by George Pfau 

As a collaborative team of two, how did the HalfLifers merge their notions of the zombie into a singular package? 

HalfLifers as a project has always emerged out of a space of shared interests and dialogue…we’d always both had an interest in the idea of the zombie (based mostly on its figure in cinematic space) and at some point in our continually evolving conversations it re-emerged in the context of HalfLifers. We had talked about doing something with zombies where the undead characters illicit a feeling of sadness and or alternating inspiration by continually exploring there decaying bodies and environment. We both have an interest in humor and strategies with breaking the 4^th wall. Also we were excited to investigate improvisational and gestural movements, always pushing the unliving characters from slapstick to more intense “splatstick” scenes. This might have been us picking up on a certain note of physical humor that manifests in the later Romero and especially the Dan O’Bannon films.  And since so much of HalfLifers work up to that point was based on ideas about injury & crisis, I think we sort of arrived at this idea of being undead as kind of the ultimate “injured” state.

The Halflifers video shooting strategy allows for endless accumulation of materials or “takes”. Often we find common threads, motivations, and inspirations by not having any time constraints put on us. We literally video tape everything including the meta-discussions on what we are actually trying to do at any given moment…often this material is the most interesting and becomes reworked or restaged even at the same moment of discovery.….In the case of our ongoing Zombie series Afterlifers, incarnations of our Jim & Joe doubles returned from a non-linear death. This (zombie-zone) not only has moving entities but also has patches or geographies of “unliving” and “undead” spaces. We also engaged various props, costumes and vehicle elements that were zombified including sections of a flying helicopter, drinking dead booze, and re-animating analog phone devices from previous video work.

Were there certain seminal zombie films/texts/videogames that really got your creative juices flowing?

Several pieces that we enjoyed actively explored a fusion of horror (superstitions), comedy (slapstick), and art genres (choreography). They include Lucio Fulci’s “Zombi 2”, Dan O’Bannon’s “The Return of the Living Dead”, John Landis + Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, and all of the George Romero films.

Your mentioning of “The Return of the Living Dead” makes me think of your 2011 installation at the Berkeley Art Museum, in which visitors (myself included) got to eat cake versions of the Halflifers’ zombified heads.  That film was the first of the zombie genre in which the undead have a voracious hunger for brains.  It seems like your piece reverses this idea, allowing the living to consume the undead brain.  Can you discuss this installation, and how it came about?

We had been asked to do something for Berkeley’s L@TE series, which are one-night events.  There wasn’t time or a budget to do any of the large-scale, sculptural installations we had done at points in the past, and we were trying to think of how to still do something that felt sculptural but would function better in the context of a short hybrid performance event. Somehow we arrived at the idea of having these life-size cake replicas of ourselves that would get wheeled out and consumed.  We then went through a lot of discussions about how these would arrive and what they’d look like. Gradually it got scaled down to a pair of heads, but we realized that we’d really wanted the cakes to function sculpturally as vehicles.  After a lot of back and forth, we finally arrived at these sort of “Gravicle Scout Craft,” which were micro-graves housed in wheelbarrow “ships” with zombie version of our own heads sticking up out of the grave, as though they were piloting these crafts. Later in the evening we got to slice open our undead doubled chocolate and butter cream fondant wrapped heads, and serve a voracious public who seemed very happy to eat our sweet simulated brains.

Image courtesy of the artists.

In both cases we’re just sort of bending our own language around…obviously AfterLifers was a play on HalfLifers. We came up with the name HalfLifers back in 1994; it was actually based on the name of the alternate reality the dead characters in Philip K. Dick’s “Ubik” experience while in cryogenic suspension. This idea of a kind of phantom reality that you experienced when you were essentially dead, but not completely dead, was a key reference point for us. Ubik was the first PKD book each of us had read, and it had always remained one of our favorites.  In AfterLifers, we came back to this idea of undead-ness (or unliving-ness) as a space, rather than merely a condition of the body–we talked about Zombie Space as a different phase of reality in which everything manifests in a decaying, compromised state.

It seems that zombie narratives are overwhelmingly about the zombie threat to humanity.  While Afterlifers contains some flesh chewing, there are no real acts of violence in the film.  How did you arrive at this less hostile depiction of the zombie?  

