Devils Reign

Emerging from the LA underground in year 2000, a self-proclaimed "video band" called TV Sheriff & The Trailbuddies hit the scene with their twisted take on performance art and VJ remixing. They have since taken their unique act to venues worldwide, providing animated commentary on the state of mind control in the USA. The Trailbuddies focus on the banality of television, creating rhythmic collages from appropriated clips of the most absurd broadcast moments. And besides their virtuoso sampling, the madcap ensemble creates original—and hilarious!—karaoke-style melodies on mass-media manipulation. Behind TV Sheriff & The Trailbuddies is the ingenious, Emmy-award-nominated Davy Force, an exceptional combination of brilliant director and hands-on computer artist. His recent projects include music videos for Devo, animated commercials for Bandai and the show open for Tim & Eric's Awesome Show Great Job.

Writes Ando, "Oh! My Mother was the first work I made using a newly bought 16mm camera I had purchased with the writer Shuji Terayama in Paris. This piece was selected for the Oberhausen International Film Festival. In 1969, there were, of course, no video cameras like ones we see now, and color TVs were only found at broadcast television studios. I had just been employed at the TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System), and I often snuck into the studios after hours to experiment with the equipment. Oh! My Mother was made using the feedback effect, which is produced by infinitely expanding the image by looping the video."

Camera, Monitor, Frame is the first installment of Takahiko Iimura's "Video Semiotics Triptych" (the other two works are Observer/Observed, made in 1975, and Observer/Observed/Observer, made in 1976). The work analyzes the fundamental components of video: the camera, the monitor, and the frame, focusing on the role of each within a system of video as analogous to the functions of vision and speech.

Using video technology as an extension of his body, Yamamoto interacts with a pre-recorded image of his hand displayed on a monitor.

Writes Imai, "As a photographer during the 1970s, my interest in capturing time led me to explore the video medium. After utilizing video in two or three works, I saw a similarity between videotape and an ancient scroll, in that they both capture a story of our time. I started using physical videotape as a metaphorical representation of time, rolling out the magnetic tape from right to left, representing a narrative from beginning to end."

Gérard Courant applies the Lettrist editing techniques of Isidore Isou to footage of late 70's pop culture. Courant posits that his cinema offers an aggressive détournement to the French mainstream, reifying a Duchampian view of film: "I believe in impossible movies and works without meaning... I believe in the anti-movie. I believe in the non-movie. I believe in Urgent... My first full length movie that is so anti-everything that I sometimes wonder if it really does exist!"

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi and Hakudo Kobayashi presented the video performance Eat at Video Hiroba's first exhibition, Video Communication DO IT YOURSELF KIT. Two performers sit at a table. One records the other eating; then they switch roles. The live video feed of the performance was displayed on a monitor in the exhibition space.

This is the first in a series of films using documentary, industrial and educational film footage from the Prelinger Archive and The Internet Archive. The film explores the theme of technology, showing how the future can be edited and manipulated through advances in computer science. As the narrative in the film says "The art of computer graphics is only in its infancy yet it is already stimulating creative thought in far out areas where research is likely to get complex and unwieldy".

Black Hole Radio is an installation that consists of taped confessions of callers of the New York City Phone Confession Line and video images. The Phone Confession Line is based on anonymous callers ringing to confess on things they had done or thought like adultery, theft, murder or regrets. Thereafter anybody could call and listen to the confessions. Although making a confession was free, listening to a confession costs money. After Cohen got his hands on the confessions, he used them as an audio heartbeat to accompany video-images of every day life in New York City he had taken over the years. This installation is a portrait of the city with its dark secrets, hushed voices and nocturnal images. In this way Cohen tries to bring across an experience to the viewer that relies on absence, waiting and the effort to hear something in the dark.

In 1907, the Gaumont Films company in France made a slapstick comedy (silent, of course) with a title that would translate from the French as 'A gentleman who ate some bull'. Eugene Deslow got hold of that film and added an introduction plus a soundtrack, the latter consisting of commentary narrated by the single-named actor Bétove.

In this tape, Ko Nakajima and Video Earth Tokyo interview a homeless man. The subject is initially angry and frustrated, but gradually opens up and shares stories about his life. Under A Bridge was later broadcast on cable television.

In Idemitsu's seminal women's liberationist video, the image of a tampon swirling in a toilet bowl slowly appears, as the artist speaks about the troubling roles, responsibilities and expectations of women in a clinical tone. Minimal in composition, What a Woman Made is a candid critique of the treatment of women in Japanese society.

Trance dances and out of body projection. In front of the camera, Parvaneh Navaï becomes a mediator who enters in contact with and immerses into the energies of Nature, while her own energy radiates and echos in the forest ("selva"). The camera amplifies and expands her presence, transforming the forest into an imaginary space. The camera becomes a painter's brush.

In "Falling. Desert. Syn" there is the body of repetition—not of tautology but of smooth resurrection; a body dying and being resurrected in a dance without suffering. A body of the desert, which is not deserted, but instead possessed by a force of attraction towards the sky, a force as strong as the one towards the earth. A body for the stars, the same one which plunges into the underworlds.

A collaborative performance, Image of Seeing--Seeing investigates the meaning of television watching. This work was created for television broadcast on the Nippon Broadcasting Corporation's program "Hyōgo no jikan" (Hyōgo Time).

A member of the collective Video Hiroba, Morihiro Wada also used video in his solo projects. In The Recognition Construction, each subject entering the frame is identified by a narrator, while the video camera slowly rotates. As the rotation speeds up the identification becomes more difficult, and the objects ultimately become "indecipherable."

13 minute video art piece by Phil Morton.

The Second Electronic Visualization Event took place at The University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus in 1976. This documentation features Bob Snyder on EMU Synthesizer, Phil Morton on the Sandin Image Processor by Dan Sandin and Guenther Tetz on the GRASS (GRaphics Symbiosis System) by Tom DeFanti. In Morton's words these artists perform live realtime audio and video synthesis "using both analog and digital computers as 'visual instruments'..." Other artists credited with participation in the Electronic Visualization Events between 1975 and 1978 include Drew Browning, Larry Cuba, Barbara Latham, John Manning, Faramarz Rahbar, Ed Rankus, Michael Sterling, Barbara Sykes and Jane Veeder.

Openland is an art film guided by issues surrounding micro states and its derivative definitions. Through intertwining interviews, meta-narratives, and digital landscapes, Openland unfurls a dialogue between consciousness, individuality and collectivity.

Features four distinct, bizarre, existential tales about people whose lives are in transition, who are each asking questions about themselves, their environments, and about God(s).