Woodworms I (2009, 8 MB, 26 sec.)
Wind & Styrofoam I (2009, 10 MB, 29 sec.)
A couple of installations by Swiss artist Zimoun.
Woodworms I is a sound installation based on live sounds
of woodworms. In Wind & Styrofoam I, 5 stations generate
unpredictable movements of Styrofoam balls.
In G.O.D. We Trust (2009, 52 MB, 5:04 min)
In G.O.D. We Trust remixes the political and economical hardships Barrack Obama
has to overcome within various religious contexts. In the series the 44th US president keeps
reincarnating into seven various prophets, spiritual leaders and deities in order to heal the
world, including Jesus Christ, Buddha, Elegua, Lady of Guadalupe, Krishna, Mohammad and
Abraham. The series uses the pillar belief, remix the important stories and substitute the key
elements of the religious texts with current political and economical climate. Rather than
idolizing Obama, In G.O.D. We Trust examines the hope and changes the popular 44th US
president promises to deliver and the obstacle along the way.
The title of the series appropriate the US national motto, but with a twist. In G.O.D. We Trust
the word GOD is an abbreviation of Global Obama Devotion. Contrary to the artist previous
works that criticize the manipulation of religions in politics, In GOD We Trust starts from the
religious teaching and reinterpret the moral values with current affair. The result is a spiritual
journey that even Atheist cannot deny it.”
By Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung. Audio by Mr Cloak and Dagger.
iPhone Drum Circle (2009, 40 MB, 5:10 min)
On Sunday September 20 at 2pm, MTAA, Mike Koller and friends set out
a brightly colored blanket surround by a circle of chairs at McCarren Park,
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They had amplified iPhones on which they have
downloaded touchscreen drum and bongo applications and they “jammed.”
iPhone Drum Circle (aka IPDC)
I Can’t Deal With This Stupid Ringing Forever (2009, 56MB 2:29 min)
Donna Kuhn has joined the little pantheon (Sondheim’s another, as is Sam Renseiw)
of people whose work I’m just going
to post regularly because they are great.
No apology, no argument.
If you can’t see it, the problem is yours.
Great. Great. Great.
Autoportrait d’Oro (2009, 63MB, 11:04 min)
There’s so much to commend in this quiet & beautiful piece I’m
unsure, really, where to start.
Three things though, stand out.
One is the modesty, the restraint, of the conception
-there’s no horrible look-at-how clever/shocking/whatever I am
about it, just some serious *looking*.
The camera looks and we look with it, with its (and with the artist’s,
although he’s there in the frame too) help.
Second, this austerity of visual means allows the sound to play a really
significant role in the piece. Again the work doesn’t trumpet its own innovative
qualities but quietly (pun intended) it does something quite radical with sound and
with our attention to same.
Lastly, it’s just very, very well made – that sort of still amibience is just so difficult to capture
effectively because digital video can be very unforgiving in that context – interlacing
& pretty much any sort of compression can generate horribly visible artefects.
Here, even in this pretty compressed version, there are none -it just looks like a
transparent window to a small epiphany…
Hats off then, three times.
Deadlock (1970, 7.7MB, 46 sec)
from Roland Klick’s Deadlock with music by Can.
Listen to the title track here.
What a remarkable film.
What a remarkable band.
Breathing in B Flat (2007, 41MB, 5:31 min.)
Breathing in B Flat – a documentation of a live performance by Curt Cloninger.
In Repair – One Song, One Day (2005, 119MB, 18:42 min.)
John Mayer interview and studio footage, wherein he explains the writing
process in the studio of the song In Repair from the album Continuum.
With Steve Jordan and Charlie Hunter.
lev_interview_1 (2003, 2MB, 2:12 min.)
lev_interview_2 (2003, 2MB, 2:08 min.)
lev_interview_3 (2003, 2.5MB, 2:14 min.)
lev_interview_4 (2003, 2.7MB, 1:45 min.)
A 4 part interview on Soft Cinema with Lev Manovich –
the Mecca of new media arts.
DEAF 03, Rotterdam.
Also: “On Database Driven Movies”.
“Senses and memories of motherhood evoked by visiting Birkenau
(Auschwitz II) in Poland July 2008.”
I wonder whether memorialising the Holocaust isn’t too important a job to be
left to artists.
Anders Weberg’s piece is as well made as one would expect from him
and I have no doubt it is a sincere response.
Does it tell us anything new, though?
Does it contribute to any understanding which will make
repetition less likely?
As we get further away in time isn’t it the facts we have
to insist upon & isn’t there a danger that art -especially well made
art -aestheticises and dilutes?
Read the Primo Levi book. It sets the bar very high.
Mariah Carey/Boyz II Men(2009, 86MB, 4:49min)
Splendid bit of drôlerie from Dan Osborne, whose work
we’ve featured here before and certainly will again.
It’s funny, sure, but as with a good deal of Osborne’s work it
treads an interesting line between funny bone and heartstring.
