Matias Duville

. . . is good.

Artists and Things I Have Been Looking at Part 2

1. Marlo Pascual 

"In the act of producing a picture there is always a form of “construction” going on. Whether it’s the framing, the lighting, or the positioning of the subject. As time passes, we have a better understanding of these constructions, and their successes and failures become more evident.

As social interactions take place more and more with the screen and the virtual, I find that there is a desire for physical interactions and I play with the possibilities and limitations of those interactions."

- Marlo Pascual

2. John Divola

"The psychiatrist and theorist Carl Jung speculated that human beings have a biological propensity to form certain mythic structures that he called archetypes. In his personal writing he describes the existence of a collective human consciousness. Rather than Jung's idea of a psychic inheritance, a collective unconscious may be something that humanity is in the process of implementing. While one might suggest language itself is the beginning of collective identity, contemporary visual culture shifted the abstraction of language to a realm of shared experiential specificity.

We have extended the externalization of memory in the form of digital databases and we have interwoven representational experience with direct experience to a degree where we can no longer distinguish the basis for our conceptions of reality. Furthermore, there no longer appears to be much individual appetite for interrogating the difference. When I think about Manhattan, and I have been there many times, I cannot clearly identify the source of my conceptions. These conceptions are based in direct expe rience, Manhattan as background in TV detective fictions, or numerous other representational sources. It never really occurs to me that I should make a distinction as to the sources on which I base this image of place. Whether from direct experience of the world or direct experience of the physical evidence that constitutes photographic representation, visual experience and memory gradually focus these impressions on a condition of equivalence. Memories of my actual experiences with any particular city must compete with a relentless stream of representations of Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. Memories of walks in nature are intermixed with that familiar stretch of desert highway that I see continually repeated in automotive commercials."

-John Divola

3. Zilvinas Kempinas

Tube, 2009.  Magnetic tape, plywood.  Installation view, Lithuanian Pavilion, 53d Venice Biennale, June-November, 2009

White Noise, 2007. Horizontally stretched lines of video tape, electric fans

Simple and quietly mesmerizing, Zilvinas Kempinas' screen of "white noise" was one of the superstar of the shows. Seen from afar, the screen vibrates and sounds like the fragmented black and white pixels of an untuned video source. As they move forward, visitors realize that the screen is an opening into the wall stretched with horizontal lines of videotape vibrating in the currents of air created by fans. Unlike a magic trick which looses its spell as soon as the artifice behind it is revealed, White Noise gets more fascinating the closer you get to understanding it.

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/04/one-of-the-major-downsides.php


4. Semiconductor 




Brilliant Noise from Semiconductor on Vimeo

"Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files, made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun's finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This grainy black and white quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected as single snapshots containing additional information, by satellites orbiting the Earth. They are then reorganised into their spectral groups to create time-lapse sequences. The soundtrack highlights the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating areas of intensity within the image brightness into layers of audio manipulation and radio frequencies."

Black Rain from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Black Rain is sourced from images collected by the twin satellite, solar mission, STEREO. Here we see the HI (Heliospheric Imager) visual data as it tracks interplanetary space for solar wind and CME's (coronal mass ejections) heading towards Earth. Data courtesy of courtesy of the Heliospheric Imager on the NASA STEREO mission.

Working with STEREO scientists, Semiconductor collected all the HI image data to date, revealing the journey of the satellites from their initial orientation, to their current tracing of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Solar wind, CME's, passing planets and comets orbiting the sun can be seen as background stars and the milky way pass by.

As in Semiconductors previous work 'Brilliant Noise' which looked into the sun, they work with raw scientific satellite data which has not yet been cleaned and processed for public consumption. By embracing the artefacts, calibration and phenomena of the capturing process we are reminded of the presence of the human observer who endeavors to extend our perceptions and knowledge through technological innovation.

Black Rain installation from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

I Have A Lot To Write About

Maureen R. Drennan                                                                                   Adam, 2008

Ideas, artists, new friends, old friends, the events of the last two weeks, so on and so on.  Hopefully I will get to it all over the next couple of days.

