Scenes of Provincial Life (2005, 3.5MB, each loop 25 sec.)
“Well, it does what it says on the box – let it loop and pretty much every cycle will be
different, both image & sound. #87 in a continuing sequence, my first but
definitely won
Sex Positive
Daryl Wein – Sex Positive (2008, 16MB, 2:43)
Groundbreaking film from 24-year-old Daryl Wein.
I hate it when people mention my youthful age, but
I think since I know my motivations for doing it, I’ll
just accept that we all mean it as a compliment.
Wein’s portrait of 1980s AIDS activist Richard Berkowitz
is such a contribution to our modern understanding of the
history of AIDS and gay rights activism. One of the first
to speak out about the need for safe sex in the gay
community, Berkowitz was ridiculed and ostracized.
This excellent documentary finds Berkowitz today and
revisits his time as an S&M sex worker before becoming
an outspoken critic of the AIDS epidemic. Much of the older
footage is also courtesy of Berkowitz.
An outstanding collaboration.
Sacha Baron Cohen – Borat – Wine Tasting
wine tasting (2002, 28MB, 3:57 min.)
British chameleon Baron Cohen as Borat – the spoof Kazakh television presenter.
more Borat here.
Rubber Band Hand – Brian Liloia
Rubber Band Hand (2005, 21.4 MB, 2:47 min.)
A young man discovers the limits of his newfangled
rubber band hand. From – Brian Liloia.
Jillian Mcdonald – Me and Billy Bob
Me and Billy Bob (2004, 22.7MB, 7:04 min.)
Jillian inserted herself into existing film clips as the recurring
object of actor Billy Bob Thornton
WalMart Growth
Toby Segaran – WalMart Growth (2008, 6.6MB, 0:46)
Toby Segaran isn’t a media artist – he’s actually
a software developer and writer. But, he made
this excellent video clip of American WalMart growth
from 1962 to the present on his off time at work,
and the way I see it, the best work sometimes
happens when you, well, aren’t working. Similar
to these videos made with the processing language.
LeedsVlog #1
Woodhouse Sunset (Alison Booth , 2007, 32.9MB, 1:17 min)
21 Today (Patrick Devlin, 2007, 20.2MB, 53 secs)
Soundcheck (Chris Harman, 2007, 45.3MB, 3:24 min)
At the end of last year I taught a course, which I rather pompously entitled
‘Videoblogging for Artists’, at Leeds College of Art.
The students made 5 videos each over a ten day period & some of what they
made stands up with the best.
The whole 100 or so to date are up here but I’m going to post two or three batches
of my favourites on dvblog over the next couple of weeks.
Bottomunion – The Endangered P-Money Bird
The Endangered P-Money Bird (2005, 14.5MB, 2:23 min.)
Erik Nelson’s videos are always funny and poetic. He posts new work regularly
on his vlog – Bottomunion.
music by – dudley from – Autres Directions.
By Mica.
Standard Operating Procedure
Errol Morris – Standard Operating Procedure (2008, 11.2MB, 2:00)
We don’t hide our love for Errol Morris – see here
and here – but there’s no need for us to apologize.
The man is a genius. His latest feature, Standard
Operating Procedure, interviews Abu Ghraib prison
guards and tells the story behind the now-infamous
photographs of abuse from the prison, uncovered in
2003. Dubbed a “nonfiction horror film” by Morris,
this investigative film, much like A Thin Blue Line,
helped Morris once again dig deeper into a crime
file, this one just more contemporary.
When you see a picture, you don’t see outside the frame.
With the frightening pictures as a jumping off point,
Morris interviews those involved with the scandal to
get the whole story.
Can’t wait to see this one.
Rock History
Rock History (2006, 6.3 MB, 2:34 min.)
Ugly pictures and Man VS Magnet have created a short film play before
the Battle of the Ad Bands at Irving Plaza in New York. (The show is a
charity venue where advertising agency garage bands compete for the
best band and all the proceeds go to help the public schools of New York.)
The result is a funny and hilarious and violent animation about the recent
music history, and especially the design of the LPs.
from its art mag.
pixelbirds – cube pusher
Cube Pusher (2007, 31MB, 2:49 min)
Deft & very attractive interweaving of video & live performance from pixelbirds.
They make it look effortless; of course it’s anything but.
