Sleeves is an experimental digital video that consists of two separate screens or frames that are stacked upon each other. The two cubes related to each other as constructive space.

This piece is presented as a picture medium or video painting where it relies on a constant motion cycle and not a linear narrative. The looping video of the boat constantly sinking and remerging is intended to represent the idea of innocence and fascination. The cube constructions make up a minimalist environment of cycles and perspective edges.

I was inspired by Jerry Uelsmann's Untitled [boat and cube] piece. I emulated Jerry's technique of taking 2D photo image and overlaying two faces that simply tints the image thus creating a natural optical illusion. The shape, shading, and motion transforms the otherwise flat image into a 3D perspective construction.

Sleeves Video

Intermixture is an experimental piece that consists of three separate screens or frames that are stacked upon each other. The three screens are objects that form a networked sequence that relate the motion and the objects to a vertical spatial level of depth.

Each frame contains objects of symbolic elements that represent a primordial birth of nature and time. The elements in the frames map to the other frames through their natural kinetic properties that persist as a constant cycle. Man is a symbolic element to this sequence that represents his involvement with the natural world through the constant fall and rise of man.

Intermixture is presented as a picture medium and not as narrative medium because there is no beginning, middle, or end. It instead relies on a constant motion cycle that can be viewed as a digital video portrait of the natural world and time.

Intermixture Video

"A Boy and His Leech" is a video journal documentary featuring amateur naturalist Greg Wilde. Greg had become dissatisfied with common pets and human companions, so in early 2005 he decided to adopt a leech as a pet to fill this void.

What Greg intended to show was his companion as a loving and sensitive creature that he could co-exist with just the same as any other pet or human friend.

What he wanted to convey was simple and literal; but deeper within his video journal lies a depiction of human nature's constant need for attention, affection, and companionship. These most basic of humanistic needs led Greg into a dangerous dance with the natural world; a dance he would ultimately pay for with his life.

I wanted to experiment portable video's intimacy and low-tech immediacy in order to create idiosyncratic narrative comedy. Basically I wanted to make a one-man reality produced documentary that spoofs pop reality movies such as The Grizzly Man where the original creator dies during production and another indivdual finishes the piece. The second producer popularizes the documentary's original intent by taking the stance as an outside observer who anaylzes the isolated reality of the original creator.

A Boy and His Leech Video

Loading Barrel strings a network of pre-loading screens found on the Internet and other multi-media sources and projects them as a simplistic narrative with anticipated climax. Traditional writing, theatre, and movies are typically designed with climaxes that contain the elements of a beginning, middle, and end. I propose the loading screen as a narrative that is essentially a climax entity. The loading screen tells the viewer when the beginning occurs and how long until the conclusion.

We gladly wait for the meaning. We wait for the end of a movie, we read the last page to a novel, and we wait for the last act. The loading screens use increments, shapes, and symbols that map to a progression and time of the narrative/experience.

Then we can recursively move onto the next bit of content.

Loading Barrel is currently 18 minutes long. The longer loading screens are arranged progressively with the longer at the beginning and shorter ones the end. I made one audio track of a computer processing hum that also progressively gets louder towards the end. After the last loading screen, the anticipated content appears. The content consist of edited scenes taken from a Clint Eastwood western movie. Eastwood is casually loading his gun in preparation to kill predicatable villains sneaking up on him. The content is choppy to emphasize a streaming effect (which is another form of a loading). The DVD is then scripted to repeat the loop constantly.

No video cameras were used for this video project. All video footage was captured from a computer's video buffer memory using software (ACA Screen Recorder V2.02)

Loading Barrel Video