“Sun Mapping” is an experimental video that animates the pathway of the sun juxtaposed with imagery of natural specimens collected along a coastal setting. The project, a unique merging of analog and digital processes, is a poetic exploration of the symbiotic relationship between the oceanfront landscape, its ecosystem, and the greater cosmos. Musical score created by Sherman Finch.
Originally commissioned for the Port of Authority Building in Corpus Cristi, TX, the project was curated by Mary Magsamen and sponsored by The Aurora Picture Show and The Weingarten Art Group. photo credit: Mary Magsamen
Production Artists: Annie Sungkajun, Eman Zubeidi, and Drew Gillie
5-min. single channel video
“Lifeline” is an abstract visualization of the flow of water. In this piece, samples (represented as lines in the video) were extracted from footage of various bodies of water. Similar, in a way, to a doctor drawing blood or a scientist collecting water specimens to test the health of a lake. In the resulting work, the layered audio of a heartbeat draws parallels to the human body as lines move across the composition like veins or air passages.
Audio by Sherman Finch
9-min. | single channel video
3 min. | Super 8mm film
Shot on Super 8mm film, “Midnight, Houston” is a video poem that depicts, in mythic terms, a parent’s attempt to share with their child the beauties and depravities of the city of their nativity: Houston. A collaborative project with poet Nick Rattner, originally created for "Location: Houston Poetry+Film Collaboration", sponsored by Aurora Picture Show and Public Poetry for the 2022 REEL Poetry Festival.
Music by Sherman Finch
10 min. theatre version | 16 min. installation loop
Sun Notations is an experimental video that animates over 50 pinhole solargraphs - a unique merging of analog and digital processes. The original images capture the pathway of the sun rising and setting over time, with exposures that lasted one hour up to an entire year. Here, time and space expand, overlap, and then dissipate as clusters of dust appear like stars, the landscape morphs into abstraction, and sunlight traces across the screen like a drawing in motion.
Audio by Matt Steinke. Production Assistant: Ashley Lane and Annie Sungkajun
Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Republic of Korea
Public outdoor screening during the 2019 ISEA conference, Asia Culture Center Media Wall, Gwangju, Republic of Korea, June 22-28, 2019. 16 min. video created from animated still solargraphs of the sun's pathway. Special modified format to accommodate dimensions of the media wall.
4 min. | single-channel video
Emmett Street is based on a poem about a female ghost who lives in an old house with two women. In this piece, the ghost becomes a metaphor for the fading analog film medium and an homage to the women who worked in the film industry in the early 20th century. Sample clip is from a re-edit of a 2005 film shot on Super8mm. The new version includes a re-working of the original content.
Poem by Rene Steinke
Audio by Sherman Finch
4 min. | single channel video
The Earth is Not a Spaceship is an experimental film that remixes vintage educational source footage collected by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. A woman’s voice narrates the film, functioning as a type of mother nature character. The narration becomes haunting and robotic when coupled with glitchy film footage that has been re-recorded off of various electronic devices. The reworking of the footage presents new meaning at the intersection of abstraction, the digital sublime, and a potential dystopian future.
Created for “Mess With Texas”, co-presented by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, Aurora Picture Show, Houston, TX
Sample clips from a larger ongoing multi-media body of work titled “Time Scraps From the Universe”. (also see “collage”)
I have an hour drive to my teaching job. Sometimes, I feel like the only chance to appreciate nature is when I am witnessing an astonishing sunset amidst an afternoon traffic jam or being blinded by sun glare on a morning drive to work. Over the past six years while commuting, I have been photographing the morning and late afternoon sun from my car window with my cell phone. “Our closest star shot from my car” explores the desire to connect with the natural world within the chaos of our busy contemporary life.
6:27 min. | single channel video
Created for “Mess With Texas”, co-presented by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image and the Aurora Picture Show, Houston, TX.
Eyes On Texas remixes vintage film footage, highlighting common stereotypes about Texas and its history. Audio is used as the main source for this film, as a way to emphasize how these characterizations are deeply rooted in our cultural imagination.
Guest curator Peter Lucas invited a number of Texas artists to create new video works using vintage source footage collected by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. The re-workings are creative intersections of past and present, bringing new life and new perspectives to regional media memory.
4:35 min. | single-channel video, credits: the aka collective
349 Utopia Drive is an ironic portrayal of suburbia and the conquest for the American dream home. The suburbs were created as a type of refuge from the hustle and bustle of city-life; affordable living that was safe, clean, and aesthetically pleasing. Just like anywhere/ anyplace, darker, more complicated realities lie hidden beneath the surface.