Artists And Things That I have Been Looking at Recently, Part 1

1. Diffraction

2. INFLECTION 

1 : the act or result of curving or bending : bend
2 : change in pitch or loudness of the voice
3 a : the change of form that words undergo to mark such distinctions as those of case, gender, number, tense, person, mood, or voice b : a form, suffix, or element involved in such variation c : accidence
4 a : change in curvature of an arc or curve from concave to convex or conversely b : inflection point


http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inflection

3. Hollis Frampton


NOCTILUCA

Snowblind

"Homage to Michael Snow's environmental sculpture 'Blind'. The film proposes analogies, in imitation of 3 historic montage styles, for three perceptual modes mimed by that work." 


3. Paul Sharits

Installation view of Paul Sharits, "Shutter Interface," (1975, four-screen 16-mm loop projection with four separate sound tracks) at Greene Naftali Gallery, 2009.


4. ANTHONY McCALL

Between You and I”, 2006 by Anthony McCall. Vertical solid light installation, two video projectors, two haze machines.

"In his seminal work Line Describing a Cone (1973), the British-born artist Anthony McCall began with a small dot. On a wall he projected a small white circle that slowly grew to a circular line suspended in midair, then to a conical sculpture made of light. The work, the first of his "solid light" films, captured both the illusion of movement in film and the substantial corporality of sculpture."

Inflection (point), Again, this time with statement

This installation extends the perception of an image out into space.  It does so by expanding the image into seven planes or registers, which are designed to bracket the viewer's body as they walk through the space.  A type of image-room is created within the physical room as the viewer is able to walk between these parallel image planes.  Yet these different images are just different manifestations, reflections or refractions of a singular expanded image.     

The first register is the mirror on the back wall of the space, this mirror acts as a window or portal that literally doubles the space from which the projector's image emanates.  The second register is the back wall itself, which receives the biomorphic, liquid-like reflection off of the gel material which is used as a screen.  The third register is the back of the screen, and the fourth register is the front.  The fifth register is the opened mirror box structures. And finally the sixth and seven registers are the over-projections or spill images that fall on the floor and the top of the front wall. These two final registers are the original transmission of the image, the middle having been interrupted by the screen structure. These final registers act as a floor and ceiling for the body's interaction with this image room. 

The projector mirror and the mirrors in the screen structure--as far as the waves and particles of light are concerned--create deep wells of space or holes in the fabric of the space of the room.  This part of the installation is transgressive as it willfully disorients the viewer, but paradoxically

this also provides one of the main aspects of seduction.  Some other simpler means of seduction created by the mirrors are the infinity effect and the kaleidoscope effect. These latter effects ground the piece in nostalgia but also add a bit of elementary school science lab irony.   Finally I would like to point out the two different mirror effects, the non-distorted first-surface mirror that extends the length of the projection, which is more analogous to a metaphysical or science fiction-like portal in space, vs. the distortion created by the second-surface mirrored boxes, which is analogous to our subjective experience of the world, that is seeing "through a glass darkly". 

The screen structure is the inflection point, the interruption of the projector's transmission. It is literally the container for the image light--a type cage or fine netting that can hold light. But then the structure becomes its own transmitter, projecting the image-light forward, reflecting the image into infinity and--in its ultimate transformation--reflecting backwards, diffracting the waves of light, disrupting the Modernist and Euclidean grids of logic within the images and turning them into seething tendrils of organic shapes that both mimic bodily functions and airplane flight patterns. This inflection point sends the image out centrifugally but it is also centripetal as the viewers attention is always brought back to its center.  Transmitting, for we obviously live in an era structured around transmitting, transmitting and receiving, downloading and uploading, bits, ones and zeros--transmuting. 