We were never interested in the zombie as a threat or object of dread–it was much more about the pathos of the zombie, and an inquiry into what else zombies would do with themselves when there were no living humans to pursue.  The idea of zombie just wandering around, trying to figure out what to do with themselves, was really interesting to us. Instead of violent acts there is a focus on empathic exchanges between the two transitory characters and their decaying circumstances. In the videotapes we see moments of extreme confusion, fear and hunger. But over and over again they would rather eat their own bodies than engage in a violent act. One of the most “violent” scenes is towards the end of the videotape and we see the Afterlifers at their table, conversation has broken down and they are engaged in collaboratively eating proxy flesh-sheets and latex wounds dipped in karo syrup fake blood…We see that in this extreme agitated gory display of chewing and growling they are able to persevere and co-manifest thoughts to activate their flying helicopter by remote piloting.

Image courtesy of the HalfLifers.

Variable uniforms have played an important role in our video fictions over the years…first with the non-identifiable Rescuers always in interchangeable white jumpsuits and protective gear…then in the “Action” & “Pioneer” series moving on to exchangeable clothes made from prop-chunks…like suits covered with flashlights or fishing poles seemingly manifested for a brief time to service the needs of a fictional problem or blockage that erupts. For several scenes in Afterlifers: Walking & Talking we had some custom orange jumpsuits with beautiful sewn decals and patches created by the artist Adrian Van Allen. Because the Afterlifers piece was shot in bits and pieces over a period of years, there’s a lot of shifts in how we look, but I think that just becomes part of the playfulness of the piece, and the ambiguity of whether we’re actual zombies or living people practicing to be zombies.  The slipperiness of where our intention and agency is–as actors, as characters, as collaborators, as makers–is deeply encoded into the work.  So sometimes we’re scary, sometimes we’re sort of bumbling, sometimes we seem to be functioning as a kind of zombie super-duo, sometimes we’re just sitting around talking.  There’s no specific way the zombies are supposed to be, because we’re in some ways using the idea of being a zombie as a stand-in for merely being.

Also in regards to the human / zombie threshold, the film swaps scenes with zombie Tony and human Torsten and vice-versa, sitting at the table conversing.  Can you go into how you blur the boundary between human and zombie, and the level of communication happening in this scenario? 

Image courtesy of the artists.

We loved the idea of zombified inanimate objects like our “phone-props” from the Action & I.S.L.A.N.D.S. series now in a (suspendead) state with possibly new features and abilities. Would the device function differently with an undead entity dialing up? What about a unaffected human interacting with it? Could we catalogue or speculate on these differences etc. Also we were very intrigued with the idea of fusing or mashing up speculative fictions & themes including having an undead building that is also haunted – what would this mean to the spectral inhabitants? Or to AFTERLIFERS or other unliving participants passing through? These kinds of improvisational thoughts and non-scripted dialogues happened in real time over several hours of videotaping at the table between Tony and I, and (undead tony and undead I)

There seems to be a spoken sense of imagination that is commonly associated with children, inventing sets of rules, bodily abilities, or seemingly fictional or silly solutions to problems.  How ageless are the Halflifers?

Non-linear Immortality adjective entities….Hopefully we will continue exploring fictional (trans-states) of being into the nearest future! Two elderly characters who we have created have yet to make the jump into 2d screen-time. They are “Winterstick & Smithereen”.

“Halflifers is…. forges ahead…”  Halflifers is a grammatically singular unit? Not plural?  At what point does a team become a singular fusion?  Also, are Torsten and Tony = Jim and Joe throughout all Halflifer parables?

Frankly, there has been some degree of confusion / inconsistency around this over the years, as there are references over time to “HalfLifers” ,“The HalfLifers”  and HALFLIFERS: Torsten Zenas Burns & Anthony Discenza. Maybe these variable configurations gives us and the viewers a chance to create and experience fictions in Earth A, Earth B, and Earth C. Perhaps this ambiguity, like so many others, is better left unresolved…

Image courtesy of the HalfLifers.

What was the very first try at collaboration btw Torsten and Tony?

(1990)Anthony visited me at the site of my final BFA show at Alfred University and we shot a scene within a series of large scale welded steel sculptural forms that I made. The mobile sculptural elements were meant to frame parts of bodies as well as the whole integrated body-form. The original performance had to do with augmenting the body through radionic fictions and manifested tulpoidal medical treatments. Anthony and I spent one afternoon exploring these sculptural forms in a variable back and forth videotaped fiction about the re-imagined relationships between a doctor and patient. We performed improvisational med-procedures on each other with props secured from my nursing home job. This experiment was one piece that laid the groundwork for our first hybrid SFAI performance and “Rescue” video series created later in California.

