Dan Osborne – Behold the Light (at Night)

intitled
Behold the Light (at Night) (2008, 87MB, 6:27 min)

We initially posted this in 2008 when we encountered Dan Osborne’s work
for the first time.
Recently he seems to be actively rejecting some of his earlier work so I hope
he doesn’t mind us reposting this. In my view he’s a very talented artist
with a quite singular vision.
We said then:

There’s something pleasantly reminiscent of Linklater’s Slacker
in this piece from Dan Osborne.
I don’t mean to suggest it’s derivative; I don’t think it is, or only
in the completely unescapable way of coming-after. This piece
has it’s own identity, which at first I wasn’t sure whether it was
completely random, but then little bits of structuring begin to
assert themselves. In particular I like the fades which occur
immediately prior to anything substantive happening.
A lot of it looks very good too – there’s no doubt the man
has an eye – the 3-D glasses sequence, the fire women,
the musical instruments procession (although am I alone in
finding something slighty snotty about the shot of the bemused onlookers?).
That little cavil aside this is interesting stuff & I look forward to seeing
how Osborne’s work develops.

Shannon Noble – Finger Bolts

Finger Bolts
Finger Bolts (2005, 1.9MB, 1:13 min.)

Shannon Noble, an extremely technically accomplished
artist, made this elegant short video in 2005 from the simple, well-timed,
juxtaposition of moving images and sounds.
He’s still making stuff – he’s quite strangely
secretive about his work and quite often as soon
as it’s posted somewhere it disappears again.
A shame – he’s consistently great.

Pierre Huyghe

Pierre Huyghe #1
Pierre Huyghe #1 (NK, 2.69MB, 1:43 min)

Pierre Huyghe #2
Pierre Huyghe #2 (NK, 1.59MB, 3:03 min)

Pierre Huyghe #3
Pierre Huyghe #3 (NK, 2.33MB, 1:29 min)

Pierre Huyghe #4
Pierre Huyghe #4 (NK, 2.29MB, 1:30 min)

Four short videos by the often vexing, occasionally brilliant, Pierre Huyghe
from the website of the PBS Art in the 21st Century series.

3 from Alan Sondheim

me.jpg
me (2008, 12MB, 1:06 min loop)

slbarrier.jpg
slbarrier (2008, 33.1 MB, 4:32 min.)

elo1.jpg
elo1 (2008, 46.3 MB, 5:26 min.)

Three from 2008. As always, utterly watchable and quite unparallelled.
PS I’m going to post beneath a text piece by Sondheim from around the
time the movies were made, not because it has any direct
relevance to them (though of course it has relevance)
but because it’s great & a further demonstration, if such were required,
of his range of technique and vision…

