In the “organic” world of physical objects and the human mind, sharp differences tend to smudge into soft transitions as materials or processes mix and interfere with each other. Sharp distinctions soften as edges are manipulated. The simplest image for this is a hill. One can cut a vertical face off of a pile of dirt with a shovel, but it quickly becomes a slope over time. One can push at materials and get a feel for how a variable situation responds in the moment, whether one is pushing ink around on a printing plate or overdriving an electric guitar. Properties of clay, wax, ink, and paint vary with the warmth of the day and the artist’s hands. With sensitive materials, it’s never the same tool as the one you remember from the day before, and that need for continual rediscovery leads to all kinds of promising surprises.

In digital media, all gradations are designed and programmed – a tawnier red is simply a different number in a system of colors, and all blending is done with algorithms. There is no “in between” in any situation, except one that is mapped by a programmer with a specific point of view of what, for instance, color, is. Programs like Corel Painter are astonishing in their simulation of color mixing, light reflection, fluid transparency, etc., but in some basic sense, they don’t even come close to the range of possibility of a cheap box of paints. One can try new combinations of options and in some programs one can design new logical procedures from existing components, but at some point, one comes up against a wall: one is limited to the tools and options that the programming team thought of. And the display resolution. And glassy flatness. (In practice, there’s often a sense of limitless possibility with digital tools, which is also real. But I’m following a thread here, ignoring my own obvious objections for the moment…)

Of course, I’m familiar with the other side of this paradox, and if I wasn’t astonished and seduced by the range of possibility that digital cinema, still image, and sound tools provide, I wouldn’t have spent the last several years working with them. There is still something missing for me, and it’s worth trying to articulate. In my experience, few of those who know how to use the tools even perceive a problem. On the other hand, few of the people I know who shun them for more physical media have enough working experience with digital media to be more than petulant or mutely resistant. They’re just not “that kind of person,” which is a lousy reason to choose a tool.

These days, digital “resolution” is astonishing, whether you look at cinema or use sound tools. One can perceive the issue better by looking not at the impressive level of focus and forests of options, but at the edges, at the margins where information becomes distorted as the tool fails to handle the information that’s arriving. In a nutshell, for reasons I alluded to before, physical, or analog distortion tends to be “soft,” while digital distortion is always hard (unless it’s modulated by one or another kind of “simulated” softness. The simulation can be convincing, but it’s not an oil painting or an acoustic guitar.

Why should it be? Well, it shouldn’t, and there’s nothing wrong with these tools. What strikes me as wrong is an emerging society that has no visceral concept or experience of a non-virtual world. I teach students who are puzzled by my suggestion that a good reproduction is not the same thing as an oil painting. A digital version certainly has more “features” (scaleability, portability, etc.), and if the digital print has the same hues in the same relationships, well, what’s the problem? Why would one want to see a piece of music played live? Why watch movies on film?

The Game of the Goose dates back to at least the 1500s, and this etching is related to a version that was printed in England around 1800 by John Wallis. Played with dice, this is considered the prototype of all “race” games, and a variety of terrors, dangers, and opportunities lurk on the way to the central portal. Some of these, like Death, ended the game entirely for the unlucky player. This was a drinking and gambling game, and if one landed on the Ale House, for instance, one would be obliged to add money to the pot, drink, then wait through a whole cycle of turn-taking before rejoining the race. Falling in The Well could also cause wet, frustrating delays. On the other hand, landing on a Goose would double the number one rolled, allowing one to swiftly proceed toward victory and profit. Original impressions of this early British printing are exceptionally rare, the late 20^th century Waldemar variant even more so. It is one artifact of my continuing study of how the human species spends their time. It’s a small edition (7). Go to Ink Lounge and buy one, or at least look at it. Here’s the site for the show:

http://www.inkloungegallery.com/pages/exhibits.html

See you there.

