calm and enduring nature.
Top is from Dutch filmmaker Miron Bilski (from the viral video award)
Bottom is from artists Max Kotelchuck and Peter Nowogrodzki.
‘Miniatures’ by Steven Hoskins
Miniatures (2006, 11MB, 2:35 min.)
‘Early experimental work in multi-frame/multi-track asynchrony.’
More works from video artist Steven Hoskins on Video Art Net.
Constant Dullaart – Hurricane
hurricane3 (2008, 1.7MB, 47 sec.)
From Dutch artist Constant Dullaart.
Richard Haley – Extending a Rain Puddle’s Reach By 16 Inches
Puddle Extension (2007, 5MB, 6:42 min.)
Masonite, masking tape, and plastic sheeting device
designed to extend a rain puddle’s reach by 16 inches.
By Richard Haley.
In the realm of ‘A Series of Practical Performances In The Wilderness’
by Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir. (1) (2)
More from Kevin Flanagan
Grass Barbed (2008, 13.8MB, 41 secs, silent)
Grass In Wind (2008, 20.4, 48 secs, silent)
Utter loveliness from Irish artist Kevin Flanagan in 2008.
Utter loveliness never something to be disdained in my view, but here it’s also allied to a
steadfastness of purpose & well, just simple old fashioned
courage of conviction.
2 from Loiez Deniel
Ice Flowers – and my cat was so curious (2007, 23.5MB, 3:59 min)
shame (2007, 14.8MB, 2:27 min)
From 2007: first beauty tout court, then beauty with a big sting in the tail.
From Loiez Deniel, all of whose work is worth spending time with.
More from Diana Brighouse
Diana Brighouse – Floating Green Leaves
Floating Green Leaves (2012, 212MB, 3:52 min)
Diana Brighouse is a doctor turned artist in a grand tradition.
She’s currently completing an MA at the University of Chichester in the UK.
Her work is intensely thoughtful and thought through and also often very beautiful.
I’m not always keen on artist commentaries on their own work but what she sent
me is a model of clarity so I’ll reproduce it in full here.
‘The underlying stimulus for my work is to challenge the reductive philosophy
that prevails in Western society today.
I believe that reductionism is manifest through a prioritising of scientific
or quantitative methodology. An unquestioning belief in the measurable is
found not only in science and technology, but also in education, medicine
and politics.
I believe that the supremacy of the measurable can be directly related not
only to the political and financial threats to the arts, but also to the
regressive attitudes towards women and the disabled.
Successive postgraduate university educations in medicine, spirituality,
psychotherapy and art have repeatedly challenged the certainties I have
been taught.
My use of digital video (a quantitative binary process) to produce images
that I believe to be non-reductive reflects the paradoxes created by my
chosen professions.
There are multiple possible interpretations of the videos depending on
the background of the viewer. This is deliberate and hopefully supports
my non-reductive thesis.
These videos are part of a series investigating reflections; a second
series that I am also currently working on investigates shadows.
My intention is that this series will be more politically orientated.
My videos are taken in my garden and edited with Sony Vegas Platinum 11.0HD.’
We’ll have another of these beautiful works next week.
2 from Jack Ryan
I Fell for You (2011, 216MB, 1:00 min)
Threshold (2011, 86MB, 3:29 min)
I Fell For You:
‘My early artistic ideas came from a 3-year experience as
a commercial fisherman in Alaska. At the time, my work
centered on ideas consistent with the locale: hermetic
fabulousness, escape, odyssey, and the sublime.
Todayperversities of the sublime continue to influence the
way I shape projects. A consensual explanation of the
contemporary sublime would acknowledge that there are
thresholds of human perception and a desire to explore these
thresholds connecting ourselves to a greater environment of
understanding and awareness. At the root of my work is
an interest in human experience.’
Threshold:
‘Borrowing from fluxus films Threshold is filmed in Iceland
and the Oregon Coast and made for a project with The
Archer Gallery.
The video takes place where land meets sea, where the
landscape moves from vertical to horizontal, and
associatively between life (verticality) and death (horizontality)’
I’m guessing the club formed by the intersection of the sets of
experimental video makers and of former commercial fishermen
in Alaska is a fairly exclusive one.
Jack Ryan upholds its honor in these two exhilarating
(but totally uningratiating, no puppy-dog-eyes here) pieces.
I especially love “I fell…”.
Very bracing.
Heath Bunting – Memorial Stone
Memorial Stone (2011, 92 MB, 38:31 min)
“As technology moves forward.. all my work is falling apart.. I’d like to move
forward as well, into a more outside adventurous practice, so this video is an
attempt to document the ruins and the remains of my internet work”
– by Heath Bunting
Ruth Catlow – Landscape
Landscape (2011, 114MB, 3:12 min)
Ravishing piece of work from my friend and colleague Ruth Catlow
who is also co-director of the indispensible Furtherfield.org
We’ve been talking a lot amongst ourselves and with our students about
continuities across art history and about hybrid techniques which
meld both the ancient and the newest.
Filmed in the New Forest, this piece (apart from its great beauty)
is an exemplar of this approach and pathbreaking in its way.
(More so than much which, dull-eyed, shouts and waves the latest thing
from the rooftops.)
The oldest kind of mark making, delicately but robustly realised,
captured on a tiny portable video camera in a semi-performative
way and then networked…
Beautiful and nourishing both.
