AbstrArt 27

Luis Carlos Rodríguez Garcíai | Spain

Year: 2023

Run time: 6:20 min.

Synopsis:
Abstrart is part of an audiovisual artistic research project that tries to transfer expressive and emotional concepts to the screen with moving images and, therefore, intentionally lacks formal, narrative and structural aspects.

Bio:
Luis Carlos Rodríguez García. Avila Spain. I reside in Valladolid, Fine Arts. University of the Basque Country. Currently a professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Valladolid.  I Have maid individual and collective exhibitions of painting, photography, video art, installations and audiovisual performances  including Alicante, Avila, Barcelona, Bilbao, Girona, Granada, Madrid, Salamanca, Valladolid (Spain). París, Toulouse, Nice, Aquitaine, Aveyron. Decazeville, (France). Monterrey, Guanajuato y México DF (México). London, Morecambe, Walthamstow, Cambridge, Folkestone (UK). New York, Atlanta, Burbank, Venice. Tampa, Asheville. Los Angeles, Las Vegas. Illinois, Ohio. Sacramento. (USA) Roma, Forlí, Bari, Milan. Lecce. Modena. (Italy). Callcuta, Bengal, Maharashtra. Pune.

Electronic Insects

Keum-Taek Jung | US

Year: 2023

Run time: 1:30 min.

Synopsis:
The energetic imagery outlines the connection between nature and abstraction. The expression of geometric abstraction is revealed in the interlaced patterns and colors to represent insects’ features. The dynamic movement is characterized by shapes and forms without limitations and leads to another time and space.

Bio:
The interdisciplinary artist Keum-Taek Jung teaches graphic design at Mississippi State University. He received an MFA in Computer Animation from Rochester Institute of Technology, having previously studied Visual Communication at Iowa State University. His films have been showcased at international festivals and museums. He has a keen interest in experimental animation that explores abstraction and the transformation of symbolism. Currently, he is engaged in the UI/UX design of an application.

Black Sun

Zuzanna Michalska | Poland

Year: 2023

Run time: 3:12 min.

Synopsis:
Black Sun was born from blackness, afraid to look out. Sitting in its closure, it believes that it is possible to spit out something that will take a permanent place in its world. Through rays, it roots the particles of itself, and they, dissolving into nothingness, do not allow to reach the desired decay. Excerpt from the Black Sun's existence pictured in a stop-motion ink animation.

Bio:
Zuzanna Michalska was studying animation (BA) at University of Arts in Poznań. She is interested in experimental and abstract animation. In her work she is mainly focused on visualizations of music and inner states. She likes the idea of non-figurative shapes and forms, that turned in motion, can tell stories, provoke associations and show emotions.

A Chair Can Be Electrified

Aaron Whitney Björk | US

Year: 2022

Run time: 2:20 min.

Synopsis: ”The project considers the shifting logic of speed during the pandemic– complicating the signs of speed, reconciling the past’s future, and scrutinizing the materiality of movement, both as an animated form and cultural phenomenon. In the 1958 treatise Theory of the Dérive, Situationist Guy Debord writes “that cities have contours, currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones”.1 These energies of urban space are taken for granted if you are not actively questioning, looking, testing, or stressing the flows.
However, the weight of the pandemic has stressed the city in ways that make these currents more evident. What comes to mind are the parking garages transformed into covid-19 triage centers, duct tape striped sidewalks, the kitchen tables turned into offices, the high speeds of cars traveling during what used to be rush hour traffic jams, and the ballooning of tent dining onto the sidewalks and boulevards are just some examples of the city in flux. To then intersect this stress with the growing homelessness crisis and mass evictions that have swept cities, the apartment becomes a highly contested space as they serve as interior bubbles from the reality of urban street life”

Bio:
Aaron Whitney Björk is an associate professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. His research-based art practice serves as a test lab for generating critical ideas that interrogate and provoke visual culture, genealogies of design methodologies, and the cross-cultural implications related to technical artifacts. His work has been exhibited at Gallery 151, New York, Ny; Fisk Gallery, Portland, Or; SOIL Gallery, Seattle, Wa.; Ditch Projects, Springfield, Or.; and has been curated in internet-based exhibitions with Fluidity.Online, ECLIPSECORE, and The Wrong Biennale. He has given lectures or workshops at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Southern Oregon University, and Whittier College, among others. In addition, he has collaborated with many interdisciplinary design studios, working on design projects ranging from feature film and television title sequences, music videos, and other culturally relevant commissions.

14th Street Union Square Station

Michael W Zodorozny | US

Year: 2022

Run time: 4:13 min.

Synopsis:
Experimental music video for the "14th Street Union Square Station" track from the "Other Side" album by Michael Zodorozny. "Other Side" is released on the Electronic Emergencies record label.

