https://michaelchernoff.com Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website Mon, 02 Feb 2026 14:16:44 +0000 https://michaelchernoff.com en https://michaelchernoff.com/Front-page Wed, 15 Jun 2022 02:52:29 +0000 Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website https://michaelchernoff.com/Front-page &nbsp; &nbsp; VIDEO ARCHAEOLOGY&nbsp; &nbsp; VIDEO ARCHAEOLOGY&nbsp; &nbsp;VIDEO ARCHAEOLOGY &nbsp; <img width="1080" height="607" width_o="1080" height_o="607" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5d7f5d1185395ca935cc6cb84327df2673e04b1320c8e8101d703f34e106b0b3/VideoCapture_20210509-140905.jpeg" data-mid="164132156" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5d7f5d1185395ca935cc6cb84327df2673e04b1320c8e8101d703f34e106b0b3/VideoCapture_20210509-140905.jpeg" /> <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/80c5861cb8400b045e6fe4ae60f4c23840bed264a38f905257808140607a205d/Still0618_00000.jpeg" data-mid="202802103" border="0" 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data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a667eed0d987ede9cd540961556a89f2f6b99b6026ce71a4379249b17127265d/Screen-Shot-2024-01-31-at-11.33.43-PM.png" data-mid="237548443" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a667eed0d987ede9cd540961556a89f2f6b99b6026ce71a4379249b17127265d/Screen-Shot-2024-01-31-at-11.33.43-PM.png" /> <img width="720" height="480" width_o="720" height_o="480" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fbf5ee4cedd1eee2263faf7d9cf18b8c77dcd914811af2b4da11c10c0a82cc44/993962_193372070830835_1520348627_n.jpg" data-mid="164131332" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/720/i/fbf5ee4cedd1eee2263faf7d9cf18b8c77dcd914811af2b4da11c10c0a82cc44/993962_193372070830835_1520348627_n.jpg" /> Video Art – Virtual Reality – Multimedia Installation - Media Assemblage – Experimental Filmmaking - Documentary Video – Video Surveillance – Signal Processing – LIVENESS – Glitch Media – Interface – VIDEOSPHERE – Interactive Media - Site_Specific Installation - Interdisciplinary Research - Presence &amp; Feedback -&nbsp; https://michaelchernoff.com/Media-Blog Tue, 11 Mar 2025 15:11:18 +0000 Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website https://michaelchernoff.com/Media-Blog Media Research Blog Reflections on Media: Trends, Culture Technology, History, Art, and Theory Index: 2025 What Is Media Theory For? (3/16/2025)The Fictional A.I. of Celery Man: How Computers Make Work And Play Indistinguishable (3/22/2025) Multi-Screening: Re-Visiting VIDEOSPHERE (4/1/2025) Re-Launch &amp; Remediate: Timothée Chalamet‘s Music, A Complete Unknown (4/8/2025) Warm Media: The Sublimation of Hot and Cool Media (4/13/2025)&nbsp;Digital Art Education (Anti-Art World) 4/24/2025Meditations On Video 5/10/2025 https://michaelchernoff.com/What-Is-Media-Theory-For Tue, 11 Mar 2025 15:23:04 +0000 Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website https://michaelchernoff.com/What-Is-Media-Theory-For What Is Media Theory For?Sunday, March 16th 2025 The traditional ecosphere of media is one of consumption, response, and making. In the past, responses were isolated yet global, and making was a private affair for publication. Today, response to media has become another form of media production, breaking out of television and radio into the domain of video on the internet, made possible through democratized tools of making that have migrated from corporate media into the realm of homemade media. Response to events, news stories, entertainment, politics, and consumerism have made the current of mass media, more amplified, and therefore more massive in terms of reproducing subjects and increasing the possibilities of information flow. There is another kind of response to media activity - media studies. The response that comes from Media Studies, are academics, who coolly remove themselves from the real world, to study the character of society, technology, and communication as type of philosophy. When the field of Media Studies was new and bourgeoning in the 1960’s, it’s collective response in the arts and humanities was in the form of essays, exhibitions, lectures, and documentary film/video. Today the field still exists but is arguably struggling to keep up with the impact of emerging technologies, information networks, and the flood of publication. The task of responding to systems of communication and media consumption, has become an assault on all sides through mobile devices, online platforms, and production driven by consumerism. What then has media studies achieved when so much production still perpetuates a reality that is informed out of late-stage capitalism? Media studies dialogue is somewhere between hard and soft science, certainly interdisciplinary, but not easily known. The level of response by Media Studies scholars is theoretical. Media theory is run on a circuit for only some interested parties interested in the dynamics of media and communications to some ends. <img width="2332" height="1502" width_o="2332" height_o="1502" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f250d9193998f2b4cc851d217ff190247509ddcf7c35ed0b9fcae92dba6566af/Screen-Shot-2025-03-16-at-11.35.53-AM.png" data-mid="228313120" border="0" data-scale="76" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f250d9193998f2b4cc851d217ff190247509ddcf7c35ed0b9fcae92dba6566af/Screen-Shot-2025-03-16-at-11.35.53-AM.png" /> Google Search (Shopping): media theory (3/16/2025 11:35 AM) What then is media theory for? Who is media theory for anyway? The technical lens of experts (engineers, public relations, and marketers) view media as production: print, recording, transmission, UI/UX, etc. Engineers consider the circuitry, wiring, and mechanisms for devices, programs, and processes used for designing and creating discrete messages in the form of electronic image and sound. Communications experts examine media in terms of campaign performance, metrics, viewership or listernership in a wholistic approach in terms of sending messages through mass media. The technical gadgetry and utility for understanding of media are knowing the circumstances and modes for achieving fast, efficient, and optimal deliverance of well designed media, created by professionals and enthusiasts alike. &nbsp; Media Theory on the other hand are the inquiries and analysis that connect the technical aspect of media with the way media affect the real world. Theoreticians, critics, and creatives consider the effects that media content, formats, instruments, and systems have on the social fabric and ecology of societies, nations, institutions, and individuals. Theoretical analysis is often rendered in the form of written discourse by academic thinkers, whose views seek to comprehend the technological and social mechanisms that irreversibly alter the development on lived experience; culture, labor, and leisure. This frame work of looking at media as a real social force began with Marshal McLuhan whose views on understanding media were tied to literacy and technological transformation of messaging. McLuhan’s ideas were tied to the inability of human cognition for recognizing the altered state of content produced in a medium, because of invisibility of communication mediums. McLuhan also infamously noted that the technologically driven nature of humanity was the result of a reciprocal relationship between humans and our tools, endlessly shaping the other. Media theory is not just an explanation of what media are but what they do technologically and sociologically. Media theory (in theory) should always be an act for drawing attention to how certain modes of communication make us think, and change us by literally programming us. <img width="676" height="1000" width_o="676" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7f18cd9708d4fe446306d16beba4108db44f7625ae180e467099f0ee125f3539/Understanding-Media_McLuhan_BookCoverDesign.jpg" data-mid="228313433" border="0" data-scale="42" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/676/i/7f18cd9708d4fe446306d16beba4108db44f7625ae180e467099f0ee125f3539/Understanding-Media_McLuhan_BookCoverDesign.jpg" /> Mass media was and still is an engineering of the masses. The masses were generated, when industrialization caused a new urban migration, and people began living in dense quarters. Guy Debord described in his book Society of the Spectacle, that a loss of public space and commons was replaced by the space of mass media. A new society in which people cannot not know everyone another required a new common area contained in the socialized space formed by radio, newspapers, magazines, movies, and television. The commodified image of products, leaders, performance, and celebrities united a new urbanized working class. &nbsp;According to Debord also stated that this cruel and seemingly unjust replacement of cultural and physical connections was actually a necessity. That the making mass society was impossible without simultaneous control through an atomizing lived experienced in which manufactured experiences were enjoyed in private and then used to re-connect people with talk at a “water cooler.” But these realizations of control and lack of agency produce unpopular sentiments. <img width="2880" height="1800" width_o="2880" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5a0a84fc75ab4a4b9ae57e1e636dd82b2536263cac15a23d28bba641be7285ef/Screen-Shot-2025-03-16-at-11.39.59-AM.png" data-mid="228313366" border="0" data-scale="73" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5a0a84fc75ab4a4b9ae57e1e636dd82b2536263cac15a23d28bba641be7285ef/Screen-Shot-2025-03-16-at-11.39.59-AM.png" />&nbsp; Pages From Society of The Spectacle (1967) It is one thing to know the rules and another to state the presence of invisible rulers. We may be exposed to media and come under its influence regularly but surely it is still us, the individual mind, who is in control of our own decisions and destiny. We want to believe that ideology does not exist when it comes to media, since people do not like considering that their thoughts are not their own making. That individual actions are determined by the presence of technology and information streams of indexes, menus, diagrams, playback, and live broadcasts that engulf everyday experience. But if individuals and the whole or masses of society were to have a moment of realization – a mass epiphany about the system of control rendered through media, it would not provoke dismantlement. We are very dependent on mass communication as means of providing services, security, and knowledge, that we cannot break away from the governance of telecommunications and technocracy. Confronting the belief of control only results in frustration with the omnipresent power of information networks that are too big to understand. The observable resistance to media is a disbelief in faked information – and fundamental rejection of reality. Media theory therefore is not useful to the average person. It does not enhance their engagement with media, it theorizing the implications and impact of media is too complex to be understood as an outside observer to media empires. The information networks of Television, Film, Radio, Publishing, Video Games, appear totally accessible through open information the Internet and its Websites, allowing users to toy around with digital tools. However, the advertisers, politicians, news moguls, entrepreneurs, and technocrats dislike that such knowledge be exposed. Media theory often scrutinizes enterprises that rely on media messaging. Private authority dislikes academic circles who draw awareness to the secrecy of power behind the communications done by the government and capitalist organizations. I feel that because of the dominance of media in connection to the power of government and industry, media theorists are always locking horns with the private power ownership of media and production. The powers that render capitalist messaging about