We will all face times in our lives where we must shed a role, identity and perception of ourself that we no longer are.. Perhaps that metamorphosis can be intentionally induced through a form of creative metaphoric narrative? The medium may be generated through meditation, a gaming engine, animation, video and the written word. That is one small formula, this is my attempt to integrate and simulate such a thing…
The “pieces” in the exhibition contain a series of written passages, looping animations and aesthetically stylized videos. The artwork as a whole is soundless. I believe that there is great depth and beauty in soundlessness. It is an overlooked medium and energy source that hearing people take for granted. The intention of the soundlessness is to provoke the viewer to go inside of themselves and connect to that pending emotional state that needs to be faced. But “how” does one know once it has shed a self-perception of themselves?
That evidence can only arrive through a metric of “time” spent in new and contrasting experiences..
Duration – 00:16 (set to loop), Size: 1080px X 720px
“The Communication Game” is a new animation by Ryan Seslow. Derived from an ongoing frustration with communication, accessibility and technology, the animation asserts itself through an overpopulated, heavily manufactured interface. Fragments of 3D models stiffly role-play as video game characters and jockey over each other in various scenes, situations and actions. The visual aesthetic is gritty, grainy and degenerated. The soundless video flows on a loop that creates a feeling of ongoing struggle as the viewer attempts to follow its chaos and understand what is being communicated..
In the comments section below generate a response that addresses your connection or disconnection to the animation.
What do you see? How does the animation affect you?
Can you relate to communication frustrations? If so, how and where?
Where do you see or experience this the most?
2,500 Extra-Credit points will be given to all who respond and react!
FILE – Electronic Language International Festival is a non-profit cultural organization that sparks a reflexion on the main aspects of contemporary digital and electronic universe; disseminating the electronic language across Brazil and South America through events and publications since the year 2000.
FILE gathers works of aesthetic expression that capture the main trends and movements of our contemporary culture, which are diversified amongst the main categories of the festival:
Electronic Sonority: Sound Performance, Sound Installations, Sound Art, Genetic Music, Biologic Music, Classical Electronic Music, Pop Electronic Music, Dramatic Radio Broadcasting, Radio Art, Sound Landscape, Sound Robotics, Music Video, Sound Poetry, Sound Robotics, etc.
Interactive Art: installations, performances, internet projects, virtual reality, augmented reality, multitouch tables, digital objects, outdoor projections, phone projects, electronic graffiti, VRML, etc.
Digital Language: digital games, animation, digital theatre, machinima, digital video, digital architecture, digital fashion, digital design, robotics, artificial life, biological art, transgenic art, software art, new interfaces, animes, hypertexts, non-linear scripts, artificial intelligence, programming language, digital poetry, digital dance, etc.
Founded in the year 2000 by Ricardo Barreto and Paula Perissinotto, FILE aims to magnify technological discussions in the cultural scope. Besides the traditional annual event in São Paulo city, the festival expands itself across national and international borders to cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Vitória, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, São Luis and Brasilia.
FILE’s mission is to promote a wider access from the general public to technologic languages demonstrating how our contemporary world builds itself on the advances of new and digital medias.
The Game Begins, April 2019, is an animated video art work in progress constructed from multiple individual components. The animated clips were composed and generated with various mobile and desktop applications. They have been layered and and recomposed in Adobe after effects. The video loops repeatedly and is intended for large scale projection presentation. Iterations and experimentation of its presentation are underway. This is an experimental process to fuse together multiple narratives, stories and situational realities. Can it work? Will it work?
Press “Play” above and indulge.
I converted a longer video version of this experiment into an animated GIF here to give a little insight into the testing process. I teach a graduate level new media class at LIU Post in NY and a Digital Storytelling class at CUNY York college where we experiment with many video and animation processes and applications. The projection of video and animated works play a role in the final weeks of the course. It is one of the most important aspects of the class as it breaks free from using the hand held device, monitor or screen as a presentation tool. In this case, the video is projected directly onto 3D objects like stacked pedestals. But as a looping video published via YouTube (above) and inserted into a blog post, Im not convinced it can hold up in this format for long durations of time…well, not yet anyway!
“Every Conversation I Never Overheard” – a second iteration forward.
Ryan Seslow, 2019, Multiple Channel Animated Video.
I feel that physical scale plays a role in the development, impact and sharing of works like this. I always ask myself, can it hold up on Instagram, Youtube or a website? The answer is obviously yes, but asking the question helps me give it further contexts to look into. There is an old outdated version / part of me that can still recall past teachers and mentors instructing that I shouldn’t share this new “work in progress” on the web until after I have shown it in a more traditional public art space. (How limiting) Thankfully, that is not my idea but one that was constantly shared with me (and the others around me) for many years. I never took that advice. I’m happy about that. I’m sure that I missed hearing a lot of the reasons for why or why not, and that’s also a good thing.
