DINCA » interview

Six Question Interview with Sara Ludy, Vancouver-based Artist

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:57:10 +0000

Sara Ludy is an artist and animator whose work runs the gamut of digital art. Her work includes video, the computer art tile, the animated gif, the self portrait, the VJ set, still photography, animation, the digital image, and the computer art painting. Sara graduated from SAIC in 2003 with a BFA in New Media Art, and after living in LA for some time, she now resides in Vancouver.

Her work is very much concerned with architecture, a sense of home, and a warm domestic sense of place. Recently, her work has explored digitally replicating specific decor elements of the domestic interior — carpet, rugs, paintings, wallpaper, elements of interior decoration — some of those digital image instances are featured below, and it’s also worth noting that Sara Ludy and Nicolas Sassoon projected animated .gif tiles as wallpaper at their WALLPAPERS installation at 319 Scholes back in 2011.

Sara also makes music: she is a member of the experimental electronic band Tremblexy. “Tremblexy is an experimental audio/video collaborative between Sara Ludy and Austin Meredith that creates immersive sensory experiences through the use of sound collage, electronic manipulation, repetition, projections, and improvisation.” Sara is also a member of Computers Club, an online art collective.

Apart from being an august figure in the ambit of internet art, Ludy has exhibited work at the Gene Siskel Film Center for CATE; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Berkeley Art Museum; 319 Scholes, Brooklyn; Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo; Luminary Center for the Arts, St. Louis; Hex Gallery, Kansas City; Fe Arts Gallery, Santa Fe; the Armory Show, NYC; bubblebyte.org, internet; and at many other notable places.

Below is a six question interview with Sara Ludy.

Some Pattern, 2012

(1) What inspires you?

Carpet tiles, virtual worlds and many many other things.

Rooms, 2012, video, 4 min, color, sound

(2) Work work and artwork: how do you strike a balance?

I don’t.

some other different rug, 2012

(3) You have visualed for Mr. Oizo, AC Slater, and Moby, among others — what introduced you to VJing — and what is your approach to the live visual set?

I was randomly asked to VJ at a club in LA. I had one week to learn modul8 and make video loops. I worked there for 3 years until I moved. I keep it simple. Whatever feels right, I project and mix.

Thuja, 2012, video, 3 min, color, sound

(4) How do you cure artistic torpidity?

Two giant mugs of lapsang souchong.

some other carpet, 2012

(5) What is your ideal atmosphere for creativity & creative production?

Working next to the fish tank.

Body Wave, 2010, video, 3 min, color, sound

(6) Why is making work important to you?

It’s the most natural way for me to understand my interests.

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Sara Ludy

Sara Ludy on Computers Club

Sara Ludy on YouTube

Tremblexy

7 Question Interview with Jeremy Boxer, Director of the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:33:12 +0000

Dec. 13, 2011 — Vimeo, the amiable filmmaker and artist friendly video-hosting service, opened submissions today for the second Vimeo Festival + Awards, “which celebrates the most creative and original videos online and the individuals that make them.”

Beginning today through February 20, 2012, filmmakers can submit their works for consideration in one of 13 different judged categories.

Last year, the judge panel was impressive — David Lynch judged the “experimental” category — and this year the judges will be equally impressive; however, the judges are to be announced sometime in early January.

Submit your work to the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards ———> click here. Vimeo will award Grants of $5,000 to all of the 13 category winners, as well as awarding a Grant of $25,000 for the Grand Prize winner.

Jeremy Boxer, the Director of the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards, spoke with us yesterday. Mr. Boxer explains now, more than ever, is a propitious time to be an artist producing work that’s disseminated on the internet.

(1) Why should a filmmaker submit to the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards?

The main difference from traditional film festivals is we only accept work that has premiered online — anywhere — not just Vimeo. The majority of film festivals do not accept work that has premiered online. Our hope is that in the future every festival will accept work that has premiered online.

(2) What categories/genres are in competition in the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards?

There are 13 categories. Experimental, which is of course of interest to your readers. Lyrical is a new category this year. The Lyrical category encompasses poetic videos based on a personal world-view. These are personal representations of the way the creator looks at the world. For example, travelogues or time-lapses of a local neighborhood. Captured is a category not based on filmmaking technique but more on what is being captured by the video, for example, a performance based work or projection art.

The other new categories include Advertising, Action Sports, and Fashion and returning categories from our inaugural Vimeo Festival + Awards are:

Narrative
Animation
Original Series
Motion Graphics
Music Video
Documentary
Remix

(3) Will David Lynch return to judge the experimental category?

We are announcing a few of the judges now. The remainder of the judges will be announced January. The judges will be equally as impressive as in 2010.

(4) Filmmakers can submit their work using Vimeo via the Internet; are there post-internet distribution/exhibition opportunities in place for the winners? Will there be a time to P-A-R-T-Y?

We will have an Awards ceremony, talks, workshops and a bunch of screenings as part of the festival. As we are 6 months out, we’re currently in the planning process and are open to ideas. As we get closer to making that announcement, we’ll reach out to you with all of those specifics.

(5) Last year, Chris Beckman won the Experimental category award for his film OOPS.

Shortly thereafter, Beckman’s film was named an official selection of the corporate-industry-driven 2011 Sundance Film Festival and Beckman directed a commercial for Motorola, for whom he made a branded short film directly inspired by OOPS.

What potential professional opportunities are available to a filmmaker submitting to the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards?

Our intention is to provide filmmakers with opportunities they would never have had before. We want to provide the gold standard for what you can find online and in so doing provide filmmakers the potential to be seen by a much wider audience which could lead to their big break. Because of Vimeo’s reach, we can put a filmmaker’s work in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands.

After its discovery at the Vimeo Festival + Awards, Chris Beckman’s Oops was chosen as an Official Selection at Sundance Film Festival 2011. Chris then went on to direct for such brands as Motorola. Sundance reached out to me directly to ask for Chris Beckman’s information for him to be entered into the festival. This was great, as it was the first time I heard Sundance was accepting films that had premiered online.

Another inaugural award winner was Onur Senturk, he had just graduated university when he entered the Vimeo Festival + Awards. After winning for his film Triangle, due to the Festival’s exposure, Paramount asked him to create the motion design title sequence for Transformers: The Dark Side of the Moon.

The Overall + Documentary winner, Eliot Rausch, has been showered with media attention that landed him a spot on the Carson Daily Show and more commercial work than he ever expected to see in his lifetime. He’s in post- production on his latest documentary — a film he was able to produce with the grant money he received from winning the 2010 Vimeo Festival + Awards. He has gone on to be offered more work than he knows what to do with.

To give you a sense of what Vimeo can do for filmmakers, here is another very recent example. A few weeks ago, James Curran, a 28 year old from UK, put up his own homage credit sequence for “Tin Tin.” The beautiful animated piece came to the attention of Steven Spielberg who hired him for his next film.

You never know who might be watching.

(6) If you could send a submitting filmmaker one special message, what would it be?

The goal of Vimeo Festival + Awards is to expose your film to a much wider audience. We welcome you to submit and we wish you all good luck!

(7) Anything else you want to add?

We’re just hoping that more filmmakers will submit so that more of them have a chance at all of these incredible opportunities in existing and new categories added for 2012.

————> Submit

2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards

Jeremy Boxer on Vimeo

Submit : : 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards

Seven Question Interview with Matt McCormick, Portland-based Filmmaker and Artist

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:36:45 +0000

Matt McCormick is an ardent filmmaker and artist who resides in Portland, Oregon. He is an eminent maker in the avant-garde and independent sphere of cinema — voted one of the best filmmakers of the 21st century, according to a poll conducted by the Film Society of the Lincoln Center — Matt found early success with his well-known short The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal (2002, narrated by Miranda July), which was named in ‘Top 10 / Best of 2002’ lists in both The Village Voice and Art Forum magazine.

Matt collaborates with notable artists; Matt makes music videos for recognized bands: Broken Bells, The Shins, Miranda July, Sleater-Kinney, The Postal Service, YACHT, Al Burian, Eluvium, Patton Oswalt, and Calvin Johnson, to name a few.

Matt McCormick has an aptitude for successfully distributing his films, whether it be D.I.Y. and starting his own distribution label (Peripheral Produce) and founding the PDX Film Festival, or simply just making great work and having it exhibit in a theatre, gallery, or festival.

“Matt has had three films screen at the Sundance Film Festival, and has had work screened or exhibited at MoMA, The Serpentine Gallery, The Oslo Museum of Modern Art, the Reykjavik Art Museum, The Seattle Art Museum, and in 2007 he was selected to participate in both the Moscow Biennial and Art Basil. He has received awards including Best Short Film from the San Francisco International Film Fest, Best Experimental from the New York Underground Film Fest, and Best Narrative from the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Matt’s debut feature film Some Days are Better Than Others premiered at SXSW and was invited to screen in the New Directors / New Films series presented by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Starring Carrie Brownstein and James Mercer, the film was acquired by Palisades Tartan and will be released theatrically in the spring of 2011.”

(1) During your early days of filmmaking, what were the challenges, and how did you surmount? What are the onerous aspects of the filmmaker’s journey?

I get the sense that the challenges never really cease. Even when I talk to my super successful filmmaker friends, I am always surprised to hear how difficult things can be. For me, the early challenges were as simple as getting access to equipment and finding venues that would screen my work. From there, the challenges largely became more internal — wanting to grow as an artist and make work that felt like a progression, or simply arranging your life so that the demands of filmmaking are not impeded on by other lifestyle choices. But I think the challenges are almost always there, from being frustrated because you want to make something, but lack the resources, to having made something, but being disappointed with how it turned out or was received. And then there is the whole “how am I going to make a living?” to boot. I think as a filmmaker, you just have to deal with it, and understand that there are challenges around every corner.

(2) You recently completed your first feature film, Some Days are Better Than Others (2010), which stars James Mercer and Carrie Brownstein, and premiered at the 2010 SXSW. Please tell us of the process of making your first feature film — all the toil, from conception to distribution.

It was a long haul. I began writing the screenplay as far back as 2003 or so and got really serious about it in 2006. It was a multi-step process that ping-ponged back and forth between purely creative challenges, such as writing and casting, to much more business like challenges, such as finding investors and creating a foundation upon which to make the film. I suppose my big ‘break’ with the project came when producers David Cress and Neil Kopp approached me about making the film. With those guys on board we started the argues process of fund raising, and then eventually casting and production. It was amazing how slow it all felt for the first several years and then the explosion of productivity once the funding was secured and we actually went into pre-production and production.

(3) Additionally, you recently completed your first feature-length documentary, The Great Northwest. How does creating a feature-length documentary film compare to making a feature-length narrative film?

I wouldn’t really call The Great Northwest a “feature length documentary.” It is much more of an artistic project or experimental documentary that just so happens to have a running time that falls within the ‘feature length’ range, but really it has more in common with my earlier films like Future So Bright and The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal. That said, creating The Great Northwest was about as opposite of an experience as I could imagine from making Some Days are Better than Others. With Some Days, while I was the writer and director, I was still part of a large team of filmmakers who were all pitching in to make the project. From the cinematographer to the producers to the actors to the editor, I had a great deal of help making the movie, and as a result was able to make something much larger than I could possibly do on my own. But while that larger group effort made several things possible, it could also be cumbersome. Simply put, a team effort needs organization, but then organization can often limit spontaneity.

With The Great Northwest it was the exact opposite. I literally made that film all by myself — from research to writing to camera work to editing — I was the entire crew list for that project. That obviously created a wide open door for spontaneity, but also clearly left me limited to what I could do with and in front of the camera — no grip truck to help with lighting or set up a fancy dolly move, no PAs to place extras exactly where I wanted them, and no producers creating schedules and contingency plans. There are aspects of working with a crew or by myself that I both love and hate, and while they are very different, I don’t necessarily prefer one over the other. There is great freedom while working alone, while working with a team can give you powerful options.

(4) What is your approach to distribution?

In terms of distribution, I approach each project differently. Some projects clearly need a more traditional approach to distribution, while others stand to benefit most by pursuing an alternative path. I am in a position where my films have to meet some level of financial re-coupment if I am going to be able to continue making them, so figuring out the best way to “get the work out there” while at the same time bringing in some revenue is vital. That said, I have now done just about everything from traditional theatrical-then-video release to limited edition releases sold through galleries.

(5) What is success?

A favorable or desired outcome, at least according to Merriam-Webster.

(6) What is the ultimate goal of the filmmaker?

That might be an impossible question. Keep making films? Have each film be better than the previous one? Feel like your making the world a better place? Be able to afford health insurance? I suppose those are some of my goals, but the reasons people become filmmakers are vast, so I don’t think you can pigeonhole filmmakers with a blanket goal or motivation.

(7) Churchill, Shakespeare, Bach, Bunuel — their quotes have survived the test of time — do you have an epic quote you wish to record? If so, please
share.

“Live every week like it’s Shark Week.”
— Tracy Morgan

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Matt McCormick’s Website

Matt McCormick on Vimeo

Some Days Are Better Than Others

Watch a clip from The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

The Great Northwest

Peripheral Produc

Experimental Film Achievements of the 21st Century: Avant-Garde Poll: Film Society of the Lincoln Center

Seven Question Interview with Rafaël Rozendaal, Netherlands Artist

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 16:47:06 +0000

http://www.muchbetterthanthis.com/ MUCH BETTER THAN THIS .COM BY RAFAEL ROZENDAAL – 2006 – WWW.NEWRAFAEL.COM

COLLECTION OF ALMAR AND MARGOT VAN DER KROGT

Viewing the art of Rafaël Rozendaal evokes a warm and curious feeling: he produces incredible work, featuring bold and beautiful graphic, thoughtful use of colour and eloquent animation, lifting the digital canvas to higher plane. Thinking of Rafaël Rozendaal gives me a warm feeling; I often think about Rafaël, and I picture him leading a well-rounded life, traveling, having fun, living free, having fun, and eating healthy.

