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Experimental Philosophy Trilogy Part 3: Absolute Folk

Ben Coonley

2013 00:07:20 United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video

Description

An intrepid academic travels the world, asking people if it is OK for someone to stab a friend in order to test the sharpness of a knife. If one person says it's OK and another says it's not OK, can both respondents be right? This video is an illustration of a multi-layered experiment designed to test the claims of several traditional philosophers that non-experts (folk) tend to hold rigidly absolutist views of morality. 3D video is used to create harmonious illusions of depth as well asynchronous left and right eye views—a fitting visual analogy for the complexity and mutability of folk moral relativism. Singer Amanda Palmer's disembodied head narrates.

This title is also available on Experimental Philosophy Trilogy.

About Benjamin Coonley

Ben Coonley is a video and performance artist who uses comic pedagogical styles and direct audience address to explore aspects of media culture and film history.  Drawing from the avant garde canon and amateur/public access video conventions, his videos are sardonic no-brow subversions of cinematic form and genre.

Coonley studied Art Semiotics at Brown University, and received his MFA from Bard College.  His works have been screened at venues and film festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Underground Film Festival, Cinematexas and the Pacific Film Archive, San Francisco.  He is a regular contributor to Movies with Live Soundtracks, a quarterly DIY film/performance series based in Providence, RI.  He lives in Brooklyn.

He was recipient of the 2003 Barbara Aronofsky Latham Memorial Award, given to an Exceptional Emerging Video Artist.