she can MOVE FRUIT FROM ONE KIND OF TREE TO ANOTHER
she can MAKE OTHERS FALL ASLEEP OR WAKE AT WILL
she can MAKE FIRE BLAZE FROM WEAPONS
she can FLY THROUGH AIR
she can SEE THROUGH WALLS
she can TRANSFORM A CAVE INTO A PALACE AND SEAL THE EXITS
she can REMOVE THE TUSKS AND TRUNK FROM AN ELEPHANT AND RESTORE THEM
she can MAKE A KING SPEECHLESS AND RESTORE HIS SPEECH
she can GENERATE DEMONS AND COMPLETE DEMONS
she can END DROUGHT AND HEAL ILLNESS
she can SUBDUE LIONS AND TIGERS AND BRING THEM TO FAITH
she can REMOVE ARMS AND LEGS FROM SOLDIERS AND RESTORE THEM
she knows ALL LANGUAGES AND ALL DOCTRINES
she can EAT ENDLESSLY AND DRY UP WELL SPRINGS AND RESTORE THEM
she can CUT OFF HER HEAD AND FLY THROUGH THE AIR AND RESTORE IT
she can MOVE A BUFFALO AND HER CALF BACK TO THEIR HOME
she is SAFE FROM ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND BLOWS WITH CUDGEL AND ARROW
she can TURN AROUND ARROWS IN FULL FLIGHT
she can TURN INTO AN OLD WOMAN AND BACK AGAIN
she can SEE THINGS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD
she knows ALL FUTURE AND ALL PAST EVENTS
she meditates FOR DAYS ON END WITHOUT SLEEP OR DRINK OR FOOD
she can HOLD SEVEN HUNDRED UMBRELLAS ABOVE HER WITHOUT TOUCHING THEM
she can RAISE THE DEAD AND RESTORE THEM TO DEATH
she can BE IN SEVERAL PLACES AT ONCE
she can TRAVEL INSTANTANEOUSLY FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER
she can MAKE SMALL THINGS ENORMOUS AND ENORMOUS THINGS SMALL
she can MAKE DEVOTIONAL IMAGES CRUMBLE AND RESTORE THEM
she can CARRY A TEMPLE ON HER BACK
she can CLIMB ENDLESS STAIRS AND OTHERS CANNOT FOLLOW HER
she fits THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE INTO A TINY CORNER OF A CAVE OR HOUSE
she disappears AND APPEARS AT WILL
she conquers DEATH
she eats CORPSES URINE EXCREMENT SEMEN MENSTRUAL BLOOD
her slightest MOVEMENT TRANSFORMS WORLDS
her dance CREATES AND ANNIHILATES WORLD
she loosens BOUND ANIMALS AND RELEASES THEM
she can WALK ON WATER AND WALK THROUGH FLAMES
she can CAUSE THE EARTH TO QUAKE AND FLOWERS TO FALL LIKE RAIN
she can DISCOVER HIDDEN TREASURES
she can WALK THROUGH WALLS AND CLIFFS
she can SEAL CAVES AND CREATE GREAT HALLS WITHIN THEM
she can MAKE HERSELF INVISIBLE AND MAKE HERSELF VISIBLE AGAIN
she can CREATE OVERWHELMING TEMPESTS
she can SUBDUE SNAKES AND OTHER WILD ANIMALS
she can SING PERFECT SONGS OF HER OWN DEVISING
she can ALLEVIATE THE SUFFERINGS OF THE ELDERLY
she can ALLEVIATE THE SUFFERINGS OF THE POOR
she can SCORCH CLOTHES AND RESTORE THEM
she can READ MINDS CLOSE BY AND AT A DISTANCE
she can EAT ANY SORT OF IMPURITIES
she can LAUGH AN EIGHT FOLD LAUGHTER
she can DRAW STELES AND JEWELS FROM THE GROUND
she can ERECT VAST PALACES AT AN INSTANT
she extracts POISON FROM WATER AND WALKS THROUGH BLAZING FLAMES
she can CHOOSE THE DATE AND TIME OF HER DEATH
she can MAKE DRUMS AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS TO SOUND BY THEMSELVES
her steps MEASURE GREAT OR TINY DISTANCES AT HER WILL
her gaze CAN SHATTER AND RESTORE ANYTHING
she can TRANSFORM HERSELF INTO A SKELETON AND A RAINBOW BODY
her gaze CAN OPEN CAVES IN SOLID ROCK AND SEAL THEM AGAIN
she remembers HER PAST AND FUTURE BIRTHS
she can TARRY WITH CONSORTS WITH OR WITHOUT ELABORATION
she can SELF ILLUMINATE
she can WALK AIMLESSLY DAY AND NIGHT
she can SPREAD THE SCENT OF PERFUMES IN EVERY DIRECTION
she can SIT LIE OR WALK IN MID AIR
she can WEAR APRONS OF BONES
she is FLEET FOOTED
she changes THE COLOR OF HER BODY AT WILL

Some Versions of Pastoral

Extended Camera
Extended Camera (2005, 5.5MB, 2:19 min.)