consumerism, entertainment, politics, render such commodities as our only possible reality perpetualy. &nbsp; <img width="2880" height="1516" width_o="2880" height_o="1516" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/da922f798312707483231f36188a6e9a6103e95afe1f4243b9c376c7a1b7b053/Screen-Shot-2025-03-16-at-11.45.24-AM.png" data-mid="228313400" border="0" data-scale="81" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/da922f798312707483231f36188a6e9a6103e95afe1f4243b9c376c7a1b7b053/Screen-Shot-2025-03-16-at-11.45.24-AM.png" /> Google Search: media theoreticians (3/16/2025 11:45AM) Media Theory it seems is firmly in the hands of intellectuals that derive ideas from the disciplines of the humanities, social sciences, the technical data of communications, and the artistry of filmmakers, animators, and media artists. These intellectuals historically, wanted to challenge the influence of mass media while rallying for independent creation of alternative media content. This mobius endeavor even includes architecture, ubiquitous computing, computer science, programming, and broadcasting. This movement for questioning the dominance of media also include the alternative lenses of Feminist, Marxist, Continental Philosophy, Theater, Dance, Music, and Literature are all absorbed into this mesh, since media can reproduce and re-present the other arts and sciences. Media theory is the greatest interdisciplinary undertaking because it is a discipline that mediates all forms of knowledge and allows us to inspect the process of mediation. This inspection would create an awareness of the changes to human perception when new technologies take over is also an awareness of control which McLuhan sought to make known. However, the dream of breaking away from corporate and state media control has not happened through alternative methods of making media. Inquiry in past and present forms of media technology and democratized modes of creativity with digital tools have not carved out a resistance. In fact, the instructiveness of media, expands into more copying and making within the cultural language of a particular medium, as in the norms of certain platforms. Intellectual pursuits are most often just an end game of pleasurable imagining and conceptualizing life. Media theory is a certainly a pleasurable realm set aside for the specialists who are obsessed with reformations of communication technology. And thinkers who want to understand media to better develop persuasive messaging, that will sway thought and control action. It is a closed circle of study shared by activists and propagandists alike. The masses do not need the theory to enjoy media, in the same way that a viewer does not need to know physics to enjoy the luminance of a sunset. Private industry and corporations do not need media theory since real engineering and marketing outperforms the flowery idealism of what media could be, and therefore create alternatives to unsettle capitalism through de-colonial, neo-Marxist, and critical theory. By revealing the influential effects of control be media, media theorists should aim to make systems of information a public utility. But at the same token, can media theory ever unseat the dominance of private ownership and control? Like other social sciences and humanities disciplines, media theory can make all the justifications for change by revealing systems of control and cultural dominance done through media production. Yet, the systems of power and control do not need to take into account the alternatives provided by media theorists. Who then is media theory for if we cannot enact what it really can do? ︎︎︎Return To Index https://michaelchernoff.com/The-Fictional-A-I-of-Celery-Man-How-Computers-Make-Work-And-Play Sun, 23 Mar 2025 15:44:14 +0000 Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website https://michaelchernoff.com/The-Fictional-A-I-of-Celery-Man-How-Computers-Make-Work-And-Play The Fictional A.I. of Celery Man: How Computers Make Work And Play Indistinguishable Sunday, March 22nd 2025 <img width="2880" height="1588" width_o="2880" height_o="1588" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0fd743ff2b818109525aeb501ce1d8f5b81e1b22ac39c1459f890095447d18ec/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.46.52-AM.png" data-mid="228651507" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0fd743ff2b818109525aeb501ce1d8f5b81e1b22ac39c1459f890095447d18ec/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.46.52-AM.png" /> Work is traditionally an objective act, structured by procedures, for the sake of reproducible results. Play on the other hand is experimental, unstructured, free roaming, with unexpected results. Both work and play form their own space, and the digital space of a computer make work and play possible at the same time. The multimedia capability of computers not only makes both making and consuming media possible, but also makes the domain of separate activities a singular process, more often called multi-tasking. As computer operations have become more powerful, faster, and networked, the differences in labor and leisure on a computer have been blurred. For users, a computer is a multi-media machine that can shift into alternate modes of activity instantly.&nbsp;Things like work processors, media editing, internet searches, and file management or selection are interactions made possible by human command and computer operations. However, casual searches for content can be done at the same time as real work is happening. As much as we can do work on a computer, we can also use them to access information, articles, movies, music, and games. We might listen to a podcast or have video streaming playing in the background or to the side of work driven programming. With so many actions and digital events at play on a computer, productivity on a computer can become murky. Yet, this framework of human to computer is already a basis for digital tools driven by human users. Today’s digital toolkit is fixated with AI driven operations. Getting computers and information networks to generate unique text and image from data. If labor and play are interchangeable on computers, then AI better illustrates this mode of production with work that is done by playing with an AI model. When a specific user prompt generates unexpected results on screen, the result is indeed experimental, and the experience is novel for the viewer as they wait to see how their request is executed. This relationship of witnessing digitally generated media through a confusing mixture of work and play with a computer interface is exemplified by the satirical work of comedy duo Tim (Heidecker) and Eric (Wareheim), during season 5 of their Adult Swim TV series,&nbsp;Tim and Eric Awesome Show: Great Job! (2006-2010). Episode 10 features a sketch starring actor Paul Rudd, called Celery Man, made viral on the internet with memes of Paul Rudd’s dancing. The scene begins with Paul Rudd as “Paul,” walking loudly across a bridge in a domed virtual environment. When Paul activates a desktop computer, the machine audibly greets him with an AI named “Paul’s Computer” which automatically runs a storied program called the Cinco Identity Generator 2.5. Paul then speaks commands to load the “Celery Man” sequence.&nbsp; Video content of Paul dancing in different outfits, styles, and audio appears on across multiple media player windows, producing an experimental multimedia performance. The purpose of Paul actions and the content is never fully disclosed. Operating on a seemingly primitive interface with a futuristic graphical processing, Celery Man is particularly attention grabbing due to today’s increased leveraging of generative AI for making photos and videos, and the embedding of AI functions into computer operating systems. If the interaction we have with computers enables work to be more leisurely due machine labor value harder that is harder to know, is Paul’s activity driven by amusement or is his curiosity an absurd form of work? Unpacking the mysteriousness of Paul’s work situation, and his Celery Man clips, we can notice a few things. First, we don’t know exactly where Paul is located but it has the trappings of workplace, not a home entertainment experience. His business casual attire, a cup of coffee, and computer station signify working in an office. The echo his footsteps is an industrial metallic sound. The chair and table are steel and black leather are corporate. The workspace is devoid of distracting décor, possessions, or supplies. This environment has all the trappings of a disembodied Virtual Reality space that could symbolize Paul’s all-consuming focus on his technology, or a literal high-tech workspace that is unattainable for the average person. It is not Paul’s work surroundings that represent his work, it is what’s going on the screen of his computer that he treats as work but looks frivolous and unproductive. <img width="2880" height="1598" width_o="2880" height_o="1598" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/da10ed8d7379089ab8fa3fcd2a565f9c5341edcc4967feadea4f00f3d74b247d/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.47.15-AM.png" data-mid="228651508" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/da10ed8d7379089ab8fa3fcd2a565f9c5341edcc4967feadea4f00f3d74b247d/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.47.15-AM.png" /> Paul’s workday begins by hitting the space bar of the keyboard once, waking up a PC that indicates it belongs to him without a password or other security credential. At certain points Paul just sits and watches his screen, sipping his coffee, waiting to see the results. Although he is prompting the computer to make changes, he is also a spectator anticipating for something exciting to unfold. The origin of the media shown is also an unknown element. Are the video clips played from saved files? Is it Paul’s likeness pasted onto an animated digital model? In reality, we know that Paul Rudd was videographed doing dances. Therefore, as a fiction, we cannot assume that that Paul is viewing videos of himself that he recorded on camera. We can assume that the Identity Generator created dancing models that look like Paul sourced from some kind of data. The low-grade technology aesthetic of the sketch positions video of Paul Rudd as hyperreal video generated, touching upon the tension between filmmaking and AI as generative video quality is aimed to replicate the quality of a cinema camera. <img width="2878" height="1584" width_o="2878" height_o="1584" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7619522444ad2a45157b5046236893b9a2e18184e1784e8c64779a3554e88c85/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.48.12-AM.png" data-mid="228651513" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7619522444ad2a45157b5046236893b9a2e18184e1784e8c64779a3554e88c85/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.48.12-AM.png" /> Considering the dancing Paul’s as being generative AI video content is especially apparent when the computer offers Paul a new sequence it has been working on. The appearance of the new flamboyant dancer named “Tayne” sounds like Paul but is wholly another character. Paul states his satisfaction, “Now Tayne, I can get into,” and sits back and continues watching. It is worth mentioning that the character Tayne himself is a broken word pun for Entertainment. At no point does Paul become completely passive in his work process. By the end of the scene, the probability of Paul’s activity being slacking off increases by his request for NSFW generation of Nude Tayne, and he ignores an incoming call notification from his wife about an emergency, to focus on the all-consuming work. Paul certainly enjoys seeing himself as his own self-image made over in a novel way. The alternative looks, running variable speeds and resolution, and models occurring simultaneously through multiple media displayed present possibilities for Paul’s manners and appearance. This emergence