My ideas in creating this piece is to show the viewer the destructive acts of trash in the world juxtaposed with the earth friendly intact CRT. In the piece Destroy I am trying to project the cautionary effects to earth showing the real world destruction done by human neglect. With Birth, my intentions are to show a reference to an ‘old earth’ giving birth to an old technology that could be reused in a much more ecofriendly way. 

Narrative Video: Dances With Werewolves

Dances With Werewolves from Michael Telschow on Vimeo.

"What's That?" Documentation

Exhibit Documentation ("What's That?") from marisa haitsma on Vimeo.

“What’s that?” featured everyday objects in microscopic form. I used filters and fun effects to distort them to be unrecognizable. At the film festival, I asked many viewers of my piece what they thought a specific object was and most people got around four correct out of the eighteen that were featured. The rest were too distorted for the human eye to recognize it. In our daily lives, we see things or objects and know immediately what they are just by looking at it so I brought a challenge to the table with this piece and pushed people beyond what they know. Oh, and there is no audio in my original because I didn't want to take away from the individual objects and would have had to place individual audio for each and I feel that would have been confusing or maybe would have given away the object.

Variant Similarities Documentation

Variant Similarities Documentation from Ryan Weber on Vimeo.

Variant Similarities is a video sculpture art piece that plays with the concept of identity. A single subject is shown at all times, yet this subject is created using different parts of already living subjects. With every screen change, the old subject is destroyed and a new subject is born. The constant destruction and creation of subjects on the screen breaks conventional concepts of how an identity is created by randomly producing a new one in front of the viewer. The viewer is, at the same time, a part of the piece because it is the combination of the three parts of the new subject in the viewers mind that gives this subject its identity.

Wash It Off Documentation

The digital age allows for complete control and manipulation of images, whether it’s making colors more vivid or taking out elements for a better composition. The most damaging of these manipulations is that of the Photoshop perfect models in teen and women’s magazines and ads. These images can control and destroy a woman’s self-esteem as they set standards that no human could possible achieve. It is an internal, everyday struggle that we face and it needs to be taken down from within. The standards of beauty will always surround us. It is how we receive them that matters.

Obsession

Untitled from Katelin Hager on Vimeo.

Installation Documentation

Installation Documentation from Katelin Hager on Vimeo.

My video “Obsession” is an exploration of an idea I developed because of obsessive cleaning habits that my family and I partake in. It all started because of something a family friend said to me once, “You know your dad looks crazy going around the house and turning everything until it’s at a 90 degree angle? And you obsessing over one little spot on one glass…. Yeah. You guys look crazy.” This comment still carries with me to this day. I wanted to record someone else obsessing over the same things I might have obsessed over. I wanted to see the “crazy” and show everyone else. From living in this lifestyle, I know it’s sort of a sickness. Because of this, I also wanted to bring my understanding of obsession or OCD to a more visual stance (instead of an explanation that you would read). I wanted to do this to show others but also as a process for myself to better understand what my life was composed of. Which is where the mantra comes in; obsession, mania, fascination, fixation, to name a few, describes the mindset in which an obsessive person is in. While they are not thinking these words, the thoughts they are thinking stem from the ideas provided by these words. Since each scene or “chapter” as I like to call it, has a different matter at hand, a viewer may see the switch of subject matter as less obsessive and more ritualistic. However, a person who is obsessed with cleanliness has a preconceived idea of perfection (in their opinion), which everything they touch must achieve. The one chapter I would consider most important in consolidating the video is the scene where the woman fixates on the picture frame. The use of the Droste/ Escher effect was intended to demonstrate the sickness most strongly. It shows both literally and figuratively that it is something that spirals out of control and traps your mind. It wraps up the concepts I used throughout the rest of the video and provides a visual of the craziness that an obsessed person may experience or even the same sort of madness my friend observed.

The Documentation of Maelstrom

The Documentation of Maelstrom from Michael Telschow on Vimeo.
The Artist Statement is showcased at the beginning of the video.

Documentation of Elemental Ideas

My ideas are always changing. As I continue to think my ideas evolve into something new. I chose to use colors representing the elements because as elements they are always changing also. The basic earth, wind, fire and water are somewhat harmless in small quantities, but altogether they can manifest into a destructive force. I see my ideas the same way not destructive but intellectual.

TechnoShaman

Television Sculpture
by Sky Santiago


TechnoShaman sits at The Crossroads and walks between worlds.

TechnoShaman could be a power, a person, a map, a means of travel. TechnoShaman is the visionary and historian, wearing the garb of mediums past and present--- taking us on a journey that is an investigation of the unknown.

The piece is meditative and signal oriented. Materials of circuit boards, components, cables, electrical wiring, cassette tapes, filmstrips, floppy’s and dvd’s were used to illustrate the demystification of technology. The video is a feedback loop and is representative of human consciousness. The television as the TechnoShaman’s head, is a pro-active art element, taking the place of its commonly accepted use as a device of corporate broadcast and passive receptivity.

We live in the information age of DIY, hacker culture, and social media engagement, as many seek solutions to world problems and to create works that speak to the masses. With these tools we play, experiment, teach, learn, expand, and can perhaps heal our world. We are “media-minded” digital natives in a grassroots, open-source playing field. We are disassembling the past and repurposing it for the next stage in our human evolution.

Michael Nespo: Atomic Documentation

Artist's Statement: For the final project for video art class I chose to take something destructive and abstract it in a way that would make something destructive more appealing to the eye. I took old army footage from archive.org of atomic explosions and mushroom clouds and abstracted them using different filter effects in Adobe Premiere. I wanted to enhance the explosions in the middle of the piece so I used the earthquake and strobe effects quite often throughout the piece. Since the piece was going to be in the Riverbend Film Fest at Century Center, I chose to make a mushroom cloud out of foam core to place over the actual television that would be playing my video. Since the pedestal that my video was going to be displayed on was white, I chose to make the cloud out of white foam core. That way the installation aspects of the piece would not take away from the colors and visuals of my actual video. Overall, I felt my video as well as the installation was strong and worked well together to bring out the overall message of the piece.

Atomic Documentation from Michael Nespo on Vimeo.