[spectre] New DVD: ASPECT - The Chronicle of New Media

[Joel S. Bachar]

The Blackchair DVD Collection Recommends:

ASPECT – THE CHRONICLE OF NEW MEDIA
VOLUME II – ARTISTS OF THE WEST COAST (United States) 

Aspect is a biannual DVD magazine of new media art. The mission of the 
publication is to distribute and archive works of time-based art. 

Each issue highlights 5-10 artists working in new or experimental 
media, whose works are best documented in video or sound. Each work 
can be viewed with or without an additional commentator audio track.

Copyright 2003. 74 minutes. $25.00 with Public Performance Rights.

Included in this issue: 

ANTHONY DISCENZA: Object 8242600 
with audio commentary by Marisa Olson 
Between the relentless spread of consumerism and rapid advancement of 
technology, we find ourselves exposed to ever-greater amounts of 
visual stimuli. From television, movies, and the internet, to and 
endless sea of magazines, billboards, and print media, a steady stream 
of highly mediated imagery assails us. In the escalating battle for 
viewer attention, more and more of our information, regardless of its 
content, arrives in the form of elaborately manipulated visual 
sequences formally and structurally indistinguishable from mass 
entertainment. This results in a gradual poisoning of our experience, 
a profound level of alienation produced as our own internal narratives 
are colonized by the logic of the spectacle.

CAROLE KIM AND JESSE GILBERT: Reverse House Kit 
with audio commentary by Julie Lazar 
REVERSE HOUSE KIT is a non-linear, spatial interpretation of a 15-part 
poem by the same name. 

SCOTT SNIBBE: Deep Walls 
with audio commentary by George Fifield 
Deep Walls is inspired by architect Christopher Alexander's "Pattern 
Language". His admonition to architects is to build the walls of homes 
thick, so that cabinets, drawers and windows can perforate the 
interior space, providing areas to store, display, and slice through 
and ultimately provide more meaning within the home. In the spirit of 
Alexander, this work gradually absorbs the contents of its environment 
onto its surface, creating a cinematic cabinet of sixteen silhouette 
recordings of viewers' own shadows. By collecting viewers' shadows, 
the piece destroys the fantasy and illusion of cinema, replacing these 
with a structured representation of an active audience. Since each 
small recording retains the duration of the events within, a complex 
musical relationship between the cinematic loops emerges.

SURVIVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY: e-motion 
with audio commentary by Susan Joyce 
Survival Research Laboratories engages new vocabularies by integrating 
machines, theatrical sets and props, with dramatic visual metaphors, 
bringing to life, large-scale mechanical performances for audiences 
that rival other popular cultural events. By taking things to extreme 
ends SRL attempts to create new levels of sensory and emotional 
intensity.

BRENT WATANABE: Thrift Store Tape #3 
with audio commentary by Bill Arning 
For the last several years I’ve been working on a “Thrift Store Tape” 
series. These videos are created from footage found on discarded home 
videotapes. On these tapes are fragments of the lives of people I’ve 
never met and most likely will never encounter. I’m fascinated by the 
fact that these memories have been lost or sold or traded, and the 
people that recorded these events have probably forgotten these tapes 
even exist.
Editor: Michael Mittelman

Copyright 2003. 74 MINUTES
$25.00 (with Public Performance Rights)
To order: orders at microcinema.com
Or go to: 
http://www.microcinema.com/programResult.php?program_id=192


Joel S. Bachar, Founder
Microcinema International
531 Utah Street, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA
415-864-0660
www.microcinema.com