Interlords II (2008, 70MB, 5:09 min.)
Deft & compelling bit of After Effects powered You Tube
mashing from Daniel Swan, frighteningly, still a
student at Camberwell.
One to watch.
Category Archives: remix/mashup
Steve Bishop – Behold a Pale Horse
Behold a Pale Horse (2007, 6MB, 2:26 min)
I love this piece, originally posted to the currently very lively & interesting
Rhizome front page, quite extravagantly, almost unreasonably.
Reader: Well! -what is it then?
Me: er..well it’s.. a very lo-fi mash up of film studio idents
Reader: and?
Me: ..well..um..that’s it.
Reader: Harrumph! (gets on bike to go)
but you would be so, so wrong, to go that way, dear reader.
I burbled something on Rhizome in a comment on this about the
transfiguration of the banal & it is precisely there
that it seems to me the magic lies. Bishop makes us examine
every pixel as if ( & of course he makes it so) it mattered.
In a kind of strange way the film is rendered archetypally
‘painterly’.
There’s more, though. In the way he estranges & hence makes us look
anew at the imagery of the idents, he recovers some of the mythic force
that was being tapped into by their makers before familiarity rendered
those images banal.
Tremendous work!
Curt Cloninger -<em> Pop Mantra</em>
Pop Mantra Video Documentation #4 (2008, 51.7MB, 5:17 min)
Pop Mantra Video Documentation #7 (2008, 50.5MB, 5:41 min)
I like & admire Curt Cloninger for his steadfastness of belief in both his religion
& his artistic work.
He’s also one of the best writers about new media around at the moment.
In both theory & practice he’s curious, inventive, knowledgable, quirky and passionate.
Unlike many in this sphere he’s also not afraid to think aloud in public, to take risks.
Even, (quelle horreur!), to risk appearing uncool.
Recently he’s been making work away from the web, some of it performative
& very interestingly so.
Here (& I stress what you see here is the documentation, not the piece
itself -a fine, but important, distinction) he repeatedly sings & plays a
single phrase from a popular song, in this instance Radiohead’s Karma Police, for several hours.
For me there are number of interesting resonances – minimalism, shamanism,
the kinds of ‘test’ that occur in many religious belief systems, a losing, dissolving
of the self (In additon to the eponymous “mantra” ,there’s an echo too, I think, of Sufism);
but also there is the straightforward investigation*** of the mechanics of playing,
of performing (& there’s a fractal quality to the rather symmetric & crystalline
structure of popular song that makes this kind of extracting both possible & immediately
approachable -it’s a world familiar enough to welcome us in.)
The two extracts are from different ends of this marathon
( & selecting & typing that word just conjured another association –
the of the twenties & thirties).
I find this work fascinating.
Fascinating & affecting too.
*** It’s almost always a laughable misuse of the word to say ‘investigation’
in an art-speak context. Here it seems correct & natural.
PES – Sneaux Shoes – Human Skateboard
Sneaux Shoes launched a consumer-generated video campaign
with a stop-motion video of a human skateboard. The TV ad
features a skateboarder using a kid as a skateboard and performing
classic tricks like ollies, grinds and 360s.
PES who directed the video made it entirely in-camera (Canon D20)
and on location through the use of a stop-motion animation technique
known as pixilation. Says PES: “This spot is a great example of the
breadth of stop-motion. If something exists in the real world, it can be animated.”
Editing and sound design was done by Sam Welch at Homestead, New York.
Carey/Laric/Stracke
Touch My Body (Oliver Laric version) (2008, 40.9MB, 4:18 min)
No Mariah (Caspar Stracke version) (2008, 52MB, 4:03 min)
OK, pay attention! This is complicated.
Ms Carey (or her corporate minders) release a video, which if she did have
a significant part to play in it shows such a staggering lack of self esteem
that a kind of dark despair begins to envelop me.
Artist Oliver Laric remixes it, removing all the backgrounds and replacing it with
green, for ease of a certain species of remixing.
There follows what is actually an interesting and nuanced exchange of views.
Then Caspar Stracke posts the second of our videos & MTAA make a
very funny joke.
Two from Robert Croma
Thibaut Is Singing On Oberstein Road (2008, 15.5MB, 2:36 min)
Rules of Engagement (2008, 18.1MB, 2:15 min)
Tremendous work from Robert Croma.
The Iraq piece is harrowing but you should watch it nonetheless.
The Thibaut piece is simply exhilarating.
I was trying to figure out what exactly makes this work so outstanding.
I don’t think it’s just the fact that it is technically so good (although it is).
It’s to do with Croma’s taste, judgement & instinct, or at least how he
deploys these to tell us something, or rather to intuit-to-us something
about being a human being.
You couldn’t make a rule of it, for that would render it inert & mechanical,
but, loosely, in these two pieces, it seems to me to lie in a going-beyond
-the-expected – a process with its heart in the little codas which open
out the pieces in a quite extraordinary way.
So the Iraq piece, though supremely well done, is initially not a
million miles away from much other remix type work, but it is the final
calling-to-attention, the framing, of the gait of one of the people
whom we have just seen obliterated that re-doubles its horror
but also creates the tiniest ground for hope in the inescapable
(thanks to Croma) clear recognition of our common humanity.
A similar process occurs in the Thibaut piece
– its potency initially seems to reside in the simplicity of the
camera exploring the still, the conjunction of the new and old
imaging technology and the simple & moving fact of evocation
of time passed.
It’s beautiful; and many would have been tempted to leave it there.
The final section is a risk – it could have have the opposite effect
to what it actually does; it could have closed off, made pat.
Here perhaps the technical fluency does play a defining role but the
effect is the exact opposite of closure -we’re left, once again, in a very
different way, filled with a sense of the mystery & complexity & possibility
(& the fragility) of being human.
The Vasulkas: Pioneers & Magicians
Violin Power (clip, 1978, 2.1MB, 1:17 min)
The Vasulkas, husband & wife team Woody & Steina,
have devoted over thirty years to an intensive exploration
of the possibilities of electronic image making.
It
Roundhay Remix
Roundhay Remix (2006, 15.6MB, 1.57 min.)
A beautiful remix of the Roundhay Garden Scene,
from 1888, one of the first films ever made.
From Pouringdown.
By Mica.
TRIPTYCH.TV once more !
MOON CRASH by Claudia Tomaz and Kevin Walsh
MOON CRASH (2008, 58 MB, 4:42 min.)
“MOON CRASH is a 360 degree immersive experience using DJ sets
and mutant slides, painted live with video projections.
All visuals are painted on acetate using slide mounts, vitrail glass paint
and drops of water. The paints are solvent based and don