PAX ABSURDIA

Trish Keenan's Mind Bending Motorway Mix

2011-01-16T22:39:00.000-08:00

Via womblife: "Further to Trish Keenan's passing: a friend of Joe Muggs has passed this on so I'm spreading the word -- quoting his friend: "Before she went to Australia Trish sent me a mix CD of bonkers pop music she compiled, I never thanked her. Its called Mind Bending Motorway Mix and I want to share it with you, please pass the link on, share it far and wide...'"

Download link

R.I.P. Trish Keenan

2011-01-14T11:38:00.000-08:00

This is an untimely tragic loss and we will miss Trish dearly - a unique voice, an extraordinary talent and a beautiful human being. Rest in Peace.

-Statement from Warp Records

37 Synthesized Patterns (2010)

2010-10-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

"A demonstration of the LZX Visionary modular video synthesizer used for direct synthesis techniques, meaning that no external image was used in the creation of these clips -- with the exception of a couple, which use a feedback camera to introduce extra modulation. Modules used include the basic system of 8 modules, including three Video Waveform Generator signal sources. A variety of techniques are used including oscillator frequency and waveshape modulation, keying, voltage controlled mixing, signal summing and absolute mode summing. No post-processing or manipulation has been added. Audio from the track Omniverse by S U R V I V E."

SOLAR CAROUSEL (2010)

2010-10-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

"Reimagined moments from Logan's Run (1976) by filmmaker and electronics designer Lars Larsen. This experiment uses an adaptation of the Function Generator circuit from the Sandin Image Processor, and the LZX Visionary modular video synthesizer to add additional keying and blending. Audio is processed through a Cat Girl Synth Wave Multiplier module, which is a similar circuit to the Sandin Image Processor's Function Generator. So in effect, similar processing techniques are implemented simultaneously to both video and audio, which are controlled by a single CV source."

CUBITS (1978)

2010-09-14T07:15:00.000-07:00

Cubits (1978) Al Jarnow

DUNCAN MALASHOCK

2010-08-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

Magic Square (2009)

Temple (2009)

OP ART OUTTAKE

2010-08-05T21:23:00.002-07:00

Clip from Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno(2009) the "semi-documentary" by Serge Bromberg chronicling the making of the ill-fated 1964 film by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

SCANNING THE MICROWAVE SKY

2010-07-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

"An all-sky image from Planck's recently completed first survey highlights the two major emission sources in the microwave sky: the cosmic background and the Milky Way."

via esa

OUT OF THE INKWELL

2010-07-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

The Ouija Board (1920)

Modeling (1921) via HiLoBrow

Out of the Inkwell was a major animated series of the silent era produced by Max Fleischer from 1918 to 1929.

FALLS EXCERPTS

2010-06-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

"An interest in the possibilities of a filmic encyclopedia to rival the Whole Earth Catalogues of the early seventies and a delight in the manufacture of lists for their own sake were the ideas initially responsible for various projects that coalesced into The Falls. If an ambitious filmic encyclopedia of the World threatened to make the World redundant, and if the items in the lists were essentially unclassifiable, then so much the better."

7: Lacer Fallacet

11: Carlos Fallantly

18: Aptesia Fallarme

54: Throper Fallcaster

Excerpts from Peter Greenaway's The Falls (1980)

FILM STRIP SERIES ITEM # 3

2010-06-24T12:30:00.001-07:00

From Stan Brakhage's Mothlight (1963)

LZX "IN THE WILD"

2010-06-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

Check out these video demos of work being made RIGHT NOW by happy LZX Industries Visionary video synthesizer owners:

Tommy DOG:

BRIZBOMB:

via lzxindustries.net

WIM MERTENS & SOFT VERDICT

2010-06-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

Energys from Vergessen (1982)

Invader from For Amusement Only - The Sound of Pinball Machines (1980)

RUSSIAN MIND (2009)

2010-06-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

Music video for Oneohtrix Point Never's Russian Mind (2009) directed by Nate Boyce

MAX (1967)

2010-06-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

Phill Niblock and Dave Gearey w/ music by Max Neuhaus

SOON

2009-12-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

LZX INDUSTRIES VISIONARY VIDEO SYNTHESIZER, WINTER 2010
lzxindustries.net

OK TO GO (2008)

2009-12-17T13:13:00.000-08:00

"Chain of Hyper Space scenes from films (a collaboration with Mike Merrill).

