Category Archives: event

Garrett Lynch performs Trav-erse

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trav-erse_short
Trav-erse short (2011, 96 MB, 1:58 min)

This is shaping up to be Furtherfield fortnight & whyever not?
Here’s some footage I took there last Friday night, at the very entertaining
launch of the Art is Open Source/REFF – Roma Europa Fake Factory publication
& exhibition, (GO, if you’re in London) of a splendid performance by
Garrett Lynch of his Trav-erse, where he uses custom Max/MSP created software to
grab audio from an analogue world band receiver, manipulate and remix it.
I was struck both by the simplicity of the idea and the effectiveness of
its execution – a neat concept but also an excellent ear at work.
The sound from my stills cam video was unusable (shame, it sounded great
there) so in the latter section I’ve dubbed on sound from
an earlier performance of the piece in Cardiff, Wales in 2008.

KMA – ‘Flock’ in Liverpool

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‘Flock’ in Liverpool (2008, 152MB, 2:44 min)

How many times do you read artists’ descriptions of their own work
and think ‘naaaaa…’ totally failing to recognise their stated ambitions
in what appears to you to be, at best, somewhat pedestrian and at
worst, a total disconnect from what they write.
This is the complete opposite of that, utterly living up to the makers’
stated intentions, and an absolute spine tingler to watch even through
the distance of video documentation.
Check out the KMA site for a complete description of the piece,
an ‘interactive light installation’ based around Swan Lake,
but not until you’ve watched this beautiful bit of documentary.
Particularly touching is the genuine joy in participation it evokes.

Very hard to pull off and very moving to see.

Bernhard Lang – I Hate Mozart

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mathematics
I Hate Mozart [excerpt] (2006, 11MB, 4:03 min)

Excerpt from the 2006 production of Bernhard Lang’s opera
I Hate Mozart written for the Viennese Mozart Year festivities
of that year.
It’s interesting in a number of ways. Lang’s musical language is based upon the
loop, but loops treated within a fairly hardcore art music environment.
Sounds like a recipe for pretension or disaster. Strangely it’s neither,
but most compelling.
Secondly, the piece is that rare beast, too often promised and so rarely
delivered, a genuinely comic opera and all the more impressive for being
cast in an apparently recalcitrant & unforgiving musical language
for such a purpose.
Hats off, Mr Lang, hats off.

Annie Abrahams

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mathematics
Mutant #2 (2010, 64MB, 4:04 min)

Annie Abrahams is a singular and compelling voice, her singularity
ironically copper-bottomed by her willingness to embrace the network
& collaboration thereon fearlessly, inquisitively and to always
striking effect. This piece is described as a video arising out of
the second session of a
“Telematic Performance / Experiment investigating communication and
relational dynamics in a dispersed group.”
and it’s bewitching.
The pages documenting it bear the motto
“Communication is never clean, smooth and transparent”
True – and to turn that truth into crystalline & affecting art is a little miracle.

Nuit blanches 2010 Metz, France with DIEZ and paradigme

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Nuit blanches 2010 – DIEZ and paradigme (2010, 41 MB, 1:55 min.)

Collaboration of Video mapping, light and sound installation, done for
Nuit blanches 2010 Metz.
Audio Visual design by paradigme.
Scenography and video mapping by DIEZ.

Mapping Festival – Motomichi and Otto

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Mapping Festival – Motomichi and Otto (2010, 100 MB, 5:25 min.)

Mapping Festival is organized by Modul8, the most popular VJ software in the
market and the venue “Usine / le Zo” is their primary space.
Here is a great collaboration at the event. Video mixing by Motomichi and
music performance by Otto von Schirach.

More Showstudio

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beasting
Beasting (2008, 3MB, 31 secs)

blackball
Blackball (2008, 10MB, 1:21 min)

God, I dislike this work! It’s the combination of the stellar
degree of smug self-congratulation with a faux experimentalism/pretension
to art similarly typified by the ludricous “creative” moniker
attached to exponents of advertising.
But..but..again – like some ads, not many, some – there’s
something to be learned here, especially from Beasting
which manages to be both deeply, Zoolanderishly, risible
(the branded underpants) but also generate a kind of deep,
myth-related frisson.
All the more vexing that somewhere here is real talent.

So…we hold our noses and post…

Enough! Six months, at least, before any more of this.
I’m going out for some air.

Readings

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readings
Readings (2008, 43 MB, 9:53 min.)

I must admit I’d never really heard of fashion video as a genre
until someone I teach showed me an astonishing piece by
Ruth Hogben & Gareth Pugh last week, which sent me off in search of more.
This piece comes from site called ShowStudio:

‘an award-winning fashion website, founded and directed by Nick Knight,
that has consistently pushed the boundaries of communicating fashion online.’

according to its ‘about’ page.

The piece we’re posting here is directed by Knight together with the designer
Hussein Chalayan, with editing by Ruth Hogben and music by Anthony, of Johnsons
fame.
It’s a tour de force, fizzing with ideas, a mesmerising watch,
and a fund of stealable ideas, so we’ll definitely be returning
for more, though I have to say I only see a dark void where
a living heart might have beat – there’s no speck of warmth
or humanity to it.

Elodie Pong

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Secret 044 (2007, 10 MB, 4:27 min.)

Another secret.
See original post for details.

Nigel Ayers – War Criminal

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first line
War Criminal (2003 -2010, 22MB, 3:18 min)

When I first saw this piece from Nigel Ayers I assumed, quite wrongly, he
was involved with some heavy duty image manipulation in the cause of a
kind of conceptualist ‘activism’ (and I sat scratching my head at just how difficult it
must have been to get that image onto so many moving figures).

DOH! The facts are much weirder and much, much better…
Great stuff! Hats off! Not worthy, not worthy!

Let Nigel explain…