Night Performance #3
Night Performance #3 (2005, 12.1MB, 7:54 min.)

In May 2005 Garrett Lynch & co-conspirators blagged some
money from Arts Council England to spend a weekend at a
country house playing with video.
The result is documented on this great site.

At their best these vids do absolutely match up to the
funding application rhetoric. They combine performance,
technology & layer upon layer of knowingness to produce results
which had me, at least, open mouthed with admiration.

Wonderful!

2 from Loiez Deniel


cat

Ice Flowers – and my cat was so curious (2007, 23.5MB, 3:59 min)


shame

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.

Margaret – Brian Gibson

Margaret
Margaret (2008, 54.3MB, 5:44 min)

“This is a reoccurring dream. I shot this a few days back in Peg’s
wonderfully spacious apt. The music is originally by Michael Szpakowski
and was remixed by me for the video.”
Puzzling and mysterious video by Brian Gibson.

John Cage – 4:33

john cage
John Cage – 4:33 (2004, 47MB, 9:23 min)

Wonderful video of the BBC Symphony Orchestra under
Lawrence Foster giving a performance of John Cage’s
notorious/ provocative/seminal/epoch-making 4:33.

Bonnie Prince Billy/Ben Berman –I See a Darkness

I See a Darkness
I See a Darkness (2012, 32MB, 2:40 min)

Bonnie Prince Billy/Will Oldham has a way of generating interesting things
around his core business of making extraordinary music.
In a similar way to that of Ornette Coleman, his album artwork always
contains many little explosions of visual pleasure and neither is it devoid of
food for thought.
This is also true of the videos he commissions to accompany his music.
We’ve posted some of these before , including a deliciously bizarre
one from Harmony Korine.
This is one of my favourites to date. Made by Ben Berman, it involves
Oldham lolloping around the streets of Glasgow in a way that in real
life would have me crossing the road toot sweet.
I’m an Oldham fan. If I had to put my finger on one of the things
that lifts him so far from the ordinary it would be a confidence in his
work so great (or maybe better, simply an integrity to it and to his art),
that he can encompass within it and place around it things of utter
ridiculousness without undermining it, indeed, whilst rendering it the more potent.
This is not to downplay the role of Berman in this. He is clearly a significant
talent and a fine co-conspirator for Oldham.

Curt Cloninger & A Bill Miller – sliveRider

sliveRider
sliveRider (2012, 316MB, 5:26 min)

From: Curt Cloninger
To: Michael Szpakowski
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 4:21 PM

A video collaboration between A. Bill Miller and Curt Cloninger.
Audio by Low. Bill and Curt swapped files back and forth until the
person receiving the file felt it was finished. Links to the video
files in progress are included
.

I’ve been reading Deleuze on Leibniz about the Baroque fold, and
this project seems like we were folding video. Like cooking, folding
in ingredients. The trace of each iteration is discernible, baked
into the final fold. Not so much cutting, fading, layering, moshing,
or even remixing (although there is some “databending”).

Hope you are doing well over there,
Curt

On Sunday, May 20, 2012, Michael Szpakowski wrote:

This is quite, quite enchanting.
Do either of you have any objection to me doing a DVblog post on it?
thanks!
Michael

At 8:28 AM -0400 5/20/12,
a bill miller wrote:
Fine with me!
bill

Thanks Michael,
Yes, please do.
Best,
Curt

More from Diana Brighouse

Floating Green Leaves
5 Minute Measurement (2012, 279MB, 5:04 min)

original post

Diana Brighouse – Floating Green Leaves

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.

Psycho Bob – Bob’s Big Date

bob_date.jpg
Bob’s Big Date (2008, 7 MB, 50 sec.)

“These are the adventures of a psychopath named Bob. Bob is not
a nice man; not even a little bit. This show is the video equivalent
of a Sunday comic strip.

Here Bob goes out on a date with Betty, perhaps the first woman
other than his mother to truly understand and appreciate him.”
From The AV Club.

