Creation (Megaplex), 2012
3-D High Definition disc Color, sound 4 min., loop Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica + info Creation (Megaplex) is the completion of the Megaplex trilogy of 3D video collages. Set within the form of a giant DNA double-helix, Creation (Megaplex) takes the viewer on a spiraling trajectory that begins with a big bang and continues through embryonic inception, idyllic Eden-like bliss and decadences, and culminates in annihilation - only to then interminably re-invent itself. A hyper-realistic landscape of clouds, meadows, and burning cityscapes is created against which this cycle of human endeavour unfolds. |
Atlantis (OV-104), 2012
High Definition disc Color, sound 03:15 min., loop Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica + info Atlantis (OV-104) is a video commemoration, an imagined future archeological record of the Space Shuttle, and potentially NASA’s manned space program as well. Filmed at the VAB at the Kennedy Space Center, the piece captures the Atlantis as it was in its final moments as a functioning shuttle. Photographed with an old tube camera, with that footage then run through monitors and rephotographed, the piece has a vibrating degraded quality, a transmission from the analogue to the digital age, the time of flesh & blood in space to the unmanned explorations of the present. The images at once concretely echo the distress of the Atlantis’ surface tiles, and more metaphorically recall the portrayal of human explorations of extinct advanced civilizations in science fiction films. |
Evolution (Megaplex), 2010
3-D High Definition disc Color, sound 03:04 min., loop "The Dark Lining", Santa Monica Museum of Art + info Evolution (Megaplex) is the second in a series of large scale video collages and the first work to be executed in stereoscopic 3D. The history of humankind is illustrated as a vast side-scrolling video mural depicting the spectacle of human conflict across time through the lens of cinema. The source material is genre film; the samples are looped and combined in a remix that seamlessly moves through past, present, and future providing a satirical take on the bombast of the big-budget "epic." |
Flashback (POV), 2010
Blu-ray high definition disc Color, sound 01:22 min., loop Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica + info Flashback is the first in a series of sampled works exploring subliminal collective consciousness in film. This piece weaves together Film Noir imagery to create a kinetic video canvas visualizing the spectrum of human emotion and recall using the principles of cognitive psychology |
Civilization (Megaplex), 2008
Single-channel video Color, sound 03:00 min., loop Collection Fundacion Sorigue, Lleida, Spain + info Civilization is a multi-layered tableau of interconnecting images that illustrates a contemporary, satirical take on the concepts of eternal punishment and celestial reward. More than 300 individual channels of looped video are blended into an expansive landscape that continuously scrolls upward, from the depths of hell to the gates of heaven. |
Cathedral, 2008
Single-channel video installation Color, sound 9:32 min., loop Collection Metronome Foundation, Barcelona + info Cathedral was filmed at the Toronto Eaton Centre mega mall during the Christmas shopping season. Here is consumerism as spectacle: Throngs of shoppers circulate in slow motion, in superimposed and multi-layered images that transform the mall into a kaleidoscopic, hallucinatory space. The cyclical montage is inspired by the time and motion studies of Frederick Winslow Taylor and Frank Gilbreth, which date from the American industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century. The video is installed in a mirrored box, bringing the video into three dimensions and further multiplying the images. |
Wall of Death, 2001
Single-channel video Black and white, sound 2:40 min. Collection New Line Cinema, Los Angeles + info In the carnival act “Wall of Death,” first performed in the 1930s, a motorcyclist rides around the inside of a wooden drum, maintaining a delicate state of equilibrium between centrifugal force and gravity. The video is made up of a series of motion loops that become progressively shorter, creating the illusion of continuous motion: The rider is caught in a never-ending, never decelerating circle. The editing technique, inspired by the Kinetoscope films popular during the time the act was widely performed. |
Cyclorama, 1999
Nine-channel video installation Color, sound 3:20 min. Collection San Francisco Museum of Modern Art + info Filmed in 35mm at nine revolving restaurants across North America—including ones in Seattle, Las Vegas, St. Louis, and New York—Cyclorama presents nine panoramas side by side in a cylindrical enclosure that mimics the restaurants’ architecture, creating the sense of one continuous, moving landscape. The sun rises at the same moment on each screen, erasing time zones and providing a 360-degree view of the Western horizon. |
Sea of Tranquility, 2006
