Birdbeat (fugue)
(2002) 4:08

The ritual hierarchy at a backyard bird feeder, accompanied by saxophone ensemble.

Peggy Ahwesh

Over the last two decades, Peggy Ahwesh has produced one of the most heterogeneous bodies of work in experimental film and video. A true bricoleur, her tools include narrative and documentary styles, improvised performance, Super-8 film, found footage, digital animation, and Pixelvision video. With playfulness and humor, she investigates cultural and gender identities, the role of the subject, language and representation.

She Puppet
(2001) 15min

Re-editing footage collected from months of playing Tomb Raider, Ahwesh transforms the video game into a reflection on identity and mortality. Trading the rules of gaming for art making, she brings Tomb Raider's cinematic aesthetics to the foreground, and shirks the pre-programmed "mission" of its heroine, Lara Croft. Ahwesh acknowledges the intimate relationship between this fictional character and her player. Moving beyond her implicit feminist critique of the problematic female identity, she enlarges the dilemma of Croft's entrapment to that of the individual in an increasingly artificial world.

The Waters of Casablanca
(2002) 6min

The Waters of Casablanca is the first in a series of digital works that I have produced that are inspired by the direct film tradition. This tradition was probably originated by Len Lye in "A Colour Box" (1935). In these works Lye painted on, scratched emulsions off of, or otherwise manipulated strips of film directly without the use of a camera. In my piece I took a single high resolution frame of the film Casablanca and broke it up into grids of tiny rectangles in a photo editing program. Then these images are presented one frame after another in the animation. This technique transforms the still into what appears to be a jumbled explosion of images based on the still. You are actually seeing the still one tiny piece at a time in a sequential order in columns (from top to bottom) and then in rows (often from left to right). The piece presents this information at a variety of speeds, resolutions, and superimpositions. This is accompanied by an audio collage made from a famous passage of dialogue from the original film.

sitting still john (hypnogogic case file VI)
(2002?) 5:50

Experimental short, part of the series "sitting still john" film portraits. John is asked to sit still, to silently be alert, to listen without the interference of the mind. Everything constantly changing, moving, altering. Hallucinations, mysterious sounds or voices, and surreal feelings and imagery on the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness, further stretch the surreal landscape and complexity of awareness John experiences. In his effort to quiet the mind, will John ever attain stillness?

Mar...
(1998) 3:17 min

Fragmenting a look, writing a memory. We construct what we call our reality through fragments of our past (situations we have lived) or of our future (what we want to live), So, what remains of the present, and of reality? Fragments... isolated elements that try to make sense.

Ryan Michael Hisey

Unsatisfied with the constraints of traditional media alone, Ryan Michael Hisey has mixed new technological skills with traditional artistic technique developed as a painter. Combined with his newfound love for composing music, he creates with emotion and spontaneous thought, bringing a unique twist where technology is a tool and not the subject matter. Received a BFA in Painting from the school of fine arts at Ohio University in 1999, he now is a freelance video artist /director and animator located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Examples from his work can be seen at www.art-therapies.com.
rmhisey@art-therapies.com

reflections + expressions + delusions
(2002) 5:47

reflections + expressions + delusions is an experiment in sound-based particle effects and time remapping. An "animated sound painting" based on the musical touch designed to submit strong subliminal emotional reaction on the viewer/listener. With original footage shot in Jeffersonville, Ohio on a miniDV camera, this audio-visual animation was created using sound analysis and applying this data to generate and control an assortment of effect parameters.

Cycle
(2002) 3:27

Cycle concludes that from within the imposed order there lies a predatory impulse, which is revealed upon the destruction of that order. But, once revealed, it is replaced by the urge of the "natural" to replenish the earth, and overtake any remnants of a history dedicated to the by-play of cultural competition.

Cycle is constructed from footage shot in England in 2000 and in Boston in 2002. The piece is edited and processed in Final Cut Pro ,Adobe AfterEffects and Reason (audio software). It is the final work in a trilogy (STONES,2000, TALE, 2001 CYCLE, 2002) of pieces concerned with the historicity of the myth of the Natural and its use as a veil to cover the interventions of cultural exploitation and manipulation of the resources of the Earth.