Part of the thing which is so appealing about Hyper Space scenes in films is the idea that something fantastic and unknown lies at the end of them. In fact, here are the primary uses of Warp Speed/ Hyper Space as plot device:
A) Tunnel to unknown.
B) Escape from danger via total oblivion.

Both represent a kind of inversion, or temporary lifting, of the accepted order."

by Claire L. Evans and Mike Merrill

via Rhizome

FILM STRIP SERIES ITEM #2

2009-09-21T15:10:00.001-07:00

Len Lye, frames from A Colour Box (1935)

FREE RADICALS (1958)

2009-09-21T14:12:00.000-07:00

While Len Lye may be most well known for his color films, this simple study in movement of lines is just as impressive.

ERKKI KURENNIEMI

2009-09-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

Electronics in the World of Tomorrow (1968)

Computer Music (date unknown)

"Erkki Kurenniemi (born 1941) is a Finnish electronic musician, composer and inventor of electronic instruments, such as the DIMI series and the Electric Quartet."

LARRY JORDAN

2009-08-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

TWO FILMS:

Our Lady of the Sphere (1969)

Rime of the Ancient Mariner with Orson Welles (1977)

BY JWM

2009-08-20T10:41:00.001-07:00

I recently posted a new soundform sketch entitled Noospheric Congruence on BY JWM

LILLIAN SCHWARTZ

2009-08-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

Lillian Schwartz - The Artist and the Computer (1976)
a documentary on the art of lillian schwartz (in two parts)

Pixillation (1970)

ARABESQUE (1975)

2009-08-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

John Whitney and Larry Cuba, 1975

FILM STRIP SERIES ITEM # 1

2009-08-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

John Whitney, animations used for Arabesque 1975

OBJECT CONVERSATION (1985)

2009-08-18T15:06:00.000-07:00

Paul Glabicki, 1985

"precise draftsmanship combined with a stream of consciousness approach to produce a complex visual composition of abstract and figurative forms."

CURATORIAL MOMENT

2009-08-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

check out my list of "top five video visionaries"
over at the silver lining

NOCTILUCA (1974)

2009-07-31T15:12:00.000-07:00

Hollis Frampton 1974

"Noctiluca is a three and one-half minute film designed to be shown on the second day of the MAGELLAN cycle. The title (nox/luceo) means something that shines by night, i.e., the moon, and the film indeed consists of a bright sphere, sometimes white, sometimes tinted, sometimes single, sometimes doubled and overlapped. This suggests to me the nocturnal navigation that Magellan had to rely upon in his first-ever trip around the world. The second day of the cycle seems to be an inventory of the knowledge, machines, and arms that Magellan--and latterday voyagers like Frampton--had at the outset of his journey." - Brian Henderson

MERCE

2009-07-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

JOSH SLATER

2009-07-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

All Lined up and Almost Ready

via dossier via new slater art

JULES ENGEL

2009-07-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

exerpts via iota center

Train Landscape (1974)

Silence (1968)

Swan (1975)

Toy Shop (1998)

Villa Rospigliosi (1988)

""I have concentrated, with particular emphasis, upon the development of a visually inspired, dynamic language, demonstrating that pure graphic choreography is capable of non-verbal truth."

DUCKTAILS - PARASAILING (2009)

2009-07-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

Video by Richard Law
Underwater Peoples Records 2009

I don't usually post music videos, but this one is pretty mesmerising.

via rhizome

OFF ON (1967)

2009-07-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

"seminal videographic film made by San Francisco based film maker Scott Bartlett with assistance from Tom Dewitt, Manny Meyer, and Michael McNamee in 1967."

WEE SEE

2009-07-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

As a dad of a wee one, I approve of this stimuli:

"A gentle introduction to our visual world

Part art installation, part pacifier, Wee See is a collection of black-and-white animations built from basic shapes to delight both child and parent. As vision develops slowly over the first months of life, Wee See provides surfaces of bold, well-defined artwork to engage your baby’s curious mind and bring the screen to vibrant life.

With great sensitivity to the delicate nature of the audience, Wee See’s animations move methodically slow and maintain an extraordinary simplicity yet remain endlessly inventive."

Collection One:

wee see - collection one from Rolyn Barthelman on Vimeo.