Image courtesy of the artists.

PHASE1: Analog video  / PHASE2: Meta-Analog video / PHASE3: Home Depot

PHASE4: Perry Hoberman described to us once that something called “Virtual Reality” was coming. We might investigate this “Virtual Reality” situation in 2013.

Note: HALFLIFERS haven’t been exposed to the variable internets and interwebs. There are no “computers” in their worlds….

What is next for the Halflifers?

SPACESUITS! Custom built pressure suits! We are activating a fictional ride with a re-imagined space program. Jimbot & Joebot (tele-resurrected) exploring outer spaces in a new speculative variable vehicle delivery system.

HALFLIFERS BIOGRAPHY:

HALFLIFERS is an ongoing collaborative project created by longtime friends Torsten Zenas Burns and Anthony Discenza. Burns received his BFA in Media Art from New York State College of Art & Design at Alfred University in 1990, and an MFA in Performance and Video from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1993. He currently resides in Holyoke, MA. Anthony Discenza received a BFA in studio art from Wesleyan University in 1990, and an MFA in video from C.C.A.C. in 2000. He currently resides in Oakland, CA. The HALFLIFERS create videotapes, photographs, and installations exploring speculative fictions including zombie / afterlife relationships, rescue-rituals and psychic manifestations. Their installation projects have shown at New Langton Arts (CA), Smackmellon gallery (NY), and most recently showed their new project “AFTERLIFERS: WALKING & TALKING (EXTENDEAD RE-COMMUNICATION EDIT)” at Catherine Clark gallery in San Francisco. Single-channel works, including The Rescue, Action, Island, Pioneer and Afterlifers series have screened at The Museum of Modern Art (NY),The New York Video Festival, The Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), Cinematexas (TX), Video_Dumbo (NY), Chicago Underground film festival (IL), Pacific Film Archive (CA), Impakt Festival (Netherlands), European Media Arts Festival (Germany), Pandaemonium Festival (England), Pleasuredome (Canada), and most recently curated SUPER GIGANTIC HALFLIFERS DVD MEGA-RELEASE PARTY an installation / performance event in 2011 for the Berkeley Art Museum’s L@TE program. The HALFLIFERS were just featured with an artist page in the just released Radical Light: Avant Garde Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000. http://www.vdb.org/titles/halflifers-complete-history-1992-2010

George Pfau Biography

George Pfau is a multimedia artist living in San Francisco, CA. He received a B.S. in Studio Art from New York University in 2005, and an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2010. In 2010 he was awarded a Daisy Soros Fine Art Prize and a Vermont Studio Center Residency and Artist Grant. Pfau’s “Feverish Homeless Cannibal” for Zombies in the Academy, was published in Intellect Press, UK, 2012. Pfau’s ongoing lecture series: Zombies, Identified. Has been presented at  Observatory, Brooklyn, NY., and Unspeakable Projects, San Francisco. Pfau has had his work shown in several exhibitions and screening series including: They Live, Broward College, FL,The Feel of the Water, Krowswork, Oakland, CA., The Armada of Golden Dreams, Invisible City Audio Tour, San Francisco., International Short Film Festival, Detmold, Germany., Retrofuturology, Observatory, Brooklyn, NY. http://www.georgepfau.com

After 18 years HALFLIFERS has just released through VIDEO DATA BANK a re-mastered double DVD set of their complete video and installation works from 1992-2010 / http://www.vdb.org/titles/halflifers-complete-history-1992-2010

By Kristin Trethewey

Navigating Darkness. Marlena Kudlicka.

Located in an old warehouse near the Hamburger Bahnof, The Tape, functions as a venue for music and art exhibition in Berlin. Most recently the one-night show, Navigating Darkness curated by Helen Homan Wu and Mira O’Brien explored the interrelationship of lightness and darkness. The exhibition presented almost thirty artists showcasing video, sculpture, performance and sound for one night only. I was able to interview Helen Homan Wu currently in Shenzhen, China about the role of video in the exhibition and their intent on coaxing viewers through the space via sound and light.

http://opalnest.com/navigatingdarkness.html

KT:Navigating Darkness focused on the interconnection between light and darkness using sound to guide the viewer through the exhibition space. Many of the works played with visual perception. Can you outline some key projects? Which ones succeeded in the illusory experience and the suspension of disbelief within the exhibition on a whole? 

