Based on a set of drawings that depict George W. Bush's administration as wounded soldiers in the war against terrorism, RE:THE_OPERATION explores the sexual and philosophical dynamics of war through the lives of the members as they physically engage each other and the "enemy." Letters, notes, and digital snapshots "produced" by the members on their tour of duty become the basis of video portraits that articulate the neuroses and obsessions compelling them toward an infinite war.
A brief glimpse of a confessional detour during a pictorial drift.
The fourth collaboration between Jessie Mott and Steve Reinke continues its melancholic musings on desire and mourning, this time with more twerking. Hypnotic backgrounds and eccentric animals lend to its psychedelic children's cartoon vibe, and the signature Madonna and Stockhausen soundtrack enhances the desperation for paradise among those extra long tongues and snake-y bodies.
If second lives have grown into the landscape of social network space and avatars engage a full range of human emotions and experience, it follows that they would eventually encounter existential questions. A plot of land is purchased in the online network of SecondLife and a simple questions is asked: Where do discarded 3D objects go and can we build a dumpster to accommodate them? To find out eteam set aside a year to let this virtual land use problem unfold and what is captured in Prim Limit is the lived experience of avatars managing and recording this dumpster.
Part of paraconsistent sequence series and the hauntology series.
With the Watergate hearings as a backdrop, quotes from various newspapers and magazines--including the story of Robert Smithson's death in a plane crash--build a picture of the confusing and tragic events of July 1973. Sonnier uses appropriated footage and reproduced newspaper clippings to create a richly layered video that attempts to sort out the truth from the available information. Sonnier's instructions to the computer operator reference the making of the video, and thereby create a self-conscious, limiting frame.
The set of Bewitched is a spiritual battleground of overlapping zones — human, alien and cyborg — in Bobby Abate's latest ontological mystery film.
Red House is an animation that playfully explores metamorphosis in relation to the stability and structure of housing. Created using the AMIGA computer console and Deluxe Paint IV software, hand drawn sequences delight in the constant reconfiguration of images, characters and forms.
Animated by Barry Doupé
With sound design by James Whitman
Nine micro-essays on animation and death--with many appearances including Goethe, Pink Floyd and Bambi--leads to a final encounter and introduction.
A 19th Century etching of a bedroom in the Palace of Versailles is animated and depicts the room in the midst of an earthquake. Every detail, from the moldings to the small figures in the hung paintings, trembles. Eventually all the elements — objects, furniture, decorative features — fall and pile-up on the floor. The once crowded walls are left empty, with only a few lines signifying the space. As the objects fall and break, their initial significance is questioned. The once strong, solid symbols of power and glorification fall and break to useless shreds on the floor.
In this moment when the believability of our reality continues to stretch - blue people are hoping to enter into our reality environment.
In English, Chinese, Haudenosaunee, and Spanish. This video is originally a 2-channel video installation.
In the spell of one of the most exquisite pop songs I know, with the most rudimentary of animation skills, I sought to produce a smooth and rapid transition from innocuous kindergarten silliness to faux-Lynchian horror. As with Gaijin, I exploited the then-novel Google image search heavily for this video.
In Blood & Cinnamon Mott’s creatures discuss existential crises as they flip and rotate and disappear from view.
--F News Magazine, December, 2010
Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.
In this 2013 interview, experimental animator and School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumna Jodie Mack discusses the developments that have taken her from an interest in musical theater and playwriting to organizing microcinemas and DIY filmmaking.
Mack describes her interest in early cinema history and the relationship between its technologies and spectacle, particularly the manner in which video production incorporates planned obsolescence. Referring to the “scavenger nature” of her work, Mack discusses her interest in waste and her desire to use reclaimed materials in her work. Using fabric and paper to create shifting fields of color, Mack references corroded and glitched digital media in her work. Her use of quotidian materials reflects upon the role of abstract animation in everyday life, and serves to draw audience awareness to the spectacle of televisual technology.
– Kyle Riley
The fourth collaboration between Jessie Mott and Steve Reinke continues its melancholic musings on desire and mourning, this time with more twerking. Hypnotic backgrounds and eccentric animals lend to its psychedelic children's cartoon vibe, and the signature Madonna and Stockhausen soundtrack enhances the desperation for paradise among those extra long tongues and snake-y bodies.
Angel appears to Weirdo and forces a distasteful issue.
An invitation to riff on Chapter 10 in the book of Revelations resulted in this short experiment. It merges full body motion capture and facial motion capture on both characters and blends between them.
Animation by: James Duesing
Technical Animation: Jessica Hodgins
Assistant: Vidya Vinnakota
Motion Capture Actor: Freddy Miyares
Motion Capture Tech: Justin Macey
Voices: Brady Lewis, Jimmy Dee
Thanks:
Wendy Arons, Anna Houck, Michael Mallis
Primavera is a frenetic experimental animation that documents the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests as they intersect in springtime Brooklyn. Shot during isolation on a phone, the video explores the effects of imposed distance on touch and intimacy, the proximity of an invisible virus and invisible deaths, and the revolt against the racist, corrupt systems that commodify, exploit and render their most vulnerable citizens disposable.
Part of paraconsistent sequence series and the hauntology series.
A significant amount of the hand-drawn animation seen on television today is cartooned in sweatshop-like animation factories in Korea, China, and the Philippines. The writers and animators who form Animaquiladora sharpened their skills in one such factory located in Tijuana, Mexico. After years of animating logos for the American talk show Regis and Kathie Lee, Lalo Lopez and Alex Rivera escaped from the hellish sweatshop of Tijuana to seek better lives in Los Angeles and New York.
They say there are only two stories in the world: man goes on a journey, and stranger comes to town.
Six people are interviewed anonymously about their experiences coming into the U.S. Each then designs a video game avatar who tells their story by proxy. Goss focuses on the questions and examinations used to establish identity at the border, and how these processes in turn affect one's own sense of self and view of the world.
A short animation commissioned for Peter Burr’s touring media project Special Effect connecting Tarkovsky’s Stalker to its original text Roadside Picnic by the Strugatski Brothers.
Stop action animation, paint on a single canvas.
To make this animation, I painted scenes of my daily commute from memory and photographed them. Each frame was painted on top of the previous one, each scene triggering the following scene. I collected sounds from the places and environments I painted and edited them together with the captured frames to realize the piece.
— Ezra Wube
This title is also availble on Ezra Wube Videoworks: Volume 1
A compilation of too-close observation, animation, and stolen moments, The Seven Wonders of the World adds an eighth: survival at the edge of the known universe — bare-plus life.
Combining shaky close-ups and stop-frame animations, the video examines people living at the margins of the society, struggling to survive.
In order of appearance: Raymond Beaudoin, Beverly Murray, Ralph Monk, Pauline Mellor, Robert Smith.
