Soda_Jerk Re- Copyright

Soda_Jerk's site is here.

R. Luke DuBois

Doing some curating for my next project, Co- Re-Creating Spaces, an exhibition opening on Nov. 17 at CentralTrak (in Dallas, TX), and enjoying the research.

The artist explains,

Kiss takes 50 iconic embraces from the history of cinema and re-animates them through a non-photorealistic rendering technique developed by the artist. The technique analyzes the footage by looking at details in the source that resemble the lips of the kissing actors and redrawing them with points tinted to match the colors of the original film. Because the computer schematizes lips in a mathematically abstract, and not particularly accurate, manner, all sorts of details fit this criteria, causing the software to highlight not only lips but hair, details in clothing, and portions of the cinematic backdrop. The artist then creates a vectorization of these 'points of interest' akin to a cats-cradle, connecting all the dots to create a work of moving string-art that entwines the actors performing the kiss in a new, geometric embrace of connecting lines. A deliberate misuse of computer vision, Kiss evokes the embrace-as-viewed, tracing the trajectory of our gaze with an abstract connectivity akin to our mirror neurons firing when we feel the romance underneath these cinematic objects. The soundtrack of the piece subjects the non-diegetic soundtrack of the kissing scenes to an auditory time-lapse effect, creating a feedback network that underscores and propels the imagery.

Fight Bite - Charlotte Iris

Seriously, Google has made it very difficult for me to even get in here to post, let alone format anything.

Anyway, quick share:

(Thanks, Sally!)

"Expanded Cinema"

Sorry to be so scarce here lately; I've been working on another big project. The 25th Dallas VideoFest opens on Sept. 26 with a screening of new video art works created especially for the LED display on the exterior walls of the Omni Dallas Hotel. I'll have a new piece of my own in the program, and have also been the coordinator/compiler for it, and before that, Ben Britt and I also created a template to enable myself and the other artists to make their works. We expect the audio for the initial screening to be simulcast on public radio KXT 91.7 FM public radio.

The show is called Expanded Cinema, in honor of pioneering new media art theorist Gene Youngblood (whose seminal book by the same title is seen as the first to propound video's potential as a fine art medium, and who will speak at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of the fest on Sat., Sept. 29). (Image left shot by Danielle Georgiou at a test screening.)

The show will include works by 14 artists selected by Bart, Michael A. Morris, and me, including Kari Altmann, Frank Campagna, Tim Capper, Rebecca Carter, Jeff Gibbons, Andrea Goldman, Mona Kasra, Kyle Kondas, Phil Lamb, Shane Mecklenburger, Mike Morris, Edward Setina, Jenny Vogel, and me. Expanded Cinema starts at 8:00 PM; pls watch for announcements re- a viewing location (generally, the best views will be from the south near the Houston St. Viaduct and Jefferson St. Bridge, along the far levy from the hotel).

The remaining 4 days of the 25th Dallas VideoFest will take place at the Dallas Museum of Art. The all-fest pass is a steal at $50; tickets here. In past years there've been some 250 videos to choose from; I think there may be slightly fewer this year, but with perhaps a greater proportion of the kinds you might find in an art gallery, for what that's worth, since I, Mike Morris, and Dee Mitchell helped curate in addition to the festival Director, Bart Weiss.

PS: I wrote an article for art+seek in honor of the 25th VideoFest, here, discussing some of my favorite videos shown at VideoFests past and how they relate to some of my favorites in the present, including works by Cindy Sherman, Sadie Benning, Martha Rosler, Mary Reid Kelley, and many more.

UPDATE: You can now see the piece I made for the program, Braille, here. More info about Expanded Cinema and the works in it here.

I Love the Aesthetics of this Video

If you've never seen "Naked tourist in Japanese moat," just go (sadly, embedding is not an option).

Dallas VideoFest 25th Anniversary Party!

