Expanded Media

Science Fiction

Barbara Lattanzi — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 02:18:47 +0000

I just received this video still today, at my request, from Rebekkah Palov (MFA, 2009, IEA program). Her video, “Science Fiction” is included in a newly-distributed DVD on the Aspect label – a curated 2-volume set, “Strangely Funny & Failure”. Since I haven’t yet seen this work, there is only this image and an excerpt from a descriptive statement.

"Science Fiction" by Rebekkah Palov

“Science Fiction” is a single take performance narration of ruptured texts about re-creations. The constellation of free flowing text fragments jump from personal to (inter) national narratives and functions under a thin guise of genre, science fiction.[...] In the background, 2 televisions play science-fiction-esque video with an obviously canned soundtrack; both access conventions of genre which further confound this intimate, amusing and unnerving performance.

Palov’s description references genre – the “thin guise of genre” – as enabling a set of narrative associations that emerge ambiguously from a textual reading. Palov has dressed in this textual get-up before. In an earlier video, done during her MFA studies, she re-stages Henry Kissinger 1970s audio fragments in which diplomatic-speak becomes an aural presence (literally a foregrounded “figure of speech”) synced to the pulsing electronic color of its visual background. In simpler terms, narration becomes an audio figure against a visual ground. The staging of a diplomatic event is the “thin guise of genre” par excellence, where the nuance of tone and the careful selection of words – against the grain of the voice – both clarifies and obfuscates (are the diplomat’s words scripted or are they “real”?). The questions that I will bring to some future viewing of “Science Fiction” – this video that I have not yet experienced! – will be exactly about that figure-ground relationship: in this case, what one thinks one sees as figure, against a ground of what one thinks one hears. I expect to be similarly tested with a series of intentional and precise inversions and reversals in the “thin guise” of narrative.

Boomerangrang software

Barbara Lattanzi — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 02:49:15 +0000

Boomerangrang is software that variably delays sound from a live microphone, for an experiment focused on perception and language. It is my 2nd project posted over at code.google.com. This simple project is open source; the max/msp patches are there along with the downloadable application (for Mac only). The source of the idea is a 1974 video by Richard Serra, with Nancy Holt.

In 1974 Richard Serra recorded Nancy Holt. Serra’s video documents Holt speaking… as if to herself; there is no indication of anyone else in the room (until later in the tape, when we here Serra off-camera). In the situation of being recorded, Holt’s words are audible to herself mainly through the headphones she is wearing. The cadence of Holt’s voice is shaped, however, not by this real-time mediation of her voice. This is because what she is hearing through her headphones is her voice slightly delayed, less than a second. That 1974 video, titled “Boomerang” is archived at Video Data Bank (VDB) in Chicago. The VDB description is admirably succinct: “This is a tape which analyzes its own discourse and processes as it is being formulated. The language of ‘Boomerang’, and the relation between the description and what is being described, is not arbitrary. Language and image are being formed and revealed as they are organized.” A video excerpt of “Boomerang” by Richard Serra can be found at the Video Data Bank. And ”Boomerang” can be seen in its entirety at the ubu.com collection.

Wang Rui’s work

dream120995634 — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 23:51:46 +0000

Scars series,2010

Digital photography

Wang Guojun’s work

dream120995634 — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 23:38:59 +0000

untitled, 2010

digital photography

Video Happy Society

dream120995634 — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 02:50:53 +0000

THE FALL 2010 VIDEO, SOUND, PERFORMANCE show

Art Needs Art

William — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:19:57 +0000

Senior Shows, May 8th 2010

William — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:58:30 +0000

Senior Print Exchange 2010: Curated by Alex Williams

William — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 02:51:31 +0000

Alfred University’s Design Blog

William — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:46:52 +0000

CAUSE + TIME

William — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:28:15 +0000