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“.

Eddie Whelan/Grass Giraffes – Better Alone

Better Alone

We’ve followed Eddie Whelan’s work from the very beginning and enjoyed it all the
way.
More than enjoyed, actually. Been impressed and moved by the care, thought and skill
with which he approaches everything and particularly by his forging of a very personal,
nuanced and beautiful
language from the practice of data-moshing.

He has recently turned his talents to the making of music videos
and the constraints of the form, both in terms of time and the unity demanded
by serving a soundtrack make for small jewells of lyric visual poetry.

I gather he also plays on this one, and they,Grass Giraffes, have an EP forthcoming in May.
I’ll certainly be investing in a copy.

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

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.

Afrobeats Week – #5 // EL – Obuu Mo (Azonto Version)

EL - Obuu Mo (Azonto Version)
EL – Obuu Mo (Azonto Version) (2011, 89 MB, 4:23 min)

“Look boy, I’m changing my trajectory of isotopes to my temporal place of domicile,
to cause a thermostatical refreshment, to my gorgeous masculine homosapien.
I don’t want any discombobulation by the time I come back. Is that clear?”

Afrobeats Week – #4 // D’Banj Oliver Twist Dance Competition #2

My Backyard Crew - Oliver Twist
My Backyard Crew – Oliver Twist (2011, 18 MB, 3:57 min)

Afrobeats Week – #3 // EL – One Ghana for your Pocket

EL - One Ghana for your Pocket
EL – One Ghana for your Pocket (2011, 45 MB, 3:20 min)

Afrobeats Week – #2 // D’Banj Oliver Twist Dance Competition

 D' Banj Oliver Twist Dance Video Competition
D’ Banj Oliver Twist Dance Video Competition (2011, 33 MB, 1:57 min)

Afrobeats Week – #1 // 2Shy – Azonto Girl

azonto girl promo 2shy
2 Shy: Azonto Girl(2011, 82 MB, 3:39 min)

Q: Why?
A: Because we can

Gabriel Shalom – Small Room Tango

Small Room Tango
Small Room Tango (2007, 7.9MB, 3:43 min.)

Anyone who has attempted this kind of video-sampling-whilst-letting-the-
audio-determine-the-structure will now just how extremely bloody
difficult & fiddly
it all is.
Hats off bigtime, then, to Gabriel Shalom, who not only makes it look
natural & easy but even squeezes poetry from it.

Comme un Chat Noir au Fond d’un Sac

chatnoir12
comme un chat noir au fond d’un sac (2006, 18.4MB, 4:47 min)

A beautiful excerpt from Stephane Elmadjian’s feature film found
on composer Daniel Wohl’s website.
Starting off a bit intense it winds itself down and into some breathtaking stuff.

Paul Rodriguez – the Mean Reds

Mean Reds
Mean Reds (2007, 11.6MB, 1:48 min)

Artist & filmmaker Paul Rodriguez made this rather good
(I particularly like the collage plus the loopy/scratchy business
towards the very end where he collages/edits the sound too)
music video in 2007.

He said:

‘I was planning on shooting my friends for a
documentary. Magically the Mean Reds were also
playing, so I decided to shoot them as well.
Months went by with me sitting on this footage.
Then I found my self printing out frames,
and doing collage on individual frames.’

Two from David Fincher


The Motels – Shame (1985, 18.7MB, 3:59)


Rick Springfield – Celebrate Youth (1985, 25.6MB, 3:58)

Before directing features like Se7en, Zodiac, and Fight Club,
badass David Fincher made some awesomely 80s music videos.
He continues to make solid music videos for more
contemporary acts, favoring the short form to the
Hollywood machine. These lyrically poor videos
serve as proof that you too can film talking billboards,
windy alleys full of teens, use the color-pass effect,
and still go on to direct such hits as Alien 3.

Dan Canyon

Quilts Never Sleep
Quilts Never Sleep (short version) (2007, 20.9MB, 3:07 min)

Me... U
Me… U (2007, 80MB, 12:45 min)

Two very different but attractive & telling pieces from Dan Canyon.
The first was part of a show of – you guessed it – quilts in London in 2006,
about which read more here.
The second could’ve been made for dvblog, well, at least for me, as I’m a fool
for all things turntablist, & features the splendidly monickered Mickey Morphingaz.

