2@
Tony Cokes, USA
2@ rehearses a subjective, skeptically positioned, history of rock to a generic song by the noise-rock band Swipe. Coke's approach was inspired by Dan Graham's videotape Rock My Religion, which deploys a punk-inflected documentary technique to construct a counter-discourse about rock history. While disagreeing with Graham's central argument, Cokes borrows his desire to put rock music's history of production and reception in a critical context. Begging the question, says the artist, of whether "I am undertaking legitimate critical analysis, amateur historiography, or simply advertising for a band. Perhaps it is all three simultaneously." Length: 6.36 minutes
18
Han Ter Park, Scotland
Presented in the line-test form of pencil drawings on animation paper this one-minute animation uses adult humor to poke fun at the work of the film
censor. Length: 1.14 minutes
AD Vice
Tony Cokes, USA
For Cokes AD Vice functions as a re-evaluation of a historical media work that has influenced his production: Richard Serra's Television Delivers People. This early video piece (1973) uses scrolling text and a muzak soundtrack to bluntly describe the function of television as an institution. Intended to be equally direct about the subjective interpolations and confusions produced by an imperative textual address, derived mostly from advertising, Ad Vice poses the question: Is the text speaking directly to you, or is it simply emitting permutations of the basest cliches? Length: 6 minutes
American Psycho
Andrew Wood, Mark Gardner, Lewis Paul + Daryl Smith, Scotland
An animated sequence created by Andy Wood, Mark Gardner and Lewis Paul, with sound composition by Daryl Smith and Lewis Paul. Length: 1 minute
Animal Attraction
Kathy High, USA
Animal Attraction follows the work of Dawn Hayman - an interspecies telepathic communicator - and shows her telepathically talking with the animals and teaching others to do the same. Dawn lives and works on an upstate farm in New York with her two business partners and over two hundred animals. During the course of the documentary she explains how George Keigercat - a cat - designed one of the farm buildings, and relays telepathic stories from Breezie the horse. Length: 60 minutes
Arcigram
Andrew Wood, Scotland
This title sequence for a documentary-style program on experimental architecture is intended to convey the optimism and excitement of the architects it features, and was inspired by a group of architects of the same name who created 'fantastic' schemes in the early 1960s. Length: 1 minute
The California Dream
Nahyeong Cheon, USA
Nahyeong Cheon documents her journey to Los Angeles in search of the cyberfriend she has yet to meet in person. Interlacing footage of her present pursuit with their past conversations The California Dream reveals a story of growing love and a stalking obsession. Length: 15 minutes
Chlorine Addiction
Kai Syng Tan, Singapore
Comprising ten video essays, the disparate pool of aural and visual data that makes up Chlorine Addiction is unified by the central metaphor of a fictitious protagonist who swims compulsively.
Describing Chlorine Addiction as "a work-in-regress"
Kai Syng Tan's self reflexive critique of media and cultural practices questions
"Several Serious Issues" - including gender, time, geography,
evaporation, insatiability, obsession and objectivity. Original music created
by Phillip Tan. Length: 45 minutes
Communicator
Mark Gardner, Scotland
Designed as a title sequence to a program about communication technology pioneers, Communicator is intended to suggest the analog experience of electrical communication, its fragility and kinetic nature, and a sense of its capacity for dislocation before the 'perfection' of the digital age. Length: 1 minute
The Darkening
Peter Rose, USA
Slow transformations that elude language, and beams of light used to 'write space' combine with moments of grand opera and suggestions of music on the edge of audibility to create a Stygian night journey animated by unknown languages, illuminated speech and mysterious conjunctions of light. Working from the idea that "if language is to give some shape to thought, it must be language as invocation, rather than denotation, that we consider," Rose originally designed The Darkening as an installation work for the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art and the Delaware Museum. Length: 8.5 minutes
Everybody's Got Problems
Hilary Wilder, USA
This video takes the familiar characters from the 1964 videocraft special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and positions them in a world of real life conflicts and obstacles. Rudolph's visual elements are overlaid with audio from the Billy Wilder/Paramount classic The Lost Weekend, resulting in an unlikely narrative in which the reindeer and elves at the North Pole grapple with the specter of alcoholism. Length: 7 minutes
I Could Have Been Human
Barbara Medajska, Poland
A documentary detailing the touching story of impoverished Polish coal scavengers that creates a suggestive picture of human suffering. Length: 14 minutes
Invisible People
Hung Wing Kit, Hong Kong
Moon - once an experimental item in a laboratory - is now out in the 'real' world and becoming increasingly invisible - when walking down the street unnoticed; when conversing on the internet; and when, as a result of the experiments, experiencing uncontrollable episodes of transparency. In her search for self and visibility; and in the tradition of the Chinese mythical character Moon Elderly; Moon uses red strings to bind seemingly unrelated things together.
