Extended Animation: Digital Effects, Corporate Logos and Style
CURATED BY HANNE MUGAAS Extended animation; digital effects, corporate logos and style. The screening includes artists who are using digital editing and animation tools as part of their practice in order to manipulate popular entertainment and iconography, mimic corporate design, or visualize technology's impact on contemporary imagery. From Bernadette Corporation's use of computer software to Pierre Bismuth's montage of found cinematic material; from Dara Birnbaum's exploration of the cartoon character Wonder Woman through linear editing to Charles Broskoski's digital customizations, the artists in the screening utilize repetition, movement and abstraction as analytical tools to visualize the mechanisms of technology, entertainment and culture. BERNADETTE CORPORATION Logo Film The B.C. Corporate Story Logo Film and The B.C. Corporate Story examine the sorts of propaganda that a corporation might distribute internally to communicate an over-arching mandate or vision to its workers in order to boost morale. Bernadette Corporation twists these intentions and provides a document that underpins and deconstructs the existing material. Write the artists: "An early self-portrait of Bernadette Corporation and an in-house film whose purpose was to inspire and motivate members of the New York-base artist collective cum underground fashion label. Corporate propaganda for a subculture-obsessed youth market." Sony Corporation, Disney Corporation, Time Warner Corporation, Beatrice Corporation, Bernadette Corporation. Since 1994, the anonymous, international group of artists known as Bernadette Corporation has explored strategies of cultural resistance and détournement, appropriating contemporary entertainment modes for their own experimental purposes. From the New York-based BC fashion label and the magazine Made In USA to the collectively-authored novel Reena Spaulings (Semiotexte, 2005) and videos starring the likes of Sylvère Lotringer and Chloe Sevigny, Bernadette Corporation's projects amount to a critique of a global culture that constructs identity through consumption and branding.
DARA BIRNBAUM Technology/ Transformation: Wonder Woman Appropriating imagery from the TV series Wonder Woman, Birnbaum isolates and repeats the moment of the "real" woman's symbolic transformation into super-hero. Arresting the flow of images through fragmentation and repetition, Birnbaum condenses the comic-book narrative, playing on the psychological transformation of a television product. In her videos, Birnbaum applies low-end and high-end video technology to critique and deconstruct the power of mass media images and gestures to define mythologies of culture, history and memory. Birnbaum was born in 1946 in New York, where she currently lives and works. She has exhibited extensively worldwide, and her work is in the collections of Centre Pompidou in Paris, San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), and Generali Foundation in Vienna, among others.
PIERRE BISMUTH Coming Soon Coming Soon comprises a single screen video montage of the last segments of actual film trailers. The video is embodied in the iconic phrase 'Coming Soon,' which is typically used to announce the release of a film. By repeating this language, Bismuth presents a paradox to the viewer, as the words create an expectation that will never be fulfilled. Bismuth is known for his manipulation of cultural products; feature films, newspapers, and magazines. Creating videos, musical compositions, drawings, and collages, he mines acoustic and visual perception and the structure of narrative. Using a variety of devices to track and document the ways we work, he compiles an ongoing study of the frequently overlooked peculiarities of memory, comprehension and interpretation.
CHARLES BROSKOSKI Infinity x 10 For Infinity x 10, Broskoski has written a computer program to play the ‘Infinity and Beyond’-scene of the movie 2001- A Space Oddyssey 10 times over with a 5 second difference between each instance. 2001- A Space Odyssey was one of the first movies to use computerized special effects. For the original ‘Infinity and Beyond’-scene, animation techniques were used to mimic the journey through space. Working with Stanley Kubrick was Douglas Trumbull, who produced the ‘Slit-Scan Effect’ where basic cinematic techniques were mixed with computer and video sciences. Broskoski visualizes how computer technology is currently all-embracing popular entertainment, and further explores the possibility to distort and manipulate. Charles Broskoski was born in New York in 1982, where he currently lives and works. He founded and is still part of Supercentral.org.
|
