Matthew Dotson asked me to create the video supplement to this piece. His initial request
Matthew Dotson asked me to create the video supplement to this piece. His initial request was to have only simple, elegant white on black text. That posed a significant challenge to the creative process, as my goal was to visually link the textual elements of Murakami's writings with the dynamics of Matthew's composition. To accomplish this, I visually imitated themes from each movement ("insect wings", "earth", "dust", and "lock") through animating their elements by properties of the sonic spectrum (brightness, noisiness, amplitude, and pitch).
The impetus of this work was four quotes out of Haruki Murakami's novel "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles." The intention was to create a kind of pseudo-narrative out of just these four quotes; creating a new story out of fragments of the original story. But beyond this, I wanted each quote (or movement) to be markedly different, thus depending on the visual presence of the quotes to keep the work coherent. Sonically, Murakami's work made it very evident to me that, in the words of his main character, it should be "something concrete" (a phrase he often used to try and make sense out of the baffling world that surrounded him). Thus, the foundation material was derived from several ambient recordings that took place both inside and outside of my apartment in Chicago. These recordings were used to symbolize the "inner" and "outer" worlds; the interactions and tensions between which served to be the conceptual focus of my piece as it likewise was with Murakami. Soloists (cello, drum set, flute, and clarinet respectfully) were added in order to comment on these sonic environments and lend a sense of humanity and drama to the work. - Matthew Dotson, 2007.
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Added: 6 months ago
Views: 1,140
Computer musician, James Phelps, commissioned the video for RickLicks. This proved to be o
Computer musician, James Phelps, commissioned the video for RickLicks. This proved to be one of the most challenging videos that I have ever edited. The music frequently transitions from the music of James Phelps, the music of John Lennon, and the sound of the Rickenbacker guitar.
"No single influence has been greater in my musical life than the music of the BEATLES. More specifically, even at the ripe age of 9, when I first laid eyes on John Lennon playing his 325 Rickenbacker, I thought that just must be the perfect sound and the most perfect-looking guitar. Now in later years I know it wasn't just the guitar, the player or the 1960s production sound, but all of that, and perhaps more, rolled up into one musical package which I never "got over." Roughly forty years later I thought it must be time to pay homage, in some small way, to this influence which was largely responsible for my becoming a professional musician and, even, Music Professor."
"After some discussion with a very good friend and award-winning artist, Bart Woodstrup, the project of such an homage began and culminated in RickLicks, for digital video, computer music and live guitar, the latter component being, of course, a reissue of Lennon's 1958 model 325 Rickenbacker electric guitar, humbly played by myself."
"Now long completed and many times performed and recorded, the work resounds in glorification of this sonic energy which propelled me into music as a career and appears to offer, occasionally, an eerie quality. I never wanted to compose a requiem and this work is, in fact, not one. I suppose it's understandable, however, that such a loss as that of Lennon to the music world and to my own world would tint the piece with a distant, lost voice. The piece is, however, a celebration!"
-Jim Phelps
Jim Phelps is playing a Rickenbacker "Hamburg" 1958 reissue of John Lennon's favorite instrument in the late 50s and early 60s.
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Added: 6 months ago
Views: 3,000
First completed for a performance at version03 in Chicago, ESC was designed to gradually b
First completed for a performance at version03 in Chicago, ESC was designed to gradually build to an intense climax. The imagery of blended memories of landscapes creates a feeling of anxiety and claustrophobia - a feeling of a desire to escape.
collaborators: Matthew Biederman (video)
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Added: 6 months ago
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This is a sample of independent-experimental film and video work completed over the past t
This is a sample of independent-experimental film and video work completed over the past ten years.
Each clip been divided into one of 4 categories, the category is indicated by the letters within the small green dots appearing below each video.
SY - Synesthetic are videos with a strong relationship between sound and visual.
LC - Live Cinema - these films were all produced/edited/generated in real-time using sophisticated custom software.
iN - Installation - examples of works that exist as installations within an art gallery context.
N - Narrative - narrative or documentary films.
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Added: 6 months ago
Views: 89
This short film/video examines the festival of the pumpkin in small town, mid-west America
This short film/video examines the festival of the pumpkin in small town, mid-west America. A twist, however, is that this documentary, in homage to NOVA/PBS documentaries, mocks the traditional format and tone of early cultural documentary film. Thereby, subjecting the inhabitants to labels such as: "natives," "indigenous," "primitive," and "villagers".
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Added: 6 months ago
Views: 104
This is an excerpt from "You Cannot Survive the End of the World' - a 14 minute video/film
This is an excerpt from "You Cannot Survive the End of the World' - a 14 minute video/film about the future, population, and the environment. It was written for the 1995 World Population Film and Video Festival for which it won first place. It is comprised of many short clips and animation. These clips include a commercial for "Save the Moon" - a fictitious organization dedicated to saving the "vast wilderness of the moon, our celestial nightlight." A commercial for a "new, clear power (nuclear power)" is also featured, including aerial footage of the nuclear power plant in Byron, IL.
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Added: 6 months ago
Views: 215
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Havana is a city caught in a contradiction. It is loved or it is raped, and so it has been
Havana is a city caught in a contradiction. It is loved or it is raped, and so it has been for centuries. The composition begins with the sounds of the nightly cannon fire from the La Cabana. The sound of the trumpet then arrives like tears of joy over a sound bed of a distant call from a colonial period slave. The composition then breaks into a mix of bongos, cowbell, timbale', and woodblock. The sound of the marching drum follows, leading into a synthesis of actual recordings of Cuban musicians. The piece closes with the trumpet again over a sound bed of a distant singing voice.
This video was shot in the spring of 2000 in Havana, Cuba. Havana is a city on the verge - of what, no one knows. Whether capitalist or communist it has been a home to prostitution, gambling, and corrupt power. Through all of this the people of Havana remain strong. You may never meet such beautiful people in such an ugly place.
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Added: 6 months ago
Views: 1,051
Climate Control is a series of climate-interactive electronic installations and eco-visual
Climate Control is a series of climate-interactive electronic installations and eco-visualizations
intended to address the personal detachment felt towards global climate change. As the earth's resources increasingly succumb to the human grasp, these works question whether the next step is the construction of a human-desirable climate. Through perception and interaction the goal of this work is
to enhance sensitivity of the issues involved, inspire critical thought about solutions and to recognize the beauty inherent in the real-time climate occurring outside the gallery walls.
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Added: 6 months ago
Views: 53
"Three Children Lie" was a compositional experiment. Each of the artists were shown words
"Three Children Lie" was a compositional experiment. Each of the artists were shown words as they improvised on their instruments. These words were conceptual cues to make adjustments to their improvisations. Various treatments were made to the original recordings via software synthesis packages (i.e. SMS, SMSMK, SK8) running on a NEXT workstation. Three Children Lie was composed with the intent to morph, through the use of the computer, the talents of the three musicians involved.
collaborators:
James Hendricks (piano)
Brian Harris (saxophone)
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Added: 6 months ago
Views: 213
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