Wheeler Winston Dixon – Serial Metaphysics

Serial Metaphysics
Serial Metaphysics #1 (1984-86, clip, 6.4MB, 1:08 min)

Serial Metaphysics
Serial Metaphysics #2 (1984-86, clip, 5.9MB, 1:08 min)

Wheeler Winston Dixon is now a professor of film studies
at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Before he did that he made
a lot of (on the evidence of these clips & others) really great short movies.
In particular these two clips from Serial Metaphysics, apparently almost
entirely constructed from TV ads, whet the appetite for a viewing
of the whole twenty minutes.
Dixon conjures fever dream magic from commercial banality.
Check in particular the end sequence of clip one:
David Lynch eat your heart out.

Nathaniel Stern & Scott Kildall – Tweets in Space

Tweets in Space
Tweets in Space (2012, 52MB, 2:27 min)

Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern of Wikipedia Art return with another
project both odd, lyrical and utopian.
“Tweets in Space” will beam Twitter discussions from participants worldwide
towards GJ667Cc: a planet 22 light years away that apparently might support
earth-like life.
Anyone can take part, simply by adding #tweetsinspace to their tweets during
two performance times in September, when Stern and Kildall will be doing live
projections at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in New Mexico,
and boldly tweeting where none have tweeted before.

They say:
“This differs from every past alien transmission in that it is not only
a public performance, but also performs a public: it is a real-time
conversation between hopeful peers sending their thoughts to everywhere
and nowhere.
Our soon-to-be alien friends will receive unmediated thoughts and responses
about politics, philosophy, pop culture, dinner, dancing cats and everything
in between.
By engaging the millions of voices in the Twitterverse and dispatching them
into the larger Universe, “Tweets in Space” activates a potent discussion
about communication and life that traverses beyond our borders or understanding.
It promises more than could ever be delivered.”

This is their fundraising video – please consider making a donation to make the
project happen and also publicise and share it on lists, facebook, twitter, etc.

Diesel U Music – Ben Hanbury

Ben Hanbury
diesalumusic (2006, 27MB, 3:19 min.)

Ben Hanbury entry for the Diesel U Music 2006 VJ competition.

Curt Cloninger: Again (I Wish I Was A Fool For You)

Again (I Wish I Was A Fool For You) #1
Again (I Wish I Was A Fool For You): 9:23-9:26 pm (2012, 70MB, 2:27 min)

Again (I Wish I Was A Fool For You) #3
Again (I Wish I Was A Fool For You): 10:08-10:10 pm (2012, 64MB, 2:33 min)

I love (and increasingly so) Curt Cloninger’s work.
The wonderful series of gif/flash/loop/glitch/kitchen sink audio visual poems on his site, his forays into
datamoshing and his series of live performative/endurance pieces
which, sprouting like green shoots from a rather austere central
European branch manage to be filled with light and nuance and a
-how shall I put it -… a joy which is earned, which is not trivial,
and to which we are invited and which arises out of a heightened sense
of ourselves and of others as embodied beings and of our necessary interconnections…

Here’s Curt’s account of a recent piece, a collaboration with his wife Julie,
for which we post two pieces of documentation. (I don’t know whether Curt sees
them as simply that. I think they are quite lovely in themselves – certainly the video
piece derived from Curt and Annie Abraham’s telematic collab Double Blind,
featured here previously certainly has artistic legs of its own and perhaps should
be taken as something of a precedent.)

Anyway, over to you Curt:

“A 3 Hour performance by Curt and Julie Cloninger. Julie is pre-recorded
on video singing for ten minutes along with Curt playing Rhodes piano.
Her video and audio are then projected and looped in the performance space
while Curt sings and plays guitar live. Both are blindfolded.
A duet across time. The repeated excerpt is from the Richard and
Linda Thompson song “For Shame of Doing Wrong.
Performed at the Black Mountain College campus during the 2012 reHappening festival“.

