DINCA Vision Quest 2012

Thursday, August 16–Saturday, August 18, 2012 –> –> Vision Quest 2013, click here
1807 S. Allport St., Chicago, IL (map)
Free. 8pm e’ery night. (Seating is limited; first-come, first served, or RSVP here.)
Click here for DINCA VISION QUEST 2012 program notes w/ film synopses.

VISION QUEST 2012 is three nights of vision quest festivities in Chicago, including a handful of screenings with live audio/video performances. VISION QUEST’s credo is to translate the dinca.org blog experience into an amalgamated IRL (in real life) experience, to further expand the ambit of experimental film & video, new media art, internet art, and to share the subterranean magic of great artists & filmmakers in a physical and social setting. In addition to screening work from around the world, it’s our mission to bolster the Chicago arts community by featuring the works of many Chicago filmmakers & artists in a setting that’s free of charge.

All festivities take place in Thalia Hall (1807 S. Allport St.), a grand old Czech theatre built in 1892 in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. Thalia Hall remained in use until the mid 1960s. Since then, the theatre has largely been abandoned, seeing raves and metal shows in the mid-to-late ’80s and early ’90s, and most recently, a Space Program multiple-date screening series organized by artist and filmmaker, Ben Russell, during the spring of 2011. Since then, the theatre has been inactive, and with VISION QUEST 2012, we wish to revive the building with free screenings of contemporary recherché film and video, with subsequent real-time a/v performances.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

COMPUTER BLOOD.

Featuring work that is disseminated online with a subject matter that blurs the lines between new & experimental media, technology, and cinema.

(TRT 62 min, plus performance.)

I Can’t Feel My Face
Chris Naka
Chicago, IL | 2011 | 6 min | video | sound
Chrisnaka.com

I Can’t Feel My Face is shot and edited entirely on an iPhone, and the digital photographs contained in the video are navigated by hand on an iPad. I became tired of how slick and sterile a lot of work produced using motion graphics software can look–especially how divorced it can seem (at times) from any immediate relationship to the maker’s body. It has been my experience that our encounters with images are increasingly tactile and grimy. The grimier the better. (CN)

Hyper Geography
Joe Hamilton
Melbourne, Australia | 2011 | 1 min | video | sound
Joehamilton.info

As we wend our way through Hyper Geography (2011), we see a floating iPhone o’er an icy landscape; a USB storage stick hovers in a valley; it’s an amalgamation of the digital experience, the material experience, and the natural experience — the daily experience — a certain ode to our inundation of technology and the speed at which things are moving.

At a one-minute duration, the video seems a little too brief, but perhaps it serves as a snippet of a larger, shared experience, especially considering its abrupt start and end points. It’s a video component to Joe Hamilton’s “Hyper Geography” internet art project, a project hosted on the tumblr platform featuring “100 looping posts that link together horizontally and vertically.” See the result at http://hypergeography.com. (AR)

Kafka Office
Bea Fremderman
Chicago, IL | 2012 | 2 min | video | sound
Beafremderman.com

Natural light cycles through an unnatural office labyrinth. (AR)

Spectrum Horizont
Emilio Gomariz
Spain / UK | 2012 | 2 min | video | silent
Emiliogomariz.net

A prismatic spectrum of undocked Mac OS desktop. (AR)

Going Through
Eric Fleischauer
Chicago, IL | 2011 | 5 min | video | sound?
Ericfleischauer.com

Going Through is a minimal and cyclical meditation on the slippery relationship between the virtual and the real. Combining pop culture with the tableaux vivant, this video presents a single-take, real-time performance via the iphone set to “Changes” by Black Sabbath. Here, the coldness of technology is imbued with emotion in order to address the complex and paradoxical nature of technology’s ubiquity, influences, and consequences. (EF)

[[[ I’ll Show You HD ]]]
Jennifer Chan
Syracuse, NY | 2012 | 3 min | video | sound
Jennifer-chan.com

New media A–Z. (JC)

blinkinggirls.com 1 min
Emilie Gervais & Sarah Weis
Paris, France & Montreal, Canada / Chicago, IL | 2012 | 1 min | sound
Emiliegervais.com & sarahweis.com

blinking, girls, foreplay, trance, electricity, simulation, simulated, prostheticization, intranet, protocol, being away, ecstasy, input, output, processing, hyper-cinema, gaming, video, games, audience abstraction, confessional behavior, leisure suit larry, tasha, blinks, cursor, if then else, reality, violet, accessories, pinky paradise, sweet pink games, extension, hot tub, tinychat, energy, configuration, twitter, hi, do cats blink, stars, amiga, anime, anigao, hola! (EG & SW)

