Filmmaker Chris Burden shoots himself with a live round of .22 ammo.

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

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

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

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

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Video via Craig Shimala.

Last night, June 23rd, a spectacular storm boomed through Chicago. From the bottom my heart, it was the most marvelous storm I’ve seen with my two eyes. I watched the storm from my deck; I watched 80 mph wind gusts rip the shingles off my neighbors roof. My new roommate, Juan, was storing many things in that neighbors basement, and the basement flooded. Looking at the door afterward, a half-foot watermark. Their basement and Juan’s stuff is destroyed. Juan had to throw away many things (talk about Summer cleaning).

Three lightning bolts hit the three tallest buildings in Chicago — the Willis Tower (formally the Sears Tower), the Hancock Building, and the Trump Tower — the three bolts hit the three buildings simultaneously.

Soon after the storm lulled, it revealed one full-arching rainbow, and soon after, second rainbow, one atop the other.

“Wednesday’s storms towered up to 63,000 ft, unleashed 80 mph gusts, local 3″+ rains and 15,000 cloud to ground lightning strikes in a single hour.” — Chicagoweathercenter.com

Amazing video.

Saul Levine, 1969, 8mm, 7 min, silent, color

The edit is the impetus for Saul Levine’s silent seven minute short, A Note to Pati (1969). With his jaunty edit, Levine creates a unique juxtaposition of weltering, home video imagery with brush cutting gat-gat image tracing. Levine’s edit, with alacrity, leavens the film into a visual visual poem, which otherwise would simply be a few dusty 8mm reels of an individual’s home memories.

The edit is the vise of this film, and this surely is a technical edit, therefore let’s briskly analyze this film afore.

Film editor’s curiosity compelled me to watch the film multiple times while tallying the number of film splices. Clearly, it’s impossible to get an exact number, but according to my tally averaged, the film has approximately 400 splices — this is wild — this is a seven minute film.

The duration of the film is 6:51; and let’s say the film contains a 400 number of splices; 400 splices. Ripping it with math, we’ll round 6:51 to seven minutes and divide that by 400 — this equals one splice per 1.75 seconds.

Here we see the divergence of experimental/underground/avant-garde film from the Hollywood or mainstream independent film. Mainstream film editors, on occasion, have reign to experiment with the edit here and there, obligations attached, affecting their edit in a tame manner, constricting it to moments, 1-10 seconds, because they have to play it safe, because they have to ‘keep the story moving’ ‘long. Avant-garde film is A-1 because there’s experimentation, and experiments lead to discovery and newfound creation, and newfound creation is boundless — it can enkindle all sorts of tropes, and emotions, and might even dust some dusty glyphs and dusty arcana.

It’s apparent that Levine had scant amount of footage to work with, and arguably this project may have started as an editing exercise for Levine, but what is evident is that Levine’s edit leavens this footage into ink which pens a letter visual letter to a girl. Perhaps he writes to the titular Patti, perhaps he writes this letter to others or everyone, perhaps this letter is perennial.

Levine writes a letter and this letter is a letter of human movement, progress, it pushes forward. In his letter, he paints, splats, and crosscuts between images observing the movement of children whereabouts wintry white hills and the snowy front of a homestead; particular focus drawn on a child in red, and a lingering shot of a bird in a tree. The mise-en-scène of the film is a punctuating red against snow white — red and purity — linked with the sturdy, organic color of brown. Mother earth. Mother Earth earth and whatever place we feel at home.

The film lingers most on the images of the child in red, the movement and shoveling and excavating of snow,  children with snow, and the bird in the tree. Gluing this imagery together is the splicing of black leader flashes, film splice marks, deformed celluloid, and sometimes 1 to 5 frames of weltering camera movements of extreme-close-ups that tumble all over the screen, throwing eye-tracers hither and thither.

Near the end is an image sequence worth ponder: children sledding; the main child in red frolics in the snow, lots of forward movement, and subsequently the child is warm-washed by sunlight.

In the closing shot, the standalone treetop bird flies away toward something. The same closing shot caps with a pan-left to the sturdy trunk of a tree, solidly rooted in the earth’s soil.

From a narrative standpoint, Levine’s letter is multivalent; however, the editing in A Note to Patti constructs a lovely letter of human progress, writing of the parallel existence of human life and all life housed by mother earth; a friendship us humans, consciously or subconsciously, share with mother earth and all living creatures. That is one person’s subjective interpretation vis-a-vis this film stripped of its constructivist edit just be an old, dusty 8mm home movie.

More:

Saul Levine on Vimeo

Saul Levine on Mubi (formally the auteurs)

Harvard Film Archive: Recent Restorations, including the films of Saul Levine

jupiter’s eye

duration: 1:25
2010
pair part one with part two.
Watch synchronously; synchronize part one and part two.

Also, try watch the fullsize here: part 1, part 2

Also, try watching fullscreen.

timefaall from andrew rosinski on Vimeo.

2010, video, 20 sec

fall in time / fall in line

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.

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a beach

duration: 2:11
2010
pair part one with part two.
Watch synchronously; synchronize part one and part two.

Cheetah Run from andrew rosinski on Vimeo.

A running cheetah

2010, 21 sec, video

By Petra Cortright. Fullscreen it.