Collection Two:

wee see - collection two from Rolyn Barthelman on Vimeo.

via stork bites man, via daddytypes

TIQUE

2009-06-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

My love has opened up shop on a small plot of digital real estate.
If you have an appreciation for beautiful things, or if there is someone in your life who does, please do yourself a favor and scope it out.

tique.etsy.com

ALAN BERLINER'S AUDIOFILE

2009-06-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

Ben Shapiro's video portrait of Alan Berliner and his large filing cabinet filled with sound.

via transom radio

LUMIGRAPH

2009-06-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

"In the late 1940s, when [Oscar] Fischinger had lost the support of the Guggenheim Foundation, he invented a color organ instrument that allowed one to play lights to any music very simply. His Lumigraph hides the lighting elements in a large frame, from which only a thin slit emits light. In a darkened room (with a black background) you can not see anything except when something moves into the thin "sheet" of light, so, by moving a finger-tip around in a circle in this light field, you can trace a colored circle (colored filters can be selected and changed by the performer). Any object can be used: a gloved hand, a drum-stick, a pot-lid (for a solid circle), a child's block (for a square), etc. Oskar performed certain compositions (such as Sibelius' "Valse Triste") publicly, at the Coronet Theater in Los Angeles, and at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1953, in connection with a one-man show of his abstract oil paintings (where Jordan Belson saw it, and was greatly impressed by the mysterious "presence" of its color).

Fischinger hoped, like Castel long before, that someone would manufacture Lumigraphs, and that they would become common household items, used by children for play and artistic training, by adults for recreation and party games. Although that has not yet occurred, Oskar's original Lumigraph does survive, in the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, where it is played with some regularity, and it has been loaned to the Louvre in Paris and the Gemeente Museum in the Hague for performances by Oskar's widow Elfriede. Oskar's son Conrad also constructed two other Lumigraphs, one large one that was used on an Andy Williams television special, and a smaller one to use in Los Angeles performances. The Lumigraph also appeared in a 1964 science-fiction movie The Time Travelers, in which it is a "love machine" that allows people to vent their sexual urges in a harmless sensuality."

text via here
tons of information about oscar fischenger can be found at the center for visual music

GRAPHICAL NOTATION: PICTURES OF MUSIC

2009-06-09T09:08:00.000-07:00

"Graphical music notation is characterized by non-traditional musical symbols aranged in a visual design rather than conventional musical syntax."

info, scores, biographies and soundclips here

TUXEDOMOON - NEW MACHINE (1977)

2009-06-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

from the early collection of performance and video art experiments Colorado Suite from 1977

while these early sounds bear almost no resemblance to the sprawling winston tong led masterpieces created just two years later, they're still pretty rad...

TO READ LIST ITEM # 3

2009-05-26T07:34:00.000-07:00

I always like hearing Codrescu's essays on NPR, so imagine my delight when this little gem came across my desk last week.

"The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world--all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich's Café de la Terrasse--a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution--lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future mass murderer over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are playing for the world. Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, Andrei Codrescu has created his own brilliantly Dadaesque guide to Dada--and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future. Here dadaists Duchamp, Ball, and von Freytag-Loringhoven and communists Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev appear live in company with later incarnations, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gilles Deleuze, and Newt Gingrich. The Posthuman Dada Guide is arranged alphabetically for quick reference and (some) nostalgia for order, with entries such as "eros (women)," "internet(s)," and "war." Throughout, it is written in the belief "that posthumans lining the road to the future (which looks as if it exists, after all, even though Dada is against it) need the solace offered by the primal raw energy of Dada and its inhuman sources.'"

more info here

POEME ELECTRONIQUE (1958)

2009-05-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

Varese, Xenakis, Le Corbusier

"Poème électronique is the first, electronic-spatial environment to combine architecture, film, light and music to a total experience made to function in time and space."

ELECTRONIC MOON NO 2 (1969)

2009-05-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut
1966-72, 1992, 4:52 min, color, sound

description from electronic arts intermix
note: not sure why youtube video mentions bill viola... anyone have some insight?