of the real self-linked to an artificial self-image clearly represents how individuals prefer to use AI to see and hear themselves reflected back. <img width="2880" height="1586" width_o="2880" height_o="1586" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b045828ba496fda8a92e3ea913613012a3e174232db4a563cc8c6001055b4ac1/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.48.36-AM.png" data-mid="228651514" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b045828ba496fda8a92e3ea913613012a3e174232db4a563cc8c6001055b4ac1/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.48.36-AM.png" /> Another question is if Paul is doing work or merely escaping work? Work in the arts and entertainment, often requires some degree of play to be successful. The inclusion of digital workflows, makes creativity faster. Tim and Eric’s production team certainly used digital tools to produce experimental media by playing with audiovisual qualities through distortion, editing, and animation. Celery Man functions almost like a love letter for the free expression of digital film and video production. We cannot help but be playful and silly with the output of computers due to their timing and multimedia capabilities. <img width="2880" height="1588" width_o="2880" height_o="1588" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d1543000a2493b2274c40d54be3ea3c19c235666fd4ece67185af3fddebaadb4/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.47.43-AM.png" data-mid="228651511" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d1543000a2493b2274c40d54be3ea3c19c235666fd4ece67185af3fddebaadb4/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.47.43-AM.png" /> As to what Paul does for work, the answer is benign. What Paul is working on is reproducing what he already likes, himself, as an entertainer, but for whose benefit? A criticism of AI is that it is most often used not to create new things but to recreate what we already like or believe to be true. That the biases, opinions, ideas, and creations that we already know are just reproduced by being recycled. As consumable media, AI does not present a viewer with new challenges but variations on what is already familiar and well-liked by them and others. In the case of Paul, the character already likes seeing himself. His narcissism is fed with endless possibilities of how to depict is bodily image, and in the process, he embodies the image processing through interacting with a voice acting and recognizing personal computer. The computer can compile Paul because it functions an extension of him as a tool and service. Paul is building automated sequences that seem frivolous, while re-familiarizing himself with previous content, and intuitively modifies and recreates processed results in real-time. Paul watches the screen like a show never-before-seen. As computers are automated to perform without human input, AI video retains the traditional screen watching of television. A viewer can sit back and wait for the next visual event to occur. The future of digital labor is a stream of global media objects, prompted and synthesized AI as a companion to play with. The AI company Runway also envisions this kind of relationship with AI video with a streaming service that continuously produces generative visuals. <img width="2880" height="1590" width_o="2880" height_o="1590" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/03ff027b83161aea0cf6cf429b1544edf907f6da8b0c96f9d5269e18f821ce26/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.47.54-AM.png" data-mid="228651512" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/03ff027b83161aea0cf6cf429b1544edf907f6da8b0c96f9d5269e18f821ce26/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.47.54-AM.png" /> Human to computer communications is clearly creative through indivisible play and work conditions. Like Cinco Identity Generator 2.5, modern AI models do work by being tooled through users playing with their prompts, with occasional successes and failures. What differs however, is that Celery Man reflects a physical and mental perception of interacting with one’s own electronic image with a digital profile managed by an AI. Paul commands his own entertainment materially with his own data, technology, and thinking. AI tools are currently in a state of being casual amusement or used for commercial media production. Yet as computer functions are less driven by human mouse and keystrokes, the user becomes a watcher of their own work. Work becomes desire by waiting for a desirable result. which makes work into trouble shooting self-driven amusement in a process that has some level of unpredictability. Generally, users want AI models to be more stable, predictable, cohesive, and reproducible in a controlled way. Paul certainly gets a stable image of himself, but the medium of the computer interface and video content are affected by the automaticity, shown by an intermixed animation of GUI elements and photographic content. &nbsp; <img width="2880" height="1572" width_o="2880" height_o="1572" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c313ca3196086bd5730b07edaffcc0950d94c62a63eb336fc662784f093b943c/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.49.14-AM.png" data-mid="228651515" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c313ca3196086bd5730b07edaffcc0950d94c62a63eb336fc662784f093b943c/Screen-Shot-2025-03-23-at-11.49.14-AM.png" />While public interest in AI is focused on its product and the medium itself, it is clear that differences in work and play are liberated by the multi-tasking of computers and its multimedia display. So, is Paul now more fascinated by the possibilities of generated content or what the machines capabilities are? Perhaps when AI takes total control of a computer, we can then see the work it is doing. Then we can know just how much really are or are not playing with our computer. ︎︎︎Return To Index https://michaelchernoff.com/Multi-Screening-Re-Visiting-VIDEOSPHERE Tue, 01 Apr 2025 14:19:55 +0000 Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website https://michaelchernoff.com/Multi-Screening-Re-Visiting-VIDEOSPHERE Multi-Screening: Re-Visiting VIDEOSPHERETuesday, Arpil 1st 2025 For my graduate thesis, I created a video art installation titled VIDEOSPHERE: You Are Always On A Screen Somewhere… (2023). This thesis was an exhibition that occurred in real and virtual space. It was seen physically and electronically throughout physical space and screen space, using cameras trained on screens. This was an open circuit of surveillance where visitors could see themselves, and interact with their electronic reflection with movement. The project was chock full of analog and digital screens, cameras and a VR headset. All of it demonstrated the dynamics of interaction and shared signals between analog and digital tools for making surveillance observable. The intended message was to: <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cc9264ed40d17684f46a6912ae69d9ea8a8233e355d69262ae18d7efc7446779/Videosphere-Week-1_2023_50.JPG" data-mid="229113367" border="0" data-scale="71" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cc9264ed40d17684f46a6912ae69d9ea8a8233e355d69262ae18d7efc7446779/Videosphere-Week-1_2023_50.JPG" /> 1. &nbsp;&nbsp; Make an audience aware of the presence of video technology, and to consider the implications of video collectively occupying physical and sending out signal from many iterations of technology. 2. &nbsp;&nbsp; That modern video signal is still tied to past forms of televised and closed-circuit surveillance. That while the video screen generates an interactive space, it also attracts activity to be done through video which expands the application of video surveillance. Video surveillance has transitioned beyond just humans watching screens. Rather video surveillance is the surveillance of the video screen itself. That surveillance space is made up by cameras embedded around and within the screen itself, recording both sides of the screen as the real and virtual collapse together through shared response and reaction. But to talk about space, environment, and the time-space of video is ontologically difficult because human perception usually conflates the real with virtual subjects. The mind even prefers the hyperreal electronic liveness of video to the reality of events, objects, and individuals. The VIDEOSPHEREinstallation itself, put video on display while the exhibition space was displayed by video. The two kinds of space that inform the other are not easily divorced as a media environment that exists as a video space. But where is the interactive space generated when the virtual and physical collapse into one another? Can we talk about it in a way that does not hurt my head? This lack of understanding of how to talk about the video environment in regards to overall environment, was the loose end of the project. I used the word “Videosphere” which is taken from Gene Youngblood, who created the word to theorize a new environmental phase, the way in which architectural and mental space was being altered by the dominance of television. Youngblood also speculated how further changes would happen with the advent of new miniature devices and public video communication systems. Rather than being a single channel experience, the inclusion of numerous video cameras and screens has turned contemporary experience in multimedia viewing, and colonized physical space with multi-channel access. <img width="1191" height="631" width_o="1191" height_o="631" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/58dfdff6b5a71b882671c46e30747b89d5ae2ac75bbccff939b5beefafae4c55/Gene-Youngblood-Expanded-Cinma-Layout.jpeg" data-mid="229113363" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/58dfdff6b5a71b882671c46e30747b89d5ae2ac75bbccff939b5beefafae4c55/Gene-Youngblood-Expanded-Cinma-Layout.jpeg" /> Along with Youngblood’s chapter from Expanded Cinema (1970) my project also drew indirect inspiration from other fictional media literature. The graphic novel Watchmen (1987) authored by Allen Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, contains various kinds of sense perception through maps, newspaper media, quantum power, and a meta-narrative comic strip. In particular the character Ozymandias, known publicly as Adrian Veidt is drawn to and powered by video technology. As a former masked vigilante who became wealthy through using his heroic image for money-making, Veidt is shown tapping into the information network of television with a wide and tall matrix of TV monitors and international clocks. Precluding the internet, Moore represents television as the dominant information medium due to its live feed. Veidt observes the different information streams simultaneously to then feel out and synthesize opinions and ideas for business strategies. As business man, Veidt believes that the best solutions for saving the world are business solutions with investments, production, and mechanical invention. The logic of Veidt’s methods is told in an inner dialogue as follows: “Observation: Multi-screen viewing is seemingly anticipated by [William] Burroughs cut-up technique. He suggested re-arranging words and images to evade rational analysis, allowing subliminal hints of the future to leak through.” – Chapter XI Page 1 <img width="1041" height="1600" width_o="1041" height_o="1600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/20e892e21aa7845fa9fedc8f86f32c0a79a6876be1923be2895b668f025733cf/Watchmen-Chapter-XI-Page1.jpeg" data-mid="229113364" border="0" data-scale="78" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/20e892e21aa7845fa9fedc8f86f32c0a79a6876be1923be2895b668f025733cf/Watchmen-Chapter-XI-Page1.jpeg" /> Veidt can be characterized as a man of his times as a post-modernist viewer. He is locked into the stream of video, and the circulation of messages, waiting for answers to arrive from a non-stop broadcast. But Veidt is also different from the typical viewer glued to a