Ken Jacobs

is an essential figure in the history of American avant-garde film. A leader in cinematic experimentation since the late 1950s, he explores the mechanics of the moving image. Jacobs investigates the cinematic experience in its entirety, from production to projection. Focusing in recent years on electronic media, his new works explore video technology and the digital image.

Flo Rounds A Corner
(1999) 6 min

Writes Mark McElhatten: "The cast is in flux -- the animate and the inanimate get double billed with that dynamic duo - Push and Pull. If matter has consciousness and has renounced movement as Henri Bergson suggests, in order to conserve energy, then here we have a dramatic apostasy. A broken vow of stasis, a flood of energy. What beautiful instability and pulsation in this floating world off a hinge, drawn through invisible bellows, exhaled, exultant. Figure and ground (such a quaint term for what we really see) do a slow motion see-saw on shifting techtonic plates, and fold into Cezanne-like origami. If this dance weren't so meticulous, so slow, so molecular it would describe a calamity. But in fact this happens every day, every moment in the blink of an eye. Tilts with perfect pitch. The eponymous Flo moves slanted and enchanted down a street in Taormina, Italy - as casual, momentous and as 'on time' as the Arrival of the Train at La Ciotat that rounded the corner of another century. A landmark work."

Heliotrope No. 1
(2003) 4:15

Heliotrope No. 1 attempts to document the movements of my body and by extension, video camera, within a ritualistically charged space. Two close friends had been married on the site, in the middle of a Nebraska cornfield, and the air was still ringing when I returned one hour later with my camera. It being the autumnal equinox, I sought out a dialogue with the late afternoon sun and was amply rewarded. In fact, I was nearly knocked flat on my ass.

Til Edvard (For Edvard)
(2002) 4.5 min

a little hommage to Edvard Munch shot in Trondheim Norway, a little exploration of rhythms of light.

Hear Me! Riff
(2003) 5min

Hear Me! Riff records and demonstrates an interactive multimedia work using original software. It is part of a larger interactive video performance titled "Muscle and Blood Piano" that incorporates original software for the improvisation of sampled sequences and frames from the classic horror film "Nosferatu" (1922) by F.W. Murnau. At a central moment of the film "Nosferatu", a threshold is crossed, into the 'land of phantoms'. That threshold of horror resonates with the idea of the technological interface itself. Thus, as a sampling from the early horror film, "Hear Me! Riff" invokes a problematic, unsettling metaphor for the interface - both cybernetic and social.

machyderm inc.

Christopher McNamara

born in Windsor, Ontario, is a multi-disciplinary artist who divides his time between working on community-based projects and creating his own stuff. His video & photographic installations have been exhibited in Windsor, Detroit, New York and Toronto. His installation, WED. SPEC. was featured on the cover of the Fall, 1994 issue of C Magazine. In another life Chris was a 78rpm DJ, toqueless but with a big heart. His favourite group is the sexecutives.

thinkbox.ca

Dermot Wilson

born in Dublin, Eire,Ireland, is a practising video installation and performance artist. Also a writer, his fiction has appeared in many Canadian literary magazines and a first book of short stories, entitled 'Wet' was published in 1995 by Scratch and Sniff Ink. His work has appeared in both artist-run and public galleries, across the country and internationally. He hates film and all technologies and pines for the 'innocent eye'.
Dermott si currently the director of Paved, a center of art & new media in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

www.videoverite.org/

Wassailing is a "trailer of sorts" for a multi-media exhibition of the same name. Letters from across the North Sea provide the setting for an examination of the depths of our collective (and fragile) psyches during the "festive season".

Experienced as Real
(2002) 4:58

Can we believe what we remember? Can we keep ourselves from remembering what we don't want to believe? This work combines contemporary digital video and super 8 film shot in the 60's. Juxtaposing the film and video footage with audio excerpts that were edited out from interviews, those left on the "cutting room floor", "Experienced as Real" explores how from moment to moment, we are inundated with memories and how we battle with what they reveal.