Rozendaal is an artist from Amsterdaam, Netherlands, and he makes websites as art pieces, those pieces are sold with domain name, the work remains public, and the name of the collector is displayed in the title bar.
Rozendaal has lived in Amsterdam, Rio, Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo, Portland and Berlin. He lives and works in hotels. Some of his websites, including the wonderful Much Better Than This .com animation (top), appear in this interview as flash animation embeds. Rozendaal works with paper, too, sometimes translating his animated work to the off-set color print, and he also takes the black ink to the white paper, producing charming ink drawings available for purchase. Be sure to visit Rafaël’s website, newrafael.com. View his C/V here.

Mr. Rozendaal is the founder of B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Beamer): “BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer) is a series of one-night-exhibitions hosting artists and their projectors.”

Continue reading for seven questions with Mr. Rozendaal.

(1) Please abridge your career as an artist from age 20 – present.

Travel

As far as I can remember I have been traveling. I feel very calm in a moving vehicle, usually I fall asleep. I love sitting by the window and watching the world pass by. I get my best ideas in trains and planes. The last 10 years I have been exploring different cities like Paris LA Tokyo Berlin, hoping to find a permanent home. I still haven’t decided what the best place is. For now I like moving around.

(2) When and how did you learn flash and how do you pursue work with flash? What about the technical incompatibilities of flash?

I always liked vector images, for practical and conceptual reasons. Vectors are theoretical shapes, in theory they are absolutely perfect, but in reality the pixels of the screen or lines on paper can never really display a perfect circle. And even if that perfect circle existed somewhere, our imperfect eyes would not be able to register the perfection.

Every laptop and desktop in the world supports Flash. Apple’s mobile devices dont play Flash (yet), so I am releasing some pieces as apps. Luckily Android phones & tablets, Blackberry tablets, Nokia, Windows phones, Google TV, Nintendo Wii, all support Flash, so that’s a lot.

aesthetich echo .com exhibited in the NIMk media dome.

http://www.aestheticecho.com/ by Rafaël Rozendaal

(3) Please explain how and why you design websites as pieces of art for sale.

I don’t design websites, I make websites as an artist. This means I can do what I want without worrying about practical usage.

I make websites because I really enjoy it. For some reason my brain always has moving ideas, non-narrative, eternally moving images, and often interactive. The internet is a great place for those ideas. The web gives me a lot of freedom and audience, I enjoy both.

I sell the websites so I can make money to buy nice food.

(4) Tell us about B.Y.O.B..

BYOB is also about freedom! Projection is a very flexible medium. I created BYOB as a tool to enable people to make huge exhibitions with no budget. It is very simple:

Find a space, invite lots of artists, ask them to bring their projectors.

On www.byobworldwide.com/faq you can read how to make your ow. It is so much fun to do a BYOB! I was really surprised how easy it was to organize, and how much you get back, the energy is very rewarding.

(5) Some say energy is 70% of the work, and if you don’t have it, be nice. You have a specific Twitter account designated to tweeting what you eat. Do you see any correlation between food and producing good work? Your thoughts, please.

I love food so much. All day I think about food and I am always hungry. But I have to take it easy and eat healthy otherwise I become fat. I want to become 120 years old and they say being a bit hungry all the time is what keeps you healthy for a long time. For me, good ideas come when I am bored. Boredom is facing yourself, and this is a painful process, but I get a lot out of it.

http://www.aestheticecho.com/ by Rafaël Rozendaal

(6) What are you pursuing now, and how do you see the future?

I am thinking a lot about the future. I want to continue making non narrative moving images, but also it would be interesting to make a movie.

Mostly I want to make things that have an emotional impact, that is the key, I will keep trying different ways and that is the goal. I’m so happy when I work, especially if I feel like I made something beautiful.

http://www.papertoilet.com/ (spin the roll) PAPER TOILET .COM BY RAFAEL ROZENDAAL – 2006 – WWW.NEWRAFAEL.COM

COLLECTION OF SEBASTIEN DE GANAY – WWW.SEBASTIENDEGANAY.COM

(7) Please compare the world of avant-garde art to avant-garde film.

Let’s compare art to film, and leave out the world “avantgarde”.

Art is sold as unique objects, therefore high price, therefore old people as audience.

Film is for everyone. From young to old. Thats why I love the WWW, it is for everyone.

Cinema is very powerful, it becomes part of many people’s lives. The narrative can stir up many emotions and suck people in. Film can do a lot of things art rarely does. But sometimes, art can do things film can not. Those weird moments when void and boredom clash with beauty and melancholy.

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More:

RR’ Portfolio:newrafael.com.

RR’sC/V

B.Y.O.B(Bring Your Own Beamer)

7 Question Interview with Petra Cortright

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 10:05:06 +0000

Petra Cortright is a traveler, an internet artist who currently resides in California, whose work plies the territory of webcam performance, computer graphics and graphic art, animated .gifs, the webcam music video, other sortings of media that are bejeweled with web gems, and other videos that artfully hype the youtube-dance-video come what may.

Petra Cortright was born in 1986, in Santa Barbara, California, and has has resided in New York City, New York; Portland, Oregon; Toyko, Japan; and Berlin, Germany. She is a member of the Nasty Nets Internet Surfing Club, Loshadka Internet Surfing Club, and Computers Club. She has studied at Parsons School of Design in New York and California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Click here for Petra’s C/V and bio.

Her work has made its way ‘cross the interview and o’er the international scene, including the New Museum in New York, the Venice Biennale, Adbusters Magazine (Nov/Dec ’08 issue), the sixth annual Stan Brakhage Symposium (2010, Film Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder), the (now defunct) New York Underground Film Festival, and her Endless Pot of Gold CD-Rs installation (Nasty Nets collaboration) piece exhibited at the 2009 Sundance International Film Festival.

Petra and her work makes the internet splash, with her work snagging brickbats and inciting plaudits. In August 2007, Petra’s work stirred some dirt with a puzzled Patty Johnson, artfagcity.com founder and veteran art-blogger:

Four days ago Tom Moody posted Petra Cortright’s webcam video and since then I’ve been struggling to articulate why the aesthetics of this piece of [sic] go beyond taking a few clip images from the web and slapping them on a video. Unlike a David Shrigley piece, which uses humor so obvious its value requires no explanation, a cam featuring a still figure, dancing pizzas, and falling snow to an electronic beat may require a little more discussion.

…………………………………………………………………………….

Probably the most amusing aspect of this work lies in the fact that it’s basically a documentation of a live performance, in which you watch someone concentrate on their computer screen for the duration of a song. I realize this comment tends to incite a host of responses most of which begin something to the effect of “So why am I looking at this?”, and while there’s no response to this if you don’t find the redundancies of web surfing that so many net artists like to highlight funny, there’s also a level of virtuosity in the live arrangement of gifs etc, that needs to be called to attention.

Patty seemingly warmed to Petra’s internet work with an near-end conclusion of, “Cortright’s webcam piece succeeds because her dancing pizzas are unexpected, and the snow and lightening seem almost delicately placed.”

Petra’s work speaks for itself, and Patty of artfagcity makes a peppery bullet point: love-it-or-hate-it, multiple viewing explicate. Her work verily is an internet new-media culture thing. Below is a seven question interview with Petra Cortright.

sparkling (2010)

(1) What corner of the Internet do you call home?
gmail/gchat/gtalk since i live in an “isolated” place so its where i talk to all my friends. fb/fb chat doesn’t feel very solid. the fb chat format is annoying and i really dislike being sent actual information in a fb message — i always forget to reply because they get buried so fast under some type of event invite messages

SYSTEM-LANDSCAPES-2007

" src="http://dinca.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/SYSTEM-LANDSCAPES-2007.gif" alt="" width="468" height="391" />

SYSTEM-LANDSCAPES-2007

(2) What is your inspiration soup?
bored + energy + my room is clean + NONJUDGMENTAL STANCE + WISE MIND

glow-drawings-2006

(3) What is your recipe for disaster?
living in filth & feeling lost

footvball /faerie (2009)

(4) How do you wish to expand your work, aesthetically, conceptually, and technically?
aesthetics come without thinking, “conceptually” is something i avoid, sincerity has greater value to me, technically trying to be better about not becoming nervous / intimidated / second guessing myself with commissioned work.

(5) Select an image of your liking and write a 7-line dadaist poem. (However you may interpret a Dadaist poem).
i wrote in 2007 inspired by the meeting of largest dog in the world with the smallest dog in the world:

TWO EYEEZ GOIN IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
ONE TOWARDS THE SUUUNNN
N ONE TOWARDS THE MOOONNN

YOU WERE BORN
KNOWIN A SECRETTTT
THE SECRETT TO LIFE
BUT UR NOT GONNNA TELL US
YOU WILL NEVVERR TELL USS
YOU WILL DIE WITH THE SECRETT

TWO EYEEZ GOIN IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
ONE TOWARDS THE SUUUNNN
N ONE TOWARDS THE MOOONNN

N IM PRAYING 2 U
CUZ GOD MUSTA MADE U
UR GOD URSELFFF
SOME SAY ITS TRUEE

TWO EYEEZ GOIN IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
ONE TOWARDS THE SUUUNNN
N ONE TOWARDS THE MOOONNN

THE KNOWLEDGE U HAD
UR KEEPING IT INSIDE
INSIDE YOUR BRAIN
ITS THERE IN YOUR GAZE
BUT ITS LEAKKING OUT
ITS FLOWIN OUT OF YOUR PIGTAILS
IT ONLY LOOKS LIKE U GOT EM
U DONT REALLY HAVE EM
BUT YOUR HAIRS
JUST SO LOOONG

TWO EYEEZ GOIN IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
ONE TOWARDS THE SUUUNNN
N ONE TOWARDS THE MOOONNN

Oh my God how we.. Increase. Oh my God, how we rise., 2010

(6) Your opinion: vimeo vs. youtube: your opinion, please expound.
youtube because always more comments/discussion and people get really real with hate/like and dont hold back. vimeo is like flickr where there are not many comments and the comments are always positive. its more interesting to hear about how much people hate what you do and also more fun to repsond back with rude goofy threat then thank the peasant for the +1 view

(7) Seven irrelevant questions:

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(A) Your favorite action movie.
lara croft 4-ever

(B) What is the best film you have seen this year of 2010?
“the comfort of strangers” it was made in 1990. so fucking creepy. i aven’t seen any movies in theatres actually now that i think of it. this year i mean. i like the harry potters i guess that is my answer for something released 2010.

(C) What are your top 5 Kraftwerk songs (in order of preference, if possible)?
the modell song

(D) What two colors look best together?
black n white, i always have a thing for “defaults”

(E) What type of ‘creative stuff’ is most boring?
something that requires an essay to understand or something that is made just claim it because nobody has made it yet / ”art sport”

this work serves a purpose and i do not think it is bad per se i just personally donnt connect the way as i do with something that feels strong to me in aesthetics

(F) What is your #1 favorite website?
unnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnghthist question. google images probably??

(G) What type of animal do you think of when you hear the word ‘DINCA.’
something sly and pointy, long haired, squinty
criminal by nature goofy @ heart

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Petra Cortright Youtube Channel

portfolio: petracortright.com

“Petra Cortright’s Webcam Video,” artfagcity.com, 2007

computersclub.org

Nasty Nets Internet Surfing Club

Loshadka Internet Surfing Club

7 Question Interview with Duncan Malashock, Brooklyn-based Artist and Filmmaker

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 04:00:31 +0000

Duncan Malashock is a Brooklyn-based artist and filmmaker whose work we have featured before — that being his 2006 piece, Road, and Pyramid (2008). His work was featured in the recent REFRESH exhibit at the AXIOM Center for New and Experimental Media. Duncan makes “analog videos that are concerned with the history of creative technology.” He also makes interactive websites and recently started making sculptural pieces using projections. Duncan was born 1982, San Diego, southern California, and graduated Bard College 2005, BA Integrated Arts.

(1) What do you make and what aesthetics do you pursue?
I’m interested in our relationship with technology, specifically within the context of the Internet as a day-to-day activity, and in light of the history of the use of technology as a way of representing ideals. I make analog videos that are concerned with the history of creative technology, and in exploring what I understand as the ideals of early computer art. I also make interactive websites as public artwork, and that work emphasizes exploring interaction and simulations as their own media. Lately I’ve also started making sculptural pieces using projections, either from laser light or digital projector, which explore both of these sets of ideas, with a focus on the interaction between the ”immaterial” content and physical spaces and objects.

Temple
Digital video, 2009

(2) Your thirst for inspiration: what is something you love, but can not get enough of? Does your thirst for this inspire and guide your art; how does your work correspond with its influences?
I think most of my interests come from my background. I’m from Southern California, so that’s probably why I’m obsessed with ideas like self-created identity, lifestyle marketing, and the possibilities of technology, our understanding of which has largely been shaped by the Californian intersection of phenomena like the Human Potential Movement and Silicon Valley. My dad is a modern dance choreographer, so that’s probably why I’m interested in the expressive qualities of motion and physical performance, both of which are involved a lot, both actively and latently in my work. Simulations come up a lot in my work as a way of exploring these interests. Sometimes an interactive or static simulation of an object or process will form the basis for a new piece. I’m always reading when I’m working on something, and often times that manifests itself in the form of subjects or titles for pieces.

