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.
Explaining Conceptual Art to Bizarro (2012, 89MB, 1:36 min)
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.
at interval (1977/2006, 24.3MB, 13:22 min)
Early work from the redoubtable Nathaniel Stern where he reworked,
in the most curious of ways, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.
Interesting that although the working method here seems
almost diametrically opposed to the hands on, performative
approach found in his odys series here too is that same
sense of the fragility & vulnerability of human beings and their
bodies & psyches & of the unreliability of the language we use
to try & make what we want to happen & to relate or lie about what did .
emptyspaces (2000, 31MB, 2:26 min)
Zdeno Hlinka aka ZDEN.
A multimedia artist from Slovakia who’s been a pioneer in
working with real-time and visual mixing.
Dark Continents 1 (2007, 51 MB, 2:34 min.)
Video artist and animator Tyler Coburn‘s self conscious and rough use
of digital techniques presents a compelling parallel to Hollywood’s continual
and rapid movement toward the fantastically “real”.
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.’
Lulu PIP (2009, 194 MB, 12:10 min.)
iligili has been doing hardcore pornography art and music videos
for over 25 years now. In the last decade he has been living in the Republic of Colombia
where he gets most of his inspiration for the upbeat, ‘in your face’ extravaganza.
Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin (2003, 20 MB, 4:14 min.)
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)
Recreation, Re-Creation (2006, 9.6 MB, 4:27 min.)
“This video juxtaposes original 16 mm footage acquired from my Grandfather
with interview footage taken of my Mother and Grandparents. All but the
past-tenses of their speaking are left intact, while the film footage has been
aggressively manipulated.
The project seeks to question the language of constructing one’s identity through
negotiation with familial history, where the past has been constructed and reconstructed
in order to corroborate certain facades of culture which are wished to be left intact.”
Bitsy Knox from 312.
Saved By The Bell/Mofones (2011, 33MB, 54 secs)
The title of this post being words that seldom pass my lips but which in this case
are entirely to the point.
The splendidly creative video artist Morrisa Maltz whose work we’ve been delighted
to feature here several times made these..um..arty-i-phone holders, which are, it has
to be said, rather good and to cut a long story short their commercial potential was
spotted and now she is a C….E….O & Urban Outfitters are selling her stuff.
You can read a fuller account here and you can view & buy here.
I hope she spends all of any money she makes on giving herself time to make more of the
very smart and fetching art videos she’s so good at.
Anyway this is a promotional vid for the moFones, lovingly carved from “Saved by the Bell”.
She even does marketing classily.
Jack Goldstein – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1975, 16.2MB, 2:10)
An endlessly cyclical Hollywood, summed up in two minutes,
over thirty years ago. Still relevant and all too real.
Business (2007, 67.9MB, 9:33 min)
I find it easier to admire this piece, to respect its clear integrity,
than to actually like it much – it’s a pretty hardcore glitch
assemblage & it doesn’t let up …oooooh noooo… not at all
(Strikes me as a bit of a video analog for something like Lou Reed’s (in)famous
)
It’ll be interesting to see where Junu Ahn goes next…
Towards a Common Understanding (excerpt) (2007, 9.4MB, 6:50min)
Douglas Fishbone is one of my favorite video art jokesters.
He leaves no stone unturned in his search for a common
understanding, which takes him to the furthest reaches
of the world wide web and back.
I have been trying to find a video of his online to
include here for a while now, then I just asked him and
he graciously sent me this video for the faithful DVBlog viewers.
Beware, there are many disturbing images in this video but none
of them on screen for more than a few seconds and all quite spectacular.
By Mica
I Fell for You (2011, 216MB, 1:00 min)
Threshold (2011, 86MB, 3:29 min)
I Fell For You:
‘My early artistic ideas came from a 3-year experience as
a commercial fisherman in Alaska. At the time, my work
centered on ideas consistent with the locale: hermetic
fabulousness, escape, odyssey, and the sublime.
Todayperversities of the sublime continue to influence the
way I shape projects. A consensual explanation of the
contemporary sublime would acknowledge that there are
thresholds of human perception and a desire to explore these
thresholds connecting ourselves to a greater environment of
understanding and awareness. At the root of my work is
an interest in human experience.’
Threshold:
‘Borrowing from fluxus films Threshold is filmed in Iceland
and the Oregon Coast and made for a project with The
Archer Gallery.
The video takes place where land meets sea, where the
landscape moves from vertical to horizontal, and
associatively between life (verticality) and death (horizontality)’
I’m guessing the club formed by the intersection of the sets of
experimental video makers and of former commercial fishermen
in Alaska is a fairly exclusive one.
Jack Ryan upholds its honor in these two exhilarating
(but totally uningratiating, no puppy-dog-eyes here) pieces.
I especially love “I fell…”.