Edward Picot –Things That Flow
Things That Flow (2011, 175 MB, 4:00 min)
Doing what it says on the can, and doing it elegantly
and with understatement and grace, a new pastoral (although
that’s not quite the word because the urban, or at least the mechanical,
usually intrudes into the idyll in some way) from Edward Picot.
Anne de Vries – Forecast
Forecast (2011, 58 MB, 5:04 min)
By Anne de Vries.
Text: Bertrand Russell.
Sound: James Whipple.
Tech assistance: Timur Si-Qin.
Martha Deed – Snow Haiku
Snow Haiku (2011, 28MB, 1:22 min, silent)
Oh this is beautiful!
Martha Deed‘s work is unique, beholden to no-one;
lyrical and tough at the same time.
It’s the work of someone who has seen a great deal of life,
of sadness and wickedness both and yet who still dares to
hope and to dream and to find that life wonderful.
Martha Deed – War and Peace
War and Peace (2006, 35.4MB, 2:34 min.)
Some delicate & tough poetry of the everyday &
the often overlooked (& thence of all we are & of
our place in the natural world too) from Martha Deed in 2006.
Shannon Noble – Newt
We haven’t had anything from Shannon Noble for a long time.
He’s quite elusive. His blog springs up, then disappears, then appears
again under a different name. Currently most of his stuff just seems to
be sitting, unlinked, in a folder on his site.
His work is always interesting (in the strong sense that one can
always learn from it) and hardly ever showy. Maybe his lack of need to show off
or jump up and down saying look at me, even when he’d be justified in so doing
is tied in with his apparent reluctance to promote his work.
Don’t get me wrong -I approve of the former -it makes the viewer do some work and there
are rewards to be had here for doing that work.
Here’s the first of two pieces, a bit like Robert Croma’s piece earlier this week,
not at all in mood or content but simply in being by someone who clearly knows
exactly what they are doing.
The use of sound is both deeply eccentric and wonderful.
More next week.
Edward Picot – Combine Harvester
Combine Harvester (2010, 68MB, 2:23 min)
A eclogue of sorts from Edward Picot; somewhat noisy, somewhat dusty
but evocative of the real British countryside and a little bit thrilling too.
Rick Silva – Krummholz Formation
Krummholz Formation (2010, 112MB, 16:48 min)
It’s always a pleasure to post new work from Rick Silva here
and this piece is no exception.
His work has been heading somewhere strange, gripping
and utterly his own for some time now.
I find this loyalty to a very personal vision both admirable
and exemplary. I’m fascinated to see whether further development
along this path is possible or whether there will at some point be a sharp
change of direction.
(Once again with this piece I really want to see it
in a gallery -nobody is more adept or at home at work for the net than Silva
but I can’t help feeling that this work needs space and distance…)
Two Loops – Michael Szpakowski
Direct Language
Diect Language 5.0 (2010, 74 MB, 6:26 min)
Steven Ball has re-started his Direct Language project & this was the first piece
of the new sequence.
I think it is quite breathtaking.
It strikes me as very much in a relatively recent British experimental film tradition
where a quite austere formalism can engender the most extraordinary beauty.
There’s always the danger of a failure of nerve, the pill being quite needlessly sugared
and nothing such happens here.
Not only is it haunting & lovely, there’s food for thought here too,
the lack of glibness & the refusal to cuddle up to the viewer meaning
it sustains repeated viewing.
More Virtual Hiking
Rush Creek Wilderness Trail Movie (2006, 41.1MB, 5:43 min.)
This one, from 2006, is as splendid as the one we posted yesterday.
Like that, though, there’s a deep oddness here.
Sometimes the virtual hiker is discussed in a clinical, technical, manner,
then at others anthropomorphised shamelessly.
Then the narration: -is anyone really that deadpan?
Seems like the camping isn’t confined to tents on the trail.
But then it is also utterly beguiling & lovely – makes me, at least, yearn
to pack my boots & book a flight.
Sun Capture – Julianne Swartz
Sun Capture (1999, 9.6 MB, 1:23 min.)
Transferring the reflection of a natural occurrence (the movement of the sun)
from outdoors to indoors, Brooklyn-based artist Julianne Swartz creates
her site-specific installation “Sun Capture” with existing architecture, metal pole,
mirror, sun, and wind.
Alan Sondheim: large tree-scan world images
treee (2006, 2.28MB, 1:03 min)
treees 3 (2006, 5.86MB, 38 sec)
treees 8 (2006, 9.15MB, 58 sec)
“similar to a scanning electron microscope, two images of a moving tree
with enormous detail were stitched together, warped, merged, and
analyzed at every stage. the result is a planetary configuration; one can travel
for at least an hour or two through the detailing. at times threads or
tubes appear; at times there are planes, sharpened edges, odd holes and
gaps. a tetrahedral mapping was employed.
it is this acute exploration of acute angles of inner worlds that
fascinates me. the mp4 file is small and an enormous amount of detail
is lost, but you get the idea. there are videos as well of course.
here is the resurrection of encapsulated movement-into-landscape of a
five-story tree outside the virtual environments laboratory at west
virginia”
Circulation by ZDEN
Circulation (2003, 56.1MB, 3:24 min)
ZDEN is a Slovakian artist and a pioneer in real-time
video performing – VJing. His live visuals are produced by a
self-developed post-production tool called CIRCULATION,
a software-based real-time 3 source video mixing engine.
Visit his site.
More vids here.