Group Drawing
Digital video, 2010

(3) How do you use your hands to make stuff; how do you use your
computer to make stuff?
A lot of my work is made with systems or simulations, either by using or creating very rigid systems and attempting to be expressive within their constraints, or attempting to create interactive systems which respond expressively to a user’s actions. So the nature of a lot of the work is either in controlling parameters, usually by changing numbers by very small amounts, or interacting expressively with an interface, usually by dragging the mouse around.

http://www.pilewithpedestal.com
Animated interactive website in domain name, 2010

(4) Art and work; the work in art; the process of creating: what
parts of the process are laborious?
Sometimes a website piece will involve weeks of writing and debugging code; other times I’ll steal someone else’s code and change something minor. Sometimes I’ll work on a system for making work within, which may end up taking months to do, and the pieces I make using it will take a few hours or minutes to finish. Sometimes I’ll work with a very specific end result in mind, but at the last minute I’ll make a mistake and like it, and that will be what finishes the piece. The nature of the actual work involved goes back and forth between the head and hands; when it’s not architectural or design-oriented, it’s very physical and direct.

http://www.letsmakesureeverythingisathing.com
Animated interactive website in domain name, 2010

(5) How do you wish to expand your work?
I started publicly interactive artwork on the Internet to make my work more accessible, but as I kept using it I started to appreciate the Internet as its own context, one with very interesting and problematic qualities, not only where presentation and distribution of artwork is concerned, but also with regard to the social aspect of making work online. How is culture evaluated after the Internet? How can an Internet-based artwork be shown effectively within a gallery setting? What is the nature of online work as a commodity? What is the nature of the online art “community”? All of these questions contain directions for expanding work that are all very interesting to me.

Computer-Generated Ballet by Michael Noll, 1963

(6) Is the internet really cool, or cool?
The Internet’s great. I used to be the only artsy computer geek I knew; now I’m a part of multiple groups of them. The Internet as an explosion of points of view seems like just what we needed to put the whole postmodern revolution into the global perspective it was asking for; but now what concerns me is the task of balancing all that cultural material with traditions, and not letting the speed of information obscure our history.

Always Time to Chill Forever by Duncan Malashock

(7) Is there something new you wish to pursue?
I started a project called chat.duncanmalashock.com, which is a kind of library of online chat transcripts as art writing. I think there are a lot of possibilities that open up when people become casual with their ideas and how they present them, and it was also about getting more involved with people in the online artwork community. My experiences with in online artwork got me interested in pursuing the possibilities of continuity in that group, possibilities which are difficult to achieve given how quickly information is consumed and replaced online. I’m interested in how that stream of information can transform into a culture, one that is perhaps more stable and aware of its history and community.

//////////////////////////////
 _______ _______ _______
|\     /|\     /|\     /|
| +---+ | +---+ | +---+ |
| |   | | |   | | |   | |
| |E  | | |N  | | |D  | |
| +---+ | +---+ | +---+ |
|/_____\|/_____\|/_____\|
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More:

Duncan Malashock Portfolio/website

Duncan Malashock on vimeo

chat.duncanmalashock.com

AXIOM Center for New and Experimental Media

7 Question Interview with Ben Russell, Chicago-based Artist

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 07:38:02 +0000

Ben Russell is a Chicago-based filmmaker, artist, art instructor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, curator, and a great keynote speaker. Perhaps he may be considered a terminologist, for he seemingly has coined the term/genre “psychedelic ethnography,” judging by his writings and recent inspiring lecture at the MCA.

Mr. Russell’s recent three-hour ethnography Let Each One Go Where He May (2009) won a FIPRESCI award at the 2010 International Film Festival Rotterdam. It is a pioneering film in the ethnographic sphere of cinema: an experimental ethnographic film “shot almost entirely with a 16mm Steadicam rig in thirteen extended shots of nearly ten minutes each.”

In the past, Ben developed stimulating relationship with east-coast-Providence-Baltimore-area noise/punk/underground music scene, whence Black Dice was a hardcore band, a period whence he documented the live-event of a Lightning Bolt concert, slow-motion live-action action that is Mr. Russell’s first documentary/ethnographic film, Black and White Trypps Number Three.

In this interview, Ben talks about how he made an underwater remake of the 1991 cinematic classic, Boyz n the Hood.

Trypps #5 (Dubai), (3 min, 16mm, color, silent, 2008)

(1) HEADS AND TAILS (as a metaphor for your filmmaking career): what are your words on: the heads/leader (your start), where you are now, and your tails (however you interpret tails).

HEADS:

I ran away from home when I was six or seven because my parents wouldn’t let me watch Superman on TV; Aliens (1986) was my first R-Rated movie; I had nightmares for weeks from overhearing the sountrack to The Shining (1980). I grew up in the suburbs of Southern California where I got to watch five hours of television a week and would spend my weekends in triple features at the Mission Viejo Mall. I remember watching everything I could, liking all of it. I played Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981) and sometimes Dune in my backyard, made out with a girl named Kim during the credits of Neverending Story 2, made an underwater video remake of Boyz N Tha Hood at summer camp. I don’t remember watching foreign films or documentaries, or at least I didn’t search ‘em out – MTV [i.e. "I want my MTV"] and Max Headroom (1987–1988) and TWIN PEAKS were the bits of media that really blew my mind. “Welcome to the Jungle” totally freaked me out – that image of Axl Rose screaming in an electric chair = proof of image-power.

I went to college to make art and be a marine biologist. I made emotionally fraught photographs of my first girlfriend, lived in Australia for a year and learned about Flaherty, ethnography, Foucault, and conceptual art. I studied with an anthropologist whose research was on Easter Island, I went to Papua New Guinea for 50 minutes, and some time later I returned to Providence, USA, where I made videos under Gregg Bordowitz’s watch and three 16mm films under Leslie Thornton’s quiet stare. Public art, falling asleep during Dead Man (1994), wheatposting, video installation with bark chips, BADLANDS projected in the Fort Thunder parking lot, Wend Kuuni (1992) and cinema-time, Black Dice as a hardcore band. Time passed and I traded Providence for Suriname – two years in the Peace Corps, the only movies I saw in the Paramaribo theater were out-of-focus (Saving Private Ryan, 1998) or burning in the gate (70s GERMAN PORN). Those theaters later became churches, then casinos. I lived in a jungle village, learned an obscure language, wrote a letter a day on a missionary’s typewriter, shot three rolls of super-8 and decided to be a poet.

TAILS:

After grad school, after jungle surrealist films and pinhole films and slow-mo old-timey films and video voice-overs and synch-sound films I moved back to Providence, I got dark and lonesome. Cinema became inert so I tried to find a way out of it, realized that I’d been circling around non-fiction like some dumb buzzard, decided to land and sink my talons into the body that had always clearly been there. Prior to that moment, I’d made images of worlds that were somehow somewhere else – to the left of this one, I used to say. I don’t know if it was heartache or age or that damp Northeastern air, but I suddenly developed a taste for the present that hasn’t left me since. All of those early cinema re-enactments and collaborative ethnographies, the later Trypps and my recent feature [Let Each One Go Where He May (2009)], these are all about addressing the now in a meaningful way. I’m entered into a contract with the present for the sake of the future – however long it may take to roll out.

The Quarry, 2002, 16mm, color, silent, 2002

(2) You teach at UIC. How often do you teach, what courses, how fun, and how (in what ways) challenging?

It’s true – I’ve been there since 2006, been in a classroom since 2003. It seems to be a decent way to find the time and money to make work in parallel, although I’ve of course been really lucky to end up where I am, to have the job that I do. My colleagues are all active, engaged, and prolific artists and I feel privileged to be in their mix. I teach two classes a week, four courses a year – right now it’s 16mm Production: the Portrait and Interdicisiplinary Seminar 1: Contemporary Theory Since 1985, next semester it’ll be Moving Image Topics: The Remake and Psychedelic Ethnography etc etc. UIC has a robust MFA program, so there’s a bit of advising thrown in for good measure, along with challenging critiques and the like. While I never feel like I’m prepared enough and all of that one-sided social interaction can be totally exhausting, it’s still pretty great – at least I enjoy teaching and have a passable stand-up routine for my students. The best part is that I’m still getting smarter by dint of my conversations with the artists that make up our MFA program. I could never really speak cogently about the plastic arts before I started at UIC, but I sure can talk the shit out of ‘em now.

The Quarry (2002)

(3) You often use 16mm film. What are your thoughts on film; what are your thoughts on video? What are the provisions for film/video on a project?

Film’s great and video’s great but they’ve both got different economies, histories, and aesthetics. I tend to work in film more than video because I’m getting less and less interested in post-production (I suspect it has a lot to do with not wanting to spend any more of my life in front of a computer screen), and it still seems like that’s where the real possibilities of video lie. I like the restrictions that the cost and materiality of film place on me – I make better decisions when I have structures to butt up against, and the durational concerns that a 100’ or 400’ roll of film presents are really different than what a 60:00 miniDV tape of a solid-state recorder propose. I started using video in 1996 (or so) and have been working with film since 1998, but I still don’t really feel like I understand what video is or how it works. The mechanics of film cameras and projectors, the chemistry of emulsion and developer, the nature of light and reflection – those seem pretty transparent to me, and there’s a real physicality to cinema that I can wrap my head around. This just isn’t the case with video, and I’ve consequently developed more of an affinity to cinema.

As a viewer, I’m totally invested in the cinema experience as well — the projected image, writ large on that silver screen — I don’t watch much television and rarely see movies at home; I find the combination of the social and the spectacular that a theater provides to be one of the most fulfilling experiences I can ask for.

Let Each One Go Where He May (EXCERPT) from Ben Russell

Having said as much, while my first impulse is to choose film over video, as a good conceptual artist there are all sorts of hoops that I force myself to jump through before I settle on one form or the other. Both mediums do radically different things to their subjects, and it is this factor, this notion of what the subject is and how it is going to be presented, that is usually the selling point. By way of example: I was in Mali for a month over the summer making video portraits of Dogon animist “magicians,” and I chose video over film because I wanted these men and women to be as firmly entrenched in the present-that-video-connotes as possible. Video doesn’t age well, whereas film has gone more or less unchanged for the last century – this means that my video image will, at some point in the not-so-far-off, serve as a temporal index for the moment when I captured the semblance of these magicians. Lensed through a 16mm camera, they would’ve been made “cinematic” – removed from time, placed in atmosphere circling somewhere above the present. Of course, I made the opposite decision with Let Each One Go Where He May for that very reason – to mythologize my subjects, however minutely.

Ben Russell with a miniature film slate

(4) You are a Chicago filmmaker. When you hear “Chicago film,” what does that recall?

If I have to be anything at this point in time then I’d prefer to be a “Chicago-based artist” – terms certainly have their uses, but “filmmaker” both limits the conversation and privileges one way of working over all of the other approaches that I employ (video, installation, curation, photography, performance).

As for CHICAGO FILM, it’s getting harder and harder to imagine geography as any kind of a determinant for a style or school of artmaking. The increasingly global nature of media + the relative nomadism of the American population means that borders are pretty tough to pin down. What the phrase CHICAGO FILM does conjure up is a surprisingly rosy image of a super-supportive community of makers, exhibitors, and venues. It’s a great town to make images and sounds in, to be sure, and right now feels like a pretty brilliant moment for such things.

Trypps #7 (Badlands), 10 min, 16mm, color, sound, 2010

(5) Your Trypps series: what was the evolution of this series, project-to-project, 1-7?

I’d just moved back to Providence and was feeling really stuck in this long film about Billy the Kid that I’d shot in Gary, IN, just prior to leaving Chicago. There wasn’t much in the way of experimental film in Providence, so I ended up going to noise shows about four or five times a week, started thinking about how to make what was happening to my body in those spaces take place in the zone of cinema. It seemed too easy to use sound at first, so BWT#1 and BWT#2 were silent. I made both of ‘em pretty quickly as well – initially just to have footage to project for a show in NYC that I was sharing with Joe Grimm and filmmaker Jonathan Schwartz. I screened the footage while Joe was performing, used some of it and shot some more, remember being really excited when I got the rushes back from BWT#2 and felt my body react to the footage by moving towards it… That was the sort of thing I was after, but those first two films felt too modernist, too acritical, and it ultimately made sense to make BWT#3 at a Lightning Bolt show since that was the reason for the series in the first place.

With BWT#3, I felt like it wasn’t enough to just film the concert, that if I did whatever I came up with would just be a lesser version of what the live experience was. I needed to produce something else, to let the film be an experience in of itself – that’s where the slow-motion came into play, the drone that went with it. That film is almost entirely in-camera, and it’s the first instance where I felt like everything happened exactly as I wanted it to, although of course I only set the stage for bits and pieces of it to occur. Significantly, that film marked the first time that I shot footage of the world-in-the-present, something that I’d been avoiding since I first started out.

