Category: DO/DA Shorts 1

  • “Contact A” and “EC One, Two, Three, and Four” Mike Newton

    “Contact A” and “EC One, Two, Three, and Four” Mike Newton

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    EC, Contact: Conceptualized as a model for an eye contact training video, EC draws off the strange and unknowable logic of established social conventions and the manifest difficulties (maybe even impossibilities) of teaching social skills. Much as repeating the same word over and over leaches it of meaning, focusing on out-of-context eye contact turns an extremely normal action into something bizarre. Contact expands upon this idea, placing the sculptural props of EC alongside objects and imagery drawn from studies of autism, language and anxiety. By contrasting (ostensibly objective) scientific studies with digressive, emotive writing and handmade forms, these works try and negotiate the difficult relationships between clinical practice and lived realities.

    minusobjects.com

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 1:

    Contact A

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 3:

    EC ONE
    EC TWO

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 4:

    EC THREE
    EC FOUR

  • “Moderato” and “Synopsis” Annetta Kapon

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    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 1:

    Moderato
    1 minute 38 seconds, 2014

    A video about video, time, movement, sound, metronome, still photography, Man Ray.

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 2:

    Synopsis
    00:00:35 seconds, 2014

    A video about the structure of video, and computer screens.

    annettakapon.com

  • “Sidewalk,” “Blue, Red, Yellow,” “The Live! Show—QUBE Episode,” and “¡Saludos Amigos!” Jaime Davidovich

    Jaime Davidovich - Sidewalk (1976)

    Sidewalk, 1975, 13:04-minute video

    “Like Walking SoHo, Sidewalk tracks along a section of a SoHo street. The camera follows the point where the sidewalk meets the buildings, panning in a strange, jilted movement. It is interrupted by pauses during which we can just barely see a figure reflected in a screen: Davidovich himself, editing in his studio, collapsing this private (professional) setting onto public space (the city outside). Sidewalk is closely related to the artist’s earlier video Road, 1972, as well as the contemporaneous Baseboard, 1975, both of which methodically trace preexisting lines across space (in Road, the double line dividing directions, and in Baseboard, the juncture between the wall and floor of his studio). While Sidewalk is certainly representative of Davidovich’s formalist approach to video art in the mid-1970s, it is also quite literally connected to the space and information in the city where it was filmed.” – Daniel Quiles 

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 1

    Jaime Davidovich - Blue, Yellow, Red

    Blue, Red, Yellow, 1974, 34-minute video

    “In this conceptual performance, Davidovich “paints” on an electronic canvas in the three primary colors of the color wheel, by covering a snow-filled TV screen with adhesive tape: first blue, then red, then yellow. Davidovich first exhibited this work at Anthology Film Archives in 1974.” –EAI

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 2

    Jaime Davidovich - The Live Show (Qube Project)

    The Live! Show—QUBE Episode, 1980, 10:32-minute public-access television excerpt

    “Enjoying another bottle of wine on Manhattan Cable Television, accompanied by co-host Carol Stevenson, Davidovich encourages real-time viewers to experiment with the Warner QUBE cable system. First broadcast on Channel J in 1979, The Live! Show was equal parts playful and utopian, brimming with optimism about an expanded, participatory audience for art on television. In this episode, one caller is made “director” and makes choices as to zooms and special effects, while the QUBE audience is polled for their preference of camera (a binary choic, Camera 1 or 2). This is a playful, tentative exploration of a brand-new technology, but one that recalls Marshall McLuhan’s insistence that television is a “cool,” participatory medium. With the viewers effectively in charge of the program, Stevenson inquires, a bit awkwardly, how Davidovich got his scar. No answer is provided.” – Daniel Quiles

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 4

    Jaime Davidovich - Saludos Amigos

    ¡Saludos Amigos!, 1984, 21-minute public-access television excerpt

    “In this, one of the final episodes of The Live! Show and a collaboration with Texas Tech University, Davidovich travels to Lubbock, Texas. His “people in the street” interviews touch on racism and Mexican-American relations in addition to the usual queries about video art and its possibilities for transmission on television. The title is taken from the 1942 Walt Disney film that emblematized the “good neighbor” years of U.S.-Latin America diplomacy, only in this case, Davidovich locates his “friends” within the borders of the United States.” – Daniel Quiles

    Airing Thursdays and Fridays Mar 19 – 27th, 7 pm CST

     

  • “Power / Point” and “Screensaver” Adam Castle

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    Power / Point

    In this short video essay exploring the sculptural potential of digital space, the physical body and the computer cursor collide in a struggle to manipulate each other. Incorporating actions within Microsoft PowerPoint, there is a sense of frustration at the relentless banality of such digital software. Human actions start to echo pre-determined digital procedures.

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 1

    Screensaver

    Screensaver explores a bodily relationship to digital imagery in our internet age. Drawing on notions of instructionals, live streaming, pop-ups and infomercials, in this video piece the sheen of the internet screen tumbles in on itself. The work circles around the concept that one can order online a .jpg printed on to a towel. What happens when a digital image is physicalized in this way and rubbed in the body? Will the body become a pixelated .jpg? And what if we try to feed such objects back in to the digital world?

    Exploring these questions, the video takes you through floating landscape of digital debris. Sliding across the screen are verbatim recitals of chat room conversations about towel printing, discussions of .jpgs and duvets, videos painted on to nails via iCloud nail polish, spinning 3D CAD scans of towels and YouTube tutorials on how to make CGI towels.

    All of these scenes are framed by the karaoke version of the song ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ whilst a hand cursor ‘flies’ towards an iCloud symbol across the empty void of the screen. Images of hands run throughout. In a world populated with touchscreen phones, we want to stroke and feel images, but when can we fly up to the iCloud?

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 3

    adamcastle.com
    vimeo.com/adamcastle

  • “Practical Preparedness” Ellen Mueller

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    This series of videos explores preparedness in our society, in addition to the everyday challenge of resisting change and maintaining control. It examines fear generated by a world of non-stop technological development, global climate change, and mass media focused on economic uncertainty in consumer culture. 

    The overall look of these videos purposefully harkens back to 1960’s flight attendant uniforms and instructional films. Using humor, these videos explore the idea of preparing for the future as a means of exercising control. The videos range from serious responses to post-terrorism working environments to post-apocalyptic wilderness survival to more fantastical situations including extraterrestrial communication.

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 1:

    Communicating with Media and Authorities After a Crisis
    Isolation
    Extraterrestrial Non-Verbal Communication
    Decipherment
    Creating Smoke Signals

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 2:

    Preparing for Bioterrorism
    Crisis Management Questions
    How to Build a Hasty Shelter
    Evacuation
    Maintaining Motivation After a Terrorist Attack

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 3:

    Physical Training
    How to Preserve a Severed Limb
    How to Escape When Tied Up
    Preparing for a Soccer Tournament

    Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 4:

    How to Pass a Bribe
    Estate Planning
    Preparing for the Holidays
    How to Build a Snow Cave
    How to Find Water In the Wilderness

    EllenMueller.com