Dustin D. Morrow

Emmy-winner Dustin D. Morrow is a digital media artist and writer. He was born and raised in a rural Illinois community, where he wrote his first novel in third grade, directed his first play in fourth grade, and made his first film in seventh grade. In 2000, Morrow returned to the Midwest to pursue his MFA in the department of Cinema and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa after working for four years as an editor and director of music videos and commercials in Los Angeles. He was the founder of the digital film festival "D:Cinema," based in Iowa City, and the director of a large-scale mounting of Stephen Belber¹s play "Tape," in which he integrated digital media into the traditional theatrical setting in new and interesting ways. His short digital movies have been shown in venues around the world. Morrow currently teaches production at the U. of Iowa; writes about Narrative Theory, Midwestern Theory, and Digital Theory; and continues to produce digital movies and photo essays. Morrow¹s artistic goals involve utilizing this seemingly cold and impersonal technology to move audiences emotionally, to create "digital mood pieces." He also experiments with digital media in the pursuit of unexplored forms of narrative construction and new abstract aesthetics.

ddmorrow.tripod.com

Dirty Lens
(2002) 2:53

Dirty Lens is a short experimental work about digitally manipulated motion. The lens of a prosumer digital video camera was intentionally coated with dust and small particles of dirt, and then that camera was used to capture a series of kinetic images centered on the riding of a bicycle. In post-production the visuals were heavily digitally manipulated, and the result was that the camera was able, through these alterations, to maintain a nearly unchanging constant in the small dirt particles even while the motion of the cyclist was altered, smoothed and overlapped dramatically. The result is an extreme layering of the image, with the dust particles and the bike rider occupying different visual planes, and with the implication that the digital manipulation of the material is its own separate, third layer.

Snow seen from warm window
(2001) 2 min

Snow seen from my warm window.

Scott Pagano

is a video/sound artist currently living in San Francisco, CA. His work ranges from experimental video/film pieces to live video performance, and from architectural photography to electronic music composition. Driven by a keen interest in the byproducts of machine errors, graphic reworkings of architectural spaces, and breakdowns in communication systems, his work foregrounds both precision image reworking and malfunction fetishism. With a strong desire to create striking content via non-dominant processes, he employs a host of custom image/sound processing tools developed in max/msp/jitter/nato.0+55. Communication technologies, transportation, the physical layout of cities, and the pathways through which we are 'informed' of events around the world are the impetus behind his video and sound compositions.

www.neither-field.com

ok.town re.work
(2002) 5min

Rearrangement / restructuring of architectural forms and patterns found in downtown Oakland, CA. Custom image slicing & reforming systems create a lush graphic rhythm, transforming recognizable space into distant imagined cities. This is a breakdown and reconstruction of structures designed for commerce and transaction into a meditative play of brokenness and fragmentation.

Whizeewhig
(2002) 2:40

Whizeewhig presents a playful examination of the patterns of the cityscape. Through digital image manipulation, the frustrations and idiosyncracies that arise from the devices and situations of the urban infrastructure are explored.

Phoenix Perry

has been curating video art and music events in the San Francisco Bay area for the last four years. She has shown her own video and installation work in London, Barcelona, Hanover, New York and San Francisco. She now lives in Brooklyn, NY

Her main project, Form Records, is a collaboration between her and Brian Jackson. This label combines cutting edge art with genre defiant sound.

Memory Systems' is their electronic music and art project. Memory Systems' sounds and images recall a future-past-perfect of immaculate robotic shopping malls, bright shiny objects, and an earlier era's innocent immersion in technological glamour. Phoenix Perry's lushly ambiguous imagery utilizes digital decay and degradation while retaining rich beauty and compelling density. Perry constantly pushes systems until they break down, reform and evolve.