I'm throwing a party tonite F-U-N it's called "Experiments in [Video]," bring everything that you own! (paraphrasing one of my fave videos brought to you by the Video Association of Dallas). And it's coming right up, on Sept. 14! But I'm not throwing it, AMS Pictures is; and you don't need to bring everything you own, just $25.

The event will feature a micro-fest of old VideoFest faves, a silent auction, and of course, a preview of what's to come at the 25th Dallas VideoFest! A panel of guests will also discuss their favorite VideoFest moments; the guests include:

Ed Bark, TV critic and blogger
Manny Mendoza, former DMN TV critic and filmmaker
Mark Birnbaum, filmmaker
moi, video artist
Katie Gimenez, Director of Networking at Plano Chamber of Commerce (and former DVF Festival Coordinator)

Come get prep'd for the fest, help re-create the world as a more interesting, fun place (another quote from Treetin: [s]how me something beautiful and I will go on) by contributing to a great organization, and party! – more info here, and tickets here!

Back to the Future of Video Art

The history of video art includes lots of wonderful work, much of which is rarely seen; but you'll have a few chances to catch up soon.

First, the Power Station will host four nights of video art from the past thru the present:

Aug. 30, video art from the 70's, selected by Mike Morris;
Sept. 6, from the 80's, selected by Ben Lima;
Sept. 13, from the 90's, selected by Jenny Vogel;
Sept. 20, from the 00's, selected by Nadav Assor.

All shows start at 7:30PM; the Power Station is located at 3816 Commerce, Dallas.

Meanwhile, on Sept. 14 at 7PM, AMS Pictures will host a 25th anniversary bash for the Dallas VideoFest featuring 3 rooms with screenings of favorites from past festivals, a panel briefly discussing their faves, and a program previewing Director Bart Weiss's picks from this year's festival. Tickets to this fundraiser are only $25 per person or $40 per couple.

And that brings us to the Dallas VideoFest itself, which is making new history by opening on Sept. 26 with a program of video art works created especially for and displayed on the four curved walls of the Omni Hotel, Dallas.

The remaining 4 days of the festival, most of which is dedicated to contemporary works, will take place at the Dallas Museum of Art. The all-fest pass is a steal at $50; tickets here. More details about the VideoFest to come.

Dallas VideoFest 25

. . . makes a big entrance with a program of new video art created especially for the nearly 200-foot high display system on the exterior walls of the Omni Hotel, Dallas, at 8:30PM on Wednesday, Sept. 26 . The program is entitled, Expanded Cinema, borrowed from the 1970 book of the same title by seminal new media theorist Gene Youngblood (see also this previous post), who will give a lecture at the festival, Secession from the Broadcast: The Internet and the Crisis of Social Control, at 3PM on Sunday at the DMA, Horchow Auditorium.

The image right is from OMNEY, one of the videos to be included in Expanded Cinema, by Shane Mecklenburger, who provided the transcription of Youngblood's talk at the latter link. The Omni display completely wraps the building; hence the weird aspect ratio. (Full disclosure: I'm helping to organize the program and will have a piece in it.)

Because of the unique characteristics of the Omni "screen," most of the artists had to re-invent their approach to an extent perhaps greater than usual, in order to create works that might exploit the potential of this new platform while adapting to its requirements and continuing to explore the concerns with which they prefer to engage in their aesthetic practices. They have risen to the challenge, and the resulting works are gorgeous and fascinating.

The rest of the VideoFest will be at the Dallas Museum of Art, Sept. 26 - 30; block out your calendar! It's shaping up to be one of the best fests yet. As the dates approach, I hope to post more details here, including a chronological schedule with program descriptions all in one page.

But go ahead and buy tickets for the fest (I recommend full immersion), find more info, or (please!) donate at videofest.org. You can also donate via Kickstarter here.

Here's an auditory blast from the past, ca. early Gene Youngblood . . .

The Palestinian Situation

I've been hearing of conflicts between Israel and its neighbors my whole life, but the news media never explained enough for it to make sense, and I'm afraid I never took the time to fully inform myself.

