Private Negations

@ SAZMANAB
IN TEHRAN/IRAN

Experimental video animations
by 14 aritsts
Co-curated by
Morehshin Allahyari (Dallas & Denver, USA)
Alysse Stepanian (Los Angeles)

Sazmanab
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Screening: 7PM – 8PM Tehran’s time
Q&A with the curators via the internet: 8-8:30PM

Sazmanab's location: Apt. 2, No. 99, Pardis St. Ariafar St. Sazman-e ab St. Sheikh Fazlollah HWY, Tehran, Iran

by Morehshin Allahyari and Alysse Stepanian

Christopher Coleman (Colorado, USA)

"Modern Times"
2:46 min, 2004, color, stereo, animation, 4:3, sound design by George Cicci

"Modern Times" examines the issues we cope with regularly such as racism, surveillance, and apathy by using imagery from specific safety brochures. These pamphlets about terrorism readiness, provided by the Department of Homeland Security, are part of a larger system designed to promote meta-fears like terrorism that serve to distract people from their everyday concerns. This animation discusses the effects of fear, apathy, and isolation, and how they are transmitted and utilized for control.

"Modern Times" is an animation created over 18 months and completed in 2005. Because the Department of Homeland Security made their Terrorism Readiness brochures available in digital format, much of the imagery in the video is directly taken from the source, recontextualized, arranged and animated. The original movie, Modern Times, featured Charlie Chaplin struggling to deal with man’s relationship to technology in the Industrial Age. We have now moved into the Age of Information in which our connection to the world around us is not only defined by technology, but the information it does or does not provide.

When first encountering these brochures I was struck by how they, along with other safety illustrations like those found in the back pocket of every airplane seat, are supposed to simultaneously alarm and calm us. There is no sign of fear on the faces of the generic passengers bracing for a water landing. It is interesting to note that while the public was still quite shaken from the events of 9/11 when the US government released these brochures, they were an instant source of ridicule. I have attempted to return their levity but with a different focus.

Modern Times has played at numerous events in 14 countries and is on two DVD compilations. Sound Design was done by George Cicci.

Sachiko Hayashi (Sweden)

"N00sphere Playground"
2:58 min, 2008, color, stereo, machinima, 16:9
Concept, Image, & Sound Arrangement: Sachiko Hayashi
Original Sound Source: Magnus Alexanderson
© sachiko hayashi 2008

"N00sphere Playground" in the virtual world Second Life is an interactive sound installation in which avatars' own movements trigger various preprogrammed sounds. With its form that imitates and modifies a playground sphere, the work expresses the joy of play through the experience of interactive sounds. Beneath its surface, however, is an underlying notion of noosphere, closely related to Henri Bergson’s idea of "Èlan Vital" and its role in evolution. The machinima "N00sphere Playground" takes this installation work to another level by fusing its core concept with machinima visuals. Expressed in it is a dual position over our notion of an ideal future, a crash between its optimism and its back side.

BIO
Sachiko Hayashi is a visual artist who primarily works in video and interactive media. Her works exhibit a unique blend of aesthetic and conceptual foundation with technology, as she consistently explores co-relation between image, sound, conceptualisation in art, and discourses in philosophy and other social disciplines. Her video works investigates temporal composition in subjective imagery, often in combination with audio-visual experimentation. Her works have been shown widely internationally at various venues such as Transmediale, Berlin, Museum of Science and Technology, Stockholm, and Saitama Museum of Modern Art in Japan. Her other merits include the founder of internet network DIAN and since 2003 the chief editor of hz-journal, an online journal by non-profit art organization Fylkingen in Stockholm.

Shane Mecklenburger (Ohio, USA)

"Halcyon Atmosphere"
3:00 min, 2009, B&W, sound

Halcyon Atmosphere is a single-channel video made from found digital 3D models of guns. This work is part of pwn3d, a series of animations, objects and performances. pwn3d is a gaming term which refers to humiliating victory and appropriation, usually of a defeated player or computer system. The series explores the virtual gun which often serves as a stand-in for the body. I'm interested in how first-person shooter games assign value through the virtual gun to construct a particular masculine identity.

Bio
Shane Mecklenburger is an intermedia artist working between sculpture, media art and performance. His projects collaborate with systems of value, transaction and conflict by making diamonds, ‘weaponizing’ paint, turning happiness into money and repurposing shooter games. He holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently Assistant Professor of Art at The Ohio State University Department of Art. His work has exhibited at Hoxton Art Gallery/London; Texas Woman’s University; The Studio for ElectroInstrumental Music/ Amsterdam; The Übersee-Musuem/Bremen Germany; Antena Gallery/Chicago; El Centro Cultural Paso Del Norte/Juarez Mexico; The El Paso Museum of Art/Texas and The Dallas Museum of Art.