DOCUMENTATION OF EVE II (1976)

2009-04-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

"The Second Electronic Visualization Event took place at The University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus in 1976. This documentation features Bob Snyder on EMU Synthesizer, Phil Morton on the Sandin Image Processor by Dan Sandin and Guenther Tetz on the GRASS (GRaphics Symbiosis System) by Tom DeFanti. In Morton's words these artists perform live realtime audio and video synthesis "using both analog and digital computers as 'visual instruments'..." Other artists credited with participation in the Electronic Visualization Events between 1975 and 1978 include Drew Browning, Larry Cuba, Barbara Latham, John Manning, Faramarz Rahbar, Ed Rankus, Michael Sterling, Barbara Sykes and Jane Veeder."

MICHAEL GOLEMBEWSKI

2009-04-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

SOUTH STATION:

South Station (Scanner Camera) from Michael Golembewski on Vimeo

"A short animation loop created at South Station, in Boston, MA, with an early scanner camera."

THE SCANNER CAMERA:

"Several years ago, I built my first homemade digital camera. The idea was simple - I would take an ordinary flatbed scanner, and use it in place of photo paper with a large format camera."

more info and photos here

ONDULATION

2009-04-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Thomas Mcintosh at DEAF 2007, Rotterdam

CHALAZAE (2005)

2009-04-03T11:59:00.000-07:00

Samantha Krukowski
2005, 4min 48, color

"Eggs, shot on glass from below and above, are the primary image material for Chalazae. When I was eight, I called the chalazae the thingy. It is actually the anchor that holds down the yolk membrane and separates the yolk from the white of an egg. Throughout my childhood, I refused to eat any egg that had a thingy--my mother obliged me and removed the thingies of any egg she hoped to feed me. I was convinced the thingy (the chalazae) was a baby chicken, or at least the starting point for one. My mother took me to her biology lab a lot, and there were always eggs and chickens in various stages of development. I saw chicken embryos on yolks and thingies nearby. That was enough to empower the chalazae and invest in it a series of meanings and capacities that continue to be largely imagined. I am particularly interested in the cellular, cosmic and embryonic forms evoked in Chalazae."

excerpts from a talk given at the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts Conference, 2003:

"The egg is a common alchemical symbol. The retort, the alchemists’ bulb-shaped vessel, was called the Philosopher’s egg. It was used for gentle distillation and cohobation and could be hermetically sealed, so that the various materials inside could incubate.
The egg was, more importantly, perceived as an image of the universe, the macrocosmos."

"A few months ago, I trained my video camera on some glass. I positioned my camera below the glass, and began to crack eggs onto it. Some of the eggs were frozen... Some of the yolks broke, some stayed intact. While working on the video, I recalled some writing by Simone de Beauvoir:
'With her fire going, woman becomes a sorceress; by a simple movement, as in beating eggs or through the magic of fire, she effects the transmutation of substances...'"

"Michael Maier’s, a German alchemist, wrote in his Scrutinium Chymicum of 1687: 'Learn about the egg and cut it with a flaming sword. In our world there is a bird more sublime than all others. To search for his egg be thy only concern. The egg of alchemy is a symbol for magical realization.'"

"There is something in these alchemical descriptions that parallels the process of embryogenesis, which metaphorically might be considered the birthplace of all works. The blastocyst is a universal subanimal formed by simple cell division, a volvox-like ball. Its organization is ancient, primary, and panspecific, affecting all eggs in much the same way. Regardless of their ultimate destiny, the component cells of a blastocyst first arrange themselves in a hive of sibling balls, a mold from which individual animals can be shaped. Blastulation is a cosmic event…it denotes the creation of primal matter—an ushering of one into many, unity into multiplicity, timelessness into time, inertia into mutability, information into form."

EXCERPTS VIA HERE

VIOLIN POWER (1970-1978)

2009-03-26T09:41:00.001-07:00

Steina, Violin Power, 1978
by Video_Blog_REWF

Steina Vasulka
Videotape, 10 min, b&w

THURSDAY AFTERNOON (1984)

2009-03-23T14:58:00.000-07:00

"I was delighted to find this other way of using video because at last here's video which draws from another source, which is painting .... I call them 'video paintings' because if you say to people 'I make videos', they think of Sting's new rock video or some really boring, grimy 'Video Art'. It's just a way of saying, 'I make videos that don't move very fast"

data="http://ubu.artmob.ca/video/flash/flvplayer.swf?file=Eno_Brian_14VideoPaintings_1981-1984.flv&autostart=false">

Brian Eno
1984, 61 min, color, sound

VIA UBUWEB

TIMEPIECE WISHLIST ITEM # 1

2009-03-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

Designed by Laurinda Spear
Developed by Projects, USA

"The cycle of life, with a beginning, middle & end is synchronized by the 3 rings and guide us along our path to openings where time limits are set free. Our journey through time, passes the story of our past & present, to a hopeful future"

SCREENING ROOM

2009-03-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

"Screening Room was a 1970s Boston television series that for almost ten years offered independent filmmakers a chance to show and discuss their work on a commercial (ABC-TV) affiliate station. The series was developed and hosted by filmmaker Robert Gardner (Dead Birds, Forest of Bliss), who was Chairman of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and Director of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard for many years.