(Rosa Menkman, 2009, video, music by Extraboy)

This video, by Dutch visualist Rosa Menkman, is quite lovely, considering it’s glitch video art. This piece is most forceful when, one minute in, we begin to see RGB tiger-stripe-slashing and Extraboy’s music finds stride. I highly recommend reading of Rosa’s process (below) in making this video.

Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum.
— Haraway, Donna. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” 1985.

Synopsis: The video-images are constructed out of nothing but the image created by feedback (I turned a high-end camera on a screen that was showing, in real time, what I was filming, creating a feedback loop). Then I glitched the video by changing its format and subsequently exporting it into animated gifs. I (minimalistically) edited the video in Quicktime. Then I sent the file to Extraboy, who composed music for the video. The composing process started with a hand held world radio. Extraboy scanned through frequencies and experimented with holding the radio in different parts of the room while touching different objects.

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1974, 16mm, Color, Sound, 3 minutes

JACK GOLDSTEIN

BIOGRAPHY (from Jack Goldstein website):

Jack Goldstein was one of the most important artists of the 80′s in New York. He returned to California in the 90′s and slowly disappeared from the art world until renewed interest in his work began to happen in 2000. He, sadly, died on March 14, 2003 just as his dreams for his work were being realized.

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Ouroboros
6-channel 3D video, 2010
Ise Cultural Foundation, 555 Broadway at Prince St, New York City March 9 – April 23, 11 am – 6 pm, Tuesday – Saturday

Do you live in New York City? If you answered yes, you absolutely have to visit this video installation: Ouroburos: The History of the Universe, curated by Koan Jeff Baysa, MD, is a holographic 3-D visual installation that tells the story of cosmic evolution. Some 30,000 found images we’re used, and the 3-D video environment was rendered by Bruno Levy’s (no relation to Eugene Levy) software. According to artists Ali Hossaini, Bruno Levy aka SWEATSHOPPE, and Blake Shaw, “Compiling and processing the images requires hundreds of hours of effort and attention to detail on every frame of video.

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.”

March 09, 2010 – April 23, 2010 at  Ise Cultural Foundation in SoHo.

Artist(s): Ali Hossaini, Blake Shaw, Bruno Levy
Curated by: Koan Jeff Baysa, MD
Artist Talk: Wednsday, April 7th, 6-8PM
Artists Ali Hossaini, Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw will discuss the inspiration, influences and technical processes used to make the installation.

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Ed Emshwiller and Alvy Ray Scott, 1979, 16mm, 3m

Born in Lansing, Michigan, and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Ed Emshwiller (1925-1990) was a pioneer in the development of video technology. He was one of the first to experiment with synthesizers and computers in his quest to ‘sculpt with technology.’ Sunstone (1979) is film version of computer animation: it was made using a digital paint program at New York Institute of Technology — a collaboration between Emshwiller and Alvy Ray Smith. Sunstone exhibited at many places, including SIGGRAPH ’79 in Chicago, New York’s WNET television show video/film Review, 1979, and the Mill Valley Film Festival, Mill Valley, California, 1981. Originally released as a videotape.

Synopsis: Sunstone is a prime example of Emshwiller’s artful use of technology to create stunning images. A timeless face, carved from stone as a ‘third eye’, appears radiating color and forms that are computer generated.

Ed Emshwiller and Alvy Ray Smith work on Sunstone at NYIT in 1979

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Max Hattler, 2005, U.K. & Germany, 2 min, color

Collision is a short, award-winning animation from Max Hattler, a London-and-Germany-based animator and artist, whose work we have blogged before, e.g., 1) 1923 (2010), and 2) Live A/V Performance by Max Hattler & Noriko Okaku.  Hattler’s minimalist approach to graphical forms, pattern, and the RGB color palette are bright.

Collision deploys a deft arsenal of shapes on path, stars-and-kaliedoscope-striping geometry, with textures and forms culled from the ensigns of Americana and Islamism. Animators crackle and explode; pattern and cadence enkindle war paradoxes between the U.S. Government, the special interests of the U.S. Gov. (some say Israel), and their Islamic adversaries. The sound design is slick and significant, and this crackle-crisp sound imbues extrasensory depth, while punctuating the graphic.

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“Look” by Sebastien Tellier, visuals by Myzyk & Moriceau, 4 min

I do not own an iPhone, I can’t even text-message, but for those of you who have iPhones, French independent label Record Makers created an iPhone application/game (they dub it “surrealistic”), and apparently you can win prizes by playing. That’s right, you heard right, you can win prizes. And here’s the best part: this iPoop application is f r e e.

Artists Mrzyk & Moriceau created the game; in the game you create random art by swiping different parts of the drawing. Your experimentation paired with your creative iPhone can WIN BIG.

It’s widely accepted by scientists and mathmeticians that our iPhones have and always will be smarter than us. Having said that, we must examine if the iPhone is more creative than the human.

Find it on iTunes

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Andrew Rosinski, 4 min, found footage, 2008

Synopsis: A feverish montage-meditation on the national identity of American Citizens, the culture and trends of American consumerism, the relationship of man to machine, and the abstract relation of machine + wilderness. Americans define their individuality and lifestyle through their consumerism; corporations create sub-cultures, niches, and they market and sell this lifestyle, sending the consumer concealed messages that we need to buy the best to be the best.

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