Man With a Movie Camera – Perry Bard

man_camera
Man With a Movie Camera (Trailer) (1929-2007, 6MB, 2:17 min.)

“Man With a Movie Camera is a participatory video shot by people around the world
who are invited to record video according to the original script of Vertov’s Man With
A Movie Camera and submit it to a website which will archive, sequence and deliver
it. When the work streams your contribution becomes part of a worldwide montage,
in Vertov’s terms the ‘decoding of life as it is’.
Project by Perry Bard.

Morrisa Maltz – Two New Movies

I Don't Know That Would You Like to Search the Web for it?
I Don’t Know That Would You Like to Search the Web for it? (2012, 96MB, 38 secs)

Image White/Red
Image White/Red (2012, 12MB, 35 sec loop)

Another DVblog favourite today, I’m glad to say.
Morrisa Maltz, returning to the world of art from her foray
into commerce
(but that so elegant and sharply done), presents
us with two new vids, mysterious and lovely both; one that
feel ecstatic and the other with, perhaps, a darker note, I think.
Anyway, partly because I think it’s enlightening and partly because, dammit,
I can, I reproduce below an edited verison of an exchange
Morrisa and I had about these.

MM:
…think I’m moving in a bit of a different direction…I’m working
on a few pieces that are much shorter and meant to loop- sorts of images
that function more as paintings and could possibly fit in sculptures
or present themselves framed on a wall… I’m not sure if those would
work for DVblog, but I’m attaching two pieces that function in that way,
one that is similar to old pieces a bit and one that is entirely meant
to loop and function as more of an “image” than a video……..
I’m really trying to get back in the groove after all the Mofone excitement
so no worries if you don’t like these pieces and don’t want to write
about them or want to write something not so great about them…

MJS:
I think they’re both great & I’d love to do a post about them.
For me change is a sign of life. Nothing depresses me more than the all
too frequent art school advice to find a “thing” and to keep doing it.
Imagine Picasso with this philosophy…
Anyway – although they are different you have very distinctive fingerprints 🙂

MM:
I think that change is extremely important for an artist , and it’s …
unfortunate that artists quite often get pegged into one way of making
things and continue to work in that vein- that seems to contradict
the whole idea of an artist for me…

Takeshi Murata – Melter 02

Melter2
Melter2 (2003, 8MB, 30 sec.)

Undermining the traditional notion of televisual viewing by creating a passive,
sculptural work of technicolour beauty.
Clip from Melter 02 by Takeshi Murata.

Lisa Cianci

okay, not okay
okay, not okay (2006, 2.53MB, 4:03 min)

year before last
year before last (2006, 1.98MB, 3:43 min)

I admire this work in its refusal to cosy.
I think it’s quite brave, in a medium where
startling visual effects are so easily realisable,
so little needing to be worked for, to make something
( & not just a work but a whole series)
that demands such careful listening
& hands out so few visual lollipops.
Lisa’s site.

Ben Pranger – my life is not a happening


my life is not a happening

my life is not a happening (2007, 17.3MB, 1:31 min)

I really like this genre of physical theatre/dance/happening/what-you-will
put through the video mangler (apparently jitter does its stuff here)
& the splendidly named Ben Pranger & his accomplices
carry it off rather nicely.
I gather this piece arose out of some workshops in 2007.
I love the excitement of that sort of voyage of discovery; there’s a kind
of frontier feel to it which is really captured here.
It’s also a philosopher’s stone job – out of apparently prosaic fragments
comes forth a small kind of magic.

Peter Scott – Death was the West

Death was the West
Death was the West (2012, 221MB, 5:19 min)

A restrained, austere, smart and at the same time gripping piece from
Essex, UK, film-maker Peter Scott, still in his final months at art school.
I understand it to be a by product of a work in progress but it
has an integrity and presence entirely of its own.
I look forward to more.