HHW:When Mira O’Brien (co-curator) approached me about the project, I was immediately drawn to the unique architectural settings of the Tape Modern space. After hearing her describe what the space is like (cavernous, dark, industrial with a stage), and doing my own research, I knew this had a huge potential for curatorial experimentation. I began looking back at the Tape Modern’s previous programmes and found that an impressive amount of artists had shown there. Since I’m in New York and not at the space in Berlin physically, I did more research than I normally would to get a sense of the space as much as I can before curating anything for it.  Mira had initiated the project with the theme being light/darkness, reflection/shadow, so I worked my ideas towards that to include sound and performative works.

Navigating Darkness. Andy Grandon.

There are a few works that I can point out, but I’m really intrigued by the artist Andy Graydon’s work on many levels – his way of communication, his processes, the diversity in his intermedia practices, and his background as a filmmaker. For Navigating Darkness, he presented a pile of fluorescent tubes, something that must to be seen in person to be understood. The tubes themselves are salvaged material that no longer works, but instead the artist projects a light source onto them as if bringing them back to life.  There is a lot of this going on in his work- a clever way of using simple technology, combining rough material with new media, playing with the viewer’s sense of place and perception – this experience can very easily draw you into his world.

Video as a medium is usually light emitting. This often causes problems for its presentation in the white gallery space. How did you consider presenting video within the Tape Modern space, which is quite large and dark? Did you see this space as an opportunity to show video pieces?

The dark atmosphere of the Tape Modern is naturally an ideal setting for light-emitting works.  We did think about video pieces for Navigating Darkness but more as projections (or light works) than simply showing them glaring out from screens. Between Mira and myself, we wanted to be careful about the way videos were presented and not to overdo it with too many video works.  Instead, we were focusing on how they were presented. Using projections, or the size and placement of the works became more of a theatrical approach.  In a dark setting such as the Tape, light is a really powerful element and our visual perception becomes quite sensitive, and this engagement is something that’s really interesting to work with.

There were a number of works that were not light emitting, but seemed to reference the history of video. I noticed at least two references to the zoetrope, the forefather of video that produces the illusion of movement using a successive series of still images. What was the decision to include these works in the show?

Well, the theme of the show was light and darkness, shadow and reflection.  And the

Navigating Darkness. Andy Graydon.

zoetrope definitely fits into this theme quite nicely. It’s a wonderful object that uses simple technology and never gets outdated. One of the other focuses in Navigating Darkness was to show sculptural works, works that will benefit from extreme light and darkness.  I think many of the pieces worked well together because it was a good balance between light-emitting works and sculptural pieces.

Opalnest curates projects in geographically disparate locations. Can you tell us how this process works for you? Where do you find yourself physically most often and how much of your work can you accomplish remotely today?

Well, it’s definitely not easy!  I’m somewhat of a bohemian, and actually still trying to tailor the best way to work to fit this situation. The principle behind Opalnest is that it aims to deliver a sensory experience to audiences, allowing them to come out of their comfort zones in that moment and hopefully be inspired to see or think with a different perspective. I think it’s a very fluxus principle as well, and somewhat spiritual in a sense that it’s about the audience’s needs of that moment.  So based on these principles our projects can happen anywhere in the world, but I’d like to focus producing projects in cities as a way to help people break down barriers.

Navigating Darkness. Alan Ruiz.

I would have say, I find myself spending most months in New York City, which is where I grew up, and can’t seem to leave.  For about two to four months out of the year, I travel to where the projects take me (right now I’m working out of Hong Kong and Shenzhen).  The show Navigating Darkness was the first exhibition that I curated and produced remotely without being in the space physically, and it was quite an interesting process. The process of planning, organizing, having meetings and to some extent looking at work, can all be done over the Internet these days. It’s fascinating how many online tools are available to us today for synching our workflows and having everything that we do documented. I think more and more people are catching up and developing systems to work via the web, but personally I still prefer to be present in person.

Your personal curatorial practice focuses on experimentation in a wide variety of mediums. Who are some interesting artists you are working with using video? Have you noticed common themes at play and how are they pushing boundaries within performance or artwork?

Right now I’m working with Katja Loher, Suki Chan, Richard Garet, Andy Graydon, Jacob Kirkegaard, Paul Clipson, Joao Vasco Paiva, – they lean towards earlier career.  For more established artists, I really admire the work of Phill Niblock and Carsten Nicolai, who are both a part of the programming that I’m putting together during the 2011 Shenzhen-HK Architectural Biennale. Besides Jacob Kirkegaard, who is a sound artist, the above artists all incorporate the aesthetics of sound into their practice as a part of the process, and not as an after-thought. I think this collaborative process: artist-to-artist, sight and sound, becomes very performative and interesting.  For example, Carsten Nicolai (aka alva noto) continuously collaborates with the French poet-sound artist Anne-James Chaton and the resulting body of work is extremely original- Nicolai’s highly minimalist visuals and intense electronics with AJ Chaton’s “poor” literature.  Although they often create works for audio or video outputs, it’s best to see their live performances.

