Chicago Works Project Descriptions

Chris Reilly
Hollow Self Portrait
1:37 Minutes, 2007

Hollow Self Portrait is one of a series of three self-portraits that are the product of preparing a model of myself for insertion into a 3D video game . These portraits include information collected from a 3D optical scan of my facial geometry, as well as two-dimensional photographs of my face and head. This information combines to produce an accurate 3D model of my head with realistic facial features, ready to be processed and inserted as a character into a video game (specifically the first person shooter Half Life 2).

Sasha Samochina
Cloudfalling
1:20 Minutes, 2006

Cloudfalling is a short digital video that represents a moment of simplicity and grandeur simultaneously. The video features a girl who blissfully floats above her bed. The details of her expression and childlike demeanor transport the audience into her frame of mind.

Aaron Henderson
Motive
2:53, 2008

Motive examines 8 University of Minnesota Cheerleaders as they perform. Their individual performances are composited into a flickering video of the group as a whole. The resultant concatenation reveals subtle shifts in gesture and affect as each individual cheerleader attempts to synchronize her movement with the others.

Amber Hawk Swanson
To Have , To Hold, and To Violate, Amber and Doll: Wedding Reception, Tailgate, Girls Gone Wild
7:00, 2008

Amber Hawk Swanson's compilation, To Have, To Hold, and To Violate, Amber and Doll: Wedding Reception, Tailgate, Girls Gone Wild explores the interplay between repulsion, desire, and surrender. In the piece, Swanson relies on spatial and temporal relationships inherent in ritualized settings. Each of her selected scenarios evokes nostalgia and camaraderie in spaces where the human impulses of curiosity, longing, hostility, and self-assessment are magnified. By inserting a sexually available silicone replica of herself into already charged environments, the possibility of peril often interrupts allegiance to the social codes of each space.

Stacia Yeapanis
We Have a Right to be Angry
4:44 Minutes, 2008 

In "We Have a Right to be Angry," appropriated footage from the television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Xena: Warrior Princess , and Charmed is edited together to Pat Benatar 's "Invincible." The video explores real female aggression, exposed through the vehicle of my own fictional heroes.

*Footage appropriated, edited and set to appropriated song by Stacia Yeapanis. Based on current copy-right law, I assert my right to Fair Use, but I do not own the rights to any individual parts of the video. Music: “Invincible” performed by Pat Benatar, written by Holly Knight and Simon Climie Buffy the Vampire Slayer footage owned by 20th Century Fox Television Xena: Warrior Princess footage owned by MCA Television Charmed footage owned by Paramount Pictures .

R. J. Chmiel
The Electric Breakfast Club
7:00 Minutes, 2006

This film flirts with the idea of a remake. By focusing on desensitized characters and dystopian ideals the source material (the original) is called into question as a valid timeless myth.

I Love Presets
2007.01.26
1:30 Minutes, 2007

This document is a recording of a live performance in Chicago , 2007. It consists of a custom video game being played live, with additional layers of hacked audio/video electronics, Windows screen-savers, fractals, Google images, velociraptors, and the original Metroid game. Audio consisted of home-built instruments, hacked electronics, and manipulated music/audio samples also being played live.

Sandra Rosas Ridolfi
The Final Amnesia
4:25 Minutes, 2008

This work questions our relationship to our own body, and what defines who we are. While listening to excerpts of the literary pieces that inspired it, we see different and contrasting material, some extremely familiar and other unfamiliar, controversial or hard to watch, waking us up and making us wonder in the  realization that the perception of the body is different for each of us.

Andrew Hicks
We Wear Our Houses on Our Back
2:30 Minutes, 2008

This short piece seems to be about hikers in the wilderness, however the ambient soundtrack created with synthesizers and simulated military chatter culled from cable TV presents a juxtaposition that is difficult to reconcile. Layers upon layers of hand held shots, stills, simulated film grain , and overexposure combine to portray the body in wilderness as an abstract aesthetic experience.

Emily Kuehn
The realTime and Life of John James Audubon
5:40 Minutes, 2008

Bit rot, the idea that hard coded data is subject to physical decay and economic support through storage media, illustrates that information is not a solid state. Fact is a constant state of Flux. The realTime and Life of John James Audubon looks at historical legacy and the social perception of science through the lens of information decay.

Taylor Hokanson
Small Exertions
3:00 Minutes, 2008

The motions of the body form a pattern that we are wired to recognize.  Can this motion be separated from the corpus that it animates?  Small Exertions is culled from digitally processed, low-quality internet video of physical activity, allowing the distractions of individuality to fall away.  The remaining deconstruction can be viewed as a layered series of interconnected loops, or as a singular, amorphous organism.

Matthew Nelson
Every Combination Lights On, Lights Off,
1:35 Minutes, 2007

Every Combination: Lights On, Lights Off is a multi-channel video installation, where existing light fixtures become a controlled combination. Custom electronics were programmed and wired into the architecture of the studied space. Through turning the lights on and off in every possible permutation the programmed code shows the space a new light. The video consists of five perspectives where shadows and bleeds of light allow the viewer to reconstruct or recreate the space. Marshall McLuhan states, "electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message..." Thus allowing the logic structure of the code to be seen and to affect the physicality of the space.

Niki Nolin (with poet Maureen Seaton)
Drought
1:45 Minutes, 2007

Drought is an intimate moment. Time spent contemplating how much we give and how much we receive from giving in our journey through life. Representing heartbeat and flow, resonating with quiet persistence and faith that everything works toward good even when the fruits of our actions are not immediately apparent. Drought is a poetry video collaboration that integrates the work of poet, Maureen Seaton and media artist, Niki Nolin. The intent was to create a seamless blending of text and image so that no one element outweighs the other. They breathe life to each other. Red beauty.

Jared Larson
Three Familiar Minutes
3:33 Minutes, 2008

This short work is a slice of familiarity. As we age we see each other less, and these moments, though familiar, end up being more and more rare. The use of stills brings a nostalgia, but also recalls more precisely, the moment as it appears in our memory.

Janell Baxter (with composer Dr. Joseph Cancellaro)
Yen
3 Minutes, 2008-A generative piece exploring order and random; a random photograph of a Japanese shrine garden (from Meiji Jingu, Senso-Ji, or Chingodo-Ji in Tokyo , or Heian Jingu in Kyoto ) is used as the basis for each iteration. As the work attempts to create a greater verisimilitude, random elements disrupt the process. A balance is achieved as the piece evolves.