Mapping Festival – Motomichi and Otto

motomichi1
Mapping Festival – Motomichi and Otto (2010, 100 MB, 5:25 min.)

Mapping Festival is organized by Modul8, the most popular VJ software in the
market and the venue “Usine / le Zo” is their primary space.
Here is a great collaboration at the event. Video mixing by Motomichi and
music performance by Otto von Schirach.

Alice in Wonderland, 1903.

Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland (1903, 136MB, 9:32)

Enthralling first ever screen version of Alice in Wonderland
from 1903, lovingly restored by the folks at the BFI.
There’s no-one –no-one – who could not learn
something about film-making from this gem.
Nine minutes of sheer, grinning-with-joy delight.

The Smith Family

#1
#1 (2007, 1MB, 56 secs)

#2
#1 (2007, 1MB, 57 secs)

In 2007 I ran a little competition on my site centred aound
a musical setting I had made of a tiny poem by my friends and
collaborators Robert Roth & Carletta Joy Walker for
their magazine “And Then”.

I invited remixes, either musical or visual, of the song and
these two pieces, both utterly barking & delicately poetic at one
and the same time, came winging their way from the Smith Family
in Germany.
Wonderful!

Simon Mclennan – The Mouse Escapes

the mouse escapes
The Mouse Escapes [Trailer] (2010, 4MB, 37 secs)

Difficult to gauge from the trailer what the full 12 minute piece
might be like but it will clearly be interesting & atmospheric and guided
by an acute visual sense.
The music, written by director Mclennan, is also rather good.
Website, with lots of details, here.

Black or White, the Gravy Version

black or white
Black or White, the Gravy Version (2010, 58 MB, 2:38 min.)

An outing, or perhaps more a forced march, for Michael Jackson’s
Black or White refracted through the prism of English
whimsy that is Edward Picot (well, on occasion; fans will know
his range is much, much broader) with co-conspirator Hoola Hoop Kid.
Never understood the Jackson appeal myself but this I like a great deal.
Wish, though, they’d called it ‘Black or White, the Gravy Mix‘.

More Showstudio

beasting
Beasting (2008, 3MB, 31 secs)

blackball
Blackball (2008, 10MB, 1:21 min)

God, I dislike this work! It’s the combination of the stellar
degree of smug self-congratulation with a faux experimentalism/pretension
to art similarly typified by the ludricous “creative” moniker
attached to exponents of advertising.
But..but..again – like some ads, not many, some – there’s
something to be learned here, especially from Beasting
which manages to be both deeply, Zoolanderishly, risible
(the branded underpants) but also generate a kind of deep,
myth-related frisson.
All the more vexing that somewhere here is real talent.

So…we hold our noses and post…

Enough! Six months, at least, before any more of this.
I’m going out for some air.

Marina Abramovic & Ulay: Relation Work (1976 – 1979)

relation_in_space
Relation in Space (1976, 2 MB, 26 sec.)

expansion_in_space
Expansion in Space (1977, 5 MB, 1:18 min.)

In “Relation in Space” (1976) Marina Abramovic & Ulay ran around the room – two
bodies repeatedly move past each other. They collide at great speed like two planets,
mixing male and female energy into a third component called

Sondheim & an Ad…

rilkes tongue
Rilkes Tongue (2006?, 73 MB, 1:44 min)

Alan:
“something to stare at

This is a few years old, but hasn’t been put up; the dancer is Maud
Liardon, either Foofwa or I held the camera and made the video and
effects reminiscent of G. Moreau come to life, the church is in the
Swiss Alps, Rilke was buried behind it, murals of tormented hell,
angelic world of Elegies, we were transported”

PLUS
tether

…Alan Sondheim is one of the artists whose work you can see if
you can get to Nottingham, UK this Thursday – Sunday, 11th-14th Nov, 12-5 pm, in the first offline
appearance by DVblog, where a 45 minute program of work first posted here
will be continuously screened at The Wasp Room, part of Tether Studios.

Details:
Tether Studios,
17a Huntingdon Street
Nottingham
NG1 3JH

tel: 07729124336

mail@tether.org.uk

Artists featured:
Kerry Baldry, Steven Ball, Robert Croma, Rupert Howe, JimPunk, Donna Kuhn, Morrisa Maltz, Millie Niss, Giles Perkins, Sam Renseiw, Alan Sondheim, Nathaniel Stern, Liz Sterry, Eddie Whelan

Also – if you’re reading this & are interested in screening this program -we have both PAL and NTSC
DVDs available. Just mail us!

Tony Oursler – EVOL 1984

evol
EVOL (1984, 25 MB, 2:36 min.)

Tony Oursler is known for his fractured-narrative handmade video tapes including
The Loner, 1980 and EVOL 1984. These works involve elaborate sound tracks,
painted sets, stop-action animation and optical special effects created by the artist.
The early videotapes have been exhibited extensively in alternative spaces and museums..
His early installation works are immersive dark-room environments with video, sound,
and language mixed with colorful constructed sculptural elements. In these projects,
Oursler experimented with methods of removing the moving image from the video monitor
using reflections in water, mirrors, glass and other devices..” – from wikipedia

Ethernet Orchestra – Distant Presences

sam_r
Ethernet Orchestra -Distant Presences (2010, 43MB, 6:42 min)

Delicate but nonetheless ravishing beauty from the improvisation-across-the-net,
(Brazil/Sydney/Germany on this occasion) outfit Ethernet Orchestra
That our hats come off in the face of their technical achievement should go almost
without mention -this cannot have been easy to do; but to make something so devoid of
gimmickry and so entrancing too…well, I’m lost for wo