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Trypps #5 (Dubai) from Ben Russell. | (3:00, 16mm, color, silent, 2008)

Happiness.

Chris Marker, 1983, 103 minutes, 16mm

This is a phenomenal film — a prophetic film — and if you haven’t seen it, highly recommended.

Click images to enlarge
Click here to read a transcript of the film

Sound Over Water, Mary Helena Clark, USA, 2009, 6m; 16mm, color/black & white, sound

A film by Baltimore-based filmmaker, Mary Helena Clark.

Synopsis: The sky and the sea meet in a deep blue underwater evocation on 16mm. Floating particles, schools of fish and film emulsion converge.

a beach (2010) | click to enlarge

Hey ya’ll East-Siders: my two-part film, a beach (2010), will be wavin’ simultaneously on two monitors at the Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media, as part of Refresh, “an exhibition of video and animation work that explores an alternative aesthetic in digital media artwork.” … “Refresh features a group of artists that all ask the viewer to reevaluate our collective definition of digital beauty and the value we place on visual quality in contemporary culture.”

The opening reception is tomorrow, 23 July, 2010, and the exhibit will sit pretty 23 July – August 28th, 2010. Artists in the show include: Nick Briz (Chicago), Michelle Ceja (NY), Clint Ennis (Canada), Elna Frederick (the internet), Doug Goodwin and Rebecca Baron (Los Angeles), Duncan Malashock (NY), Rosa Menkman (a Dutch-visualist DINCA recently interviewed, the Netherlands), Andrew Rosinski (Chicago), and Nicolas Sassoon (Canada).

  This exhibition is curated by Yuri Stone.

REFRESH

23 July – 28 August, 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, July 23, 6-9pm

Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media is pleased to present Refresh, an exhibition of video and animation work that explores an alternative aesthetic in digital media artwork. Refresh features a group of artists that all ask the viewer to reevaluate our collective definition of digital beauty and the value we place on visual quality in contemporary culture.

Spanning from 8bit and ascii animations to manipulated digital video, this exhibition creates an aesthetic and conceptual dialogue that allows us to question conventions of digital media in our society as well as our relationship to new and past technology.  The artists included in this exhibition evoke notions of nostalgia, document unintended artifacts, and push the boundaries of the ↓field by experimenting with new technologies.  In doing so, these artists create a refreshingly alternative digital practice that functions outside of the mainstream aesthetic.

More:

Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media
Refresh Exhibit Page
Nick Briz
Michelle Ceja
Elna Frederick
Doug Goodwin and Rebecca Baron
Duncan Malashock
Rosa Menkman
Andrew Rosinski
Nicolas Sassoon

Please spread the word of this exhibit by clicking the “Share/Save” button below. Great thanks, and remember: this summer, take a break and beat the heat by visiting a beach.
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Chicago-based animator and digital media artist, Takeshi Murata, is featured on The Creators Project. Takeshi takes a unique approach to his work, emphasizing the relationship between humanity and technology as an important element of his artistic ethos. His brilliant displays of color and animation have an organic edge that gives them a life of their own.

In this short feature, VICE sits down with Takeshi as he discusses his relationship with his work. Takeshi’s projects are like living creatures; he follows them through technological experimentation, ultimately allowing them to develop creative story arcs of their own. Combining hand-drawn animation with software manipulation and beyond, Takeshi has mastered communicating the human behind the digital.

Andréa Stanislav, "Divine Creatures," 2006

Andréa Stanislav is a Chicago-based artist. “Divine Creatures”,  part of Stanislav’s to the Western Lands exhibit at the Packer Schopf Gallery.

This post embeds two lovely music videos by Ben Russell, an eminent Chicago-based experimental filmmaker, known for his Black and White Trypps series and the recent experimental ethnopgraphy, Let Each One Go Where He May (2009). There are a number of reasons why these two films defy a classification, namely, they are captured on film, not video. Black and White Trypps Number Three (2007, embedded below) was shot on 35mm; Rock Me Amadeus by Falco Via Kardinal by Otto Muehl (2009, embedded above) was shot on 16mm film. Whether it be 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, black/white or color, a music video shot on film looks volumes better than a music video shot on video. Film captures sunlight on celluloid; film is warm.

The above video is an avant-garde kareokee performance between filmmaker Ben Russell and Celeste Neus. The film observes the sticky-synergy between the two as they rock to Falco’s lengendary 1983 hit “Rock Me Amadeus.” This film ponders humiliation of some sort — preparation, then humiliation — other than that, it’s strikingly similar to the original Falco video. Five Stars, verily.

Black and White Trypps Number Three captures a live-performance from Providence-based band Lightning Bolt. Although we’re at the show, we only catch a glimpse of the two-piece band, that being the neck of a bass guitar. We don’t see the band; we see the audience, we hear the music, and we see how the music affects the audience.