BWT#4 was initially intended as an apology for the “avant-garde” aesthetics and sensibilities of BWT#1 and BWT#2. I didn’t feel like either of those films were very representative of my interests or abilities as an artist, and I was a bit embarassed that they were both getting play and winning awards around and about. I think they’re fine films, they’re just not what I’m after or about. Anyway – BWT#4 was meant to be a play on words – it’s in four sections, it’s in black and white, it features a black comedian telling jokes about black and white people, and the main character trips (or trypps) during the course of the film. I’d had the footage, 16mm picture slug of Richard Pryor’s 1979 LIVE IN CONCERT, for a few years, and it seemed like the right time to use it – I figured that by making hi-con contact prints of the original footage and then mirroring them in multiple directions, I could make something totally apeshit to watch. I didn’t anticipate the optical effects that would ensue (retinal afterimages! Purplegreenred!) and it wasn’t until I started working with the original sound that I realized how heavy Richard Pryor’s monologue was. The film stopped being an apology and became an attempt to force a critical conversation between race, representation, and experimental cinema.

Black and White Trypps Number Four from Ben Russell on Vimeo.

After all of that hand-processing and contact printing, I was a bit shocked to find TRYPPS #5 (DUBAI) just waiting for me out there in the world. It presented itself to me while I was recording sound on a project in Dubai, and I wasn’t sure for a while afterwards whether or not it was actually a film. Turns out it was – the combination of candy-neon flicker and inquiry into global capital was all it needed. Although that film is technically silent, the beats produced through onscreen movement place it well within the lineage of the other sound films in the series.

I shot TRYPPS #6 (MALOBI) while making LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY, and while it does exist in a slightly shorter incarnation in the latter film, I do think of it as a film in its own right. I decided to release it into the world with this understanding – my onscren presence with the slate at the beginning of the film not only rhymes with the beginning of BWT#3 (as does the ending, with the flash/photographer), but it foregrounds the essential question of how much is construction and how much is actuality. This doesn’t happen within the context of the feature, or if it does, it transpires in a very different fashion. TRYPPS #6 (MALOBI) makes a great deal of sense within the series, pointing as it does to the function of trance and ritual (á la Jean Rouch), the ethnographic, and the ecstatic. It felt like a great partner to BWT#3 in particular, and I do like that the time of this film is undeniably the same time as the films that preceded it – this is all happening now, in the world.

Like BWT#4, TRYPPS #7 (BADLANDS) was meant to top off the series – we’ll see if that happens or not. This is the first piece that I’ve made specifically for a video installation, and while it’ll soon enough have a life as a single-channel film, I’m presently unsure as to what will be lost/gained when Space and Repetition are taken away, when it becomes a 10:00 film. As it stands, the film is still a bit new for me and I’m unsure as to how/what to talk about it, save that it’s another great instance of serendipity determining the course of events within the frame that I’d established. I initially tried and rather magnificently failed to be the figure onscreen – those cliffside Badlands elements conspired against me, or actually with me, as the end result is much better than any I could’ve imagined…

There’s an ongoing conversation about the function of trance throughout the TRYPPS series, and since the specter of drug use hovers over the secular instances of trance, TRYPPS #7 (BADLANDS) seemed like the right moment to address this topic directly. Ever since seeing FUNERAL PROCESSION OF ROSES, I’ve wanted to make a portrait of someone in an altered state; cinema always seemed like too radical of an imposition however, and it took a really specific failure for me to allow myself to make the seventh film in this series. As was the case with BWT#3, I’m not at all interested in producing a record of experience – the idea of making a record of something so radically subjective and internal (an acid trip) is preposterous. The turns that the film ends up taking are reflective of my attempt to produce a cinema that operates on its own terms, that produces its own experience, that can function as a site of transcendence unto itself.

(6) You are a curator. Tell us more.

After soaking up as much cinema as I could in grad school, my move to Providence intitially felt like some sort of sad desert migration. The kind of critical engagement that I was used to was lacking (although it was happening in other cultural zones – music, in particular), and it seemed that the only way it was going to happen was if I made it materialize. In February of 2004 I started MAGIC LANTERN, a tri-weekly screening series of thematically-curated film and video works, complete with beautiful silkscreened posters and vintage thank-you postcards for all participants. I’d come across a lot of difficult-and-joyless avant-garde film screenings during the years prior, and it was really important for me to find a way to frame works I totally cared about within a context that was neither pandering/populist or exclusive and soul-sucking. Organizing programs according to theme (as opposed to by maker, geography, or time period) made the most sense, and I did this for 20+ shows before trading Providence for Chicago again. I’ve been following a similar approach ever since – I mostly curate film/video programs in relation to gallery exhibits at Gallery400; the shows are related to whatever is up, and I screen the programs in the gallery space in an effort to physically bridge the gap between contemporary art and experimental media.

After a few years of doing programs like this, I had my first solo show and suddenly realized that my curatorial approach was a mirror to my practice – stylistically all-over-the-place but conceptually coherent. I’ve since come to see it as an important piece of my practice on the whole – it serves as a vehicle for sorting out my relationship to the world, to art, to media and vice versa.

Last year I started a gallery space in my apartment called BEN RUSSELL with fellow artist-curator Brandon Alvendia. There wasn’t much money to support the sort of film/video curating I’d been doing in Providence (where I was funded by Brown University and state arts grants) and I felt quite comfortable in what I could do with it, so I decided to move into terrain that I was more uncertain about, a space that truthfully kind of freaked me out. Brandon and I made a set of rules and restrictions about how we would exhibit work, decided to have 5-person group shows with each classically-defined “medium” represented, and determined that we’d use the letters from “ben russell” to determine the themes. We’ve had 8 shows since we started – BEER, BLUENESS, and LESSEN were the best of the lot.

Let Each One Go Where He May, 135 min, 16mm, color, sound, 2009

(7) Seven irrelevant questions:

(A) Do you own a laserdisc player and laserdiscs?

Nope, but when I was in high school I babysat for a family who had CONAN on laserdisc, and I would watch it once the kids were asleep. Would’ve been better to just watch that disc spinning, probably.

(B) What two colors look best together?

Blue + Orange

(C) Name something you hate; name something you love.

Headaches! Always my right eyeball getting stabbed through the back. Optical illusions.

(D) What is your favorite Hollywood action movie?

ALIENS.

(E) What is your favorite alcoholic beverage?

Whisky – on the rocks, as an Old-Fashioned, or styled after the Manhattans my father drinks nightly.

(F) Write seven words on Falco’s “Rock me Amadeus.”

Amadeus Amadeus Oh Oh Oh Oh Amadeus

(G) What have you been listening to lately?

ZZ Pot, Lil Wayne’s NO CEILINGS mixtape, Ministry (only for about 5 songs, though), Lichens, and a Nigerian psych rock compilation from the 70s. Just placed an order for NO MAS by Javelin, an amazing South African Shangaan electro compilation, Major Lazer, and three albums worth of field recordings from Sublime Frequencies. I also just downloaded the new Gucci Mane mixtape, but it’s too bad to be any good.

//////////////////////////////

 _______ _______ _______
|\     /|\     /|\     /|
| +---+ | +---+ | +---+ |
| |   | | |   | | |   | |
| |E  | | |N  | | |D  | |
| +---+ | +---+ | +---+ |
|/_____\|/_____\|/_____\|

//////////////////////////////

More:

Ben Russell’s Website

Ben Russell on Vimeo

Ben Russell’s Gallery

Magic Latern Cinema

Let Each One Go Where He May on Cinema Scope

Studio Visit with Lewis Khlar, Los Angeles-based Filmmaker

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 03:59:52 +0000

Studio Visit with Filmmaker Lewis Klahr from Wexner Center on Vimeo.

Earlier this year, the Wexner Center visited the Los Angeles-based studio of award-winning animator, Lewis Klhar.

Klhar works with found footage: found still images, to be accurate. He culls and clips images from old magazines, books, printings, and so forth. He uses other inanimate materials as well. Most of his imagery looks like it originated from Don Draper’s (Mad Men) creative team, i.e., Klhar mostly uses advertisements from the 1950s–’60s.

Klhar considers himself a re-animator. Looking at Klhar’s studio, it’s apparent that Klhar is a pack-rat, and looking at his breadth of work, it’s evident that Klhar is a fecund pack-rat. Studio visits are fun to watch.

During this video-visit, Klhar was working on his film Wednesday Morning Two A.M.; Wednesday Morning journied-on to the 2010 International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it won a Tiger Award for Short Film.

April Snow, Klhar’s latest, will screen at the 2010 NYFF Views from the Avant-Garde as part of the Séance Programme, Sunday OCT 3 2010.

Audio Interview: Robert Breer Interviewed by Charles Levine, July 1970

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:35:04 +0000

(7″ IPS; 1/4″ REEL-7″; 00:45:46)

Found via Anthology Film Archives / UbuWeb

Filmmaker Charles Levine interviews animator/artist Robert Breer at his home in Palisades, New York. They cover Breer’s transition from painting to film, his years spent in Paris, neo-plastic painting, W.K.L. Dickson’s Mutoscope, image and sound composition, modes of exhibition, audience impact and the conventions of cinema.

Video Interview: Peter Hutton, Robert Gardner, the Screening Room (1977)

Andrew Rosinski — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 18:10:48 +0000

Peter Hutton (At Sea, 2007, Skagafjordur, 2003, Looking at the Sea, 2001), an eminent experimental filmmaker from Michigan, visited the Screening Room Series, in March 1977, to screen excerpts from his films and discuss his experiences with filmmaking and education; Hutton is interviewed by Robert Gardner. Gardner is a eminent visual anthropologist who is widely known for his 1965 ethnographic film, Dead Birds (1965). Throughout the years, Dead Birds has functioned as essential referential material and a common case study in the world of anthrology, visual anthropology, and ethnographic filmmaking. Dead Birds in referenced in essential ethnographic readings, including Karl Heider’s book, Ethnographic Film, and Jay Ruby’s book, Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology. (Click here to visit Gardner’s website.)

Gardner developed and hosted The Screening Room, and the program ran from 1972–1981. The Boston-based program offered independent filmmakers an opportunity to screen and discuss their work on a commercial (ABC-TV) affiliate station. Gardner interviews the filmmakers in a minimal-intellectualist setting that’s somewhat comparable to the aesthetics of the Charlie Rose show. The Screening Room also featured filmmakers Robert Breer, John Whitney SR, Jean Rouch, Jonas Menkas, Bruce Baillie, Jan Lenica, John and Faith Hubley, Emile DeAntonio, Ricky Leacock, Yvonne Rainer and Michael Snow, and other notables.

In this interview, excerpts from Hutton’s films include: July ’71 in San Francisco (1973), Images of Asian Music (1973-1974), Florence (1975), New York Near Sleep for Saskia (1972), and footage from New York Portrait: Chapter One (1978–1979). (Click here to view Peter Hutton’s filmography.)

The featured video above is only an 11 minute excerpt; the original episode ran 72 minutes, and is available as a digital download, rental or purchase, from the Documentary Educational Resources website. Enjoy!

Five Question Interview with Blake Whitman, Vimeo Founder

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:47:24 +0000

I recently interviewed the founder of vimeo, Blake Whitman, for Inspired Magazine, a daily selection of graphic design and web design inspiration. We briefly discussed the current the 2010 Vimeo Film Festival and Awards.

Click here to read the five question interview.

Seven Question Interview with Will Reed, Brooklyn-Based Painter

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:27:47 +0000

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.

(2) What do you paint?

My painting language encompasses a broad subject matter. I paint often time exclusively from life. I love painting fellow humans. I also think painting the animals that we share our world with is meaningful subject matter as well. I also spend a great deal of time painting outdoor and interior spaces directly from life too. But, many people would probably say that my synthetic work, that is work derived from memories or imagination, might be the most powerful and original. These paintings/drawings are reflections on my past, on the current world, and on the realm of nightmares and what many might consider the macabre or terrifying. In these works I feel that the Freudian idea of “Thanatos” and to a lesser extent the idea of “Eros” is paramount.

(3) Are certain things better left unpainted?

I feel that almost anything can and has been painted. Is it well done and meaningful, probably not. I love the ambition and fearlessness that it takes to paint the figure today. It is such a hard subject to paint. You get to realistic and it slips into stale academism, too flagrantly sexual and your looking at soft core porn, and too sweet and its just sentimental. This is why for me the figure is really the make or break motif for me. Can I do it right now? I don’t think I am capable, but I will continue. Failing makes me a better painter. So, returning to the question I think some things are tremendously difficult to paint. But that doesn’t mean they’re better left unpainted.

(4) What is your inspiration soup?

Wow, that’s a tough one. Obviously the history of painting. My favorite paintings and painters changes from month to month. Right now I would say Giotto, Paulo Ucello, Titian, El Greco, Goya, Degas, Bonnard, Ceazanne, Seurat, A.P. Ryder, Edwin Dickinson, Euan Uglow, and Antonio Lopez Garcia are the painters that make the list. Within that group I take a little from each painter and try to synthesize it with my own language. And if you know those painters that group begins in the late 1300′s and continue into today. I pay attention to what my contemporaries are doing, I enjoy the Leipzig painters and there are some young painters here in the US I look at it, but I feel like I have a lot to learn from the past masters.

In terms of influences outside of painting well that is whole other story. I am deeply influenced by film and literature/poetry and too a lesser extent by music. I am in an intense period of watching the films of Andrei Tarkovsky- late Russian filmmaker active from the 60′s until 1988 when he died. The harmony of beautiful imagery, the history of all art, personal narrative, and craft all speak to me in his work. For me, Tarkovsky stand with the great masters of painting. His images transcend temporality and specificity, yet at the the same time they have such a unique personal language and history to them and that is similar to how I want my work to function.