“Every Conversation I Never Overheard” puts an emphasis on the overstimulating visuals that I experience in my daily soundless travels through transit in NYC. As my ability to wear and use hearing aids degenerates rapidly I have been spending more and more time not wearing them at all, especially when I am alone and in transit. The less I hear, the more I see, and the more I see the more I hear inside. (re-read that last stanza) I see in narratives that seem to splice themselves together into a continuous sequence of scrolling communication. This is a first attempt at bringing together the visual aspect of the sentiment and experience.
“The Multi-Self Channel Narrative” is Part 1 of a new multi-channel soundless Video Art narrative. This piece is set as the background for the additional layers as they develop. This piece was started on March 24th 2019 and created from various art historical images that can be found in open access and public domain resources. This video art work is a simulation of the resources and a visual example of the potential! (More to come on this soon, including a “how-to” tutorial)
Screen Cindy Sherman’s short film: “Doll Clothes” from 1975. Click here.
Via the Ubu.Web Film & Video Archive – (An Amazing Resource!)
“When I was in college, I made this book of doll clothes for my photography course. I was documenting a piece that I had already made for a film course, but I wanted to bring the doll to life so I shot myself doing all the poses, and it became this goofy little film. It completely ties in to everything I’m doing now because I decided that I liked the cut-out figures more than the film.” -Cindy Sherman
“One of the First Cindy Sherman’s super-8 film,”Doll Clothes” has not been viewed since 1975, the year it was made. It comically crosses Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase with animated paper dolls in a sly, funny and clever precursor to the concerns that became signature elements in Sherman’s remarkable body of photographic work.” – UBU.com
“Sherman’s 1975 animated short Doll Clothes, is among the pieces that bring Sherman’s early exploration of gender and identity into focus.” – Paul Ha and Catherine Morris
React & Respond in the comments sections below.
Questions to consider:
After screening the film (is it really a film?) share your first impressions in contrast to the artist’s current work on the popular platform Instagram <– go here.
What similarities do you see? What contrasts are obvious and why?
How did you experience the works shared in this post? Your mobile device? Tablet? Laptop? I would like to know. How did you make this choice?
What other artists do know of that share a connection with the genre of Identity exploration?
Please screen the video art works above and below and respond in the comments section below.
1. “Les Grands Ensembles” by Pierre Huyghe (1994–2001) – (Above)
(I was lucky enough to screen this piece above in full scale at the Guggenheim in 2002).
“On October 16, 2002, Pierre Huyghe was awarded the fourth biennial Hugo Boss Prize. Inaugurated in 1996, the prize was conceived to recognize and support contemporary artists making profound contributions to the cultural landscape. Huyghe has gained international prominence for works that explore the convergence of reality and fiction, memory and history. Incorporating film, video, sound, animation, sculpture, and architecture in his diverse works, the artist intervenes in familiar narrative structures to investigate the construction of collective and individual identities in relationship to various forms of cultural production. Huyghe is interested in both reading and making possible multiple, subjective reinterpretations of incidents and images that shape our realities. Through such retranslations, Huyghe offers a way for his characters and his viewers to take back control of their own images, their own stories.”
“At the Guggenheim, Huyghe presents a film installation, Les Grands Ensembles (1994–2001) that address alternative modes of representation and communication (the work has been compared to the attempts at contact in Close Encounters of the Third Kind). In Les Grands Ensembles a pair of bleak buildings, models based on 1970s French housing projects, enacts a subtle inanimate drama. Enveloped in fog, the uninhabited scene is both romantic and alienating. “These subsidized public projects ended up being an architectural and social failure,” explains Huyghe. “They were a corruption of Le Corbusier’s social and architectural Modernist theory.” Though meant to be temporary, these structures are still here, much as we may try to ignore them. Huyghe brings the buildings into view and gives them agency. “Without beginning or ending,” he says, “the two low-income towers dialogue in a strange Morse code given by the light of their respective windows, a blinking existence.”
Tango is set in one room with an increasing number and series of interesting characters that loop in and out of the composition over and over.
Can you stop watching? Tango won The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1983.
Questions to ponder and react to:
Tango is considered a “short animated film”, but is this a film? How would you describe it in 2018?
How would you describe both pieces technically? The year they were made plays a role for sure. Or does it?
What did you think of “Tango” and “Les Grands Ensembles”as a whole?
What is your interpretation of each piece? What is the artist communicating?
Does the art work(s) induce personal reflection in anyway? If so please share.
Do you find connections between these two works of Media Art? If so, please describe?
Please leave your reactions and responses in the comments section below.
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