Video Art

A gentle meditation on “the difficulties challenging traditional beauty in the post-modern era”, this immersive video installation strategically overwhelms the viewer’s eye from 3 sides, filling their peripheral vision. Each of 3 HD channels are presented up to 16’ wide x 9’ tall, for a total of 48’ wide. This vast experience can’t be fully appreciated online or on a single screen. This excerpt starts with a mockup of the 3 screens, then continues with the center screen only…

Zieman shot all the footage, wrote the texts, edited, and also composed the 48 track soundtrack, solo in the studio. This work was presented in various galleries and art fairs in US and Europe. Original length 5:25 (Excerpt 1:52) Edition of 5, with 2 AP.

Zieman shoots Super 8 movie film, of broadcast tv, probably 1979. His music composition and titles added, probably 1981-84.

There is no way to experience the impact of this work, without wearing 3-D glasses. Every frame of the program is composed featuring depth perception; each has a separate left eye and right eye file. Viewers put on the 3D glasses and are transported in a visceral way.

TS3 / TIME SUITE 3 is the third in Zieman’s TIME SUITE series, which features animated type, literally words as light, projected on the human form. The new stereo optical technology allows the viewer to literally feel Word Art wrapping in 3d around the sculptural human form, like tattoos or a T-shirt slogans. Filmed in a dramatic NYC exterior location, where the shots naturally feature great spatial depth.

(Most 3-D productions, like movies, are 100% animation, for technical production reasons, it is rare to feature organic photography.)

Zieman used a prototype 3D camera with twin lenses; provided as a production grant from Panasonic. Lensing by Manfred Reiff, music by John Petersen.

The second work in Zieman’s TIME SUITE series, “First Dream” presents a floating illusory world, featuring the artist’s text literally projected upon the bodies of the subjects, both human and otherworldly.

As the type wraps around their forms, the subjects literally ’embody’ their texts. Dancers move into positions to reveal type designed to meet them. Texts seem to explode off the violent thrusts of a couple.

Within the dreamlike tableau, supernatural beasts appear – perhaps to observe the proceedings – perhaps with curiosity, perhaps with munificence. Lensing by Manfred Reiff, music by John Petersen.

A transcendent fragmentary moment is captured, as Zieman explores the poignant tautologies of “Necro-Tourism” — the drive to visit dramatic places, immediately, before all the traditional and unique is lost, or unrecognizable…

Shot by Zieman in Mariazell, AU in 2017. Zieman edits & composes the musical score during early Covid, 2020, while NYC is suffering great loss of life, and no funerals or memorial gatherings are permitted.

This video art “self portrait” was commissioned by the curator of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts “New Portraiture” group show. Zieman’s unconventional narrative structure portrays him in a place; Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, with its sounds, vistas and textures. He is faintly revealed — in the reflections of windows, the increasingly repetitive pace of life. This pulse of life is echoed in his music composition, which features an unusual melodic figure – a five-measure bass line. (vs. the conventional four or eight) which he obsessively pursued, throughout a variety of musical creative environs, from bedroom studio to large multitrack recording studios. Video, music, and editing by Zieman.

This solo video art exploration was created In an advanced tv studio environment for its era; color cameras; “A/B roll” time-code editing, a “film chain” to mix in movie film and slides, and a primitive character generator, providing text on screen, titles & credit rolls. 30 years later, in a solo gallery retrospective, this work was critically cited as an example of “Glitch Art”, celebrating the ragged edges when technology breaks down, and image abstracts into textures… The on-screen texts tease at readability, then fade away into electronic detritus. The messaging explores the tautologies inherent in Human Progress and Species Extinction. Visually, Zieman exploits a primitive time-delay effect, jury-rigging 2 videotape machines together with one tape, stretched across a 6’ gap between them. This allowed a sort of visual ‘echo’ effect, where subjects are iteratively layered over themselves 10 seconds earlier, etc. The sound score is a single 30 minute studio performance take. Zieman ‘plays’ a bank of unique, military-grade voltage-controlled sequencers, very wide-range and high speed… Stepping through the sequence at typical speed plays a melodic phrase, but as the sequence speed approaches 20,000 cycles a second, the sequencer suddenly becomes a sound waveform itself. Original length 30 mins (Excerpt 1:52)

Time Suite is the first in a series of large screen video art installations for gallery & museum display. Zieman develops an innovative creative methodology, literally projecting animated texts on the body. This creates a sort of “layered portrait” using light, (not a post effect.) The texts, with the brevity of t-shirt slogans or tattoos, explore the human sensations of time, as it passes through the body.

Lensing by Manfred Reiff, music by John Petersen. Time Suite was assisted by production grants from Arriflex, and Sony. It premiered at The Bridge Art Fair, and showed in galleries and art fairs

MOUSEYFESTO (2015) (HD, Stereo) Exhibited as a sculpture, featuring a video monitor inside a cork plinth, also exhibited as a single channel HD. A thumb-sized mouse, rendered into a nearly psychedelic, god-like presence, musing upon human overpopulation and water shortages, saying: “Well, you know, The trees have long memories, and they say – The humans used to struggle, now they are overtaking. Natural predators used to keep the herd size down – Now even the weak ones are reproducing. The runoff from their nests messes up the ponds, the lakes, the oceans. They messed up the air, even the weather. Seems like every year, it’s the storm of the century. They chopped down so many trees, and these crazy new winds break the arms off the trees that are left. The human are totally overbreeding. They drill down so deep to drink the water first. Overpopulation! They are their only enemy, and they’re gonna take us all out with them!

Video, Edit, & stereo music composition, by John Zieman, 1979.
On a visit to Chinatown, NYC, in 1979, Zieman shoots a solo field recording. Color video cameras were still rare then, and his rig weighed over 40 lbs. He edits with a then-new feature, the option to manually freeze the picture frame. Zieman composes, performs, and engineers the free-form music — alone in a large professional 16trk studio. The control room was located far from the mix desk, so he would hit record, then run down the very long hallway, and slide behind the piano, to perform. Ah, those Analog days!