Michael Chernoff

Video Artist | Researcher | Educator


Bad Player (2025)  MAX/MSP/Jitter




Coalesce: VANM Faculty Show. Rockefeller Arts Center, SUNY Fredonia


This is a screening of feature length films played at random.  The normally stable narratives of feature length filmmaking is subjected to scattered, broken, and re-mixed mode of sound and picture into effects audiovisual effects, scrambled events, and jumbled stories. The movies are transformed into an experience of information rather than epic or dramatic narrative.

The video files are digitized VHS of Hollywood movies. Created with a object-based programming software called MAX, the MAX patch can be timed to jump to a different frame every few seconds down to the an 1/10th of a second. 

The patch allows users to select files with mouse clicks. The game controller changes the rate of frame change and playback speed.  The patch itself is designed to pick a random starting frame of a video by analyzing its frame rate and duration.