Tag: video

August News

on By

Little bit of news:

  • I have an updated page on my portfolio for sound/video things – had to scratch an itch that wasn’t painting-related and I had some fun. I plan to do more sometime in the future, but for now it’s back to painting so I have enough new work to show in the fall!  Someday during my lifetime, I would like to try and project these onto paintings at a show – even though it may not end up looking or sounding as right as it does in my head. Remember that these are amateur/experimental and I really don’t take myself that seriously as a sound or video artist (and my computer is a decade old).   To see them, follow this link:   Video & Audio 

 

Archival Screening Night in Seattle 

on By

img_0354-1

(I’m working on trying to to tie my library job and former archive studies into this blog a bit.)

Last night the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle hosted Moving History Returns: Saving Our Magnetic Media, presented by Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound (MIPoPS).

These 20 clips and short films were from the Seattle Municipal Archives, Sally Sykes Group, Scarecrow Video, the Wing Luke Museum, Seattle Public Schools Archives, King County Archives, Seattle Art Museum, and the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.  The videos were apart of MIPoPS’s digitization project – most of the original formats were in 16mm, Hi8, and VHS.

Although I’ve gone into library work and haven’t been involved in the archives world at all since I graduated, screenings like this remind me why preservation and access is so important – and it’s another step towards feeling linked to the PNW in general.

My favorite video (transferred from 16mm to VHS to digital) was from the King County Archives – Waste Away [The Mole] (1966).  This promotional piece was produced by the county and government to showcase its mobile trash compactor (called “The Mole”).  Footage of garbage waves and tumbling torn scraps, plus rotating rusty dumpsters, reminded me of the visuals at my old job as a park janitor. It was quite interesting to hear the narrating voice, speaking from 1966, on the awakening awareness of waste disposal and consumerism.

http://www.mipops.org

Craft & Folk Art Museum 

on By

On Sunday during my recent short trip to Los Angeles, I decided to opt out on paying the pricey admission to go inside LACMA (at the time I wasn’t feeling that keen about worshipping Picasso and Rivera, the two male titans). Instead, I dragged my poor sick sister to the nearby Craft & Folk Art Museum because they were having two exhibits that caught my interest (and the admission was far more affordable). The first exhibit was called Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California. Over 60 local artists were featured and the works (spanning two floors including the entrance) covered sculptural installations, interactive found-books (visitors could tear a piece out of a blank page for keeps or manipulate the printed words to form a sentence), zines and hand-printed/illustrated editions. The many themes ranged from conceptualism to feminism.  Nothing gets me more excited than when words not only can be functional in visual art, but when they also can just exist as static matter.   The second exhibit on the top floor was called Focus Iran 2: Contemporary Photography and Video.  The juried exhibit was in collaboration with the Farhang Foundation, a non-profit that provides support for Iranian art in LA. My favorite section was the video/sound installation by the artists Elahe Moonesi, Maziar Moradi, and Farhood Yazdanpanah. I sat and watched goldfish, frozen in melting ice cubes, hanging by strings in the sun – and a young woman lying on her back, smothered in her white (wedding?) dress, as her fabric is getting violently sewn by other hands.  It only reinforced my wish to someday venture back into video and sound.

http://www.cafam.org 
http://www.farhang.org