Jonathan Monaghan (Brooklyn, New York)

"Dauphin 007"
3:11 min, 2011, color, sound, CGI animated HD film on BluRay disc, 16:9

Referring to the heir-apparent to the French throne, Dauphin 007 is a short animation which draws on elements and narratives surrounding French monarchy. The Dauphin is portrayed as a would-be king lion who meets an untimely demise after an eagle snatches his crown away. Medical devices re-occur throughout the animation, hinting at a more contemporary form of institutional control. With an almost irreverent use and misuse of these references the film attempts to create an absurd reality that is both familiar and alien at the same time.

BIO
Jonathan Monaghan (b. New York, 1986) makes CGI animations with a range of iconic subject matter. From mythical animals, to video games characters, to Baroque architecture, Jonathan's work creates a distorted mix of reality, imagination and cultural critique. Work by Jonathan has been shown in the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., the BFI Southbank in London, the Today Art Museum in Beijing, as well as other galleries and venues in New York, Oslo, Berlin and London. Jonathan has been awarded residencies from MakerBot Industries in New York, Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, and Seven Below Arts Initiative from Burlington City Arts in Vermont.

Morehshin Allahyari (Dallas & Denver, USA)

"The Romantic Self Exiles" 
5:05 min, 2012, HD 3D animation, Color/B&W, sound design by Ivo Bol

To build a land; an imaginary home. To push the limits of real and unreal, memory and imagination, locality and universality, self censorship and self- exile, time and space. To put together my most vivid memories on flat planes or 3D cubes. Inside and outside the empty rooms, rooms without bodies, rooms left behind. To construct the remembered, missed, identical objects. Things I care for, love the most, miss the most... To put together every five sense of my body into one (“sight”) through text and animation. A reflection and presentation of emotional attachments. Collective and personal.

Bio
Morehshin Allahyari is a new media artist and an art activist. She was born and raised in Iran and moved to the United States in 2007. Her creative and research interest encompasses 3D animation, digital filmmaking, web-art / design, performance and extensive activity as a curator and producer. The topics of her practice include the social, political and cultural issues of Iran, creative writing, art activism, media art, and collaborative art. Morehshin’s animated films and curatorial projects have received world wide acclaim. She has been part of exhibitions, festivals, and conferences in Tehran, Denver, Dallas (Dallas Biennale + oliver Francis Gallery), Chicago, New York, Germany (The 7th Berlin International Directors Lounge (Berlin) + 25th European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück), Virginia (The Taubman Museum of Art), San Francisco, Denton (University of North Texas), Portland, Ohio, Brazil, Sweden, Romania (Arad art Museum), Netherlands, and Canada.

Bio
Jon Satrom undermines interfaces, problematizes presets, and bends data. He spends his days fixing things and making things work. He spends his evenings breaking things and searching for the unique blips inherent to the systems he explores and exploits.

By over-clocking everyday digital tools, Satrom kludges abandonware, funware, necroware, and artware into extended-glitchy-systems for performance, execution, and collaboration.

His time-based works have been enjoyed on screens of all sizes; his Prepared Desktop has been performed in many localizations. Satrom performs, develops, and organizes with I ♥ PRESETS, poxparty, and GLI.TC/H; in addition to executing other initiatives with talented dirty new-media comrades.

Jon Satrom (Chicago, USA )
"QTzrk_loop"
03:12 min, 2011, QTzrk, color, sound

When creating glitch-art, developing kludgy workflows is key. Softwares and languages with loop-holes, open-ports, and forgotten-functions are integral to constructing situations for glitching. In my mind, no other program embodied this ethic more than QuickTime. It's popularity, and the fact that it's development was to position itself within a multimedia paradigm yet-to-be solidified, makes QuickTime (versions 1.5 – 7.6) a quagmire of mystical features. The recent rewrite of QuickTime as QuickTime X threatens an environment that helped form my ideas of how malleable digital video can be. The drumbeat of "progress" has stripped esoteric codecs and functions in favor of the current flavors of standardized media consumption.