Two recent works, The Thinking Truck and Canvas Cinema: Thinking is Finding will take up over half of the show at “Faux Mouvements… and Other Excursions ,” which will be screened twice:
Monday, November 17th at 7:00 and Sunday, November 23rd at 3:30, at Starz Film Center (at the Tivoli, on the Auraria Campus in Denver). Who knows? These shows could be rapidly selling out, so make sure to get some tickets. The link: http://www.denverfilm.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=22333&FID=43

The show includes work by Dan Boord, the director of the CU Boulder Film Program, made in collaboration with Luis Valdovino, also CU film faculty. It includes Pip Chodorov,  who’s been prominent in both European and American experimental film communities for many years. It includes Alexandre O. Phillipe, a Frenchman living in Denver, whose work I frankly don’t know. As I said, it also includes two movies by my very self, both of which premiered this Summer at Boulder Public Library. See you there…

On the 23rd of September, at the Art Students League of Denver,  I’ll be screening films by two of the people who showed me how to make movies, Stan Brakhage and Harry Smith. I’ll also be giving a brief sketch of the history of animation as an art made by individual artists, rather than by commercial enterprises. In the other arts, this distinction is usually fairly obvious, but in film, most people assume that a movie director is something like a special, glamorous CEO. They’re usually right. There’s a whole other world of cinema, though, and if you’re not aware of it, you need to cancel your plans for the 23rd and get to this screening.  Besides Brakhage and Smith, I’ll show a few bits of my own, as well as relevant bits from the history of cartoons, "visual music," and various peculiar moving images that show the vast possibilities of solo animation.  This talk and screening will introduce an 8-week course at the League, which starts two weeks later. That series will include more screenings and a whole lot of hands-on moviemaking. It’s reasonably priced and will transform your conception of time and space permanently. Trust The Thinking Truck to bring you to worthwhile destinations, now and always. To get a seat for the screening or sign up for the course, go to www.asld.org or call 303 778 6990, x100.

For all the info you need, have a look at the flyer (PDF) . It has pictures, a few words about Stan and Harry, and a few more about me. Print it out and tack it in some public place, or on your refrigerator.

A few diverse monotypes from recent days. Some were made as demos for my class (see below), others in solitary visionary frenzies. If you can explain them to me, please do.

The students in my monotype course  at the Art Students’ League were impressive, as you can see. There’s a wide range of imagery here, and they took the techniques I showed them in directions that never would have occurred to me. I’m hoping some of them return for my advanced course at the League late this fall, so they can teach me more. Put your mouse over the picture to see the menu. Click the number/fraction to stop on a picture. You’ll figure out the rest.

The feature premieres this Friday (7PM, Boulder Public Library), July 11th. Though my intention was to get a “trailer” up, it’s more important to polish up the actual movie for you in the time I’ve got left. Here are some stills, though, to either draw you in or frighten you terribly. These are captured frames from something constantly in motion, recall, and an odd mix, not including any shots of the desert, the truck, the badger, the bombing,  the tranquil forest, or the romantic bohemian squalor of life in the truck. It’s what I’ve got handy, and I wanted to get something fresh posted as the show approaches. This is partly because The Thinking Truck is slated to appear in Westword today, with a link. I haven’t seen it yet.

“Set amidst the sparse grandeur of the northern Chihuahuan desert, Eric Waldemar’s “The Thinking Truck” (2008 video, 40 min.) incorporates abstract animation and musical sound in a deeply peculiar sojourn into artistic work process and deliberate solitude. Often funny and occasionally gruesome, Waldemar coaxes and guides the viewer into realms of imagery and lithe, agile rhythm that defy description. An artifact from a deliberate process of self-renewal, this meditative and oddly entertaining movie evokes Bowles, Brakhage, Krazy Kat, and the Koran.” -Anselm Etting. Also screened is Waldemar’s classic faux history, “The Origin of Music” (1995, 20 min.), a preposterous fable that starts with the Big Bang. In “Know Knit Knot” (1997, 16mm, 5 min.), animated shapes that resemble ropes or guts emerge, twist, fold and tangle. Enthusiasts of Neolithic symbology are in for a treat. In “Doot” (1997, 16mm, 4 min.), elements form and disintegrate, and calm is restored when an unruly shape gets pulled to the ground. Each frame of Waldemar’s oddly visceral “Thinking is Finding” (2007 video, 6 min.) was painted on cotton canvas. New perceptual doors are opened in a short movie that has lingering effects. The filmmaker will be present to comfort the audience and answer questions.

Joel Haertling (the program’s impresario) has had a really stunning series of films this season, with more to come, so if you’re not aware of this, do have a look right now, as he’s showing great works that you’ll never see on film anywhere else in Colorado.  If you like things like my Thinking Truck (whatever “type” of film that might be), you should see his retrospective of avant-garde film classics from the 1930s to the early 70s (July 17th). The works he’s showing are absolutely essential, and you’ll be horrified to see what you’ve missed this season. Start with The Thinking Truck, then begin attending regularly. See you there.