As rapid technological changes are rupturing traditional social structures and modes of communication Hung Wing Kit uses the metaphor of invisibility to enquire: "what defines our visibility and how do you know you're here?" Length: 33 minutes
Island to Island
Somyung Sohn, USA
In this documentation of the daily ferry commute between Manhattan and Staten Island a routine event becomes an unexpected moment of peace and meditation. Reality intrudes all too quickly as commuters rush off, new commuters rush on, and the cycle begins again. Length: 8.5 minutes
Loss Prevention
Jeanne Finlay, USA
Loss Prevention combines documentary and fictional elements to tell the story of Irene's shoplifting arrest and her sentence to ten weeks of Senior Citizen Shoplifting Prevention School. Combining shots of the lush Florida landscape with intimate super-8 footage, and narration from Irene's daughter, Loss Prevention creates a subtle meditation on the conflicts of parent and child, boredom and pleasure, accident and intention, authority and subterfuge. The interviews, originally recorder for broadcast on the radio program This American Life in July 1999, were audio-only in order to protect the identity of the participants. Length: 17 minutes
Meine Heimatstadt
Gili Dinovich, Scotland
In our era of supersaturated media, the breaking news finds its way straight to our dinner tables. Images of destruction, suffering and death become the side dishes to our main course. Does our indifference to such events make us partially responsible for their existence? Meine Heimatstadt, an animation drawn in charcoal and ink, addresses this rumination. Length: 5 minutes
My Parents Read Dreams I've Had About Them
Neil Goldberg, USA
As the title implies My Parents Read Dreams I've Had About Them features the videomaker's parents reciting the transcripts of an assortment of dreams he's had over the years. Goldberg's parents had not seen the dreams beforehand and were given no coaching. Their deadpan performances are at once anxiety provoking, moving, and sometimes very funny. Length: 8.5 minutes
Role Models
*University of Southern California School of Fine Arts' Student Award
Catriona Grant, Scotland
Role Models is a video piece about young men - their influences, the prejudicial manner in which they are often portrayed and perceived by the media, and where and whom they look for inspiration.
Visual portraits present five single adolescent males as they lean in
turn against the wall of an institutional corridor and gaze dispassionately
from a window. The camera shows viewpoints a parent might have access to
as it lingers around the delicate skin at ear, mouth, and neck. In voice-over
older men discuss their relationship with an unnamed male, addressing love,
friendship, companionship, but also the power structure of the relationship,
the speaker being the dominant partner in each case. Length: 10 minutes
Second Thoughts
Dennis H. Miller, USA
Section one of this three-part work explores the inside of a virtual object and portrays many of the surfaces and textures found therein. Section two moves into 3d space and shows different perspectives of the initial object, while introducing new elements that derive form, color or texture from the elements in the opening. Section three is a recap of the first. Like previous of Miller's works, all visual elements were scripted using the POVray scene description language; no 'special effects' or plug-ins were used. Length: 8.5 minutes
Eric Saks/Belief, USA
Inspired by the desire to provide a new forum for experimental creativity ('art for art's sake' ) in the design community the design studio Belief brought together twelve broadcast design studios, and ten composers, for a collaborative project on the theme of darkness. The results - twelve one-minute films - showcase progressive design and digital art making. Length: 12 minutes
Verbatim
Annetta Kapon, USA
Composed entirely of music and verbatim quotes from various rejection letters Annetta Kapon has received this documentary/comedy/melodrama raises such questions as: What is an artist? How is a "career" imagined/constructed/produced through the institutional voices that reassure, regret and apologize; thanking the artist, and wishing her the best for "future endeavors"? Who is the "we" and who is the "you" in this generic and yet strangely intimate correspondence? Length: 4 minutes, 30 seconds
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