[spectre] Two New Art and Artist Titles Available from Microcinema DVD:

[Joel S. Bachar]

Two New Art and Artist Titles Available from Microcinema DVD:
1.	Bill Viola – the Eye of the Heart
2.	Soft Cinema – Navigating the Database


Bill Viola – the Eye of the Heart, a film by Mark Kidel
Catalog No. MC-435
2005, 59 minutes
ISBN: 9085140595
UPC: 9789085140597
SRP (includes PPR): $37.00

Synopsis:
Hailed as the 'Rembrandt of the video age' internationally-renowned American
artist Bill Viola will become the first ever contemporary artist to be
featured in a major one-man show at London's prestigious National Gallery.
Since 1972 Viola has created critically-acclaimed architectural video
installations, sound environments, videotapes, electronic music performances
and works for television broadcast. His evocative pieces focus on universal
human experiences and are inspired by both western and eastern art as well
as religion and mystical traditions . Bill Viola: The Eye of the Heart
features the artist at work, rarely-seen footage from his own archive and
in-depth interviews with Viola himself. Film maker, Mark Kidel, of Calliope
Media, was granted unprecedented access to Bill Viola and his personal
archives in the process of making the documentary. Within the film Viola
talks passionately about his life and the artistic influences that have
driven his artwork from the beginning and made him one of the true pioneers
of video-art. From his childhood memory of drowning, to the artistic
exploration and political activism of his years at Syracuse University, and
on to the shattering death of his mother, Viola talks candidly about the
interplay of his life and work. As many of his works focus on emotions and
the great universal experiences, the documentary highlights just how much
Viola's life and work are inextricably linked.

Details:
http://www.microcinema.com/programResult.php?program_id=435

Soft Cinema – Navigating the Database
Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky
Catalog No. MC-436
2005, 60 minutes
ISBN: 026213456X
UPC: 9780262134569
PAL format
SRP (includes PPR): $30.00
Street Date:  Catalog title

Synopsis:
Leading artists from different cultural fields collaborate on three films
that explore the aesthetic possibilities of computer-driven cinema.

What kind of cinema is appropriate for the age of Palm Pilot and Google?
Automatic surveillance and self-guided missiles? Consumer profiling and CNN?
To investigate this question, Lev Manovich, one of today's most influential
thinkers in the fields of media arts and digital culture, paired with
award-winning new media artist and designer Andreas Kratky. They have also
invited contributions from leaders in other cultural fields: DJ Spooky,
Scanner, George Lewis, and Johann Johannsson (music), servo (architecture),
Schoenerwissen/OfCD (information visualization), and Ross Cooper Studios
(media design).

The results of their three-year explorations are the three "films" presented
on this DVD. Although the films resemble the familiar genres of cinema, the
process by which they were created demonstrates the possibilities of
soft(ware) cinema. A "cinema," that is, in which human subjectivity and the
variable choices made by custom software combine to create films that can
run infinitely without ever exactly repeating the same image sequences,
screen layouts and narratives.

Mission to Earth, a science fiction allegory of the immigrant experience,
adopts the variable choices and multi-frame layout of the Soft Cinema system
to represent "variable identity." Absences is a lyrical black and white
narrative that relies on algorithms normally deployed in military and
civilian surveillance applications to determine the editing of video and
audio. Texas, a "database narrative," assembles its visuals, sounds,
narratives, and even the identities of its characters, from multiple
databases. The DVD was designed so that every viewing of each film generates
a different version.

Details:
http://www.microcinema.com/programResult.php?program_id=436


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