Constant Movement

Lately I've been interested in the relation between constant movement vs. stationary objects. The stationary becomes animated in a way, like in stop-motion or a person standing against a moving stream. It really depends on where you place your focus. Exploring this dichotomy results in some pretty mesmerizing videos:

Variation VI: Motion panorama still landscape from Aitor Gametxo on Vimeo.

The Constant and The Flux (excerpt) from Callum Cooper on Vimeo.

eye know from Woody Kaine on Vimeo.

Bas Jan Ader

Is he magic?

Nicole Cohen

Douglas Gordon

Déjà-Vu (2000)

A Right Angle?

Vertical Travel from Sarah Chan on Vimeo.

Just some pretty lights . . .

Peter Campus

'Interface,' 1972

'Optical Sockets', 1973

'mem,' 1974

What the hell is going on in my brain? (Thanks a lot TV)

There he goes. Eating a hamburger. He doesn't even finish it.

And why should we care about this?

Is this a joke? Were we tricked? Did we wasted our time watching this?

In Warhol’s Eating a Hamburger (1982), we are presented with a incredibly mundane situation. It just Andy. He's just eating a hamburger. Yet the very medium of video makes it an event. There is action, drama, and mystery (why didn't he finish that hamburger???)
It is at once mesmerizing and distancing. A screen that demands our gaze and yet offers us something that can be found in the everyday.

We can read into whatever we like about this piece. I like to think of it as a spectacle.

Jordi Colomer

Christian Marclay and his Telephones

Telephones (1995) by Christian Marclay

There are only so many ways you can answer a telephone. 

The appropriation of Cinema in art has been around for a while, but it never seems to go out of style. Using cinema (or television) as an archive of human history gives us an idealized and somewhat condense view of society. Even basic human activities (waking up, getting out of bed, eating, etc.) are captured and preserved on film and we tend to see similarities in the presentation of those activities across many different films. It creates its own dialogue out side of narrative, one that considers the whole scope of film history parallel to human history.

Strangely Hypontic

I came across this today

Small fragment of a lost film in Kinemacolor

From "How to Live 100 Years" (1913)

Lost films have a truly enigmatic quality. It is evidence of the past, documentation of the work of the film makers, actors, artist, never to be seen again. Fragments are found here and there, but they are tantalizing artifacts that make one dream of what could have been. 

Here is an attempt to preserve this film (thanks http://www.yooouuutuuube.com), to make it last a little be longer.

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?width=192&height=120&yt=zQSJKCkZ8sI&flux=0&direction=left_up

 Remind you of another post?

What Comes After Remix? (A Remix of the Remix?)

Alice Remixed by Pogo

Here is the remix of the remix:

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?width=80&height=80&yt=pAwR6w2TgxY&flux=0&direction=bottom_left

In Lev Manovich's 2007 article "What come after Remix," he proposes that this is the age of remix culture. It most certainly is, and still lingers today. Music, video, fashion, food, architecture --what have you-- has been in someway remixed re purposed into something new. Our world history is an archive. Why not use it?

Marcel Duchamp - Fountain, 1917. Sculpture

Looking at the art world, it is a technique (also known as appropriation) used time and time again but never ceasing to find new combinations, new languages expressed through re-contextualizing the visual. A notable early example is Duchamp's Fountain, in which a urinal is magically "turned" into a work of art through the artist intent (whether seriously or jokingly) and most importantly, the placement of the object in a new context. In this case from the bathroom into the museum.

But what comes after remix? This is the question Manovich asks but does not answer. It is too soon to tell or it may have already happened and no one has yet to notice. Have we reached the pinnacle of our visual production? I don't think so. But if remix isn't the end all of our cultural visualization, it is certainly a powerful tool to influence the next.

Rebeca Méndez

At Any Given Moment, Grass #1 from Rebeca Méndez on Vimeo.

Movement created by nature and captured brilliantly by Rebeca Méndez.In her series,  Méndez "explores issues of perception, specifically our relationship to technologically mediated nature."

(http://cargocollective.com/rebecamendez/About-Rebeca-Mendez)