time-based additive color variations based on and inspired by the work of Carlos Cruz-Diez
selected shortlist finalist - Roger and Brian Eno’s “Mixing Colours” project, 2020; A Quiet Scene: L.A., film competition and screening, Los Angeles Music Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2021
selected shortlist finalist - Roger and Brian Eno’s “Mixing Colours” project, 2020; A Quiet Scene: L.A., film competition and screening, Los Angeles Music Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2021
on public display 2019-2020 at Seattle’s 4Culture storefront media gallery, Pioneer Square, Seattle, WA
Computer-generated video
2019
12-channel computer-controlled synchronized video installation (single-channel version); 2013
Simplicity/Complexity deals with perceptual shifts between representation and non-representation through a reanimation and transformation of Eadweard Muybridge's photographic studies of human locomotion. Seemingly paradoxical transitions occur, as the overall appearance of visually simplistic patterns in fact exist at their highest states of informational complexity. As information is reduced, individual figures reveal themselves to the viewer in an apparently more visually complex state overall.
Video projection + live improvised music performance; Unseen Zinema Festival; Madrid, Spain; 2016
Time Landscapes depicts multiples of the same timelapse video with delayed starting points. With a higher number of videos, the delay between them is shorter, creating the appearance of an overall rapid pace. As the number of videos decreases, the apparent delay between them increases, suggesting a deceleration in pace, when in fact they are all exactly the same speed for their entire duration. The piece emphasizes simple variations in shape, color, and light to create a kind of “shimmering” effect, rather than stress the identifiable content of shards of broken glass on wooden floor.
3-channel computer-controlled interactive video and 6-channel sound installation; 2013
A common definition of propaganda is the deliberate transmission or omission of information to influence the thoughts and opinions of an intended audience for a specific purpose. By analyzing American advertisements and propaganda videos of the 1940s and 50s, such materials at first appear to be quite different. One is meant to instill fear and paranoia, the other is meant to encourage carefree, spendthrift behavior. Upon closer analysis, however, their mechanisms seem to behave in very similar ways - the first wants its viewers to buy into a particular ideology, the second wants those same viewers to actually buy products. Likewise, several videos, all produced by the US government, warn of the dangers of nuclear blasts and radiation (anti-Communist), while others downplay such dangers and are in favor of nuclear armament (pro-US). Such informational "filters" over the co-existence of seemingly opposing ideas was used literally and metaphorically for this piece with custom modified anaglyphic colored glasses. These offer viewers the choice of seeing only one of two superimposed videos as playing independently, or both simultaneously, just as some people in the real world might choose to selectively believe in certain ideologies while rejecting or ignoring others.
2-channel computer-controlled interactive video (documentation video); description pending...
2013
2016
Rabeda is a colorized, reversed, decelerated, delayed, and otherwise digitally distorted version of Peter Kubelka’s 1957 experimental film, Adebar. Using the original film’s seemingly sardonic cultural juxtaposition of European dance club imagery with an African tribal soundtrack, one intention of this new piece was to further amplify the ambiguous elements of an already largely ambiguous and often misunderstood work, while creating a separate and new aesthetic out of these initial image and sound sources.
Multiple colorization processes, digital artifacts, slowed speed, and feedback all serve to disrupt the original film’s strict rhythmic patterning of positive and negative spaces; motion vs stasis; and inherently analog film aesthetic. Perceptual alternations of foreground and background are in a near constant state of flux as a result. Much of my photo and video work explores the boundaries of how much visual or sonic information can be removed or transformed while remaining in a subtly identifiable state. Despite the numerous alterations and degradative processes of this piece, the ability to recognize silhouetted dancing human figures remains largely intact throughout.
Unseen Zinema #5 Experimental Film Festival; Madrid, Spain
video + improvised sound performance
2017
Keyboards, Synthesizer, Mixing - Shawn Berkeley
Guitar, Field Recordings, Photo, Mixing - Ryan Hoover
2011-2013
2012; silent
These twelve video studies were created simultaneously in an intuitive and exploratory manner. Lacking any strongly predetermined concepts or durations, they were largely an attempt to create transformations of still images into time-based video forms. Many of these videos combine elements of my own photographic/video work and time-lapse or stop-motion animation with appropriated source material such as scanned images from historical magazines and other found objects, projected still images onto objects, etc.
(upright piano, Yamaha keyboard/digital synthesizer, Doepfer analog synthesizer); 2013
Drops was primarily inspired by Javanese and Balinese gamelan music - traditional Indonesian ensemble music played on several metallophones, xylophones or wooden instruments. Its cyclical compositional forms are often described as the sound of "liquid moonlight". With this in mind, the audio was created in two steps: first, several short looping melodies were recorded on an upright piano and digital keyboard/synthesizer, whilst simultaneously listening to recordings of gamelan. These recorded loops were later played back, layered and re-recorded in real-time through an analog "Doeper" synthesizer (identical to Kraftwerk's), producing the final improvisational soundtrack for this piece. It is important to note that this piece was only inspired by gamelan, and was in no way intended to be a direct mimicry of such music.
The visuals for this piece were derived from a series of still water droplet macro photographs, processed with several different opacities and video blending modes in a similar multi-layered approach as the audio tracks.
4 layers computer-generated video + 4 audio layers
2021