ASCII Rock – Yoshi Sodeoka

LedZepplinWholeLottaLove
Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin (2003, 20 MB, 4:14 min.)

vh-unchained
Unchained by Van Halen (2003, 18 MB, 3:21 min.)

Ascii Rock by Yoshi Sodeoka is a brilliant example of the genre of ASCII art, which creates still images and videos entirely out of alphabetic and numeric characters (ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a common format for text files in computers and on the Internet that represents alphabetic and numeric characters as binary numbers)

Cohen, Tarantino, Goffman

Dance Me
Dance Me To The End Of Love (clip, 1994, 0.5MB, 31 sec.)

Dance Me1
Dance Me To The End Of Love (1995, 34.1MB, 6:07 min.)

Leonard Cohen’s work has always walked a fine line
between kitsch & poetry.
Don’t get me wrong – the kitsch is like a dash of chilli,
gives the whole thing added piquancy & depth.
Check out these two videos for ‘Dance Me To The End Of Love’.
The first, the short clip, is the official video.
Now look at the second.
OK- first things first -just who is that playing the bridegroom?
Then, consider if this whole unofficial one ( by Aaron Goffman)
prolix & kitschy in some respects as it undoubtedly is,
doesn’t somehow do more justice to Cohen’s world !’

Philippe Decouflé – Le P’tit Bal

le p'tit bal
Le P’tit Bal (1994, 14MB, 3:48 min)

Total joy.

Video: Philippe Decouflé
Song: Le P’tit Bal Perdu byAndré Bourvil

Gilbert & George -The Singing Sculpture

Gilbert and George
The Singing Sculpture (1992, 830k, 41 sec.)

“Singing Sculpture documents one of Gilbert & George’s most famous “living sculpture” pieces.
Covered in multicolored bronze paint, the artists sing and interchange parts of the English
music hall standard “Underneath the Arches.” Through their stylized performance,
Gilbert & George deliberately blur the lines between life and art, reality and contrivance.
This ambiguity does not rely on a transformation from living to sculptural form. On the contrary,
they have merged the two in order to obliterate, rather than emphasize, the distinctions between life and art.” – Walker Art Center
from Video Data Bank

Scritti Politti – pop sublimity

Word Girl
The Word Girl (1985, 7.62MB, 3:14 min)

Oh Patti
Oh Patti (1988, 20.3MB, 4:14 min)

Two of the most perfect pop songs ever made, the first from
1985’s Cupid & Psyche & the second from 1988’s Provision
(& which features a trumpet solo from Miles Davis of staggering
economy & otherworldly beauty).
Pet Sounds excepted, pop music just doesn’t come better.
The vids aren’t just an adjunct – of course they have historical
interest (that weird decade!), but there’s something fragile
& haunting & mysterious there which survives the occasional impossible
to overlook moment of naffness.
Wonderful.

Aī-Hz – My Miwoo

My Miwoo
My Miwoo [Tai Chi Weekend Control] (2007, 24.6MB, 50 secs)

Aī-Hz, real name Michael Renassia,
is a French visual performer living and working in Tokyo.
His site contains possibly my favourite biographical nugget ever:

‘He is using compositing software in a diverted way, and real-time mixing
instruments with the aim to create a noisy/pop universe…’

Now, who could possibly object to that?
This piece is rather lovely – the thing that totally makes it for me
is the epiphanic moment at the end when the music/animation stops &
the person appears ..there’s a haunting sense of time suspended..
So, for me, 10/10 for visuals.
I am pretty bored ,though, with the by-the-yard avant-dance music
that accompanies so much work of this kind..it’s not bad
or anything, just pedestrian…

James Joyce has a Posse

james joyce has a posse
James Joyce has a Posse (2011, 32MB, 4:49 min)

And mentioning Curt Cloninger, as we did on Friday last, it’s nice to report he has made
a new video which is both gorgeous and engimatic, with a musicality which stems
not only from the actual sounds but the video’s very construction, that repeated
wistful, strange, ‘Portrait of the Artist’, title motif…
Cloninger is someone (Eddie Whelan the other who springs to mind) who has thoroughly incorporated
data-moshing as an expressive tool into their vocabulary, defying reports of its early death.
Poetry.

PS And just in passing – I’m fascinated by movies like this one, for which it’s very difficult
to create an adequate poster image.
Data-moshing is a particularly dynamic form of moving image work
where the motion is like the Cheshire Cat’s grin.
It’s not just data-moshing – it happens elsewhere.
It’s like some movies are, in some sense, “further away” in the line of image kinship
with the still.