Popular computer program releases are similar to code-volcanoes barfing new functions on-top of themselves creating mountains of functionality. Due to the fact that QuickTime was one of the first popular desktop video playback and editing technologies, the program is full of strange utopic abandonware. Aside from the myriad of codecs available, two of my favorite QuickTime features are QTVR and the ability to skin one's own player. These are once celebrated features are now forgotten on the edge of the volcanic crater of QuickTime 7. After working and performing with these techniques for years, I have only been moved to articulate my love and investment as I find my go-to-tool on the chopping- block of our upgrade-culture. For now, I can rest assured: it's a weird-chopping-block; there's still time. For now, QuickTime7 has been transformed from a player into a utility. Even now (OSX 10.6.6), there are elements of QuickTime X that rely on the robust functionality of QuickTime 7.

When working against an upgrade culture and hesitant to celebrate a retro-ness within my own work, I'm forced to jump the shark and exploit my favorite functions before they are "legacy features"...
"QTzrk" is powered by QuickTime 7 on MacOS and Windows

Alysse Stepanian & Philip Mantione (Los Angeles)

"alysse 9.1"
2:57 min, 2001, Color/B&W, stereo, 4:3

Alysse Stepanian: video, voice, additional sound, text, animation design
Philip Mantione: music, animation programming, text, animation design

This short computer generated animation takes a humorous look at the hyperreal contemporary age of computers, with software upgrades and progress. This video was part of "liveReal", a multimedia performance presented for studio audience at DCTV in New York City, and broadcast live on Manhattan Neighborhood Network and dctvny.org (September 24, 2001). More info here...


BIO(S)
Alysse Stepanian: see bio here...

Philip Mantione is the Technical Director of Manipulated Image. He has composed music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, computer, fixed media, interactive performance, multimedia installations and experimental video. Selected venues include: Merkin Concert Hall (NYC), the Bing Theater at LACMA, the CCA in Santa Fe and the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona. He has participated in festivals worldwide including the European Media Art Festival (GE), Spring in Havana (Cuba), FILE 2010 and 2011 - Hypersonica (Brazil), and Zèppelin 2004 at CCCB (Spain). In 2010 he was awarded a grant from Meet The Composer, for his participation in an event he conceived called The Improvising Composer.

Michael Lasater (Indiana, USA)

"Epiphany"
5:17 min, 2006, color, stereo, HD video, 16:9
Sampled and synthesized sound, text, digital objects, animation

The medium is the message.
-- Marshall McLuhan

In Epiphany, I take medium to be the entire text of American advertising and entertainment in the 1950's and 1960's, expressed most profoundly in the content of television commercials. Two prom night sweethearts are at play in a mass media pinball game, their identities, assumptions, and aspirations all the product of American TV culture.

Bio
Michael Lasater was born in 1947, in Hutchinson, Kansas, USA. A professor, musician, filmmaker and gallery artist, he holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, the Juilliard School, and Syracuse University. His work in documentary and gallery art has been widely exhibited in the United States and Europe, including the Hun Gallery New York, California Museum of Photography, Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, University of Rome, Wienviertelfest-Austria, and others.

A narrative of glitches and beautiful failures. This video explores the terrifying as well as the creative potential of error.

Bio
Jenny Vogel (born in Germany, 1975) lives in New York and North Texas. She works in video, photography and computer arts. Vogel’s art explores the world as viewed through new media technology using web-cameras, blogs and Google searches as source material. She received her MFA from Hunter College (NYC) in 2003. She is a 2005 NYFA fellow in Computer Arts and is currently an Assistant Professor of New Media Art in the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas. Her work has been screened and exhibited in group and solo- shows in numerous locations and galleries: San Francisco Camerawork, CA; Arnolfini, UK; The Siberia Biennial, Russia; The Swiss Institute, NYC; EFA Gallery, NYC; Kunstwerke, Berlin; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, NYC.

BIO
Hart is currently Associate Professor in the department of Film, Video,New Media and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago. She is represented by bitforms gallery, NY. Her new works are part of The Sandor Family Collection, Chicago, the Theres Rohan Collection, San Francisco, the Leutz Teutloff Collection, Cologne, and the Borosan Collection, Istanbul.

Dream is a fluid environment evoking x-rays and the style of medical imaging as well as biological elements. Semi abstract, the animation suggests cells, blood vessels and a range of the visceral emissions that come from bodies.
Dream is also a way of imagining a digital body, on the edge of the abstract or the graphic, yet with the slow time and space of a painting or a dream or a dream of painting.