single stream. His genius and wealth enable him to re-configure television into a grid of multiple channels to be viewed all at once. He engages in the overwhelming complexity of global messaging and networks that few people want to engage with. The broader view of all messages helps him notice general trends and economic strategies that are happening Live. Rather than being swayed by a certain message, Veidt is trying to detect an undercurrent of activities and planning happening in the global economy through the television, the tool used by marketers themselves. And like the internet the information is public, but his arrangement the channels is wholly private. I did not create a direct homage to the character of Veidt or the invention of his grid. His name is mentioned on a poster I made and some images from the comic strip appeared in a VR scene I designed. Looking back now, I can see better how the term Videosphere applies to Veidt, my project, and what the term means concretely as a spatial orientation and observation. Veidt by compiling different screen content, he succeeded in making a new, larger screen space similar to the multi-screen “Valsulka Effect” fashioned by video artists Woody and Steina Vasulka. Reality, or the world rather, is being mapped and laid out not as a continents and oceans, but as a grid work of windows. The real world it seems is really happening on television. His unnamed matrixing of television and his method for observing it, is a Videosphere. Both the room for this TV assemblage and Veidt’s attention are conformed to screen watching. Veidt is totally with the World as he calls and utterly separate from it as a masterful viewer. <img width="758" height="412" width_o="758" height_o="412" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/69efbd69a33f3e087bb903d5da8f5ea01fbdbe4a735f1364e38c599c26eabd4d/ozymandias-veidt-cat-screens-featured-e1569021951280-758x412.jpg" data-mid="229113649" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/758/i/69efbd69a33f3e087bb903d5da8f5ea01fbdbe4a735f1364e38c599c26eabd4d/ozymandias-veidt-cat-screens-featured-e1569021951280-758x412.jpg" /> The way in which we appear in a video screen via security cameras without knowing it at a given moment, and then there is the way in which in appear and simultaneously see ourselves, on personal computers and smartphones through web cameras. These signals are not relegated to just a single viewing location and can be transmitted to multiple screens elsewhere. This elsewhere can be the collective view of all screens, all feeds, and all channels. As a closed-circuit video system, this de-centralized patchwork of screens was an environment for viewing the activity of visitors and screens. The Videosphere is a new space and way of looking in which the space is composed by the matrix of individual screens, arranged and unionized as broad information feed for the human, and total sphere of information for machine and computer vision. The videosphere can be flat, circular, spherical, etc. It is canvas that is only limited by the resolution of the output. It does exist for around us but we do not get to see it unified, only in fragments of solitary screens. Therefore, there are many videospheres happening from the localized CCTV system to the control rooms of National Intelligence and Television Studios. A videospheres scope is only bound the number of inputs and outputs received by screen, camera, and virtual camera. The videosphere could just be called a multimedia experience, but that would exclude the idea of channels. There is a sender and receiver, not just a beholder of one’s own image and pictures from somewhere else. <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9d09bc41fbd91916c02a5e8a000ea5dc5fafd62b3cb86265b86e63ef33fc4f97/_MG_5680.JPG" data-mid="229113382" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9d09bc41fbd91916c02a5e8a000ea5dc5fafd62b3cb86265b86e63ef33fc4f97/_MG_5680.JPG" /> ︎︎︎Return To Index https://michaelchernoff.com/Re-Launch-Remediate-A-Complete-Unknown-Timothee-Chalamet-s-Music Sat, 05 Apr 2025 15:36:45 +0000 Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website https://michaelchernoff.com/Re-Launch-Remediate-A-Complete-Unknown-Timothee-Chalamet-s-Music Re-Launch &amp; Remediate: Timothée Chalamet‘s Music, A Complete Unknown Tuesday, Arpil 8th, 2025 Media are temporary and a recurring effect. For most media the shelf life is brief, promoting a product, entertainment, and the news of the day. Media are typically shown and then forgotten as one unit in a long line of information. Media entertainment such as music and films however are recurring, played continuously throughout time as classics. Even songs and films that are later forgotten or loose frequent play can still resurface, especially with a reformatted: analog to digital, tape to disk, or websites to mobile apps. Through remediation, old media can be revived as new media. The idea of remediation is drawn from Marshall McLuhan’s observation of how old media become the content of new media. When a new medium comes into use its identity as a medium are verified in the medium’s ability to replicate the fidelity and function of an old medium. Jay Bolter and David Grusin used McLuhan’s theory of transference between mediums for coining the term remediation. The authors say that media is translated, reinterpreted and preserved differently but still main cultural consanguinity of the song and film that they re-presented in a new dominant medium with transparent immediacy – or the invisible operation of a medium. &nbsp; <img width="1536" height="1805" width_o="1536" height_o="1805" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/acc62dc83e4947b17a7f8eb0aec53eadc2b4c918e62455644ed43e9b9970a5e6/Remediation-GrusinBolter.jpg" data-mid="229527718" border="0" data-scale="53" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/acc62dc83e4947b17a7f8eb0aec53eadc2b4c918e62455644ed43e9b9970a5e6/Remediation-GrusinBolter.jpg" /> This exchange of dominance for viewing media is exemplified by video. Whereas television remediated the medium of cinema by broadcasting films, viewing the analog videotape cassettes have been remediated digitally by laser discs, memory cards, hard drives, and online streaming, all of which feature playback controls, image, and sound that originate in tape deck technology, just as tape decks were based on the spooled mechanisms of a steenbeck film editor. Therefore, remediation is the takeover of an old medium which had dominated human attention and imagination, or at the very least the co-existence of mass media, whose mediums inform and change the others style of dissemination. Reformat/Remediation is also a way for generating new profit margins from old media. The profitability of a mass-produced intellectual property is not really a singular effort of release and purchase. Media reformatting is an opportunity to sell media properties time and again. We can see how corporate publishers have re-packaged and manufactured books, music, and movies with new formats. Books are reprinted into a number of editions, but also are re-created as e-books, audio books, and streamed readings. Music albums have been released on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, mp3 players, and paid streaming services. The containment of Films and movies to their respective mediums of display have been continuously democratized with the purchasing of video disc, laser disc, Betamax, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, and streaming, as rent or purchasable. These re-releases of entertainment cause a frenzy of reinvestment into newer formats that advertise lighter weight formats that have higher fidelity, on demand control, and memory space extra content. Consumers quickly toss away the old format when they acquire familiar titles with the newly superior technology. The expansion of consumer purchasing of new media technology creates a windfall of new sales of old intellectual property. Buyers are not getting content, just a new mode of experience. By tricking consumers into re-investing in home media for greater cinematic or concert quality image and sound, so then does the property of the publishers and artists reach new levels of profit by simply re-purchasing books, songs, and movies time and again. <img width="1200" height="675" width_o="1200" height_o="675" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c3e5c2803611cb0d21e5857a5df3212c30d1e0147f12f5f42139767ce3f4790b/a-complete-unknown_searchlightpic.jpg" data-mid="229315778" border="0" data-scale="79" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c3e5c2803611cb0d21e5857a5df3212c30d1e0147f12f5f42139767ce3f4790b/a-complete-unknown_searchlightpic.jpg" /> But on the remediation side of this, there is not just the technology of media but also the content of performance which can be simultaneously revived be being remade. The theatrical release of A Complete Unknown premiered in cinemas in the U.S. in 2024, and is now available for free streaming on HBO MAX, is a film that focuses on musician Bob Dylan and the evolution of his career. Starting off as the wanderer “Bobby,” to an anointed folks singer, and then famed counter-cultural rock star, the overall story depicts Bob Dylan as an who never wanted to to fit into a particular genre of music. We see this when Dylan transitions from an acoustic vocalist to being back by a band with electric guitar. The film stars the young headliner Timothée Chalamet who plays Bob Dylan. Chalamet not only speaks and moves like Dylan but also plays Dylan’s songs, instead of lip syncing the original songs. On the surface this film reflects a consistent alliance between the cultural production of film studios and music labels. Music can serve films by elevating scenes and deepen the emotionality of a narrative. Conversely films can carry songs into a new phase of appreciation through a visual story. Original songs covered by other artists or bands always result in a reinterpretation of sound and delivery which draw comparisons between the original and homage artist. A Complete Unknown is a biopic which not only pushes for not only the sales and interest in Bob Dylan’s songs and albums but also the sale of Chalamet’s covered songs. This film isn’t just one of many biopics about Bob Dylan. What sets it apart is not just a storied adaptation but also an adaptation of songs and sound for a generation new of listeners. <img width="1500" height="1500" width_o="1500" height_o="1500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6730e53363518e48970fb703bed83e77e9fe7f9547d2aa2e86bea947843a053b/CompleteUnknownAlbum.jpg" data-mid="229315749" border="0" data-scale="47" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6730e53363518e48970fb703bed83e77e9fe7f9547d2aa2e86bea947843a053b/CompleteUnknownAlbum.jpg" /><img width="1500" height="1500" width_o="1500" height_o="1500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2cb35fc5a58b95ea5497959383ad869221f8b1f7da15ca0d1f227531f5cc4478/CompleteUnknownAlbumBW.jpg" data-mid="229315750" border="0" data-scale="47" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2cb35fc5a58b95ea5497959383ad869221f8b1f7da15ca0d1f227531f5cc4478/CompleteUnknownAlbumBW.jpg" /> The film transports audiences into the 1960’s as if Dylan has come back young again. Despite restoring a public interest in Bob Dylan, Timothée Chalamet’s appearance overshadows Dylan’s image. And the film’s soundtrack performed by Chalamet makes us compare their audio performances. Such effective remediation of Dylan’s songs draws new profits and could launch a music career of Chalamet if his sound and image is accepted with full transparency. &nbsp; <img width="1500" height="1500" width_o="1500" height_o="1500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1b97798631d0a7085b18077c56bef96efd8dfa66ca7bd98f5774d6dbd80b6b3d/BobDylanFreeWheelin.jpg" data-mid="229527767" border="0" data-scale="71" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1b97798631d0a7085b18077c56bef96efd8dfa66ca7bd98f5774d6dbd80b6b3d/BobDylanFreeWheelin.jpg" /> It