I was of course horrified by the Holocaust; the images from the death camps were burned into my brain at an early age, and they and the history that goes with them should never be forgotten. And I read Exodus, which portrayed the founding of the modern Israel in thrilling terms; and I could certainly understand why Jewish people would feel the need for their own state, where they could never again be a persecuted minority.

But from the start, I had trouble understanding why it was fair to force the people already living in those lands to give them up in order to create the new state. If Westerners were so keen to support the project, whey didn't they donate their own lands, instead of taking from others?

The history of this situation is long, with many twists and turns, and I remain embarrassingly ignorant about most of it; but during the last few years, I've come across a couple of items that seemed helpful enough to share.

The first was a video by artist Ursula Biemann, X-Mission (2008) (viewable at the foregoing link), which explores among other things the effects of the division of the Palestinian people among geographically dispersed locations and their partial re-connection via new communications technologies.

The second is the image at left, from Michal Vexler at +972 (click on it for a more legible version), which shows how Palestinians have been divided into five categories of citizenship with different rights and subject to different restrictions.

Pogomix Does It with Pulp

As usual, as great to see as to hear.

Chad Hopper a.k.a. PALFLOAT

I went to see what Chad Hopper's been up to and found this website, and the image right, and this music, and a bunch of other cool stuff, and a solicitation to help pay cancer bills. Go there for more cool stuff, and consider donating. (You can also click on the "Chad Hopper" label below.)

More from NYC: the New Museum

The New Museum had a lot of great shows, too, with exhibitions of work by Klara Lidén, Tacita Dean, Nathalie Djurberg, Phyllida Barlow, and others; I think my favorite was Lidén's, though perhaps partly because her work was new to me. My photos are here; apologies for the spotty quality; again, these are more a sketchy record than representative of the work shown.

More from NYC: MoMA

Got back from another stint in New York but haven't had a chance to process the photos 'til now. Since I was there earlier this year, I had the luxury of spending a little more time in fewer places. I spent 2 days at MoMA and could have spent much more – it's literally awesome.

The knock-out show was, of course, the Cindy Sherman retrospective. She's spent a lifetime re-creating in loving detail our most ambitious creations, ourselves, transforming herself into half of humanity while calling into question every means by which we prop up our sense of reality as well as our own identities – while selectively leavening her tableaux with flaws that point toward the eerie whatever-it-is that lies beneath. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed; but MoMA has lots of visuals on their website.

I also enjoyed a series of vintage video classics by Vito Acconci, Dan Graham, Richard Serra & Nancy Holt, et al., across from the main elevators on the ground floor; videos by Noam Toran, also near the elevators, I think maybe on the second floor?; an exhibition called The Shaping of New Visions, which included wonderful videos by Paul Strand & Charles Sheeler (hokily captioned but gorgeously shot) and Man Ray, as well as three series of politically-conscious photographic works, by Harrell Fletcher, Martha Rosler, and Lee Friedlander, among other things; the Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language exhibition (where photography was unfortunately again not allowed; but the "catalogue" was cheap). And I liked the premise of the Foreclosed, Rehousing the American Dream show – that the real estate collapse could be regarded as an opportunity to re-think housing, rather than leaving it to be exploited by disaster capitalists – tho' I found the show slightly disappointing in other ways.

My own photos of some of these works are here; apologies for moiré on tv screens and other defects; these photos help me as a record, at least, and can perhaps serve others in the same way.

Jon Kessler at Salon 94

And here's a post leading to images of an earlier Kessler work, seen in the 2009 Armory Show.

Robert Cauble's Guy Debord

A little long, but a wonderful ride; via notbored.org.

Stealth Projection

Created by Frédéric Eyl. In the US, you'd probably be hauled off as a terrorist; but I'd love to see more done with this.

