PSST! Pass it on…


DRIFT SLICYCLE POPPED! (2007, 11MB, 1:59)


LOQUACIOUS EYESICLE WILD-BITES (2007, 14.9MB, 2:34)

PSST gets designers, animators, and directors together for
collaborative film projects every year. Their main concern
is process, which they explain comes from a fusion of the
Dadaist game Exquisite Corpse and the sometimes childhood
game, Telephone.
Whatever their theory, their annual collections are stellar.

Brody Condon – Performance Modifications

DeathAnimations
Death Animations (2007, 22 MB, 2:58 min.)

“‘Death Animations’ by Brody Condon.
Closely linked to his past process of modification of existing computer games,
as well as performative events with medieval re-enactment and fantasy live
action role playing subcultures, the work is a re-creation in medieval fantasy
costume of Bruce Nauman

2 from Patrick Lichty

Explaining Conceptual Art to Bizarro
Explaining Conceptual Art to Bizarro (2012, 89MB, 1:36 min)

Danger Music #17
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.

Joshua Fishburn – Layers. Machinima

joshua_fishburn_layers
Layers (2007, 23 MB, 5:23 min)

“Layers is a mashup narrative machinima created with footage from Metal
Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2), Military footage from an Apache Helicopter
in Iraq (Public Domain/Department of Defense), and Shadow of the Colossus
(PS2). Recorded almost entirely through a sniper scope from the game, it
extends the conversation about the relationship between increasingly
sophisticated military technology and the drive towards visual realism in
videogames. What happens to the relationship between killer and victim
when they are separated by real and virtual distances? Adding the layer
of virtuality through the videogame complicates this relationship even further.”

by Joshua Fishburn.

Brody Condon – DefaultProperties()

baptism
DefaultProperties() (2006, 6 MB, 30 sec.)

“The first in a series of re-interpretations of Late Medieval Northern
European religious paintings, DefaultPropeties(); is a non-interactive,
animated recreation of the baptism scene from the Triptych of
Jean des Trompes by Gerard David from 1505 using current game
development technology and visual styles.”
By Brody Condon.

Three from Writtle

Impossible Conversations
Ashleigh Smith – Impossible Conversations (2010, 75 MB, 2:30 min)

Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Emma Haggis – Out of Sight, Out of Mind (2010, 118 MB, 2:18 min)

Response
Lucy Mills – Response (2010, 108 MB, 2:02 min, silent)

So, first, I should say, Writtle is where I taught this year, but it cuts both ways:
I wouldn’t post these pieces by graduating students here on DVblog unless I
thought they were all great, which I do.
They’re also diverse, in a fascinating way.
There’s Ashleigh Smith’s haunting – stays with you long afterwards – game/real life hybrid,
Lucy Mills beauty industry critique – half mash-up, half rather brave performance,
(It’s interesting the way that all three pieces incorporate, to
some degree, elements of self performance) and Emma Haggis’s superbly made
and utterly captivating stop motion environmental piece.

In each case one can see a personal language well into its development.
(All these pieces or variants/derivatives thereof formed part of larger
installations; I’m impressed by the naturalness & lack of self consciousness
with with these three move between modes of working/presentation)

I hope they’re all still making work in ten years – given this
starting point then that would be a treat in store.

Dom Cheverti – Throwing Chamberlains

bowl
Bowl (2009, 2 MB, 1:52 min)

bowl/glass
Bowl/Glass (2009, 2 MB, 1:01 min)

bowl/flower/vase
Bowl/Flower/Vase (2009, 3 MB, 57 secs)

little river
Little River (2009, 2 MB, 1:00 min)

Recommended to us by the sublime Sam Renseiw who,
when he speaks, we listen.
Nonetheless I had some difficulties in coming to grips with this.
Sam tells me it relates to some current You Tube thing whereby people
throw ping-pong balls into various receptacles with a high degree of accuracy.

Clearly I should stay in more.

So…in this case the balls are substituted by a species of cookie, apparently
known in Denmark as ‘chamberlains’.
(I asked Sam exactly what a chamberlain was.
He says:
“Chamberlains is an odd translation of ‘kammerjunker’ that
can both be a chamberlain and danish cookie/biscuit.
It is usually consumed in summer with “koldsk