Tired of the WC, Gulanny – KBSC505 vs WWFT

knbs_wwft
KBSC505 vs WWFT (clip) (2006, 27MB, 8:14 min.)

WeWorkForThem short was created as an extra for KNBSC505’s
Noise Driven Ambient Audio And Visuals DVD. Exploring the emotions, physical & mental
pain and illusions of bacteria this video follows 8 minutes from infection to cure.

Hexstatic

Ninja Tune
ninja tune (2006, 10.9MB, 5:06 min.)

Distorted Minds
distorted minds (2006, 6.9MB, 3:18 min.)

Brilliant, and in the case of the first piece, hilarious work from
Hexstatic out of London.
The second featuring Juice Aleem.

Now. Go practice.

Change is Constant – Mark Reilly

Change is Constant
Change is Constant (2006, 6.5 MB, 3:02 min)

This is a short film I edited to one of the tunes recorded by
Amoeba Technology. I shot most of the footage use in the video,
the footage is a mixture of 16mm, Super 8 and Mini DV.

from Mark Reilly, at alienresident.

2 from Jess Loseby

Arms Race
Arms Race (2007, 1.85MB, 1:02 min)

Handbag Surveillance
Handbag Surveillance (2007, 4.18MB, 2:05 min)

Anyone lucky enough to have already encountered Jess Loseby’s artwork
online or in a gallery will have realised immediately what a thoughtful,
courageous & dextrous artist she is. She hasn’t been so active of late &
her excellent site is offline now due to her continuing ill health
(although it is possible to explore it somewhat using the wayback machine).
This is a real loss: there is a warmth & humanity to her work
– an ability to find beauty in the ordinary, the overlooked
( & in our still sexist society, these categories often overlapping
with the domestic, the feminine) – which one often looks for in vain elsewhere.
Her work doesn’t strut, it enchants, (& then maybe sticks a
big fuck-off hatpin into you).
Video making isn’t central to what she does, but when she does it
she does it with all the qualities noted above.
Enjoy & learn.

Music for Handbag Surveillance by Clive Loseby.

We at DVblog join with many of her friends in wishing Jess well
and look forward to her return to active art making.

Mr. & Mrs. Blue Skies – Ajit Anthony Prem

Mr. & Mrs. Blue Skies
Mr. & Mrs. Blue Skies (2006, 30MB, 5:30 min.)

‘September 7th marks three exciting years since meeting my wife.
In that time, my life has changed dramatically for the best.
It seems like I finally have a life!
This video should certainly remind you of being forced to sit through the
family vacation videos by your parents.
If it doesn’t then you should watch it a couple of times.’

Music: Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra
From Ajit @ squigglebooth

Arni & Kinski


glosoli (2005, 45.3MB, 6:14 min)


hoppipolla (2006, 34.7MB, 4:38 min)

Iceland’s own, Stefan Arni and Siggi Kinski, have provided
“pure aesthetic beauty” to back these two wonderful Sigur Ros tracks.

Found on their site.

Martin Archer live at The Grapes

Martin Archer
Martin Archer Live at The Grapes, Sheffield (2006, 85.8MB, 9:52 min)

Great vid made by Jonny Drury of Martin Archer, a unique
& towering figure in British (here I was going to interpolate experimental but that
doesn’t really do justice to the intensely personal soundworld Archer has
forged over the years – a combination of fierce poetry, a huge
intellectual range & hunger & a love affair with sound & how it
can be ordered & dis-ordered & where one now feels he knows
exactly where he’s going, so experimental feels in a way
like an impertinence) music of the past 25 years,
performing at The Grapes pub in his home town of Sheffield, UK.

If you like this do check out his site, where you can buy a
staggering diversity of recordings from over the years.

Ed Banger


ed rec vol. 2 (2007, 9.7MB, 1:05 min)

Little animation for Ed Banger Records Ed Rec Vol. 2.
Music is by Mr Oizo.

Hey Ya – OutKast

HeyYa
Hey Ya (2003, 80MB, 7:36 min)

“Hey Ya!” was a 2003 number-one single recorded by André 3000 of the
hip-hop duo OutKast.
The song’s music video, directed by Bryan Barber, features a performance,
styled in the manner of TV’s black and white era (although it’s in color).
It won the MTV Video Music Awards in 2004 for Video of the Year.