2 from Patrick Lichty

Explaining Conceptual Art to Bizarro
Explaining Conceptual Art to Bizarro (2012, 89MB, 1:36 min)

Danger Music #17
Danger Music #17 by Dick Higgins (2012, 19MB, 45 secs)

And to celebrate our resurrection (for which heartfelt thanks go to James Morris), two newish pieces from the redoubtable (I write so many of these things a nagging doubt enters my mind as to whether I’ve perhaps called Patrick redoubtable before, once, twice…more? But leave it – redoubtable he is) Patrick Lichty.

Both pieces take place in DC Universe Online, about which I know nothing so I won’t even begin to show myself up by attempting to expand, and both reference recent art history – one Beuys explaining pictures to a dead hare and the other Dick Higgins’s Danger Music.
Both are utterly splendid.

Alan Sondheim – What Remains

what remains
what remains (2007, 19.7MB, 1:26 min.)

We need no excuse here to feature more of Alan Sondheim’s singular & remarkable oeuvre.
This one caused a bit of a debate on Netbehaviour in 2007 -some baulked, fearing it to be images
of rending, tearing of the body. Alan says not at all, it’s tantric/ecstatic.
The singer is Alan’s wife Azure Carter.
When he originally posted it, it came with this poem (a sonnet?):

what remains

because of the faces and powers among our second lives
and third and others in-between the others; because of
swollen faces thinned back to pages bones and shadowed flesh
that nothing stays what was simple and illusion

and then poetics rounds and fills the world
among lost pages and inscriptions freed
from every symbol and symbols freed and world;
the less are said the farther truth transcends

because of truths and songs and lights and place
where bodies turn; because of bodies churned and stretched
among beams of those lights and those songs; those truths
nothing stays back nothing; valleys fill with jostled things

and things churn symbols; the world
fills silence; skies get dark kiss; welkin

Still Life: Gallery – Gareth Long

gallery
Still Life: Gallery (2002, 3.5 MB, 3:22 min.)

This piece was shot with a still camera. The images are ‘stitched’ together using
a combination of specialized software and by hand; the stills seamlessly joined to
create a new space. Because the space is made up of stills instead of video, any
and all action contained within the frame is arrested. The two major precepts of
video – motion and time – are thus implied but impenetrable.

from Gareth Long.

Charlie Mars – Videomaker from Outerspace

deux
deux (2006, 22MB, 3:48 min)

by Charlie Mars.

Joan Healy: Deranged, but in a Good Way


Sithair

Sithair (2007, 6.4MB, 1:49 min)

Cyberskin
Cyber Skin (2007, 38.8MB, 3:05 min)

Meat Market
Meat Market (2007, 39.6MB, 7:14 min)

I was lucky enough to see young Irish artist Joan Healy
present her work at a 2008 DATA event in Dublin.
It was strange.
First off, consciously or not, she has this innocent
butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth demeanour and then she
shows this.. er..stuff
Documented here, in ascending order of weirdness, there’s a performance piece
where she transforms her hair into a musical instrument,
a piece where she satirises the current bio-art fashion by
getting into a box, exposing some of her back (the installation
claims this is especially grown cyber-skin)
& then attempting to draw to screen the patterns the punters trace
out on her.
Last is ..well.. (vegans avert your eyes), electronically assisted dancing meat
– you know.. chops.. steaks.. & the like..
After she gave her talk I said to her I thought her work was ‘utterly deranged’
She smiled sweetly and said she would take it as a compliment.
It was.

Bleip – No

bleip
Bleip – No (2001, 14.32 MB, 2:59 min.)

Beautiful visuals and some on point editing from Pleix,
a group of digital artists in Paris, France.
The music on this one is provided by Bleip.

Two from Blip Boutique


Blip Boutique – Not In Love (2007, 30.2MB, 1:28)


Blip Boutique – 24 in 60: hollywood (2007, 18.8MB, 1:14)

Two shorts from 2007, from Blip Boutique,
makers of fine viral, art, and music videos