is my contention that through inherent remediation in A Complete Unknown, repackages Dylan’s history, image, and artistry for the new format of Chalamet’s appearance, acting, and singing performance in a motion picture and original soundtrack. In fact, the emotional depth of the soundtrack’s titles is amplified and certainly differ from original recordings of Bob Dylan. Blending the effect of a live performance set, staged within a film makes Chalamet’s seem as or more authentic than the past recordings of Dylan. Dylan’s recorded songs serve as a medium to test and show us to what degree Timothée Chalamet can perform identically to Dylan because Chalamet’s musical talent can be verified. A listener can certainly tell the difference between the singing of the two men. But do audiences come to prefer the new over the old? Is Chalamet doing a cover anymore if we are immediately thrusted into a reality recreated in a new cinematic format and a new star? <img width="1392" height="884" width_o="1392" height_o="884" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3926c869e516ba7dfb8d065605a880ffb201a29e473f063ac1b01310b97fa305/timothee-chalamet-bob-dylan-getty-comp-1392x884.jpg" data-mid="229315837" border="0" data-scale="51" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3926c869e516ba7dfb8d065605a880ffb201a29e473f063ac1b01310b97fa305/timothee-chalamet-bob-dylan-getty-comp-1392x884.jpg" /><img width="2000" height="1500" width_o="2000" height_o="1500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/16b61f9fc664549359a4a799d4378afb019d4ac7bc1986547ee5a92ee70246ae/Timothee-Chalamet-Bob-Dylan2000x1500.jpg" data-mid="229315838" border="0" data-scale="43" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/16b61f9fc664549359a4a799d4378afb019d4ac7bc1986547ee5a92ee70246ae/Timothee-Chalamet-Bob-Dylan2000x1500.jpg" /><img width="1000" height="700" width_o="1000" height_o="700" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0081f0f88ae3736310646017f5feb982613461d69611c2a8e02a9e8cf5671583/timothee-Vera-AndersonWireImage-Evening-StandardGetty-1578359000-1000x700-1680970144.jpg" data-mid="229315839" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0081f0f88ae3736310646017f5feb982613461d69611c2a8e02a9e8cf5671583/timothee-Vera-AndersonWireImage-Evening-StandardGetty-1578359000-1000x700-1680970144.jpg" /> Now when a movie comes out about a cultural icon, I can no longer just assume it is matter of just reviving their sales like an appearance on a Time Magazine cover. By using a well-trained theatrical actor to remake old songs, old media is renewed and the quality of new media verified. The movie is one long billboard for redesigning Bob Dylan as Timothée Chalamet. So recluse, Dylan now exists only as a commodity to be resourced and his youth cannot be photographed in the say way as Chalamet’s has. Remediation is not just reformatting the original content of media but is also about the reformation of captured performance. Thus, culture and history, are replaced by a fresher visuals and new sounds which make the past come to life again, to be purchased and enjoyed all over again. Profits can be made from old and new Dylan songs. But as Grusin and Bolter write, new media are not really new, they are just old media performed in a new way. While captialist scheming wants both the new and old to extract more value from both performers.&nbsp; <img width="1704" height="1086" width_o="1704" height_o="1086" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ff0d30fe45efc7cfb28c74bc6d75e3f36684288495c8f657e6cbe77092b39979/Screen-Shot-2025-04-08-at-6.39.11-PM.png" data-mid="229527735" border="0" data-scale="83" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ff0d30fe45efc7cfb28c74bc6d75e3f36684288495c8f657e6cbe77092b39979/Screen-Shot-2025-04-08-at-6.39.11-PM.png" /> ︎︎︎Return To Index https://michaelchernoff.com/Warm-Media-The-Sublimation-of-Hot-and-Cool-Media Sun, 13 Apr 2025 16:15:54 +0000 Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website https://michaelchernoff.com/Warm-Media-The-Sublimation-of-Hot-and-Cool-Media Warm Media: The Sublimation of Hot and Cool MediaSunday, April 13th, 2025 A central binding theory behind the media ecology of Marshall McLuhan was his idea of hot and cool media. At the time of McLuhan’s writing about hot and cool media, his ideas were inferred by the informational intakes of film and radio in comparison to TV and telephony. That the difference between hot and cold media are media whose experiences were either passive or active. <img width="254" height="392" width_o="254" height_o="392" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/20d9933be1aec97bc7889c7046ff41229521fb31da5733ffa94bc6e81ccde4db/Understanding_Media_1964_edition.jpg" data-mid="229744700" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/254/i/20d9933be1aec97bc7889c7046ff41229521fb31da5733ffa94bc6e81ccde4db/Understanding_Media_1964_edition.jpg" /> In terms of proximal distance hot media is like being up-close to something – viscerally, and cool media are distantly removed. Hot media are hyper forms of information made up by high-definition sound and image, whose message is composed in fullest detail and clarity. Media like radio, films, photography, and printing were considered by McLuhan to be rich sensory experiences that emphasize a specific sense, like sight or just hearing, altering the ratio of human senses. Cool media instead lack detail as low-definition media which cause the viewer to fill in the gaps of missing information with multiple sensations. Media such as books, television, and telephone required active participation. McLuhan appeared to be preferred the “cool” viewer or listener who recalibrated and used all of their senses to coolly observe and construct messages. Therefore, hot media require little to no extra work from the viewer who is made passive by being tantalized and dominated by a hi-res spectacle. McLuhan’s lens was informed by the clarity of the technologies in his time. The low-definition quality of television which he determined to be a defining feature of the TV medium has since been discredited as too technologically deterministic since the character of TV changed with digital cable and satellite TV. Also, some internet media are uploaded in low resolution format, but with high resolution media, networks re-prioritize low or high-quality media playback based on bandwidth. If bandwidth performance increases, then a low image and sound can jump to higher fidelity, and the opposite is true if bandwidth decreases. <img width="465" height="786" width_o="465" height_o="786" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a7eebc0756e1a243ae1219234e2d6ef297507ad0ba51414bff479ded658018c3/0_Zl24__cxjLgshiMm.png" data-mid="229744712" border="0" data-scale="51" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/465/i/a7eebc0756e1a243ae1219234e2d6ef297507ad0ba51414bff479ded658018c3/0_Zl24__cxjLgshiMm.png" /> Such differences in digital technology undermine the theory of hot and cool media since media content can exist in a variable state of definition, and a mediums quality can be modernized. With TV there is no fuzzy image where we are guessing what is being represented, because now like a film we can see the stream in the highest definition of 1080p and 4K resolution. The cool and hot forms of participation are also challenged by the interactivity of media sharing and commentary as a live act. Yet the terms hot and cold still relate to contemporary media consumption. The internet can function cinematically where we watch explanatory and podcast conversations in high definition coolly, while participate in live chats hotly filling in the gaps with extra information that comes from an audience response to a transmission. Hot and cold seem to switch sides now that participation has become real-time tool and high-definition a standard way for viewing transmission while co-existing with lower quality forms of the same content. Between hot and cool, there can be warm(th). Warm media is an ideal undifferentiation between passivity and participation, when watching and interaction collaboratively create feedback. Since hot and cool media are also deterministic terms, warm media is intermedia approach to handling both ideas since the closed-circuit or one way communication of McLuhan’s era has changed to real-time networks with multiple actors updating information streams. Warm media is also a middle process of transference which little considered. Hot and cool are also a duality which bypass the warm state of media. This skipping over missing segment of transference is comparable to a process known as sublimation,&nbsp; the act of solids turning to gasses without become liquid which can be attached hot and cool media with another kind of terminology: Water. The vocabulary of water has been incessantly invoked for communications because of water’s natural and engineered carrying capacity. Terms like signal flow, electrical current, channels, multimedia filtration, streams, volume, wet or dry audio, the liquidity of video image, are just a few of the metaphors that engineers, electricians, technicians, and theorists have used to describe the activity and make up of electronic communication. How water is a gaseous vapor. Cool (cold) water is a solid ice. In between would be the liquid form of water. Perhaps the gases should be thought of as the signal in the air (the cloud of computing raining down) and the ice the analog transmitted result (the screen and speakers). The water analogy would be process of the travel or flow between the sender and receiver. But if hot is the color red, and cool the color of blue, then the blending of the two in the middle would be purple, a color commonly associated with vaporwave. <img width="1212" height="798" width_o="1212" height_o="798" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3011042c478cbf2e22ce3718d1760efaf973172188a26c32b694da8ffe0c0f12/Cubed.jpg" data-mid="229744559" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3011042c478cbf2e22ce3718d1760efaf973172188a26c32b694da8ffe0c0f12/Cubed.jpg" /> Image Created by Author Vaporwave is a internet cultural movement, made up by the retro style of producing music and reusing with old video, graphics, and ads from the 1980’s and 1990’s. Vaporwave is both a reliving and repackaging of the past with re-appropriated mass media. At its onset, Vaporwave seemed to critique of mass consumerism but this critique is canceled out by the aesthetic nostalgia and identification with mass media, consumer electronics, and corporate branding. Participation in Vaporwave happens when the re-authoring old content is one of commentary on social media boards, and sedating audiences with future-past music and video that are familiar, alien, hollow, and comedic all at once because the audience is recalling an old memory while making a new one. Vaporwave excels because the listener and viewer can recognize the old sources and is excited by the familiarity of a remixed past happening in the present, making it a very post-modern artistic practice and online trend. Perhaps hot and cool media combined create an antithesis of the other through narrative. Narrative can happen as either a movie that lays out a discrete message and spoon feeds the viewer, or exists in a videogame whose meaning is generated or arrived at with player actions. A completed narrative that is linear or roaming is hard to fit into the categories of hot and cold. Today’s media landscape is one of perpetual liveness over the internet as consumption and interaction can blur the creative content roles for senders and receivers alike. The lost or broken future of promises advertised in mass media that make up creative filed like vaporwave are really the resonating search for the future through process. The process of purple/warm media is an environment