Collaboration #1 — Eijane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin (August, 2010)
Eijane Janet Lin
Chicago, IL | 2010 | 5 min | video | sound
Eijanejanetlin.com

A bawdy internet performance piece combing elements of CAM4 chat room interaction with new-media performance art and transgressive use of props. (AR)

CAPTCHA Part II
Gabrielle de Vietri
Berlin | 2012 | 8 min | video | sound
Gabrielledevietri.com

Chapter Two continues with the brilliant concept of using CAPTCHA (“Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”) words as fodder to abstractly concatenate a fantasy story; storyteller Gabrielle de Vietri’s prudence, placement, and fastidious care with these CAPTCHA vocables results in pitch-perfect zaniness. (AR)

Post_It_Desktop_Feedback
Miyo Van Stenis
Venezuela | 2012 | 3 min | video | silent
Vimeo.com/miyovantenis

Having fun with feedbacks and Terminal. (MVS)

Headquarters
Nicolas Sassoon & Sara Ludy
Vancouver, Canada | 2011 | 3 min | video | sound
Nicolassassoon.com & saraludy.com

On the computer, a dream and a screen, the syzygy. Chimerical, real, and otherworldly.

Headquarters, by Nicolas Sassoon and Sara Ludy, is an architectural proposal for the online art collective, Computers Club. The animation displays a 3D aerial view and walk-through of a building rendered at a low resolution, using a simple color palette. The building displayed in the video is meant to act as a physical meeting point and a center of operations for the members of the collective. Nicolas Sassoon, a member of the Computers Club, created the design of the building and the animated rendering. Sara Ludy, another member of the collective, created the soundtrack for the animation. (AR)

Purple Rain
Geoffrey Pugen
Canada | 2010 | 4 min | video | sound
Geoffreypugen.com

The car is purple and there is purple rain raining, much like the song. Is anyone in the car? We do not know. What we see is an expressionistic, soft and delicate automotive compliment to the timeless ballad of “Purple Rain.” Oh, the pathos (but this rendering borders on the bathos).

We all actually know that Prince made a wicked feature film titled Purple Rain (1984), over 20 years ago, and he drove a smoking motorcycle in the film, not a car, and it was a biopic, and we very well know that biopics often win the awards. Regardless, this short animation gives us a purple reason to drive our purple car into the Purple Rain. Purple pedal to the metal. (AR)

Climbing
Jesse McLean
Chicago, IL | 2011 | 6 min | video | silent
Jessemclean.com

So many mountains to climb — climbing and climbing and climbing — and now we are seeing the colors of change. Grab hold and climb, climb, climb. Now — more than ever — it is time to implement the most profound changes internally. Our inner develops pari passu with our outer. Change or be changed. Participate in the glorious uphill climb of life. What is your mountain to climb? Find the mountain; climb that damn mountain.

“The real world is a thing of joy, a dance of life. It is a world in which no one finds it difficult to be a means of bringing happiness to others.” (AR)

Three Ways to Evaluate a Landscape as a Work of Art
Nicholas O’Brien
Boulder, CO | 2011 | 8 min | video | sound
Doubleunderscore.net

Ruminations on land by Nicolas O’Brien. (AR)

At The Shore
Stephanie Barber
Baltimore, MA | 2011 | 2 min | video | sound
Stephaniebarber.com

A digital paintbrush manipulates an idyllic photo of flowers by a waterside setting. (AR)

Part of the Jhana and the Rats of James Olds or 31 days/31 videos (2011) series by Stephanie Barber.

Vexed
Telcosystems
presented by Bonobostudio
Rotterdam, Netherlands | 2012 | 29 min | video | sound
Telcosystems.net & bonobostudio.hr/en/

As physicists are closing in on the particle described as the fundamental building block in our understanding of the Universe, Telcosystems show a far less conclusive particle theory; one that describes a digital world that is unstable and multimodal by nature, only revealing itself through bits and pieces traveling at superluminal velocity. At these speeds even the slightest fluctuation or disturbance unleashes a cascade of shapeshifting sono-optical movements, constantly challenging and redefining the rules by which this pattern-defying universe is pulled from stasis into turbulent chaos.

This film was made possible by the generous support from: The Netherlands Film Fund, the Rotterdam Media Fund, the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture and the Rotterdam Department of Art and Culture. (Telcosystems)

With performances by:

Jon Satrom
Chicago, IL
Jonsatrom.com

A real-time a/v desktop hacking performance.

Friday, August 17, 2012

SCINTILLATING TRIPS.

