Optimizer Customizer

A feminine machine, stuffed with modern nano-technology and useless operations is depicted in this mixed-media 2D animation short, highlighting the consequences of consumerism and the downfall of civilized society. The machine reminiscent of a two-dimensional video game, leads to a destructive chain reaction after a strange malfunction, with people turning into clones and robots.

All Star Video

A compilation of avant-garde artwork and talent of the mid to late 20th century hosted by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Chamyto Tapes V1

Magnética

In a city inhabited by drawn beings, an indigenous boy witnesses a holographic appearance. It is the arrival of an entity of unknown materiality. With a mysterious presence and exotic allegories, it starts to enchant the residents, awakening their most insane senses.

Graphic Variations on Telidon

"In an effort to explore the flexibility of Telidon, Canada's videotex system, Pierre Moretti, animation artist from the National Film Board, used, in the graphic mode, the geometric figures which form the basis for Telidon's picture description instructions. Thus he created this short animated film."

Between Science and Garbage

A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.

Dust and Piranhas

“The faster you break it the faster we make it,” says the wooden column at one point, going on to acknowledge the bounteous economic logic of this reality with the observation that “production is sealed in gold.”Early on we see the black-and-white striped house Adolf Loos designed for Josephine Baker. It’s a cardboard model, of course; the plans were never realized. The house is an idea, an image, a virtual presence, a possibility, a provocation. Later in the film it reappears, reconfigured in different materials with a different range of qualities and surface finishes. “Why do so many things look the same, and only one of them is good?” asks a female voice. This is not the column’s voice but that of someone who sounds much like Marten herself. It is, in fact, her sister, one Marten speaking another Marten’s words. After all, in order to manufacture glamour, a little plagiarism is essential. And this process—call it borrowing, copying, paying homage, whatever—is both violent and comic.

Evian Disesase

For Ed Atkins, Marten’s "Evian Disease" embodies ‘flatness’ in all its weightlessness, emotional deficit and hollowness of representation. The fact that it’s completely unapologetic about it is what makes it a dangerous piece to his mind.

Orchids, or a hemispherical bottom

Orchids,… centers on an animated video in which Marten sets forth a sanitised and alluring world of free-floating and fragmentary objects. Excised from normal context and imbued with an impossible cosmetic sheen, these crystalline forms are conjured in colours that range from the surreally heightened to the deliberately banal. A line of toy-like objects – a train, a giraffe on wheels, a boat – trundles along on an impossibly turquoise plane. Parasitically followed by a swirling black fly, the unfolding narrative is one of production, consumption and saturation. Elsewhere, the naked human backside of the title (cropped and anonymous) is shown with a luridly-glowing orchid tucked between its buttocks. At points, the imagery takes on the semblance of a painting or diagram, both formulaic ‘analogues’ of reality, like the video itself, implying the knotty weight of a Cézanne still life.

Untitled

In this hyper-realistic digitally rendered video, sandwiches are assembled in sequence. Each component, from the first slice of bread to the last, is dropped dramatically from a height, before bouncing and settling into place in slow motion. Mayonnaise, then ham, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and the final slice on top. This perfect yet uncanny choreography reads like an exaggerated, perverse take on ‘food-porn’ obsessed advertising campaigns. These sequences repeat, the sound gradually incorporates saws and machinery, echos from empty environments, pianos breaking, smashes, crashes and mechanical crescendos like jet engines alongside eerie drones, bells, and hard rummaging noises. Another piece of bread lands, some rubber baby dolls fall onto it, some brown slop, a blanket, denim jeans, some businessmen in suits, and more slop. Ketchup, then a union jack, all encased in the final layer of bread that falls to the top of the pile to the sound of a tolling bell. Infinite continuation, loop.

Rectangle & Rectangles

This is a didactic film in disguise. A progression of brilliant geometric shapes bombard the screen to the insistent beat of drums. The filmmaker programmed a computer to coordinate a highly complex operation involving an electronic beam of light, colour filters and a camera. This animation film, without words, is designed to expose the power of the cinematic medium, and to illustrate the abstract nature of time.

Video Weavings

Video Weavings is a link between the modern (video) and the ancient (weaving) technologies. Video Weavings are based on poetic mathematical rhymes, or algorithms, visualized in real time on the warp and weft of video's horizontal and vertical scanning electron beams, color phosphors, plasma cells, and LCD pixels.

Anima

Abstract computer animation set to autoharp solo music composed and performed by Jordan Belson

Site Unseen

A collaboration between Kadet Kuhne & Alba G. Corral.

Isolation

A meditation on isolation through paint textures, video collage and sound

Distant Activities

Real time development of a video feedback, processed and controlled through a video keyer. Sound results from video signals, interfaced with audio synthesizer.