Loop (2010, 6 MB, 6 sec, loop)
Category Archives: landscape
Direct Language
Diect Language 5.0 (2010, 74 MB, 6:26 min)
Steven Ball has re-started his Direct Language project & this was the first piece
of the new sequence.
I think it is quite breathtaking.
It strikes me as very much in a relatively recent British experimental film tradition
where a quite austere formalism can engender the most extraordinary beauty.
There’s always the danger of a failure of nerve, the pill being quite needlessly sugared
and nothing such happens here.
Not only is it haunting & lovely, there’s food for thought here too,
the lack of glibness & the refusal to cuddle up to the viewer meaning
it sustains repeated viewing.
Pink Tall Bike
Pink Tall Bike (2010, 50 MB, 2:16 min)
One of those does-what-it-says-on-the-can movies.
Made by Mike Stoddard & Ryan Lynch who say:
”This is our latest creation made from free bikes and parts,
comprised of three womens’ frames, bed frame iron (front fork),
and an old ATV shock.
Filmed on the Woonsocket River Bikeway in Rhode Island. ‘
…not much to add except to say it’s very diverting &
WANT ONE!
A Short History of Virtual Hiking
A Short History of Virtual Hiking (2005, 9.1MB, 3:47 min.)
Originally posted in 2006.
‘Not sure it
Rupert Howe – The Wicker Man Remade
The Wicker Man (2010, 12 MB, 1:09 min)
The Wicker Man Live (2010, 7 MB, 3:31 min)
Rupert Howe is always doing interesting things.
He’s also an early adopter of the sort of tech that in-my-old-age I
would cautiously leave a few months to see how it turns
out, so many of the interesting things he does mystify me
somewhat at first.
SO.. here he seems to have got given (?) lots of extras
(in what universe does this occur?) to remake a section of
cult British horror film The Wicker Man on Hampstead Heath.
The results are jaw dropping in two ways.
Jaw droppingly charmingly-funny.
And jaw droppingly odd.
Most of his work is essentially some combination of these
two axes. ( Plus serious skills)
As an added bonus there a kind of Making-Of-The-Wicker-Man-Remake
which apparently was originally streamed live from his mobile.
I didn’t even know you could do that.
If anything the ‘making-of’ piece surpasses the substantive one on the
Howe strangeness scale. Even his friends & colleagues seem touched too
by a species of benign insanity.
Long may he flourish.
Sun Capture – Julianne Swartz
Sun Capture (1999, 9.6 MB, 1:23 min.)
Transferring the reflection of a natural occurrence (the movement of the sun)
from outdoors to indoors, Brooklyn-based artist Julianne Swartz creates
her site-specific installation “Sun Capture” with existing architecture, metal pole,
mirror, sun, and wind.
Alan Sondheim: large tree-scan world images
treee (2006, 2.28MB, 1:03 min)
treees 3 (2006, 5.86MB, 38 sec)
treees 8 (2006, 9.15MB, 58 sec)
“similar to a scanning electron microscope, two images of a moving tree
with enormous detail were stitched together, warped, merged, and
analyzed at every stage. the result is a planetary configuration; one can travel
for at least an hour or two through the detailing. at times threads or
tubes appear; at times there are planes, sharpened edges, odd holes and
gaps. a tetrahedral mapping was employed.
it is this acute exploration of acute angles of inner worlds that
fascinates me. the mp4 file is small and an enormous amount of detail
is lost, but you get the idea. there are videos as well of course.
here is the resurrection of encapsulated movement-into-landscape of a
five-story tree outside the virtual environments laboratory at west
virginia”
Donna Kuhn – Please Don’t Look Like A Pear
Please Don’t Look Like A Pear (2010, 10 MB, 3:22 min)
I love Donna Kuhn’s work.
I’ve rhapsodised about it here before, so I’ll just note, first,
that she continues to develop in the most thoughtful & interesting of ways
& second that this video is very funny, poetic
& scarier than most horror movies.
( Donna: ‘people don’t believe that these are completely unembellished
craigslist personals ads’)
To do all three – a coup!
More soon please Donna!
Studio Banana TV Interviews Pablo Valbuena
Interview with Pablo Valbuena (2009, 43 MB, 3:46 min)
Studio Banana TV interviews visual artist and architect Pablo Valbuena.
After working in digital media designing virtual architectures for videogames,
he currently looks for new ways of using light to introduce the dimensions of
time and movement in urban spaces, altering the perception of physical space
through projected virtual realities.
One Minute, Volume 4
Martin Pickles – Dinosaur (2010, 130 MB, 1:01 min)
Nicki Rolls – 1961 Revisited (2010, 114 MB, 58 secs)
Two pieces from a touring screening of one minute films,
the fourth such from British filmmaker Kerry Baldry.
It’s a really well put together and gripping hour
(transparency dictates I confess I have a piece in it
but I won’t foist that on you here), with a strike rate well above
most of this kind of compilatation.
Here are two of my favourite pieces; both, in different
ways, little gems of cinematic poetry.
Although Martin Pickle’s piece is amusing there’s
something enchanting about the changing seasonal
landscape & light of West London and how it manifests on screen,
which raises the work from anecdote to something more complicated
and lasting.
The Nicki Rolls piece had me in the palm of its hand within about a second.
(I’m a total sucker for near stillness and for the movement of light)
Then I started to think about what exactly I was watching.
You might like to give it some thought too.
Again, the twist breaks the confines of the one minute form
to resonate long after.
I haven’t see the other three compilations but I hope we could maybe
feature a couple of pieces from each in the not too distant future.
Next week we’ll have a piece by Kerry herself.