Modern (one minute clip with music by Jeff Looysen)
40 minutes, 16mm from digital animation, series, 2008-2010
In this series of films, I am creating source images within the computer consisting of animated "modernistic" abstract impressionist work. Non-representational colour grids, stripes, and amorphous shapes emerge, move, pulse, and transform. Once designed, these videos are then filmed using traditional kinescope techniques onto chemical based 16mm film. The film is then being processed roughly by hand, transforming it from a mechanical image into an organic one. The damaged image under the header “modern” will be ironic, pointing out that “modern” no longer means “new” but rather, it harkens back to a distant past, fading and shifting, existing more in the history books than on the walls. These 16mm films are silent but are being presented along with live improvised musical performances. Music is recorded and in the end, a dvd containing all of the diverse performances will be available to the viewer to choose from. Running time is 40 minutes, although at least three hours of digital animation has been created in one minute pieces. However, the digital work is too clean and cold and never evokes the richness of either the paintings or the films.
This project is supported by grants from the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Saskatchewan Filmpool and has relied on the resources of the University of Regina New Media Studio Laboratory.
I constantly sample from and re-use material from this project in other projects. For example, the web video Space Polka from 2016.