I watch Hitchcock on repeat as well. The films of Michelangelo Antonioni have impacted my drawing as well and recently the high drama of Bela Tarr has influenced some of my images.

In terms of literature, well I feel as though we live in dark times and really for me no one is darker than Dostoevsky, so I don’t buy too many new books I just re-read all of his (I own all his works). Its an extreme examination of the human condition and you don’t get much serious than that. Plus, he just takes you into the gloom, that dark tonal gloom of dark earth colors and cold greys, at least that what sort of color his stories emit for me. For a very long time I loved the works of William Faulkner, I even spent a great deal of my MFA thesis writing about Faulkner. A critic once asked me who I read while I was working on a specific body of paintings, I replied Faulkner and he said, “It figures, you’re a southern gothic” — I was very complimented, obviously.

Faulkner has that same sense of time and place as Tarkovsky, but yet the imagery functions on a universal level.

Music wise, well Johnny Cash is always playing in the studio. But recently I have been addicted to Daniel Johnston and Elliot Smith, obviously for their darkness. But I thoroughly enjoy listening to Bach, Beethoven, and Rachmaninoff as well. I hope that is a rich enough soup for you!!

(5) Your work very much pulls focus on the relationship of man and animal; man and nature. Over the last few years, the public has gradually become aware of the existence of a new cause: animal liberation. DINCA believes that animals and all creatures are absolute equals to the human.

What are your thoughts?

I think I could return to an earlier answer. Those cave people, the very first imagists, what were they drawing and painting? The animals around which they structured their existence.

For me, animals are amazing things, they are magical if you will. It is a wonderful thing when you realize the sentience of animals. I feel like I did at an early age because it was something my mother instilled in me.

From my first memories as a child I can remember being with dogs. They have always been my friends, and more often than not the most loyal ones. But, though my work focuses almost exclusively on dogs, I believe most all creatures have this magic about them. I know “magic” seems cheesy or too whimsical but I mean really if you’re in the “know” how else do you describe this? Concerning the equals aspect of your question — I don’t know if I can agree across the board. For instance, I know that without a doubt my dogs have a stronger life force and intelligence than many people I meet, but do I think they have that compared to me, no. But there are plenty of slovenly worthless human beings out there that I would prefer the company of rats to!! So, I think its more a spectrum than absolutism. I don’t I could paint such great images of my animals if that did not posses a profound life force — more profound than say many humans I meet.

(6) This is a general question: what will happen in the future?

I want to believe that this a broad existential question. I could go into a diatribe/rant on this. I will try to be succinct. Where we’re at is here: slaves to a imperialist, globalized, capitalist fascism that has raped the earth and a majority of its inhabitants. We are spiraling towards oblivion and we as a total culture have set into motion forces that will destroy us if we do not change. But, we have shown that the only change we are capable of is change for the worst. Hence, I can only see Apocalypse. But not in the earth shattering Hollywood variety, more like the slow creeping type that only T.S. Eliot could sum up: “This is how the world ends, This how the world ends, this is how the world ends………………not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

(7) What animal/creature comes to mind when you hear the word “DINCA?”

Also, when you hear “… a beautiful girl …” what lady initially comes to mind?

DINCA- A Rhino type dinosaur creature.

Beautiful girl: I can’t say just one so I’ll give you a few — Halle Berry, Zoe Sladana, Uma Thurman, Salma Hayek, Audrey Hepburn, Donna Reed, Nina Simone, Jennifer Wallace, and true to my weird Freudian roots my Mother of course!

More:

Will Reed’s Website

Will Reed’s C.V.

Interview with Rosa Menkman, Dutch Visualist

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:32:03 +0000

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.

Dear mister Compression from Rosa Menkman on Vimeo.

1) Please tell us about the glitch genre. What is glitch video and why should someone watch a glitched video?

Glitches are the uncanny, brutal structures that come to the surface during a break of the flow within a technology; they are the primal data-screams of the machine. In the digital these utterances often take form following the “vernacular of file formats” (the encoded organizations of data). A file format signifies what protocols (formal descriptions and semantic rules) are used to structure or encode the information. Many different file formats exist, for different forms of information and every one of these formats possesses its own encoding structures, which can be understood as a grammar or idiom. When this idiom is broken, for instance by a glitch or a wrong encoding, the data in its basic/primal structures of encoding comes to the surface. Visually glitches show themselves through organizational structures like rasters, grids, blocks, points, interlacing vectors and frames and therefore often look complex, repetitive, discolored, fragmented and flickering.

Glitch art is a practice that studies and researches the vernacular of file formats in exploitative manners to deconstruct and create new, brutalist (audio)visual works. However, glitch artists often go beyond this formal approach; they realize that the glitch does not exists without human perception and therefore have a more inclusive approach to digital material.
The materiality of glitch art is constantly mutating; it exists as an unstable assemblage that relies on the one hand the construction, operation and content of the apparatus (the medium) and on the other hand the work, the writer/artist, and the interpretation by the reader and/or user (the meaning). Thus, the materiality of the glitch art is not (just) the digital material that follows the vernacular of file formats, nor the machine it appears upon, but a constantly changing construct that depends on the interactions between text, social, esthetical, political and economic dynamics and the point of view from which the different actors make meaning.
Digital artists exploit their digital materials thus also metaphorically or critically (showing the medium in a critical state or criticizing the medium and its inherent norms) and not just formally.

I think it is an interesting choice of you to use the words “glitch genre” – more and more people are indeed referring to glitch art as a genre. But I also think it is kind of a problematic choice of words. In the coming month there will be a conference about “noise art”. Jon Cates (a teacher at SAIC [The School of the Art Institute of Chicago], Chicago and opinionated contender within the glitch scene) asked me what I thought about this just last weekend, and now when you ask me this similar question I could give you almost the same answer. This kind of genre-fication (Gentrification?) is in my opinion a contradiction interminis: noise and glitches are (often) about breaking or pushing boundaries and relaying the membranes of what is socially accepted as categories or genre. Noise and glitch “categories” are thus in a constant state of flux and pinpointing them down as a genre feels like an act that defies their inherent nature.
However, as more and more people are starting to use the term “glitch genre”, I think it has become apparent that the question of what constitutes a genre, and how a genre should be studied needs to be included in Glitch Studies. Also, in the case of a “glitch genre”, I think there is a need to research the process of stylization of glitch – the point where the formal creation of glitches are not unknown, new utterances but are becoming stabilized, new commodities and even filters.
This kind of study involves more then just a vernacular of file formats or a research into technology but also includes culture, individuals, politics and the history of the technology.

But I still wonder if there is really anything consistent within the glitch art “genre”. If so, then I think it is the critical use of error, perceived or non perceived, real or designed. And I think when I watch a glitched video, or any other glitch work, this is what I find most interesting to look for: what critical elements play a role in the work – does the work criticize something, or does it show the technology in a critical state?

staircase to nowhere

2) Your inspiration: who, what, where, when, and why.

One important moment in my personal glitch-history is when I visited the exhibition “World Wide Wrong” by the art collective Jodi (Amsterdam, NIMK, 2005). This is where I had my “paradigm-shifting” encounter with glitch art – although I did not realize it at the time. The exhibition touched me, even though I didn’t understand it at all – I went home sort of shattered and confused.
What I learned when I came home and took some space to think, was that the digital world of the moving, audiovisual imagery did not just exist out of images striving for perfection, but that there is also a space for unknown, unaccepted or plainly wrong possibilities – which was a revelation to me – (I knew about the videoart from the 70s, but never thought about a digital counterpart). I used to perceive breaks within digital transmissions as annoying, or even scary, but now I suddenly saw that the glitch can also be understood as a special event. This discovery created a lot of questions, like “what is a glitch?” and “what is glitch art?”, which inspired me to write my master thesis about Jodi, a research that that I later also continued in formally driven, practical work.

While I used to be a commercial photographer, focussing on how to make the best framing and technically perfect photo, now I didn’t need to be perfect anymore. A catharsis of broken, creative energy challenged me to map and explore new possibilities. In my first explorations of the broken image I just saw ruins of lost meaning. After a while I found more than just damage, ravage and chaos; I saw a not yet existing aesthetics and beauty. Lately I am moving away from just formal experimenting and am trying to tell stories about beauty through collapse, tipping points and the tragedy of lost, ‘just not good enough’ signals of obsolete technologies.

I realize now that the constant search for complete transparency, or perfect transmissions brings ‘newer’, ‘better’ media. Yet, still every one of these new and improved techniques have their own fingerprints of imperfection. While most people experience these fingerprints as negative (and sometimes even as accidents), I can emphasize their positive consequences, by showing the new opportunities they facilitate.
These breaking points in development intrigue me; the tipping points of failure give space and perspectives for changes that go further then just the creation of new forms. Renovations and new forms have a deeper potential in which artistic opportunities, technical knowledge, social norms and academic research can come together. This is what I call Glitch Studies; a study into other forms and other possibilities that are not yet accepted.

Broken Heart

3) Your videos are leavened by the process of video compression. Describe your process of glitching and how you wish to refine your process (and please tell how you use the animated .gif in your work).

Video compression is a very important part of the vernacular of file formats. Every compression follows another encoding; a different syntax, dialect or language. Even developers cannot learn all these different ‘slangs’ by heart – they can only understand or recognize certain parts or tropes.
This is why different glitch-works have a very different material feel. For instance, when I use the animated gif in Radio Dada, the transcoding from one compression to another (.avi to .mov to .avi to .mov to .gif) resulted into some very specific ‘slang’ traces, like interlacing and dropped avi-pixels. I also often exploit the .gif interlacing when I databend this image format, because I really like the aesthetics of the file formats interlacing that come to the surface.

My process of glitching is not always the same, however I do sometimes give in to the relaxation of habits – I have to admit glitching has also become some kind of relaxing/catharsis-activity to me. For instance, the playing with different file formats and encoding and decoding can be done via some very standard trial and error scheme.
The question of refinement is interesting too, indeed I do not want to get stuck in an only formal investigation of the vernacular of file formats. This is why I am happy I also contextualize what I make through my Glitch Studies and lately moved into telling “stories” or embedding some kind of “narrative” within my audiovisual work.

Rosa Menkman

3) How does glitch video tell a story?

It really depends on the kind of video. A new work of mine, “The Collapse of PAL” is an example of how I try to tell a story through the use of glitches.
I developed The Collapse of PAL on request by SOUND & TELEVISION (in Copenhagen, Denmark). SOUND & TELEVISION is a transmission art project that explores the performativity of television in light of the challenges brought about by a converging mediascape. Signal, noise, liveness and flow along with standardized production formats are all aspects of the television medium which are reshaped in digital, networked media. Rather than a stream-lined sound-image of digital convergence, SOUND & TELEVISION strives to act as a springboard for an aesthetic “media-clash” reflecting on the political-aesthetic of old and new media forms.

SOUND & TELEVISION invited me to work with the materiality of audiovisual flows to realize a performance exploring the performativity of television. In this performance, the “transmission” itself became part of the artwork. The performance reflects on different significant aspects of the changing conditions of broadcasting. In the new DVB-T (digital terrestrial television) environment, the very transmission format of TV has changed, from symmetric analog to asymmetric data flows, encoded in the MPEG format and decoded through software implemented in everything from flat-screen TV’s, set-top-boxes and PC’s. “The cracking of LCD screens” …all is not smooth in this world of digitally compressed TV.

In “The Collapse of PAL” (Eulogy, Obsequies and Requiem for the planes of blue phosphor), the Angel of History (as described by Walter Benjamin) reflects on the PAL signal and its termination. She concludes that in the end, the signal still exists as a trace left upon the newer “better” technologies. PAL can, even though the technology is terminated, be found in these newer encodings, as a historical form that newer technologies inherited and appropriated. Finally, the Angel also realizes that the new DVB signal, that has been chosen over PAL, is differently, yet also flawed.

The Collapse of PAL (1. Eulogy, 2. Obsequies and 3. Requiem for the blue plains of phosphor), as performed at TV-TV on the 25th of May 2010, Copenhagen, is based on analogue PAL video, compressions, glitches and feedback artifacts and is complimented with (obsolete) soundscapes that come from both analogue and digital media.
For the video-part I used a NES, some image bending, a broken photo camera (CCD chip is loose), digital compression artifacts and video bending artifacts (DV, interlacing, datamoshing and black bursts) and feedback. For the sound I used a cracklebox, feedback, a telephone eurosignal, morsecode an old Casio keyboard, feedback filters and a couple of DV-compressed video soundbends.

glitch studies manifesto Live ft Goto80

4) What are your thoughts on film festivals, the film festival circuit, and how does glitch video fit into the aforementioned? What art scenes, festivals, communities and suchlike, are most receptive to the glitch genre?

I have not had an art education, but instead studied in the University (in Netherlands there is still a strict difference between practical and theoretical schooling). I used to think this could be a good thing, because it allowed me to develop my own artistic norms, styles and working methods, but lately I have been experiencing the drawback of this very heavily. Many art based-institutions and funding opportunities don’t accept my work, solely for the formal reason of having an art school education.
Right now I am doing an unpaid practical PHD at the KHM in Cologne, Germany, but the place of my practical work is still very insecure; it will not be challenged or judged in my final PHD work and as such still does not really count, or has a defined place.

