the imagery and process

artreading is a response to image saturation in contemporary culture, a critique of image excess as it relates to cultural memory, and a personal attempt to remember images from the multitude presented in the art, architecture and film magazines that appear monthly on my doorstep.

The film component of artreading is made using cameraless techniques. As I read through magazines, I remove images that I find generally interesting, or because they inspire my own work in other media – interestingly many of them are already cinematic in character.  I press 16mm splicing tape onto sections of the images I choose.  The taped sections are then cut away, placed in water, and the paper is pulled away.  Ghosts of the original images remain on the tape, which is then ironed onto 16mm clear leader.  Each image section is usually 10-12 inches long, and is spliced onto the previous section.  The order of the sections in artreading mirrors the order in which I read and select the included images.

In the context of my interest in scientific imagery, objects and processes, artreading is an exercise in recombination.  The joined and juxtaposed film segments are individual, genetic units that determine the structure and development of the film.

the music (Russell Pinkston, performed by Gregory Allen)

TaleSpin is a short musical fantasy, written in a quasi-romantic style. It has something of a program, too, whose subject may be evident from the section titles: Telltale, Hot Topic, Blissful Ignorance, Morning After Songs, Still Spinning, and Picking up the Pieces.  Many of the electronic sounds are processed sounds recorded inside the piano, including stopped and bowed notes, plucked and struck notes, prepared notes, etc. In the outer fast sections, it is similar to a piano 4 hands piece, with the computer responsible for the middle two "hands." The computer part is relatively simple and accompanimental, however, while that played by the performer - the outer two hands - is soloistic and quite virtuosic.