Activated Memory is a two video project based on animated photographs of different parks and buildings of Montreal. Through the use of video feedback, 3D animation and color manipulations, the pictures render a new kind of space, a virtual world where only fragments of “reality” subsist. The music accompaniment is composed by Roger Tellier-Craig.
I blogged about seeing Adam Beckett’s work awhile back, when the “Heavy Light” program showed at Deitch two years ago. I’m really excited to announce that I co-organized a screening of six of his films in San Francisco next week at N O M A Gallery as a closing party for Nate Boyce’s solo show at the space. Beckett’s work rarely gets shown – this should definitely be worth it. Info below.
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On August 28th from 7-9pm, N O M A Gallery will host a screening of animator Adam Beckett’s films on the occasion of the closing of Nate Boyce’s solo exhibition Parallel Series I & II. The event will be presented by Nate Boyce and Ceci Moss.
Adam Beckett emerged from the Experimental Animation program at CalArts in the 1970s. Although Beckett’s career was brief, only lasting a decade, he is renown for his unique, meticulous production process using the optical printer. This tool allowed filmmakers to rephotograph multiple strips of film into one strip, creating optical effects such as fades, dissolves, and the matting of images. The effects produced by optical print…ers were later carried over into computer graphics by digital compositing techniques, and indeed at times Beckett’s films seem remarkably prescient of this future path. Using both an optical printer and an animation stand, Beckett would gradually reposition and reshoot his intricate drawings into animated loops in order to create slight variations that guide the evolution of the figures and shapes depicted. The optical printer was also variously used to make rhythmic patterns by offsetting the frame or to re-frame sections of the drawings. Beckett’s animations appear to organically morph and mutate, often to a lively a soundtrack.
This program includes the following films:
Kitsch In Synch (1975)
Flesh Flows (1974)
Sausage City (1974)
Evolution of the Red Star (1973)
Heavy-Light (1973)
Dear Janice (1972)
This event is free.
PLEASE RSVP to marcella[AT]nomagallery.com. Seats are limited.
I posted Collins 1976 animation Fantasy today to Rhizome (above), but I thought I would follow that up here with a few more of his shorts. They’re pretty awesome.
Part of the screening included a number of films (on 16mm!) by ’70s experimental animator Adam Beckett. Apparently the evening marked the New York debut of Canyon Cinema’s recent restoration of his prints. I hadn’t heard of Beckett’s work before the event, but my friend Nate Boyce talked him up quite a bit.
According to Nate, Beckett has remained a somewhat obscure figure, largely due to the fact that he passed away early in his career, in 1979 at the age of 27. His animations were meticulously hand drawn, like Dear Janice which featured layers of seemingly hundreds of intricate rotating patterns and shapes.
Dear Janice
I was surprised to discover that Beckett’s piece Heavy Light was also an animation. The undulating red, green, and blue waves recalled the Vasulka’s work from the early 1970s, and almost everyone I spoke to afterwards thought it was an analog video piece. According to Canyon Cinema, Beckett used 13 drawings and a technique he developed for the optical camera to produce the effect. The score, written by composer Carl Stone, was a successful part of the work. It further dramatized the movement of the light and contributed to a feeling of momentum.
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