ªÝnix111@form8.com ªÝwww.formrecords.com

The Shadow of Digital Living
(2002?) 3:46

This film is about my experience with technology as it has evolved during my lifetime. I suffer from a condition called Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), caused by my constant exposure to computers. Many people are beginning to break down biologically as a result of non-ergonomic, purposefully anti-body, cost effective input devices. My interaction with technology is significantly different than the 'normal' experience. Social fissures and political breakdowns are leading to injured bodies and the production of technologically inferior machines. This film compares my hair to technologies unruly growth and development. Using a broken DV camera, dropped during a political protest rally, and a circuit-bent video mixer, I create re-processed images of my hair. My personal experience transcends me and becomes metaphor for the way technology both positively and negatively integrates into society.

The Back Steps
(2001) 5:30

A small moment from a kid's Halloween party is taken as material for an exploration of folded time.

Brett Simon

2/04/03 Brett Simon¹s short films and videos have appeared in festivals around the world including Toronto, Telluride and ResFest, where they have won several first prizes. In 2002, he was named a finalist in the Student Academy Awards and selected as one of three Bay Area filmmakers for the GenArt PT Studio Program. Kathy Geritz, who recently curated a program of his work for the Pacific Film Archive, writes, "Simon creates fractured fairy tales for adults with a lush, inventive visual vocabulary that displays his passion for cinema."

www.brettsimon.com

The Flickerflash
(2001) 6 min

Once upon a time, I was happilly ever after. Then one day, something caught my eye.

Somewhere
(2000) 2:49

When a person or object is collectively given a disproportionate amount of attention, the status of that person or thing is transformed into that of an "icon". How do we experience an icon when it is seen repetitively? How is our perception of the original affected by the passage of time? In "Somewhere" Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow" is a contemporary version of the "round". Twenty-four durations of the song are overlapped, one on top of the other. Each duration is stretched by 1/32nd of the total running length. The fist layer to begin is the last to end. The result is a swelling of both sound and image that resonates beyond the boundaries of the original format altering both context and meaning.

Ann Steuernagel

is an experimental video and sound artist. Her visual work accentuates the gestures and quotidian rhythms of her subjects. Ann's sound work-a blend of ambient sound, ethnographic recordings, story telling, and original music-stems from her decade-long collaboration with choreographer Caitlin Corbett. Ann's work has been shown throughout the United States including Boston, New York, and San Francisco. Her work has also been screened in Canada, Mexico, and at the Rencontres Internationales Hors-Circuit Festivals in Paris and Berlin. In 1999, Ann's video boy running won first prize at the XX VideoArt Festival in Locarno, Switzerland. She has received grants from the Somerville Arts Council and Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Film Studies Department at Mount Holyoke College.

home.earthlink.net/~cait333

black water
(2002) 5min

Black Water is a daydream, an afterthought, a fractured memory set to the sounds of toy instruments, birds, and fragments- of a waltz. SCREENINGS 11/02 Technological Challenges, Nat'l. Conference Assn. of Moving Images Archive, Boston Park Plaza, Boston, MA. 11/02 Medialess Media, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA.

Dean Terry

is an experimental cross media artist, utilizing digital video, writing, sound, and the Internet. He is also an entrepreneur and in the 1990's was co-founder and principal of PixelWave, a leading interactive media firm in Los Angeles. In 1999 Mr. Terry sold PixelWave to AtomFilms (AtomShockwave), the leading online film site. There he served as Senior Vice President of Creative Development and directed, wrote, and produced numerous widely viewed online projects. Mr. Terry also produced some of the earliest interactive mobile media projects with Microsoft and Nokia. Dean Terry is currently developing independent new media projects and is Assistant Professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. http://www.deanterry.com

www.deanterry.com

Plano
(2003) 2:34

Plano is a northern suburb of Dallas, Texas. Painfully new, unrelentingly horizontal landscapes, open fields next to long fortresses of super stores, miles of parking lots: these image places are both the resonant center and dissonant catalyst for the project. The textual method for exploring the ideas and image places in ^ÃPlano¼ is through an imagined inhabitant in a combination of confessional and conversational text. The subject speaks alternately of his general state of happiness and his violent tendencies - contrasting the social pressure to behave and an increasingly uncontrollable desire to react maliciously. His language displays his limited, regional context, a context (and a god) which has betrayed him.