[ISEA2011] Panel: Mal­colm Levy – Other Frames

Panel Statement

Panel: The Big Bang of Electronic Art: Merging Abstraction and Representation in the Age of Digital Imaging

Other Frames’ in­ves­ti­gates is­sues of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in pho­tog­ra­phy and video within a dig­i­tal frame­work, and specif­i­cally the issue of for­merly un­seen work being ex­posed through a com­bi­na­tion of dig­i­tal and ana­log means.  In par­tic­u­lar to my prac­tice are the places where dig­i­tal and ana­logue meet.  This is an area of pho­tog­ra­phy which I have found to be lack­ing in re­search cur­rently, but emerg­ing in prac­tice at this time. The spe­cific area of re­search that I have fo­cused on is in look­ing at Con­struc­tivist Con­cep­tu­al­iza­tions around Ab­strac­tion using the dig­i­tal cam­era and com­puter as the tools.  The focus of this has been on the com­puter chip within a dig­i­tal cam­era, and how this can be ma­nip­u­lated with frames that are in be­tween, or not re­ally part of the ac­tual log­i­cal frame rate pat­tern.  Through prac­tic­ing tech­niques of move­ment with a dig­i­tal cam­era, I have fo­cused on in­ves­ti­gat­ing the place where the dig­i­tal chip stops work­ing prop­erly, where it can­not han­dle the work­load it is being given.  The im­por­tance of this issue is based on the cur­rent dis­course around the pho­to­graphic image, and post pho­to­graphic con­text around the record­ing of mem­ory.   I have looked at com­men­tary and work of artists within both dig­i­tal and ana­logue spaces around ab­strac­tive pho­to­graphic prac­tice, and an­a­lyzed how these two areas of prac­tice some­times ac­tu­ally find areas of sim­i­lar­ity, both with re­gard to method­ol­ogy as well as the final re­sult.  In terms of the spe­cific artis­tic prac­tice re­lated to this re­search, I have worked on cre­at­ing pieces where the final out­come has been specif­i­cally fo­cused on ac­tive work around a com­bined dig­i­tal-ana­logue prac­tice.

  • Mal­colm Levy is an artist, cu­ra­tor and film­maker liv­ing in Van­cou­ver, Canada. He was the Cu­ra­tor of CODE Live at the 2010 Win­ter Olympics, where he over­saw the in­stal­la­tion of over 40 in­ter­ac­tive media art­works and 8 per­for­mances across the city. Work­ing pri­mar­ily in ex­per­i­men­tal film, new media and doc­u­men­tary, his pro­jects in­clude co-found­ing Cap­i­tal Mag­a­zine (1999-2005) and the New Forms Fes­ti­val (1999-pre­sent), un­der­tak­ing pro­jects for CBC Radio 3, and writ­ing or cu­rat­ing for Mo­bile Muse, and Hori­zon Zero among oth­ers.  Levy’s cu­ra­to­r­ial, pre­sen­ta­tion, film and video in­stal­la­tion works have been pre­sented in India, Aus­tralia, China, Ger­many and Canada at such or­ga­ni­za­tions and fes­ti­vals as Sarai, Next Wavie, the INIAF, MUTEK, VID­FEST, the FCMM, Club Trans­me­di­ale and the AND Fes­ti­val.  Fea­ture length doc­u­men­taries in­clude Shamb­hala (2001-2008) and Walk­ing on Glass (2006-2010).  Cur­rent pro­jects in­clude pur­su­ing an MA in Media Stud­ies at the New School in New York, de­vel­op­ing a media lab for the grunt gallery in Van­cou­ver, the Goethe Satel­lite Pro­ject, and pro­duc­ing a se­ries of com­mis­sioned art­works for urban screens in con­nec­tion with Mcluhan in Eu­rope 2011.  Mal­colm is the co-Founder of the con­tem­po­rary art group Re­vised Pro­jects.

Full text (PDF) p. 1517-1521