that is made up from the intersection of media signal, objects, and infrastructure. The sublimation is the stream of cyberspace that we cannot enter just like the gaseous signals we cannot actually perceive. So, we look at the screen and hear the speaker, waiting for the message of what to do next rather what we can be doing. Would the dissolvement of passivity and participation end the paradigm of post-modernity with its pointless recursion of saving and reviewing the past? Is the past in the air and present in the solidness and the future the cross section of liquidity? ︎︎︎Return To Index https://michaelchernoff.com/Digital-Art-Education-Anti-Art-World-copy Sun, 11 May 2025 01:17:22 +0000 Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website https://michaelchernoff.com/Digital-Art-Education-Anti-Art-World-copy Digital Art Education (Anti-Art World)Sunday, April 27th, 2025 In the School of Visual Art + New Media (SUNY Fredonia), where I teach digital arts, the majority of my students are preparing to be illustrators and animators. They are working mostly with software and are wanting to work for major entertainment studios. And by working with digital tools, their art making becomes subject to duplication, revision, and easy uploading and downloading of files. Digital art can exist on one machine or many. Art schools are still largely modeled on the belief in the development of style and skills through foundational learning, observation, art history, and the exhibiting of making things. They are pre-digital institutions and not mass production. Art history in particular provides a sense of the development and changing role of artists and the impact of their artwork. The hope being that art history instills a sense of time and place of the students to understand what has happened in fields of art as it is laid out by the art world. Yet when it comes to exhibiting in a gallery the students do not seem to have strong affection for the conventions of installing art. Knowing framing, and displaying art is shrugged off by some. This physical act of showing work in the White Cube Gallery is directly tied to the principles of exhibition done in the Art World of a museum gallery. This lack of interest in gallery exhibition seems to also indicate a lack of professional interest in the Art World.&nbsp; Students research the artistry and history of other artists if they want to be a professional. I find that the professional inspirations of my students are largely internet personalities; influencers, streamers, gamers, and visible artists on social media.&nbsp; The windows of their smartphones and laptops provide glimpses into what others are creating as social media, which is disguised mass media. Historically, mass media are societal programming done through mass production of image and sound in print, radion, and TV. Artists used to resist, protest, mock, and appropriate mass media in the tradition of critical, conceptual, activist, and avant-garde art. Today, the independent endeavor of making things (art being one of them) is easily publishable as digital media. The world of creatives is increasingly an online experience, de-centralized, processual, with the product and production directly tied to a single artist as an identifiable brand. And although some online creatives may be associated with major institutions and studios, the creative fields of the art world, commercial design, media, and film production are significantly different experiences from the intenet. They are physcial places with addresses and closed off production. So while students are taking classes in art and design, they are also peering into constant information streams. Is it the space of the school or the internet where art and design students find answers? And which space is more important to them? There are of course sections of production in art programs. Print making, graphic design, and video production exist in art programs, but even these areas are limited in comparison to schools of journalism, communications, and broadcasting. Art schools teach production as a craft but on a limited run. Like the Art World of museums and galleries, art schools emphasize the creation of objects whereas an education in communications would try to tailor art objects for public consumption or be implement into advertising and branding. Indeed, most art schools are still modeled on the Art World, in which single or limited run objects are exhibited and advertised for gallery viewing. Students at Fredonia must attend gallery receptions, tours, and lectures about the art and artist(s). While SUNY Fredonia has a strong studio arts program in drawing, painting, sculpture, and ceramics, the areas of illustration, animation, and cinema arts are preparing students for jobs in highly financed studios and major publications. These students can even post their digital art projects online before it is even show in a classroom or gallery. Yet, the students must go to these Art World events whose very commercial value is not mass production of image and animation, but accessing the private space of the gallery. Considering how much the students are engaged with content space of the internet, in what sense do these traditional facets of the physical exhibition in an art school have for them? Most art students do not become exhibiting artists in the museums. By working in digital media, most of them will go on to studio productions. But even film, animation, and game industries seem to be shrinking due to the cost slashing effects of better computers, programs, and AI. In other words the main viewing space of exhibition for the typical art student isn’t a physical gallery, but the virtual space where posted content and streams are experienced. A conflict can be seen between the two kinds of output: In-person and Virtual exhibition. It is easy to post digitally and hard to install physically after all. Some of my students think that there is a future for them through self-publishing on websites such as Paetreon. Others may see live streaming as a beneficial, even though the stream would never be about the object itself but the performance of making art. This bend for digital consumption and mass media has been a threat to the art world for a long time. The maintenance of the single edition and distinct mediums have been held up as fine art against the kitsch of consumerism. Pop artists use of mass media and Video Art with its ephemeral qualities and technological connection to mass media have been collected and sanitized through careful writing and curation by critics and historians. As digital technology has advanced art museums and galleries must also collect certain kinds of the digital art. This is because mass media is just another mode of cultural production which rivals the production of the Art World. Besides selling artwork for vast sums of money, and grants, the only monetary value the Art World has is charging admission to experience artwork. Whereas the internet is a viewing space for media that is largely free and disposable viewing. The art world has cultivated value through the archiving of artwork to be shown, toured, and advertised. Whereas the digitality of the internet is rapid, simultaneous, and modifiable but like video is hard to monetize outside of the model of paid advertising, such as television programming. So is the answer that art schools must not only teach the process of making art, but also mass distribution due to the digital rendering of art? That only teaching gallery exhibition is a disservice to the students. Not even just web design, but also treating the internet as curatorial space and publication? Perhaps these young minds would be right at home online with their art, compared to the forced activity of gallery hangings. A student’s naïveté understanding about the logistics and materiality of framing, mounting, lettering, promoting, and even displaying digital media on a stand alone screen with speakers would be canceled out with a web platform. The internet does make displaying creativity look easy as operating systems and code adjusts audiovisual elements for mass engagement. Then again, there was one time that some students told me they had never posted a video to YouTube. The simple process for posting a video publicly made them nervous. I can only assume because the&nbsp; high quality standard of video production on Youtube is too intimidating for a young artist to ever want to post. We of course can look back and know that was not the case not too long ago. Now YouTubers invest in DSLR cameras and LED lighting, and conform to speaking styles. Young art students can be creative or find creativity online, but if they do will they just succumb to watching? Will the high quality of closed production intimidate them instead of provoking them to make? I write all of this as way of working through the educational values that an art student can get through art school, but whose output as local or global modes of viewing appear to place art schools in a predicament of knowing essential skills. In my time as an undergraduate, I was taught that cutting mats and dry mounting were essential for photography. I do none of those things now. And I took video and media classes which focused on message and technique but not distribution or audience. My students are informed by not just the content of social media but also recognizing the platforms of distribution as having characteristics. Is physical space necessary for digital illustration and animation? Or is the physical space for art just the medium of curators, and the Art World is not where these students want to be? Is art education broken by technology that both displays and generates artwork all at once?&nbsp; ︎︎︎Return To Index https://michaelchernoff.com/Meditations-On-Video Sun, 27 Apr 2025 13:38:10 +0000 Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website https://michaelchernoff.com/Meditations-On-Video Meditations On Video&nbsp;Saturday, May 10th, 2025 One day, while staring at my computer screen, I asked the question: “What is video?” The query was inspired by the visual comparisons between the monitor screen of a Television CRT set, and an Apple MacBook GUI. Although all graphic representations on a computer are expressed and visualized with a video screen, we still refer to generated windows, objects, and coded elements as a “video.” The objecthood of analog video carries over and hides the video medium of interactive media and graphic programming of computers. Since having these thoughts, I keep returning to interrelations of cinema, television, and computers shared through the interface of screens. As video technology has gone from analog signal to digital encoding, several electronic signals can be outputed to a screen. Digital video reveals that signal not tapes, disc, or broadcast are at play which define medium. It is a variety of source inputs that make up the audiovisual quality of elapsing events that happen with every cycle of a video frame. To answer to the question of what IS Video? We must examine the process of what video DOES. Video IS, an electronic signal, and it is always a signal. Video is not really a physical object like videotape cassette or digital video disc, or even a digital file. These media objects are access containers of recorded content that are often associated as being “the video.” &nbsp;These media objects activate and inform the signal output of a media player, but are not the source format itself. What video the signal DOES, is host the appearance of things. More than just “re-presenting” events and subjects, the electronic image of video also forms a literal space for hosting of activity. The active space of the video screen is a place to be populated by numerous incoming signals, which gives video its spatial character as a scientific, entertainment, marketing, and military uses. The idea of video as an “active space” came to me reading