Very bracing.
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.
The Incorporation of Demands for Liberation(2011, 13MB, 3:24 min)
Brilliant!
Last piece from ANW, for the moment, although we
certainly hope to feature more in the future –
some of the most original and exciting work I’ve seen recently.
For some context see Monday’s post.
Flow Spot Test #5 (2011, 57MB, 2:03 min)
“Just having my early afternoon session of Body-Work with
Nnah, my Body-Designer.”
Says ANW, of the FlowSpot Tests:
For a large-scale exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
I created a color coordinated airport/hotel/mall/bank/spa/biennial lounge to
offer a site of relaxation and bodily engagement in an exhibition dominated
by isolated, sellable art objects.
All lounge products were purchased through online transactions (mostly
Target and Walmart), and were returned at the end of the exhibition.
My dystopic science fiction news video Global Countdown played on
a 55” flat panel monitor.
On opening night, visitors to FlowSpot could register for massages from
licensed massage therapists. While participants received massages they
could not see anything and listened to my directors commentary of the
Global Countdown video. The commentary consists of very basic visual
descriptions, with the goal being that the person receiving the massage
can visualize the video in their minds.
Throughout the duration of the exhibition, I used the lounge as a science
fiction video set to make “FlowSpot Tests.” In these videos I engaged
with the lounge both conceptually and materially in a color coordinated
outfit.
Contact me if you are interested in opening a FlowSpot in your airport,
hotel, mall, bank, spa, biennial, gallery, cultural center, or any other
space that you own/lease/use.
See also.
Anxiety About Relationships Between Friendship and Business (2011, 11MB, 2:41 min)
I’m so taken with Andrew Norman Wilson’s work I’m going to devote
the whole first week of this DVblog season to it.
He initially sent us a longish piece, Networking with Andrew Norman Wilson
made with Nicholas O’Brien of Bad At Sports.
It’s wonderful but pretty huge so you should definitely go and
look at the Vimeo version there.
On Monday, Weds and Friday of this week we’ll post smaller
pieces extracted from that (but without the commentary or
‘interview’ as it is styled elsewhere [-the text on the BAS page linked above]) ,
On Tuesday and Thursday we’ll post two of Wilson’s FlowSpot Tests
with some accompanying explanation from him.
I find this work in general very exciting because it does a lot
of interesting, nuanced and often rather funny (and I’m in favour of funny –
there are very few great works of art which contain no funny at all)
and intially apparently contradictory things.
Let me give you my take on it.
The Webinars are all composed entirely of footage sourced from Pond5
“the worlds stock media marketplace” . The FlowSpot Tests are performative
pieces involving bizarre consumer items sourced from e-bay and wallmart and
deployed in a 21st Century updating of silent movie Lloyd-Keaton-Chaplin
deadpan involving, too, a certain degree of slapstick
and displaying a deliciously calibrated sense of the ridiculous.
The Webinars (a least when one takes account of their titles and certainly viewed
in the light of the commentary from “networking”) are a kind of consumerist
reductio-ad-absurdam.
The intent is celarly in some sense satirical but the pieces take risks in
that they don’t stop and end in critique – there is an understanding of
how toxically compelling some of this imagery is and to some extent they
toy with celebrating this.
Wilson is clearly a natural movie maker. He doesn’t restrain himself from
visual flourishes and jokes which are by no means integral to any
satirical case but make the pieces more fun to watch.
(The distortion effects applied to objects in the periphery of the
action in FlowSpot Test #5 are a case in point.)
Additionally, and most impressively, there is a muddying of the
waters in Networking… (and by implication the
Webinars and FlowSpot Tests) whereby
cogent and apparently straightforward philosophising is allowed
to cross pollinate/contaminate with the satire and vice versa,
leaving the viewer with -ahem- work to do.
This work is not glib; it takes risks – in order to maintain its
high level potency it risks misunderstanding.
A look at Wilson’s CV shows a spell spent working for a
labour union and I read the impulse behind these pieces
as radically anti-commodification and corporate mind rot.
Agit-prop, thankfully, it’s not, but “something rich and strange”
– radical art for interesting times to come.
Nice to see this when so many younger artists seem to be
tempted by a career orientated and somewhat cynical celebration
of that same deadend emptiness.
Buffies – First Season (2002, 5.4MB, 1 min.)
Winsome bit of conceptual candyfloss from Chuck Jones in 2002.
One of his isolation studies, this piece comprises
‘Every utterance of the word ‘Buffy’ made during
the first season of ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’,
totaling nearly one minute.’
Baldessari Sings LeWitt (excerpt) (1972, 30.5MB, 3:38 min)
In which John Baldessari sings Sol LeWitt’s
sentences on conceptual art.
From the indispensible Ubuweb.