Scintillating strips of psychoactive and psychedelic cinema.

Screening in sequential order. (TRT: 120 minutes, plus performance)

Point de Gaze
Jodie Mack
Lebanon, NH | 2012 | 5 min | 16mm | silent
Jodiemack.com

Named after a type of Belgian lace, this spectral study investigates intricate illusion and optical arrest. (JM)

Some Animals
Stephanie Barber
Baltimore, MA | 2011 | 2 min | video | sound
Stephaniebarber.com

A cacophony of animal noises. (AR)

Part of the Jhana and the Rats of James Olds or 31 days/31 videos (2011) series by Stephanie Barber.

Visitors
Brenna Murphy
Portland, OR | 2011 | 2 min | video | sound
Bmruernpnhay.com

An experimental travelogue with emphasis on color, shape, and pattern. (AR)

A Party With Sex and Sadness
Bobby Abate
presented by the Video Data Bank
Brooklyn, NY | 2011 | 10 min | video | sound
Sweetkitty.com & vdb.org

A high & low fidelity record of obessions past & present. A hooded man named Cobra Commander (drawn nake) and a boy with black glasses. A fanged woman named Shadow-La and a girl in a rose colored wig. Belinda (Heaven on Earth), Madonna (Live to Tell), and headphones (worn naked). An airport terminal. Home. The Montgomery Ward catalog circa 1980. That orange bedspread, the red flowered couch. (BA)

RUINAS (PART ONE)
Jesse Malmed
Chicago, IL | 2011 | 5 min | video | sound
Jessemalmed.net

Border/s of time/s, place/s; amateur (as in love) archaeologists; someone said “hauntology,” someone asked where the ruins were; someone remembered those caves from two decades before, someone from 10,000 years before; someone said friendship, said going home; someone knew. (JM)

Mahjongg
Frank Pollard
Chicago, IL | 2012 | 3 min | video | sound
Frankpollard.net

Through the SD kaleidoscope, there is a topless woman dancing. (AR)

An ominous knock on Ted Danson’s door leads to a psychedelic trip through the astral plane. The truth behind myth is proven not to matter, belief is affirmed, and transcendence is unintelligible. (TB)

Shift
Max Hattler
London, UK | 2012 | 3 min | video | sound
Maxhattler.com

Using the New Age idea of a ‘dimensional shift’ as inspiration, Shift combines science fiction themes through abstract, stop motion animation of objects and colour. (MH)

WHS VHS #1
Kent Lambert
Chicago, IL | 2009 | 3 min | video | sound
Roommatemusic.com/index/kent-lambert-videos

A dread-laced celebration of my high school via its 1993-94 “Video Yearbook.” (KL)

Loud Video
Neil Ira Needleman
Westport, CT & NYC, NY | 2011 | 6 min | video | silent
Neilneedleman.com

Abstract patterns made utilizing Microsoft Word are “animated” via editing into a dazzling and frantic kaleidoscope video. (Onion City Film Festival)

New Document
Jaakko Pallasvuo
Berlin, Germany & Finland | 2011 | 1 min | video | sound
Jakkopallasvuo.com

A bucolic video poem featuring white sheets flapping in the wind. (AR)

o,n,e,t,o,k,e,o,v,e,r,t,h,e,l,i,n,e
Theodore Darst
Chicago, IL | 2012 | 3 min | video | silent
Theodoredarst.net

Made as attempt to fuse a more personal, diaristic form of video art with the more formal concerns raised by the structuralist filmmakers. o,n,e,t,o,k,e,o,v,e,r,t,h,e,l,i,n,e uses a frame by frame 3D rendering of the 16mm projections from Paul Sharits’ SHUTTER INTERFACE ( youtube.com/watch?v=Syjw1hJAADg ) as a structural base for some my most recent iphone videos. (TD)

ECCOS (trailer)
Andrew Norman Wilson
Chicago / NYC | 2012 | 2 min | video | sound
Andrewnormanwilson.com

ECCOS is a six hour meditation video based on a manipulated video of Ecco the Dolphin game-play. (ANW)

Burning Star
Joshua Solandz
Brooklyn, NY | 2011 | 4 min | video | sound
Vimeo.com/user819761

Dedicated to my father, who asked that I make a more colorful work. (JS)

Conjuror’s Box
Kerry Laitala
San Francisco, CA | 2011 | 5 min | 35mm on video | silent
Kerrylaitala.net

Through the looking glass one travels, and becomes immersed in a fiery pane of hand-painted wonders. (KL)

Activated Memory 1
Sabrina Ratte
Montreal, Cananda | 2012 | 7 min | color | sound
Sabrinaratte.com