Single-channel video Color, sound 3:00 min. + info In this computer-generated “time-lapse study” of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, the Eagle spacecraft and the American flag planted alongside are shown as they slowly disintegrate. Beginning with the original image transmitted on television, the video compresses years into seconds, until nothing remains but a pile of rubble—a cynical commentary on the decay of American idealism from the ’60s to the present day. The sound is taken from recorded radio transmissions between mission control and the lunar base, but the dialogue has been removed; all that remains are the beeping radio carrier signals, static, and interference. |
Sync, 2005 |
Getaway, 1999
Single-channel video installation Color, sound 02:40 min., loop Collection San Francisco Museum of Modern Art + info Shot from the point of view of a passenger aircraft, Getaway begins with an aerial view of a generic industrial district and ends with a landing on the main runway at Los Angeles’s LAX airport. The video is presented on a small LCD screen in a plastic setting designed after a 1970s Pan Am airline tray—a relic from a time when passengers could fly in style. |
HalfLife (Surveillance Channel), 2002
Three-channel DVD Color, sound 09:41 min., loop Collection IFEMA, Madrid Collection Metronome Foundation for Contemporary Art, Barcelona + info The multi-channel video installation HalfLife juxtaposes surveillance footage of video gamers in cyber-cafés playing the popular video game, ‘Counter-Strike’, with a live video feed of the game they are playing. The surveillance channel shows their expressions from the cross-hairs’ point-of-view while the game engine channel captures their virtual actions inside the game-world and presents the interplay and interactivity between both |
HalfLife (Game Engine channel), 2002
Three-channel DVD Color, sound 09:41 min., loop Collection IFEMA, Madrid Collection Metronome Foundation for Contemporary Art, Barcelona + info The virtual world of ‘Counter-Strike’ is re-photographed from a live video feed from each player’s point of view as they play against each other in the same environment or “map”. The gamers’ actions are recorded as they engage each other in various missions: when a character is killed off in the game, the real player and the corresponding surveillance footage disappears. |
Approach, 1999
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Superstar, 1999
Single-channel DVD color, sound, rear projection 04:41 min., loop + info Inspired by Yves Klein’s Leap into the Void (1960), Superstar was commissioned by Creative Time to be presented on the Jumbotron screen in Times Square, New York City. The subject appears perpetually frozen in time while the document of the moment itself slowly descends. Filmed in a pre-Matrix era, the performance in Superstar was captured with 180 cameras mounted in a 360 degree ring that show a 1/500 second wedge of time. |
 Sequel, 2001 Single-channel DVD 35 mm with audio 02:50 min. + info Film footage of Sylvester Stallone in Brambilla's 1993 debut feature-film, Demolition Man, is re-photographed through the gate of a 35mm projector and presented as the Sequel. The movement of the film gradually begins to slow until the light from the projector lamp begins to disintegrate the celluloid film. |
 Pulse, 1999 Three-channel DVD Color, sound, rear projection 01:48 min., loop + info Referencing Eadweard Muybridge’s black and white motion-study photographs, Pulse presents life-size projections of male subjects aged 8, 14, 24, 48, and 76 running on electric treadmills set to 5.5 miles per hour. They wear heart monitors that trigger a strobe behind each subject. The speed of the individual sections is manipulated so that the strobes become synchronous to match the slowest heartbeat of the 24 year-old subject. |
 O% Health (Dramatization), 2002 Single-channel DVD Color, sound 01:00 min., loop + info Based on a re-enactment of a stabbing incident that took place outside of a cyber-café in 1999, 0% Health is filmed in the style of reality television at the actual location of the incident. The graphic content is exaggerated by the treatment of the action and its endless repetition, while the term 0% Health" references the state a video gamer experiences during a virtual death in the game ‘Counter-Strike'. |
 Continue, 1985/1997 Single-channel, DVD Color, silent 00:07 min., loop + info A man walking towards the viewer, in Continue, is filmed holding a card in which the same footage is projected in reverse. This effect creates an endless loop where he is caught perpetually in motion between two finite points in space. |
 Arcadia, 2000 Unique Six-channel DVD Color, sound 02:17 min., loop Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York + info Presented by Creative Time in the Brooklyn Anchorage, this six-channel video installation of the “Millennium Force” in Ohio, is composed of two towers with screens that show the slow ascent and the 300-foot drop, that takes place at 92 mph in the span of three seconds. The towers create a narrow perspective, placing the viewer outside of the particular “sweet” spot from which they could best observe the full ride of the world’s highest and fastest roller coaster. |
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