Monthly Archives: July 2011

July 14, 2011

Type A

“Type A  is the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Adam Ames and Andrew Bor­d­win. Using a vari­ety of media, Type A explores the ways in which men com­pete, chal­lenge, and play, and the result­ing social and psy­cho­log­i­cal imbal­ance. Doc­u­ment­ing pre­de­ter­mined actions towards a series of goals, the results of their works range from psy­cho­log­i­cally dis­arm­ing to pro­foundly absurd…” (excerpt)

4 Urban Con­tests and 5 Urban Res­cues, 1998. Two single-channel videos worth check­ing out. Saw this work at Cor­nell University’s Museum of Art recently and was imme­di­ately cap­ti­vated by it. Videos and artist state­ments avail­able on their site.

July 13, 2011

The Zonders

“The Zon­ders is an inter­na­tional artist­col­lec­tive founded by Dieter Dunkel & Wolf­gang 3000. Raised by the for­mer band named ZONDERSTEIN and influ­enced by dif­fer­ent styles of music, it is their plea­sure to cre­ate a visual out­put in a pro­fes­sion between sur­re­al­ism and society.”

I dis­cov­ered some work by The Zon­ders after occa­sion­ally snoop­ing around Valerie Col­lec­tive for music. All the artists in the col­lec­tive have some inspired and inno­v­a­tive iden­ti­ties backed by the design work of The Zon­ders. It seems like a really fun col­lab­o­ra­tion rooted in ‘80s synth nostalgia.

July 10, 2011

Greenwashers

Bret Mal­ley is the mas­ter­mind behind Green­wash­ers, a film that “blurs the line between green and greed, truth and believ­abil­ity, envi­ron­men­tal­ism and marketing.”

Bret is not only the direc­tor, but also one of the per­for­mance artists in the film. As “Alex Maxwell” he infil­trates green expos and busi­nesses with mock graphs, erro­neous facts and ridicu­lous props all to satir­i­cal sell peo­ple on his green­wash ser­vices. A num­ber of busi­nesses actu­ally bought into Alex’s ideas and the film exposes those more inter­ested in mak­ing money off of his “ser­vices” ver­sus the efforts of those invested in what it really means to go green. The result is eye-opening and fea­tures some insight­ful inter­views with Scott Case and author Bill McK­ibben.

I was hired on by Bret to be a cin­e­matog­ra­pher for the project in two loca­tions: New York City and Syra­cuse. It required a lot more per­for­mance and flex­i­bil­ity beyond just shoot­ing and it was a lit­tle bizarre at first.

Check over here for more infor­ma­tion on the film and the act of greenwashing:

The Mak­ing of Greenwashers

Check my work page for the trailer and addi­tional information:

Green­wash­ers Trailer

July 9, 2011

The Mars Society

Con­cep­tual images from the Mars Home­stead Project.

I spent months this year research­ing and plan­ning a doc­u­men­tary short on The Mars Soci­ety, an inter­na­tional non­profit orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to pro­mot­ing the human explo­ration and set­tle­ment on the planet Mars. My plans didn’t exactly pan out the way I had hoped and instead opened up some new wildly dif­fer­ent ideas. You can take a look at a clip of the doc­u­men­tary and view more infor­ma­tion on the work page.

Dur­ing my research I col­lected and sorted through an exten­sive amount of con­cep­tual images of a hypo­thet­i­cal col­o­nized Mars. The Mars Home­stead Project, the main project of the Mars Foun­da­tion, has a nice archive of images rang­ing from sketches and paint­ings of hab­it­able Mars land­scapes, domes­tic spaces, spe­cial­ized machines and instru­ments, and gen­eral human explo­ration. There is a lot of infor­ma­tion out there on the idea of Mars set­tle­ment and no bet­ter way to inves­ti­gate the sub­ject bet­ter than to check out The Case for Mars by lead­ing advo­cate and Mars Soci­ety Pres­i­dent, Robert Zubrin.

July 8, 2011

Terrence Malick: 1973, 2011

Bad­lands, 1973

Bad­lands, 1973

Bad­lands, 1973

Bad­lands, 1973

The Tree of Life, 2011

The Tree of Life, 2011

The Tree of Life, 2011

The Tree of Life, 2011

The Tree of Life, 2011

The Tree of Life is a film of immense ambi­tion. The only other film I think I can com­pare it to in terms of scale and bold­ness is 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s a pop­u­lar com­par­i­son, but I can’t think of many film­mak­ers aside from Mal­ick and Kubrick who can offer up such sweep­ing philo­soph­i­cal gestures.

I thought about Malick’s low-budget debut fea­ture, Bad­lands, lead­ing up to and after I saw The Tree of Life. It’s visu­ally rich com­po­si­tion, depic­tion of human­ity at its ugli­est and dead­pan, bleak humor amounts to one of my per­sonal favorites. A lot of peo­ple describe Malick’s films as visu­ally poetic and I com­pletely agree. His meth­ods are unmis­tak­able and often appear effort­less or even impul­sive when they are com­pletely controlled.

Here is a great arti­cle I found that spans Malick’s career includ­ing The Tree of Life: Ter­rence Mal­ick: act of creation

July 8, 2011

Shimpei Shirafuji

Fan­tas­tic pho­tographs from the ongo­ing series Thank You For Your Hos­pi­tal­ity.

Shim­pei is one of sev­eral tal­ented artists I have come to know over the past three years as a grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Col­lege of Visual and Per­form­ing Arts at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­sity. As his room­mate this past year, I have got­ten a lot more per­sonal insight into his work process and philoso­phies. He’s a great friend and makes a tremen­dous chicken curry. I am really look­ing for­ward to keep­ing up with this series as it con­tin­ues to expand.

For infor­ma­tion on Shimpei’s work and prac­tices I highly rec­om­mend this thor­ough inter­view he par­tic­i­pated in for Too Much Choco­late and their Rotat­ing Gallery artist series: Rotat­ing Gallery 92