Oh..alright..maybe heartstring is a bit strong but there’s a
certain, and a rather touching, melancholy lurking here.
Also – what is it about Mariah Carey and art video on the net?
Instant conductors : Tpada (40.3MB, 4:19 secs)
A piece by Brian Gibson which captures you with
its trance like visuals and experimental audio.
Instant conductors : tpada is part of a full length
album project created with a video camera to capture visuals
and audio then assembling them into a stunning form of art.
Using a range of different camera angles focused in on areas
from where the musical source is created, this forms an explosion
of creativity manifesting as hybrid song/video.
If you’re intrigued by this clip it’s well worth checking out
untitled project 3 which features
a short number on mini organ with video accompaniment.
Also download the 3 track EP for free at glimpsecontrol .
Must Read After My Death – Morgan Dews (2007, 23.9MB, 1:47)
When a Hartford couple turns to psychiatry for help
with their marriage in 1960, things quickly spiral out
of control. Couples counseling, individual and group
therapy and 24-hour marathon sessions ensue. Their
four children suffer and are given their own psychiatrists.
Pills are prescribed, people are institutionalized, shock-therapy
is administered. This is an intimate story in the family
Katrine Emme Thielkes – Sweet Christmas #19 (2008, 1.8MB, 0:31)
The nineteenth in the Sweet Christmas series by Katrine Emme Thielkes.
Audio by Mikkel Westerkam.
Blackest Spot (2008, 18MB, 2:17 min.)
A new installation by Jody Zellen at LA’s Fringe gallery.
The Blackest Spot is an interactive installation that uses Elias Canetti’s
seminal text “Crowds and Power” as its point of departure. Viewers step
on floor mounted triggers to change images and sounds within the space.
Anarchy (Slight Delay) (2006, 17.8MB, 3:23 min.)
In which Aaron Valdez takes the Sex Pistols vid from
these very pages and..er..does stuff to it.
Explains Aaron:
‘This is the second entry in a study (or me messing around) with audio
and video delay. I did a Bob Dylan one way back. Nothing new but
interesting nonetheless. I made three tracks of video each offset by
6 frames then I cut out three frames alternating between those three
tracks. It
Domestic Safari (2007, 63.4MB, 10:32 min)
We’ve shown work by Anders Weberg and Robert Willim here before.
It’s always both perfectly executed & intriguing.
This piece is no exception.
Here’s the creators’ commentary:
‘What if we started to see the material worlds of
domestic settings as wild places?
Is there a potential for the exotic and uncanny in the
inconspicuously mundane?
Domestic Safari is a journey through three different
homes in three different European countries.
The film and its soundtrack is based entirely on manipulated
recordings from the three places in Finland, Italy and Sweden.
This audiovisual excursion aims to call forth imaginaries
and a profane illumination that disorient and estrange
the materialities of everyday reality.’
CDR (Listen) (2007, 13.75MB, 1:20 min)
Says Kari Altmann:
‘This is the webvideo version. In real life it also lives as a
looping video installation with headphones (that play nothing).
This piece is meant to encourage you to question the notion
of listening and hearing. When experiencing it some people
crave audio, some people hear imprints, memories, and echoes of it,
and some people “see” it or “feel” it. The headphones that are
expected to play audio or music are actually used to close you
off to outside noises and force you to truly listen to the piece
and process it within your own headspace. Many people already
think audiovisually, while many others still divide the two in
their own terms. What do you hear?’
Messa di Voce (2003, 12.3MB, 2:40 min)
Messa di Voce (Ital., “placing the voice”) is an audiovisual performance
in which the speech, shouts and songs produced by two abstract vocalists are
radically augmented in real-time by custom interactive visualization software.
by Golan Levin & Zach Lieberman.
The Human Browser (2006, 29.7MB, 8:18 min)
Documentation recorded at last year’s transmediale in Berlin
of a quite marvellous project by Christopher Bruno which
just won the share festival & most deservedly too.
It’s a fantastic blend of technology, performance & a kind of ‘information poetry’.
In many hands it could have been smart but dullish, but this is joyous stuff.
There’s a whole load of videos up on the human browser site
& they all have their particular delights.
Bruno’s short project description goes:
Human Browser is a series of wireless Internet performances
based on a Wi-Fi Google hack.
Thanks to its headset, the actor hears a text-to-speech
audio that comes directly from the Internet in real-time.
The actor repeats the text as he hears it.
The textual flow is actually fetched by a program
(set up on a Wi-Fi laptop) that hijacks Google,
diverting it from its utilitarian functions.
Depending on the context in which the actor is,
keywords are sent to the program and used as
search strings in Google (thanks to a Wi-Fi PDA)
so that the content of the textual flow is always
related to the context.
The performer in this video is Manon Kahle.
A good deal of the charm of this project
is due to the “performances” of the actors which are
highly professional but also very human too.
.
Great stuff!
