Category Archives: experimental

Marisa Olson – 2 videos

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Dark Stars
Dark Stars (2006, 6.9MB, 1:30 min)

From Here
From Here (2006, 29MB, 4 min)

Two rather attractive & intriguing pieces by Marisa Olson
made at a 2006 residency at the Experimental Television Center.

Said Marisa:
“Both are made using a combination of analog & digital processes
and Dark Stars is almost completely analog.. but
then again, both appropriate found material from the internet.
From Here is the music video for Zach Layton’s remix of my song of the
same name. Dark Stars uses samples from one of those old VHS video
games”.

More from Marisa on DVblog here.

Sondheim – Watching Them

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watchingthem
Watching Them (2010, 14MB, 38 secs)

ALL

ALL-BEARING Omniparous
ALL-CHEERING That which gives gaiety to all.
ALL-CONQUERING That which subdues every thing.
ALL-DEVOURING That which eats up every thing.
ALL-FOURS A low game at cards, played by two.
ALL-HAIL All health.
ALL-HALLOWN The time about All-saints day.
ALL-HALLOWTIDE The term near All-saints, or the first of November.
ALL-HEAL A species of iron-wort.
ALL-JUDGING That which has the sovereign right of judgment.
ALL-KNOWING Omniscient, allwise.
ALL-SEEING That beholds every thing.
ALL-SOULS DAY The day on which supplications are made for all souls
by the church of Rome; the second of November.
ALL-SUFFICIENT Sufficient to any thing.
ALL-WISE Possessed of Infinite Wisdom

(From John Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, 1825 ed.)

38 seconds of strange & aching beauty from Alan Sondheim.
The text above accompanied the original posting
of the vid on the Netbehaviour & Webartery lists.

Double-Taker (Snout) – interactive installation

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snout
Double-Taker (Snout) (2008, 7MB, 52 sec.)

“Double-Taker (Snout)” deals in a whimsical manner with the themes of trans-species
eye contact, gestural choreography, subjecthood, and autonomous surveillance.
The project consists of an eight-foot (2.5m) long industrial robot arm, costumed to
resemble an enormous inchworm or elephant’s trunk, which responds in unexpected
ways to the presence and movements of people in its vicinity. Sited on a low roof above
a museum entrance, and governed by a real-time machine vision algorithm,
Double-Taker (Snout) orients a supersized googly-eye towards passers-by, tracking their
bodies and suggesting an intelligent awareness of their activities. The goal of this kinetic
system is to perform convincing “double-takes” at its visitors, in which the sculpture
appears to be continually surprised by the presence of its own viewers

donebestdone

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Willow Creek Coffee
Willow Creek Coffee (2006, 14.5MB, 47 sec.)

A Greater Degree of Hardware Awareness
A Greater Degree of Hardware Awareness (2006, 25.6MB, 4:40 min.)

Is that a Shakespeare reference I see before me?
These 3 artists from Milwaukee ( who seem to have mutated
into an essentially music making outfit since) used whatever comes to
hand or mind, allied to an aesthetic that privileged
collaboration, speed & the improvisational,
to make this beautiful & engaging work.

Nam June Paik – documenta performance

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NJP_documenta1977.mov
documenta performance (1977, 6 MB, 1:35 min.)

The 1977 “documenta” show, which became known as the ‘media documenta’,
opened its doors with a live satellite telecast from Kassel.
Nam June Paik appeared together with Charlotte Moorman and used the slot
for a Dadaistic, allusive excursion through his performance and installation works.
from ZKM Videosammlung.

Takashi Ito – Spacy

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Private Charges
Spacy ( 1981, 14MB, 2:27)

The other day,on a whim, I bought Takashi Ito’s collected works on DVD
from the BFI shop. I’d never heard of him before.
I’m so glad I did. It is utterly compelling and remarkable work.
Spacy is an early piece and the clip here is neither complete
not particularly good quality but it does give you a taste of Ito’s early
– almost formalist – style.
There’s such delight in seeing how this broadens into the flexible,
confidently handled and singular idiom of the later pieces, where a quite
musical rigor in the formal structuring is never absent but which
also underpins a beautifully ambiguous and rich expressivity.
The whole set was one of those all too rare tingle-down-the-spine
revelations which I gulped down in a couple of sittings.
This is outstanding & important work – I urge people to become acquainted with it.

suzon fuks :: rings #1 – #6

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rings1to6
rings #1 – #6 (2007, 25MB, 6:35 min.)

“Ongoing series of one-minute unedited shots which can each stands alone.
Improvised choreography multi-reprojected on body parts, counterpointed
by texts by Fernand Shirren, Maurice Bejart’s music advisor and rhythm teacher
of many dancers and choreographers, and a significant inspiration in Fuks’ work.
made collaboratively with and performed by Helen Varley Jamieson,
James Cunningham, Scotia Monkivitch and Suzon Fuks.”

Directed by Suzon Fuks.

Jolipunk – Octopus

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Octopus
Octopus (2010, 56MB, 1:15 min)

When we previously featured a piece by Jolipunk we took the
exceptional step of including a warning that it might disturb.

This new piece is interesting on several counts –
(1) The somewhat in-your-face Oldboy reference/homage
(I can’t believe there’s anyone interested in film who isn’t at least
aware of that scene)
(2) The sharp focus once again on the mouth and mouth
related transgression.
(3) That -at least in my case – it didn’t send me running
for the sick bucket or even force me to turn away; indeed there’s
something even elegant (especially after the beats kick in
around 47 secs) about it.
(4) The jumpy editing and ambiguous music (which flits rapidly
from mood to mood, ominous at one time, quite lighthearted
at others) which serve both to distance us from simple disgust
and from a too easy identification with the Chan-wook Park sequence.

Sometimes work is “interesting” without being good – here
the things that make it the one make it the other too.

Veronique Hubert – Two Movies

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A Venir Le Monde Sera Beau
A Cube Bavards (2009, 20MB, 2:47 min)

A Venir Le Monde Sera Beau
A Venir Le Monde Sera Beau (2009, 52MB, 9:51 min)

OK -comparisons, I’m aware, can sometimes obscure as much as they illuminate but
imagine, if you will, a female, French, slightly more lapidary, Matthew Barney and it does
seem to fit the bill.
Exemplary and wonderful strangeness from Veronique Hubert.

Morrisa Maltz – Girl Space

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Girl Space
Girl Space (2010, 22MB, 3:45)

Another great piece from Morrisa Maltz, whom we first showed here last week.
This puts me in mind, stylistically, of another DVblog favourite, Donna Kuhn.
I mean that entirely positively – the content & tone are clearly different but there’s
something of the same dynamism and confidence in working with very diverse materials
in both artists.