"In The Very Very End, Barber points to his medium's plastic possibility by somehow traveling into the future and the past, nodding to Neville Shute's apocalyptic 1957 novel On The Beach, while setting an end-of-days story in a 21st Century holiday resort.
This documentary charts a trip around Baja California to the Tropic of Cancer line on the summer solstice. Largely photographed in-camera, the film develops its narrative drive through the rhythm of shot length and composition. Aided by an original score from Beth Custer and a wicked sound design by Jeremiah Moore that utilizes sounds form the Cassini space probe, the piece takes on a humorously sinister tone; as if the historical marker were an alien landing
Some forms we can only know by their shadow. In homage to the spirits of space test dogs, or any being we use in the name of progress.
This video was made by invitation of composer Olivia Block for the release of her album Innocent Passage in the Territorial Sea (Room40).
Composer: Olivia Block
Additional Imagery: NASA, Jeremy Inglis, Suan Hsi Yong
Heliocentric uses timelapse photography and astronomical tracking to plot the sun's trajectory across a series of landscapes. The entire environment seems to pan past the camera whilst the sun stays in the center of each frame, enabling us to gauge the earth's rotation and orbit around the sun. As the sun's light becomes disrupted by passing weather conditions and the environment through which we encounter it, it audibly plays them as if it were a stylus.
A distinguished looking man (performance artist Richard Layzell) is apparently trapped in an ever changing void of colour, locked in a power play with a perversely operated camera. A mute, caged, charismatic TV presenter he is by turns charming, menacing, educational, confused. At times he appears to have great powers. A voiceover tells us extraordinary things — how this man is special — the first man to 'have a baby'. Hallucinogenic flash-frames punctuate the colour field to give us a view of his world's disturbing and alien futuristic logic.
Suzanne Anker (b. 1946) is an American visual artist and theorist. Considered a pioneer in the field of Bio Art, her work is situated at the intersection of artistic practice and biological science. Through a concern for genetics, climate change, species extinction, and toxic degradation, Anker draws focus on the “necessity for enlightened thinking about nature’s ‘tangled bank.’”
"The human ear. A gatherer of energy. A gatherer of sound. RPMs and BPMs. Satellites go up to the sky."
In the video Satellite, Nelson Henricks combines found footage and techno beats to question western society's ongoing obsession with science, technology and the future. Juxtaposing images derived from old educational films with absurd, aphoristic slogans, Henricks offers up a witty, entertaining and provocative commentary of our need to make sense of everything, at any cost.
Forest Mind is a video work that emerges from the artist’s longstanding interest in the human interaction with the natural world. In a series of recent art projects, she has shed light on the cosmology of Indigenous communities and their political struggle to keep their forests alive.
Jacqueline Goss and Jenny Perlin retrace the journey of two 18th-century astronomers tasked with determining the true length of the meter. From the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel, The Measures explores the metric system’s origins during the violence and upheavals of the French Revolution. Along the way, Goss and Perlin consider the intertwining of political and personal turmoil, the failures of standardization, and the subtleties of collaboration.
For 200 Nanowebbers, Semiconductor have created a molecular web that is generated by Double Adaptor's live soundtrack. Using custom-made scripting, the melodies and rhythms spawn a nano scale environment that shifts and contorts to the audios resonances. Layers of energetic hand drawn animations, play over the simplest of vector shapes that form atomic scale associations. As the landscape flickers into existence by the light of trapped electron particles, substructures begin to take shape and resemble crystalline substances.
Theo Cuthand and his mother Ruth Cuthand have a candid conversation about Theo's last hospitalization for Bipolar Disorder in 2007. While Theo only knew his manic episode from the inside, Ruth had to deal with caregiving decisions and trying to find help. While they reminisce they also have to reckon with the feelings of animosity that arose between them during these events.
Co-directed with Ruth Cuthand.
On May 11 2004, Steve Kurtz phoned 911 to report Hope, his wife of 20 years, was unresponsive. When paramedics came to his house, one of them noticed that Kurtz had laboratory equipment, which he used in his art exhibits. The paramedics reported this to police and the FBI sealed off his house.
Authorities later said that Kurtz's wife had died of "heart failure," but he wasn't allowed to return to his home for two days while the FBI confiscated his equipment, and biological samples. They also carted off his books, personal papers and computer.
Earthmoves is a continuation of Semiconductor's exploration into how unseen forces affect the fabric of our world. The limits of human perception are exposed, revealing a world which is unstable and in a constant state of animation as the forces of acoustic waves come into play on our surroundings.
Jacqueline Goss and Jenny Perlin retrace the journey of two 18th-century astronomers tasked with determining the true length of the meter. From the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel, The Measures explores the metric system’s origins during the violence and upheavals of the French Revolution. Along the way, Goss and Perlin consider the intertwining of political and personal turmoil, the failures of standardization, and the subtleties of collaboration.
20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception.
On May 11 2004, Steve Kurtz phoned 911 to report Hope, his wife of 20 years, was unresponsive. When paramedics came to his house, one of them noticed that Kurtz had laboratory equipment, which he used in his art exhibits. The paramedics reported this to police and the FBI sealed off his house.
Authorities later said that Kurtz's wife had died of "heart failure," but he wasn't allowed to return to his home for two days while the FBI confiscated his equipment, and biological samples. They also carted off his books, personal papers and computer.
Detour de Force presents the world of thoughtographer Ted Serios, a charismatic Chicago bell hop who, in the mid-1960’s produced hundreds of Polaroid images from his mind. Constructed from 16mm documentation of Serios’s sessions and audio recordings of Serios speaking with Dr. Jule Eisenbud, the Denver psychiatrist who championed his abilities, the film is more ethnography than biography, portraying the social and scientific environments in which Serios thrived.
The Soft Science “Cinema of Attractions” is a series of short movies by scientists. Commission and concept by Rachel Mayeri, electronic compositions and musical accompaniment by Joe Milutis. Many of the videos can be found on the web, posted for public appreciation of a scientist's lab work, as instructional material, or for communication to peers as data. As "data," the videos are non-narrative, scientific information.
“Mining an ironic vein by turning technology against itself, AlienNATION undercuts the sociological ramifications of modern living. It is an astounding compendium of sci-fi images, textbook diagrams, special effects, and studio props, which together build multiple readings of the alien, the mysterious, and the obscure in American culture.
