Video
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I recommend you right-click and choose "save as"
Over the past 6 years, I devoted a lot of time and energy to create tons and tons of video art, much of which was shown at Mondo events, and then was later collected onto DVDs. In (roughly) chronological order of creation:
Video Shorts DVD #1
9 video shorts compiled together, mostly created during my last two years at UIC, and the first piece I made after college.
1. Change - My first post-college video. I still love the imagery, but the sound never was quite what I wanted. Just had to declare the piece done. It's about the transformative qualities of drug use/drug addiction. (not really pro or con)
2-4. Next follow the Dream Machines. These pieces use video in which I cut out frames to make it so the TV flashes light at the viewer at specific rates in order to synchronize your brainwaves to the patterns they achieve during the sleep cycle.
2. Dream Machine #1 flashed 10 times per second to trigger beta waves (the point in the sleep cycle just before waking/after falling asleep). Somehow the most effective of the three. (wmv)
3. Dream Machine #2 flashed 6 times per second to trigger gamma (? I'm doing this from memory 6 years later) waves which if I'm remembering correctly is the REM cycle.
4. Dream Machine #3 flashed 3 times per second to trigger delta waves, which is deep sleep.
5. Screens - This piece was meant as a video version of sampling (like with my old Boss SP-202 sampler). Three TVs in a dark room showing different loops which all contain lots of black screen time. Intended to keep the viewer off-guard and off-balance.
6. Thought You Knew Better - A short looping video with parallels one of my recurring dreams. In this case, dreaming that you're waking up, walking down the hall, and pouring a glass of water. Repeat
7. Absorbtion - My earliest experiment in video mixing. Very lo-tech style. Still feel good about this piece. (wmv)
8. Exodus - A piece that really just fell together from documentary footage of a jam session and entirely unrelated sound. Works though.
9. Slow Twist - Simple video where each channel being mixed on the audio mixer which is the main image corresponds to a video layer which matches the fades in and out of the audio.
Dreamstates Clip
(A 74 minute long video piece in which I tried to create the rough feeling of a dream or altered state of consciousness which was probably too ambitious of an undertaking for three months worth of work. Not as good as it would've been (suffered from storage problems when editing, this was made in 2000, back when it cost a ton for 20 GB of storage space, so I had to edit in small chunks). Either way, felt I put so much into it that I had to make it available.
cinephile Clip (wmv)
Whole piece (divx)
Another long piece, which is the result of one very solid month of editing found footage in order to obscure it as fully as possible and transform it into something beautiful and abstract. The title is a combined word which should roughy translate from the two roots; "cine" meaning film, "phile" meaning, more or less, lover. So cinephile= "film lover".
DJ Puzzle/Kevin Gondek - Live @ Bar Veritgo
This is simply a document of some of the live video setups I was doing around Chicago at the time. 2-3 times a week in the summer of '04 I would bring out my equipment to a bar that one of my friends had a residency at and would find some interesting video setup or another to try to get crowds interested. Usually didn't work out too well. Put this one on DVD because I liked the best out these setups, and I liked the DJ set a lot too.
Video Mix june 28th, 2004 Whole
piece (divx)
The other type of video I was doing a lot of in summer '04 was live video mixing/VJing. I did it for bands (michael columbia, the silent treatment, lacona, millimeter dragon, etc.) and DJs (onefiftyone, thomas wax, DJ Puzzle, etc.). unlike the simple setups, the video mixing usually went over well, but could be a little draining on me and I started to get pretty tired of using the sam source material so much, and had little time to create or hunt down new stuff, so the video mixing has been far less frequent for me this past year. If I remember correctly, the two DJs during this mix are RE:Issue and one of the guys from mahjongg (can't remember which).
forgive, forget, ferment Clip (wmv)
Whole piece (divx)
This is actually a test of the setup for the DJ Puzzle DVD with different source video (dreamstates, actually) and the entire environmental sound collapse album "forgive, forget, ferment" as the audio source. Works better than I had imagined it would.
Video Shorts Vol. #2
The second collection of shorter works, from the first half of '04. 6 short videos.
1. bombs, red squares, and pop stars - A newer take on the same idea I had for "screens" just done with source footage of, well, bombs, red squares, and pop stars. Shown at Mondo on three TVs all looping each portion, which in theory would make it nearly endless, since I intentionally made the loops different lengths. (wmv)
2. Untitled #1 - Hard to describe this piece, or explain it. I just find it soothing to watch.
3. Hallucinogen - This piece was a contest entry, really. I decided to see how good I was compared to VJs worldwide (or at least who went to the same web page I did). I also decided to up the challenge by limiting myself to a 24-hour period to work on my submission. The contest was meant for you to create video for a psy-trance festival up in Quebec, and despite having to find out what "psy-trance" was, I somehow won. Still not sure how.
4. Sketch - Kind of encapsulates how I felt around then. I was stretched so thin, I felt I was being erased.
5. Smack - A reaction to an old friend of mine's drug problems. (wmv)
6. Van Gogh Clouds - Just and experiment in image manipulation.
DVD Shorts, Vol. 3
Another collection of video shorts, from late 2004-2005. Too many videos to list them all separately, but sections will work well.
Media Reclamation - 6 videos in which I deconstructed music videos and popular music, trying to make something I like out of what is shoved down our throats by the media. (never say you're sorry or downloading illegally, wmv)
4 bit, 8 bit - 5 videos of layered Nintendo game footage with a soundtrack done on a Game Boy (part of the environmental sound collapse album, BTR8). (Elves&Shields, wmv)
Becoming a Modern Philosopher in Your Spare Time- A 4-video instruction manual on turning yourself into a pseudo-intellectual. Very tongue-in-cheek.
Then, two newer video mixes.
and finally...
cinemort - A continuation of the cinephile idea with different source footage. Where cinephile dealt with love, cinemort deals with death.
On
War, Technology and Capitalism Clip (wmv)
(divx)
4 videos constructed out of old cartoons meant to teach children about how great the US is, and how wonderful war, capitalism and atomic energy are. Fun to make.
Video Shorts Vol. 4
Collects the last of the works I did with Mondo so far, plus a few things that were floating around without a home.
nintendolotry - A few more pieces like the "4 bit, 8 bit" videos, this time with songs from the environmental sound collapse CD of the same name. (Castlevania 3, wmv)
war machine - Is one those videos that never quite worked how I wanted. I think I distorted things too much and the subject of the source material got lost to the audience.
kevin gondek vs. millimeter dragon - Both performances from March of '04 that Millimeter Dragon did at Mondo and I did video mixing. Sound isn't great and the camera was all the way back where I was doing my mixing, but it gets the idea across. Round 1 (wmv)
2 more video mixes, and...
4 DJ companions - Which are just oddly manipulated music videos/footage from pop culture meant to go with a mix CD onefiftyone was working on, but I had to pull out of the project since I had almost no free time at that point.
"elements" / "endless loop DVD"
Limited to 10 copies ONLY.
"elements" - A simple piece about the beauty of nature.
"endless loop DVD" - “endless loop DVD” is a series of 49 short video loops which are navigated through by means of the arrows on your DVD player remote. Goes great at a party along with your choice of music and the remote out on the coffee table.