There’s an interesting form emerging here, with this physical intervention/relation
of live performers to a projection.
This notion has some way to unfold yet, I think, but
this is an excellent staging post.
Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli
Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli – SHE:contaminated (2005, 33.5MB, 13:58)
Brooklyn-based Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli works in
video and super 8 film.
An explanation of SHE:contaminated:
An examination of cellular abnormalities in video and
super 8mm film in which the three identities of the
character SHE confront the nature of their malformation,
and the affected woman they have collectively become.
I find this piece so moving, particularly the openly segment.
Her metaphors are completely brilliant and resonate with me,
perhaps mostly as a woman but also as an artist.
Also a huge fan of her supposedly poor compression –
love the idea, love the execution.
Blow Up Media
DELOS (2007, 36 MB, 7:15 min.)
A great corporate satire by The Blow Up Media.
thanks yoshi.
The Intimacy of Strangers – Eva Weber
Eva Weber – The Intimacy of Strangers (2007, 7.4MB, 2:23)
Trailer for the innovative The Intimacy of Strangers,
“a story of life, love, loss and hope – told entirely
through overheard mobile phone conversations of
random strangers.”
Winner of several festival awards, including the President’s
Award at the 2007 Full Frame Film Festival, which is extra
exciting as Full Frame is one of the first festivals that has
started showing videoblog work within the last year. Be sure
to check out the excellent IoS website, a wonderful complement
to the actual film.
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005, 27.3MB, 2:43)
Trailer for the brilliant 2005 film
Lovely and humorous teaser for an equally delightful movie
From female mastermind Miranda July
Gareth Long
Gareth Long (2004, 1.2 MB, 25 sec.)
More from Gareth Long.
Keep On Smoking
Michel de Broin – Keep On Smoking (2006, 8.2MB, 2:51)
Absolutely hilarious video for a fantastic piece of interactive art.
I thought I was going to end up with a statement about
smoking cigarettes with I came across Michel de Broin’s
Keep On Smoking.
But completely unrelated, de Broin says this:
As an alternative to petrol, this custom-made bicycle
transforms kinetic energy produced by the cyclist into smoke.
The will to power is a renewable energy resource that can be
recuperated by a power generator supplying enough electricity
to operate a smoke machine. The work is the result of two
coupled machines; the one human is productive and the other
machine, consumptive. This coupling of machines produces smoke,
a waste energy that is liberated freely in the atmosphere.
Ride with Theo
Ride with Theo (2005, 27.7MB, 6 min.)
Directed in 2005 by Owen Plotkin of the now corporation
(Owen is also behind the excellent gaaagled.com)
this is a piece of viral advertising for an annual bike ride to raise
money for leukaemia research at Hammersmith hospital, London.
It features the splendid Theodore Bouloukos, whom regular dvblog
viewers will have seen & admired in Doron Golan�s recent piece.
Day of Ashurah (Day of Tenth)
Day of Tenth (2006, 13.6MB, 1:40 min.)
Europe January 2006.
Sunnis and Shi’a Muslims commemorating ‘Day of Ashurah‘.
A Good Joke – Nick Fox-Gieg
A Good Joke (2005, 18.5 MB, 3:16 min.)
This short is based on an old joke, a perennial in compilations of
Jewish humor. Although the details differ between versions, the
scene remains the same: a priest challenges a rabbi to debate on
the spiritual condition of Jewish people. But neither speaks the other’s language.
Commissioned by Project Mosaica, by Nick Fox-Gieg.
Doron Golan – Forgot
Forgot (2008, 98.3MB, 12:06 min, silent theatrical act)
This is simply wonderful.
Doron’s work is strange – it doesn’t lend itself to blow by blow verbal description:
er..‘Some actors perform in a silent movie based on Waiting for Godot‘
Then you actually look at it (or if you haven’t you should, you really should).
The grammar of his editing is completely unique & mysterious (a feature of all his longer pieces).
‘Why did he do that?’ – ‘Dunno – but it made my spine tingle’
Work like this often slips under the radar because it has no easy marketing line,
it can’t be glibly summed up, reduced to an easily digestible one-liner.
Work like this is food you have to chew a little…but what flavour & what nourishment!
Also, the acting ( and the director/actor collaboration) is outstanding.