The Armory Show, and a Few Observations

So here, finally, are my photos from the Armory Show 2012 – the "Contemporary" pier only. I saw lots of wonderful work, although I can't say anything totally blew my mind this year, either here or at the other shows seen on this trip; but that may have more to do with my previously perhaps-somewhat-retarded state of understanding of contemporary art, and the fact that art in Dallas may be catching up with the bigger art centers, than with any deficiency in the art on offer in these shows. (In fact, it seemed to me that, on a per capita basis, there may be as much or more great contemporary art being made here as in NYC.) A few general observations. Admittedly, it may be that what I noticed had a lot to do with the interests I went in with, which lately trend toward big-picture, substantive concerns . . .  

1. Complexity. While minimalism gave us (among other things) an appreciation of how much info is actually embedded in or implicated even by sensory fields that appear quite simple, art now seems to reflect our attempt to process how complex our world has become and to come to grips with complexity itself. We're deluged with more info, faster than ever before, and must not only process the individual bits, but try to understand how info in different areas of experience interrelate – how things intersect or are layered, reflected or echoed, how that makes them appear from different points of view, and what kinds of over-arching order can help us interpret and manage them without over-simplifying them, etc. [My apologies that I failed to note the artist or other info re- the work shown at left; if you can enlighten me, please do, and I'll update this post.] 

In contemporary art, this seems to me to show up not only in the kinds of juxtapositions of various, often incongruous styles and subject-matters characteristic of post-modernism, but also in the presentation of lots of detail in ways that are very inter-related and layered, both substantively and often in quite literal, physical ways – often while evincing a retained, minimalistic awareness of how much info is actually carried by even the most basic elements within the work. In addition to the image at left, see, e.g., the mobile by Pae White starting here, at the Independent Fair. Many works that embody or refer to this kind of inter-relatedness, intersection, layering, and/or reflection also seem to me to refer to issues of dimensionality.  

2. Multi-Dimensionality. As some of you may be aware, I'm very interested in such questions as: what can exist in which dimensions; how are or might things that extend into higher dimensions be perceived in or otherwise affect things in lower dimensions, and vice versa; what are the relationships among the dimensions themselves; etc.? Art has in the past been concerned with the fundamentals of manufacture and perception; the pendulum's been swinging back, and/or has perhaps now come full circle, to concern itself with metaphysics. (Installation at right: Jonathan Schipper, Slow Room in Miami (2011); a related video shows an even larger roomful of furniture being slowly pulled toward a similar hole in the wall.) I think of time as the fourth dimension – I understand that's appropriate from a scientific point of view – but in addition to points, lines, planes, spatial volumes, and time, I'm also thinking of, e.g., virtual spaces, such as in imaginative or conceptual, mental realms, or in cyberspace, or in the realm of data generally – the latter three seeming like more or less the same thing. More of us are actually living our lives more and more fully and more collectively in these virtual realms.  

One artist dealing with both complexity and dimensionality is Mary Reid Kelley (mentioned in my post on the last Site Santa Fe biennial here), whose b&w videos emulate the look of slightly surreal graphic novels, i.e., 2-D, though obviously shot in 3-D and recorded in 4-D, with titles and settings that literally invoke the imaginative dimensions of ancient myth and somewhat more recent history, and with relatively wordy, rhyming scripts that remind one a bit of epic poems. Dimensionality was also explicitly invoked in the work shown starting here, at the Independent Fair. (Still at left from Kelley's The Syphilis of Sisyphus (2011).)  

3. No Monopoly on Truth. There are many aspects of the dimensional inquiry that interest me, but, e.g., the virtual or conceptual realm sometimes seems to exist outside of time and space, even if we can only experience it from within time and space; e.g., clichés seem true at nearly all times, everywhere; ditto math. And my own insights and artistic inspirations sometimes seem to involve not so much my personal creativity as my somehow simply accessing stuff that already existed in some timeless, etheric realm; and I suspect many scientists feel the same way about their discoveries. (Image right and the following two show works by Michael Riedel; see also here et seq.) Until recently, intellectual property law recognized that, while you can copyright a tangible expression of a fact, or patent a device or process that deploys it, you cannot own the fact itself; in a quite literal sense, no one could have a monopoly on truth, at least not for long. Now, of course, over-reaching extensions of law permit corporations to patent actual gene sequences and lock up inspirations for lifetimes after the artists who expressed them died.  