This unique program dealt even-handedly with animation, documentary, and experimental film, welcoming such artists as Jan Lenica, John and Faith Hubley, Emile DeAntonio, Jean Rouch, Ricky Leacock, Jonas Mekas, Bruce Baillie, Yvonne Rainer and Michael Snow. Frequently, guests such as Octavio Paz, Stanley Cavell, and Rudolph Arnheim appeared as well. Many of the filmmakers presented on the show are now considered the most influential contributors to their respective fields of modern experimental film, documentary, and animation."

CAROLINE LEAF and MARY BEAMS:

The piece mentioned at the end of the clip is The Owl Who Married a Goose: an Eskimo Legend (1974)

SAM MESSENGER

2009-03-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

Untitled, 2005, pen & white ink & ink wash on paper

Untitled, 2005, pen & white ink & ink wash on paper

via the silver lining

ART BY TELEPHONE (1969)

2009-03-05T13:42:00.000-08:00

"Shortly after its opening, the Museum of Contemporary Art planned an exhibition to record the trend, incipient then and pervasive today, toward conceptualization of art. This exhibition, scheduled for the spring of 1968 and abandoned because of technical difficulties, consisted of works in different media, conceived by artists in this country and Europe and executed in Chicago on their behalf. The telephone was designated the most fitting means of communication in relaying instructions to those entrusted with fabrication of the artists' projects or enactment of their ideas. To heighten the challenge of a wholly verbal exchange, drawings, blueprints or written descriptions were avoided. -Jan van der Marck (covertext)

Participating artists: Siah Armajani, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Iain Baxter, Mel Bochner, Geoge Brecht, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Robert H. Cumming, Francoise Dallegret, Jan Dibbets, John Giorno, Robert Grosvenor, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Dick Higgins, Davi Det Hompson, Robert Huot, Alani Jacquet, Ed Kienholz, Joseph Kosuth, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Guenther Uecker, Stan Van Der Beek, Bernar Venet, Frank Lincoln, Viner Wolf Vostell, William Wegman, William T. Wiley."

It's interesting to hear these concepts in their early stages, especially in such a candid context.

via UBUWEB

note: I had to get rid of the seeqpod player on this post because I was unable to disable the auto play feature. If you want to hear the mp3 in its current embedded state, you will need quicktime.

TO READ LIST ITEM #2

2009-03-04T15:30:00.001-08:00

Books as History by David Pearson

"Books have been hugely important in human civilisation, as instruments for communicating information and ideas. The digital age is challenging their ongoing existence – although the e-book has not yet taken over from print, the landscape is changing all the time, with the traditional functions of books increasingly being performed electronically.

People usually think of books in terms of their contents, their texts, with less thought for books as artefacts. In fact books may possess all kinds of potentially interesting qualities beyond their texts, as designed or artistic objects, or because they have unique properties deriving from the ways they have been printed, bound, annotated, beautified or defaced. This text explores books from the Middle Ages to the present day to show why books may be interesting beyond their texts.

Books can develop their own individual histories, which provide important evidence about the way they were used and regarded in the past, and which make them an indispensable part of the fabric of our cultural heritage. This book will raise awareness of an important aspect of the life of books in the context of the ongoing debate about their future. Extensively illustrated with a wide range of images, it will not only be approachable but also thought-provoking."

I came across this book at work and I wish I had my own copy. The illustrations are beautiful and the concept is thoroughly executed.