Enjoy these beautiful video manipulations from Montreal-based artist Sabrina Ratté. Seemingly benign images of trees and other static scenery is subjected to “video feedback, 3d animation, and color manipulations,” creating a visual style associated with early experiments in computer graphics. The dissonance here comes through juxtaposing these typically cosmic-themed techniques with the simplicity of the landscapes. An eerie calm is achieved (spurred on by the synthesizer work of Roger Tellier-Craig), particularly when a patch of trees is seen in a spinning, multiplying 3D encasement. It’s as if each layer of the frame is unknowingly studying the one before it in a pristine, diorama-like setting. (Keith Kawaii, Tiny Mix Tapes)

Decorations of the Mind II
Shana Moulton
San Francisco, CA | 2011 | 12 min | video | sound
Shanamoulton.info

Moulton’s alter-ego Cynthia travels through the desert to understand a Magic Eye poster. Eventually, Cynthia gains requisite Gnostic knowledge of the optical illusion and enters its fold, where she’s greeted by a gathering of friendly and awesome creatures. (Tom McCornack, Alt Screen)

Undergrowth
Robert Todd
Boston, MA | 2012 | 12 min | 16mm | sound
Roberttoddfilms.com

Feathers, foliage, flowers, tree bark. Through the eyes of a blind owl, Robert Todd’s Undergrowth (2011) saunters through the woods, craws under brush, climbs trees and branches, and channels the Great sentient Spirit of the woods. (AR)

PONCE DE LEÓN
Ben Russell; co-directed with Jim Drain
Paris, France & List other city here | 2012 | 26min | HD | 5.1 sound
Dimeshow.com

“I could do wonders if I didn’t have a body. But the body grabs me, it slows me, it enslaves me.” — Ponce de Léon

Our PONCE DE LEÓN discovered the fountain of youth and drank of immortality in the waning moments of his life. In an instant, he became old forever – an 80-year old Spaniard who would continue to walk the earth for century after century after century, watching as coral foundations gave way to mangrove swamps, as swamps were drained and buildings were erected, as buildings decayed and swamps returned. Our PONCE DE LEÓN is an immortal for whom time poses the greatest dilemma – it is a constant, a given, and his personal battle lies in trying to either arrest time entirely or to make the hands on his clock move ever faster. For PONCE DE LEÓN, time is a problem of body, and only by escaping his container can he escape time itself. (BR)

With performances by:

arcanebolt
Chicago, IL
Arcanebolt.net

arcanebolt is a crew [Tamas Kemenczy, Mark Beasley, & Alex Inglizian] of dweomerkrafters building up & breaking naive circuits and bygone hardware.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

AN OPEN DOOR.

Walk through this open door of cinema.

Screening in sequential order. (TRT: 111 minutes, plus performances)

30,000 Days
Stephanie Barber
Baltimore, MA | 2011 | 3 min | video | sound
Stephaniebarber.com

A singular old photograph of a woman invokes many thoughts and feelings. (AR)

Part of the Jhana and the Rats of James Olds or 31 days/31 videos (2011) series by Stephanie Barber.

349 — For Sol LeWitt
Chris Kennedy
Toronto, Candada | 2012 | 1 min | video | silent
Theworldviewed.com

Chris Kennedy digitally animates Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawing #349 in a scintillating short sequence that enchants the viewer with its primary color palette and bold geometric diction. In one thoughtful minute, the sequential dance of shape cuts the frame into pieces of eye-candy; frame-by-frame, the flux of color creates a lurid, fluorescent flicker, fostering a graphic environment with a cinematic sparkle that’s sure to dazzle the viewer. (AR)

(ebbs + flows)
Clint Enns
Toronto/Winnipeg, Canada | 2011 | 3 min | video | sound
Vimeo.com/clintenns

The endless cosmic flow. A meditative video exploring the transition from truth to loving kindness. (CE)

By Foot-Candle Light
Mary Helena Clark
Chicago, IL | 2011 | 9 min | video | sound
Vimeo.com/user4839651

Scenes from the proscenium wings. A film imagined and recounted by foot-candle light. You close your eyes and, suddenly, it is dark. (MHC)

Village, silenced
Deborah Stratman
Chicago, IL | 2012 | 7 min | video | sound
Pythagorasfilm.com

A re-working of Humphrey Jennings’ seminal 36-minute 1943 docudrama “The Silent Village,” wherein Welsh coal miners from the village of Cwmgiedd collectively re-enact the Nazi invasion and annihilation of the resisting Czech mining village of Lidice. Focus in this iteration is on sound as a mode of social control and the larger historical implications of repetition. An homage to Jennings’ lucid address of labor solidarity, power and commemoration. (DS)