Artists have been exploring these issues for quite a while now, but they remain unresolved and continue in evidence in contemporary works. Perhaps no one can have a monopoly on truth not only because expressions of it are to some degree relative to particular contexts, but also because there's a sense in which truth "wants to be free" – though we all also want those who provide useful expressions of it to be able to make a living. And of course, many of the efforts of governments or corporate management to hoard or otherwise control the flow of info seem to many of us tragically wrong-headed at best, and more often than not, as Julian Assange has suggested, evidence of corruption. As devastating as many of our wars have been, there's perhaps no greater conflict now unfolding than the infowar, the struggle between old and new power structures over who will control access to information (as evidenced in the ongoing efforts to shut down Wikileaks and whistleblowers, promote our reliance on the Cloud, and otherwise control the internet). These issues seem part of Michael Riedel's concerns in his large images (resembling crosswords and QR-type codes; and consider the actual texts {as usual, click on any of these images for larger/more legible versions}, including the way they were installed (look at their "reflections" in the purple "surface" – something's wrong . . . ).  

4. Our Interdependence Within the Virtual World. Other aspects of the virtual that I think we're wrestling with have to do with ways in and the extent to which our "real" lives are being supplanted, absorbed, and consolidated into our virtual lives, and our dependency on one another and on the technologies and organizations that make our virtual lives possible. In "real" life, even though you might not want to live as a total hermit, it can be done, at least in some parts of the world. But our lives in cyberspace can't exist at all without the many other people and organizations that make and maintain the necessary hardware, software, energy sources, etc.  

As you can see from the images within this post, some of my favorite works seem to address more than one of the areas mentioned above. With respect to our dependence on "clouds" of other people and technologies, some works deployed literal images of clouds; Leandro Erlich's Cloud Collection (2011) aligned 2-D layers to create clouds, while Philippe Parreno's Marquee, Atlas of Clouds (2012) similarly layered 2-D neon "pages" in a "book" – in both cases, the results could be interpreted either as 3-D but not 4-D or vice-versa; i.e., each complete cloud could represent either a set of 2-D cross-sections of a cloud in one shape in 3-D, all at the same, single instant in time, OR a series of images of a cloud captured in 2-D only but taken over a period of time, as its shape changed. In the case of Parreno's work, of course, the title suggests that what he had in mind was a series of images of different clouds; yet the book format seemed to me nonetheless suggestive of a flip-book, with the possibility that the images might in fact be of one cloud that morphs to become something different at each moment in time. 

 5. New Media. In another vein, forgive my complaint that, while there's been an explosion of exciting video and other new media work during the last ten years and more, we're still getting to see very little of it. The Armory and the Whitney tried to address the problem by offering seated screenings of compilations of videos. This does not put the videos thus shown on par with works in other media, since the videos were shown just once or, at best, a few times, while works in other media were shown continually for the entire duration of the exhibition. The arrangement seems esp. paltry given that video, by its very nature (≥ 24 FPS, with audio), can encompass more info than works in other media – i.e., good video can require as much or more viewing than works in other media, not less. The Moving Image Fair is commendable; but much more needs to be done. You can find my posts on the other 8 fairs or shows I saw on this trip (with links to photos) here (scroll down to get past a repeat of this post).

Independent Fair

Fair website here; NYT review here; my photos here. There was lots of great work; but if I had to pick one work that's really stuck with me, it was the 16mm film by Daria Martin, Closeup Gallery (2003), from Maureen Paley gallery, London. I was also happy to get to see another video by Laleh Khorramian, whose work I'd admired in the 2010 Site Santa Fe biennial. Additional posts on the NYC Armory week shows here.