Available through the british library

SPACE SONATA (1981)

2009-03-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

Bulat Galeyev
with electronic music by Alexandr Nemtin & Stanialav Kreichi
1981, 8:59 min, color, sound

via Rhizome

SCOPE AND THE NIGHT AIR

2009-02-25T12:53:00.000-08:00

Thanks to today's edition of WFMU's Ken's Show I was turned on to a really great little radio programme broadcast on Australia's ABC Radio National called The Night Air. I listened to the Podcast on String Theory and was totally wowed. I probed their website a bit more and found something even more interesting: a retrospective on an obscure Australian radio show from the sixties and seventies called Scope. I'm a sucker for old radio and for magazine style radio in general. Conceptual and theme based magazine style radio is even better, so I guess you could say that Scope could have been my favorite radio show ever, had I grown up in Australia during the sixties. With that being said, I invite you to join me in my fake nostalgia and immerse yourself in this: Reviewing Scope episode one: Time

note: I had to get rid of the seeqpod player on this post because I was unable to disable the auto play feature. If you want to hear the mp3 in its current embedded state, you will need quicktime.

LINK TO MP3

CHRIS BURDEN

2009-02-20T14:58:00.000-08:00

data="http://ubu.artmob.ca/video/flash/flvplayer.swf?file=Burden-Chris_Documentation-of-Selected-Works_1971-74.flv&autostart=false">

Documentation of Selected Works 1971-74

1971-75, 34:38 min, color and b&w, sound

"Chris Burden's provocative, often shocking conceptual performance pieces of the early 1970s retain their raw and confrontational force in these dramatic visual records, shot on Super-8, 16mm film, and half-inch video. Guided by the artist's candid, explanatory comments on both the works and the documentative process, these segments reveal the major themes of Burden's work -- the psychological experience of danger, pain, and physical risk, the aggressive abuse of the body as an art object, and the psychology of the artist/spectator relationship. This compilation is an historical document of one of the most extreme manifestations of 1970s conceptual performance art. Included are the infamous Shoot (1971), in which Burden allows himself to be shot in the arm; Bed Piece (1972), in which he stayed in bed in a gallery for twenty-two days; and the notorious Through the Night Softly (1973), which featured Burden, arms tied behind his naked torso, dragging himself over shards of broken glass. Also included are: 220 (1971) Deadman (1972) Fire Roll (1973) Icarus (1973) B.C. Mexico (1973) TV Ad (1973) Back to You (1974) Velvet Water (1974)."

via UBUWEB

SCIENCE IS FICTION

2009-02-18T11:31:00.000-08:00

"The mesmerizing, utterly unclassifiable science films of Jean Painlevé (1902-89) have to be seen to be believed: delightful, surrealist-influenced dream works that are also serious science. The French filmmaker-scientist-inventor had a decades-spanning career in which he created hundreds of short films on subjects ranging from astronomy to pigeons to, most famously, such marine-life marvels as the sea horse and the sea urchin. This definitive three-disc collection brings together the best of these, and also includes the French television series Jean Painlevé Through His Films, indie rock band Yo La Tengo’s eight-film score The Sounds of Science, and an essay by film scholar Scott MacDonald."

due out 21 Apr 2009 via CRITERION

too bad there aren't any clips floating around of the yo la tengo scored Sounds of Science... I was able to find this though:

Jean Painleve - "Le vampire"
by arginati22

PAUL BAKER ON VIMEO

2009-02-16T10:14:00.000-08:00

Paul baker used to do the live visuals for my band OVEO as well as countless other Texas acts, most notably with the psych/dub collective Sub Oslo.

He has slowly accumulated quite the online portfolio. Here are a few gems:

ferb rise from vision system on Vimeo

Book of Shadows from vision system on Vimeo

Dubalicious from vision system on Vimeo

Paul currently lives in Austin TX and can be reached through his myspace page.

MARK BROWN

2009-02-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

1992 from Mark Brown on Vimeo

Tatsumi Hijikata from Mark Brown on Vimeo

Growing // Innit from Mark Brown on Vimeo.

CRAZY DREAMS BAND

2009-02-05T12:54:00.000-08:00

HOLY SHIT is all I can say. I had the pleasure of seeing Lexie Mountain back sometime in 2006 at the House of Tinnitus in Denton TX and I've always found her work to be completely badass. I had NO IDEA just how badass though.

