Visualizing the Art of War, 2005 (single channel video installation, 8:52) / 2010 (LED display, 0:30)
An 30-second remix of this video will be featured in the PECO Crown Lights "Art in the Air" project in Philadelphia on Sunday, July 4, 2010 and broadcast on 6ABC Philadelphia from 8–8:30 pm.
Watch the video documentation.
"Visualizing the Art of War" is my MFA creative project, completed at Virginia Commonwealth University under the mentorship of Sandra Wheeler, Roy Mckelvey, Rob Carter and Matt Woolman. I explore visual representation from a philosophical, historical and personal perspective. The video examines the power of numbers and of visual abstraction (the arrow mainly) to address the accumulation of information, the media experience and the toll war takes on humanity. Data gleaned from daily news accounts (and recited over handheld transceiver) are countered by excerpts from the "Art of War" (attributed to Sun Tzu 500 BC).
The soundtrack is a mix of repetitive beeps, breaths, and phrases, which refers to the media experience of quick sound bytes and pop rhythms. The drawings were created over the course of four months, with each day's events drawn and then erased. These erased surfaces were shot in video, also every day. They are the gritty black and white imagery in the final video.
The pop graphic of the cut numbers and verbal information refers to the branding of war and the trivialization of the horrors. The video reflects on the relationship of real war to mediated war. The first version of the video was screened at Chop Suey Books on March 19, 2005. The final version (as seen here) was installed in the VCUarts Anderson Gallery in Richmond, VA. The video was screened in its entirety a year later as part of the Experimental Media Series at the Washington Project for the Arts\ Corcoran (DC) and an excerpt was screened (as a intervention) in April 2006 on Salto A1 Television in the Netherlands as part of the One Minutes Festival.
Watch the video.
The soundtrack is a mix of repetitive beeps, breaths, and phrases, which refers to the media experience of quick sound bytes and pop rhythms. The drawings were created over the course of four months, with each day's events drawn and then erased. These erased surfaces were shot in video, also every day. They are the gritty black and white imagery in the final video.
The pop graphic of the cut numbers and verbal information refers to the branding of war and the trivialization of the horrors. The video reflects on the relationship of real war to mediated war. The first version of the video was screened at Chop Suey Books on March 19, 2005. The final version (as seen here) was installed in the VCUarts Anderson Gallery in Richmond, VA. The video was screened in its entirety a year later as part of the Experimental Media Series at the Washington Project for the Arts\ Corcoran (DC) and an excerpt was screened (as a intervention) in April 2006 on Salto A1 Television in the Netherlands as part of the One Minutes Festival.
Watch the video.
This is one of the drawings from the video.The work is 22 x 60 inches, erased graphite on paper
Watch a bit of my process on video: cutting
I designed this poster to promote the first version screening of my video at Chop Suey Books.
Visualizing the Art of War, 2008 (archival ink jet prints, 12 x 17 inches)
These are stills from my video which I have resized and printed as a series.
