play and repeat, 3:20, HD video, 2014
audio by Max Jeffers
NOW SCREENING ON BLACK MARIA FILM FESTIVAL
play and repeat is a technological rendering of a cityscape and the experience therein. A sequence of altered still images shot in New York is repeated, each time manipulated and layered over the artifacts of the previous sequence. Images of concrete and pavement are digitally smeared, transmogrifying the architectural structure of the street. Billboards and graffiti become the passage of color and texture through the 2-dimensional space of the screen. play and repeat takes both the city and digital video itself as subject and explores the effect of the addition and removal of the representational image on perception and memory.
The five-part structure is loosely based on the five-part Dog Star Man, in which Stan Brakhage manually manipulated layers of film to create effects like scratching and tinting in a way unique to film. The digital images in play and repeat, shot on the way to a screening of The Art of Vision (the expanded form of Dog Star Man), are layered and manipulated using software-generated effects unique to video. Composition, color and movement give way to accumulation and eventual disintegration into its own ephemerality.
Screenings:
– Antimatter Film Festival [Media Art], Victoria, BC, Canada (October 2014)
– The Parlour, Brooklyn, NY (March 2015)
– Moving Image, New York, NY (March 2015)
– Experiments In Cinema Film Festival V.10 (April 2015)
– Athenaeum Arts and Music Library, La Jolla, CA (August 2015)
– San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA (August 2015)
– L’Alternativa Independent Film Festival, Barcelona, Spain (November 2015)
– Director’s Choice Prize – Black Maria Film Festival, Touring program (Winter-Summer 2015)
– AXW Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY (October 2016)
– SDSU Downtown Gallery, San Diego (July 2017)
– Anarchivia, Mexico City (March 2019)
– Connect: International Video Art Festival, Tampa FL (October 2019)
– The Wrong New Digital Art Biennale, Foggia, Italy (November 2019)
– Black Maria Virtual Film Festival (April 2019 – ongoing)
– AXW Film Festival, Show 18 online (April 2019 – ongoing)
– AreaCode Art Fair, Boston, MA (August 2020)
Available for rental and sales from Film-Makers Coop