Because my work is interwoven between theory and practice, I can show it in academic conferences, symposia, festivals or in the disco – and when this works out well, the different forms of appreciation are very interesting. What is most interesting however, is that within the academic world (at conferences and symposia), I am the one who has to pay to take part, publish and attend, whereas in art-festivals, where I sometimes give payed workshops, gigs or lectures, – it is such a different reflection from the formal criteria by which the funding institutions judge me.
This definitely proves the fact that Glitch Studies and glitch art are still not incorporated in any of the institutionalized paradigms, but still operates between the cracks of different institutions and circuits. I realize that I am lucky that I get some opportunities, but working in this rigid academic and art climate is a struggle.

5) Seemingly a glitch artist has to spend many hours in front of the computer to be creatively productive and to carry a fecund spell. How much time do you spend with the computer; how does the computer help and hurt creativity?

My computer sleeps when I sleep, we have a very committed relationship.
Although my computer is my medium of choice, I don’t feel stuck in this medium. I also use many other, analogue media. But even when I make my work completely analogous, I still often digitize (photograph or scan) it, so I can also show on the internet (through for instance flickr).
As a material the computer of course has its limitations, like any other kind other canvas or material. I think that glitch art plays with the concept of limitations and tries to push them forward, so I don’t feel like these limitations hurt my creativity; I feel like they help me and make me more aware of my material and its potentials.

6) Internet video exhibition and distribution: viewers are under no obligation to watch an entire piece, beginning to end. Right now, everyone reading this holds the power of the mouse — and unlike the theatre, we can click away at any time. For the filmmaker/visualist, does uploading an entire piece weaken its eminence, or make it any less noteworthy?

I never really bother to see if anybody watches my videos from beginning to end. My videos are only a particular part of my personal, larger work, my Glitch Studies, in which my theory and practice come together. The videos can stand on their own, but also function as an illustration of a possibility, or concept within Glitch Studies.
The Collapse of PAL was an audiovisual performance, of which I made a render for the web. To me, there is a big difference in doing the piece live and then rendering it for the web, I am still searching to find a way to translate one to the other better (this is why I did not upload the ‘final’ render yet. However, I don’t feel like the two undermine each other.
I think that when an online or live work captures the interest of an audience at first, than I would like to offer them the possibility to take a step back and see the context of the work, which is my Glitch Studies. Glitch Studies is however complex and still growing larger, so I think it is only natural for people to click away at some point.

7) When you hear the word “DINCA”, what is the first animal you think of?
Lastly, what is your favorite beverage?

10 minutes ago a “Eurasian Jay” flew into the window. I will dedicate this one to the poor bird, may god rest his soul.
My favorite beverage is a cocktail: 2 sips of nirvana, a pinch of emotional memories and a gallon of self deception topped of some self-serving bias.

More:

Rosa Menkman Website

Rosa Menkman on Vimeo

Rosa Menkman on Flickr

The Glitch Studies Manifesto

“Reality is Psychedelic.” Seven Question Interview with Ali Hossaini, American Philosopher, Filmmaker, Ouroboros Artist, Board of Anthology Film Archives

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 25 May 2010 20:11:51 +0000

Artist Interview: Ali Hossaini, (interviewed by Andrew Rosinski, April/May 2010)

Ali Hossaini is an American philosopher, a filmmaker, an artist; an innovator, a pacifist, a seer; a visionary. A warm-hearted man with a mystical, ubiquitous vision for progress. Common themes in Ali’s work include, “a commitment to freedom and innovation that breaks disciplinary boundaries.”

Ali serves on the Board of Advisors for Anthology Film Archives and the Water Mill Center for the Arts. He is an Associate of the Liverpool-based FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, where he serves in a development role.

Ali Hossaini (view his IMDB page here) works on the cutting edge of film, television and interactive media, and in addition to his 2010 Ouroboros exhibit, the 6-channel 3D video exhibit collaboration with SWEATSHOPPE, Ali has been involved in the launch of several television channels, including LAB HD, the only TV channel devoted to video art, Equator HD, Gallery HD, Oxygen, TechTV, NOW, and LinkTV. He is currently proprietor of Pantar, a media production company that specializes in talent-driven projects of artistic merit. Much of his work involves organizing international production, financing and exhbition.

Hossaini’s productions include the Voom Portraits, directed by the avant-garde visionary, Robert Wilson, which includes performances by Johnny Depp (one of my favorite actors, who starred in one of my all-time favorite films, Dead Man (1995) — a film by the brilliant Jim Jarmusch), Salma Hayek — Brad Pitt — Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Sean Penn, and other cultural icons. He has produced numerous documentaries and factual television series relating to travel, natural history, culture and sustainable living. In 2009 he produced Self-Portrait, a short film by Dennis Hopper.

Johnny Depp in "Voom Portraits (watch video)" by Robert Wilson

7 question INTERVIEW: Ali Hossaini

ArtTV (now Lab TV), Single-channel video, 2001 - 2003

(1) Please tell us about your artistic process and how it has evolved throughout the years.

For me the first stage of inspiration comes through adventure. My fundamental drive is curiosity – I’ve always wanted to know everything. I love reading, and I might have been very bookish, but (fortunately for my love life) that intellectual drive is matched by a robust physical and emotional urge to see the world. So I’m constantly exploring, whether through mind or body, then reflecting on what I’ve learned. In the course of this process one naturally makes connections. Some of these connections are straightforward, following established rules of analysis or synthesis. And some are poetic: associative with resonances that are more generative than conclusive.

It is through the latter process that I produce something people call art, though for me it’s more precisely called poetry. I like calling myself a visual poet because the term relates to poesis, which for the Greeks was very specific kind of creative process. (Also the words “art” and “artist” today imply a lot of things I find horrible.) For me poetry arises from a process of disintegration in the fullest sense of that process: the coherence of things breaks down, and previously unrelated structures start bumping against one another, adhering and forming new structures which may or may not make immediate sense.

When I’d started trying to express myself I had a lot of trouble coming up with ideas. And I was unconfident about them. Creativity is a natural secretion of consciousness, and, now that I’ve had a lot more experience, new projects flow faster than I can realize them. One way I think about the creative process is alchemy, the transmutation of dross into gold, an image I love. (This is silly, but I secretly think of the need for artistic expression as a full bladder—you just gotta do it.) In Hindu culture the transcendence of creativity is represented by the lotus, a beautiful flower that rises from muck. Years of reading and travel has enriched my daily experience. When I look at things, I see the thing in front of me, for sure, but it’s in the center of a vibrant, fluctuating, utterly delightful web of connections – historical, scientific, aesthetic, emotional, literary, social and philosophical. My rich inner life contrasts with my Spartan approach to possessions. I live very simply because have a lot of trouble with stuff. Material possessions make my heart sag and distract my thinking, so I find living plants and organic forms to be the best environment for creativity.

ISE Cultural Foundation is pleased to present an exhibition, “Ouroboros: The History of the Universe”, curated by Koan Jeff Baysa, MD.

Video artist Ali Hossaini teams up with artists Blake Shaw and Bruno Levy, aka SWEATSHOPPE, to present Ouroboros: The History of the Universe. Over 30,000 images combine to tell the story of cosmic evolution in an immersive 3D video environment generated by SWEATSHOPPE’s own software. The artwork was inspired by Hossaini’s investigations into the psychology of vision and SWEATSHOPPE’s interest in the hypnotic, meditative and mind-altering potential of the moving image.

Visitors will be handed 3D glasses that reveal mesmerizing arrays of animated holograms, created by seven channels of video, within a 2,000 square foot gallery. Original compositions of ambient sound have been produced by the artists, and a limited edition of 3D prints will be available for purchase.

Aesthetics and craft are very important to me, so I work hard to make experiences that are beautiful. Beauty has been an unpopular category in art for some years, with the justification being that aesthetic criteria have less validity than concepts. I take the diametrically opposite view, as I don’t think artists have much to contribute in the way of original concepts. What the artist can offer is a rigorous craft based on trained manual skills and aesthetic principles. The mandate of art is to create something beautiful – this doesn’t mean that it can’t be critical, provocative or idea-based, but those qualities emanate from the relationship of art to disciplines better equipped to handle them.

Some might say I am dumbing down art, but to me beauty relies on processes that are far more sophisticated than the verbal ability required to appreciate the irony, cynicism and self-referentiality of conceptual artworks. Beauty arises from the innate mathematical abilities of our mind. While our verbal brain lumbers along with kludged linear processes, our visual faculties contain dedicated neural circuits that instantly analyze multidimensional fields. To say concepts are more sophisticated than beauty ignores the fundamentals of cognition, and it also disrupts the organic connection between our intuitions, life processes and the physical world.

Ouroboros, 6-channel 3D video, by Ali Hossaini and SWEATSHOPPE, 2010

(2) The process in creating Ouroboros: when did the concept arise, what do you wish to explore and unveil, and what is the aim of the exhibit? How did you secure funds for the exhibit?

The concept for Ouroboros arose in summer of 2009, not long before the exhibition. The Ouroboros is a powerful symbol in hermetic traditions. As an object for contemplation it’s meant to evoke the self-sustaining nature of the cosmos, eternal life and the unity of being. Since childhood the Ouroboros has been one of my favorite images—that snake has such a self-confident expression – but before last summer I’d only considered as a potential tattoo. Then I started thinking about the degradation of our school system, particularly right-wing attacks on cosmology and evolution, which I think is a real problem because it creates ignoramuses who are ill-prepared to be responsible citizens. It’s kind of weird that the same people who are crying patriotism want to turn America into a ignorant theocracy incapable of technical progress.

This provoked a strong desire to do a work that drew on science, especially the threatened theories of the Big Bang and evolution. At the same time I reflected on why social conservatives and a lot of other people rejected science, and I thought maybe it’s because they don’t feel how scientific theory connects to their own lives. Scientific theory excites me, and it evokes a sense of wonder that makes me feel at home in the cosmos. It sings. How could I convey these feelings to a mass audience? Not by talking about them – BORING – but as a direct experience so they could feel what I feel. It occurred to me that I could do a “history of the universe” animated by images drawn from the Internet. Why not show the unity of being by creating an immersive visual mix poem that stretches from the Big Bang to Lady Gaga?

When the curator Koan Jeffrey Baysa offered the Ise Cultural Foundation as a venue, the project was off and running. Koan generously agreed to split his curatorial fee with me, which provided about 5% of the budget, and my collaborators SWEATSHOPPE covered another 5%. The balance of cash expenses were covered from my savings.

Conceiving of Ouroboros was a lot easier than creating it. It seemed like the faultlines of modern experience run through the boundaries of matter, life and spirit, so I made storylines corresponding to physical, biological and psychological evolution. I wanted to create a visual mix of these three realms, and 3D video was the obvious way to do it, particularly since I’d just produced a 3D film of Robert Wilson’s Kool: Dancing in My Mind. But existing technologies were too expensive and difficult to execute.

(SWEATSHOPPE VIDEOS — Live 3d video/av performances)

Then I met SWEATSHOPPE aka Blake Shaw and Bruno Levy. They are an art collective that do remarkable live performances that combine music with live 3D video. Their work bowled me over the instant I saw it, and I instantly knew they were the friends and collaborators I needed to make Ouroboros.

SWEATSHOPPE has created a cool 3D aesthetic based on Chromadepth technology. Within it you can assign any set of images to layers within a holographic space. Layers are coded red, green and blue, and the effect is incredibly robust – you can walk up to an image, and it maintains the illusion of depth. And you can view it in 2D without glasses, and it retains its sharpness, so it’s perfect for a standing piece of art.

We had a lot of discussions about how the concept of Ouroboros could be expressed through the SWEATSHOPPE aesthetic. The tripartite layers neatly fit the three realms of Ouroboros, so the aesthetic provided the perfect grammar for the poem. They taught me how to use their software tools, which was easy, but I also had to learn how to make crisp, coherent sequences, which was a lot harder. Fortunately we share a lot of the same interests, and we were completely receptive to each other’s ideas. The expression of Ouroboros got even larger, as it expanded to include SWEATSHOPPE’s focus on mandalas, hypnosis and primary shapes, and the installation evolved into two triptychs, one of which was representation and the other abstract. SWEATSHOPPE and I both aim to make art that is complex and provocative yet accessible, and I think we succeeded. The audience for Ouroboros was completely universal – it’s appeal didn’t break down across educational, class or generational lines. Sure we got the art audience, but the building’s maintenance staff, babies, toddlers, seniors citizens all responded positively, and creating something that appealed to everyone was our most important goal.

(3) Would you say that some of its content chases the chimera?

When I was a kid my mom would sing, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream,” to help me fall asleep.

Dinca note: The word “chimera” is chiefly known to be, “(in Greek mythology) a fire-breathing female monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail”; our intended usage of the word is in its lesser-known definition, “a thing that is hoped or wished for, but in fact is illusionary, or impossible to achieve.”

(4) Ouroboros certainly is psychedelic, top-to-bottom. Why?