Peril of the Antilles
Fern Silva
Brooklyn, NY & Haiti | 2011 | 5 min | video | sound
Fernsilva.com

Peril of the Antilles was filmed at the beginning of November 2010 while visiting a friend in Haiti. At this specific time, the cholera epidemic was on its way to Port-au-Prince, Hurrican Tomas was on the horizon, presidential elections were in a couple weeks and the first Gede (day of the dead) took place since the January quakes. Along the way I acquired a very curious copy of a music video of Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly (Haiti’s newest president and once bad boy of Compas), from his early ‘90s heyday … shot in a familiar location … raje gain’ zoreille … (FS)

Across & Down
Lori Felker
Chicago, IL & Uganda | 2012 | 18 min | video | sound
Felkercommalori.com

Sampling and participating. Randomness found in rigid frame-works. All of the pieces that make up some of the wholes. (LF)

Fantasy Suite
Kent Lambert
Chicago, IL | 2009 | 7 min | video | sound
Roommatemusic.com/index/kent-lambert-videos

A meditation on mainstream American heterosexual romance. (KL)

All Of It
Jacob Bricca
CT | 1996 | 23 min | video | sound
Jbricca.blogs.wesleyan.edu

A mélange of found-footage from ‘90s television provides a commentary of western pop culture verging on dystopia. (AR)

Low Epic
Jaakko Pallasvuo
Berlin, Germany & Finland | 2011 | 5 min | video | sound
Jaakkopallasvuo.com

A poetic video essay set inside of the gallery space, featuring two feet wearing coral-colored socks that stand atop two blocks of ice cream. (AR)

Line Describing Your Mom
Michael Robinson
West Danby, NY | 2011 | 6 min | video | sound
Poisonberries.net

This is the new choreography of devotion, via the vlog of southern nightmares. This is the light that never goes out. This is the line describing your mom. (MR)

Untitled Composition #1
Sara Ludy
Vancouver, Canada | 2012 | 3 min | video | sound
Saraludy.com

A photo of grass cycles through a gallery. (AR)

River Rites
Ben Russell
Paris, France | 2011 | 11 min | 16mm on video | sound
Dimeshow.com

“Animists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others.” – Graham Harvey, Animism

A trance dance water implosion, a newer line drawn between secular possession and religious phenomena. Filmed in one shot at a sacred site on the Upper Suriname River, the minor secrets of a Saramaccan animist everyday are revealed as time itself is undone. Rites are the new trypps; embodiment is our eternal everything. (BR)

Remote
Jesse McLean
Chicago, IL | 2011 | 12 min | video | sound
Jessemclean.com

In the collage video Remote, dream logic invokes a presence that drifts through physical and temporal barriers.

There is a presence lingering in the dark woods, just under the surface of a placid lake and at the end of dreary basement corridor. It’s not easy to locate because it’s outside but also inside. It doesn’t just crawl in on your wires, because it’s not a thing. It’s a shocking eruption of electrical energy. (JM)

A Lax Riddle Unit
Laida Lertxundi
Los Angels, CA | 2011 | 5 min | 16mm | sound
Laidalertxundi.com

In a Los Angeles interior, moving walls for loss. Practicing a song to a loved one. A film of the feminine structuring body. (LL)

With Performances by:

Jesse Malmed
Chicago, IL
Jessemalmed.net

video L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetics + abstractedelia and participatory performance w/ conversational karaoke

Jon Cates & Jake Elliott

Chicago, IL
Systemsapproach.net | dai5ychain.net

Dirty new media multiple projector performance.

Logo and animated .gif by Will Thomas.

Audio by Simple A/V.

Curated by Andrew Rosinski.

Organized by Amelia St. Peter–Blair of E.A.T. and Andrew Rosinski.

DINCA.org
Sacred Visions 4 U.
Our mission is to expand the international sphere of experimental film, new media art, video art, internet art, and more. We strive to share the subterranean magic of great filmmakers and artists. We are Chicago-based. We are open to submissions, press for relative events, new writer/contributor submissions, and more.

E.A.T. is a non-profit organization dedicated to promote the arts by providing exhibition opportunities and educational resources for emerging artists in the Chicago-land community. E.A.T.’s goal is to enrich the neighborhood of Pilsen through inspired artistic productions showcased in Thalia Hall’s theater and gallery space. E.A.T’s dynamic programs will cultivate a supportive artistic network where emerging artists can be empowered to share their voice.