South Yorks (2011, 27MB, 2:40 min)
Possibly only amusing (or even intelligible) to those hailing
from the area, I’m going to post it because I do & it makes
me laugh a lot.
Bit of background on Kid Acne here.
15 Years (2011, 60 MB, 3:08 min)
Reverse aging transformation of a 15 year self-portrait sequence
of Dan Hanna, forming the basis for the movie “StartStop” (2009).
Edited in HD. Used is 32 channel split screen asynchrony to create the illusion of flow.
By Steven Hoskins.
Asynchrony – Split (Head) (2006, 11 MB, 2:14 min)
“My latest project is Asynchrony. It’s a set of four interactive sketches for the
simultaneous visualization of multiple points in time within video. When combined
with time-lapse or looped video clips, each sketch generates a crudely synthesized
image of different time points in video, all within the shared space of the visual frame.
They divide the video frame into static or animated rectangular regions,
each of which can have its own time flow.”
by James Jung-Hoon Seo.
from Split Screen.
Love is a Wave (2010, 17MB, 1:59 min)
Another video for Crystal Stilts by the
difficult-to-discover-any-details-about armyofkids.
As with the first we posted (also, apparently, by aok)
stylish and dashing both.
Recap (trailer) (2006, 7.18MB, 1:12 min)
Says Rick Silva:
‘Recap is a remix of the cult classic graffiti movie
Wild Style (1982) where every piece of graffiti in
the original film has been digitally crossed out and tagged over
with the Recap tag.’
The full piece is available on DVD as an 82 minute video loop.
I find this piece intriguing. I’m pretty friendly to formalism –
it’s amazing what beauty & interest a good algorithm
(in the broadest sense) can deliver.
But here Rick Silva seems to have taken steps to eliminate
…perhaps too strong…rather…to render difficult…
the emergence (partly because the original looks so great,
haven’t seen it, so even the trailer is, for me, quite irritating,
because by definition it covers up [and maybe this
is the point – I think the setting & hence the mode of viewing
probably make a huge difference – I could see this working
brilliantly in a gallery where one takes in some of it & moves
on, digesting, but I think I would rather have extensive dental
work than sit & watch it as movie] what
I long to see.) of casual beauty.
Good though!
I don’t mean to be negative!
Better than bland of course, anytime!
Serra Frottage (2009, 13 MB, 3:17 min)
Whenever I’m travelling through, or near to London’s Liverpool Street station
I try and make time to pass by the wonderful Richard Serra sculpture,
Fulcrum, at the Broadgate end.
I really love it, one of the most successful pieces of public art I’ve
ever seen.
I mentioned this to a friend and he sent me a link to this piece,
one of a series of ‘minimal interventions’ by Jordan McKenzie
who clearly also um – –loves– – Serra’s work.
Departure (2009, 34 MB, 4:24 min)
I love this video for two, apparently almost entirely independent
(but maybe, in some strange, deep way, connected) reasons.
First – the music is great. I listen very little popular music these
days (which is why I’m 2 years late with this) as most of it, even
(especially!) the so called indie stuff gives the impression of
having been focus-grouped into bland submission before being let
limply loose not to offend anyone.
This, contrariwise, oozes life & not-giving-a-fuck from every note
(especially the splendidly slightly out of tune vocals; but it’s all a joy).
Secondly, director of the video, Kate Thomas, about whom I know
nothing and could find out no more, had the totally brilliant idea
of simply stringing together some footage of French students
and workers standing up for themselves against the riot cops in 68.
If this all doesn’t make you weep with barely suppressed joy please
check your pulse.
Organic Urbanic (2002, 14 MB, clip, 1:17 min)
“Organic Urbanic is a reality-fiction video based on an ambient
micro/macro cosmos of the urban-organic tapestry of the city.
The local and familiar transgresses into a dense textured
urban scape. The city is featured and filtered as a distorted
blue print image of itself.
The streets cars and buildings reveal an organic living machine-symbiotica.
Organic Urbanic amplifies what is already there. Among others, a complex
inner connectivity of city factors amplified and relocated.”
By Ran Slavin
Full duration: 9:00 min.
omni1.9 (2002-97, 18 MB, 1:28 min, excerpt)
“The idea behind this loop is to show the 360 degrees of choice. The mad culmination of wanting
to go to all directions at once. Inspired by the ceiling of the Geneva airport while in transit.
Shown also as a video installation of varying loop durations on a transparent two way screen.
Like a small vignette of digital nature, the small figures are continuously looping in a busy circular
motion with the urge to span in all directions at once.This stasis, a static dance, the body like a
scanner unable to decide, caught between indecision. A seemingly digital nature. The bodies
which are silhouettes of the artist, become small digital scanner probes.”
Video and audio: Ran Slavin
Original: 6:33min/variable/2002-97
