JB: Rather than filming natural phenomena, in
your current “Morphologies” series, you are creating what you call video-based life forms. From
orifices to organs and trilobites to starfish, these
creatures take on a life of their own as they pulsate
and travel in their virtual world. Can you talk a
bit about this project, how it started, and where it’s
going?
are hundreds of these morphologies that
don’t survive past the developmental stages
and will never go beyond the software’s timeline.
The subject matter of the recorded video
files typically forms a conceptual foundation
that I build upon. While the finished image
may have no obvious visual correlation to the
original material, the image has in its digital
PH: Often when I’m creatively stuck or
need a change in creative direction I
will take a video clip and begin manipulating it in the computer. It’s an
action much like sketching or even
doodling, a technique that allows me
to explore at an unconscious level.
Often the results are abstractions of
ideas that I’m working through, processed in a new way. As I was digitally manipulating some of my raw
video files, the abstract images began
to manifest in a way that reminded
me of organic creatures, small to
microscopic in nature, but blown
up large as if being observed and
studied. Once I was able to key in
on this idea, I began to manipulate
the video imagery with specificity in
mind, and the project took off.
As these ideas solidify, the video’s
manipulation becomes more complex and involved. This manipulation
is much like genetic modification. I
enter into the material at the most
basic level—in my case, the pixel—
and through manipulation, transform and alter the original data to
create something new. This manipulation and shaping is done through
the layering of filters on selected
DNA trace
video clips and precisely animating
elements of
Untitled - video still, “Threshold Series” (2013 –
the filters’ parameters over time to
its ancestral
construct the new imagery and bring present). Dimensions variable. High definition.
beginnings,
the digital organisms to life. Each
which provides more complex meaning in the
piece’s outcome is realized through countfinal work. The specimens that I am working
less evolutionary steps in the modification
process. While I could use three-dimensional on right now all come from video that I shot
of Lake Erie.
animation for the morphologies, I prefer
the limits of the video medium. This project
This series is developing in two parallel
has been more about the act of modification
than creation. I can minutely adjust a specific mediums right now. The videos of the morparameter of one specific effect,, and a com- phologies will be displayed in small wooden
pletely new and unexpected shape is formed. cabinets that I am designing and constructOften, these don’t advance the design. There ing. These cabinets will reference historical
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SciArt in America April 2015