Experimental but heartfelt, all fiction + mostly video.

Featuring: phantoms, parakeets, some animation, much smoke, Super 8 hi-jinks, several actors.

A compilation of too-close observation, animation, and stolen moments, The Seven Wonders of the World adds an eighth: survival at the edge of the known universe — bare-plus life. 

Combining shaky close-ups and stop-frame animations, the video examines people living at the margins of the society, struggling to survive.

In order of appearance: Raymond Beaudoin, Beverly Murray, Ralph Monk, Pauline Mellor, Robert Smith.

Hatsune Miku is a co-creation platform, personified by a cute and oddly seductive animated character. Fans bring her to life by creating content that she “delivers”. Her entire persona: lyrics, music and animation – is fan created, and that's her charm. Cosplaying Hatsune Miku, Ann Oren goes to Tokyo for a performative journey among these fans and explores the Miku phenomenon as an expression of collective fantasy. The habits of Miku's fans is a familiar exaggeration of our social media habits, that flood us with crowd creativity.

The disparate chronicles of a high school wrestling team, a flooded town of aliens, and the love affair between two young men. Performers responded to individual drawings and prompts to collectively generate improvisational dialog during the Pilot Conference: Experimental Media for Feminist Trespass, in Chicago, 2004.

With Becca Taylor

The desire to own and name land and the pleasures of seeing from a distance color this personal survey of the history of mapmaking in the New World. There There Square takes a close look at the gestures of travelers, mapmakers, and saboteurs that determine how we read - and live within - the lines that define the United States.

The evolution of man from ape to yuppie flashes before the viewer amid 3-D animation, paint box images, and digital compositions while a narrator provides satiric play-by-play commentary. Conceptually, verbally and graphically, man leaps forward through the centuries to master the litany of pop clichés and consumer culture acronyms of the modern age; and yet, he's never quite free of his original grunts. 

Tugging the Worm is an allegorical film that takes place in a utopian society which has faced the prospect that complete annihilation is an ever present possibility. Cork, an innocent bird-like creature, in a militaristic world that is dominated by high fashion and flashy billboards is befriended by the not too trustworthy bad boy named Vouku. Vouku’s tendency toward violent entertainment and vehicular homicide only serve to increase Cork’s angst. After a trip to the game their attitudes are changed by a vision of angels dancing at a ho-down on the head of a needle.

Computer graphics and RT/1 programming by Dan Sandin 
Original music and audio effects by Laurie Spiegel 
Algorithms & ray-tracer by John Hart
Mathematical research by Lou Kauffman
Visual leadership by Tom DeFanti

Walt Disney's re-imagineering of Martin Scorsese's classic film Taxi Driver follows Mickey Mouse-obsessed Travis Bickle as he looks for love in a rapidly transforming New York City. A 'fair use' parody by Bryan Boyce.

"A brilliant video essay."

-- Roger Ebert

A 19th Century etching of a bedroom in the Palace of Versailles is animated and depicts the room in the midst of an earthquake. Every detail, from the moldings to the small figures in the hung paintings, trembles. Eventually all the elements — objects, furniture, decorative features — fall and pile-up on the floor. The once crowded walls are left empty, with only a few lines signifying the space. As the objects fall and break, their initial significance is questioned. The once strong, solid symbols of power and glorification fall and break to useless shreds on the floor.

I could not remember anything about my childhood before the age of twelve. I made a decision to remember. West Fingerboard Road relays how I remembered my forgotten childhood memories, and references the writings of philosopher Gilles Deleuze that echo my ideas on memory and the process of remembering.

-- Susan Youssef

More than three thousand insects appear in this film each for a single frame. As the colours glow and change across their bodies and wings it seems that the genetic programme of millions of years is taking place in a few minutes. It is a rampant creation that seems to defy the explanations of evolutionists and fundamentalists. It is like a mescalin vision dreamt by Charles Darwin.

Live action and animation adaptation of an episode from Lautréamont’s 1868 anti-novel Maldoror.

This film has led a double life: in one version it forms part of an Anglo-German feature film collaboration (see below) based upon the eponymous anti-hero. But here it stands alone, and self contained - the same source of inspiration but a different edit with all new sound.

Angel appears to Weirdo and forces a distasteful issue.

An invitation to riff on Chapter 10 in the book of Revelations resulted in this short experiment. It merges full body motion capture and facial motion capture on both characters and blends between them.

Animation by: James Duesing
Technical Animation: Jessica Hodgins
Assistant: Vidya Vinnakota
Motion Capture Actor: Freddy Miyares
Motion Capture Tech: Justin Macey
Voices: Brady Lewis, Jimmy Dee

Thanks:
Wendy Arons, Anna Houck, Michael Mallis

Created with artist Jolie Ruelle. 

You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born is a visually stunning work that follows a woman through a life characterized by damage and loss, but in which she finds humor, love, and joy. With a score that follows the span of Lenore’s life, from her birth in the early 70s to her death in the 2040s, the film takes us from moments of harrowing loss to those of poignancy and dark humor.

You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born is a visually stunning work that follows a woman through a life characterized by damage and loss, but in which she finds humor, love, and joy. With a score that follows the span of Lenore’s life, from her birth in the early 70s to her death in the 2040s, the film takes us from moments of harrowing loss to those of poignancy and dark humor.

In the next chapter of Bobby Abate’s mysterious lo-fi cyborg tale, we find ourselves roaming the set of a 1960’s evening newscast. The mysterious unearthly being has claimed a new test subject and is making use of the station’s control room in attempt to communicate and perhaps reunite with his unshaven counterpart. Zenith is a celestial space, high above the clouds, where lonely frequencies and frantic spirographs pulse the dimension that separates the real from the rendered, the now from nostalgia--and ultimately divides these two beings (alter egos or lovers?)