the musings of Villem Fluesser. I was drawn to his written philosophy about the way in which a video monitor bonds everyone involved (technicians, operators, and performers) with the output of a TV screen, informing them how to work to build the picture. Fleusser also wrote that video began with television but was later discovered that the screen was useful for spying. Not the camera per say but the way in which the screen is watched indicates video surveillance. The desire for total control (totalitarian power) through mass surveillance is the real purpose of video. Like Panopoticism, the proliferation of cameras throughout industries, institutes, homes, and public space turns the world into a laboratory of power for systems to observe behavior, and implement corrective changes. But my own thinking about the controlling power of video became limited to just thinking about surveillance. The video screen itself is alluring. The screen attracts and engages the curiosity of a viewer, and keeps us watching to see what kind of imagery unfolds. If the purpose of video is to be a tool for total control as a messenger and surveillance apparatus then it is the space on both sides of the screen which generate a video environment. To commune and interact with screens enables systems to observe activity happening within and outside of the screen. This video environment of watching and being watched is too difficult to grasp when video space represents reality (real spaces) but is in fact still a separate reality which overtakes modes of communication, action, and movement. Since television, video has become the dominant cultural form. Video no longer supports culture but is culture itself. At this point, I answered my own question, but is that enough? There is still my interest in the way that video forms both constructed and incidental apparatus. There’s also the aspect of thinking about liveness that goes beyond differences of real-time and recorded media, and more so as liveness being how image is compiled and generated repeatedly. These aspects of video still that gnaw at me. Video art after all is useful for exploring what video is and what it can be, and the spatial possibilities of video are still developing further. Space, time, perception, and culture all collapse into the other when the virtual and physical spaces are bounded. As physical structures support the screen space, the video screen hypermediates physical space. Video screens make physical space into immersive places. The active space of the screen extends the confines of physical space with a live information stream. Just as a windowed opening in a building lets in the visual information of the outside world, video screens are taking on such a role less as perceptual metaphor, and more as built-in technology. TV was originally just a furniture object and later became a mobile device. The 3-Dimensional box of TV screens we gather around are now nearly 2-Dimensional flat panels, wall paper, partitioned walls for homes, offices, movie production, events, and a sphere for Las Vegas. The television tube of video has merged with architecture, which returns to the immersivity to the past tradition of murals and painted ceilings in building interiors.&nbsp; This deepening relationship of video with architecture shows just how necessary video is for systems in our society. The apparatus of video cameras and screens operate openly without protest. As Video has made physical spaces more immersive, video-based Virtual Reality technology is enabling new opportunities for viewing, interaction, access, and experience in a disembodied way. Spatial media is happening both within and outside of screens. Yet the screen is still a visual spectacle that is to cinema and television, which were common space for an industrialized society. And since new media remediate old media, the 3D video space of VR is seen through and by a virtual camera. Virtual Worlds turn into a just another activity space for surveillance that is embedded in 3D architecture and truly invisible for the human eye. Critical theorists such as DeBord and Baudrillard have established the proliferation of virtual experience and hyperreality. Guy Debord and the Situationists in France, framed their current time as a society who was losing public space, eroded by consumerism. The new or actual social space of industrialized nations was formed from the social space of mass media. A common for people that was founded through shared experiences with news, entertainment, and advertising. Debord’s vision of society is an all-consuming theatricality treatment, one in which the spectators are as much a part of producing the spectacle as they are seeing it. So immersed are modern people in the world of “commodified imagery” that they cannot step away from and separate from spectacle as it would be possible. The mass media environment of printed magazines, broadcasting, photographs, films, radio, billboards take up as much space as do the actual commodities they symbolize, but these image commodities in turn take on their own meaning. Jean Baudrillard was also keen on billboards, going further by claiming that the “billboards are watching us.” This metaphor has taken on a real shape, as surveillance cameras monitor human reactions to advertisements. Today, surveillance capitalism is carried out with video with screens, when the act of using and looking at them are recorded inside-out. The conflation of the real and the hyperreal cannot be disentangled, just as the physical and virtual intermingle becoming one in the same experience. Physical and the virtual worlds inform one another’s cultural production, but the virtual has the upper hand as always being available globally. But neither of DeBord or Baudrillard could provide an answer to a solution to capitalist realism beyond describing the implications. That the state of affairs in which progress is repetitive instead of a breakthrough. This modern world of sophisticated architecture, energy, and communications is so old and familiar, it seems to have naturally sprung up, when in fact it only exists because of human decisions. To not acknowledge human agency in construction of machinic world, is to render reality as phantasmagoria – fitting since logical systems perplex and frighten us. It is a world whose communication cannot be ended until as Ted Turner put it “the world ends.” The answer is to assign oneself a role in global communication. We instead should stop recycling knowledge and information. A post-modern project never tosses away and only saves things. For capitalism to keep extracting value nostalgia, formulas, models, and stories need to be resurrected. The difference between post-modern intellectual and capitalist pursuits is type of discourse. We should made video be communication about a reality that is unlike the real world. The copying of reality only leads to the extraction and copying of the real into a commodifiable forms. And digital media has its own limits for translating the natural function of physical reality. What makes virtual worlds passable is how it makes us feel they are real. Digitally created virtual worlds will enable exploration and play, an activity space for mapping out new possibilities, observed by cameras that are watched by… ︎︎︎Return To Index https://michaelchernoff.com/THE-DEAD-MEDIA-RESIDENCY Mon, 02 Feb 2026 14:16:44 +0000 Michael Chernoff: Video & Media Website https://michaelchernoff.com/THE-DEAD-MEDIA-RESIDENCY THE DEAD MEDIA RESIDENCY (2026) Buffalo, NY The DEAD MEDIA Residency is the first ever video art residency offered by the Video Archaeology Lab (VAL) and artist Michael Chernoff. This residency is a work and educational opportunity for artists across various disciplines who are seeking, or already incorporating, analog video media, visual effects, and electronic techniques into digital media and video/film projects. Located in Buffalo, NY,&nbsp; Video Archaeology is a video art environment for collecting, housing, and reusing obsolete analog video equipment for artistic practices and research. It is a privately owned and maintained AV system and equipment, that is used for creating immersive media installations, digital recordings, and live visual effects.&nbsp; VAL is primarily seeking artists to utilize its Multi-Channel AV system to create new media art, videos, digital media, and immersive experiences. List of Public Events Exhibits <img width="1080" height="1080" width_o="1080" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7a15191a76f8923cda216647972e076cbbe1a674a340c60889e7ab2915633cd5/DM-Slot2_Exhibit_JensonLeonard_ver2.png" data-mid="250990176" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7a15191a76f8923cda216647972e076cbbe1a674a340c60889e7ab2915633cd5/DM-Slot2_Exhibit_JensonLeonard_ver2.png" /> <img width="3068" height="3068" width_o="3068" height_o="3068" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1edd63657cf3f3d14fdb5b3382c5f9e58436275d614a31a3243f93cc15dba52f/YugengZhao_DMR_Exhibit-Announcement.jpg" data-mid="250990093" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1edd63657cf3f3d14fdb5b3382c5f9e58436275d614a31a3243f93cc15dba52f/YugengZhao_DMR_Exhibit-Announcement.jpg" /> Workshops <img width="1080" height="1080" width_o="1080" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/042b521a90ff885d97540a4aa7b4c7f6582c924c563bc24ea3b90dc5427938b9/Workshop_AriellaTai-1080p_ver2.jpg" data-mid="249285828" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/042b521a90ff885d97540a4aa7b4c7f6582c924c563bc24ea3b90dc5427938b9/Workshop_AriellaTai-1080p_ver2.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1080" width_o="1080" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2c8c403b87e76e0e5d3f340d94c67788d66a2be16ff59379756f97b469ff9b87/DM-Workshop2_JensonLeonard_ver1.png" data-mid="250990189" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2c8c403b87e76e0e5d3f340d94c67788d66a2be16ff59379756f97b469ff9b87/DM-Workshop2_JensonLeonard_ver1.png" /> <img width="1080" height="1080" width_o="1080" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/da48c8161823e44cc063623b145f3f8e3bb555948aa2a0ca7448c5efb7dec2d4/YugengZhao_DMR_Workshop-Announcement_ver3.jpg" data-mid="250990095" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/da48c8161823e44cc063623b145f3f8e3bb555948aa2a0ca7448c5efb7dec2d4/YugengZhao_DMR_Workshop-Announcement_ver3.jpg" /> Learn how to glitch your pictures and video clips tjrough Hex Editing with a workshop hosted by THE DEAD MEDIA RESIDENCY and @squeakwheel, taught by residency artist @ariellatai. Following this event will be an open house of the Squeaky Wheel facility and new art exhibit in the gallery. Maximum Number of Participants is 8 RSVP: archaeologyvideo@gmail.com Date: Saturday June 13th 10:30AM to 12:00PM Where: Squeaky Wheel Film &amp; Media Center | Tri-Main Center 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo, NY 14214 Cost: Free Equipment:A Personal Mac Laptop is Recommended but not required Download Application at https://hexfiend.com/ Cache of digital images and video clips on a USB stick, drive, or computer. *Squeaky Wheel also has MacMini computers that are free to use during the workshop. How can a single sentence become a cinematic sequence? In this live demonstration, artist Jenson Leonard&nbsp;will construct a short film scene from the ground up using ChatGPT, Nano Banana, and Seedance. Rather than presenting AI as a shortcut or replacement for filmmaking, the&nbsp;workshop&nbsp;explores these tools as part of a broader creative practice rooted in poetry, montage, production design, and visual storytelling.Participants will follow the evolution of an idea from written language to image generation, shot design, and finally animated moving image. Along the way, Leonard will discuss how cinematic meaning emerges through composition, sequencing, repetition, and editing, drawing connections between contemporary generative media, visual effects