LINKS:

http://www.katjaloher.com/

http://www.sukichan.co.uk/

http://richardgaret.com/

http://www.andygraydon.net/

http://fonik.dk/works-sounds.html

http://www.withinmirrors.org/

http://joaovascopaiva.com/projects/

http://www.carstennicolai.de/

http://aj.chaton.free.fr/

http://www.phillniblock.com/

Helen Homan Wu is a multimedia curator who works between New York, Berlin and Hong Kong.  Her projects involve curating contemporary visual art, new media art, experimental music, interactive installations and performance art.  She is the founder of Opalnest, a production agency devoted to international cultural programming and the co-founder and director of Artcards an online resource for arts listings in New York, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London and Berlin. Helen is currently working in Shenzhen, China with the One World Expo, http://www.oneworldexpo.org/en/index.html and the 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale http://opalnest.com/specialprojects/szhkb/index.html

In the early days of modernism, the futurist manifesto “The Art of Noises” was a provoking and seemingly outlandish proposition, more agitprop than reality. At the time, there was really no practical way for Russolo or others to realize the ambitions of the text. In the decades that followed, many composers and artists, following similar ideas, worked with percussion and newly constructed electronic “instruments” in an attempt to explore, in a broad way “The Art of Noises”. Only in the 40’s and 50’s, with the tape recorder could anything like the use of “everyday” sound objects be incorporated into a musical fabric. Still, tape was difficult and inflexible. More importantly, the composers working with “concrete” had their background in traditional musical composition, which is based entirely on regular vibration producing instruments. Did it occur to them that a different compositional approach had to be used for a fundamentally different i.e., irregular vibration (car motor) sound source?

It was only in the late ’70’s, and realistically, the ’80’s when sampling became an affordable (for artists) tool for capturing these irregular vibration sound sources. We are just beginning to see the results of artists who have been creating sound art and music for the last 20 years with digital sampling technologies. What is the result of such work? Has it lead to new kinds of human artistic expression or been a dead end?

In the ’80’s, my sound palette was almost exclusively, with the exception of the electric guitar, irregular pitch. I never met a sound I didn’t like, and I preferred a bird to a violin any day. I worked for seven years exclusively with sampling. It included live performance works and two virtual audio installations. Because of the vivid, almost visual effect of the virtual audio, I began to think of expanding my work into a larger framework. Because of the visual connotations of the samples I was using, Could there be a visual extension of my work?

At the time, I was studying the surrealist artists, from the most famous like Tanguy to the less famous but just as good like Kay Sage. I began to create visual scenes, each usually centered on one sculptural object that moved. The works overall were composed in a musical sense, with reoccurring shapes and motives. The form of each was created in a very flowing, rhythmic sense often with several scenes shown together, contrapuntally, in four different windows.

The music was composed afterwards. Usually I chose one kind of sound that resonated, in some way with what I was looking at. For me, neither the image nor the music was sufficient by itself, but together created a new thing, A+B=C.  For example, in the beginning of scattered……wide, behind the credits is a cloud shape that is rotating on the ground. I chose some bird samples to accompany it. Why did I choose that? Perhaps as you look at the rotating cloud, your attention is drawn to the shape of the cloud and it’s two “wings”. The cloud then becomes a “cloud bird”, a result of aural and visual.

To me, these works really aren’t animations or films. They’re something else. Could they be music? There’s not much to the sound track. Yes, there’s almost always sound, but it certainly couldn’t be played without the visuals.

What is music today anyway? Is it still organized sound? Or is it evolving into something else? Perhaps music is not only sound. Perhaps artists choose a medium to work in because it enables them to present their ideas reflecting how they view time?

All art perception is time based. Some mediums take longer to perceive, that’s all. To experience a building you have to walk around it and through it. That takes time. How much time does it take to view a Vermeer? It’s fairly rapid because the photons are moving at the speed of light. Music, moving at the speed of sound, is a lot slower, so things have to be placed in sequence.  Literature works even slower.

