Gareth Long (2004, 1.2 MB, 25 sec.)
More from Gareth Long.
Monthly Archives: March 2008
Keep On Smoking
Michel de Broin – Keep On Smoking (2006, 8.2MB, 2:51)
Absolutely hilarious video for a fantastic piece of interactive art.
I thought I was going to end up with a statement about
smoking cigarettes with I came across Michel de Broin’s
Keep On Smoking.
But completely unrelated, de Broin says this:
As an alternative to petrol, this custom-made bicycle
transforms kinetic energy produced by the cyclist into smoke.
The will to power is a renewable energy resource that can be
recuperated by a power generator supplying enough electricity
to operate a smoke machine. The work is the result of two
coupled machines; the one human is productive and the other
machine, consumptive. This coupling of machines produces smoke,
a waste energy that is liberated freely in the atmosphere.
Ride with Theo
Ride with Theo (2005, 27.7MB, 6 min.)
Directed in 2005 by Owen Plotkin of the now corporation
(Owen is also behind the excellent gaaagled.com)
this is a piece of viral advertising for an annual bike ride to raise
money for leukaemia research at Hammersmith hospital, London.
It features the splendid Theodore Bouloukos, whom regular dvblog
viewers will have seen & admired in Doron Golan�s recent piece.
Day of Ashurah (Day of Tenth)
Day of Tenth (2006, 13.6MB, 1:40 min.)
Europe January 2006.
Sunnis and Shi’a Muslims commemorating ‘Day of Ashurah‘.
A Good Joke – Nick Fox-Gieg
A Good Joke (2005, 18.5 MB, 3:16 min.)
This short is based on an old joke, a perennial in compilations of
Jewish humor. Although the details differ between versions, the
scene remains the same: a priest challenges a rabbi to debate on
the spiritual condition of Jewish people. But neither speaks the other’s language.
Commissioned by Project Mosaica, by Nick Fox-Gieg.
Doron Golan – Forgot
Forgot (2008, 98.3MB, 12:06 min, silent theatrical act)
This is simply wonderful.
Doron’s work is strange – it doesn’t lend itself to blow by blow verbal description:
er..‘Some actors perform in a silent movie based on Waiting for Godot‘
Then you actually look at it (or if you haven’t you should, you really should).
The grammar of his editing is completely unique & mysterious (a feature of all his longer pieces).
‘Why did he do that?’ – ‘Dunno – but it made my spine tingle’
Work like this often slips under the radar because it has no easy marketing line,
it can’t be glibly summed up, reduced to an easily digestible one-liner.
Work like this is food you have to chew a little…but what flavour & what nourishment!
Also, the acting ( and the director/actor collaboration) is outstanding.
Smart, funny, puzzling, touching by turns…and generous also…
With Theodore Bouloukos, Joanne Douglas, Brian Gibson and Stephanie Noritz
Lossy Video
Hollywood News (2006, 2.7MB, 1:06 min. )
Saddam on Trial (2006, 1.9MB, 52 sec)
Two pieces from the Montreal based video collective Lossy Video.
The idea being to take news footage & ..er..look at it closely.
The results are undeniably capable, attractive & interesting.
Reminds me, conceptually, of Mark Tribe
Two from Human Dog
Garage Door (2006, 4.4MB, 0:47)
Human Dog was one of the first videoblogs and has
been closed down since early 2007. Luckily, all of
the media remains online (so far). One of the best
things about the entire series of videos (and the various
serials therein) was creator Chris Weagel’s ability
to tease out the absurdity of everyday life without
hitting the audience over the head with his message.
Video that was made specifically to live online, this
is some of the best work ever produced in videoblog
format.
The French Democracy
The French Democracy (2005, 39.7MB, 13:09 min)
Quite remarkable piece of Machinima from France, dealing with
the riots there by oppressed North African and Arab youth.
The subtitling and translation ( ‘I had some training to do’ says koulamata,
the author, rather disarmingly) are hit and miss, to say the least -but it would
be wrong to view this as an ‘all your base are belong to us’ curiosity.
The very strangeness of the English translation, the sheer virtuosity of shaping
the fairly recalcitrant source material into a coherent 13 minute plus narrative
means that its honesty and sincerity shine through at every moment.
There is an interesting discussion of the piece on the Machinima.com site.
Aaron Koblin –The Sheep Market
The Sheep Market (2008, 5.4MB, 32 secs)
Aaron Koblin, whose work we’ve featured here before does
rather wonderful things using the Processing language.
Well..of course that’s true..but if he wasn’t endowed with wit & smarts
& a sense of beauty then the tools he used would interest us not at all.
Here’s what he says about this piece (or rather the project for
which this vid is a short installation view):
TheSheepMarket.com is a collection of the first 10,000 sheep
made by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
Workers were paid 0.02 ($USD) to “draw a sheep facing to the left.”
Animations of each sheep’s creation may be viewed at
TheSheepMarket.com.