HOLY MOUNTAIN

CLOUD PROJECTIONS

2009-02-05T11:53:00.000-08:00

by Blake Gordon

there is something about this series that scares me a bit. something opressive in there...

via today and tomorrow and bldgblog

UNIVERSE (1960)

2009-02-04T09:28:00.000-08:00

Roman Kroitor

"A triumph of film art, creating on the screen a vast, awe-inspiring picture of the universe as it would appear to a voyager through space, this film was among the sources used by Stanley Kubrick in his 2001: A Space Odyssey. Realistic animation takes you into far regions of space, beyond the reach of the strongest telescope, past Moon, Sun, and Milky Way into galaxies yet unfathomed."

GHOST BOX RECORDS

2009-02-02T12:11:00.000-08:00

"Ghost Box is a recording label for artists that find inspiration in library music, folklore, vintage electronics and haunted television soundtracks."

SeeqPod - Playable Search

more infohere

GEOMETRY OF CIRCLES (1979)

2009-01-30T07:21:00.000-08:00

Philip Glass + Sesame Street = awesome.

more info here.

DARIO ROBLETO

2009-01-29T15:01:00.000-08:00

At War With The Entropy of Nature / Ghosts Don't Always Want To Come Back, 2002, Cassette tape made from carved bone and bone dust from every bone in the body, trinitite, melted and dissolved audio tape of an original composition of military drum marches and soldiers' voices from battlefields of various wars made from EVP recordings (Electronic Voice Phenomena: voices and sounds of the dead or past, detected through magnetic audio tape), metal, screws, dust, Letraset, 5/8 x 3 3/4 x 2 1/2 inches, Collection Julie Kinzelman and Christopher Tribble

SYNCHROMY (1971)

2009-01-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

"To make this film, Norman McLaren employed novel optical techniques to compose the piano rhythms of the sound track. These he then moved, in multicolor, onto the picture area of the screen so that, in effect, you see what you hear. It is synchronization of image and sound in the truest sense of the word."

1971, 07 min 27 s

TO READ LIST ITEM #1

2009-01-26T14:05:00.001-08:00

The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr.

"As the world undergoes daily transformations through the application of technoscience to every aspect of life, science fiction has become an essential mode of imagining the horizons of possibility. However much science fiction texts vary in artistic quality and intellectual sophistication, they share in a mass social energy and a desire to imagine a collective future for the human species and the world. At this moment, a strikingly high proportion of films, commercial art, popular music, video and computer games, and non-genre fiction have become what Csicsery-Ronay calls science fictional, stimulating science-fictional habits of mind. We no longer treat science fiction as merely a genre-engine producing formulaic effects, but as a mode of awareness, which frames experiences as if they were aspects of science fiction. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction describes science fiction as a constellation of seven diverse cognitive attractions that are particularly formative of science-fictionality. These are the “seven beauties” of the title: fictive neology, fictive novums, future history, imaginary science, the science-fictional sublime, the science-fictional grotesque, and the Technologiade, or the epic of technsocience’s development into a global regime."

-UPNE

EVLTUBE

2009-01-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

EVL (electronic visualization laboratory) has a youtube account!

check out these amazing early video art pieces:

COLORFUL COLORADO (1974)
Phil Morton

CALCULATED MOVEMENTS (1985)
Larry Cuba

PAINT PIECE (1983)
Mark McKernin

STRINGS AND VECTORS (1984)
Marilyn Wulff

SKIPPY PEANUT BUTTER JARS (1980)
Copper Giloth

GIBSON

2009-01-23T09:58:00.000-08:00

JOHN STEZAKER

2009-01-21T07:53:00.000-08:00

Mask VII, 2005

CRYSTALSCULPTURE

2009-01-16T10:53:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across the crystalsculpture2 youtube account a little while back when I was looking for early computer animations. I didn't know any information about it or the fact that there are three other crystalsculpture accounts on youtube.

I just scanned over rhyzome's highlights from 2008 post and thought to myself "this looks familiar" and... sure enough.

Enough background info. check these out for yourself: 1 2 3 4

ORGAN2/ASLSP (2000 - 2639)

2009-01-16T10:34:00.000-08:00

"How slow is “As slow as possible”? In 1985 ASLSP was created as a version for the piano, but in 1987 John Cage changed it for the organ at the suggestion of the organist Gerd Zacher. The question of how to realise the opus leads to the conclusion that “as slow as possible” can be thought and played indefinitely – at least as long as the life of an organ lasts remains and also as long as peace and creativity in the following generations exist. But the question remained: How long should the piece be? The first organ performance was 29 minutes. A recent recording lasts 71 minutes. From that question a project was developed over the time that caused a worldwide sensation.