Maybe choosing a particular medium has little or nothing to do with a physical attraction to sound or vision or imagining a narrative in one’s head? Maybe it has to do with time and the aesthetic predilection of the artist, whether it’s emotional, sensual, intellectual or aesthetic. Because of the computer, maybe the physical attractors to an art form are becoming less important to an artist’s choice. If so, perhaps we’re in an age that is revealing what an accurate definition of each art really is. Or maybe all the arts are disappearing into a one huge, all encompassing “mega-art” form?

After completing about seven works influenced by surrealism and exploring the sound/image combination in an abstract way, I felt that, as satisfying and beautiful, at least to me, as those works are, it was at an end. Again, I was reading a surrealist poet, Reverdy, when I thought of the idea of movement between medias- a sound, a light dimming, a man turning. This idea of motion, realistic motion, all connected in a time sequence (naturally, after all, I am a musician) became the foundation for all my work of the past seven years. Because it is similar to real movement that one can observe, I felt this work had a resonance that lasted beyond the initial viewing.

I took movement and abstracted it, separating it from further actions by that human, animal or light. Then, I connected it by linking the motions in a sequence, which is highlighted for the viewer by numbers on the screen. For example in on the roof, the first scene consists of the following multimedia movement

On the Roof. Courtesy of Henry Gwiazda.

a. the couple, half in shadow on the roof, embraces

b. the sound of pigeon wings

c. the couple makes two motions, becoming closer

d. the pigeon wings again

e. the words “I shift my weight from my left to my right”

f. two more motions with the man shifting from the right to the left along with the sound of a woman’s heels on pavement

g. “The air is cool”

h. a light comes on the wall above the couple showing a window with blinds from a neighboring building.

For me, the sound of pigeon wings has an intimacy about them that matches the couple’s motions. The words “I shift my weight from my left to my right” either suggest a viewer of the scene and his or her physical motion complimenting the couple, or a remark to focus on the physical aspects of intimacy. “The air is cool”, suggests something amiss and the light above implies a future intimacy or something else.

For me, all the abstracted motions are artistically satisfying by themselves. But when they are combined in a sequence, they take on a meaning that is more than the sum of their parts. I am attempting to create a new kind of sensitivity or perception that encourages one to transfer attention from one aesthetic response (visual, aural, tactile) to another in order to experience a new kind of trans-medial perception. They also suggest, at least to me, human issues and concerns. Does the light on the building in the above scene suggest a destination for the relationship or is it some sort of metaphor for human relations as a whole?

Scattered…. Wide.  Courtesy of Henry Gwiazda.

I chose digital animation to work with rather than video because I couldn’t isolate as well the movement, especially the light. Also, in order to think about the movement one is seeing and reflect on it, the digital world is better for me than video. Video looks real because it is a video of a real event. Therefore, I think it’s easier to identify with what one is seeing. But, in my work, I don’t want you to identify with any of the characters or scenes, but rather to observe them and reflect on the motion. You need a certain distance that the digital medium can give. Plus, the digital world looks and sounds different than video. Video is warmer, blurry and bit too self-indulgent for me. I like the look of the digital. So I have created works like i’m sitting, watching……, a doll’s house is…… and claudia and paul claudia and paul claudia and paul claudia and paul which are concerned with the choreography of reality. While each explores different scenarios, they present they same artistic perspective. The world that we live in is made real by movement and this movement is all connected to produce a meaningful and at times profound statement about life and ourselves. Whether it’s sitting in a café in Venice like i’m sitting, watching….. or viewing the activity in an apartment building like a doll’s house is…… or following the mise-en-scenes of claudia and paul in a dingy industrial city, all my work is about this “mega-art” where all the art forms are equal and interact to create a truly 21st century view of human life and human reality. My work, therefore, doesn’t have a technical agenda, but rather uses the new technology for an expressive agenda where, hopefully, the materials vanish and art emerges.

Henry Gwiazda is a new media artist/composer whose artistic trajectory has taken him from sampling, sound effects, and immersive technologies to his current work with new media. This new work is a comprehensive artistic approach that has resulted in work that is multimedia in nature and focused on movement. Gwiazda’s works are regularly screened in festivals and galleries throughout the world including New York, Paris, Madrid, Cairo, Amsterdam, Beijing, Berlin, Naples, Marseilles, Seoul, Damascus, Athens, Istanbul, Moscow and many others. He won First Prize at Abstracta Cinema (Rome, Italy), Magmart Video Festival (Naple, Italy), Festival InOut (Gdansk, Poland), Second Prize at the Crosstalk Video Art Festival (Budapest,Hungary), Third Prize at the GIGUK Video Art Festival (Giessen, Germany), and the Grand Prize for Best Audio at the 2008 DIGit Media Exposition (Narrowsburg, NY). His work is available on Innova Recordings.

