The New Historia

THREAT  (1978) An award-winning solo video art work exploring themes of water scarcity, and water pollution.  It’s hard to imagine the technical limitations of those early days of video.

 

John had several large lengths of cheesecloth sewn together, then covered an entire dance class, in the dance studio, and directed the motion and movement. 

 

Using only a B&W video camera, and stretching the primitive post production technology available, colorizing the footage in post, shooting images off of a monitor (“re-scan”)

to create slo-mo, (since the tape machines couldn’t do that smoothly yet), using video feedback to create bubbles-like FX. 

 

John crafted his music score from his field recordings of water sounds; droplets, faucets, filling pans, streams, kids in a water park. 

He modified those sources by sending them through a Moog music synthesizer, then layered them in a multi-track analog tape studio. 

 

 

 

MEDIATION  (1979)  Another solo video art exploration, this time created In a more advanced tv studio environment, allowing multiple sources, a primitive character generator,

(Type on screen, like credit rolls), ability to mix in super 8mm movies.  Later this work was critically cited as an example of “glitch” art, celebrating the ragged edges when technology breaks down into textures… The texts tease at readability and weave back to electronic detritus.  Messaging explores the tautologies inherent in Progress and Human Extinction. 

 

Also John explores a primitive time-delay effect, created by jerry-rigging 2 tape machines together with one tape, stretched across a 6’ gap between them.  This allowed a sort of visual ‘echo’ effect, where the people walking on camera are layered over themselves walking 10 seconds earlier, which are both layered over the scene 10 seconds earlier, etc. 

 

The music score is a single studio performance take.  John ‘plays’ a bank of voltage-controlled sequencers, very wide-range and high speed, where stepping through the sequence at up to 10,000 cycles a second suddenly becomes a waveform itself, instead of a controller. 

 

 

MOUSEYFESTO  (2015)  A single-channel video art work, designed for projection on a screen, shown on a monitor, and also presented as a sculptural objet.  The Mouse relates his point of view about human overpopulation and water shortages. 

 

MOUSEYFESTO is a video art work who’s hero, a tiny mouse the size of my thumb, reflects upon how humans are overtaking the land, taking all the water, etc. in a fable-like storytelling voice…

 

 

 

WEAPONIZED BEAUTY  (I’ve written widely about this – I will dig out some good writing and sharpen it to emphasize this aspect of the work.