workflows, and experimental film traditions.Rather than focusing on prompts alone, this&nbsp;workshop&nbsp;offers a behind-the-scenes look at AI-assisted filmmaking as an iterative artistic process—one in which writing, cinematography, production design, and VFX increasingly converge.No prior experience with AI tools is required. Artists, filmmakers, writers, students, and anyone curious about emerging approaches to image-making are welcome. Tutorial Lecture A hands-on tutorial of media artist Yufeng Zhao’s custom built Computer Vision application, designed to interpret and misread a video file. The computer algorithmically “cold reads” things like: text, faces, bodies, objects, speech, and other areas of interest. We'll briefly learn about the background of each algorithm, then remix its readings and mis-readings into visual collages and live video effects. No coding experience required. The application will be distributed with a USB thumbdrive. What To Bring: A short video clip 30 to 45 seconds (Phone Footage is Perfect!)Personal Laptop: Mac (preferred) or Windows. Beefy RAM and Graphics Card Recommend. USB A Port or AdaptorLatest version of Google Chrome Browser installedClass Size Max: 10 Persons To RSVP email archaeologyvideo@gmail.com with your legal name and subject like “DMR: Workshop RSVP”Location:980 Northampton Street, Buffalo, NY 14211 Room 2605 Date: Sunday August 9th 10:30AM to 12:30PM (In-Person Only) Artist Pages <img width="2048" height="1536" width_o="2048" height_o="1536" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/753f16650f38578dbf9e1e43c2d86d05a7f6c5e4443fd35d491fb040d25379b5/DEAD-MEDIA-Hex-Workshop.jpg" data-mid="250988667" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/753f16650f38578dbf9e1e43c2d86d05a7f6c5e4443fd35d491fb040d25379b5/DEAD-MEDIA-Hex-Workshop.jpg" /> ariella tai (Portland, OR) <img width="2048" height="1365" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fc5bbdde0e2d1ce7763cda3bd9948270eae75a52afda10fafbe3c92ff1886d9e/YufengZhao_DMR-3.jpg" data-mid="251708883" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fc5bbdde0e2d1ce7763cda3bd9948270eae75a52afda10fafbe3c92ff1886d9e/YufengZhao_DMR-3.jpg" /> Yufeng Zhao (Boston, MA) <img width="1365" height="2048" width_o="1365" height_o="2048" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/012f2b001417e981468479b92ec28557761b496d9b2106e3ced9366951592152/DMR-Jenson-Leonard-80D-154.jpg" data-mid="250990068" border="0" data-scale="51" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/012f2b001417e981468479b92ec28557761b496d9b2106e3ced9366951592152/DMR-Jenson-Leonard-80D-154.jpg" /> Jenson Leonard (Buffalo, NY) Selected DMR Artists Announcement <img width="1080" height="1080" width_o="1080" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6f8904ad8a5ff3f3abfebcba2c2927e87f21ed5eafeb931f9bdb161eb17ab469/Dead-Media-Artists.png" data-mid="248669810" border="0" data-scale="92" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6f8904ad8a5ff3f3abfebcba2c2927e87f21ed5eafeb931f9bdb161eb17ab469/Dead-Media-Artists.png" /> <img width="2903" height="2903" width_o="2903" height_o="2903" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6cee19b49d4d3ae6a1c105314488df64b9134f1e69a4743e050e200471610cfe/headshot_at3.JPG" data-mid="248669812" border="0" data-scale="58" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6cee19b49d4d3ae6a1c105314488df64b9134f1e69a4743e050e200471610cfe/headshot_at3.JPG" /> <img width="1856" height="2304" width_o="1856" height_o="2304" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/32157575669534e4bffaa1f91b75d29526b6d2081c6568098909cf775b1440e0/gxuucz-ggrysz.jpg" data-mid="248669811" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/32157575669534e4bffaa1f91b75d29526b6d2081c6568098909cf775b1440e0/gxuucz-ggrysz.jpg" /> <img width="1898" height="1898" width_o="1898" height_o="1898" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8e3d7a7a7255846606b2d9fcc532aaf05b050815ffa60d943b3314336d5015ac/2024_SPAM_2_BW_SQUARE.jpg" data-mid="248669809" border="0" data-scale="70" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8e3d7a7a7255846606b2d9fcc532aaf05b050815ffa60d943b3314336d5015ac/2024_SPAM_2_BW_SQUARE.jpg" /> <img width="2975" height="2975" width_o="2975" height_o="2975" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5846ff8aedebf9bc854811c45379227689253de5dee682c65d128fef5787aefb/photo_bio.png" data-mid="248669813" border="0" data-scale="73" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5846ff8aedebf9bc854811c45379227689253de5dee682c65d128fef5787aefb/photo_bio.png" /> &nbsp; We are proud to announce the recipients for the DEAD MEDIA RESIDENCY 💀 10 Days of&nbsp; Exploration and Display of Video and Media Arts&nbsp; ariella taiJenson LeonardYufeng ZhaoMaurane Dubois Artist Bios ariella tai an experimental filmmaker, video and installation artist, film educator and programmer based in Portland, OR. Their practice is rooted in fostering spaces for critical spectatorship around film and media, with a focus on film from the Black Diaspora. They create experimental, sample-based films and installations using digital and analog video processing tools for glitch, editing and sound design to explore alternate storylines, endings and futures. Their methods are informed by research and pedagogical practices that center Black feminist and queer experimental film history, theory and literature. Jenson Leonard is an artist working across memes and internet culture, sculpture, installation, film, and generative AI. His work explores how digital media shapes contemporary life, identity, and visual culture. He has exhibited at Pioneer Works and the Hessel Museum of Art, and has completed residencies at Obracadobra and Squeaky Wheel. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Pratt Institute and teaches in the Media Study Department at University at Buffalo. Yufeng Zhao is a media artist and technologist whose work addresses data, imagery/language processing, and experience design—exploring unexpected connections embedded in our techno-cultural landscape. Through web-based experiences, video installations, and data art, his practice investigates the intersections of information, graphics, and human interaction. His work has been featured in The Pudding, Fast Company, and the Electronic Literature Organization, and exhibited at SKOL (Montréal), Wonderville, and the SPAM New Media Festival. He is a master's student in the Future Sketches Group at MIT Media Lab. Maurane Dubois is a video artist from Montreal, Canada, whose practice is rooted in autofiction, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction. Her work draws from her own relationships, which she reinterprets through a playful, absurd, and critical lens, exploring ugliness, beauty, and truth within intimacy and human connection. Her recent projects explore the tension between authenticity and spectacle, questioning the circulation of intimacy and the role of the viewer within digital communication systems. Original Call For Applications&nbsp; <img width="1080" height="566" width_o="1080" height_o="566" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/85e116cee82efc45f008e83c28dc554bad0805f43ec20c583b88e1dd6b082698/Slide1_DeadMediaResidency.png" data-mid="244325825" border="0" data-scale="71" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/85e116cee82efc45f008e83c28dc554bad0805f43ec20c583b88e1dd6b082698/Slide1_DeadMediaResidency.png" /> The in-house AV system distributes up to 8 kinds of media inputs to several video displays within a Video TV Wall, for both recorded and live media. Media signals can also be processed wth real-time video synthesizers and mixers. Residents can also access the lab’s equipment pool which includes a variety of camcorders, security cameras, CRT and LED monitors, microphones, cables, tape decks, e-waste VHS, Windows 98 PC, and retro videogame consoles. The residency also provides a DSLR and an HD Video Camera to artists for documenting their work, process, and exhibits. We equally encourage both experienced and emerging artists to apply. Applicants can be media artists, photographers, filmmakers, video artists, performers, and other interdisciplinary practitioners. Residents receive guided tutorials and hands-on experience to learn about using our system, and individual aspects of analog electronics, camera, screen, and synthesizer technology. The residency will happen from June through August of 2026. 4 artists will be chosen for individual residency cycles for a period of 10 days. Each selected candidate can receive a stipend of up to $1200. Artists living outside of Erie County are eligible for a housing and travel stipend as well. Couples, duos, and collectives may jointly apply but receive a single stipend award. Residents will have 24 hour access to the studio, and WiFi internet. All residents are expected to publicly exhibit work produced from their residency, in the form of either screenings, performance, installation, artist talk etc. Residents will also plan and lead a 2 hour workshop about a technique of their choice. The VAL will work with artists to promote and facilitate all exhibits and public programming.&nbsp; <img width="1080" height="566" width_o="1080" height_o="566" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d09310034e44fde790f627b4d8319ac5659f46ae2da4702c6e17bee9aa8e33c2/Slide4_DeadMediaResidency.png" data-mid="244325827" border="0" data-scale="67" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d09310034e44fde790f627b4d8319ac5659f46ae2da4702c6e17bee9aa8e33c2/Slide4_DeadMediaResidency.png" /> How To Apply:&nbsp; Email us at archaeologyvideo@gmail.com with the subject: “DEAD MEDIA Residency - YourFullName” Attatch a single PDF document containing the following items: Letter of Intent: (Max 250 words) Describe your project idea with the following questions in mind: What is your interest in analog video, and what do you want to achieve? How would you use our AV system? Is there other equipment you are interested in using? What will your time in the residency produce?How do you want to publicly share new work?Short Workshop Proposal: A technique that you can competently offer to teach in Buffalo, NY. Include necessary materials and equipment, and general costs. Web Portfolio: 3-10 work titles, year, medium, and hyperlinks to internet images, video, websites, etc. Long format video content will not likely be watched in full, so send clips or time stamped sections.Artist(s) Bio: (100 Words) URL links: Professional websites, portfolios, and social media profiles3 Professional References: (Non-Family Members): Name, Phone Number, Email, Relationship.Contact Info: Name of Applicants, Home Address, Phone Number, Email, Date of Birth Applications will close on April 6th 2026 at 11:59PM. Recipients will be notified by May 1st. Awards will be announced on May 8th.To view up to date examples of the studio space and technology capabilities, click and visit us on Instagram and Youtube This residency is fiscally supported by a Potential Award Grant from the Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Art during the 2025 Generator Fund Cycle <img width="504" height="289" width_o="504" height_o="289" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a9e4f737eb19b49bacdae69ac6022bc2e2f5b7d639fa480a1fb692a78eeb29bc/Copy-of-BICA-LogoArtboard-1-copy-22x.png" data-mid="244325705" border="0" data-scale="72" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/504/i/a9e4f737eb19b49bacdae69ac6022bc2e2f5b7d639fa480a1fb692a78eeb29bc/Copy-of-BICA-LogoArtboard-1-copy-22x.png" /> <img width="2001" height="771" width_o="2001" height_o="771" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/870a9999bf4b22ebb373a37a962e173e0e14c74ffcc2d0b61be7377cdba72458/BICA-TGF-Logo-RGB-Reverse-Horizontal.png" data-mid="244325725" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/870a9999bf4b22ebb373a37a962e173e0e14c74ffcc2d0b61be7377cdba72458/BICA-TGF-Logo-RGB-Reverse-Horizontal.png" />