Tania Mouraud has been creating art since the 1960’s. Her work has ventured through multiple mediums over the years. These different mediums are relevant to the times upon she chose to create. Once upon a time she burned her old paintings and called it Autodafe, created novel installations with electronics and sound, designed posters and public art, organized visual storytelling in photography, and today she uses common technology – technology accessible by most people. She has always been smart, and current in her time. Her art seems to reflect an interest in a generation, where the idea is key.

Photograph provided courtesy of Tania Mouraud.

Her work seems to be molding with technology, or possibly transforming with technology. She acknowledges that she is “usually changing.”

“When it becomes too easy for me I get bored and I try to change.”

Her process has much to do with the analytical process.

“When you are an artist and you think,  you analyze how it is done, and doing that concerns me, it becomes part of your function.”

Mouraud wears her shoes as an artist proudly, with confidence. She accepts herself, and accepts her “moments” of epiphany. Artistry allows her to “express a kind of philosophical gaze about the human condition, to show things ‐ and the viewer makes what he or she wants with it. I am allowing myself to be emotional, to convey emotions about what I see about the state of the world.”

The computer has allowed her to move into mediums that weren’t easily accessible in the past. Her interest in making moving image artistry has truly allowed her to continue this vision of her work. For instance, an interest in creating video and music has become manifested in her use of technology. Technology is merely a tool. When Mouraud shoots a video she shoots with a hand held camera. Nothing fancy.

“I don’t believe in professional camera because I am not working for the TV or  film industry. I don’t want my work to be too technical.”

It is important for her viewers to see the image and imagine they could have done the same. She wants to erase the distance between the viewer and the specialist. A camera set on automatic mode is preferred, to presume the importance of what is purely seen in the composition.

“I don’t want to be concerned with pressing all the buttons. If it is complicated then I am fed up. That is what I like in digital.”

In order to compensate for her lack of “sharpness” within the image, she focuses on image color and composition, similar to a painter. This painterly approach is instinctual, rooting from first hand accounts of attending the Louvre as a young girl, on the weekends as part of her history program in school. Digital tools have made this process “easy,” and with her artistic outlook, the work becomes. She criticizes her ability to use Final Cut Pro, saying we may be “horrified” of how she uses it ‐ lightheartedly. Her process may be complicated, or simple, but the result and conveyed concept of the work is her main concern.

Photograph provided courtesy of the artist.

A spontaneous (or long‐desired) interest in creating music rooted in the early 90’s. Mouraud expressed her desire to her class at the time, and they returned to the college with a variety of music making machines ‐ mostly electronic. Mouraud, whom had never been one to play a real instrument, took this opportunity to the next level, and began to make music on her own. She has dived into the production and performance of electronic music, sampling from a plethora of sources, and combining sounds in mindful ways. Live performance of these musical ventures has been her most recent adventure. Her sound performances are “experimental” with little to some planning. She often combines her sound performances with video. Sometimes subliminal messages are spoken into the microphone.

Though this recent infatuation seems to be the contemporary work of Mouraud, she is still working in other mediums. Video is still a primary choice, and will be the medium of an upcoming, in‐process work, to be showed at the Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Canada for Fall 2012. Her work will be a part of the main projects for this sleepless night in the city dedicated to contemporary art. She will present a video of wood logging in Canada. The piece will be projected on Toronto’s City Hall at 600 feet in length and 286 feet tall. The juxtaposition of wood logging in the core of the city will have a certain insinuation. It will become a monumental installation amongst the buildings as the infrastructure itself will become part of the piece. To the viewer, it will be their interpretation, but an overall idea is ever present and looming.

“The perception is very important. Mastery of perception to convey your message and the possibility of a reaction. I believe in humanity.”

Tania Mouraud’s work, especially in video, has a certain power that can mesmerize you. Her approach is so subtle, with her concept penetrating the viewer at their deepest subjection. As an artist of so many mediums, it is evident that her professionalism in all forms of art truly comes from within. She follows her instinct, and allows the medium to be her tool. With a refreshing outlook on making art, with a core interest in the project, Mouraud  “plays” and thus learns new ways.