Smart, funny, puzzling, touching by turns…and generous also…
With Theodore Bouloukos, Joanne Douglas, Brian Gibson and Stephanie Noritz
Lossy Video
Hollywood News (2006, 2.7MB, 1:06 min. )
Saddam on Trial (2006, 1.9MB, 52 sec)
Two pieces from the Montreal based video collective Lossy Video.
The idea being to take news footage & ..er..look at it closely.
The results are undeniably capable, attractive & interesting.
Reminds me, conceptually, of Mark Tribe
Two from Human Dog
Garage Door (2006, 4.4MB, 0:47)
Human Dog was one of the first videoblogs and has
been closed down since early 2007. Luckily, all of
the media remains online (so far). One of the best
things about the entire series of videos (and the various
serials therein) was creator Chris Weagel’s ability
to tease out the absurdity of everyday life without
hitting the audience over the head with his message.
Video that was made specifically to live online, this
is some of the best work ever produced in videoblog
format.
The French Democracy
The French Democracy (2005, 39.7MB, 13:09 min)
Quite remarkable piece of Machinima from France, dealing with
the riots there by oppressed North African and Arab youth.
The subtitling and translation ( ‘I had some training to do’ says koulamata,
the author, rather disarmingly) are hit and miss, to say the least -but it would
be wrong to view this as an ‘all your base are belong to us’ curiosity.
The very strangeness of the English translation, the sheer virtuosity of shaping
the fairly recalcitrant source material into a coherent 13 minute plus narrative
means that its honesty and sincerity shine through at every moment.
There is an interesting discussion of the piece on the Machinima.com site.
Aaron Koblin –The Sheep Market
The Sheep Market (2008, 5.4MB, 32 secs)
Aaron Koblin, whose work we’ve featured here before does
rather wonderful things using the Processing language.
Well..of course that’s true..but if he wasn’t endowed with wit & smarts
& a sense of beauty then the tools he used would interest us not at all.
Here’s what he says about this piece (or rather the project for
which this vid is a short installation view):
TheSheepMarket.com is a collection of the first 10,000 sheep
made by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
Workers were paid 0.02 ($USD) to “draw a sheep facing to the left.”
Animations of each sheep’s creation may be viewed at
TheSheepMarket.com.
Papa and Daddy
Papa and Daddy – Jump Start (2008, 9.8MB, 0:53)
Papa and Daddy (Shawn Preston and Ross Ludwig)
made this terrific 2008 Superbowl commercial,
a fun coincidence since I found their charming ad
work via Food Chain Films, a nice page of several
directors based in Portland.
Lewis LaCook –The Ghosts of Colors
The Ghosts of Colors (2006, 1MB, 29 sec)
Lewis LaCook is often brilliant & never less than interesting.
He says of this:
EVP is short for electronic voice phenomena; these are purportedly
“otherworldly” sounds audible only via magenetic tape.
They are often cited as evidence of the supernatural.
Some of the sounds heard in this video are culled from
paranormal research archives.
Videominuto
Cosimo Terlizzi by Regina Irena Radmanovic (2008, 4MB, 1 min.)
Special Mention “1.000 Euro for 1 Minute”, 2008
IlluminAzione by Corrado Bungaro (2007, 4MB, 1 min.)
Winner “1.000 Euro for 1 Minute” 2007
From Videominuto –
exhibition of videos not longer than one minute in duration.
Lewis LaCook -<em>Joey</em>
A new video from Lewis LaCook comes too infrequently.
He’s one of a kind in his and here too.
There’s a throwing of everything, including the
kitchen sink, going in his movies & it shouldn’t work
but it so does.
We’ll repost another of his pieces tomorrow; a little feast for you.
Just for the record here’s Lewis’s description of the piece:
Joey, or DJ Joey, as he is affectionately called, is a
young man in Lorain, Ohio, who spends most of his day
dancing on the corner of 28th Street and Elyria Avenue
to his boombox, waving and smiling at passing
traffic.
This video was constructed of footage found on
YouTube, all dealing with Lorain, Ohio. This is the
first video I
Marc Greenfield’s drought
Marc Greenfield – Toothbrush (2004, 5.5MB, 0:31)
Emmy winner Marc Greenfield’s public service
announcement about Denver water
via Food Chain Films