Reality is psychedelic. I guess I should explain what I mean. Many people treat psychedlia as an aesthetic, and I think the art world mirrors society by marginalizing psychedelia. They seem to think it’s a simple-minded or lacks conceptual rigor. However I am grounded in philosophy, psychology and cognitive science, and I’ve done a lot of introspective work on my perception, what some might call phenomenology. It is easy to go through life accepting the world as appears in normative experience, but scientists, mystics and, yes, a lot of old hippies will attest to the fact that normative experience is a mental construct. That mental construct makes a lot of sense because it evolved to maintain the continuity of biological and social life. With a little poking this construct comes unraveled, and then we confront primordial questions. What am I? What is reality? What should I be doing? Within psychedelia these questions appear as living presences. It is easy to shrug them off in the dry setting of Philosophy 101 or when given ironic distance in yet another piece of conceptual art. Psychedelia confronts Being, and it does it directly with an intellectual, scientific and emotional discipline that I find unmatched in other movements. At the same time, it’s a lot of fun.

SWEATSHOPPE and Isabella Rossellini

Isabella Rossellini in "Guy Maddin's Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair", a film by Guy Maddin, (2010)

(5) You premiered Guy Maddin’s Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair in Times Square last December of 2009. Was it a party? When and how did you meet Guy Maddin?

My connection to Guy is through Isabella Rossellini, whom I met several years ago during my production of the Robert Wilson Video Portraits. Bob portrayed Isabella as a wild anime character, and while we were in makeup she insisted that I check out the films of Guy Maddin. The Saddest Music in the World had just opened. Of course I loved it, and then I found out that my friend Jody Shapiro produced a lot of Guy’s work, so I was able to see Sissy Boy Slap Party and a lot of other Maddin classics. I’d recruited Isabella to be chief juror of the Metropolis Art Prize, a project of Babelgum Networks, and I’d decided to screen the winners in Times Square.

I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it was Isabella who suggested we premiere Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair as part of the program. Of course I jumped at the possibility, but it took some diplomacy on my part to make it happen because the film shows Isabella being jolted into an ecstatic state (to put it mildly) after being strapped into an old school electric chair. I won over the gods of Babelgum and midtown Manhattan by arguing for the artistic merit and press worthiness of Guy’s work. For an hour we watched the winning videos, which were really wonderful, and then we premiered ‘Lectric Chair over an installation that contained the actual electric chair from the film, which was incredibly campy. The crowds loved it, but for me it was a delightfully perverse thing to do. Watching Guy’s visuals detour over Times Square is one of the high points of my professional career. It was a doubly great night for me because I met SWEATSHOPPE right after Guy’s film premiered. My client had recruited them to perform the afterparty at Jonathan Levine Gallery, right after Isabella gave the art video awards.

Epiphany, Immersive video, 2008

(6) What is next on the art plate?

I’m working on a bunch of projects, but two stand out. One is the final realization of my video installation Epiphany. I started working on Epiphany in 2006. It was shot on location in Greenland, Iceland, France and the USA, and I edited it into an 85 minute film set to the Renaissance composer Palestrina. The film is about cycles of life and rebirth, so I used a requiem mass and a beautiful motet based on the Song of Songs, a Hebrew poem that celebrates sexuality and life. But my goal was always to collaborate with a composer on an original mass in the motet style. Then I would edit the Epiphany visuals into a 4-channel immersive piece that created a visual motet. Last year the composer Paola Prestini, whom I think is one of the great talents of the 21st century, recruited me to create the visuals for her opera, Oceanic Verses. And this year she agreed to compose the Epiphany Mass.

Another project that stands out is Alternative Cognitions. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be dyslexic, autistic or synaesthetic? Our shared world is build around cognitive norms, and I’m researching the ways people deviate from them. My plan is build environments that recreate the worlds of people who perceive or think differently than we expect. There’s great literature on these topics, but I’m starting to interview people about their experiences, and the process is really inspiring all kinds of reflection on other issues. It’s a place where philosophy, politics and practical matters interest. I’m a philosopher of science by training, and I’m working with Koan again, who’s an MD with a research interest in olfaction, so we’ve got a really strong collaboration going for this topic.

(7) What is your spirit animal?

You’d think it would be the snake because the Ouroboros has always held a lot of significance for me. And I do like snakes. But it would definitely be the cat, traditional antagonist of the serpent. I’ve cats across the spectrum in my mythological self, falling under Leo in Western astrology, the Tiger in Chinese and Lion in Burmese. I’ve got a lot of admiration for the grace, determination and self-restraint of cats.

(7.2) The Ouroboros is …

… a cosmic key.

Ali Hossaini Artistic Statement:

I am strongly drawn to the sublime and the absurd. My life has been spent trying to reconcile these qualities, and consequently my work is driven by contradiction, paradox and mystery.

When I was young I was sure that I would become a scientist. When offered the choice I trained as a philosopher, a discipline that combined analytic rigor with humanism, and I now find myself as a hybrid media artist and mediamaker. But my work ultimately derives from philosophy, with the threads of science, spirituality and the quest for truth that drove the evolution of that discipline.

At this stage of history I think art might express philosophy better than writing: academia neuters exciting, dangerous ideas, and art can spark more debate in the public sphere, particularly as the boundaries between high art, popular culture, mass media, fashion and design begin to reconfigure, blur and even disappear. By embracing the visual, the poetic and the experiential I’ve found a way to integrate the explosively different impulses that constitute my inner world.

More on Ali:

The American Museum of the Moving Image maintains a permanent exhibit devoted to LAB HD. Other productions have been exhibited at theLincoln Center, the Tribeca Film Festival, the Montreal Festival of Film on Art, PS1/MoMA, The Hackney Empire, SF Cinemateque, Pacific Film Archives, the Beijing Borderlines Festival, Couvent des Cordeliers, and many other international venues. His production of Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30 appeared in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. His directorial debut, Epiphany (2006), premiered at Anthology Film Archives.

As a vice president at the women’s TV network Oxygen Media, Hossaini developed numerous initiatives related to programming and social networking. At TechTV, he launched Chat Day!, the first application to merge chat, webcams and live TV in a virtual environment. Hossaini is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the National Association of Television Program Executives.

He regularly speaks at conferences in the United States and Europe. In the 1990s he was a regular guest on The Site, an award-winning MSNBC newsmagazine. Hossaini recently completed a manuscript, Vision of the Gods: How Optics Shaped Histor y, and he contributed three entries to the Encyclopedia of Photography, published by Routledge in 2005.

His writing has appeared in Village Voice, The Nation, Verlag Spotlight (Germany), openDemocracy (UK), New York Newsday, Maclean’s Magazine (Canada), Logos Journal, and Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt). He is anthologized in the textbooks Passages and Considering Cultural Difference, and his essays on photography are frequently included in college coursebooks.

While working as an acquisitions editor at the University of Texas Press, which publishes books and journals, both for a scholarly audience and for the people of Texas, Hossaini published one of the first electronic books in conjunction with the Coalition for Networked Information.

He also developed Surrealist Women, an anthology of suppressed female artists, and he successfully funded the Texas History Series.

As a graduate student, Hossaini was awarded fellowships for poetry, photography and philosophy. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994.

His dissertation, Archaeology of the Photograph, traces the history of geometric optics from Sumer to the Classical Era.

Talk about about merit — I recommend clicking every hyperlink in this article. It’s well worth your time.

Ali kindly participated in the following seven-question interview, and his responses are insight, not only for artists, but for any and all striving to achieve their golden vision, and progress.

More:

IMDB page for Ali Hossaini
Ali Hossaini — Wikipedia
Art Lab TV
Pantar Productions
SWEATSHOPPE
SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo
NY Times: Exhibition Review: Ouroboros — The History of the Universe
Interview: Rotterdam 2009: Guy Maddin Will “Send Me To the ‘Lectric Chair”
Anthology Film Archives

Artist Interview: DINCA asks Rafaël Rozendaal One Question

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:31:37 +0000

Rafaël Rozendaal is a Netherlands-based artist who creates exceptional work; his art arouses that of computer art, cyberspace, and other forms that defy classification. His art is verily digital: Rozendaal also has created a number of concept-computer art websites. Part of Rozendaal’s work is computer-generated animations, and his animations are way good, and he has made many. I currently am running one of Rafaël’s screensavers — you should too — check them out here. Also of note, Rozendaal is currently selling signed prints of his “Dollar Poster” painting. Also of note: Rozendaal, inside of his mouth on the inner lip, has a tattoo that reads “internet.” He loves the internet (don’t we all?).

One of those websites is Rozendaal’s One Question Interview, a blog where Rozendaal interviews great artists, artists of all mediums, asking them just one question.

dinca.org decided to turn the table on Rafaël — do the olde tyme switcheroo — asking Rafaël just one question.

The Interview:

dinca: Your computer chair: how nice is your computer chair, do you like your computer chair, what does it look like, how many hours do you spend sitting upon it a day — and does your back ever hurt?

Rozendaal: i used to have a regular chair, a wooden office chair on wheels. i’ve
had that chair since 1998. but after a while i started moving around,
from country to country, so i was a guest in various chairs, small,
large, hard and soft. in 2005 i returned to the wooden chair on
wheels. my back never hurts but sometimes my wrists and shoulders feel
bad. i decided to research a bit and bought an expensive adjustable
chair. it didnt help. what helped was when i had more money in my bank
account, all pains disappeared.

i try not to sit too much, but i end up w about 6 hours a day.

End of Interview.

More:

Recent work from Rozendaal: www.freedomfromfearandworry.com

One Question Interview

Rafaël Rozendaal Website

One Question Interview: Rafaël Rozendaal Interviews Ed Halter, Film Critic and Currator

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:47:20 +0000

Rafaël Rozendaal is a Netherlands-based artist who creates exceptional work; his art enkindles computer art, cyberspace, and more. His work is fantastic. He also has created a great deal of concept-computer art websites. The following interview with Ed Halter was extracted verbatim from Rozendaal’s One Question Interview blog, a brilliant concept where Rozendaal interviews great artists of all mediums — each are asked only one question.

The Interview:

Ed Halter is a critic and curator living in New York City. From 1995 to 2005, he programmed and oversaw the New York Underground Film Festival, and he is a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York.

Rozendaal: Are you an idealist?

Ed Halter: My gut reaction is to say no, despite the fact that everything about my life seems to say yes. I suppose somewhere in that disparity lies the true answer.

End of Interview.

About Ed Halter: Ed Halter is a critic and curator living in New York City. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Arthur, The Believer, Cinema Scope, Kunstforum, Millennium Film Journal, Moving Image Source, Rhizome, The Village Voice and elsewhere, and he is a 2009 recipient of the Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. From 1995 to 2005, he programmed and oversaw the New York Underground Film Festival, and has organized screenings and exhibitions for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Cinematexas, Eyebeam, the Flaherty Film Seminar, the Museum of Modern Art, and San Francisco Cinematheque. He currently teaches in the Film and Electronic Arts department at Bard College, and has lectured at Harvard, NYU, Yale, and other schools as well as at Art in General, Aurora Picture Show, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, the Images Festival, the Impakt Festival, and Pacific Film Archive. His book From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games was published in 2006. With Andrea Grover, he is currently editing the collection A Microcinema Primer: A Brief History of Small Cinemas. He is a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York.

More:

One Question Interview with Ed Halter

One Question Interview

Rafaël Rozendaal Website

Ed Halter’s Website

Next up: dinca.org asks Rafael Rozendaal one question.

Stan Brakage Radio Interview

Andrew Rosinski — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:17:30 +0000

Pauline Kael interviews Stan Brakage, radio interview, 20 min, 1964(?)

/////// PLAY \\\\\\\

At times, Pauline Kael seems to be Stan Brakage’s adversary, especially during her questioning of his artistic process, and his understanding of his work versus the understanding/misunderstanding of the viewer, to which Brakhage replies, “I don’t make films for an audience … I make them for myself.” This interview is low-fidelity; nonetheless, a pleasant window into the avant-garde art scene of the early ’60s. If you are not familiar with Brakhage and his breadth of work, it is a good listen anyway. Dog Star Man is discussed 16 minutes in.

From the Anthology Film Archives:

Legendary film critic Pauline Kael is captured here in conversation with filmmaker Stan Brakhage. While the tape is incomplete, we do hear Brakhage defend his practice, his epic film DOG STAR MAN, his influences, his search for “a happening in structure”. Brakhage proudly declares: “I’m an amateur filmmaker, I make home movies.” (7″ IPS, 1/4″ REEL 5″, 00:19:32)

Click here for more Stan Brakhage audio recordings.

2009 Interview w/ Filmmaker Deborah Stratman

Andrew Rosinski — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:53:53 +0000

On the Various Nature of Things (1995)

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker whose work plies the territory between experimental and documentary genres. Her films and frequent work in other media, including photography, sound, drawing and sculpture often explore the history, uses, mythologies and control of highly varied landscapes: from Muslim Xinjiang China, to rural Iceland, to gated suburban California. She recently completed a series of works that collectively address concepts of the paranormal in the information age and is presently working on a new film about the milieu of elevated threat, patriotism, wilderness and the possibility of transcendence.

O'er the Land (2008)

1. You’ve been a successful filmmaker. O’er the Land, your most recent film, was one of the few experimental films to screen at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival — O’er the Land also won Best Experimental Film at the 2009 Ann Arbor Film Festival and had its European Premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival — in the past, your film In Order Not To Be Here won awards at the Humboldt International Film Festival, the Chicago Underground Film Festival, and (again) at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Has success altered your outlook and optimism as a filmmaker? Creatively, does it affect your vision as filmmaker, knowing that your next film will be watched by the world? How does success help you as a filmmaker; and, is it ever a hindrance, such as making you more self-conscious about the next film you are going to make?