Here’s my contribution:

Phil Bender
Last Place

Old friends fondly poked fun at Phil Bender’s obsessive concern with ordering and sorting at his recent “roast” at The Lab, but ultimately one is struck not so much by his pieces’ broad organization as by their underlying musicality.

In a contemporary art world context that favors obsession over insight and reference over rhythm, one could easily miss Bender’s subtle grace of form. When one really begins to look at these compositions of covered coat hangers, of toolboxes, of potholders, cribbage boards, basting brushes, and so on, one starts to see the layered, contrapuntal aspect of these composite forms, the rhythms of color and variation that are wrapped around and interlaced with the steady pulse of the grid.

Nicks, spots of rust, subtle curves of bent wire, and both deliberate and accidental variations in manufacturing processes are treated as significant and shapely, and Bender’s sensitivity is as apparent on a close-up scale as it is in the witty, stately compositions of color, shape and mass that one sees at first glance.

At that very first glance, one sees repetition, but one gradually becomes aware of more nuanced patterns and ultimately, by extension, of the uniqueness of every object one encounters. By massing together apparent similarities, Bender ends up making each of his pieces’ components absolutely singular. Bender’s casual reticence protects a core of real sincere care and a unique eye. He may try to convince you otherwise but Phil Bender is not a hoax.

Mary Lucier
The Plains of Sweet Regret

Though it may seem counterintuitive, multiple projections of video tend to make a work less demanding. When it is clear that one can’t take it in all at once, distraction is excused. I think it would take a few moments pause to fully appreciate the slow, spare Western imagery that makes up one element of Mary Lucier’s The Plains of Sweet Regret, but the simultaneous moving imagery discourages focused reflection. The quick, arresting, brutal rodeo section of this piece begins with a cowboy’s brief ride, hard fall and subsequent pummeling by the angry bull. After this brief passage, translucent images are flipped on themselves, creating symmetrical, blooming forms in which rider and bull merge into pulsing things with flailing human and animal legs, and these beastly forms spit out objects and whole cowboys. This kind of video symmetry is easy to produce, but is inevitably intense and usually disturbing. It certainly is here, as these digital blossom-things are assembled from images of impact and injury drawn from the American West’s trademark spectacle of human and animal pain. A viewer can’t help but see the contrast between the gorgeous, quiet vastness of Lucier’s images of the plains and the adrenaline rush of violent Wild West fun, especially when rendered in symmetries that make rodeo seem demonic.

Failure: Feel Free to Hate This Exhibition

Failure: Feel Free to Hate This Exhibition includes strong works, more than a little false modesty, some “successful” failures and some real ones. Without elaboration, the word “failure” is perhaps too diffuse to shed clear light and this exhibition reveled in the freedom of its unfocused concept.

Stephen Batura’s Collapse is a strong drawing on a hard panel, with dark reds and browns in paint and chalk highlighted with dim white overlays and an area of gold leaf that seems to portray reflections on water. I take this to be a scene in a Western mining community, which would tie the use of gold in further. In the context of this show: where’s the failure here? This appears to depict the aftermath of a building or mine entrance’s structural failure, but one hopes for more than that to tie the work to the show’s title. It’s possible that this was conceived as an early stage of a painting that will remain unpainted. An artist is often surprised by the moment a piece is suddenly, clearly finished, and if (s)he is brave enough to scrap the original intention and leave a rough, complete work alone, that is hardly a failure. I would call it a success and I’d say the same of Gemma Correll’s modest drawing in which a girl’s (musical) triangle rains when struck. Is this “about” failure? It’s certainly no failure as an image and its straightforward, graceful style enhances its sweet, funny melancholy.

Other artists were bold enough to submit pieces that really did fail, with their potential vision and intelligence showing through the wreckage of abandoned works. These honest, embarrassing, lame works are far more striking than the mannered, faux-na•ve strategic clumsiness that one so often encounters. Other works strike this writer as simply weak and/or puerile. Failure holds no drama or interest if the attempt wasn’t sincere to begin with. In other cases, it seems perhaps disingenuous to present such obviously strong and accomplished works in a context of “failure,” and I could detect no convincing ties of process, content or implication. This is, perhaps, my own failure of vision. There is a lot to individually like and dislike in this exhibition and while the title invites one to actually hate the entire show, this selection of diverse works doesn’t have a clear enough center to generate anything so fierce.