 

Dependent Fair

So you heard about the Independent Fair; but there was also the Dependent Fair, occupying 6 floors of a Comfort Inn on the Lower East Side. The offerings varied widely; OWS even got a room.

The rooms were small and plagued by darkness, glare, and color reflected from yellow walls; nonetheless, many galleries managed to mount interesting mini-exhibitions. I esp. liked the shows installed by Audio Visual Arts, Foxy Production, and Silvershed.

The first image (right) shows part of the "Ministry of Lamination" installation from AVA; the second, a frame of a video by Michael Bell-Smith, from Foxy; the third, offerings from Silvershed. Good articles with photos at Art Fag City and eyes-towards-the-dove; more of my photos here.

More posts on the 2012 Armory week art fairs here.

Spring/Break Art Show (NYC Armory Week)

Spring/Break Art Show was a new, curator-driven "this can be a fair," located in Old School, NoLIta and featuring projects by 23 curators; and it may have been my favorite of the shows I saw during Armory week. Among the curators were the fair's founders Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly, Natalie Kovacs, Patrick Meagher, Eve Sussman, and Chen Tamir. The theme was "Apocalist: A Brief History of The End." The show also has a Facebook page with some photos here; Artinfo has an article with some good photos; Vernissage TV has a 6.5-min. video tour here; and my photos, such as they are, are here.

As usual, I'd have liked to have had more time here – everything I saw seemed to warrant it – but the evening ran out before I made it through the whole thing. Out of the works I saw, some faves were:

1. An installation featuring work by Eve Sussman – the labelling was a bit confusing to me, so I'll quote it: "Eve Sussman, Waiting for an Icon, 2012. Crazy Daisy, 2012, 3 channel site-specific video round with Patricia Thornley, Jeesu Kim, Leslie Thornton, Bat Or Kalo. Eve Sussman's site-specific work at Old School is inspired by a stained glass artwork she has brought back to life, animating it with the projections of several singers attempting the title song from the film Pull My Daisy. The musical rendition of the Neal Cassidy [sic], Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac poem was featured in Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's 1959 film." You can view the 26-min., classic Pull My Daisy at Ubuweb; the title song lyrics actually modify those of the poem; both are weird and suggestive; and the melody is wonderfully discombobulating and, I'd say, hard to sing. Sussman's projection onto stained glass was flanked on each side by projections of video'd windows through which you sometimes spied a young woman, apparently washing dishes or the like – the "glass" was frosted, except for a circle framing the young woman's head (see here for the layout).

2. Sp33dGuided Art Tour by Dora Budor + Maja Cule was a charming, thoughtfully goofy, iPhone-narrated tour with guide and guidee cuddled awkwardly on one Segway, purportedly touring the art in the show but in fact limited to the courtyard and an attempted trip around the block, although in my case we turned back after a close call involving a tree root and a fence. The artists explained they'd always wanted to try a Segway; me, too! The tour launched from a room featuring twin projections of Earth, positioned like views through a pair of binocs, except the planet spun differently in the two views; but I think this was a separate work.

3. In Sea of Fire by Fall on Your Sword (2012), an antique piano had been hooked up to video equipment in such a way that, in its default mode, the video showed one of those fake statue guys dressed up like the Statue of Liberty; but when you pressed one of the organ keys, this was interrupted by a clip from a disaster movie, with each key seemingly triggering the destruction of the Statue by a different, apocalyptic means – bombing, a tidal wave, alien invasion, etc. It was, simply, awesome. Trailer here; but it's nothing like being able to trigger a Liberty-annihilating tsunami with a key stroke.

I also saw a piece in which purported art objects were incorporated into an improvisational, audience-participatory art performance, which was a lots of fun; apologies that I can't say who deserves credit, except I think it may have been hosted by ArtLog? (I've requested more info and will update this if I get it.)

(Posts on other 2012 Armory week art shows here; three more to come.)