Dream consists of two parts. In the first, a fish-eye super wide-angle virtual camera has been rotated 90 degrees to be vertically oriented in the horizontal space. In the second, the camera's view point is similarly rotated from frontal to upwards. Both camera moves are unfamiliar because impossible with analog cameras, and so were deployed to create a sense of spatial ambiguity. The sound track, by composer Edmund Campion, also functions on an edge between representation and avant-garde composition, integrating sounds emitted by bodies and fluids with classical compositional strategies.

Dragon is created during 2012, the Chinese Lunar Dragon Year. Associating imagery of human brain with Dragon, one of the most significant cultural creations of China, the work reflects on intriguing meaning of this symbol of Power. Dragon, the imaginary, almighty creature, is the subject of many Chinese classics specially focusing on its ability of adjusting itself for controlling. This cultural icon is vividly alive throughout Chinese history, inspiring personal and national ambitions in both ancient and contemporary societies of China. Within this context, the short film visualizes how this thousand-year-old unreal creature has influenced Chinese people's mindset and thinking.

BIO(S)
Lily & Honglei (Xiying Yang, Honglei Li) work as an artist collective based in Beijing and New York. Their projects utilize traditional painting techniques and digital imaging technologies including animation, virtual reality and augmented reality, to construct an in-between space reflecting Chinese cultural heritages and current social issues in the context of globalization. Their solo exhibitions are held in Germany, China, Australia, United States and Mexico. They both studied fine arts in China and continued their education in art in the States. Lily Xiying Yang received Master of Fine Arts degree in Digital Media from College of Visual and Performing Arts at University of Massachusetts, while Honglei Li earned his MFA degree in Painting from the same school.

“The Realm of Possibility” is a digital animation based at the intersection of absurdity and logic. Deductive reasoning, as found in the syllogistic form (a is b, b is c, therefore a is c), becomes a vehicle to validate concepts that might not necessarily be true. The structure of the narrative is meant to parallel the premise of a syllogism. Many men use libraries; many libraries reference aviation; therefore, many men are pilots. In the end, navigation to another planet becomes a curious byproduct of flawed logic.

Guthrie teaches animation and foundation studies as a Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. His digital animations have screened in over one hundred national and international film festivals. Past screenings include the Prix Ars Electronica new media festival (2008, 2010), Anima Mundi (2010), the Melbourne International Animation Festival (2011) and the Seattle International Film Festival (2011). Guthrie’s work addresses ubiquitous questions that cannot be definitively answered. These are the questions that are woven into the fabric of culture and become the basis for such uniquely human pursuits as religion, ethics, philosophy, politics, and science. As such, he attempts to identify and exemplify many of the more inscrutable mysteries of everyday life.

Original Title- La terre occulte
Actors: Marie Sassigneux, Flore Sassigneux
Music: Leon Dane and Julie Loi (Alcalica)

Time deposits itself in layers that mount up stores –in the same way than the earth- as a form of sediments. In this piece, video is used as a tool to reveal different layers and stories of a temporary location. This dissection of the space generates a convulsion where the absences and the presences will meet their self, establishing a silent dialogue.

BIO
Albert Merino (Barcelona 1979) is graduate in Fine Arts in the University of Barcelona and the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee

During several years he has developed an extensive work of video between the cites of Paris, Barcelona and Berlin. Using a personal and intimate language, he develops a vast imagery where the video is used as a tool to intercede in the daily life, verging often irony and absurdity. His work covers different genres from experimental films, to videodance, or fake documentaries.

During the past two years, his work has been recognized with several awards, and was shown in exhibitions and festivals in several countries, such as, Los Angeles Art Fair, the Festival Madatac at Reina Sofia Museum, the Latin Videoart Festival of New York, the Collogne off Nomade’s Festival, and the Biennal of Art from Cerveira.

"Son Of King" is about a dream and possibility of split personality inside the dream and after. This animation was made by my photographs of Orlov’s (one of the lovest favorite of empress Ekaterina II) palace which was one of the biggest palaces in Moscow’s suburb. After revolution 1917 like almost all other palaces in Russia it was harried and then abandoned. Now it is almost a ruin/ but it is stiil great/ and i think tremendous mystify::::::::::::::::::::::::::::like fantastic faint of XVIIIcentury.

BIO
b. 1982, Moscow, Russia
2006 Humanities University of TV and Radio broadcasting named after M. A. Litovchin, faculty of moving images, Moscow
Mostly i am working with paintings, videos and sculptures. In my works i am trying to investigate zero emotional state of a human being. When one is in standby mode and one's conciousness begins to make its own absurd casual chains of logical conclusions. It is something between personality disorder and a trippy system. The presence of the absence.