They say film can only capture sight and sound; however, these films capture more. Plus, music can speak louder than words. If you haven’t heard Lightning Bolt, try listening to the mp3s below — they bring the light from above to the below. It’s a heavy feeling in a good whey.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Chromatic Cocktail, 2008, 9 min

Synopsis: The vibrant, abstract spirals of Kerry Laitala’s experiments with chromovision leap off the screen in pulsating 3-D.  — San Francisco International Film Festival

Entre dos mundos from Banda TRANSIT

“In the beginning was the sea … and when a man or a woman, falls from the sky to the sea, the game starts or restarts …”

Watching this is highly recommended. It is a visceral montage from Banda TRANSIT, dubbed Entre dos mundos — my roommate, Juan, says that translates as, “Between two worlds.” Makes sense, haha, it’s part of the titular line.

This is a montage of coalescing images of big waves, beach footage, driftwood, and a man whom jumps into the water and climbs the rocky cliff neighboring a beach. The opening shot is from Peter Hutton’s At Sea, a film I pine to sea in its entirety, and footage from the great Maya Deren’s At Land, and footage from Vimukthi Jayasundara’s Between Two Worlds.

Synopsis: This video contains footage from At Land (Maya Deren, 1944), At Sea (Peter Hutton, 2007), and Between Two Worlds (Vimukthi Jayasundara, 2009). They try to illustrate a divulgative and creative text about Deren’s, Hutton’s and Jayasundara’s productions. It doesn’t exist any profit motive in mind. (Covadonga G. Lahera for (cinentransit.com)

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Will Reed is a Brooklyn-based painter. His work speaks for itself. Will received a BA, Summa Cum Laude, Studio Art; a BA, Psychology, Magna Cum Laude, and minors in Religion and Philosphy from Lyon College, Batesville, AR. Will received his Post-Baccalaureate Certificate of Fine Art at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, MD, and is currenting working on a MFA, Painting, New York Studio School, New York, NY. Also, a Master’s of Art Education at Columbia University, New York, NY.

In this interview, Will discusses why and what he paints, what women he finds attractive, and brushes his inspiration, which includes filmmakers Andrei Tarkovsky, Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo Antonioni, Bela Tarr, and more.

(1) Why do you paint?

I feel that I am carrying a torch, the torch of the original imagists of Lascaux and Avignon those wonderful, magical cave painters (probably women) in the prehistoric times. It is a powerful notion that profound and poetic images can come into being from primitive and simple means — pigment, natural oils, fabric supports, etc. They were making these amazing metaphors for their existence and that is essentially what I am doing today. Painting and drawing both have a very physical visceral quality that other 2-D media simply lack. I am a practitioner of a communicative form that predates written language and I think that is a very special and powerful thing given the contemporary art climate.

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Around two months ago, one of my favourite underground film journals, badlit.com, started a handy roundup up notable posts, culled from the corners of the somewhat established underground film loop. If you enjoy underground film, or have interest in discovering something new, subscribe to the badlit RSS feed, or simply check badlit.com every Sunday.

Also, I’m working on expanding the dinca-hosted undergroundfilmloop, which will be a separate micro-site with categorized links by blog/website/journal, filmmakers/artists, writers/poets, and more.

So, in the words of Zira, the companion of Cornelius in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), aka Planet of the Apes 3: “It’s grape juice, plus!” In other words, this will be a undergroundfilmloop, plus (!).

Summer is prime for the exc!amation po!nt. (My rule is keep yourself to 2-3 per summer writing; with this post I’ve already exceeded my limit.) (However, there is no cap on thinking with an exclamation point, for it is a recipe for joy.)

Folks, it’s time to get to work.

Two days left for the Chicago Underground Film Festival. They have already announced the award-winners. Above is the trailer for the CUFF; I think it’s a darn neat trailer.

IFP Chicago presents:

The 17th Chicago Underground Film Festival
June 24th – July 1st
at the Gene Siskel Film Center
http://www.cuff.org/

Trailer by Jon Satrom

Rosa Menkman is a Dutch filmmaker and artist; Rosa is a trailblazer in the glitch video scene. Rosa experiments with video compression, feedback, glitches, and other forms of noise to create visuals unique to the realm of digital media.

Most discern visual glitches — i.e. buzzing lines on interlaced video, video lag, digital blocks, particles, and pixelation  — as a detriment to video aesthetics. Rosa, however, embraces these glitch-bits, and contrives them in her work, which is multivalent, and may be described as subversive fidelity, technicolor, synthetic yet organic, and at times, raucous.

Rosa has shown her work at Blip (Europe and US), Haip (Ljubljana 08), Cimatics (Brussels 08/09), Video Vortex (Amsterdam ’08 + Brussels ’09), Pasofest (Ankara 08), and collaborated on art projects together with Alexander Galloway, little-scale, Govcom.org, Goto80, and the internet art collective Jodi.org.

Rosa has written many words on glitch, including manifesto on glitch, which you can download in .pdf format here. In 2009, Rosa completed her master thesis on digital glitch under the supervision of Geert Lovink.

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THREE ITALIAN POSTERS FOR ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY’S EL TOPO (1970)

7 Frames from Robert Breer’s BANG! (1986)

Found via Anthology Film Archives

© Anthology Film Archives