And then there is the film itself, its own matrix of bits, its own binary code.  It is a morse code where we again find the modernist grids  dissolving and resolving through the film's movement, diffraction and fractal-like patterns.  Though these are abstract, geometric-patterned images  an organic pulse is interspersed with the more mechanical stutter. This is a film built with history, German experimental film, Stan Brakhage's "Index of Light", the structuralists Hollis Frampton and Michael Snow. This is Modernism designed to be disrupted and transmitted by the inflection point of the screen structure. 

There is also irony in the choice of materials.  The over-arching goal is to create a room of image light, similar to what a cathedral does with stain-glass windows--though my cathedral is an intimate transcendental experience, as it is a small room. Still, here I am making the material immaterial, but I am doing it with fundamentally cheap stuff.  The film is made with air conditioning filters and plastic sheeting--the film is not even a film, it is digital video, edited with generic software with a simple click of a mouse.  The screen structure is prefab metal shelving, common photographic material and extruded acrylic; the light, a home entertainment device.  We live in a world structured with prefabricated material, but we can make magic out of this stuff. 

Inflection Installation

This is a video of Jon-Phillip Sheridan's graduate candidacy exhibition installation. The piece was titled "Inflection" and consists of a sculpture made of acrylic mirrors and metal framing, drafting paper, rosco gels, a video piece, a projector and a mirror.


Here is the projection piece:

VMFA Fellowship

From 123cantwait

©Jon-Phillip Sheridan 2010
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I just won a VMFA Fellowship Grant

Also, see here

and here

And

Some other artists who won this year:

Greg Stewart. I really like his work.

Stephen Vitiello. A great artist and a great teacher.

Kevin Everson Also a grerat artist and a very very cool man . . . I will find out next year if he is a good teacher, but from what I have heard, he is.

Hey Hot Shot Blog, Again!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Direct Object #03, Fall 2009 ©Jon-Phillip Sheridan
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This blog has been silent once again . . . grad school, teaching, and baby rearing is taking up all of my time . . . alas.

But good news for me, I am fortunate enough to have one of my brand new pictures featured on The Jen Bekman Gallery's blog Hey Hot Shot!

This is what they say about me:

"Today we take a look at contender Jon Sheridan. Jon makes a syntactic analogy with photography in his series Direct Objects: "In language, the verb acts upon the direct object. Here, the interventions of my photography act upon the direct objects in the picture," he says. Using a "forensic" approach, Jon seeks out quotidian items found at construction sites, loading docks and smoke-break corners. These Direct Objects are lit and grounded to emphasize that favorite quality of cultural theorists, their "thingness." Here, this impermanent coffee cup emerges as a uniquely sculptural object among the hard, angular wall and electricity boxes.
We wrote about Jon's series How to Fix a Campground here on the blog during the last round of competition, and you can also see more at his website."

Blurb's Photograph.Book.Now

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My book, Of Cats And Fish, has been awarded an honorable mention in Blurb's self publishing book contest.  See the winners here

Head Judge:
Darius Himes - Radius Books

Judges:
Dana Faconti - Blind Spot
Dr. Anthony Bannon - George Eastman House
Vince Aletti - Critic
Kira Pollack - NY Times Magazine
W.M. Hunt - Hasted Hunt Gallery
Platon - Photographer
Jodi Peckman - Rolling Stone
Karen Hangsen - Rizzoli

Later this weekend I will write a little bit on what went into making my book and what it's about.

Plus, please check out my good friend Billy Hunt who was also awarded an honorable mention.

200 Electric Guitars Can't Be Wrong

Urbanscreen

These are pretty amazing . . . I can only imagine what it might be like to view them in person!

The content is a little bit too . . . "theater company", if you know what I mean?

Anyway, thanks to Joey Tombs for pointing these out to me.

PS. If you watch these in the full screen mode make sure to turn the HD on.

CORRECTION: if you want to watch these in HD, double click the video and it will take you to Vimeo.

JUMP | media facade | urban screening from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

555 KUBIK | facade projection | from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

Spiegelbilder - Videoinstallation from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

Video installation "Spiegelbilder" TEST from urbanscreen on Vimeo.