But why Halberstadt and why 639 years? Michael Praetorius, a composer of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, wrote that an organ with the first modern keyboard arrangement had been built in Halberstadt. cathedral in 1361. This organ was the first one with a claviature of 12 notes and this claviature is used on our keyboard instruments today. So one can say that the cradle of modern music was in Halberstadt. Subtract 1361 from the millennial year 2000, and the result is 639."

more info here.

SINGULARITY?

2009-01-15T15:31:00.000-08:00

Of all the talk of artificial intelligence, evolution, and transhumanism I've heard as of late, this seems to be the most perfectly harmonious piece of technological progress yet.

If this type of thing scares you, maybe you should think about the social implications of a technology like this one. If each of us were given the ability to pinpoint and eradicate the sources of negativity in our own "inner space's" then maybe we would all be able to achieve some sort of balance.

But that's just my half-baked response to what deCharms had to say in this video. I'm not a neuroscientist.

GUEST (2004)

2009-01-15T07:40:00.000-08:00

Known for his silhouettes made using a pinhole camera, Christopher Bucklow's first monograph, Guest, collects for the first time many works from the "Guest" and "Tetrarchs" series. It also documents his earlier photographic work and video images made within the Canopic Fusion Reactor—a pinhole camera the size of a building, built in St. Ives in Cornwall, England, for the total eclipse of the sun, visible there in 1999.

"[Bucklow's photographs] create the impression of presences that seem both three-dimensional and immaterial-more like auras than physical objects. I am reminded of photographs taken a century ago featuring see-through presences that purported to be wraiths or spirits. Bucklow doesn't make any such claims: but the fact that the head is usually the lightest part of the image suggests that he is trying to portray something other than the body-intelligence, awareness, the spirit; call it what you will." —Sarah Kent, Time Out London

More info at blind spot books

VICTIM OF THE BRAIN (1988)

2009-01-14T12:36:00.000-08:00

"Victim of the Brain is a 1988 film by Dutch director Piet Hoenderdos, loosely based on The Mind's I, a compilation of texts and stories on the philosophy of mind and self, co-edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. The film weaves interviews with Hofstadter with adaptations of several works in the book: Dennett's Where am I?, The Soul of the Mark III Beast by Terrel Miedaner, and also the short story The Seventh Sally by Stanisław Lem. The film was shown several times on television in Holland in the late eighties."

-wikipedia

So I've been reading Hofstadter's I am a Strange Loop and I've become and remained completely entranced by this guy. So, as you may guess, my inner geek glowed when I stumbled across this one.

SUGGESTION

2009-01-14T07:32:00.001-08:00

past life regression:

CAPTIVE MINDS (1983)

I've been studying the first four minutes of this in an effort to embed it in my memory.

Stumbled across this on an anti-scientology website xenutv.com. The program can be viewed in its entirety here.

SPIN (1995)

2008-10-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

"...I [Brian Springer] chose 1992 as the year to monitor the satellite spectrum because of the national election; feeds are the easiest and cheapest way for the candidates and the networks to teleport their images across the vast landscape of a national election. George Bush began when he hired the former producer of ABC's "Nightline" to orchestrate his satellite re-election bid: Bush was beamed via satellite to many local TV stations to appear in "Nightline"-style interviews with the kinder and gentler local news anchors, and the other candidates followed suit. Larry King held court on satellite as the candidates made over 100 talk-show appearances (they made only 2 in 1988), and LA burned with hundreds of feeds as the networks spun the dissent. I'd trawl the spectrum, starting with the morning TV talk-shows at 6AM and end at midnight with "Nightline". I lost muscle-tone in my stomach, damaged the nerves in my thumb with the remote-control and felt only as good as my last image. The result of this viewing experiment is a one-hour video documentary called SPIN which uses feeds to unravel the election and the televised events which framed it, such as the L.A. riots, Colombus' 500th anniversary, and the struggle for reproductive and sexual rights. Spin captures the contempt for the public whispered by spin doctors, and the hallucinogenic collusion of the candidates, the press and the technology..."

this is a true case of life imitating art.

ABSTRACT

2007-01-14T10:41:00.000-08:00

thoughtforms & algorithms presented by JWM

mostly fragments of video with the occasional static image and textu(r)al scribbling