Su Friedrich – The Ties That Bind (1984, 14.2MB, 4:03)
From the classic avant-garde filmmaker; a found-footage,
personal and historical documentary reflection on wartime
and Friedrich’s mother’s coming of age in Nazi Germany,
presented here during yet another period of unrest
in our uncertain world.
Red Attack (2001, 7MB, 1:38 min.)
Joseph Nechvatal‘s 2001 Computer Virus Project 2.0 follows along the same lines as previous viral works by Nechvatal in 1992 – works where an unpredictable progressive virus operates on a degradation/transformation of an image. Using a C++ framework, Joseph Nechvatal and his programmer/collaborator Stephane Sikora have brought Nechvatal’s early computer virus project into the realm of artificial life (A-Life) (i.e. into a synthetic system that exhibits behaviors characteristic of natural living systems). With Computer Virus Project 2.0, elements of artificial life have been introduced in that viruses are modeled to be autonomous agents living in/off the image. The project simulates a population of active viruses functioning as an analogy of a viral biological system.
The Planets (2005, 1MB, 1:07 min.)
Toine Klaassen draws attention to the poetry of the unsightly, the small,
and neglected. He collects discarded objects from his surroundings
with no predetermined plan, and subsequently uses these in his work.
Often the work is created in the presence of the public
in a performance setting, in which he makes no attempt
to avoid the absurd.
Or as Klaassen himself states:
“If you catch a butterfly in your hands the powder on its
wings will brush off leaving just a tattered rag.”
Vertical Thoughts 4 (2002, 7.7MB, 3:22 min.)
All we composers really have to work with is time and sound
– and sometimes I’m not even sure about sound.
Morton Feldman.
The pianist is Philip Thomas.
Found in Misha David’s excellent collection of
new music performance videos.
While you’re there check out the rest of his site -he has some
great photographic work archived there too.
Augmented Sculpture (2007, 11.5MB, 3:48 min.)
“This project is focused on the temporary quality of space, investigating space-time
not only as a three dimensional environment, but as space in transformation For this purpose
two layers are produced that explore different aspects of the space-time reality.
The first stage of this project has been developed during Interactivos? 2007, at Medialab Madrid.”
Work by Pablo Valbuena.
The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema -Trailer (2007, 8.97MB, 1:06 min.)
Slavoj Žižek, philosophy’s PT Barnum, struts his stuff
con shed-loads of brio in this Sophie Fiennes directed opus.
Doesn’t seem to be much genuinely new (the terrible fate of
the celebrity academic being to be lionised for what we already
know they’re going to do/say) but still vastly entertaining.
Readings from ‘Health Proxy’ (2007, 32.7MB, 8:19 min.)
So..declaration of interest..Robert Roth is a friend of mine & I get mentioned in the book.
Nonetheless, if he was my worst enemy, I’d still say watch this, then .
Health Proxy is pretty much sui generis..the only comparisons I can think of being those fragmentary, diaristic things in the Japanese tradition:The Pillow Book or Essays in Idleness.
Of course Kenko & Sei Shonagon never wrote about baseball or AIDS,
nor were they animated by the massively warm oppositional & radical spirit we find here.
The video is a nice job too – not only is it elegantly made, but Langager and Smolarski
pass the documentary acid test of honouring their subject matter whilst still creating
something with a palpable sense of their authorship.
Lichtspiel Schwarz, Weiss, Grau (clip) (1932, 12MB, 1:39 min.)
“Lichtspiel Schwarz, Weiss, Grau”, a doc concerning Moholy-Nagy’s kinetic sculpture,
the Light Space-Modulator. Moholy-Nagy believed the motion picture played a significant
role as both art & investigative tool.
‘Painting, photography, and film are parts of one problem although their techniques
may be entirely different. They belong to the same realm; that is, to visual expression,
where cross-fertilizations are possible.’
László Moholy-Nagy
Edward Hopper at NGA (2007, 37MB, 3:36 min.)
In conjunction with the exhibition Edward Hopper, the National Gallery of Art
has released a new video podcast about the artist and his work and influence.
Narrated by actor and art collector Steve Martin.
Antinormalizer (2007, 83.9MB, 9:58 min)
This has quite a complex history, which is explained
better in the video than I could do here.
My nose twitched when I saw it posted on the
Rhizome list by Brett Stalbaum.
Anything associated with him is worth checking out
as witness the various excellent things he’s made with
a hiking theme ( & hiking theme so fails to do justice to the peculiarity
& wonder of them).
Anyway this one is a big team thing, students and staff from
two courses at Unviersity of California San Diego &
it’s entertaining & thought provoking & it feels like
a 2007, modern tech twist on 1968’s
‘Sous les pavés, la plage!’.