Category Archives: photography

Takashi Ito – Spacy

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Private Charges
Spacy ( 1981, 14MB, 2:27)

The other day,on a whim, I bought Takashi Ito’s collected works on DVD
from the BFI shop. I’d never heard of him before.
I’m so glad I did. It is utterly compelling and remarkable work.
Spacy is an early piece and the clip here is neither complete
not particularly good quality but it does give you a taste of Ito’s early
– almost formalist – style.
There’s such delight in seeing how this broadens into the flexible,
confidently handled and singular idiom of the later pieces, where a quite
musical rigor in the formal structuring is never absent but which
also underpins a beautifully ambiguous and rich expressivity.
The whole set was one of those all too rare tingle-down-the-spine
revelations which I gulped down in a couple of sittings.
This is outstanding & important work – I urge people to become acquainted with it.

Liz Sterry – Borders

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Borders
Borders (2010, 201 MB, 3:59 min, silent)

Worth every second of the download for this extraordinary
piece from young UK artist Liz Sterry, a digital arts student at the design school
in Writtle, Essex, UK*.
It’s an astonishingly assured bit of conceptual gorgeousness.
I’m particularly taken with..what’s the word.. the ..um..rightness of judgement
with which it was shot and assembled – on the surface thrown together
but everything combining so easily & elegantly to create something of
logic, power and great beauty.

*Transparency – where I currently teach.

Frames Per Second – Exhibition in Salon Projektionist – Vienna

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frames_per_second
Frames Per Second (2008, 27 MB, 3:26 min)

Video and photo installation by VJs Bopa and Bruno Tait.
The exhibition is based on the idea of using video and slide projectors to
capture a random moment in time from animations on photographic paper,
foregoing the simple system ‘screen shot’ and projecting light onto ILFORD
photo print paper.

Two tiny Sporkworld loops

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A Small Spork Lumiere (2009, 3MB, 9 sec silent loop)


Fireworks (2009, 2MB, 43 sec silent loop)

Two from the ever reliable, delightful, and in its quiet & unassuming
(but frequently deadly – it’s the Columbo of art blogs) way, mould-breaking
Sporkworld Microblog, which if you don’t follow religiously, you should.
Ironically, given the setting, A Small Spork Lumiere could constitute a kind
of ostensive definition of dryness.

Kate Maki – We are Gone

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We Are Gone (2008, 55.8MB, 2:50 min)

I was drawn to this because of its connection with the
sublime Howe Gelb ( he produced & plays on the album & it’s on
his OW-OM label), but it’s winning beyond that very good intial reason.
Ms Maki’s song & performance are quite lovely in their passionate restraint
& the video, directed by Scott Cudmore & shot by Lee Towndrow on,
I gather, though I’ve lost the link to the page that told me so, the ‘video’
setting of a stills cam, matches the song in passion, restraint & loveliness.
Cudmore and Towndrow pass, with flying colours, a very simple test
-anyone who can’t produce something affecting with the most minimal
of technical resources probably shouldn’t be making movies at all…