Bio:
Michael Zodorozny is a designer and background painter for children's television. Projects include : Doug, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, Blue's Clues, The Wonder Pets and Peg + Cat among others. In addition to his solo musical work Michael is also a founding member of the electronic musical group Crash Course in Science.

Riding Day

Michael Alexander Morris | US

Year: 2023

Run time: 3:22 min.

Synopsis:
The music video for Black Taffy's Riding Day is a loving nod to British experimental filmmaker Malcom Le Grice's 1970 film Berlin Horse, an iconic work of Structural/Materialist filmmaking that featured a soundtrack by Brian Eno. Like that film, this film is an exploration of the material qualities of celluloid film in ways that are analogous to gestures in electronic music. Just as Black Taffy has sampled and reworked the soundtrack for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to create a new musical composition, this film samples and reworks images from its sequel Tears of the Kingdom, translating the interactive game world into a physical form. Similar to the way Eno's tape loops fall in and out of sync with one another, the images of Link's horse are made into loops that superimpose positive on top of negative and allow them to drift away from each other.

Bio:
Michael A. Morris is an artist and educator based in Granville, Ohio. His work responds to the rapid changes in how moving images are created and experienced in the 21st century, affirming the traditional space of experiencing cinema while also exploring the implications of new media. Morris has performed and screened his films and videos at museums, galleries, microcinemas, and film festivals internationally, including Crossroads at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MediaLive at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, The International Symposium of Electronic Art in Vancouver, Microscope Gallery, Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival, The Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Artist's Television Access. He received a Kodak award from Florida Experimental Film and Video Festival for his performance A Chorus of Black Voids Sings in Rays of Unseeable Light, and his film Blue Movie won awards from Southern Colorado Film Festival, Haverhill Film Festival, and Athens International Film and Video Festival and was also included as part of Ann Arbor Film Festival's touring program in 2018, which was screened internationally.

Another Rapid Event

Daniel Murphy | US

Year: 2023

Run time: 7:55 min.

Synopsis:
In 1859, two telegraph operators communicate using the radiant energy from a massive solar storm as their sole power source. In 2012, the radiation from a comparable solar storm narrowly misses the earth.

Bio:
Daniel Murphy (he/they) is a moving-image artist and educator based in Milwaukee, WI. His films focus on the porous borders that lie between the tangible and intangible, between past and present. Murphy's work studies absences and their generative potentials, examining the poetics of the things that are cobbled together in the gaps of understanding. He is compelled by the ways in which past events leave imprints upon the world, traces that can alter the way in which an object, location, or landscape is received on an affective level. Informed by his past experiences working as a scratch baker, his work is hands-on and process oriented. Often using analog film and darkroom processes, he engages with sound and image in their material states. Murphy's films have screened at many festivals and screening spaces worldwide, including L’alternativa Festival de Cinema Independent de Barcelona, Antimatter Media Art, FRACTO Berlin, WHAMMY! Microcinema, Fisura, ICDOCS, Laterale, San Diego Underground, Alternative Film/Video Belgrade, REDCAT, Nomadica, and the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival. He is a lecturer in Film / Video / Animation / New Genres at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.

Act III

Dean Winkler & John Sanborn | US

Year: 2024

Run time: 6:33 min.

Synopsis:
Created with the music of Philip Glass in 1983 the artists reimagined the world as composed of contours, symbols and analog video-inspired transformations to visualize Glass’ score. Defiantly abstract, yet filled with human touches and multiple artistic references, the work functioned as a cry of liberation and operated as an original work of media art (named one of the 100 Masterworks of Media Art by Dr. Peter Weibel and the ZKM), and a music/video for the avant-garde. And, yes, it played on MTV. Separated by 40 years, both pieces use the language of virtuosic video-making to celebrate the power and freedom of transformation, leaning into apophenia, the human tendency to seek patterns for sense-making. Elena Ruehr wrote "In C, Too" in honor of the 80th birthday of the legendary composer Terry Riley. She describes the work as “a playful romp that explores the pitch C in various tonal guises, and some ragtime.” Created by Dean Winkler and John Sanborn Music composed by Elena Ruehr Performed by Sarah Cahill From the album "Eighty Trips Around the Sun"

Bio:
Dean Winkler is a NYC-based film/television engineer and video artist. Career highlights include: Senior Engineer Production and Post Production, Doha Film Institute, supervising the production, post production and display of nine boundary-pushing immersive films for the new National Museum of Qatar; Executive Producer / CTO of Crossroads Films and Co-Founder/ President of Post Perfect.

John Sanborn has been called “a key member of the second wave of American video artists that included Bill Viola, Gary Hill, and Dara Birnbaum” by Dr. Peter Weibel, director of the ZKM. Sanborn’s career spans the early days of experimental video art in the 1970s through the heyday of 80’s MTV music/videos and 90’s interactive art to digital media art of today. His work has been exhibited, screened and broadcast hundreds of times since 1978.