I don’t think success is as much of a hindrance as the fact that when you gain knowledge and skill, you lose a certain naïve fearlessness. This can be crippling. so I try to keep taking conceptual/aesthetic risks, and to shake the self-consciousness that comes with experience. Public success might create obstacles in terms of the expectations you place on yourself to live up to some ephemeral bar set by whatever you last completed. Personally, that kind of public scrutiny barely registers compared to what I manage on my own. The ‘we-are-our-own-worst-critics’ syndrome.

Has ‘success’ altered my outlook/optimism…sure. Getting recognition for what you make is always encouraging. But I also love my films that never received a peep of praise, and will keep starting projects no matter how they eventually land in the world.

In Order Not to Be Here (2002)

2. Seemingly you prefer film. Examining your filmography (pythagorasfilm.com), I counted a 9-7 tally in favor of film. Some say HD video is becoming the new standard, and the cost of shooting a film on HD video is cheaper than shooting on 16mm film.

In the future, do you see yourself making more films with video vs. film? If so, will you opt for HD or SD video? What particular qualities, or pros/cons, do you associate with the two formats?

I prefer film, but not stridently. I shoot an almost equal amount of video and 16mm. The circumstances of each project prescribe its format. I’ll adapt to mediums as they change, especially as it’s becoming harder and harder to get a decent 16mm print. All of the great timers and printers and optical track technicians are retiring without being replaced. By the time they’re all gone, I hope HD gear and post facilities will have plummeted in price and then I’ll switch over in earnest. But if 16mm film remained accessible, or if I could afford to produce work in 35mm, I would stick with film. I prefer the material over the virtual, I prefer the speed of cutting on film which is closer to my native thinking speed (slow), and I’ll always prefer rear-illuminated celluloid to projected electronic scanning.

On the Various Nature of Things (1995)

3. Technology, it’s everywhere; humans are wired more than ever. Stan Brakhage, to a certain extent, denounced technology, stating it had many negative side effects.

To quote Alan Beck, “At what point did our computers go from being a tool to enhance our lives to a medium through which to live our lives?”

Let’s say your strolling in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago — it’s very possible you might see some serious technology multitasking — a dude, bluetooth headset in his right ear, in the midst of a phone call; left ear, earbuds, rocking out to the new Katy Perry album. In addition to that, in his right hand he holds his iPhone/Blackberry and he’s looking up Katy Perry tickets with a 3G internet connection; left hand, he holds a idle netbook; under his arm he holds an idle Kindle.

Like it or not, the fact is us humans will share our future lives with technology. How should we use it, how often should we use it, and when should we eliminate it from our lives? And for artists and filmmakers, when does it hurt and help one’s art, and how do you think technology will it affect the future of filmmaking + art?

If you are an artist, you more than likely employ some form of technological interface. Wood, paint, metal, fiber, glass, instruments… even words can been understood as tools. In this sense, technologies are bridges between minds (the artist’s and the observer/listener). So to me, utilizing technology is nothing new, it’s how art has always worked. But certainly, the site and frequency at which our lives can be interrupted has changed radically since cell phones, portable computers and the like arrived on the scene.

As I see it, there’s been a major paradigm shift, on the same order as when radio and records first became available. It was a big deal when sound first became disassociated with place (radio), and then later with place and time (records). Before that, sound had for millennia been associated with something live, and something close enough to hear. The sonic defined the ‘here and now’ in a concrete way. The rise of spiritualism concurrent with the advent of radio and telephony was no accident. Suddenly, the dead could return to life. Distances collapsed. Voices were being pulled from the ether.

The advent of the cell phone has meant not only that we can now walk freely in a HERE while talking into a THERE, but more radically, that our HERE can be interrupted at any time by a THERE. And there’s always a strong desire to respond to that call, a sense that connecting to a THERE is more urgent, perhaps more LIVE than what surrounds one physically. It’s a strange shift that I admit I’ve yet to acclimate to. I resist the way these new technologies make us always reachable. Personally, I enjoy being lost, or off the grid, or whatever you’d like to call it. And no, I don’t have a cell phone. I know, it’s archaic, and a bit stubborn. Maybe my genetic makeup is just better suited to a slower era. All of this is not to say that I don’t absolutely enjoy the pleasure of working within a highly technological medium that allows me to manipulate time and space. There’s no comparison. It’s really a kind of magic.

The BLVD (2002)

4. What is your favorite beer and why?

I like a good pilsner, the czech Urquell is nice, or Becks. But I’m more of a whiskey/tequila supporter, Jameson/Cazadores, respectively. I was just in Scotland this summer and bought some righteous single malts.

O'er the Land (2008)

5. If you’re comfortable with sharing, please tell us about your future projects, what to expect from them, and what inspired each.

I’m in sub-saharan Africa right now, shooting a short experimental documentary that was a mini-commission for the Rotterdam film festival. I’m focusing on Malawi, and how culture propagates here. I’m guessing it will be around 15 or 20 minutes, shot hand-held on miniDV. Apart from that, I’m mid-way through editing a short 16mm documentary portrait of a bird of prey facility in northern England that I shot this summer. That will be around 6 minutes. And I am supposed to be making a short video about comets for a DVD that Mike Plante (Cinevegas) and Mark Rosenberg (Rooftop Films) are putting together called ORBIT – basically a bunch of filmmakers making work about the planets using NASA footage. There’s also a longer 16mm film about recondite Illinois history that I’ve been working on for a couple of years. It keeps getting pushed aside for various reasons, but in the next few months I’ll try and get back to it, once all these little upstart films are out of the way…

O'er the Land (2008)

6. What is the key to an artist’s success:

A) Networking; who you know and who they know.
B) How much money you can acquire to fund a extravagant vision (e.g. Jeff Koons’ upcoming $25 million sculpture, where he’ll suspend a working locomotive a hundred or so feet in the air, dangling from a construction crane).
C) Sticking with your individual vision.
D) Hard work.

E) For me, it comes down to RESILIENCE AND PASSION.

(stubbornness, curiosity, self-confidence, grace and entrepreneurial spirit don’t hurt either)

Energy Country (2003)

7. Let’s say you’ve been stranded on a remote island for three years. A genie appears and tells you he will take return you home only if you list your top 5 films in order. How would you respond?

I’d say, “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s the worst question ever. This island is actually not so bad”. Okay, then I might fumble around and try and come up with some films that maybe were at one time, under certain circumstances, my favorites, but will always fall short of representing a pantheon of ‘the best’. And in no way can be listed in order. Since you ask, here are five. But if you ask me again tomorrow, I’d give you a different list: Agnes Varda’s “Vagabond”, Barbara Loden’s “Wanda”, Bruce Conner’s “A Movie”, Jean Rouch’s “Jaguar”, Georges Franju’s “Judex”.

It Will Die Out in the Mind (2006)

8. What visuals and/or animals come to mind when you hear the word Dinca?

Small African rodent with big ears.

◊

Stratman teaches in the School of Art & Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Interviewed by Andrew Rosinski during the month of August, 2009.

More:

Pythagoras Film | Deborah Stratman’s Portfolio

Deborah Stratman’s Filmography

NY TIMES: ART IN REVIEW; George Kimmerling Deborah Stratman

Cinemad Interview with Deborah Stratman

Deborah Stratman Essay by David Clark

Interview with Tami Yeager of Tribeca

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:00:33 +0000

This is an interview I conducted for Viva Documentary. I posted it a few months back, but due to the fact of my blog crash, I figured I’d post it again.

The times they are a changin’.

As the the proliferation of high speed broadband connections increases and the expense of theatrical distribution continues to stay the same, the internet is looking more and more like a viable medium for documentaries. Conscious of this shift, The Tribeca Film Institute has started a program called Reframe, aimed at providing an outlet for both new and old content that otherwise might not find an audience.

Tami Yeager (IMDB), the producer behind the award-winning 2008 PBS Independent Lens documentary “A Dream in Doubt” is working with Reframe to make it an innovative doc distribution solution for both media makers and watchers. Viva Doc’s Andrew Rosinski asked Yeager about this groundbreaking initiative and the future of documentary distribution in general in December 2008.

Viva Doc: How is Reframe different from DVD distribution?

Yeager: Reframe is an exciting project to describe because it serves a lot of different needs at once. Rather than acting as a traditional DVD distributor, Reframe’s central mission is to help individual filmmakers, distributors, public media organizations, archives, libraries and other media owners digitize, market and sell their work using the Internet. Reframe’s initial non-exclusive platform partnership is with CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon.com. When content holders sign up with Reframe, their analog tape formats and DVDs are digitized for free and enjoy the better royalty returns negotiated by Reframe. The content owner sets the prices and provides the artwork – Reframe showcases the content owners’ brand and profile. All content is marketed on Reframe’s robust, searchable website and is sold and fulfilled through Amazon.com in DVD and/or digital Video on Demand formats, per the content holders’ choosing.

One of the perennial challenges facing filmmakers and distributors alike is connecting with a film’s target audience. The new media landscape presents as many opportunities as hurdles. The Reframe website is designed to address those hurdles and take advantage of those opportunities by becoming a destination where scholars, artists, teachers and film enthusiasts can easily discover, recommend and purchase media. Building community and providing a voice for trusted sources from various fields of expertise are important tools for supporting the community of work gathered on the Reframe site. Reframe’s functionality will increase over time beginning with guest curators, blogs, and thematic lists adding tagging and discussion forums and embracing networking and many other applications later.

Viva Doc: What is Reframe’s submission process?

Yeager: The first step is to send an email to partners@reframecollection.org and tell us about the film/s you would like to submit. If possible, include any relevant links to websites, reviews, film festivals, etc. so we can learn more about the work. Someone from the partnerships team will contact you to share information about the contract, terms, and deliverables. If a film is a mutual fit for Reframe, then you will send in the contract, relevant details about the film, signature still image, filmmaker photo and bio, cover DVD artwork, and source material (tape, DVD, or digital file on a hard drive) for digitization.

Viva Doc: In most cases, festivals look for short films that are under 12 minutes in length. Will online distribution open a market for films that are 20 – 50 minutes in length?

Yeager: Festivals are constrained by the clock and the schedule. Shorts either have to be very short to play before a feature to fit into the conventional two-hour blocks or to be around ten to twelve minutes to create a program comfortably comparable in length to a feature presentation. When the consumer is the programmer, things change. For the user at home at her computer, a work is captivating or it isn’t. There are no constraints of theater turnover or conventions for time-length. For the institutional consumer, shorts work well in classrooms and civic settings as they can convey the emotion or information of a feature length work while leaving ample time for the assembled group to engage in active discussions. Cynthia Wade has said on panels that she purposefully decided to keep her film FREEHELD within the Academy’s short film limits as much to make a film that was a more useful advocacy and teaching tool as to compete in the short category. Digital projection eliminates the costs and time constraints of dealing with physical media, and the time-shifting technologies of DVRs and Internet services will allow consumers to connect with subjects that compel them, captivate them and entertain them without regard to time and physical constraints of the past. Interestingly enough, two of the first three sales of Reframe titles were shorts, one a thirty-minute film and the other an eight-minute film.

Viva Doc: What direction do you see documentary distribution headed in?

Yeager: The fascinating thing about the Internet is that it has allowed documentary filmmakers to reach out directly to their target audiences. The ability to sell your DVDs from a website and/or stream clips or a whole film is completely revolutionary, and, in my opinion, empowering for our community. For the short term, it appears that DVD sales will continue to be the cash cow for films in general, while creative Internet marketing techniques allow filmmakers to raise critical awareness about the work. As we know, online distribution is still sorting itself out as different companies compete to perfect the technologies and to reach new audiences. I do believe that we will eventually access much, if not all, of our content via the web, especially once we can connect it adequately to the television.

For these reasons, I am a believer that there will be new opportunities for documentary distribution. By opening up the marketplace in a way that allows smaller, but specific audiences to find the content they are seeking, documentaries will reach their greatest potential. Certainly, creative marketing will be required to get heard through the noise.

Another very important area for documentaries that is often overlooked when discussing digital distribution is institutional and educational sales. For documentaries, this is typically the most lucrative marketplace for your work. Educational institutions are still buying DVDs in large numbers, but they are starting to look toward a future of digital distribution. The field is wide open at this point. Since reaching the educational market is important to Reframe, much attention is currently focused on DVD sales. This will likely change as the distribution ecology further evolves.

Viva Doc: Do you find yourself watching more films on the computer screen, the TV screen, or the big screen?

Yeager: I watch all three pretty equally. I recently bought my first LCD TV in order to bring the Internet connection to the tube. Still, I hope the big screen stays around for a long time, for both the cinematic experience and for hosting community screenings.

Viva Doc: How has working on the distribution-side helped you as a filmmaker?

Yeager: I have learned so much about the creative ways one can reach audiences. Conversely, I work in digital distribution because I want to represent the perspective of content makers. I believe that we should be very involved in the development of this burgeoning marketplace, as it will have a dramatic effect on our creative opportunities as well as our incomes.

Viva Doc: Any words of wisdom for students looking to submit to Tribeca Film Festival?

Yeager: Programmers at the Tribeca Film Festival say it is most important to make the strongest film possible and resist sending a premature cut of that film for consideration. You get one chance to make a first impression and, at the very least, this first impression needs to elicit a champion for your film so that it will get a second look.

Viva Doc: List your top five documentary films.

Yeager: For a cross-section of documentary styles, here are some personal favorites:

Who Killed Vincent Chin?

To Be and To Have

Latcho Drom

Murderball

Koyaanisqatsi

Visit the Reframe website here.

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