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.