“I am a big believer that work should perform and be as it is — that whatever phenomena you are trying to describe be embedded in the work itself. But I also think that the somewhat anachronistic attributes of past media have a significant weight on how work can be put into conversations today.

~ Nik Hanselmann, Artist

With the release of latest touch screen devices, consumers gather in droves as if making a sacred pilgrimage. Not only do these devotees want to be one of the privileged individuals to partake in the latest technology but these very devices are seen as a way to socially engage and entertain. The multi-layer instantaneous retinal stimulation of our youtube-flickr google-able culture make participation in society highly accessible. Everyone has the ability to create. This is where the artist creates distinctions and much needed discourse. Video art, specifically, has taken on countless iterations of the relationship between filmmaker and viewer. In recent years, new media artists have used technologies that require the viewer to become a part of the production of the art but what happens when the artist intervenes by taking away the right of interaction and interconnectivity away from the participant and relegates them viewer?

Installation of bodyfuck. Courtesy of artist.

The creative use of (programming) language to design and, in some cases, fabricate a specific reality or experience is when the medium becomes the subject. Similar to the abstract expressionists, some new media artists finds ways to repurpose the tools and techniques in an unorthodox fashion. The alternative method of producing film footage featuring organic forms may not be a foreign idea but programming language as the basis for creating a new format for video art is suggestive of how new media artists push the boundaries regarding the definition of the art object. Nik Hanselmann’s works utilize the body in different ways and piques the imagination as a point of departure for inquiry into the separation between artist, artwork, and observer in his works, bodyfuck and Observations.

In bodyfuck, Hanselmann created a unique programming language involving use of the body as a means of production. In this scenario, the artist becomes the spectacle. The piece entails a short video of the artist jumping and moving side to side within the frame of the screen. Grandiose gestures and exaggerated movements result in a specific character or symbol revealed to the viewer. As the artist moves, another character flashes on the screen. The cause and effect experience is not too dissimilar to a keystroke on a keyboard. Yet, Hanselmann’s breathy smile results in script that produces a short greeting – Hi. It is the entire body that produces the programming language, the symbols, and the text. In speaking with the artist, he states,

code. Image courtesy of Nik Hanselmann.

“…bodyfuck was comic “virtuosity” or bodily absurdity – something which ended up being a lot more physically punishing than I imagined before I set out to do the project. I think this is really important – and it’s not something that I would wish upon the audience. On a pragmatic level, it wouldn’t really work to have a bunch of non-programmer gallery-goers to be suddenly faced with the challenge or programming.” 

~ Nik Hanselmann

It is the body, in the end, that exerts (maybe even suffers) itself to some degree, which harks back to the days of experimental video art where the artist performed for the viewer. Yet, bodyfuck serves as a metaphor for the actual artistic process. Complexity within a process somehow seems to constantly produce something simplistic that may seem absurd to the viewer but it is the complex set of ideas that lay the foundation for innovation. The serendipitous discoveries lay dormant and only in the artist’s domain. They are revelatory and representative of the way watch and perceive the existence of the art object. Fictitious forms and organisms in Hanselmann’s piece, Observations, serve as another example of innovative tools used to construct a work that reveals something separate and outside of ourselves through abstraction.

“For Observations, the decision for non-interaction is to tinge the whole thing with hegemonic mystery. I’m fascinated by the idea of being an agent in science – most of us have little-to-no first-hand experience with most of the concepts that we take for granted. I think the video/screen in this context works like it did on the moon landing or the drop of an atomic bomb. The whole experience is so abstract but told with such authority. That is not to say of course that I think about the fictional phenomena I created on the same level of profundity – I’m merely calling back to this idea that the screen can be a frightening disconnect. In an age of interactivity, I think this gap is widened even further, as most of us can’t wait to get our greasy paws on something to pan, zoom, and eventually hit the home button to go tweet about it”.

~ Nik Hanselmann

Observations. Image courtesy of artist.

Hanselmann’s works open up the discussion and examination of new media arts multi-faceted and rapidly evolving nature. Definition eludes new media (even though it’s been around for close to 40 years) in large part due to its resistance to fit snuggly into the canon of art history. It remains a nebulous topic primarily due to its ever rapidly evolving virtual landscape, meaning, and structure. The term new media alone connotes something discovered and cutting edge but what happens when there is constant flux and change in that very thing we are looking to define and provide taxonomy for. It becomes a task and a challenge for the artists to examine ways in which the tools can be used differently and perhaps in conjunction with one another to create abstraction from what is seemingly finite and concrete.